Games we play....
Last week I gave in to my secret indulgence and purchased Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness. Confession: I'm a HUGE Tomb Raider fan, thanks to my son who got me hooked from the very beginning with the original Lara Croft game back in 1996. I've played every game in succession and enjoyed each one (with the exception of the horrid ending of The Last Revelation)...that is, until AOD. While the storyline of AOD is compelling, and for the first time you get to talk/interact with many characters throughout the game, unfortunately Angel of Darkness for PlayStation 2 was waaaay too glitchy for my enjoyment. Time spent (wasted): 16 hours. Game froze: +20 times. Saved game erasure (game froze during 'Save'): twice. After the first loss, I played it safe and saved in two slots.
Some of the new features included the ability to belly-crawl and to walk about in 'sneak mode'. Both were slow but workable. Other new additions: time-limit for hanging/climbing, and the introduction of a new male character, which takes Lara's place for a couple of levels. All was cool except while in sneak mode, Lara tended to sink into walls, ending up in some kind of strange, turquoise dead space where she could walk, run and jump, but there was no earthly way to get her back into the actual game. At one point, she fell from a high ceiling beam into a room below and couldn't get back into the upper room (where she'd come from). Frustrating to say the least.
Not to mention the loss of weapons she'd accumulated at another point in the game...including the machine gun I'd worked so hard to get. Now I could understand if she'd been captured and her weapons were removed (as in previous games), but in this game, none of the kind happened.
Online, I did a code search and found one for level changes, enabling her to skip/select a level. This is always a last resort, but was the only way I could get to the end of the game. Not that the bosses were hard; quite the opposite, they were nearly harmless, but the awful sequence of glitches made game play next to impossible. Did I mention frustrating?
Cool storyline, though. The graphics and puzzles were well done (except the characters still had blocky hands), and it was fun exploring around and talking with the other characters when I could chose Lara's responses. By the end of the game, though, I'd had enough, and returned it to the store's used bin for resale. I felt a little guilty losing $11 on the game, but I learned a lesson from this experience.
I don't know if it's the same for other versions of the game, but for PS2, AOD seemed to me as if it had been rushed out, not given quite enough testing before being put on the shelves. Don't get me wrong, Eidos folks, I love Tomb Raider, and I'll buy the next one that comes out because the games are fun and I like the stories. Just please, please, pleeeease test more thoroughly for glitches in the future. I'd have gone apeshit had I bought AOD for full price when it first came out instead of waiting for it to go half-price. On my budget, $50+ is a lot of money for a game, yes indeedy...and $25 is too much for a buggy game. Frustrating, you betcha.
Okay, end of rant. One horror game I highly recommend is Konami's Silent Hill 3 for PlayStation 2. Great game, eerie playing atmosphere, excellent story and monsters with backbone. Well worth the money. I left a short review of SH3 at Horror-Web; here's the link if you want to read it: http://www.horror-web.com/reviews/YaBB.cgi?board=Console;action=display;num=1068655714
My son just bought the latest Resident Evil game, and it looks very interesting, good-n-creepy. I haven't had much luck playing the RE games; my fingers are just too slow, but it's fun watching Tom fight the zombies.
More entertainment: Books. For me, that's really where it's at. I finished Deep In The Darkness by Michael Laimo, and what a good read that was! Michael has a great way of evoking heartfelt empathy for his characters and draws the reader into their situations right from the start clear through to the end. DITD is the story of a doctor and his family who move from the city to a remote, rural area to become participants/victims in the utter strangeness going on there. No spoilers here--there's A LOT more going on in this book than a mere 'who done it?'. Highly recommended reading!
I also purchased the 16th Annual Edition of The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. Tons of good information on last year's genre offerings, and a slew of short stories. I've been skipping around the book, reading them at random (not in order), and the ones I've read so far are very entertaining, proving once again that Datlow and Windling have their fingers on the pulse of speculative fiction.
And what's new in Grayville? Well, I finally finished laying the hardwood floor (red oak--looks beautiful!) in the kitchen, and laid sheet vinyl down in my office. I've come to the conclusion that you don't know how many books you really have until you need to move them, heh heh. Hubby and I are both wicked readers, so while I was putting down the new office floor (the pattern looks quite Tomb Raider-ish, btw), we had stacks upon stacks of books throughout the living room with just a narrow path for a walk-through. Mostly his WWIIs and my beloved horror with some historical fiction, and (gasp!) a couple of old romance novels I couldn't bear to part with.
One was Love's Tender Fury by Jennifer Wilde (Tom E. Huff). The reason I hang onto this book is because waaaay back in the late 70s when I first read it I had no inkling that the author was a man who'd written many romance novels under several female pseudonyms. I was just a teen when I read the book, but I remember my amazement (not only about the author being male, but that he'd written the book in a first person POV and done it so convincingly that I figured he HAD to be a woman!). Lesson learned for me as a budding young writer: you can write first person in anyone's POV--male/female/unisex--but if you're going to do it, you've got to be convincing. Step back as an author and let the main character take charge. No, I didn't master that technique as a kid, but from reading LTF, I learned how it could be done.
The other romance novel I've hung onto is Glynda by Susannah Leigh (Brigitte Yerna). This novel taught me all about sub-plotting as the third person narrative tells the epic story of Glynda's love for Duke Phillip of Verlaine. The setting is 13th Century England, my love of history--one of the reasons I bought the book, which takes place in the turmoil of Norman/Saxon England, and is chock-full of subplots. Not one of the twists takes the reader away from the story, but draws them deeper into it (just what subplots are supposed to do).
As a writer, I find effective subplotting takes a lot of work, so I make use of outlines and index cards when writing a long novel. That's because I get lost easily (makes traveling verrry interesting, heh heh). Outlines/cards help me stay on course with a tale as well as making sure there are no loose ends at the book's completion. I like to keep things tidy, especially when in the end the reader may have to decide something for themselves. (I love making the reader a participant!)
Well, after my flooring adventure, I have blisters on both knees (which, I'm sure, sounds like some kind of sexual innuendo, doesn't it? lol), and some on my toes, and splinter scrapes in my fingers, but I'm a happy gal.
What am I working on now? Still picking away at Hallow House. This one's wringing a lot of sweat from my writerly pores--almost halfway through, I realized I've presented the story all wrong. Instead of being third person, limited omniscient POV, it needs to be written in first person. Fifty whacks with a wet noodle for Gray, yup, and it's a little aggravating to have to go back and change everything--but it's well worth it if it makes the story better (and I think it will).
At least it's not half as frustrating as Angel of Darkness (grin)....
Some of the new features included the ability to belly-crawl and to walk about in 'sneak mode'. Both were slow but workable. Other new additions: time-limit for hanging/climbing, and the introduction of a new male character, which takes Lara's place for a couple of levels. All was cool except while in sneak mode, Lara tended to sink into walls, ending up in some kind of strange, turquoise dead space where she could walk, run and jump, but there was no earthly way to get her back into the actual game. At one point, she fell from a high ceiling beam into a room below and couldn't get back into the upper room (where she'd come from). Frustrating to say the least.
Not to mention the loss of weapons she'd accumulated at another point in the game...including the machine gun I'd worked so hard to get. Now I could understand if she'd been captured and her weapons were removed (as in previous games), but in this game, none of the kind happened.
Online, I did a code search and found one for level changes, enabling her to skip/select a level. This is always a last resort, but was the only way I could get to the end of the game. Not that the bosses were hard; quite the opposite, they were nearly harmless, but the awful sequence of glitches made game play next to impossible. Did I mention frustrating?
Cool storyline, though. The graphics and puzzles were well done (except the characters still had blocky hands), and it was fun exploring around and talking with the other characters when I could chose Lara's responses. By the end of the game, though, I'd had enough, and returned it to the store's used bin for resale. I felt a little guilty losing $11 on the game, but I learned a lesson from this experience.
I don't know if it's the same for other versions of the game, but for PS2, AOD seemed to me as if it had been rushed out, not given quite enough testing before being put on the shelves. Don't get me wrong, Eidos folks, I love Tomb Raider, and I'll buy the next one that comes out because the games are fun and I like the stories. Just please, please, pleeeease test more thoroughly for glitches in the future. I'd have gone apeshit had I bought AOD for full price when it first came out instead of waiting for it to go half-price. On my budget, $50+ is a lot of money for a game, yes indeedy...and $25 is too much for a buggy game. Frustrating, you betcha.
Okay, end of rant. One horror game I highly recommend is Konami's Silent Hill 3 for PlayStation 2. Great game, eerie playing atmosphere, excellent story and monsters with backbone. Well worth the money. I left a short review of SH3 at Horror-Web; here's the link if you want to read it: http://www.horror-web.com/reviews/YaBB.cgi?board=Console;action=display;num=1068655714
My son just bought the latest Resident Evil game, and it looks very interesting, good-n-creepy. I haven't had much luck playing the RE games; my fingers are just too slow, but it's fun watching Tom fight the zombies.
More entertainment: Books. For me, that's really where it's at. I finished Deep In The Darkness by Michael Laimo, and what a good read that was! Michael has a great way of evoking heartfelt empathy for his characters and draws the reader into their situations right from the start clear through to the end. DITD is the story of a doctor and his family who move from the city to a remote, rural area to become participants/victims in the utter strangeness going on there. No spoilers here--there's A LOT more going on in this book than a mere 'who done it?'. Highly recommended reading!
I also purchased the 16th Annual Edition of The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. Tons of good information on last year's genre offerings, and a slew of short stories. I've been skipping around the book, reading them at random (not in order), and the ones I've read so far are very entertaining, proving once again that Datlow and Windling have their fingers on the pulse of speculative fiction.
And what's new in Grayville? Well, I finally finished laying the hardwood floor (red oak--looks beautiful!) in the kitchen, and laid sheet vinyl down in my office. I've come to the conclusion that you don't know how many books you really have until you need to move them, heh heh. Hubby and I are both wicked readers, so while I was putting down the new office floor (the pattern looks quite Tomb Raider-ish, btw), we had stacks upon stacks of books throughout the living room with just a narrow path for a walk-through. Mostly his WWIIs and my beloved horror with some historical fiction, and (gasp!) a couple of old romance novels I couldn't bear to part with.
One was Love's Tender Fury by Jennifer Wilde (Tom E. Huff). The reason I hang onto this book is because waaaay back in the late 70s when I first read it I had no inkling that the author was a man who'd written many romance novels under several female pseudonyms. I was just a teen when I read the book, but I remember my amazement (not only about the author being male, but that he'd written the book in a first person POV and done it so convincingly that I figured he HAD to be a woman!). Lesson learned for me as a budding young writer: you can write first person in anyone's POV--male/female/unisex--but if you're going to do it, you've got to be convincing. Step back as an author and let the main character take charge. No, I didn't master that technique as a kid, but from reading LTF, I learned how it could be done.
The other romance novel I've hung onto is Glynda by Susannah Leigh (Brigitte Yerna). This novel taught me all about sub-plotting as the third person narrative tells the epic story of Glynda's love for Duke Phillip of Verlaine. The setting is 13th Century England, my love of history--one of the reasons I bought the book, which takes place in the turmoil of Norman/Saxon England, and is chock-full of subplots. Not one of the twists takes the reader away from the story, but draws them deeper into it (just what subplots are supposed to do).
As a writer, I find effective subplotting takes a lot of work, so I make use of outlines and index cards when writing a long novel. That's because I get lost easily (makes traveling verrry interesting, heh heh). Outlines/cards help me stay on course with a tale as well as making sure there are no loose ends at the book's completion. I like to keep things tidy, especially when in the end the reader may have to decide something for themselves. (I love making the reader a participant!)
Well, after my flooring adventure, I have blisters on both knees (which, I'm sure, sounds like some kind of sexual innuendo, doesn't it? lol), and some on my toes, and splinter scrapes in my fingers, but I'm a happy gal.
What am I working on now? Still picking away at Hallow House. This one's wringing a lot of sweat from my writerly pores--almost halfway through, I realized I've presented the story all wrong. Instead of being third person, limited omniscient POV, it needs to be written in first person. Fifty whacks with a wet noodle for Gray, yup, and it's a little aggravating to have to go back and change everything--but it's well worth it if it makes the story better (and I think it will).
At least it's not half as frustrating as Angel of Darkness (grin)....