Fuck yes, Bastion!

Bastion (game)
Supergiant games
5 out of 5 stars.

While all of my friends were busy with Diablo 3, I decided to save $48* and buy the humble indie bundle instead. The thing is, I was kind of in the mood to play a Diablo-like game.

Enter Bastion. A quirky roleplaying adventure game that is completely and unequivocally awesome. The mechanics are straightforward. You move around with the keyboard and click to attack the random beasties that attack you. There is a small amount of customization: throughout the game, you find new weapons***, which you can upgrade in a variety**** of different ways. Along with your weapons you can choose a special attack and as many special powers as you have levels. One of the things this game did really really well is keep the amount of customization manageable. I felt like my decisions had real impact, but I didn't spent all that much time thinking about it.***** The design is, likewise, just right. It's brightly colored****** and all of the levels have a distinctive look and feel.

What really makes Bastion a fabulous game, though, is the storytelling. The story is good enough. There has been some kind of apocalypse. You appear to be the only survivor, until you meet Rucks, a mysterious old man who guides you on the path to save what's left of the world. What makes it transcendent is how it's told. Everything you do is narrated by Rucks in a gravely, old-timey, vaguely hard-boiled sort of voice. And Rucks is an amazing character, he is sweet, and funny, and interesting, and, single handed-ly******* keeps the player engaged in the story. With his narration the story becomes something you really want to hear, and makes the ending one of the more dramatic and engaging endings I've ever seen in a video game. At some point in the ending the game has you make some choices, and the way the story is told, it felt like the choice matters.******** 


Somewhere out there, there's probably a Myers-Briggs-lite test that tells you what your choices in bastion say about your personality. All I know is that I'm happy with my choices, so much so, that I'm not going to go back and try the other ending...

I had some minor quibbles, of course: the difficulty is, shall we say, uneven. I was playing on normal mode, which gives you a finite number of lives (two or three depending on your power-ups...) with which to finish the level. This was not at all a problem until the first interlude level where you fight 20 rounds of monsters. This fucking destroyed me until I figured out the right combination of powerups. And then the game went back to being pretty (to too) easy.*********  Also, the control system is kind of crappy on the computer. You move around with WASD, but since it's a three-quarters top down view, the natural directions that you generally want to move are diagonally. Also, the mouse response left something to be desired, my mouse frequently dropped clicks, and "forgot" I was holding down the mouse button. 

Bottom line? Save ${the current cost of diablo} - ${the cost of bastion}, and play Bastion. It's great!


*And better yet, my measly** $12 was well above the average, which is how I got Bastion!
** I wouldn't feel bad for them. The humble indie bundle made $5,107,675.35. 
*** You find them deterministically though. Apart from picking up money and health potions there is, blessedly, no looting in this game.

**** 2^5 if you're counting.
***** Did I mention there's not looting?
****** Eat your heart out, Diablo fans.
******* Single voicedly, maybe?
******** None of this red explosion, green explosion bullshit.
********* Except for another gem of Bastion innovation: Early in the game, you unlock the ability to customize the difficulty level--in doing so you give the monsters a particular power up, and in return get increased money and XP. With all of these "idols" activated, I defy anyone to claim that the game was too easy...

Review: Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town by Cory Doctorow

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



OK, let's just take it as read that Cory Doctorow is great for publishing all of his novels under a creative commons license and get straight to the point: This book is freaking weird. And not just because the protagonist is an ambiguously named, navelless Mary Sue whose father is a mountain and whose mother is a washing machine ("he kept a roof over our heads, she kept our clothes clean." it rhymes, get it?*), not because there are characters who are, unironically, Russian nesting dolls (they can't digest food unless all three of them and appropriately stacked), not because the heroes girlfriend has wings that need to be trimmed regularly so she can appear in public, and certainly not because the various handy man tasks that the hero does are described in glorious, meticulous detail. No, this book is freaking weird because of how it randomly and capriciously jumps from a (granted low stakes) Cryptonomiconian techno-thriller about dumpter diving for computer parts to make routers to provide free wi-fi to downtown Toronto, to a quasi horror story about Danny,Doug,Davey**, the psychotic brother chasing down Alan,(Albert,Aaron), to a story-within-a-story allegory about being one's brother's keeper.***

At a thematic level, everything is linked. All of the stories are about how people depend on each other both in explicit and implicit ways. (The brother's keeper-ness being an example of the former, dumpster diving an example of the latter.) But while the novel is heavy on ideas and examples it's low on conclusions.*** What is to be done about Davey,Devin,Darcy, the psychotic and evil brother? He can't be killed, he is an entirely unredeemable malevolent force.**** Everyone loves the idea of free municipal wifi, but who provides the electricity? Who provides the bandwidth?

Or maybe I'm missing the point. As I've commented in my other reviews of Cory Doctorow books, he does a fine job of packing an emotional punch, within reason. The flashback sequence of Alan and his first girlfriend are sweet and moving and heartbreaking.

I have a great deal of respect for Cory Doctorows writing *and* his ideas. I think he's Right an awful lot of the time, and what he says, he usually says very well, but this novel could have really, *really* benefited from some kind of grand unifying conclusion?

But, as i've said before. Cory Doctorow writes fascinating, moving, highly readable, grandly ambitious and deeply flawed novels. I'm glad he does what he does, but I think i'm ready for a break.

* This is apparently a Gene Wolfe literrary reference, so bonus points to Mr. Doctorow for digging deep into the archive.

**Oh, yeah, did I mention none of the characters have a name? Over the course of their appearances in the novel, only their first initials remain constant. This has lead to a delightful remix of the novel where a script dynamically randomizes the first names as you read. (http://craphound.com/someone/) Brilliant!

*** This is straight out of the classical Doctorowian playbook, actually.

**** This degree of malevolvence is one of the most genuinely scary things I've read recently and his character is one of the high points of the novel, but loses something for not having anything resembling a cathartic climax.



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Review: Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Thank god for Cory Doctorow. Thanks to him and his quest to Understand the Future one's reading device can be packed full of Corey Doctorow novels for free and guilt free.

And his novels are fun, light gooey balls of science fictional zanyness. Bonus!

That's not to say that these novels are actually good. Near as I can tell Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is an exercise in whether or not one can produce a compelling story where absolutely nothing is at stake.

I mean, the premise is that in the {not-too|extremely distant} future, death has been conquered, as has scarcity of resources. One backs up one's digital brain weekly, and should one meet death, one is simply restored from a backup. Likewise, one does not have to work for a living--food is free, instead the coin of the realm is the deploringly named whuffie: a weird hybrid of facebook ''likes'' and brownie points, where good deeds, hard work, or just generally being awesome are rewarded, aparently in proportion to how far out of your social network you've managed to advertise yourself.

The plot then, involves a plucky group of deathless characters trying to save The Haunted Castle exhibit at Disneyworld. Wait. what? Why do I care about that?

The book is highly engaging, and there's several levels of nested irony. This book released on a creative commons license and is about how great disneyworld is. Of course, Mickey Mouse isn't in it because Mickey Mouse will ALWAYS be under Disney's copywrite.
Likewise there's a wink and a nod to the fact that on one hand Disneyland is a magical place, where the details of the user's experience is given foremost attention, but on the other hand, lurking in the background are the secret disney police whose job it is to stamp out any rebellion before it starts. All in the name of preserving the good time of the paying customers, of course.

In fact, these are things I was interested in! I wish they'd been explored more fully. But again, ironically, I suspect it was the fear of ramifications of besmirching Disney's precious reputation, that caused the author to pull quite a few of his punches.

Despite the lack of grave consequences in a world without death, Mr. Doctorow convincingly creates a plot hook that is both convincing and compelling, and there are moments of brilliance as the duality of being an artist and a fan are explored, along with the conflicting desire to both conquer and appreciate the objects of our affection.

But ultimately, the setting (no one can die, everyone lives in fucking disneyworld) gets in the way of the gravitas of the ending and I am left wondering why I should care, and finding that I don't, much.



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Review: The Prestige

The Prestige by Christopher Priest

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



From perhaps the moment you pick up this book, The Prestige, you get the sense that it's going to be a book with an Ending. (You know, where there's some grand mystery revealed only in the final pages to be a devious and perversely unexpected plot twist. If it were a movie you would think it would join the ranks of The Usual Suspects or the Sixth Sense).

But, in the case of the book, the surprise ending is that there isn't really a surprise ending.
Although there is a central mystery, which involves a mystery phantom twin of a modern character and can only be resolved by looking into the past to the history of the rival magicians, its solution is evident long before the end of the book. And although the book itself (and the ending) is atmospheric and creepy, upon finishing it I found myself wishing that there had been more there.*

That being said, this novel is delightfully plotted and has great timing. The solutions to the various puzzles are not hard to work out, but the manner in which they are presented is interesting and engaging, and the fact that the story is broken into several small pieces each with their own buildup, and tension, and resolution, makes it a fast and for the most part satisfying read.

As a note to my readers, I ended up reading The Prestige because of Christopher Priests online rant about the deplorable state of science fiction awards. This rant I found to be delightful (http://www.christopher-priest.co.uk/journal/1077/hull-0-scunthorpe-3/) (as did some of the people he was ranting against http://www.zazzle.co.uk/internet_puppy_t_shirt-235730813931635704). I highly recommend you read that, at least, even if you end up skipping Mr. Priest's actual literary output.

* And although to a certain extent the book spoils the movie, the movie
is a much tighter and darker piece of storytelling, with not one, but two surprise ending, to boot. I might recommend that in favor of the book, but beware this book is downright cozy relative to its movie version.



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Review: Eastern Standard Tribe

Eastern Standard Tribe by Cory Doctorow

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



As I've said before, and will surely say again, I think Cory Doctorow is an amazing human being and I am glad he has sufficient influence to force his vision of the future onto reality, at least a little bit. I mean, seriously, if there are any other modern, (relevant*) authors whose entire literary catelogue I can download without guilt or financial expenditure, someone needs to point me to them immediately.

And for a few dozen pages each, Cory Doctorow's books really sing. I mean, really, who else looks at the corporate emphasis** (or lack thereof***) on usability engineering, and takes it to the logical extreme of business entities sabotaging each other by sending in rogue usability engineers to give the companies bad advice and produce products that are non functioning and overly cumbersome to use. . . .....OR IS IT HAPPENING ALREADY!****

Moreover, the plot thread that gives the story structure--Our hero, Art, trapped on the roof of a towering monolithic sanitarium, a pencil up his nose, poised, ready to lobotomize himself--is wonderfully evocative and compelling.

But actualy, the central plot kind of sucks. Art's friends Fede and Linda are obviously crazy from the get go**** and it's not really ever plausibly explained why Art would hang out with losers like them. Nor is the main conceit ever really explained. Art is a brilliant usability engineer. Why on earth would he be more useful as a saboteur...I mean there is no motivation even for the antogonism between tribes, really.

And while we're on the subject, the tribes themselves don't even make sense. Yes, I get it, you start being friends with people in a particular geographic area and you want to chat with them online, this neccessitates a bit of sleep deprivation. But I don't buy for a second, that the only people you're going to want to hang out with live in one time zone, even if you allow for a very generous amount of homophily based movement.

So yeah, ultimately, this book feels like a poorly rehashed****** Catch 22. But you know what, I had fun reading it, I had fun writing the review, and I have no qualms about saying, Go Download All of Cory Doctorow's Books Now. And better still, they're free.*******

* there are hundreds of self-published "authors" for whom this might true, but I don't have time to read them...that's what editors are for.

** Apple, early Google.

*** Microsoft, late Google.

**** See ***.

***** Not that there isn't a delightful irony in the fact that Art's crazy friends are the ones who
try to have him committed, but a small amount of delightful irony does not make up for a large about of crappy plot.

****** Actually, drop the 're', and I hated Catch 22, anyway.

******* Footnote not realated to the text of the review, but I didn't have any good place for it above. One part of the book that I really enjoyed was Art's early foray onto the Eastern Standard Tribe chatrooms. It's a perfect logical enpoint to IRC chat rooms, complete with finding useful services via cryptographically secure means *and* dealing with obnoxious trolls. It's too bad social networking has all but killed off IRC (at least in my tribes, that is...)



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Review: The Ranger

The Ranger by Ace Atkins

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This was an interesting read and one that I haven't quite figured out.

Despite lavish blurbs from Michael Connely and John Sandford this is not much of a mystery. What reveals there are are barely foreshadowed and exist to drive the action forward, not to demonstrate the heroes powers of detection.

The writing is sparse, descriptions are mostly eschewed in favor of dialogue and action. Fortunately, Atkins has a rare gift to clearly define characters and their relationship in a lines of a conversation

The action is serviceable. The best part, when the Ranger and his buddy Boom (a fine addition to the rank of Hawk-like sidekicks, and all the more appropriate since apparently Atkins has been tapped to continue the Spenser series...) decide on a whim to wreck the local meth labs.

The plot moves along at a rapid-enough pace. Atkins does a nice job of keeping Quinn tied to the plot even once we stop caring about the initial mystery. (Note, though, that the fact that we stop caring about the initial mystery is not a good thing...)

The biggest problem that I have with the novel is that I didn't feel like Atkins has much to say. Being a stalwart and brave hero is good. Being a skinhead who pollutes the town with meth is bad. Being a disingenuous preacher or a developer who sells out his small town is worse.

Since most of the villains survive (which is refreshing, by the way) I intend to read future volumes to see if maybe this was just a set up of a longer epic. As it is, it's a fine quasi-western, but not as remarkable as I was hoping.







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Review: Dirt

Dirt by Stuart Woods

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



Stuart Woods' Stone Barrington lives in a world where what table you get at the fancy restaurant you frequent in New York Matters. And as a result it makes sense for him to care about the wealthy gossip columnist whose sexual exploits are faxed to a short list of important people. Because apparently this Matters, too.


Not to me, of course. I had a desperately hard time caring about anyone in this novel. This is partially by design of course, as it sets up an absolutely charming the-good-guys-are-actually-the-bad-guys twist at the end and of course everyone gets their just desserts. (Uh, spoiler alert...)


For those of you reading this on the blog. This sums it up nicely.

The bright spot in the novel is Stone Barrington himself, the irascible, hyper-sexual lawyer slash detective who gets to poke around the nooks and crannies of Manhattan high society. Unfortunately, there's not much of a mystery for him to unravel. And, of course, Stone Barrington doesn't even make an entrance until quarter of the way through the book. Up until then we get a lengthy introduction to the implausibly lavish lifestyle of the gossip columnist in question. Believe me, 70 pages is a long time to contemplate why we are supposed to care about any of this.

And in the end, I find I don't. It's all very engaging and readable in the moment. There's lots of sex, and the plot moves quickly. But I wish Stone Barrington were solving a mystery that mattered to me.





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