Some Reviews

I just read what may be the best fantasy story I've seen in years! It's called "Nine Pound Hammer", and it's the first book in the Clockwork Dark Trilogy, by John Claude Bemis. Yes, "clockwork dark" is as cool as it sounds! The author is a musician from the south, so he naturally knows about John Henry, and decided to turn the story into epic fantasy, using all kinds of American folklore, and steampunkish flair. The main character is a boy named Ray, who was is headed south on a train with many other orphans, following the pull of his father's mysterious Lodestone. When he sleeps with the stone, he has dreams about being chased by a monstrous clockwork hound. He runs away and joins a traveling medicine show, where he learns some very interesting things. There are some very cool twists and the characters are all awesome. I couldn't put this book down, and I can't wait to read "The Wolf Tree"!

On to games! I played Red Dead Redemption a while back, and I really liked it, with a couple of reservations. First, the bad, then the good, then the ugly:

The minor complaint I had about this game was the lack of depth. Heresy, they'll say! It's a huge sprawling sandbox style game. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sandbox style games tend to be very repetitive, and this was no exception. Sure, the different environments looked different and had different animals (freakin' mountain lions!) but you pretty much do the same things all the time. I wanted more control over the story - since morality is a big feature of the story, it would have been nice to be able to make a few choices, pick out who your allies are, that sort of thing. They managed it in Steambot Chronicle (not that that wasn't repetitive).

Also, while they do an excellent job establishing time and place, it manages to feel very static. A major feature of the setting is the end of the wild west, the spread of the railroad, the introduction of the car! And yet, I never got a sense of the tension, excitement, or melancholy that should go along with this change, outside of a couple of scenes where it was specifically mentioned.

My more overarching problem was a typical one for Rockstar. Although it seems like their hearts are starting to be in the right place, they still have the puerile tendency to substitute the sordid for the mature. This doesn't make it any edgier, and it certainly doesn't make it any deeper. I would have liked for even one of the Stranger subquests to have a happy ending.

Now for the good: This game is beautiful! Sure, all kinds of games are pretty to look at, and all kinds of games use it as an excuse for lousy gameplay. But this is different - it is like being drawn into the pages of Arizona Highways! It makes the game so immersive and engaging, you can almost smell the greasewood and pinetrees, and feel the gritty wind shift from hot to cold when a monsoon blows in. The graphics and sound design really make a difference here.

I love the story too! The premise is your character used to be an outlaw, and he tried to settle down and be a rancher with his wife and son, but federal agents kidnapped them in order to force you to hunt down your old gang. You have a whole bunch of missions where you do just that, with a few twists and obstacles thrown in. It's all tons of fun, and there's enough variety to keep it interesting - everything to storming forts to herding cattle, from robbing trains to dueling in the streets! There are sidequests too, which start off fun, but after a whole bunch of them ending badly, I started to dread them popping up. Your actions determine both your fame and honor ratings, which change how the random characters and especially law enforcement interact with you. It's way easier if you behave yourself (Hint: if you see a guy running and screaming, make sure the guys chasing him aren't wearing silver stars before you shoot at them.) If things get too hot you can pay off your bounty.

~ Spoiler alert! Highlight to keep reading ~

I really like the last few missions, where you finally find the last bad guy. And then the game keeps going! You go home to your ranch, and do missions for your wife, and teach your boy to shoot and rope, and bring supplies to the neighboring ranch! You start to build a real life, and offer your son more than you had. He wants to be a writer, and is enchanted with novels of the wild west. Or he wants to be a rich industrialist. You tell him he be whatever he wants, but he has to bring the cattle in first. I actually thought this was the most enjoyable part of the game. Of course, the g-men won't just leave you alone, and they come after you. You get your family to safety and a Butch and Sundance style stand-off, and get killed. Your family comes back, and the credits play as they bury you, and the soundtrack is "Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie". I cried. It was a great ending.

Or was it?

The ugly: They had to go and ruin the ending. After the credits, four years have passed, your wife has died, and your son has become a gunslinger. You play as him now. You hunt down the retired agent who set you up and murder him in cold blood. Then you ride around and do nothing - no more missions, no more story, no nothing. What the hell did this guy's father fight and die for?!?! It is the worst possible ending they could possibly have had. It pretty much ruined the game for me.