The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

So, this is the third and final book of the Millenium trilogy.

Spoiler Alert!

We leave our main character “the girl” recovering in a hospital after almost being killed by her father, the woman trafficker. Michael Blomkvist, after saving Lisbeth, finds himself caught up in a murder investigation. Basically, the entire book he spends trying to defend Lisbeth’s honor by clearing her name. In the process, he undercovers some pretty hefty government secrets revolving around “the sector”.

End Spoiler Alert!

Overall, I think this book was the second best of the three. The first book took to long to get going for my liking. The second book was great and full of action and plot. This book is a weird combination. It’s more of a courtroom mystery. (I made up that term; it may not make sense.) The book basically centers around Michael Blomkvist’s own investigation. There is not much action. He does a bit of sleuthing. And Lisbeth is a fairly non existent character in terms of plot development until towards the end of the book. It was slow but interesting because you have invested a lot into the characters already. The second and third book really could make up one mega book, and the author does a good job concluding the story.

Like me. The end.

Side Note! So, as I was looking for the picture for this I stumble upon another blog where a guy reviews books. How about that! Anyways, I read his review, and surprise, surprise it is very similar to mine. However, I liked this quote

"The first book is a mystery. The second book turns more towards an action thriller. This third book is very “Law & Order/CSI”."

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

It seems like my Newbery book posts have grown progressively shorter and more sarcastic. So I'll do my best to make this one as lengthy and meaningful as I possibly can. Umm, Mrs. Frisby is a field mouse and her youngest son is sick and bed-ridden but there is an imminent need for her family to relocate so she seeks advice from the rats of NIMH. NIMH stands for National Institute of Mental Health and the rats are actually lab rats who have escaped, but now they have humanlike intelligence thanks to some experiments, but they still don't know if they should help Mrs. Frisby or not until Mrs. Frisby overhears a bunch of people talking about exterminating a colony of rats and it turns out they are the rats of NIMH and Mrs. Frisby informs the rats thusly and, ever grateful, the rats of NIMH help her out. Man. Where do I even begin? It's too easy to start poking plot holes into a children's book with talking animals. It's too obvious to point out all of the flaws in the story and the concept. It'd be too harsh to rip into the author for boring characters and a lack of originality. So I won't do any of those things. Instead I'll just politely point out that with this book's completion I now have just 30 books left in my backlog. The Christmas season will surely knock that back up above thirty, even if I can get it below 30 before then, but for now, yeah, it's nice to have just 30 books left. And for that reason alone, I'm happy to have read Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.

The Tipping Point

The Tipping Point is a book about that special "moment" when a trend becomes a full-blown epidemic. Malcolm Gladwell attempts to explain the social science behind that phenomenon. You've seen it before. A few people in a select group begin to wear something, for example, such as Ugg boots. Soon the trend is noticed and copied, but only by a few people, and maybe only in a specific place. For years the number of Ugg-wearers continues to increase but still remains very small compared to the number of shoe-wearers in general. And then all of a sudden, Ugg boots hit the "tipping point" and within months you begin to see people everywhere sporting the trend. It's not just exponential growth. It's a sudden explosion in popularity. The concept is one we're all familiar with, I'm sure, but I was excited to read a book about it and see some histories and explanations at work. I did learn a number of interesting things, and the book was interesting (or at least not boring) from beginning to end, but I was ultimately disappointed in this read, largely for two reasons. The first wasn't Gladwell's fault at all; it was the publication date. The Tipping Point first came out a full decade ago in the year 2000. And that means it was probably being written between 1997 and 1999. And for a book based on social trends, that was a bit of an issue. Due to the time period, Gladwell doesn't use Ugg boots or Crocs as anecdotes for the tipping point. Instead, he looks at Hush Puppies and Airwalk sneakers. Wow! I'm sure I'd have cared more ten years ago, but those are two horribly dated footwear items. And back then, the information revolution really had yet to begin. Yeah, we had email and cell phones, but only barely. And we didn't have Facebook or YouTube or any form of viral marketing in general. "User-created content" has become so crucial to social interaction and trend-setting these days, and reading Clinton years Gladwell talk about the power of "word of mouth" without ever referencing the Internet at all felt as quaint as a 2000 movie review that praises The Phantom Menace for having great CGI effects. Any decade-old book will feel dated in its discussion of topical trends, but to "miss" the 2000-2010 decade is to miss a game-changing shift in the very way we communicate. And that was very unfortunate. The other snafu that I do pin on Gladwell is an inability to stay on one real track. Although every chapter was interesting, the writing really jumped all over the place, from "Sesame Street was a successful show because it defied conventions" to "crime in New York City dropped dramatically in the early '90s because of the 'broken window' effect" to "Gore-Tex is a successful company because it limits each plant to 150 workers or fewer" to "Paul Revere was able to spread his warning message so effectively because he was a very charismatic man." Again, all interesting stuff, but what does any of it have to do with that "tipping point" that this book is ostensibly about? Nothing. It'd be one thing if each of these points came back to reinforce a central point that the author was building and reiterating throughout the book. (This is part of why I think Freakonomics and its sequel were so effective.) Instead, all of the ramblings never really found each other and remained episodic and isolated. There just seemed to be a real lack of focus. In the end I didn't hate this book, but I can't give it a strong recommendation due to the aforementioned issues. I've got one more Gladwell book on my backlog, but if it wasn't already on my bookshelf I wouldn't have gone out of my way to read any of his other works.

Mass Effect 2

Oh crap! I beat this game a week ago and forgot to make a post for it. Anyway, I played Mass Effect early this year and despite its high praise was rather unimpressed. The create-your-own story was interesting, but the combat was dull, the vehicle segments sloppy, and no matter how fun it was choosing random lines from conversations, the plot was pretty trite. Well, Bioware fixed basically everything with Mass Effect 2. The combat? Much more fun! I personally loved the sniper rifle, which slowed time for a few seconds every time I looked through the scope- waves of enemies fell to my devastating headshots. The RPG elements worked much better here as well. In the first game I really noticed no difference in gaining a level, but in Mass Effect 2 you could spend experience points on cool new abilities which did indeed come in handy on the battlefield. The crappy driving sections on the Mako in the first game were done away with completely. The plot's no longer a generic "save the universe as captain hero" story, but instead tells a much more interesting tale. Captain Shepard goes down with his ship, the Normandy, at the start of the game, but is saved and kept alive in a comatose state for two years by a terrorist organization from the first game. When the purpose for all this is revealed, Shepard is faced with some tough choices that aren't nearly as black and white as the ones in the original Mass Effect. The plot also unfolds in a much easier way to follow here- a majority of the game consists of finding and gaining the loyalty of 8 new crew members. For instance, to find one member of your team Shepard starts up a prison riot, breaking a powerful woman out of jail, eventually killing the warden. Later on in the game I had the option of helping her face some memories of her past by blowing up the abandoned school/prison where she grew up. There's plenty of variation in the missions- sometimes I never even had to fire a gun to complete the job. It kept me interested throughout the entire game, and unlike a lot of the games I've logged, I really never got bored. Oh, all this time talking about the gameplay and I haven't mentioned that the game is freakin gorgeous. Really my only gripe about the game is that the few loading screens can take a little while to finish. Other than that Mass Effect 2 was a fantastic game, and highly recommended. Just be sure to play the first one, even though it's worse, to get the full story.

Catching Fire

Finally, I’m on break. And that means there’s time for some catching up I’ve been meaning to do. Last night I scarfed down the second installment of The Hunger Games Trilogy and I have some mixed feelings on the book. Prior to reading this, I’ve heard several viewpoints saying that either the book was great or read like melodramatic crap. I’m of two minds on this whole issue. From here on out I’m going to give away some important plot points, so...

***SPOILER ALERT***

The way the book opens was a little bland, at least for my taste. Yeah, we’ve got the government moving to control the citizens and the riots. Yeah, we learn of the secret and mysterious District 13. And, yeah, we hear that our heroes are unfairly recruited back into the this year’s Hunger Games - The Quarter Quells. All of this is fine and well, but the love triangle always rubs me the wrong way. I’m sorry, but I don’t want to hear a 16-year-old girl bitch and moan about her relationship issues - or lack thereof - while the whole damn world is coming apart! I’m aware that this might be a storyline that is the most compelling to some. However, I can only describe it as tedious.

This whole thing rolls on for the majority of the book until we finally enter the Game. Now I’m getting excited. I have to say that regardless how “Twilight” the series can get at times, Collins always redeems herself with the violence and gore that unfolds as all the tributes savagely duke it out against one another. Acid fog, blood rain, killer monkeys all in an arena that operates as a clock - pretty inventive. I just wish there were more and that it wasn’t all crammed into the very end.

And there’s the ending. I have to say I - probably amongst others - saw this coming. (By seeing it coming I mean that some of the tributes were instructed to save Katniss, waiting for their rebel group to save them.) While I wasn’t particularly wowed by it, I didn’t dislike it either. Let’s just put it this way, I’m motivated to finish off the series. And although I’m of two minds on this story, if I’m compelled enough to read on then I think the author has done her job.

Red Dead Redemption

With what appears to be my first post of the month, I give to you: Red Dead Redemption. Even if you’ve never played the prequel, just by seeing the front cover of the game - a mean looking cowboy eyeing you down accompanied with the Rockstar Games logo - you should be able to say to yourself, “Looks like GTA mixed with the western genre.” That is precisely what this game is.

In general, it was fun; however, RDR still doesn’t have what it takes to match his urban cousin in the future. The gun fights match up about the same as GTA’s except for the addition of the duels, which are - somewhat - cool. And although the magnificent scenes of the great plains are quite the spectacle at first, they slowly become one of the games most boring features. Ever new mission requires you high tail it across the country where you trot on horseback through this giant, stale environment in where there is nothing to do. Well, wait... on occasion you might choose to defend some poor old farmer being hassled by bandits, or you might get the chance to do some hunting, bag yourself a deer, but it pales in comparison to the city in any GTA. Where are the hidden jumps I can hurl my car off of, cops I can piss of and send chasing after me, hookers looking for a “good time” in the park? The missions and gun fights may be fun, but I found myself rolling my eyes every time I started a mission that required me to ride for 5-10 minutes before I arrived at any conflict. Lots of boredom.

Also, the game was a little to easy - even for me. Even if I do enjoy a nice walk in the park from time to time, I still want my games to provide some challenge along the way. The zoom feature allows you to instantly lock onto your enemies. So by constantly toggling my left trigger, I almost guarantee a hit with every shot I take. Add on top of this the fact you can earn more money than you know what to do with (Five Fingers Fillet - after only four wins you set yourself up to $100 for ever win after; a real easy event to abuse and make yourself rich as hell in no time), you could find yourself armed to the teeth with the games most lethal guns.

***SPOILER ALERT***

I did all this coming to the last stage, a point where you make a final stand at your hose holding off the US Army from killing your family. I slaughtered a hundred men without using my dead-eye (the game’s bullet-time feature) once. However, this only makes the ending more pathetic.

Your wife and son scurry away as about twenty men line up outside the barn you’ve locked yourself in just waiting to shoot you down when you come out. Now I’ve just killed dozens of these guys without so much as breaking a sweat, and now the game forces you out the front door into a duel with impossible odds. Needless to say, your shot down with only enough time to take a couple of other fellows with you. But why couldn’t I have run out the other side of the barn or climbed to the roof - I saw an opening up there, why the hell doesn’t the game?!

Regardless, I still had fun. In the end, though, I longed for something more.

Wait a tick! What’s this Undead-thing I’ve been hearing some much about as an added download feature to the game. Well, I reached the credit screen, so the game is beaten - and therefore blog-worthy - but maybe not finished.

Final Fantasy III

A lengthy game merits a lengthy post, and when it comes to the 35-hour Final Fantasy III, there is so much to talk about. I could discuss the job class progression I chose for my characters. I could complain about the light and uninteresting story. I could do my best to describe my affinity for the Final Fantasy series to an audience that may or may not have a working knowledge of RPGs in general. I could bitch about the brutal and relentless final dungeon and boss, bemoaning the lack of save points. Instead though, I'm just going to keep this light, simple, and informative rather than introspective. FF3 came out in Japan in 1990 for the 8-bit NES (or as it was known in Japan, the "Famicom" - Family Computer). But it never came out in America until this 2006 DS remake. I bought it and played through the first two thirds of it in 2008 and, on a few key days in the past couple of months, beat it entirely. And having finally done so, I really don't feel all the richer for the experience. FF3 just wasn't as good as I wanted it to be. That doesn't mean I'm disappointed I put thirty hours of my life into it. It just means I don't think you should do so unless you absolutely love the series and feel the need to play every Final Fantasy game there is. (Like me.) I'm glad they finally released an American version of this game, and it was actually a huge contributing factor when it came to my decision to buy a DS. But would I play it again? I highly doubt it. There are better games out there. There are better handheld games, better RPGs, and even better Final Fantasy games on the DS. (Well, at least one: FF4, the other reason I bought a DS.) I'm just glad to be done with this one. Maybe they were in no rush to Americanize it because it just wasn't that noteworthy. Anyway, it's nice to take a thirty-hour game off of my backlog. Two DS games remain, but neither should be as long as this one was. Time will tell.

Dr Who Series 4

So far this is my favorite season of Doctor Who. Initially I hated Donna Noble, played by Catherine Tate, but after a couple episodes she really grew on me. Watching her comedy show also warmed me up to her. Initially she comes off as loud, brutish and irritating but over time you realize that those things are all a cover because she thinks she isn't good enough, when in this season she is actually the most important person on Earth with all plots and timelines converging on her.

To spoil the obvious this is David Tennant's last season as the Doctor so going into this season I knew that he was going to have to die and regenerate as a new actor by the seasons end but I was very happy with how they wrote this into the plot. Tennant is now one of my favorite actors. As I have mentioned he played Barty Crouch junior in Harry Potter 4 but he was also recently in a DVD release of his time playing Hamlet on stage with Patrick Stewart as the king and the Kings murdering supplanting brother. Both his role as the Doctor and his role as Hamlet showcase his ability to bounce between sanity and insanity without missing a beat.

This season is also the end of a giant four season arc that makes up the new Doctor Who series. All the seasons twine together to make one huge story line, therefore the fifth season is the same but completely different from the first four.

Like the last season this one was very light on the History. The most notable historical characters in this season are Lucius Caecilius Lucundus and Agatha Christie. Neither one of very great or very interesting importance. Instead this season spent more time finishing off the tenth doctor's story line and that they did.

This season did two notable things in my opinion. The first it focused on the things that make this show what it is. The doctor travels and sees different universes and fight different enemies while developing the plot. The second thing the show does is it is always done from a creative and interesting standpoint so that the episodes don't become repetitive and the twists aren't expected.

When the season ended I felt that the only Doctor I could accept was David Tennant and I wasn't excited to see the next doctor Matt Smith who shows up right at the end of the season as a goofy looking gangly man in a bow tie and a tweed suit.

Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance

It's been well over a decade since I played the first Metal Gear Solid, and with my recent purchase of a PS2 I knew I had to catch up with the series I stopped playing oh so long ago. The first game left quite an impression on young me- the top-down shooting gameplay, the emphasis on stealth, and the hilariously overwrought plot were things I had never really seen before in video games, and all combined to make one of the most fun gaming experiences that PSOne had to offer. All of these aspects and more returned in Metal Gear Solid 2, which despite some flaws was certainly a worthy sequel and held up gameplay wise in the near decade since it has come out. MGS2 finds Snake teaming up with Otacon again two years after Shadow Moses, seeking to expose a new Metal Gear project on a military-owned oil tanker. Tons of shit goes down on the boat, and the whole thing was an excellent introduction. After the explosive conclusion to the intro, I was given control of a new character, also going by "Snake," who eventually comes to be known as Raiden. Raiden's a likable enough protagonist- not the hardcore manly-man that Snake is, but fully capable of getting the job done and more fun to use in hand-to-hand combat. The problem here is that Raiden's introduction was one of the slower parts of the series thus far- you're on an offshore facility teaming up with the original Snake sniffing out bombs. It sounds interesting, but it was the only time in either of the first two games that I felt like I was doing the same thing over and over again with the plot not going anywhere. Thankfully when that's done the ridiculous MGS plot kicks into overdrive- if you thought the heavy-handedness of the nuclear proliferation message from the first one was bad, just wait until you see the half-hour cutscenes on rogue AI and censorship Metal Gear Solid 2 has. The thing is, in most games a plot like this would be worthy of mocking, but to me it's part of Metal Gear Solid's charm. At least I thought that until the end, where I think I had about 15 minutes of gameplay in a chunk of 2 hours. How long can you go on about conspiracy theories before it stops being funny and over-the-top and starts getting really boring? Anyway, the non-cutscene parts of this game are really fun- stealthing around, avoiding cameras, hiding in boxes, great boss fights. I just wish the game hadn't devolved into a bad parody of itself by the end, losing all the charm it's wacky plot started out with. Oh well. I'm now halfway through the "main series," though there's plenty of spinoff games here as well. Will I play the rest of them? Depends on if I get a PSP, and even if that did happen it wouldn't be for a while. But MGS3 can be purchased and played easily, so I'm sure I'll get to that soon enough.

Limbo

After updating my Onimusha beating on my backloggery.com page, I used that site's "fortune cookie" feature to figure out which game I wanted to play next. Out of my 72 unbeaten games, the site directed me towards what was probably my shortest remaining game in Limbo, an Xbox Live Arcade game that came out a few months ago. I was pleased with the decision and set out to beat the game, doing so in the span of two or three hours just now. I liked it. I liked it a lot. This is one of those games that makes for great evidence in the "video games can be artistic" debate. The whole theme here is minimalism. Black and white environments, no dialogue, no story to speak of, no music aside form some ambient sounds. Some games can really just take you away into their own atmosphere. This game reminded me of World of Goo in its ability to do so. (Actually, that game was also rather minimalistic in tone. Hmm.) Anyway, the most natural comparison to make is with Braid, another quick but beautiful puzzle platformer XBLA game. But the biggest praise for Braid is directed at its very unclear and hazy story. People rave about the hew lines of text that game offers as a narrative and go off interpreting all sorts of things. I didn't like that. I mean, I enjoyed the game itself plenty, but the Internet seemed ready to go to war over what everything in Braid meant. With Limbo, you get an even less clear plot and narrative. And to me, that works even better. Rather than be able to shove your own interpretation everywhere by using a few vague lines of text as symbolic evidence, you can think whatever you want to and enjoy it all the same. My own interpretation of Limbo - which, plot-wise, merely consists of a boy waking up in the wilderness, venturing through a bunch of traps and hazards, and ultimately finding a girl right back where he started out from - is rather unimaginative and simple. But I can totally understand where other people are coming from when they say, "the boy has gone through hell and back to find his sister," or, "the boy had to face a lot of demons in order to finally accept his sister's death." For me, that works much better than Braid's "maybe the princess is a nuclear warhead, or maybe just your ex-wife, or maybe the embodiment of time, or maybe a half-assed Princess Peach parody" debate. My only beef with Limbo was that a few times I found (and collected) an egg necessary for a certain Xbox achievement, and the game didn't give me said achievement. It's not like my Gamerscore matters more to me than the wonder of the game itself, but still - what gives? Sloppy achievement-nullifying errors ain't cool! Anyway, this was a great game, and one of the best I've played on the Xbox Live Arcade.