Of Celebrities and Train-Wrecks

Posted on December 18, 2023 by JC

One of the interesting and frequently entertaining aspects of the Internet has been the rise of the e-celebrity. Or in other words, an otherwise “normal” person who becomes a minor or major public figure. Until very recently, the celebrity was confined to sports and entertainment which is tightly controlled by major corporations and government organisations. Someone had to have some degree of talent to be a celebrity but they more than anything needed the backing of powerful groups to make this happen. There are plenty of good looking people who can smile and act and very few of them ultimately become celebrities. The only exception to this was the “15 minutes of fame” when an otherwise normal person briefly rose to prominence for something personally heroic, amusing or just a novelty of some sort. Even this was tightly controlled by the mainstream media who would move on as soon as the public began to lose interest.

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Pikmin 4 Review

Posted on December 11, 2023 by JC

Pikmin 4 was officially announced late last year and released on July 21st which was almost a decade to the day after the release of Pikmin 3 in 2013. In between these two releases there was the mediocre spinoff for 3DS, Hey! Pikmin released in 2017, Pikmin 3: Deluxe a port for Switch in 2020 and the mobile exclusive Pikmin Bloom released in 2021. These releases aside, this was the largest gap in mainline releases since that between 2004’s Pikmin 2 and Pikmin 3 which came close to a decade. And within this period, the first two games were given enhanced releases on the Wii with the “New Play Control!” branding incorporating the Wii controls so well that they were retained as an option in Pikmin 3. 

As sparse as this release history may be, it is not at all surprising considering that the series has never been a big seller for Nintendo though it has always been modestly successful. All the mainline games were well-received critically and are fondly remembered by most people who played them — myself definitely included. I was actually one of the very first out the gate my my review of Pikmin 3 back in 2013, as it was released in Japan a few weeks earlier and saw the site I originally wrote for get a brief but noticeable jump in traffic. The game did little if anything to improve sales for the already struggling Wii U but then no subsequent game releases really did. Given the comparatively low sales with other Nintendo franchises, Pikmin 4 was never a sure thing but on release had the most successful launch in the series history as well as being critically well-received. My review is late but I think it contrasts enough with what has already been said to be worth writing. This review will assume some knowledge of the series which is basically a hybrid of real-time tactics and action/adventure genres.

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The Name of the Gamma

Posted on December 2, 2023 by JC

I have been curious about this book for quite a while. Not because of the praise it has received but quite the opposite. Vox Day has stated he was unable to finish it and has singled out Kvothe as the biggest gamma in fiction in one of his Darkstreams. Other writers have commented on the very slow progress of the series as well as the behaviour of the writer. So my curiosity is more akin to the kind that compels you to stare at a car crash. That is not to say the book is a disaster as it has been very successful with both it and its sequel selling many millions of copies. And though it is over fifteen years old, I still had to put one of the multiple copies at my library on reserve and wait almost a month before I could borrow it. Most authors would be happy to sell a few thousand and see one copy available in their local library. Especially in the genre of Epic Fantasy where even fewer authors find success.

I read the book while commuting over the last few weeks and it was a struggle at times though I wouldn’t say it is irredeemably awful. I came away thinking Rothfuss can write and there are some good ideas within the pages. The main problems are that Kvothe is an almost textbook Marty Stu, the novel is over six hundred pages and the plot goes nowhere. I don’t like this novel at all but I think Vox has given a good explanation of its appeal in the link above and I will add some more to this in what follows.

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, DAW Books, March 27th, 2007

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The Pirates of the Caribbean Series Review

Posted on November 30, 2023 by JC

Over the last two years much of my entertainment has been focused on pirates. By pirates, I of course mean the famous fictionalised swashbuckling version of them and not the horrible reality of piracy. I re-watched the Pirates of the Caribbean films through twice, I bought a number of books including On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers; which the fourth film is based on. As well as this I picked up Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton and Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. I also read Robinson Crusoe for the first time — which arguably popularised adventure stories set in the Caribbean much as Treasure Island did for the golden age of piracy specifically, one hundred and fifty years later. In addition to all this I read a history of the Caribbean, the life of Sir Francis Drake and a number of related works. Even video games weren’t excluded as I had a lot of fun playing through the remake of Sid Meier’s Pirates! last year too. I can’t recall what exactly started this but it preoccupied my increasingly scarce free time for a goodly portion of the last two years and has also bled into seeking out swashbucklers in general.

What makes this the more interesting is the film series is more one I’ve wanted to like than one I’ve genuinely loved. And while I’ve come to appreciate these films a lot more (especially with all the dreck that dominates the cinemas today), I still have some significant criticisms of them. Nonetheless, they are starting to be seen more and more as modern classics and I don’t think this in unreasonable. As the first is now twenty years old this year, it is a good time to look at the series as a whole.

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Do the Game Awards even know their categories?

Posted on November 19, 2023 by JC

This will be three video game related posts in a row but there hasn’t been much else to write about lately and this blog did start out with games as a focus. I hope to resume varied content again soon.

The nominees for this year’s Game Awards were announced last week. This has already been a really great year for releases so it is a bit more interesting than previous years have been. Before moving into the main topic, I want to give the very idea of the Game Award a spray similar to one I’ve already given to the Academy Awards. As I’ve repeated before, I think the very idea of having even a semi-official [Anything] of the Year is stupid and the Game Awards are no exception. This post shouldn’t be seen as me giving legitimacy to the idea of awards shows but they do exist and I am merely commenting on something that exists.

In every form they have appeared, these awards have been little more than three hours of pure cringe. The only genuinely entertaining things have been the unscripted occurrences and the amusing supercuts that appear later. Despite the hilarious ineptness of Angry Joe in his confrontation with Geoff Keighley back in 2010, there are legitimate criticisms to be made about these award shows. I will demonstrate this with a single category this year which is for Best Sim/Strategy Game.

Angry Joe famously embarrassed himself in an interview with Geoff Keighley at the Spike VGAs in 2010.

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The End of Zero Punctuation

Posted on November 12, 2023 by JC

The recent news that at The Escapist had layoffs followed by resignations of a number of other staff members, most notably Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw means the end of Zero Punctuation, the game review video series he had been producing for over sixteen years. As of writing, the site is still running and being updated but the staff who were either sacked or resigned have formed Second Wind. Croshaw does not have the rights to Zero Punctuation but the series will more or less continue as Fully Ramblomatic which is also the title of his personal website dating back before Zero Punctuation. The sardonic video series is undoubtedly behind The Escapist’s success though it also had a number of other worthy writers and features over the years that I don’t wish to belittle. I expect the site will be eventually shutdown permanently as I can’t imagine it recovering after this. Zero Punctuation will now continue more or less with a different name but the ending of the original series is still something like the end of an era that is worth marking.

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A Decade without Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell

Posted on November 5, 2023 by JC

2013 was a notable year in gaming for quite a number of reasons. It saw the announcement and launch of both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles following the unusually long seventh console generation. It was the last year the industry experimented with different game award shows before the consistent (but still terrible), “The Game Awards” began the following year. It also saw a number of major releases including games that came to define the decade.

The Tomb Raider reboot, BioShock Infinite, Metro: Last Light, The Last of Us, Rayman Legends, Grand Theft Auto V, Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, Pikmin 3 and Super Mario 3D World were all released in 2013. These were all commercially and critically successful and have all seen subsequent re-releases. Grand Theft Auto V has been ported to virtually everything since and gone on to be one of the most successful games ever made. The Last of Us got a remaster the following year and a remake within the decade. Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag is still one of the more fondly remembered titles in the series and apparently is getting a remake too. This doesn’t come close to mentioning all the notable games that came out in 2013 but it gives a good idea how big the year was.

On the other hand, there were also a few disappointments. Gears of War: Judgement released earlier in the year to a fairly mediocre reception and sales despite being a decent game. There was also Splinter Cell: Blacklist which had a better reception but as of writing, has been the last release in the Splinter Cell series. Blacklist followed the polarising Splinter Cell: Conviction from 2010 — a game that departed significantly from its predecessors. It turned off many fans of the series while bringing few new players — if any. Blacklist tried to tread the fine line of retaining some of the changes made in Conviction while restoring some of what made the series successful.  It had other problems beyond this misguided attempt to please completely different audiences which will be discussed below.

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Robert E. Howard and the Great Game

Posted on October 30, 2023 by JC

This is a continuation of my journey through the literary oeuvre of Robert E. Howard which began with Conan the Cimmerian and has covered Solomon Kane, Kull of Atlantis and his historical fiction including the Sword Woman, Agnès de Chastillon. Most recently I have returned to (and gone into more depth with) Conan after re-reading all the Howard stories for the second time. I have now finally read the adventures of Xavier Francis Gordon or El Borak (the Swift) as he is known throughout the Levant. As with most of the previous stories, I have been reading the excellent Ballantine publication which includes everything most enthusiasts could want. It is a shame this series doesn’t include everything Howard wrote and isn’t available in a hardcover set as I’d most certainly buy it.

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The Baffling Design of Sonic Frontiers

Posted on October 24, 2023 by JC

Sonic the Hedgehog didn’t have the successful transition into 3D that the Super Mario Bros. series did. While Super Mario 64 set the standard and remains a fun and engaging game to this day, the same can not be said of most of Sonic’s 3D outings. This is not to say they are all terrible, as the original Sonic Adventure and it’s sequel are well-regarded by many. I don’t have a fond opinion of either but they still at least have redeeming qualities. For my part, the best 3D games were Sonic Generations and Sonic Colours which both released around the same time and combined both 3D and 2D platforming in a unique way. Both games also focused on the titular hero and generally stuck to what works with the former being what I consider to be the best 3D Sonic game ever made. As good as Generations was, even it had some irritating design decisions with the odd mechanics introduced with the final boss making for an anticlimactic end to what had until then been a lot of fun.

Sonic Frontiers is the latest attempt at Sonic in the third dimension after the mediocrity that was 2017’s Sonic Forces. The result, like many previous games, is something of mixture of good and bad. There are some clever ideas and fun moments along with the usual frustrations as well as some downright baffling design decisions. If I had to compare it to any of the previous games, it would be Sonic Adventure which seemed to be designed to include as many features as possible without the developers spending enough time polishing any one of them. Though this is the only area of comparison as they otherwise differ in design. Continue reading →

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Peter Hitchens versus Gamma

Posted on October 15, 2023 by JC

I came across this interview that was put into my YouTube feed (I don’t have an account but my viewing habits are still noticed by the infernal algorithm), which was a recent interview with Peter Hitchens. I find Hitchens interesting and have reviewed one of his books here and commented on an appearance he made years ago on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s execrable Q&A program. So having the time and the inclination, I watched (or rather listened while working) to it. It was disappointing in a number of ways but not for the reasons his interviewer states. He described it as a “bizarre experience” and it kind of was but again, not for the reasons he has in mind. 

As I am obviously biased towards Peter Hitchens, I am going to go by what the interviewer Alex O’Connor said and not what Hitchens has said. In contrast to what happens when I usually do this, it won’t require a great length of writing or any fisking — the latter of which would be made tedious without a transcript to copy from.

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