Three Unconnected Reviews
Apr. 17th, 2013 05:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroMatchbox Girls by Chrysoula Tzavelas – This bears may of the usual hallmarks of a superhero origin story, and despite the modern dark fantasy trappings, it feels more like one. (Kinda like everything Peter David writes, even the Star Trek books, seems vaguely like a pun-tastic superhero story.) It certainly deserves kudos for the abundance of capable and credible female characters. It does, however, get bogged down in the amount of exposition it provides—the author obvious has an entire world and mythology built up, but at least some of it isn’t strictly necessary to the plot. Yes, I appreciate that there’s a wider universe of demons and kaiju, but the extensive conversations about how magic works that doesn’t actually come into play later aren’t necessary. Also, Marley’s powers could be better set up in the early scenes—really, what I think I’m getting at is that this could afford to have had another round of edits to make it tighter, and cull out a lot of supplement material that should go in the sequel or the roleplaying game tie-in. But besides that, it’s not a bad read, it has some interesting concepts, and you end up caring about most of the characters. Also, it leaves a lot of threads hanging, but in a “there are more adventures to come” sort of way, rather than a “you’ll need to wait impatiently for a sequel” way.
(Usual disclaimer for Candlemark & Gleam books: I know the publisher.)
The Walking Dead Compendium 1 – For something that was “acclaimed”, I was expecting better than a treasure-trove of hackneyed tropes and unbelievable coincidences. This doorstopper of a TPB collects the first 48 issues of the series, but I couldn’t make it that far. The whole thing feels like the writer came up with a whole bunch of zombie movie scenes he wanted to see, then contrived events and characterizations to get there. And not in a good way. And the main character reminds me of a description of Tom Cruise’s character in the War of the Worlds, who is the smartest man in the world, the dumbest man in the world, the sturdiest man in the world, and either the fastest of slowest man in the world (as independent of vehicle, he always travels at the speed of plot).
Infinite Space (NDS game) - This is apparently an epic science fiction story about politics, pirates, aliens, reality-warping and consequences. But I disliked the battle system and the general feel of the game from the first ten minutes, so I see no reason to sink 50 hours of my life into it. This initial tutorial gives you a rundown of the game's rock-paper-scissors attack style, which is apparently based on the duals in Suikoden (Attack, Strong Attack, Defend), except with a distance system and longer, more drawn-out animations. This is for ship-to-ship combat, and based on the sequence afterwards, either that's the only sort of combat or they're leaving the complications for later. It doesn't really appeal to me, mostly because it's really boring and time-consuming for the low amount of thinking it involves. I really don't like the primary font used for dialogue and narration, which makes me less inclined to go past the stereotypical opening sequence of a backwater planet boy and the action girl-for-hire who helps him with his dream to go into space and unlock the magic box his father left him. I hereby declare this culled.
(Usual disclaimer for Candlemark & Gleam books: I know the publisher.)
The Walking Dead Compendium 1 – For something that was “acclaimed”, I was expecting better than a treasure-trove of hackneyed tropes and unbelievable coincidences. This doorstopper of a TPB collects the first 48 issues of the series, but I couldn’t make it that far. The whole thing feels like the writer came up with a whole bunch of zombie movie scenes he wanted to see, then contrived events and characterizations to get there. And not in a good way. And the main character reminds me of a description of Tom Cruise’s character in the War of the Worlds, who is the smartest man in the world, the dumbest man in the world, the sturdiest man in the world, and either the fastest of slowest man in the world (as independent of vehicle, he always travels at the speed of plot).
Infinite Space (NDS game) - This is apparently an epic science fiction story about politics, pirates, aliens, reality-warping and consequences. But I disliked the battle system and the general feel of the game from the first ten minutes, so I see no reason to sink 50 hours of my life into it. This initial tutorial gives you a rundown of the game's rock-paper-scissors attack style, which is apparently based on the duals in Suikoden (Attack, Strong Attack, Defend), except with a distance system and longer, more drawn-out animations. This is for ship-to-ship combat, and based on the sequence afterwards, either that's the only sort of combat or they're leaving the complications for later. It doesn't really appeal to me, mostly because it's really boring and time-consuming for the low amount of thinking it involves. I really don't like the primary font used for dialogue and narration, which makes me less inclined to go past the stereotypical opening sequence of a backwater planet boy and the action girl-for-hire who helps him with his dream to go into space and unlock the magic box his father left him. I hereby declare this culled.
