Okami (PS2)

I am lazy and will take the description from amazon:

In Okami, the legendary monster Orochi has come back to life and turned the world into a veritable wasteland. Players become a wolf, an embodiment of the sun god Amaterasu — the world lies in gamer’s hands as they fight ominous beings and reclaim the earth from a curse that plagues it. It is crucial to help Amaterasu make the world a place where all living creatures can dwell once again.

Amaterasu has weapons (reflector, rosary, glaive with upgrades and special attacks) and also learns brush strokes along the way; these allow Amateratu to turn day into night and back into day, slash through rocks and trees, grow trees and flowers, cross water on lily pads, use (and eventually summon) existing elements (water, fire, wind, lightening, ice), set bombs, climb walls, slow time, etc. They can be used in battle and to solve puzzles, interact with NPCs, and interact with the environment in other ways. There are animals to feed and fish to catch and treasures to find, and there are various items that give special powers. The art is stunning; it is cel-shaded in the manner of traditional Japanese paintings; the information screens are explicitly scrolls.

This was the third time through, chosen partly because my dying PS2 will read it (wanted either katamari, but it wouldn’t read either disc); partly because, the last time, I got all the stray beads, giving the necklace of 10x power and invincibility, so this time I was wondering how fast I could beat it (answer, around 15 hours, getting all the brushes, feeding anytime ‘feed’ showed up, digging up any nearby clovers and treasures but not worrying about searching for them, and doing any sidequests that were triggered, but not looking for any (did the first two monster hunts and one of the demon gates in spider caves), and spent more time than I should have being lost.

I do love this game, even though it is very easy (or maybe because it’s easy) and Issun is extremely annoying. I wish there was a way to turn off the Issun’s ‘helpful’ instructions; generally I know what I need to do but sometimes it takes a couple of tries to get the right brush stroke (in general, I can’t draw a straight line with a ruler; thankfully, this game is fairly good about accepting sloppy brush strokes). The art is gorgeous, and I am tempted by the artbook. The soundtrack fits the game perfectly, though I liked it better in the game than on its own.

The official site has more information and a few screenshots and wallpapers; I wonder if they’ll add more for the upcoming Wii version.

Lois McMaster Bujold: The Sharing Knife: Beguilement/Legacy

These are essentially one book in two parts; they are romance in a fantasy setting instead of fantasy with a romantic subplot. I read these because Lois McMaster Bujold is one of my favorite authors; however, I waited for paperback for the first one and have the second one from the library (they had issues for a while and never had the first one). I did not find the various descriptions of Beguilement very appealing; this is the description from its back cover:

Troubled young Fawn Bluefield seeks a life beyond her family’s farm. But en route to the city, she encounters a patrol of Lakewalkers, nomadic soldier–sorcerers from the northern woodlands. Feared necromancers armed with mysterious knives made of human bone, they wage a secret, ongoing war against the scourge of the “malices,” immortal entities that draw the life out of their victims, enslaving human and animal alike.

It is Dag—a Lakewalker patroller weighed down by past sorrows and onerous present responsibilities—who must come to Fawn’s aid when she is taken captive by a malice. They prevail at a devastating cost—unexpectedly binding their fates as they embark upon a remarkable journey into danger and delight, prejudice and partnership . . . and perhaps even love.

There are some inaccuracies in this but it does give a good indication of what it will be like. Beguilement has the descriptions of the world and the way it works: there are farmers and Lakewalkers; the Lakewalkers have groundsense, which allows them to have a feeling about their general area and the people and other beings in it; some can use it to make things (coats that will repel water, ropes that won’t break, etc.), and they mostly consider the farmers as lesser beings. The Lakewalkers call everyone else farmers; farmers discourage relationships with Lakewalkers, and Lakewalkers forbid outside relationships. It starts with Fawn and Dag meeting and the encounter with the malice, the incident with the knife of the title, and continues through the beginning of their relationship and Fawn’s return home. Legacy finds Dag and Fawn returning to Dag’s home and the problems they face there.

I liked Beguilement well enough; I tend to like the getting-together portions of romances best, and it was interesting learning about the world itself. Even though it is really only half a book, it was a satisfying read on its own, and had a decent ending; the significance of the knife and the reaction of Dag’s people to the relationship were the only bits left hanging. I didn’t like Legacy that much; I wanted to smack some sense into both Fawn and Dag (and occasionally Dag’s family) and found myself wondering if Fawn was Dag’s midlife crisis. Most of Dag’s family was (deliberately) unlikeable, and the Lakewalker society as a whole seemed annoying and hard-headed and prejudiced. There was far too much of Fawn worrying about fitting in and trying to be accepted; I don’t really want to read about people becoming accustomed to a different culture. She also seemed a bit too impulsive and hard-headed (typical teenage girl); I didn’t mind this in the first, but in the second it became annoying.

I don’t really like large age differences, though it’s not an automatic no for me; if it’s presented as normal in the society, it doesn’t bother me as much, but there was opposition on the basis of Dag’s age as well as his being a Lakewalker. Also, the mental ages are more important to me than the physical ages, but Fawn seemed very young, and Dag seemed much, much, much older (18-55 seems about right); the Lakewalkers do seem to age a little bit more slowly than the farmers, but even 18 to 40 (what Fawn first thought Dag’s age was) is a little too much for me. I also don’t like love-at-first-sight or short-but-fast-moving type relationships, especially when there are very good reasons against the relationship (age, farmer vs. Lakewalker). I can overlook some of these things in the hands of a good author (and Bujold is a good author), but I didn’t find the speed of the relationship very convincing, especially since Fawn’s previous attempt at a relationship ended badly (rebound+experimentation?). The bit with the knife in the title seemed like it was only really important as an excuse for Fawn and Dag to be together; it was useful but did not seem to have any real meaning.

I liked the setting, and wouldn’t mind reading other books in this world; I don’t want to read any more about Fawn and Dag, even though the ending left the possibility of other stories about them. I wanted to like these books; I have read most of Bujold’s works and count several of them among my favorites (including the ones with strong romantic subplots), but these had several romance tropes that I personally don’t like, and they were enough to make me dislike Legacy. I will probably buy Legacy in paperback, eventually, though, and read any further books (even if they include Fawn and Dag).

Doctor Who, Season 2, Disc 4

The continuing adventures of the tenth Doctor and his companion Rose; I have enjoyed this, but I think I liked Christopher Eccleston better as the Doctor, and know I liked Rose better in the last season. I’ve seen bits and pieces of the older Who (like many people, starting with Tom Baker) and may eventually work my way through them (at least enough to have an idea of the different Doctors). I generally try to avoid spoilers, but there are some in here (unavoidable).

The Impossible Planet

The Tardis lands in the middle of a station on a planet far enough away from everything that there is writing that it cannot translate. They discover that they are on a planet orbiting a black hole; there is a gravity field of some sort going outwards, keeping the planet in orbit. There is a group that are trying to find the power source that is located somewhere inside that is causing the gravity field, and they are close to it at the beginning of the episode. They are assisted by a race called the Ood, who apparently live to serve others; they are humanoid with tentacle faces (I immediately thought of Lovecraft, but others would probably be reminded of Davy Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean; I haven’t seen the relevant movie yet). They are apparently low-level telepathic with each other and speak to the humans via occasionally wonky translators.

The Ood’s first appearance is a group of them advancing on the Doctor and Rose, saying “We must feed” in unison; they apologize and offer refreshments (“We must feed you”). There is an earthquake, and the sector where the Tardis landed is destroyed; the leader refuses to divert the drill to look for the Tardis, but offers them a lift back to civilization once they have found the power source and leave.

I didn’t realize this was part one of two until near the end, when I looked at the title of the next episode. This episode was nicely creepy, with disembodied voices whispering to people, and occasionally taking over the computer’s voice, the Ood’s translators, the Ood themselves, and once calling Rose’s phone. Toby, the archaeologist, is the main target of the voices; he is trying to translate the language on some pottery they have found. The drill eventually reaches the core, and The Doctor volunteers to accompany Ida (the Science Officer) down the shaft. They find a seal, it opens, the Ood are possessed and start speaking for the occupant of the pit, and the episode ends.

The Satan Pit

I like the major spoiler in the title, though it is a spoiler for the end of the last episode (and was fairly obvious earlier). The Doctor and Ida are down the shaft, debate investigating the pit, are ordered to return, and the cable snaps. Below, The Doctor and Ida have philosophical discussions while using the cable from the capsule to investigate the pit (The Doctor investigates), while above, Rose takes charge and gets the crew to come up with a plan to stop the Ood. The remnants of the crew above manage to escape; unfortunately, the possessed member is one of them. The Doctor finds the beast and faces a dilemma: destroying the beast will also destroy Rose (the gravity field is tied to its prison; destroying the field will cause the planet to fall into the black hole; the lack of the field will cause the rocket to fall into the hole as well. The existence of further episodes makes this less suspenseful than it might have otherwise been, though the remaining crew’s fate was uncertain until the end.

Rose actually is kick-ass in this episode; after the beast causes the crew to start panicking, she convinces them to concentrate and come up with a plan to stop the Ood (there are 50 possessed and armed Ood and five or six crew members by this point). She seems to be using “What would the Doctor do?” as her motivation, and it seems to be working. I liked her fine in the last season, but earlier in this season, she was getting on my nerves a little; she seemed a bit weepy and clingy, though I guess the regeneration was hard on her.

Love and Monsters

There’s a guy (Elton, with Ursula filming) telling his story of his encounters with the Doctor. He ends up meeting a group of people who were interested in and investigating the Doctor who become the London Investigation ‘N’ Detective Agency (LINDA), and they ended up becoming friends and becoming more of a social group than an investigatory one. A man named Victor Kennedy joins the group and takes it over, giving people files to analyze and getting them to look for information about Rose. Members of the group begin to vanish, there is an alien, and eventually the Doctor shows up to save the day.

For such an emotional episode, that was an extremely grotesque alien (fat and ugly). It was kind of interesting seeing the Doctor from an outsider’s point of view, but I would have rather had an episode with the Doctor in it.

wikipedia on Doctor Who

Jasper Fforde: Thursday Next in First Among Sequels

This is the latest in the Thursday Next series; it is set fourteen years after the last one. She is married to Landen, and lives quietly with him and their three children. She supposedly works at Acme Carpets, but is secretly still working for SpecOps, and even more secretly for Jurisfiction; Landen is one of the only people who doesn’t know this. Her oldest son, Friday, is eighteen; he was supposed to have joined the Chronoguard at sixteen (Thursday has met his older self), but did not and is a stereotypical lazy and sullen teenage boy. The end of the world is approaching and only he can save it, apparently.

I was vaguely curious about what happens in this book, but didn’t really care about any of the characters, especially Thursday Next herself. She is the narrator, so this is problematic. Thursday has an apprentice, and spends far too much time explaining the workings of the Bookworld to her; I am glad that Fforde has the mechanics of the world worked out, but I don’t like long infodumps. I didn’t care enough about the plot to get past my indifference to the characters, either. The lying to her husband about her job (for fourteen years?) really bothered me; I was waiting for (but didn’t want to see) the inevitable scene, especially since it seemed like everyone knew and were advising her to tell him.

I loved The Eyre Affair, but have had mixed feelings about the later books. I have them all, but it’s been a while since I read any of them; I do remember that my least favorite before this was the second one (Lost in a Good Book) and know a few people who stopped reading there. I did like the other two better than the second. I think I like the world itself better than any of the characters, and this book (at least as far as I read) wasn’t as much fun as the previous books; it was all Thursday explaining her current situation and the mechanics of the Bookworld and worrying about her son.

I will eventually try this again, maybe after re-reading the others. Part of the reason I didn’t finish it is because I ran out of time: it’s a library book, I didn’t have as much time as I expected to read it, and it’s due and non-renewable (though there are other copies available). I made it about halfway through only because I was out of town and had finished everything else I had. Maybe rereading the others would make me more interested in the characters. I do want to read this someday, and will probably buy it eventually because I have the others and am not ready to give up on the series yet.