Tag: Consumption

On Firewatch

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Despite the best efforts of my video card and Windows 10 to stop me, I recently completed Campo Santo’s Firewatch, an adventure game. It’s become the favourite thing I’ve played in the past year, I think, partially for its design, but also for the way it’s unafraid to put story first, mechanics second.

The game takes place in Wyoming’s Shoshone National Forest, a wilderness of almost 10,000 square kilometres. It’s 1989, the year after the calamitous Yellowstone fires, and you play the part of Henry, a bearded, chubby dude (voiced by Rich Sommer, Mad Men‘s Harry Crane) who takes a summer job as a fire watcher to place some distance between himself and his life’s problems.

(I don’t want to explain the problems too much – there’s a surprising amount of determining your own variant of the story in its opening minutes, and they’re certainly emotional.) Continue reading “On Firewatch” →

Book review: Dogs and Demons: The Fall of Modern Japan

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Dogs and Demons: The Fall of Modern JapanDogs and Demons: The Fall of Modern Japan by Alex Kerr
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is the second of Alex Kerr’s books on Japan that I’ve read, and it certainly doesn’t hold back. It’s critical – rightly so, in many cases – of the ornate, backhander-rich culture that permeates government and industry, of the blinkered educational aims of the country, of the done-with-mirrors, waiting-for-collapse economic system, the addiction to government works and needless halls that bankrupt cities and swell construction coffers, the lack of regulation and the wholesale disregard for culture, simplicity and the landscape which outsiders associate with Japan.

The man’s distaste and fear couldn’t be better conveyed if each chapter were entitled SHIT’S FUCKED in 72-point type, followed by pages of onomatopoeic screams.

And yet part of me – as a big ole gaijin myself – wonders how much of the writing is the result of the foreign lens being brought to bear, with the baggage that brings. Continue reading “Book review: Dogs and Demons: The Fall of Modern Japan” →

The Priest of the Invisible

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As part of an attempt to become more organised (and to eke more out of my hours) I’ve recently begun scheduling things I’d like to do. It’s not quite as cold as it sounds, and it affords me the ability to ensure I do things I like, but which often suffer in the throes of a Wikipedia hole or a TV Tropes vortex.

One of the things on my list is to read a poem a day. Every day. One poem. This is to counter the fact that though I like poetry, and though I spent four years at university reading books – some of which were made up of poems! – I still feel myself to be a low-watt bulb when it comes to poetry. It’s something I like, and have liked for a long time, but something I feel kind of stupid around, like I’ve turned up to a fancy restaurant in tracksuit pants. Continue reading “The Priest of the Invisible” →

Keeping Bad Company, twice

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Continuing the play-through-the-PS3-backlog project, I’ve just completed the two Battlefield: Bad Company games, my first proper excursion into the Battlefield world. I didn’t play any of the multiplayer, so I assume this means I am now an associate dudebro. Continue reading “Keeping Bad Company, twice” →

Running out of Forgotten Sands

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So I finally reached the end of my Prince of Persia saga, and have found it’s concluded not with a bang, but a whimper. A pretty whimper but a whimper nonetheless.

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands is not, as you’d expect from the cover, a tie-in with 2010’s moustache-twirling film. Continue reading “Running out of Forgotten Sands” →

Book review: Burial Rites

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Burial RitesBurial Rites by Hannah Kent
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Time to enthuse: this is one of the most striking first novels I’ve read in a long time. It’d sat on my shelf for a while, and I grabbed it as I hustled for a bus, so I approached it with no real expectations. So to end up reading something that came across as a more astringent cross between Atwood’s Alias Grace and the austere bones of Miller’s The Crucible was a surprise, to say the least.

Kent’s book is rooted in history and tells of the final weeks of Agnes Magnusdottir’s life. It’s the story of the last woman executed in Iceland, Continue reading “Book review: Burial Rites” →

Prince of Arse?

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My sporadic attempt to play through the Prince of Persia games continues apace with a whip through 2008’s Prince of Persia. Fancy a trailer?

There you go.

Firstly, wow. I know that I’ve most recently been playing fancified versions of the original console trilogy, but this game is very pretty – almost pretty enough to counteract a few of its glaring flaws. In this episode, you’re wandering around and stumble into a battle between a couple of gods who’re somehow involved in a family matter.Maybe.  Continue reading “Prince of Arse?” →

Back to our regularly scheduled programming

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Well, in a minute. There’s been a lot of Goodreads reviews popping up here, largely because I’ve been churning through the Preacher trades. I’ll write on other stuff soon, no doubt, but until then enjoy something missed from my ’90s challenge posts – non-Australian music. This album was one I listened to a lot and it still remains one of those with no volume ceiling: no matter how much you turn it up, it could always go just a little further.

More anon.

Book review: Preacher, Volume 9: Alamo

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Preacher, Volume 9: AlamoPreacher, Volume 9: Alamo by Garth Ennis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Well, here we are.

It’s kind of odd reviewing Alamo, the final collection of Preacher trades, as it simultaneously is a review of a collection of issues of the comic, and the run as a whole. It’s something you’re not going to read unless you’ve read the rest of the run, and if you’ve managed to stick through the other eight trades, you’re probably in for the long haul anyway. Continue reading “Book review: Preacher, Volume 9: Alamo” →

Book review: Preacher, Volume 8: All Hell’s a-Coming

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Preacher, Volume 8: All Hell's a-ComingPreacher, Volume 8: All Hell’s a-Coming by Garth Ennis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This, the penultimate Preacher collection, gathers together issues 51-58 and the Tall in the Saddle one-off. It’s a collection that has a fair bit going on, though it’s not as action-packed, necessarily as the others. Certainly, it seems to clear the path for the final volume.

We begin with our main trio split, still. Tulip is kept in a drugged haze, and through her escape from chemical bondage (and creepy sex) Continue reading “Book review: Preacher, Volume 8: All Hell’s a-Coming” →