roadrunnertwice | First bookpost of 2021*

There's nothing else interesting happening today, so let's post some book and game reviews! 😅

David J. Epstein — Range

Feb 14

I liked this a lot and found it both interesting and helpful!

Although... there's definitely part of me that's suspicious of being told exactly what I want to hear, and it was rumbling very loudly in the background while reading this. 🤣 That said, it's not like I'm going to reconsider my stance that early hyperspecialization is a gruesome misuse of a human soul.

Diana Wynne Jones — Howl’s Moving Castle (re-read)

March 1

Guess what, this book still rules.

Bonus Level: Lucah: Born of a Dream

March 23

An intensely frustrating video game with some very cool stuff mixed in!

Good:

The soundtrack kicks, both in context and in absolute terms.
I really liked the graphics and art! Berserk crawling neon scribbles, wildly expressionistic; I've never seen anything like it in a game before. (I guess the closest relative would be Vib Ribbon, but the effects are very different.) And several of the environments evoked really cool and eerie vibes.
At its best, the combat felt tense and visceral — finally cracking through a big nightmare's guard and tearing it to shreds felt very nice.

Bad:

While the altered gameplay loop of its new game + had a lot of potential, the inability to skip the corruption ending and credits turned it into a punishing goddamn slog. Basically, it's designed to have fairly frequent gameovers from that point onwards, and with EVERY GAMEOVER, you have to sit through THE ENTIRE CREDITS. There's no skip!!! You're gonna watch it like fifteen times! I'm astounded at this level of unnecessary self-own! (TBH I'm kind of amazed I actually finished it.)
There's the kernel of a compelling story in here, but it's muddled and obscured to the point of illegibility. Now, mind: I do frequently enjoy a story that won’t yield its nutrients without some effortful chewing. I don’t mind oblique; I don’t mind hard and unlikable. But this was excessive.

I think I know what happened here, and I’m sympathetic: this smells like what fear does to a story. Fear of ridicule, fear of exposing yourself, fear of being recognized and losing any control of who recognizes you. It’ll trash a project; I’ve let it trash a few myself. It’s that bit from Fire and Hemlock that keeps coming back at the oddest times: a hero is one who cannot be stopped with embarrassment. Sincerity and legibility are terrifying. They're also critical ingredients for making the thing work.

Anyway, the fraction of the story that can be extracted here is about queerness, bodily transformation, religion, repression, and a love that seemed to promise the world but has gone sour and toxic. I wish I could experience it the way it must have seemed in the author’s head.

Mitsuru Adachi — Cross Game (re-read)

April 5

For all its problems, this comic still rules.

Bonus Level: The Outer Wilds

April 10

Holy shit I loved this game.

It’s Groundhog Day in a backwater cartoon solar system — your sun keeps exploding, and it’s up to you to figure out what’s going on (and what WENT on thousands of years ago when ancient aliens ran the place and built a bunch of really suspicious ruins all over).

This had tremendous Myst energy, but all the puzzles and mysteries felt very fair! I got stymied a lot, but there was always something else I could go investigate while I waited for inspiration. And the loop is very fair too — you could do anything at any time if you just had the right information, and the whole game is about just gradually Learning Stuff. (There’s exactly one ability that has to be unlocked before you can use it, and that’s the ability to skip to the next loop early if you’re in a dead end. One of the astronauts gives it to you if you talk to them after a few loops pass.)

I really liked the story, too. Kinda sad and existentialist, but kinda joyous all the same.

Strong recommend, this is one of the best things I’ve played in a long time.

(* Well, first post of books I read in 2021. I posted some 2020 reviews back in March.)