This is one of the first games I bought for my new iPad tablet. Puzzle Agent is essentially a clone of Professor Layton from the Nintendo DS. Like that game, it is a collection of puzzles thinly veiled as a point-and-click adventure. Also, both games sport a unique art styles and interesting storylines. However, the puzzles, which I would consider the meat of this type of game, are pretty weak. With only one or two exceptions, they are just too easy. Too often the puzzles are literal jigsaw-type puzzles that stick themselves together making solving them just a matter of shaking the pieces around. The only times I got a puzzle wrong was when the instructions were unclear on important details and, even in those cases, I could guess my way through. In Layton, the puzzles challenge assumptions and really try to trick you. That said, the Fargo meets Twin Peaks story made the game worth the 99¢ I spent on it.
A lot of people are touting the iPhone and iOS as a Nintendo DS killer. This is a bunch of baloney. This type of point-and-click adventure suits the platform okay, but just about every other genre of game is mediocre at best on iOS. The touch screen and tilt controls are just plain bad compared to a d-pad or even the stylus. If Nintendo can make their DS make phone calls they would be untouchable.
I have written about The Ocarina of Time on this Web site before. That game is considered one of the best games ever, and I don’t dispute that assertion. Twilight Princess is nearly as good. In fact, it is practically the same game… or at least that’s what it feels like. Now, lack of originality isn’t necessarily a bad thing in this case. Nintendo has been able to play with the zany Zelda mechanics in their DS versions of the series, and quite frankly, they don’t work quite as well as the tried and true format laid out back on the N64.
On the Wii the formula is kept fresh with improved controls (for the most part), better visuals and a brand new story line. This isn’t Mass Effect in terms of narrative, but at least the designers took the time to develop a few primary characters and keep your over-arching goals clear. The whole Twilight dark world schtick has been done before (Metroid Prime: Echoes) but it works here too. Your ability to become a wolf and use its enhanced senses is one of the highlights of gameplay.
If I have any complaints about the game they would have to be my general dislike of the Wii waggle controls for fighting, some really ugly character designs (especially the human characters) and a lack of variation in the design of the later dungeons (they are not bad, I would have like to see the mechanics change more drastically from dungeon to dungeon. Think Super Mario Galaxy). Otherwise, it was an engaging and fun game from beginning to end. One of the best I played all year.
If you weren’t born before 1980 you may not remember this, but there was a time, early on in the CD era, when an album’s mere existence on CD was novel thing. During this early period I bought quite a few CDs just because they were there. I remembered Planet P’s video for “Why Me?”—the one where an astronaut’s head explodes into a shower of confetti—and vaguely recollected liking the song. I decided to give this CD a try. What a piece of crap. I’m guessing that Mr. P was a washed-up member of some boring 70s arena rock outfit who decided to go solo and experiment with synthesizers and other trappings of the New Wave music that the kids were hep to those days. Sure there are some theoretically interesting synth parts, but most of the disc is filled with dorky lyrics and progrock-ish bendy guitar solos. At best the songs sound like the type of cheese you would hear during a training montage in a Golan/Globus film. But, to be frank, I would much rather listen to Rob Walsh’s soundtrack to Revenge of the Ninja over this any day.
Well it’s the first day of the New Year. This day means different things to different people. For my wife it means washing off the post-New-Year’s-Eve-bash Sharpie moustache that she woke up with this morning. For me it means it’s time to assess what I thought was the best of the media I consumed this past year.
Movies
Like last year, there really wasn’t anything that truly amazed me this year. My best rated films were Moon and The Maltese Falcon. I watched more T.V. than I have in recent years, so I suppose I could add Lost, V or The Walking Dead as honorable mentions.
Books
Towards the second half of the year I started reading a bit more than usual and found several books truly grabbed me in ways that no movie or show did this year. If I had to pick a favorite from this year it would be George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones, especially if considered along side the three other books in the series that I also read and loved. At a near-tie for the number one spot is Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind, which started my on my current fantasy lit kick. Finally, rounding out the top was Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem. Honorable mentions would go to Mistborn books 1 & 2, Devil Born Without Horns and Racing the Beam.
Video Games
I played a ton of games this year. My highest rated game was House of the Dead: Overkill for the Wii. It was stupid, crude, violent and hilarious… loved it. My runners-up would be Mass Effect and Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Mass Effect further proves that the best science fiction is in video games these days, and Zelda is Zelda… ’nuff said. I am still mid-game in GTA IV and Metroid Prime Trilogy but I suspect those two titles would have made this year’s list too had I completed them in time. I also played a few casual games I liked such as Puzzle Quest and Plants vs. Zombies.
Steam just finished their massive annual game sale and I stocked up so there should be no shortage of gaming for me in the next year and beyond.
Book two in the Mistborn series continues this the storyline directly after the climactic events of the first novel. This one is on par with that story. It may lack the more instinctually satisfying “kill the main bad guy” over-arching plot, but the characters continue to grow and the writing may even be a bit better here. The Mistborn are like Jedi, but Sanderson does a great job laying out the ground rules for how their powers work. For example, whereas in a lazy fantasy story like Harry Potter the author would just supply a cheap deus ex machina type answer for a plot complication (wouldn’t you know it, there’s an Adam West shark repellent spell for just this type of situation), the Mistborn have to work within the strict rules of their craft to accomplish seemingly impossible feats. A very compelling read, however I could do without the pages and pages of battle planning and procedural politicking.
Racing the Beam is a fairly accessible look at the technology behind the Atari 2600 video game console. Apparently the 2600 was an incredibly very difficult system for which to write programs. Basically, it was designed to handle Pong and Combat style games. The fact that games as complicated and awesome as Pitfall! and Yar’s Revenge were developed on a system that supported a background, 2 sprites, 2 missiles and a “ball” gives you new appreciation for the games on the system. Okay, E.T. The Extra Terrestrial is still an abomination, but you get what I mean.
I decided to try this one out on a whim. I like Adam Carolla and his humor translated pretty well into book form (although I would much rather hear him tell these stories as a monologue or audiobook). I found myself laughing out loud quite a few times. He jumps from subject to subject and off into tangents so it’s a good book to just pick up and read from any point.
Michael Lucas is best known as the schtick-loving bassist of The Phantom Surfers. This book was self-published under his own Rudos and Rubes monicker. The cover of this book makes it look like it’s some sort of hard-boiled crime thriller. But, while the crime element eventually comes into play, the story mostly revolves around the protagonist’s relationship with the dysfunctional employees at the high-end furniture store for which he works. The book is darkly comic and is filled with many strange and vivid characters. I especially enjoyed the pokes at high culture and religious nuts. Honestly, I was hooked in by the end of the first paragraph. I really enjoyed this book and recommend it highly.
And here we go again with what I thought was going to be another sleazy women in prison movie. To my surprise, the prison portion of the film is only the first fifteen minutes or so. What this really is is a women on the run movie. You know the kind that got parodied in cartoons all the time where the two main characters dislike each other but happen to be chained together as they try to escape. This was another sleazefest that turned out to have a rather engaging and dark plot. The supporting cast of thugs, cops and revolutionaries add to the fun and the climax pulls no punches.
This was another grind house era women in prison movie. I suppose the twist here is that Pam Grier is the bad guy in this one. Despite the obvious sleeze factor here, I found this to actually be a rather well plotted and entertaining film. The acting is, hands down, some of the worst I have seen… And I have seen Troll 2. Nonetheless, I like this one.
