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.

The Coming Thing!

So, after watching the live broadcast of this year's E3, I believe I can safely say I have found another Coming Thing. And it's weird for me to pick this one out, given my skepticism for Nintendo's recent gimicky junk. Drumroll please:

The 3DS! Its marvelous! It's 3D, without glasses (I think the screen is polarized?) Now I am not a fan of 3D movies. I think it's a fad that should have died with poodle skirts and radium watches and stayed dead. The new gray glasses really don't make it any better. My biggest problem with 3D, as with any technology in a movie, is that filmmakers use it as a crutch. Look at the slew of really terrible CGI movies out there, before Pixar dominated that niche (not that people don't continue to make bad ones). If a movie needs 3D to make it fun to watch, then not only is it not worth the extra 3 bucks, it's probably not worth the regular price either. If the movie is good anyway, maybe 3D is kind of fun, but again, not worth the extra money. I like the use of 3D in one place - the Bug's Life show at Disney's California Adventure. Not to give anything away, but it's how William Castle would have done 3D if he'd had lots of money. It's the perfection of the technology used in "Honey I Shrunk the Audience".

Enough about movies and shows. We're talking games here! Going back to Disneyland (I wish I was) the Toy Story game is a good example of how this is successful. It's a shooting game, with 3D stages and projectiles projected on the screen, that totally look like they're coming out of your gun. The depth looks very realistic, and adjusting your aim is very intuitive. That's what Nintendo has done with the 3DS. One of the developers explained how they thought it was important to be able to judge the distance between yourself and your target. You can also adjust the level of depth, and even turn the 3D off (it's truly magical). I think games are better for 3D, since they would not just use it for a different look, but for a whole different way of interacting (imagine the Zelda puzzles!!!!!). Developers are going to have a field day making games for this.

And what game are they launching with the handheld? KID ICARUS!!!!!!!! I turned to my brother when they showed the 3DS and said "I hope they make good flying games for this" and then they announced Kid Icarus and I squeed. They made it specially for the 3DS, under a secret project called Project Sora (mysterious). The part with the lasers will look awesome in 3D.

Which brings me to Zelda..... no, there's not a 3D Zelda yet (can't wait though). I'm talking about Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword!!!!! For the Wii, and for the win! It's beautiful, and has realistic swordfighting! It's also pretty! It's bright, but not cartoony, keeping the realistic style but with nifty painterly cel-shading. It kind of reminds me of Ocarina of Time, but without the polygons. The environments are huge and gorgeous, and you can use items in awesome new ways. All my horrifying doubts and sickening imaginings evaporated in the glow of the new trailer. I can't wait!

Also, if anyone from Nintendo is reading this (one of my five readers is a Nintendo developer, right? Right?) .....Zelda.... has gone from sailboats....to steamboats.....to trains......there needs to be an airship Zelda games for the 3DS!

I forgot!

I was going to use another example in my last post, about technological optimism. I just got Spirit Tracks, the steampunk Legend of Zelda! It's so cute it made me fly away on a hot air balloon to the land of squee, although some people don't like it so much.

There's a temple in the middle of the map that's a roundhouse, and it turns when you unlock more tracks to new realms! As you explore and meet people, they ask you to do things for them (it is Zelda, after all). Said things involve driving them, their friends, and their groceries all over creation. And it's totally fun! All the townspeople are so excited that they are connected by rails now, and they can sell their cuccoos, and meet strange creatures, and see snow. People import goods from far away and start businesses, and all kinds of stuff.

See? Technological optimism. Seriously, it's an awesome game, for many reasons. Although I think I like Phantom Hourglass better. It was harder and had more Linebeck.

Steampunk games!

This being National Novel(a) Writing Month, I am writing a steampunk adventure story. Naturally that means I am spending an inordinate amount of time playing video games (as well as looking at airship videos on youtube, reading comics, looking at old photos and other "research"). So I thought it would be time well spent to write about a couple of steampunk games. One of them actually inspires me a great deal when I write my book (it's about flying, you see, among other things) and that is Skygunner for the PS2. Just the opening video for this game makes you feel like you are actually flying! It's just a beautiful game. The story is fair, and the cutscenes are a little flat, but it has wonderful, lovely airships, nice lighting, and very pretty dogfighting. Speaking of dogfighting, this game has a really nice feel to it. Now I am horrible at dogfighting games. This one has a simplified system that some die-hard flying game fans might find boring, but you can also choose a harder, more technical setup. The game has 3 characters with 3 levels of difficulty, and other characters are unlockable. (Actually the 3rd character must be unlocked, but you just have to beat the game with either character and you can play him) It starts out easy and rapidly becomes more difficult, keeping you on your toes. I am still trying to unlock my favorite character, but he's impossible! A nice touch for this game is you can choose English or Japanese.

The other steampunk game I like is Steambot Chronicle, also for PS2. It takes place at the dawn of the electric age, and it is a sandbox style game. It has a pretty good plot, with various endings and such, and you can run around and do all kinds of stuff and customize your robot. I spend a LOT of time painting my robot and putting an umbrella on top and taking the girl characters on picnics. It's also very pretty, particularly the lighting for certain times of day. Just a word of warning, you cannot pick the language on this game - there is only English or Off. Choose Off, because the dub causes internal bleeding and brain damage. It will make you embarrassed to be playing this game, even when no one is there. There is a sequel that looks soooo pretty, but I don't know if it's coming out here. . . .