Infamous

Infamous could best be described as a jack of all trades. It is a GTA-style open-world sandbox game that takes place in a dystopian city. It is also a lot like BioShock and Fallout in that karma plays a large role in both the in-game gameplay experience and also the way the story unfolds and the way the other characters perceive and treat you. And the very free-flowing and easy to use control scheme that allows you to climb walls like a monkey and ride across the city on electrical wires like you're Tony Hawk on a skate board absolutely reminded me of Prince of Persia. I guess the worst thing you could say about Infamous is that it lacks its own identity in the gaming world today. All truly great games have one, be it an unforgettable story or innovative gameplay or a unique concept deployed here or there. But Infamous can't boast one of its own, and that's probably the biggest reason that I can't consider Infamous an instant classic or one of the greatest games out there today. Of course, it's still a very good game, as any GTA-BioShock-Price of Persia "clone" should be. I enjoyed it a great deal, lack of "it factor" and all. You play as Cole, an every-man who is at the center of a mysterious blast one day and wakes up with the power to control electricity. Think of him as the guy in Crash 2. Or maybe Pikachu. Regardless, the city becomes quarantined as the government investigates, and suddenly you're thrust into a role of your own choice. Will you become the city's guardian with your new found powers, fighting for what's right? Or will you turn the city into a sandbox and its inhabitants into your playthings as you seek more and more power and glory for yourself? Unlike in BioShock, where the greatest rewards (and trophies and achievements) are given for being a good person, in Infamous there is total balance between both choices. Just make sure to commit to whichever one you choose. There's a karma meter that ranges from "Hero" al the way down to "Infamous," and the greatest powers and abilities are unlocked only by achieving one extreme or the other. I chose evil over good. For one thing, that's how all the GTA games played out, what with all the civilian carnage and wanted levels and all. For another, the evil extreme carries the same name as the game itself; it just felt fitting. And I guess a distant third reason was that so many video games thrust you into the good guy role anyway and I wanted a change of pace. Even though the main story progresses the same way whether you choose to be a hero or a dick, there are little choices to make along the way that affect your reputation. The plot felt a bit zany and confusing at times, but that's forgivable as this was a video game and not a book. Great plots with great characters are the exception (Final Fantasy VI and VII, BioShock) rather than the norm. Anyway, there are 39 regular story missions and there must be at least a hundred side missions. I never went out of my way to do the side missions, but plenty were achievable on the way to the next main mission and so it isn't like I avoided doing them either. There are also a number of collectable items - satellite uplink messages, lightning shards - that make this game a completionist's dream. Or nightmare, I guess. The sequel is due out in June, but I probably won't rush off to buy and play it. Not for lack of interest, but because I still have seventy games in my backlog. Infamous was a lot of fun, but time will tell how memorable it was.

The Dark Frigate

Good news: This book was a lot better than most of the Newbery Award winners I've read to date. Bad news: It was still pretty bland and meaningless. Great news: I'm finally done; the backlog is now Newbery-free. There are still a few children's books remaining, but none carry the badge of assured shittiness that is the Newbery Award. Now, this book was published in 1924, and it was only the third Newbery winner. And I guess back then, kids' books were considered good if they were exciting and filled with adventure. (And not about, say, mice and crickets chit-chatting in a subway, or mice and birds discussing government labs.) The Dark Frigate is a pirate story. As far as pirate stories go, it was nothing special. Boy sets sail, pirate crew abducts ship, boy resists piracy, pirates kill most of original crew except for boy for some reason, authorities capture pirates, boy cannot prove own innocence, touched pirate captain vindicates boy's claims of innocence, pirates are killed, boy sets sail once more. You know, the usual. Whatever. I'm all done with the quick and easy but dull and frustrating Newbery winners side quest. Phew.

Angela's Ashes

Angela's Ashes is a memoir by author Frank McCourt about his childhood in Ireland in the 1930s and '40s. It made for an informative and interesting read. I had no idea how shitty everyday life still was for Irish people this side of the potato famine. But McCourt spares no details, filling the reader in on the gritty and gruesome details of his impoverished and tragedy-ridden childhood. His father was a hopeless drunk. His mother was a downtrodden and defeated Irish Catholic housewife and mother. His house was a shit hole - literally, as it was the only house on his street to contain a lavatory, and it often flooded. Three of his six siblings died very young. Several of his friends and classmates did too. The whole thing read like an over-the-top parody of Irish culture, and I was amazed and partially aghast to read a first-hand account of such stereotypes as total realities. But throughout it all, McCourt used plenty of dry humor and wit to add comic relief to the story of his childhood and to remind us all that even when born and raised in poverty, children, with their naivete and innocence, can't help but create fun and mischief and such. It was clear that no matter how horrible his childhood was by most modern standards, McCourt has nothing but love and respect for his homeland. The book ends with Frank leaving for America at the age of nineteen, and McCourt has also written a sequel  memoir ('Tis) about his life as a twenty-something immigrant in America - college student, Korean War soldier, husband, etc. - but I don't know if I've got enough interest in his life story to continue reading it. Even in this book, I found the earlier chapters more enjoyable than the later ones in which a teenage Frank begins to explore his sexuality, rebel against the teachings of the Catholic Church, and enlighten himself in a number of other ways. Still, this was a pretty decent book, and if you're into memoirs, the 1930s and '40s, or Irish Catholic culture, consider checking it out. Or maybe just see the movie.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

I can't remember where I had Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle recommended to me (probably SomethingAwful) but I'm glad I got around to reading it. While the ending certainly veered off in a direction I wasn't expecting, it was still a very enjoyable and though provoking experience throughout. It's set in the suburbs of Tokyo in the 80's, yet has a very familiar feel to it- Murakami sprinkles some pop-culture references throughout, and for the most part there's little reason to think this couldn't have been set in any middle-class area. Unemployed narrator Toru Okada begins his day normally- fixing some spaghetti and searching for his lost cat, when he receives a call from a woman claiming to be from his past- Toru has no idea who she is. Then his wife out of the blue all but forces him to see a psychic... to talk about his cat (I realize this sounds like it could be crap, but trust me, it works). Eventually more and more odd things start happening to Toru, starting with his real life and eventually in his subconscious. I'd go into more detail, but it's pretty hard to do that without spoiling some major plot points. I've spoiled plenty of books on this blog, but one as good as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle deserves to be a surprise when you first read it. It's 600 pages, and the ending leaves plenty unresolved, but there's still plenty to do with the book after it's done- I've enjoyed reading several different interpretations in reviews online. I haven't settled on one I agree with (and I probably won't), but I can assure you that more Murakami will be posted on the Back-Blog, probably soon.

Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man

Joseph Heller's final novel was certainly an anachronism in comparison with his other six. It was very short (230 pages instead of 400-600), very lacking in structure or plot, and very autobiographical and nonfictional. It was very much an afterthought, in fact. After completing Closing Time, his self-described "summing up," Heller apparently got bored and decided to write another book; had he not died of a heart attack at 76 in 1999, I'm sure he would have written yet another. The protagonist of this career epilogue is a writer who has always struggled with being able to write a novel that could live up to the precedent set by his very first novel. Sound familiar? Heller doesn't even pretend that said "fictional" writer isn't himself - not that there's anything wrong with that. What follows is a series of "false starts," if you will; not-Heller begins to write a story and gets anywhere from a few paragraphs to a few pages into it before giving up in despair. It isn't really writer's block. It's more of a sensation that everything he's writing has either been written before (by him or someone else) or isn't good enough to build a story out of. And I see where he's coming from. One of not-Heller's rough drafts is the story of Abraham and Isaac (the one in which God demands that Abraham kill his only son, but then let's him live after Abraham is ready to go through with it - you know, another feel-good Old Testament tale) retold from Isaac's point of view. I'll admit, it had a lot of potential, but then, the opening pages of a book often do; how to stretch and expand good ideas into entire novels is the real issue. Anyway, as I read not-Heller's draft of the Isaac story, I remembered Heller's God Knows, a re-telling in contemporary language of many biblical stories from King David's point of view. But before long, not-Heller snapped out of the draft and thought, "this is way too similar to that book I wrote about David." (Again, there is never once a pretense that not-Heller isn't Heller.) I actually wondered to what extent, if any, Portrait of an Artist was a work of fiction. Were these not-Heller originals just actual failed Heller projects through the years? It seems probable, right? Other ideas that get toyed with and tweaked are a re-telling of Kafka's Metamorphosis ("There's nothing to expand upon here," realizes not-Heller), a human-history-arching story told by an immobile but omnipresent gene in every cell of every human being (scrapped for a number of reasons including its lack of a compelling narrator), a book in which Tom Sawyer encounters Mark Twain (way too much meta-fiction for not-Heller to handle - irony intentional?), and a book about all the Greek gods getting jealous and angry at one another (which was abandoned simply for lack of direction). At their best, these stories were cocktease-esque sneak peaks at Heller projects that never came to fruition. At their worst, they wasted ten uninteresting pages of Heller's final novel. The book ends abruptly (for no reason, given the short length and given that Heller's death shortly after its completion was due to a heart attack rather than any illness he could have foreseen ending his life) with not-Heller deciding that his next book will simply be a book about all of his failed attempts at writing another great book - this very book you've just read, in fact! Blech. I wasn't wholly satisfied with this final offering from the author of my favorite book ever, but then, neither was he, if not-Heller's thoughts on his struggles are any indication. But then, at least Portrait of an Artist was short and simple. It can't be my least favorite Heller book because I never expected much, good or bad, from it in the first place. Again, it always felt like a simple tacking-on to me. Like Griffey's short-lived 2010 season, or Season 9 of Scrubs. (By the way, least favorite Heller book? God Knows. But this is starting to turn into a post best suited for another blog...) I'd be remiss to end this post without some kind of tribute to Heller; I've now posted six of his books on this blog (tops for any author) and now I'll never get to post about him again, except if I'm drawing a comparison or unless I someday read his memoirs or his collection of short stories - both distinct possibilities! But for now, the backlog is Heller free for the first time since I finished Catch-22. Oh, fuck it. I'll leave you with this:

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

"That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed.

"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.

Operation Armored Liberty

Way back when I beat A Link to the Past, my original fat grey DS, a gift from Trev, basically broke in half. I had gotten plenty of use out of it, and now with some money to burn, I decided to purchase a DSi to keep playing DS games. But what about GBA games? After all, I knew there were several Castlevania and Final Fantasy games I wanted to play on the GBA, but now had no system to play them on. I turned to eBay, and got myself a slick Game Boy Micro. I really like it- it's small enough to fit in my pocket easily, but powerful enough to play some great epic games- such as the recently beaten Final Fantasy V. But with my Micro game something terrible. A toss-in game that for some reason made my Micro cheaper than all other Micros on eBay. That game is Operation: Armored Liberty. It's an almost carbon copy of the SNES game Garry Kitchen's Super Battletank: War in the Gulf, which apparently was a pretty mediocre game when it was released nearly 20 years ago. Why it got a remake/port, I have no idea. The game puts you inside a tank with a first-person view, rolling around Iraq, avoiding mines and shooting at other tanks and helicopters. And that's it. You're put on a map, and you slowly roll from one target to another, shooting at it until it blows up and moving on. A lack of any variety whatsoever kills any fun you'll have with this game. The graphics are fine. The controls are actually pretty good. A fast-travel option thankfully cuts down the time it takes to get from one target to another. But it's just the same thing, over and over. You never fight more than one thing at a time, and at no point is anything resembling a "strategy" needed. I breezed through 10 levels and got the credits to roll within 2 hours. Now it's time to move on and forget that I wasted this beautiful afternoon playing a shitty video game.

Closing Time

When I was fourteen years old, I read Catch-22. I can't remember who or where I'd gotten the recommendation from, or if it was somehow a total blind whim. But I loved it. I've re-read it two or three times (something I rarely do with old books) since then, and I still love it. It is without question my favorite book. And back when I was fourteen, I bought its sequel, Closing Time, and had very high expectations. The sequel simply didn't deliver on any account and I abandoned it after about 100 of its 464 pages. Now, let's fast forward eight years to the present day. I've been reading through Joseph Heller's novels in order of publication. Every few months, you can find one on this very blog, starting back in October of 2009 with Heller's second book, Something Happened. That book, too, was very, very different from Catch-22. But at twenty-one years of age and not fourteen, I could at least appreciate the book in spite of such differences. And as I read more and more of Heller's books I got a bigger and better picture of the evolution of Heller as an author. Naturally, I also did my fair share of research on the man's life beyond what he offered up in his books. So when it came time for me to attempt Heller's sixth novel - this novel - for a second time, I had some very different expectations than I did eight years ago. Not tempered expectations, per se, but a new outlook on what the book could and would be about and how it would be written. And frankly, the whole thing was kind of a mess. It didn't start out that way. It actually started out very slowly. Yossarian, the protagonist of Catch-22, is seventy years old and very much heading into the home stretch of his life. So, too, are all of his friends and peers (including several other recurring characters from Catch-22, which was set during World War II). And so is the twentieth century, and along with it, the golden age of America. It's "closing time," so to speak. I read a lot of reviews before, whilst, and after reading Closing Time, and the best phrase I can remember, in comparing it to Catch-22, went something like, "Catch-22 was a frantic young man's novel about how to stay alive; Closing Time is a calm old man's novel about how to die." I can't remember the reviewer's name, but in a nutshell, he nailed it. Heller divides the book neatly between Yossarian and two other World War II veterans. There are shades of Heller in all three. That in and of itself isn't strange; many authors base several of their characters on different components of themselves. But while Yossarian is Heller's superego and all of his story is narrated in the third person, the chapters in which either of the other two men - Lew and Sammy - are the protagonist are told in the first person. And stranger still, there is a reference made midway through the book to a "Joey Heller" who Sammy remembers going to war with. We're not just dealing with different versions of Heller, but with different layers of him within his own novel. It was never really confusing, so to speak, but it seemed fairly unlike anything Heller had written up to that point (1994) and I can't say it added much to the story. But it didn't detract, either. Anyway, the Sammy and Lew characters spend most of their time speaking nostalgically about their childhood on Coney Island and their timeless war stories and memories. And they do so without any added humor or wit; this is simply Heller reflecting on his past through a very, very thin fourth wall. The doublespeak and irony that sprang from every page of Catch-22 are entirely absent from these passages about days gone by both good and bad. But the Yossarian side of the story - and namely, the parts of it in which Yossarian interacts with fellow Catch-22 veteran Milo - still contains plenty of the dry humor lacking elsewhere. But again, that's only for half of the novel. It's really as if these are two separate novels; one a fun and creative "Where are they now?" take on a few Catch-22 characters, the other a nonfictional memoir of Heller's own life. I don't get it, and neither do most of the people who wrote the reviews I read. And in the final fifty pages or so, an already-strange narrative method becomes jarred completely loose by several ridiculous and over-the-top moments that felt far more Vonnegut than Heller. (Actually, Heller even wrote "Kurt Vonnegut" himself into the narrative, albeit briefly and without any real consequence.) A man becomes a highly-sought WMD when it is discovered that his urine contains radioactive isotopes; we briefly visit hell and find FDR and JFK; two characters who died in Catch-22 fly their plane through the sky, conversing with one another, completely aware that they are ghosts; and the president begins a nuclear holocaust when he mistakes reality for one of his favorite video games. It's all just so utterly bizarre. Catch-22 was full of bizarre moments, but none of them involved supernatural phenomena or a Dr. Strangelove-style apocalypse. (Heller wrote in a character named "Dr. Strangelove" as well.) There's very little to love here, and yet, I want to love this book. I really do. I don't love it, and most critics didn't love it (reactions "ranged" from slightly negative to slightly positive), but something about it makes me want to love it. Perhaps (well, more than likely) it's my respect for Heller himself. Maybe he knew what he was doing. Maybe he had a ton of ideas for more novels, but recognized that he wouldn't have time to finish writing multiple books; he died just five years after this book's publication and it's very clear that death was on his mind as he wrote what was then supposed to be his final work. ("This is my summing-up," Heller stated in an interview prior to the book's release.) So maybe Heller just said, "fuck it," and threw together his Catch-22 follow-up, his memoirs, and his military-industrial satire together without much care for how well the pieces fit together. Probably not, but still - maybe. That theory is the best I can conjure up to defend Heller's "summing-up," though. Closing Time wasn't a bad book. But the whole was far lesser than the sum of its parts. Whatever. I'm glad to have read it and I think I can appreciate it at least for what it is. I'll start Heller's final novel (a short one, relatively speaking) as soon as tomorrow. But for now, it's bed time. Now, go read Catch-22. Really, just do it. It'll change your life.

Trigun

Original Story written and illustrated by Yasuhrio Nightow. Animation by the Madhouse studio.

Vash the Stampede is the The Humanoid Typhoon and has a bounty of $$60,000,000,000 on his head. Not because he's a vicious murderer or some kind of criminal, but because his actions are costing the Bernardelli Insurance Society a to pay for every claim that he caused. Which is usually the destruction of whole cities.

And that's where we start off. We follow Meryl and Milly, two insurance claim investigator, trying to find out who this Vash character is, and to follow him around, and keep him from causing so much destruction. Vash isn't really causing any damage, but people trying to kill him are. Everyone wants that Sixty Billion Double Dollars, and are trying anything to finish him off. Vash is conflicted though. He is an amazing shot and seems to dodge bullet's at will, but he has a strong dislike of death. So he's the classic character that, while he's could be and probably once was a killer, respects life too much to ever take it. So the hijinks ensue.

For the first half of the 26 episode series, it follows the plot formula like this: Meryl and Milly are looking for Vash the Stampede, and while they are looking for him, this blonde man in a red coat will bump into them and inadvertently cause some trouble. The girls won't believe that this clumsy oaf is Vash, but everyone else will, so suddenly he's running around, while people shoot, bomb and try to score the extreme fortune on his head. The second half of the series focuses on the past of Vash, this mysterious peaceful man who seems to attract trouble where ever he goes.

The whole story takes place on a desert planet that humans have colonized 200 years previously, so anime is also put into the Space Western, something Stan saw back in Firefly. The Space Western really is just a Western that has small bits of ancient technology or uses advanced weaponry that mimics old timey western revolvers. Trigun has much more Science Fiction aspect from it, especially when it starts describing the colonization and Vash's past, even so devoting whole episodes as flashbacks.

Trigun is an anime's anime. It is filled with clichés that make anime great and annoying. Most American anime fans love Trigun, because it was exposed to Americans before anime really moved over to the Western shores. Animated in 1998, it has rich painted backgrounds, and a strong contrast between scenery and cell. I remember my only real brush of Trigun was as a freshman in highschool. I had to stay up late because I had to call in my potato baby at 3am, so I just stayed up experiencing the Adult Swim programming block. Apparently I watch the final episode of Trigun six years ago. Not really understanding the plot, I enjoyed it for gritty and pretty style of drawing and action. This isn't an anime for everyone, but it is for the fan of animes.

Pain

Yeah, know what? Let's just call this game beaten. Pain is a downloadable game for the PS3 that I was introduced to years ago at a friend's house. The concept is simple. Too simple. Just fling a person across a city with minimal control over his flight path and try to create as much havoc as possible. The game must be a cash cow, because in addition to the two levels and characters that come standard, there are dozens of levels and characters to purchase for an additional charge. Fuck that. I unlocked every version of the "Downtown" area (the game's only free one) and tried a few of the other game modes before realizing that there really wasn't all that much to this game. Truth be told, I bought it largely due to a new patch that allows the game to be played in 3D. Remember, in my Shrek post I talked at length about 3D movies and TV shows and how they really aren't that much better or cooler than regular movies and TV shows. But 3D gaming is absolutely something I could get behind. Unfortunately, only a few of the game modes in Pain offer 3D support, and none of them is the main game in which you just try to ruin as much stuff and create as high a score as possible. But when dabbling just a bit in the 3D modes, I was impressed. I guess I didn't expect not to be, but there's still something reassuring about playing a 3D video game and not having it suck. So yeah. Pain was fun, but only for like an hour or so. There's just no real replay value here, and replay value is exactly what you'd want from a game like this one.

March 2011 Recap

I logged 13 things in March, making it my fifth-worst month (quantitatively) out of the twenty months this blog has existed. Sweeney made three posts, tying his own all-time low in the same amount of time. Webber posted once, tying his own all-time low (a low he has achieved nine times in fifteen months, by the way). Marissa and Trevor each posted only twice. Brian was silent for the first time ever. Keith posted nothing for the second straight month.

Guys. March was terrible.

Granted, we have our excuses. Jobs got in the way. Springtime got in the way. Brithday parties and family dinners and budding relationships and business trips and funerals got in the way. Life happens. That's cool. That makes sense. And, yeah, I know that the things we read, watched, and beat this month were in general much longer and more effort-evoking than the things we've read, watched, and beaten in other months. Still, we can do better than 21 combined posts, right? I know that I can on my own, in a good month.

Last month, I said I wanted to use the month of March to do a bit of "spring cleaning," so to speak. When the month began I was in the midst of eight video games, four books, two TV seasons, and that Shrek 3D set. I finished off one game, two books, both seasons, and the Shrek movies, giving me a 6/15 mark on my spring cleaning. That's really about as well as I expected to do (although only finishing one of eight video games is, I'll admit, frustrating). I liked the break from my usual system of creating monthly goals. That said, in April, I'll return to specific goals. Let's see them!

• Closing Time - I'm roughly 250/460 pages in, and this is the top reading priority for the month.
• Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man - Because why not finish off the Heller collection once and for all?
• Angela's Ashes - I'm Ireland-bound in May, so it'd be cool to get this partially-Ireland-set book read before then.
• The Sopranos: Season 2 - The "roommate" and I just watched the first episode of this 13-episode season. If I can't finish it this month, it's her fault entirely.
• The Corner - This six-episode HBO miniseries may be just the jumping off point that I need in order to get back into The Wire.
• Pain - I'm not sure what constitutes "beating" this PS3 download. Perhaps I've already done so.
• Infamous - Speaking of PS3 and spring cleaning, it's time to actually play through this game.
• Counter-Strike - For literally no reason aside from its brevity and my desire to get back into gaming. Besides, it's not like this shooter is getting any less dated.

That's eight specific goals. Factor in several movies and a random inspiration or two, and I've got myself a solid month. What do the rest of you plan on logging before May Day?