Not Comic Review: The Hydrogen Sonata

I know, it's not a comic review, but I needed to do a follow up.

Not Comic Review:  The Hydrogen Sonata by Iain M. Banks

Back at the beginning of November, I did a Not Comic Review of Consider Phlebas, the first book of the Culture series by the late Iain M. Banks.  I mentioned at the end that I hadn't gotten to the last book, the result of Banks' premature death, The Hydrogen Sonata yet.  Well I finished it and I have two things to say on it.


1.)  It's not my favorite book of the series, but it's damn close.

2.)  Yeah, read this last.

Every book in the series covers a different aspect of the Culture as it's main point.  Excession is a very Mind (super AIs) heavy book, for example, showing how they think, act and orginize.  Surface Detail goes into artifical afterlives and how it effects the civilizations that create them.  Use of Weapons is all about a single Special Circumstances (Culture's version of CIA) agent.  Hydrogen Sonata covers an aspect that has only been hinted at (and only kind of explored in Look to Windward), the Sublime.

The Sublime are the "evolved beyond the material" branch of civilizations in the Culture universe.  Doing so requires either a lot of special preparation (and can only really be done by a Mind level AI), or by the overwhelming agreement of an entire civilization.  This is the result agreed on by the Gzilt civilization in the book, and the entire book is a countdown to the momentous event.

Turns out, there's a lot of bureaucracy and politics.  No, that's not what the book is strictly about, but there are affairs to attend to, effectively a civilization scale will.  Which would be pretty boring, until the remnant of an early civilization to sublime brings in a message that could turn everything on it's head, and the defacto leader of the Gzilt is damned and determined for it not to interfere with Subliming.

And that's when things get going.  The message is not a mystery, it's stated quiet clearly to the reader and the few involved.  The book itself is the chase to find out if it's true, since the message got more than a little intercepted.  First to find out who might know, then to get there before those under orders to stop it from being found.

I complained that Consider Phlebas had good action sequences, but they felt kind of thrown together.  Not here, there are maybe two serious action sequences and both are just as good as Phlebas, but they feel more controlled and natural.  Once the action kicks off, it plays out well and ends when it needs to.  Of course, there's always twists, but they feel right.

There's also a lot of extraneous story lines, but they're small compared to the larger plot, and they mostly pay off well.  The real purpose of these extra story lines is to expand on the Culture universe a bit more, and show off some really spectacular ideas and locations, which is something Banks is quite good at.

I don't know when, in relation to the writing of this book, Banks learned he was dying.  Perhaps this is because he did die, but I get this feeling from the book that this is something a dying person would write.  It has all these odd elements, like searching for old people/drones stuck in their ways and all the bureaucracy thing with the Gzilt that feels so much like someone preparing for the end of their lives (which in a sense it was).  I don't know if I would feel the same if he was still alive and another book of the series on the horizon.

As it stands, I feel The Hydrogen Sonata fits as a wonderful cap stone to the series.  It's not my absolute favorite of the series (that's still Use of Weapons), but it's probably right behind it.  If you are looking to get into the Culture series of books, I still recommend starting with Look to Windward, but the last two books should be Excession and The Hydrogen Sonata (especially as there's a call back within the latter's pages).

I probably won't review another Culture book, but I do recommend all of them.  Next time, we get back to webcomics.  Until then kiddies.

Not Comic Review: Consider Phlebas

You know, for a webcomic review site, I should review webcomics once in a while. In the meantime, let's talk about a book.

Not Comic Review:  Consider Phlebas By Iain M. Banks

I'm a fan of the Culture series of books by Iain Banks, who passed away this past year. I own all of them now, and I went back and reread a few of them. Use of Weapons, Look to Windward, and today's topic,

Consider Phlebas. What is the Culture? Well it's a sci-fi series, but honestly, the best way to understand the Culture is to go read Look to Windward, it's not the best book and story, but you'll learn more about the nature of the Culture than anything else. Beyond that, it's just a big, very advanced, civilization in the galaxy.

I could review any of the books, especially Use of Weapons which is one of my favorite books period, but Consider Phlebas stands out because, well, it's not very good. Or at the very least I don't like it very much. For a fan of the author and universe, this is hard to really critique, and even harder to describe why. But after doing a big long series of articles about how I'm a critic, I guess I should dive in.

It's certainly the weakest of the series. The reasons are many, but there is one key one I'll get to later, but first, what it does right is something the rest of the series isn't quite known for: action. Oh there are some great action scenes in this, gripping ones that get your heart pumping, especially a great chase through a space port. I believe Banks once said this book would make the best movie, and I think it's because of these action scenes.

Which is odd because, well, I couldn't remember any of it. I had read the book before, not the first book of the series I read, but an early one, and the only thing I could recall, roughly, was the part of the framing device. As I read it, I recalled more, but I can easily recall many of the major plot points of the rest of the books in the series, but not this one. It's got a lot of great ideas, from an elaborate underground nuclear rail bunker, to a city sized ocean ship and more. Yet, it's completely forgettable.

Part of the reason is that the main character Horza could be anyone. Oh, he has specific character traits, but no arc. There's no growth, development, or self discovery. He's just there to do all the wild action sequences, act as the counterpoint to the Culture (there's a war, he's on the other side), and that's about it. In fact, none of the characters are really interesting. Which is fine since nearly all of them end up dead. They're all cannon fodder, even the one character who actually gets a touch more than no development. I liked her, of course she dies. Everyone dies. It's a rather dark book in that sense.

I suspect that was kind of the point. The pointlessness of the deaths were meant to reflect the pointlessness of war. That bunker rail thing I mentioned earlier was designed to protect military leaders from a nuclear attack. In the end, the entire population of the population died anyway, of a biological weapon. The theme is well established, and it works, but that's all there is, and there isn't much that the characters do to help it along.

It's also a weird mix of events. They string together well, but they do feel random. First a raid on a temple, then an escape from a city sized ship crashing into an iceberg, an island of weird cultists, a game where lives are bet as much as money, then a mad dash through a shipyard, then they finally get to the final destination, which is random movement through that rail bunker.

The writing is good, the descriptions of the events and locations are pretty clear, and rather awe inspiring. The action, as I said, is quite clear and is rather smoothly done, it's not jarring is what I mean. The individual events are actually quite interesting and fun. Any one of them could be an entire book on their own if he had wanted. They flow together, as I said, but they are so different from each other, they don't feel like they really belong together.

Compared to the other books, it isn't really that different in that regard. Use of Weapons bounces between locations as well, but it also moves through time, both forward and backward. It has an interesting structure is what I'm saying. Look to Windward also moves between a few locations, but because both books have a point to unite together, the characters. You WANT them to live, you want them to succeed. I never get that in Consider Phlebas, and that is the biggest failure of the book.

But I know why. It was the first book of the series. Banks has written many books before it, but only a few. It was the first dipping into what proved to be a massive, wonderful universe, but one that needed refinement before it could really get going. Once he locked down the scale (the second book, Player of Games managed this) and changing perspectives a bit (most of the books are NOT from the Culture's perspective, or anyone that could be considered a peer) the series got more settled. For the first book, the rough edges are understandable. I still don't think it's very good.

If you want to see what this series is about, again I recommend Look to Windward to start. It manages to really define the Culture as an entity, followed probably by Use of Weapons or Player of Games to see how it relates to the rest of it's universe. After that, the books can be read in any order (I haven't gotten to Hydrogen Sonata, the last book, yet, so no opinions on that) but Excession should be saved for last, I think it fits well there. Consider Phlebas, while the weakest of the series, shouldn't be read until the middle of the pack, no reason to spoil the series with a weak edition.

Next time, I will hopefully have something to do with comics. We'll see, until next time kiddies.

The Eishtmo vs Neverwinter

So Neverwinter.  Cryptic is probably one of my favorite developers right now, having made 2 really good games that I’ve played.  I like Star Trek Online and Champions Online, though I haven’t played much of Champions recently (because the group I hang out with plays STO more).  Neverwinter is Cryptic’s next MMO project, and the first that’s being released as pure Free To Play (CO and STO were sub conversions).  It’s good, it’s very good.  And I think it owes a great deal to the other two games.  In essence, Neverwinter is what happens when Cryptic learns all the lessons CO and STO taught them about game mechanics, design and how to build a game.  There are some bad elements to Neverwinter, but we’ll get to those.

Many of these elements, before I begin, came out only the last year, so the question is was CO and STO used as a kind of test bed for Neverwinter?  Probably, and that’s good, to a point.  Using an active player base to “beta test” a new system is a bit iffy, but at the same time, those systems did improve those games.  With this in mind, I’ll have to divide this up to talk about each element separately or else even I will get confused.

Combat/Powers

The combat system is reticle based, as in all your attacks are tied to a targeting device in the center of the screen and aimed via the mouse movements.  It’s very reminiscent of STO’s “shooter mode,” which was an attempt to make ground combat not suck.  Didn’t help, but in Neverwinter it works quite well.  All attack commands are tied either to the mouse buttons or in the immediate area around the WASD keys (which handle movement).  It’s actually really efficient, to the point I have considered modifying STO to use the same system (the interface controls would allow for it).

What it has that STO doesn’t though is a dodge/block mechanic that actually works.  Hold down the shift key and an evade/block ability goes off based on how much stamina you have.  This comes mostly from CO, but a little from Guild Wars 2 as well, and it makes combat MUCH more dynamic than STO, and actually lets you CANCEL out of actions, some actions.  Really need that in STO.  The dynamic combat means you don’t stand around waiting for cooldowns, you’re always fighting, dodging, repositioning and triggering off the small handful of cooldown attacks.

Powers are much closer to how Champions is set up, with a selection of abilities built into each class (get to character creation in a bit).  Given the limited number of attack slots verses the high number of available powers, players will have to carefully choose the abilities they want to slot and use, but can power them up appropriately.  The other element from Champions is feats, which are basically the specialization system out of Champions, which gives passive boosts to the character.

The combat system is really good.  Maybe not groundbreaking (Guild Wars 2 did something similar, probably a bit better), but certainly worth the effort.

Character Creation

There are only 5 classes in Neverwinter, but they function more like Champions Archtypes than anything else.  They have a set batch of powers and abilities and the progression is mostly restricted to a few key roles within the overall role of the character.

From STO comes the races, each one with its own traits and story elements.  The traits aren’t nearly as complex as STO is now (or as it will be in the near future), but they’re there and might make the difference for the Min/Max crowd.  Each race, like the careers in STO, have special story elements restricted to them that other races won’t see or do.  I like that element as it makes each character a little unique.

And if you need a little extra help, there are Companions, NPC helpers that can be called upon to even the odds a bit for a single player.  Playing a DPS melee Great Weapon Fighter and need some healing?  Hire a Cleric companion.  Playing a Cleric and need a tank?  Hire a Guardian.  They can be trained up to level 15 currently, but there will EVENTUALLY be a way to convert them to a new, higher level.  Why it’s not out yet is beyond me.  Still, every little big helps and my Cleric companion has saved my bacon on more than one occasion.

What I’m disappointed with is the actual costume design.  I don’t expect it to be at Champions level of customization, but it barely matches Star Trek’s level.  And it’s all gear based.  Yeah, that’s right, if you want to look a certain way, it’s based on the gear you’re using.  You can dye it, but unlike Guild Wars, where the dyes are bound to you and usable whenever you want, you MUST have the dyes to color the various items.  Lame.  Oh, and if you want to change ANYTHING on your character, you will pay for it with real money.

Currency

The game has 3 major currencies.  The more traditional Gold/Silver/Copper system is pretty standard across most fantasy games, even Champions uses it (though with different names).  This is the in game currency that’s used for most vendor transactions.  But, it doesn’t buy as much as you would think.  It’s great for consumables (which I’ve not really needed as I find more than enough) and some of the crafting products, but that’s about it.

Then there’s Zen, the pay currency, which is for buying the more cosmetic stuff as in STO and Champions (though the selection is very narrow right now).  Zen is used for a lot of stuff, including buying more bank slots, inventory slots, character changes and other stuff.

And then, there Astral Diamonds.  In Star Trek Online, they introduced Dilithium as a major currency in the game.  It can be collected by doing various missions, has to be refined to be used, and is generally used for most of the high end equipment.   There’s even a special exchange set up to trade Dilithium for Zen, the pay currency. In Neverwinter, Astral Diamonds does all that, and more.  It’s a Super Currency, used for nearly everything.  Want to dye that piece of armor?  Costs Diamonds.  Want to remove those runestones from your armor?  Costs Diamonds.  Want to sell anything on the auction house?  Not only will it cost Diamonds to sell, but the entire exchange is done in Diamonds.

That’s a major change between the games, the auction house uses Astral Diamonds and ONLY Astral Diamonds.  In STO and CO, it’s reliant on the common currency (EC and Globals), but not here.  Also, the auction house is an actual auction house, something akin to Ebay rather than just a market where the prices are set by the players and you either pay their price or you don’t get it.  I’m not sure how that will fly as the game continues to grow, but it’s intriguing at least.

Astral Diamonds are used so much in the game, one of my guild mates believes THIS is the major currency of the game, and everything else is essentially unnecessary.  I buy that, especially given the refining rates.  In STO and CO you can only refine 8000 and 6000 per day.  In Neverwinter, you can refine 24,000 a day.  They really, REALLY want you to earn Diamonds and spend Diamonds.  I worry that this will be the primary mover for most actions in this game.  I don’t mind playing for Diamonds or Dilithium or Questionite (CO’s version), but I want to play to have FUN too.  If it becomes all about farming these Diamonds, I doubt it’ll hold my attention especially as we reach end game.

Crafting

The crafting system in this game is a wild mix between systems in Champions and STO.  Out of STO comes the professions, which is actually the Duty Officer system though simplified.  This is the main way to craft, assigning a worker to a particular task which eventually results in equipment.   This function can actually be done through the remote Gateway system for Neverwinter, so you don’t have to log into the game to do the crafting, which is nifty.  STO was SUPPOSED to have something similar for its Gateway and the Duty Officer system, but that has yet to be implemented, I suspect because the Duty Officer system is very complex.

But that’s not all!  From Champions comes the Mod/Fusion system for upgrading gear.  Most of the equipment will eventually start coming with a slot that can be filled with a runestone.  Those runestones are found in drops, boxes, from skill items throughout, and can be fused together to make more powerful versions of themselves.  This is both a nice way to adjust the powers of equipment to enhance what you’re looking for in a weapon or armor piece, and a horrible lesson in how much inventory/bank space you actually have.

Those runestones take up a LOT of room.  You need at least 4 to perform any fusion, so if you want a high level runestone, you need a LOT of little ones fused together.  Thankfully the resources for the profession system are stored in a separate bag in your inventory so you don’t have to try to store it in the bank and your common inventory will be BULDGING with these runestones if you’re not careful.  Even the wiki suggests selling the little buggers off.  There are only 9 different stones (4 for you, 5 for your companion) but considering all the grades they come in, you’ll be stuff to the gills with them.  Add on all the extra gear, consumables, and special emblems you get throughout the game, you’ll run out of space VERY fast, not just in your inventory but your 20 slot bank too.  Prepare to spend real money to expand out these in the near future.

Questing and the Foundry

The quests seem mostly to come from the Champions line of missions rather than STOs, though honestly Champions is more like a standard MMO than STO, so that’s not saying much.  Each region in and around Neverwinter has its own batch of missions, typically telling a story of each region and capping it off with either a fight with the boss of the area or a big multiperson dungeon.  The missions are pretty standard ranging from go kill X number of bad guys to doing mini-dungeon crawls and finding loot at the end.  That’s actually an odd bit, you get your gear reward WITHIN the mission, not from the quest giver.  The quest giver only gives out experience and cash.  That makes sense for the Foundry.

Before we get to that, however, the dungeons have me a bit annoyed.  Not in their structure or difficulty, those are fine.  No, the issue is the queuing system.  Like STO, there is a way to queue up for a particular dungeon or skirmish, which are the STFs and Fleet Actions of STO respectfully.  However, they are level locked.  This means that the first dungeon, the Cloak Tower, will only be available for queuing until you hit level 20, then you cannot queue for it any more.  You can still do it, by going through the front door, but considering these things need at least a couple player to even attempt, let alone complete, you’ll need a team.  You can use the zone chat to find one, but if you’re too high, you can’t be queued with the team and have to drag them all through the front door.  And again, the dungeon is locked to its level, so all of the baddies are going to be below your level even if the entire team is 10 levels higher.

Two reasons this is annoying, beyond the obvious having to go through the door instead of the queue.  First is that there aren’t level appropriate versions of the dungeons, which is something even STO could do with it’s actually missions.  This is sad because it means doing older dungeons is pointless since the drops won’t be any better thanks to the baddies not being at your level.  On top of that, there’s no way to “sidekick” down or up to the levels to make the mission appropriate for everyone.  In fact, if the leader of at team is, say, level 24 and the rest of the team is in the mid teens and you start a Foundry mission, all the baddies will be level 24, and the rest of the team will have to hide and hope the bad guys don’t see them.  That was an annoying lesson to learn.

The other major reason?  It looks like there will be very few dungeons available as you level up.  Maybe I’m wrong on this, after all I’m only level 26 at this point and the cap is at 60, but if the pattern holds, most of these dungeons will completely drop off the map and never be seen again.  I WANT to do the Cloak Tower and have it be a challenge, but with the current system, it won’t be.  Wonderful content is going to be lost to high level players, and it could cause the problem that continues to plague STO and Champions:  Lack of end game content.  But then, they might be relying on the Foundry to make up for it.

Ah, the mighty Foundry.  If you’ve heard anything about Neverwinter, you’ve probably heard about the Foundry, a system that allows players to create their own quests and stories within the game.  This comes from STO, which has had the Foundry pretty much since the beginning.  I haven’t played many Foundry missions in either game, but the few I have are pretty good.  They tell interesting stories and rarely have game breaking bugs or whatnot.  That said, it is also easily abused for gold/item farming and separating quality from crap has always been an issue.  I suspect this is why the auction house in Neverwinter has been switched to Astral Diamonds, to try to keep these quests from being used to farm beyond a certain point, but the potential is still there.  It’s really hard to tell what the Foundry will be like in Neverwinter at this point, but it’s already easier to explore and search than in STO, where it’s kind of miserable at the moment (an interface revamp is planned for the next major release, so we’ll see how that goes).  There’s a daily that rewards players for doing a Foundry quest, so that will keep people playing, but if it’s anything like STO, people will find ways to create simple “push the button” quests that will complete the daily easily.

I haven’t attempted to build my own Foundry mission yet, so I can’t give you any information on how easy or hard it is.  However, given the history of the Neverwinter franchise, I expect a lot of great quests to come out of it in the near future.  I’ll try to keep an open mind for it.

Overall

I like it so far.  I like it quite a bit.  Will it eat into STO like STO ate into Champions?  Possibly.  STO is kind of stagnant at the moment, though they do have a major released planned for later this month.  I am worried about the level progression in Neverwinter, as it feels quite fast, just like STO.  Maybe they want you to get to the endgame content quickly, like STO does, or maybe I’ve just played too damn much.  Hard to say on that end.  The game looks nice, sounds nice, has a great deal of decent voice acting, has challenge, is creative in the universe and seems to have learned the lessons CO and STO learned the hard way.  I’d like a bit more customizability for looks (not skills, I’m fine with that) that doesn’t break my bank (either in game or my actual wallet) and a little better accessibility to below level content.  Officially, Neverwinter is still in Beta, so maybe they will fix all that, but I’m not so sure they plan to.

It’s worth playing though, so go out there and play it already.  Hey, it’s free, can’t go wrong there.  Unless the servers crash, again. . .

Not Comic Review: Dreamfall: The Longest Journey

I really should have had this category all along given I've done a few of these now.  The other day I sat down and finally played Dreamfall:  The Longest Journey.  I've owned the game for about 6 years at this point, and I never installed it.  Initially it was because I couldn't run it, later, I just found other things to do.  So I finally sat down and finished it and I'd like to talk about it a bit.  And I'll be linking to Let's Plays of these games because I like links, though I encourage a playthrough first.

DREAMFALL:  THE LONGEST JOURNEY

Before I get into this, I need to talk about the original game, The Longest Journey.  TLJ is on of my favorite games of all time.  It's an old school point and click adventure game, kind of like Grim Fandango.  The adventure follows a girl, April Ryan, who discovers that there is more to the world than just the Earth we know, that it's all in danger of being destroyed, and she has a role in saving it.  The story isn't all that special, honestly.  Kind of a standard heroes quest sort of thing, but not quite.  What really drew me to the game was the world it created.  Or worlds as the case may be.  It drew me in and stuck with me.  I mentioned last week that I've written a few fanfictions in my time, and one of them, the only one that went very far, was for this game.  So I REALLY liked the game.  The game ends with the world saved, April's destiny not quite what she thought, and her stepping into a portal leading her somewhere.

Dreamfall is a half sequel.  Since the original game was wrapped up pretty well, with very few, if any, loose ends.  As such Dreamfall is free to build practically from scratch in the same universe.  New game, new main character, new story, all that kind of stuff.  We'll get to the story and characters in a moment, let's talk about the actual game itself.  From the perspective of game play, this is not a good game.  It's not godawful, but it's not good.

At it's heart, Dreamfall is an adventure game like TLJ before it.  That means puzzles, but compared to TLJ, the puzzles in Dreamfall are a complete joke.  This is kind of on purpose from what I've read, as there were a few puzzles in that game that were so convoluted as to stop people from getting very far.  Hell, one is damn near infamous.  So they made Dreamfall easier.  That's fine, but they went a bit too far.  On top of that, they provided a couple of mini-game puzzles that were shockingly underused, to the point of silliness.  At best, the two games are used a grand total of 6 times in the entire game.  Maybe it isn't so bad, given that the game is paced much quicker (it's shorter for sure) and the mini-games only work for effectively half the game anyway, but I still feel they were underused.  Otherwise the puzzles generally hand hold the player through them.  Only a couple of times I got stuck, either due to the hint not being all that clear or the camera not helping me see the issue (and then there was the music puzzle, I hate those and look them up instantly, I'd be terrible at Loom).  Of course, Dreamfall doesn't just have puzzles, and this is where things start getting odd.

Dreamfall has a combat system.  This is an old school adventure game with at COMBAT system.  And not something like out of Secret of Monkey Island.  No, there is actual fighting, with potential of loss in this game.  It's stiff, hard to perform, and as sporadic as the mini-game puzzles.  There are maybe 5 battles in the entire game that HAVE to be fought, with two optional fights that can be done via another method, which I'll get to shortly.  It kind of makes sense from a story perspective, but it's so clunky and underused that it surprises the player and results in a lot of button mashing for each fight.  It's not strictly hard, but it feels awful and really kind of drags the game down.

And then there's the third gameplay element, stealth.  Yeah, a stealth mechanic is in this game.  It kind of works, but I've seen it done better (actually I've seen all three done at the same time better, I'll get to that).  From a story perspective, again, it kind of makes sense, but it also adds undo stress, especially when it's combined with a puzzle.  Oh, and more instant death, how wonderful.  It works, not well, but it works.  It just feels, well, not great.

Combined with odd controls and a poor camera, this should be a complete mess of a game.  Want to see a game that does all these things together and does it well?  Go try Beyond Good & Evil.  It does everything this game does, but does it right and makes it easily a superior game.  Of course, it's not perfect in those regards, it just does it better than Dreamfall by miles.

And yet, this isn't a bad game as a whole.  Why?  It all comes down to the story, which is pretty good.  Very good actually, and one that is a bit deeper than one could expect for such a game.  The original game drew me in with a world, but not so much the story.  Here the world is established, for the most part, and so the story had to take charge.  It came through, except for the ending, as it were.

In many ways, I'd compare this series to Star Wars, the original trilogy (prequels don't count).  Like the original Star Wars (call it A New Hope if you must), TLJ is a complete story, with a solid beginning and end.  There's a journey, hints of a greater purpose for the lead character, etc, etc.  Dreamfall falls much more in line with Empire Strikes Back.  There are two active stories going on here, one for each world.  These stories cross each other at important parts, but for the most part are independent and about the growth of the characters.  What's more, the story does not end on a positive note.

The separate stories makes me wonder if the writers could have written them completely apart.  The crossing points between them have little effect on the two stories as they develop, so much so if there were no crossing points, only a little bit of work could break the two completely apart.  I do suspect for the larger tale, the crossing points are important, and will be necessary in the next sequel.  This indicates that there was a great deal of planning involved in the creation of the story and game, though leaving a bit of a cliffhanger was disappointing.

This planning is also reflected in the overall theme of the game.  That theme is actually spelled out in an interview, and I won't go into it here (go play the game first to see how it works).  The fact that there was a unified theme, despite 2 separate stories and 3 main characters, makes the story that much stronger, though one wouldn't necessarily notice the theme in playing, I certainly didn't.  I suspect that the writers didn't necessarily plan to reveal the theme as they were creating, hoping the game would reflect it a bit better.  I think one could suss out the theme with enough diligence, but sadly a lot of us, including myself, can't read that much into things.  The extra bump helps me appreciate what the writers were going for, and I better understand why certain events happened as they did.

And the best part of the planning, is that there are few continuity gaffes in the game.  In fact, I can only recall one that was pretty blatant.  Otherwise, every action either had a consequence or was mentioned.  My favorite, on watching the Let's Play I linked, is at one point there is a choice to fight or sneak around a particular bad guy.  When it's mentioned later, the dialog reflected the choice quite clearly.  I was very pleased with that, and it wasn't the only time such a thing happened.

The writing as a whole was quite good.  Dialog flowed quite well, despite some stiff, and probably poorly directed, voice work.  There's a bit of fun in some conversations, just as in the original game (where there was a LOT more dialog).  Choices were pretty clear, but sadly sparse.  The last couple of in game chapters were actually devoid of choice or options, which made me a bit sad in the long run.  I get why, any dialog options would have all been chosen or gone over the same territory anyway, but I would still have liked some control.  Though my favorite encounter is when two of the main characters meet just randomly on the street and strike up a conversation.  The fact that the game lets the player choose the direction BOTH sides take in the conversation is quite amazing, and I enjoyed it and would have loved to see more of that kind of thing.

So overall, the game is, well, good.  Perhaps not great, and certainly not one of my favorite games of all time.  The gameplay is bad, but there are moments with the story and the direction of that story that elevate it far beyond where it should be.  If the gameplay had been better, more in line with Beyond Good & Evil (whose story is far more pedestrian in comparison), it easily could have been incredible.  I'm glad I finally played it and will remember it for some time, but I don't think it'll have such a strong influence on me as TLJ did.  Or maybe it will and I just haven't felt it yet.  Have to wait and see on that one.

Until next time kiddies.

The Eishtmo vs Need for Speed World

NOTE:  I don't have any ideas for a webcomic article this week, so instead, I'll repost a review I did elsewhere.  Enjoy.

I've been playing a lot of MMOs recently. Champions Online, Star Trek Online, World of Fucking Tanks, as well as an old slew of browser based MMOs (Look up, but don't play, Astro Empires sometime). All of those games, though, I downloaded and played on my lonesome. Need for Speed World, however, was something others had to convince me to try because, well, I'm not much of a racing game fan. Just outside of my wheelhouse, as it were. Still, it's not a bad game, and I do play it despite it being about 6 months later. Just not as much as other games.

I will clear up something about this game: It isn't STRICTLY pay-to-win. Oh, do not doubt that buying, with real cash, high end cars and parts will give you one hell of an edge in this game, but it won't mean you'll WIN anything. This game takes some skill and practice to get anywhere. I've beaten much faster cars because the drivers were reckless or stupid or both with my free-to-play cars on a number of occasions. I have also been completely blown out and outclassed by those same cars with different drivers, leaving me in the dust very easily.

I guess this should be expected given the nature of the game, which is about collecting and racing cars you will NEVER own in real life. EVER. The cars they have available runs the gambit from classic cars, to modern super cars. There's even a bloody SUV in there somewhere, though why you'd want such a thing in a racing game is beyond me. The F2P cars available are a good mix and there are some really good cars there, but you have to grind in game cash to get them. A LOT of in game cash in some cases. Millions in game dollars cars are available but you'll maybe make a 1000 bucks a race, so it might take a little while to save up for them. Oh, and you have a limited number of garage slots, and you have to pay for more of them. Honestly, it's about as restricted as the other MMOs I play, so no big deal.

Graphically the game is, well, beautiful. Gorgeous in fact. Even at medium settings (which mine is at by default) it's just amazing to look at. The map, based on a previous NSF game (I don't know which one, sorry), offers a wide variety of different locations, each based on real world cities and neighborhoods. There's a region that looks like Vegas, another that looks LA and NY, and other classic settings. There's a golf course, an amusement park, a farm area, docks, you can even drive through a docked aircraft carrier. And all of it looks wonderful.

Which is funny when you'll be spending most of your time buzzing past at 170 mph. The real issue is, to me, is how DEAD everything feels. There are NO pedestrians (probably to prevent Carmeggedon). Oh, there are a few NPC cars, but even you're bolted to your car, unable to exit, with a stiff person in the driver seat who gives not a fuck if his convertible flips over at 150 miles per hour and rolls around the ground. It also means you can't get out of your car to really LOOK at the various landmarks and structures. This is especially annoying when sections that a car COULD go through, are blocked off by unmovable cones of impassibility. I will say they FINALLY added a free camera view (V key) so you can look around a bit. But only a bit, I'm afraid.

The cars look beautiful as well. As I said, you can get a wide variety of cars ranging from a 70's Dodge Charger to various Lamborghinis. Each one can have their paint done in a variety of ways, and have various parts added to it. Change the wheels, add a lowering kit, tint the windows, put on various pinstripes, numbers and other things, making your car, well, your car. That said, some stuff is hidden behind a pay wall (window tints cost money unless you randomly get them as prizes for races), but most of the basic stuff is available to F2P players. That said, I did have some odd graphical glitches with the Dodge Charger, but it only ever seemed to effect it, and I sold it off for another car, so I don't know if it's still there.

The gameplay has three modes. Freeform allows you to putter around the overall map. It's great for getting to know the lay of the land, looking at the pretty buildings, and that's about it. The only real gameplay there is the Treasure Hunt daily game, which is probably the main thing I play at the moment. The hunt is restricted to a particular region of the map, and you must find 15 "Gems" to complete it. Once found, the you get a random prize, which increases in quality the more days you chain in a row, and resets if you miss one. You can PAY to continue the chain, but it's honestly not worth it. You do, however, get experience and cash from doing the Treasure Hunt, and most of my 30 levels have come from this.

Races are the most common and easy event. There are two, Sprint and Circuit. Sprint goes from point A to point B as fast as humanly possible. Circuit buzzes you around a defined course for 2 or 3 laps. These can either be against the AI for lower prizes but better chance of winning (unless you're me, I suck against the AI for some reason), or other players in game. As you level up more courses are opened up, and the tracks become tougher and longer. So much so, you'll find yourself using the various consumables to get ahead, but these are really limited in supply, and you either get more from the random card you get at the end of a race, or by buying card packs (which are random) so it's almost not worth using them. Otherwise it's a lot of fun playing these, but it seems people prefer the lower ranked tracks for some reason. I have no preference here, as both have their fun aspects.

Finally there's Pursuit, which also comes in two forms: Pursuit and Team Escape. Standard Pursuits are single player only and involve running from the cops in various forms. There's no end goal besides getting your cool down bar to full strength. While it's fun to cause mayhem in Pursuit, honestly I never got that excited about it and don't do them much. Team Escape is multiplayer only, and there is an end goal. I don't do these often because they really do need teamwork to pull off. I've done it once, I think, and generally avoid it otherwise. It's the hardest challenge in the game, I think. Like the races, more open up as you level up, but at a much lower rate.

The game seems to play well enough, but there are a LOT of bugs in this game I've noticed. From login bugs that lock up your experience (sorry, Reputation) bar, to that weird graphic bug. Weird things happen with this game, and I don't often know why. When things are running smooth, it runs great. When it doesn't, well, it doesn't. Worse, I think the game has a lot of cheaters in it. Not just the wallet warriors (they're playing the game as designed after all), I mean people actually cheating to get more Boost (pay currency). Before it was taken down for "maintenance" (about 5 months ago), the freeform global chat was FULL of scammers, spammers and cheat advertisers. This drowned out the community so badly they took down the global chat entirely and still haven't returned it. Yeah, it was THAT bad. Once I got spam messages from a cheater guy, and I couldn't BLOCK HIM. That's right, the ignore function flat out didn't work on him. Buggy game is buggy, and without the freeform chat, there's basically no community within the game itself, or none that I've really seen.

Overall, if you like racing games, this is probably the best one you'll find for free. It is very responsive (you can use a gamepad, just plug it in, triggers run acceleration and break FYI), and each car feels different in how it handles and moves. It might take a while to find a favorite, but once you do, you'll be happy. Best yet, the game, despite being from EA, doesn't seem to require Origin, at all, so download and go. I putter around with it, and they have reasonably frequent give aways (I've gotten two cars in the last two months, for free, for example), and they do cycle the pay cars in and out, encouraging people to buy whatever is new and fashionable. It's a fun game, and while I like other games better, I like starting my morning to the sound of engines.

Until next time kiddies.

I Review a Book - Silver

What?  Book review on a webcomic review site?  Well honestly, I've been trying to work on an article about comic names since, um, March, and I can't get it to work.  So I need something else.  Plus, I like this book and I want to expose it to you.  So here you go:

Book Review: Silver by Edward Chupack

I've never read Treasure Island. Hell, the most I know about it comes from, of all things, Muppet Treasure Island. So it didn't occur to me that the book named "Silver" was related to it immediately. What attracted me was the black cover with the skull and crossbones. Then I read the tag line:

"My Own Tale, As Written by Me with a Goodly Amount of Murder."

Oh I had to buy this.

This is the purported autobiography of the quintessential pirate, Long John Silver, but if you think this is merely a retelling of the Stevenson's classic, you are very wrong.

The book starts by instantly dropping you into "Talk Like a Pirate Day: The Book." It's not as BAD as you might think, but you instantly know this is a pirate writing about pirate things. To read a book like that is so, different that it instantly hooked me.

The story is just what it says on the cover, the life of Long John Silver, how he got his name, and how he became a pirate to start, a story that began when he was like 12 or so. So yeah, Treasure Island is not going to show up for a LONG while.

What really stands out is the sheer realism of the piece. It's historical, rooting itself in history and setting of the period. While I'm not as versed in pirate matters as I could be, it does feel very real, and the impossible never seems to occur. I think the author took pains to make sure that what he wrote didn't seem to be pulled out of his ass, and set up each encounter and event as much as possible.

That said, he takes a great many liberties with the source material. The Treasure Island part of the book is most certainly NOT Stevenson's story, not by a long shot. Oh, they share characters and rough situations, but for the most part it is a completely different story, one that rolls better with the rest of Silver's story. At the same time, it is still the climax of the tale, and maintains it's importance in the grand scheme of things.

But if this were just a simple "autobiography" and retelling of Treasure Ilsand, it likely would only be just decent as a book. What makes it wonderful is that it's actually a mystery book, all built around the search for treasure. The mystery is presented as a series of clues and ciphers Silver sprinkles throughout his telling of his life.

In the end, the mystery is not WHERE the treasure is, but WHAT the treasure is. History buffs will likely catch on quick, but those like myself, likely won't. That doesn't really matter in the end, as Silver walks the reader through the clues step by step, like he's teaching it, and it turns out he is, after a fashion.

And the tag doesn't lie either, Silver kills a ton of people in this book, and speaks on murder and it's commission frequently and with loving detail. Still, none of this ever comes across as superhuman. He's smart as all hell, that's for sure, but often he doesn't seize on certain clues or acts until it's nearly too late. Once he knows, though, he plans quickly and executes just as well. The fact that he is captured at all is a mystery never really detailed beyond a certain point. He's not perfect, that's for sure, and it keeps him very human, and very interesting.

I happened across this book in the bargain section of Barnes and Noble, so if you happen to come across it, I recommend it. I suspect those who have read Treasure Island will be thrilled at the references that can be found, but fans of the original will be disappointed in the reworking of the original piece. For those of us who haven't read it, though, Silver is still damn good and enjoyable.

Next time, something to do with webcomics, I hope.