What tickled my fancy or summoned my ire over the past seven days.
Countless Films
Having been off work for the week I’ve spent the time staring at various glowing rectangles. The highlights, the best and brightest: Gladiator, The Fifth Element, The Dark Knight, The Hangover, Inglourious Basterds, District 9…there have been more, but they’ve all merged into one hybrid memory, impossible to distinguish from one another. All except one – the ten minutes of Ace Venture: Pet Detective Jr. I saw before turning it off in disgust. Unfortunately, that will stay with me for a while.
Games
Similarly, my X-Box 360 has been my faithful companion throughout the week, only throwing up its annoying “Open Tray” error message once.
Mass Effect
Not all of it, but I started up again from an old save. I spent most of the time bitching at the TV. “Shut up, Tali!” “Oh be quiet, Ashley!” I forgot how annoying I found certain characters to be. I’d past the point of spending 20 minutes in an elevator but somehow it wound up annoying me more than I found it entertaining. I got a few new achievements out of it, anyway. Plus it was really because my friend is buying an Xbox with Mass Effect 2; we’re swapping so I can play the sequel while he catches up with the original.
Lost Odyssey
In theory I should love this game. Unfortunately, as with Final Fantasy X, I can’t bear the voice actors. However it’s worse than FFX. At least FFX had (some) fundamentally likeable characters. I could play it on mute whenever a cut scene happened. In Lost Odyssey we have (so far, I’m still only on the first disk) Kaim “One Word Answer” Argonar, Jansen “The ‘Comic’ Relief” Friedh and Seth “Shut Up Jansen, Stop Trying to Force Character Development He Obviously Desperately Needs Onto Kaim” Balmore.
Is Jansen a double agent? Is Seth deliberately trying to stop Kaim remembering the past? Does Kaim have a cognitive impairment or does he just act like he does? Finding it difficult to care. There is no group dynamic – I thought I disliked Jansen for being such a massive tool, but then I realised I hate him because he never shuts up. Why? Because he’s filling the yawning chasm left by the other two characters never, ever talking. I’ll struggle on in a couple of weeks after I get over my little temper tantrum.
The Dark Tower
There was a time, about a month ago, I genuinely thought I would never finish Wizard and Glass. Logically I knew I must at some point because I was turning pages and getting closer to the end, but in the same way time acts strangely in Mid-World, it felt as though the book would never be over. That I would spend an eternity reading about counting horses and fish nets. About how much Roland loved Susan. About how Aunt Cordelia was a massive bitch. YAAAAAAAAWN.
By his own admission, Stephen King writes in the author’s notes at the end that even he felt it all fell apart around page 600. Too right it did mate – I recall thinking exactly the same thing at the 602 mark. He generates a web of new characters in a new setting and sets up a fairly predictable turn of events for around 200 pages, and then treads water for the remaining two thirds, to suddenly and abruptly resolve everything rather clumsily.
Additionally, I dislike prequels at the best of times. While it can be interesting to see exactly how things arrived at their later conclusions, sometimes it’s better to leave things wrapped in an air of mystery. Also, I find there’s little thrill in seeing events unfold when I already know their conclusion. Case in point.
Luckily I’m onto Wolves of the Calla, which is proving to be a much more entertaining read so far.
