I’m using the book ‘Beginning Programming for Dummies’ by Wallace Wang, along with software called Liberty Basic. The book has so far been a really good introduction to programming, the core ideas, and a lot of the terminology. It is teaching me BASIC, which might not have the most use afterwards but I do think it’s a good place to start. It’s very…basic. It’s very simple, and focuses just on the structure of writing programs, and doesn’t focus on visual things as the input and output pretty much just look like notepad boxes.

I’m now about a third of the way through the book, and I’m now learning about Loops. To repeat myself just a little, it is going well! I hope to  be able to learn Visual Basic with the book I’ve already bought afterwards. And then who knows? Maybe I could learn Python or Java.

But right now, baby steps. I can write a program that complains at me for not having enough cake. *nods to myself sagely* Yeah…

In other unrelated news, I’m still continuing with the GoodReads challenge! I’ve read twelve books so far, which makes me ahead of schedule, and I’m currently reading one of the more recent Terry Pratchett books Snuff.

Bye for now!

I will honestly admit that I came at this game expecting to dislike it. The character design is awful. Even getting past the fact that her head is creepily tiny – her proportions, dress and attitude all pretty much put me off…

But the game itself isn’t really that bad. It certainly isn’t amazing. The general feel of the game is very ‘Devil May Cry’, which is not a terrible game to emulate. With its range of difficulty levels it is fairly easy to just pick up and play. For the most part.

Bayonetta does have a few occasions where the timing of a quick time event is very close, and I did need to repeat them a few times. On the whole, however the game is quite playable.

The real downside to the game-play are the moments that feel overly drawn out. When a game play mechanic such as the motorcycle racing or the arcade style flying forward and shooting is introduced – it’s a nice change. But they really outstay their welcome after a while, with the enemies and locations you’re rushing past just repeating over and over to fill time and it becomes very boring.

Outside of the main character, the design and graphics were quite interesting. I quite liked the locations of the game, although you didn’t really spend a lot time in most of them. Sadly, you could really equate them with simply a series of corridors that you fight in between getting to cut-scenes.

This really leads to the main downside I felt with the game. I thought the plot (while not told in necessarily the best way) was pretty interesting. I liked the Witches and Sages, and their whole plot – I thought it was pretty ‘colourful’, is really the best word that comes to mind. Because really you could use the fighting system to make a much ‘safer’ game, and the developers didn’t. But there isn’t much to it other than that – it feels like it took the material and used it a bit lightly, with the player not having a lot of real interaction with the story or ideas. That’s mostly dealt with in flashbacks and in-game reading (which I always feel is a little lazy, is that just me?)

So, to finish up here on this short review of Bayonetta – despite my dislike of the main character, I don’t think it was really that bad, but it could have been better, and certainly less shallow.

I originally set the challenge figure at something like thirty books, as I started properly in April after finally sorting out and getting into the habit of using my local library more (free books are awesome!), but I soon upped it to sixty. I beat the goal in the end, reading sixty four books last year. I read some great ones…and some not so great ones.

One of the first notable reads of the year was My Secret Garden, which was a fun and not to be taken too seriously book about fantasy and female desire. I’ve already written a bit about this book here, so I’ll not go into further detail.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (and it’s sequels The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest) were actually one of the first books I took out from my local library in the end. I really enjoyed them overall, and I actually meant to write a bit about them, and about the movie adaptations after having now seen both. We’ll just have to see if I get around to it. I’d definitely recommend giving these books a go.

I still have a huge soft spot for Terry Pratchett, and despite having read a lot of his books already, I did read a few during 2012. Mort, Witches Abroad, Wintersmith, and I Shall Wear Midnight. I really enjoy a lot of the books about Discworld’s witches. They’re very fun, and interesting.

I also read a lot of Agatha Christie this year. I’d never really read a lot of them before, and had always meant to. I read fourteen different ones in the end, they take up quite a lot of room on the list so I won’t bother listing them all. My favourites by far were Sparkling Cyanide – which was very fun, as well as And Then There Were None – which I thought was a pretty interesting challenge to figure out a way for all ten stranded inhabitants of an island to plausibly die. All of the Christie books were pretty light reading, and very enjoyable.

I did get around to finally reading all of the Fifty Shades Trilogy. I would say the first one was probably the most enjoyable…but not enjoyable because it’s good. The writing is hilariously awful in a way that apparently only fan-fiction can manage. The second and third book in the set were actually much better written – which is good, but they are less fun for it. I’m not sure I’d really recommend reading them, in the end.

Towards the end of the year I started reading a lot of Fantasy and Sci-Fi – which is still one of my favourite genres by far. Unfortunately my nearest library building doesn’t stock a lot of it, so I have to wait for it to be ordered in from other libraries. I read Neuromancer, which was very cool. Game of Thrones, which turned out to be bloated and really, really derivative. And a series that I really recommend, The Nightside by Simon R. Green. I started the series with Into the Nightside, and loved it. Green writes both Fantasy and Sci fi, but I by far prefer his fantasy books. Read anything by him.

The last thing I wanted to talk about was The Casual Vacancy. This book pretty much wins the ‘Worst Book I Read in 2012′ award. To repost what I said on the GoodReads website:

“hundreds of pages of a whole bunch of miserable people being angry and miserable at each other. It feels very much like watching a terrible cheap soap show (like EastEnders, perhaps) – where the time has got to be filled with enough arguing, seething, crap attempts at sex, titillation, and painful accents. And with all that it’s still dull to read”

So…that’s what I read last year. You can look at the full list of books I read last year here. I’ll be doing the challenge again in 2013, and I’ve already taken three new books out of the library today to read. That’s it for now!

Part of that was simply a cost thing. At thirty to forty pound a game, even for games that turn out to be quite bad, I just can’t afford to buy every game when it comes out. Nor would I want to, it’s my money…I’m discerning with it. Using a rental service (which we’ve had for about a year now) really helps. We have a whole list of games, ‘B games’ we call them, which we kiiiind of fancy playing…but we suspect they won’t be good/worth the money/or anything we’ll want to keep.

So, onto Enslaved…

Like with Heavenly Sword, I really liked the design and feel of Enslaved – particularly the environments. It has a wonderfully bright and colourful representation of a post-apocalyptic world that does stand out from the dull and brown contenders.

The game play is split between two types: combat (which reminds me a lot more of Devil May Cry than Heavenly Sword – though this may be for the best), and Tomb Raider/Uncharted style jumping around and exploring of the pretty backdrops. Sadly, the exploration really suffers in favour of the combat – the game throwing enemies at you as soon as you enter areas, and then simply wanting you to move on afterwards. This leading you through pretty set piece after pretty set piece, without much interaction with it gets quite dull.

I also thought the background story was really interesting – the civilised world as we know it was destroyed at some point, and that it seems to be something to do with all the robots running around trying to kill what remains of human life. But sadly the game doesn’t develop it more…and the positives really end there.

The game play does become very repetitive quite quickly. After the first few stages exploring, and fighting battle after battle (sadly the combat takes up more of the game than the exploration), going through the obligatory vehicle sequences, there isn’t much else to appreciate other than the scenery. Which is very nice…but we’re playing a game.

The controls are good enough, the only major gripe I had while playing the game was the camera. It was a player controlled camera…most of the time. Occasionally the game really wanted the camera to point in a particular direction that while good for getting a look around, isn’t good for playing with. You do end up fighting a little for control which gets quite annoying – It really needed to be one of the other, not both.

The interesting story we get in return for all this really isn’t worth it as it moves on. The game doesn’t develop the back story any more which is a real shame, instead focusing on the relationship between our main characters. And for me this relationship wasn’t…good. Spoilers for anyone who hasn’t played the game, from here on. At the near beginning of the game the svelte, attractive and painfully generic female lead straps a ‘slave head band’ onto our badly proportioned player character Monkey (the name basically covers anything you’d need to know about him) and essentially sets up a ‘do what I want or else’ relationship. Then at the end of the game, Monkey decides to keep it on and still help Trip - apparently having developed an invisible romantic relationship between cut scenes.

The head band doesn’t really amount to anything in the end. Trip doesn’t abuse it, and knows it wrong. All it seems to be for is justifying the games HUD and the ‘escort’ type game play. But if Monkey was a she…and Trip was a guy – I’m betting people would have felt justified in being angry anyway. Slavery being a pretty bad thing. So, a touch of the sexism does put it down a bit.

Looking at it compared to Heavenly Sword as well, I really liked that Heavenly Sword had a big angry female character (Nariko) without feeling the need to make her more ‘girly’, or introduce a pointless love side plot that doesn’t make me like characters any more.

Enslaved also suffers a little from having such a limited cast of characters I think. While some people liked Enslaved’s only other main character ’Pigsy’ – I didn’t (other people with taste I’m sure too…I mean, really? The design was call him ‘Pigsy’ and make him fat and messy? You really put the effort in their Ninja Theory). And with him and the not particularly interesting Trip there aren’t a lot of characters for me to…well, care at all about.

Heavenly Sword had it’s over the top bad guys who you kind of liked despite them being bad – it was awesome. All of Enslaved bad guys and bosses are…robots. Yeah.

Sadly, overall the game really makes me think of the Prince of Persia reboot of 2008 (the helpfully named “Prince of Persia). A game that was kind of pretty, with repetitive game play and uninteresting characters and plot, that was much hyped and well received at the time. These games are quickly forgotten as they just weren’t that good, at the time they were simply shiny and new – which is something a lot of reviewers need to get over.

I would still recommend playing Heavenly Sword a lot more than Enslaved, if only to enjoy its visuals and cast of characters. Interestingly enough Ninja Theory are developing the new Devil May Cry – DMC: Devil May Cry (oh god, why the silly name?) – and while the character design is painfully aimed at a young, low jeans wearing, cool kid crowd that I’d rather burn with fire, the recent demo was very fun. We’ll have to see.

We’ll be putting up a fun little teaser for the “Born from a Wish” scenario soon, so we’ll see you then!

Videos.

And the talkie!

We finished with the abstract maze…area, killed Eddie *sad face*, finally make it to the Lake Side Hotel where Mary is waiting for us, and managed to explore a fair amount of the hotel. Not far to go now.

Videos.

And our Talkie,

Our videos.

and our talkie!

Stay tuned for next week!

Videos!

And our talkie episode…

So, I wrote about a guy called Jamie Eltin, going to work in a seasonal Night Watch position in a forest/wood/hillside retreat called Stringham. I was having him doing the unsocial night watch, feeling ignored and undervalued by the boss as it were Nita Leavell, coming to nit picky blows with the handyman Allan, and finally meeting one of the guests Chritie. Jamie was generally unsociable and a bit of a loner.

During the course of the next few days Jamie is unnerved by the green tiled pool, the empty woods and bad dreams. Someone comes into his cabin and takes food. He finds muddy foot prints in the reception leading to the disused parts of the main retreat building. He feels watched and harassed - and then he finds a faded old blue note pad, which turns out to have belonged to someone who worked there before him.

The note pad described other buildings that used to be part of the retreat, but are now abandoned for some reason. Jamie investigates and finds one old building, but someone interrupts him and he hides – knowing he’s not doing his job. Later Jamie is pushed into the pool by someone during his watch, holding him down.

…

…

…Aaaand then I stopped. I played Minecraft, and the Sims 3. I watched Game of Thrones. I read through the Fifty Shades Trilogy. I read Eighty Days Yellow. How to be a Woman. The Great Gatsby. And I’m now just about to finally read The Casual Vacancy.

So, I’m thinking maybe loving to read, and even reading vicariously doesn’t at all translate – for me at least – into being able to write. Or maybe I’m just not in a good position to write right now with all the combined stress of a lot of stuff going on in the background. Who knows?

I’m not going to continue with this NanoWrimo then. I feel a little guilty, to be honest. I do know I could get through it. I don’t think it’s going to do anything for me. Right now. And maybe not ever. I’ll be keeping – like I did last time – what I’ve written to far.

*sigh*

A lot happened this week, in these videos, we…
…meet Eddie and enjoy the dulcet tones of him vomiting…
…put our hand in a disgusting toilet all for the sake of a few packets of bullets…
…get weird-ed out by Angela…
…wonder if James is crazy or really, really crazy…
…have a unexpected and deadly encounter with Pyramid Head…
…meet Maria…
…yell at Eddie for eating pizza…
…and appreciate Maria’s “charms”.

So, now our videos!

And finally, the talkie…

We’ll see you again next week.