Castlevania: Lords of Shadow

While I finished Castlevania: Lords of Shadow a few weeks ago, I've had yet to write up my official review of the game.  So here goes.

Lords is an action game, through and through, and leaves you little time to rest easy during its intense, and lengthy campaign.  You play as Gabriel Belmont, and orphan who was inducted into the Brotherhood from a very young age, and your mission is simple.  Find out what is upsetting the balance of the world.  Things get more complicated as you realize that Gabriel's wife was killed only a couple of days ago and that he burns with vengeance, anger, sorrow, and other not so happy-feely emotions.  Soon enough, you discover that the Lords of Shadow are the cause for all of the baddies coming out of the woodwork and it becomes your goal to kill them all.  That's pretty much the premise of the game, although I will say that the story gets much more interesting and Gabriel is a great character who evolves with his actions.  Also, Patrick Stewart voices one of the main characters, which is just awesome.

Lords is also one of the most beautiful games I have ever played, with highly detailed character models and environments that change consistently throughout the game.  Never did I feel wearied by the settings, which was a relief after a few previous iterations of 3-D Castlevania games came to disappoint in that department.  Sweeping landscapes and ominous ruins expand the world of Castlevania beyond the mere castle-crawl, and reminded me of some of my favorite elements from Super Castlevania IV.  The music and sound effects are of top-notch quality as well, with new soaring anthems that have left the traditional Castlevania scores in the dust.  That's not to say that there aren't elements from some of the songs we know and love from the past, but they are hardly recognizable in the fully orchestrated symphony that blesses your ears.

In a way, Castlevania returns to some of its roots in action gameplay.  Leveling and inventory, which have been so popular since Symphony of the Night, have been stripped away.  Instead, a greater focus is lent to fighting enemies using your combat cross and an array of secondary weapons and skills.  The pace is more linear, with less wandering and more swinging, climbing, jumping, and beast-riding.  The camera cannot be controlled by the player, but it does an excellent job of showing you where you can go while maintaining a cinematic perspective.  I read several reviews complaining about the play controls, but I'm a bit baffled by them.  They reported issues with repeatedly falling off of cliffs, but if run to the edge of a cliff you cannot fall off until you press jump, and while hanging from walls Gabriel tends to look at where he will be jumping to.

In conclusion, I loved Castlevania.  The game was challenging without being frustrating (with the exception of one particular stage with some re-animated coffin creatures and no room to fight in). It provided me with around 20 hours of gameplay, and I am still meaning to return to it to play through on Paladin difficulty and unlock all of the hidden items, so it is truly a generous package.  I can't wait for the next one in the series and hope you find this review helpful in making your decisions.

Consumer to Creation

It's been bothering me for some time now that I've been pretty much exclusively a consumer in life, having contributed little to my community or society as a whole.  I think of all the authors, games, movies, and music that I love, and have realized that I would like to contribute something back.

So far, I have attempted to write and rewrite the same novel for nearly ten years now, and although progress has been slow, I think I've improved somewhat, but what I really need to do is sit down and develop a strict regimen.  Distractions are always too tempting, or it's too easy to feel discouraged from pushing ahead.  I have to set those doubts aside, pick up the metaphorical pen, and write, draw, and imagine again.

To anyone reading this post; most likely my wife and no one else, thanks!

Final Fantasy XIV Open Beta Impressions

Been a while since I posted on my blog, but figured I would give it a go. I am also writing from within Word and posting to Blogger, so we'll see if this actually works!

I figured since I have been putting some time into trying out the open beta for Final Fantasy XIV, I would leave a few of my impressions before the retail game goes live.

If you didn't already know, Final Fantasy XIV is the second MMO in the series, the first being Final Fantasy XI. While I tried out XI a couple of times, I could never really get into it. The game seemed too punishing for casual players or people who like to do lots of solo content while looking for friends (or strangers) to play with. XIV does much to alleviate that problem with the guildleve system, which is basically a quest hub that allows you to specify the number of players that will be participating in a given quest, and the challenge is adjusted accordingly. After a leve is initiated, the player is pointed in the direction of his/her objectives and must perform various tasks, such as defeating monsters, protecting individuals, or acquire materials for crafting within a thirty minute period of time.

I was happy to see that this quest system has departed a bit from the formula that has been well formulated since the inception of World of Warcraft, and during the course of a leve the music amps up and gives a feeling of some urgency to the game, which is a nice touch.

Speaking of music, and graphics as well, Final Fantasy XIV is gorgeous. While it will bring most computers to their metaphorical knees on high settings, even the lower settings still appeal to the eye and imagination. A bit of forum research has revealed that the game should run better on retail release, but we'll have to wait and find out.

Aside from leves, there are main storyline quests, which are the best I have seen in an MMO. At least in the beginning of the game, you are presented with glorious voice-acted motion-captured in-game cutscenes in which your newly made character partakes. Whether Hyur, Taru, or one of the game's three other races, you have a choice of three starting areas to choose from, and any combination of classes is made available to you from the get-go. The class system is entirely dependent on what you are holding in your main hand, so if you are holding a bow you will be working on the archer class, if you are holding a blacksmithing hammer you will be able to craft armor and weapons, or if you possess a staff you can dabble in the arts of magic. Anything is possible for a single character in this game, which is a great idea.

I do have a couple of gripes with the game, but mostly it revolves around bugs and interface issues that remain to be ironed out. For someone who traditionally uses the mouse/keyboard format for any PC games, myself included, FFXIV has yet to include hardware mouse support, and the user interface forces the player to go through layers of menus to get to their journals and inventory screens. Additionally, the UI is a bit laggy, but even that has improved over the past week or so. Square-Enix has promised hardware mouse support, and I hope they will grant the user more keybinding options so that things can be done like binding the "j" key to the journal pane and the "c" key to the character pane, etc.

Despite the problems, I found myself really enjoying Final Fantasy XIV when I wasn't expecting too. I had to give it time and pay attention to what was going on in order to understand what the hell I was doing, but that is a nice change of pace from the commonplace MMO dynamic. I may not purchase the game on launch (since I need a job), but I think it will be a pretty solid experience a couple of months in.

Rest in Peace

I just learned today from one of my former geology 211 students that another student of mine from the same quarter got into a fatal car accident near Spokane over spring break.  The least I can do is acknowledge that he was a bright student, and a great person.

Rest in peace, Sammy Alurfali.

A Game of Thrones and a Clash of Kings Review

When I first hear about the A Song of Ice and Fire Saga I felt little to no interest in George R.R. Martin's epic series.  But, of course, that was before I actually read any of the books, and now I have been sucked into the world of political intrigue, betrayal, heroism, and subtle mysticism.  Not only that, but I also had to pick of the LCG (living card game) based on the series, but I'll get to that in a future review.

I have already powered my way through the first two novels, which could be aptly labeled as tomes for their size.  A Game of Thrones, the first novel, focuses primarily on the various members of the Stark family, a hard, honest people who inhabit the keep and lands of Winterfell in the north of Westeros, the small continent which is the primary setting for the novels.  Each chapter is told from a different character's perspective, which is an excellent story-telling device and I can't imagine these books any other way.  From the start the six children of Eddard (the lord of Winterfell) Stark find a direwolf mother dead, having been locked in a deathly embrace with a stag.  They discover six pups, which they adopt and remain loyal to their children throughout the course of the books.

Soon enough, Lord Eddard's king and old friend, Robert Baratheon, arrive at Winterfell to ask Eddard to become the Hand of the King, who basically does all the hard work, which Eddard is forced to begrudgingly accept.  A secondary storyline focuses on Daenerys, the daughter of the old king who was rebelled against by Robert and friends, who has been exiled overseas with her brother on a vast, arid continent.  As the book progresses, the importance of her role continues to grow, and although her storyline often felt almost jarring in its difference from the events in Westeros, it was still a welcome dialogue with interesting occurrences.

From this point forward the plot twists and turns in intriguing and sometimes unexpected directions, bringing the reader to truly care about the fate of the plethora of characters, regardless of whether they are good, evil, or somewhere in between. I don't really want to give away too much more of the plot because I feel it would spoil a lot of the surprises for a first-time reader.  I absolutely recommend reading A Game of Thrones.  I think it is one of the most fantastic and well-written pieces of literature I have ever read, which nearly anyone could find some part to enjoy.  If you like intrigue, action, love, hate, and everything else in a book, this is the series for you!

I would also like to make a few comments on A Clash of Kings, the second book in George R.R. Martin's series.  This novel introduces a couple of new perspectives from which the narrative is driven, those being the characters Davos and Theon.  Davos is an old corsair turned loyalist who brings into focus the events surrounding Stannis Baratheon, Robert Baratheon's brother.  Theon Greyjoy is a young man of age with the eldest Stark, Robb, who is also a ward of the Starks, and his narrative focuses on his return to his father on the island of Pyke.

I also managed to plow through A Clash of Kings quickly, but I found the plot twists to be a little less intriguing than in the first novel, but it had more than enough interesting parts to carry on a fantastic storyline, and I was definitely left eager for the next novel,  A Storm of Swords, which I am already several hundred pages in.

I love these books and I just wanted to give a shout out to my graduate student compatriot, Joe, for introducing me to the series!

Quick Review: Stranger in a Strange Land

My interest in Robert A. Heinlein really began with reading The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, which I thoroughly enjoyed for its creative voice and interesting, relatively conflict-free plot. Stranger in a Strange Land is very similar, and yet very different. The plot is a sort of coming-of-age story, but told in a very different way. Michael Valentine Smith, or Mike, was the first and only human born on Mars and raised by Martians. After being brought to Earth, he must learn what it is to be human, and at the same time humans must learn what it means to be Martian.

One of the most important concepts, grokking, seems very simple at the beginning of the story, and yet has endless layers of complexity by the end. By grokking something, one has a complete understanding of it, but there is all so much more to it. With only a set of Martian morals and understanding, Mike begins to grok the world, friendships, and love, evolving from a seemingly child-like adult to a courteous and charismatic leader.

Despite his state, the reader can always empathize with Mike and the people he cares about, and I felt as though I were with them in the story, listening to their casual, witty banter, and going through all of the hard growing pains that each individual experiences. In a way, reading Stranger in a Strange Land made me see things differently and I wish that everyone would do the same. Robert A. Heinlein crafted an optimistic, yet bitter-sweet tale that speaks to the heart of what it means to be human, which is the best and worst thing that can happen to all of us.

It isn't so much the plot that makes this book special, but the underlying messages it conveys. Some of the dialogue doesn't necessarily hold up with today's conventions, dating the story a bit, but the heart of it holds up to modern society relatively well for a book that is over 40 years young.

With that, I look forward to reading more by Robert A. Heinlein in the future, with my next stop being Starship Troopers.

Quick Review: Carrion Comfort

About a month ago I finished Carrion Comfort, by Dan Simmons, which was quite an enjoyable read. Since then, I have read two other books, hence the "quick review" part of the title.

I've always loved Dan Simmons as an author, and my favorite of his works are by far the Hyperion saga and The Terror, two very different settings and genres. Carrion Comfort is much closer to the The Terror, genre-wise, in that it is a suspenseful and sometimes horrific novel. All similarity ends there, though, as Carrion Comfort takes place in a contemporary setting, well, 1980's, and centers on a group of people who have a powerful influence on the minds of others, essentially feeding off of turmoil, and those who fight against them. The book coins the term "mind vampires" for the depraved villains of the story.

I found the book to be quite gripping and well-written, but at times I felt my interest waning in certain plot points, with the middle part of the book in particular. The central portion takes place mainly in an area of Philadelphia known as Germantown and I found some of the character interaction to be a little artificial, and felt that this act dragged on for a little too long. The opening and closing acts of the story were hard to put down with a rapidly moving plot forcing characters into situations that were hard to get out of. Saul, a holocaust survivor, has a particularly interesting story in his never-ending quest to find the Oberst, a Nazi who had forced control over him when he was in Chelmno, an extermination camp during WWII.

Overall, Carrion Comfort provided an excellent read and I would recommend it to anyone interested in a well-written horror book, but I would still hand The Terror to someone first.