Books I did not read.

This year I set out to read 52 books ie 1 book per week. I thought I may have some trouble with this target, as I mostly read epic fantasy. So books can be 700+ pages long, and difficult to complete unless I put in a few marathon sessions between regular monotonous tasks each week.

My total stands at 30, and will most likely end at 32 with The Eye of the World reread and the Swarmthief's Dance (Deborah J. Miller) which has some cool fantasy concepts.

It would of been possible if I hadn't taken a 3 month break from reading books. This was caused by the Book 9-10 slump in the Wheel of Time, amongst other books I tried to read and were just terrible for whatever reason. I was really unlucky with my choice in books. Often they sounded really awesome, it was the actually reading them part which got me.


The Book of Names (Jill Gregory & Karen Tintori)
Its a Davinci Code-esc thriller that takes its cues from the Kabbalah and works a story around 36 righteous souls whose existence alone the world survives. The story goes these guys are getting assassinated as the bad guys have got their grubby mits on a book containing all the current righteous Souls.
So it falls on a professor Langd-ahh Shephard to save the world and solve the mystery.

The mystery and the pieces of the puzzle get more and more absurd. I didn't particular like their style either. I felt it lacked any kind of depth.
But the part that had me turn off is when the Ancient Super Secret orgasisation of killer Rabbis raided the shit out of the Professors office to recover some arbitrary ancient Jewish artifact. What they really needed was some pie in the face gags.

The Gone-Away World (Nick Harkaway)
Reason for buying: Cool name, cool cover. The gist of the blurb is an offbeat tale of a post apocolyptic world. "a tale of... ninjas, pirates, politics; of curious heroism in strange and dangerous places."

Pirates you say? Is that ninjas I hear? Sold good sir. Apparently the author is the son of an uber famous british author also. It is a thick read, at 532 pages with tiny font.

The trouble is I read for a couple of hours and nothing really happened at all. As far as I could tell all that happened was some merceneries had a game of pool and some other rough and tough guys had a job for them. The narrator goes off on essentially 5 page random tangents that are irrelevant to whats going on. It would be like "So Gonzo took a shot at pool.... WHICH reminds me of the time we were blah blah blah, alice liked to play cards, bananas, cabbage patch dolls, loud noises.... and so Gonzo started to line up his second shot WHICH reminds me of the.... blah blah blah

The Dark Mirror ( Juilet Marillier)
The family tale of the lonely orphan who grows up to realise hes the chosen one and will need to save the world with politics, magic, wise old guys all thrown in for good measure.

Sounded cool. But really wasnt my favourite type of book. Its essentially a romance novel in save-the-world fantasy's clothing. It appeals more toward the feminine spectrum of fantasy readers.

Souls in the Great Machine (Sean McMullen)
Post apocolyptic tale when a new society has been built with no real electricity. The calculor is a large scale attempt to build a computer type machine with units being enslaved intelligent librarians skilled at maths.

It was a really interesting concept, but I didnt feel the characters to be highly engaging. I may have another go at reading it. I still have it bookmarked on my shelf. As well as the Book of Names for that matter, but that one is only bookmarked with an old receipt. 'Souls' is privileged enough to earn the use of a shiny purpose made bookmark.

The Broken World (Tim Etchells)
I'm going to throw this one onto the list as well. Even though I only had a go at reading it a few days ago, a good few months after my reading drought had ended and I perserviered through Books 9 and 10 of WOT. They weren't half bad really.

The Broken world is a little different. Its about a guy in his 20s who is writing a walkthrough for a fictional videogame. So half the book is his walkthrough, and Im assuming the other half is about how his obsession and laziness affects his real life.

Note that this book also had a shiney awesome cover and cool name. (Maybe I'm strangely attracted to novels with 'world' in the title..)

Ok I did not really give this one a fair go. But reading the walkthrough section at the start was incredible dry. It is exciting as reading an actual walkthrough for a game you have never played. It is like 'Guy goes here, jumps through this, collects item x' It was all action and no real thought or emotion in the writing. And he chooses an idiotic nerd as his view point character, one that uses non-words such as 'coz' and 'thru'. It gives a bad name to all nerd kind. If the main character was a 14 year old who 'teh pwnzorz teh n00bs' then maybe it would be a little more forgiven as they don't know any better. But even writers of walkthrough have to have some writing credibility.

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This Guy

I never really liked the title for this blog. 'The General Escapist' as it rhymes with rapist and to a lesser degree, racist.

That is likely what happens when I over think a title. So i've gone with something generic for the moment. To rename this blog I used the part of my brain I usually reserve for watching reality tv.

So. Me thinks I should be writing stuff again. Just really for my own benefit and pleasure more than anything. Because as you can see not even my mum follows this blog. Not even I follow this blog. I gave up on it after a month. But with this post it looks like I've been on it for a year.

As soon as I think of something better to call this, I will butcher this blog and move these posts over to a new url.

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Book 3: Openland

Openland is the second book by Australian author Michael Liddy.

I read this book in only a few sittings. The story goes that Jeremy, an archaeologist carries an alien relic around that was found by his father decades ago. He enlists the help of a talented geologist friend, Marc to investigate the relics origins. After a while they eventually find some of the Aliens and set off on an adventure.



The story took a good 100 or so pages to actually pull me in. The first part of the book is mainly filled with irreverent banter between the two protagonists as they follow a few linked clues across the country. After the first part is over what held my interest were the questions raised rather than the main characters themselves.

The science behind the book was believable enough to suspend disbelief. A lot of science jargon is thrown around between the characters trying to explain their situations and find solutions. The prose offers vivid descriptions of the alien surroundings. Most of it I found is bogged down in too much dialogue. After finishing it I still can't distinguish personality differences between the two main characters. There were chapters that urged you to read on. All of them had a decent length.

What Openland offers is a journey of discovery about ancient alien races and questions the origins of Earth itself. As you read on, everything just keeps building from the small dig in outback NSW to the books climax. From where they began to where they end up its hard to believe they were born on Earth at all.

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Gabriel: film review

The movie starts with a polished sequence of the angel Gabriel falling through space. The Arc Angel is sent to a place called purgatory where he takes human form. Like those that came before him he must fight the fallen to determine whether light or dark rules the bleak middle world.

I have now seen this film twice. Once in the cinemas and I now picked up a dvd today. I highly anticipated this films release. When I first came across it I was genuinely excited that finally an Australian team was putting together a different film. This is definitely not what you would expect from an Aussie film. This isn't another dreary drama about a couple of drug addicts that can't find a plot. The director Shane Abbess and crew have put together something thats built to please audiences rather than the arty types.

The visuals in Gabriel are a truly amazing accomplishment. To pull off what they have with such a tiny budget is really unheard of anywhere. The whole dark atmosphere that has been created here reminds me of such films as Dark City and Bladerunner. Everything does seem a little off, like a puzzle piece that doesn't quite fit in the space but you can jam it in anyway.

Abbess didn't have the dollars to work massive fight scenes so instead he has taking a more creative intimate approach. He has tried things that are unusual and not typical of regular action movies. For this Gabriel is worth at least one sit through. Watching it on the cinema screen the film was grainy. At home with a dvd that same distortion is hardly noticeable. I've read that it was down to the camera they had used. So experiencing it the first time at home is probably best.

The first time through I really, really wanted to enjoy it. And I did. The second time through I did get bored in places of the story. To me it didn't offer any real connection with the audience. The actors sometimes drifted in and out of American/Australian/neutral or some combination of accents. I remember one of the Arc Angels, Uriel opened with a short first line something along the lines of “Whadda you want?” with a distinctly Aussie accent, afterwards he settled into an American accent. It can be very distracting.

I just didn't feel anything for the story or characters. They were put in a very dark fantasy world and had dialogue that didn't draw you in at all. That seemed to have a high fantasy tone and wording. Always talking of grand concepts much of it to do with strength and obligation to fight evil. Something is lost in the grandness they attempt to pull off.

It was interesting enough to hold together the action sequences and low budget, fancy visuals. It does address some interesting thoughts like how does a person stay good within such an evil place. You will definitely remember this cult movie.

Gabriel is a huge accomplishment. The people that were involved in this project will go on to bigger things because of this. One thing is certain is that Australia should be making more movies like Gabriel. Movies that actually appeal to audiences. It is beyond me why this didn't get at least one nomination at the AFI's.

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Book 2: Fires of Heaven

So I finished off Fires of Heaven - the fifth book in the wheel of time series. Even though I didnt start it this year, I'm still going to count it as one of the 52 i'm reading this year.

I cant remember why I got bored of it. For whatever reason it doesnt matter. What counts is that everything within the book came to a satisfying conclusion. No matter how long these books are the pay off is always pretty good. They are really just one long story with smaller self contained parts for each novel. To be honest I only vaguely remember where Fires of Heaven kicked off.

In any case im still over a week behind in the book a week stakes. That and a few days.

Also I have bought delicious lollies for doctor who tomorrow. Should be tasty.

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Game Over.

So I have reached what I liked to call the 'point of cbf' in terms of gaming. I hadn't picked up a single game for the longest time before the start of this year. A year, maybe two wouldn't suprise me.

Final Fantasy XII had me appreciate previous installments of the franchise a hell of a lot more. So after I had clocked up 75 hours on that beast I dusted off Final Fantasy VIII. VII was a hard act to follow, and it didn't do wonders for how it was reviewed. It generally was not as well received as the others, thrown into the larger pool of games comparatively speaking it was though. The fans and critics placed it between 8 and 10.


So the 'point of cbf' came on disc 3 of FF VIII almost right after the Laguna flashbacks had rapped. I think that its always about in this place I really don't feel the need to continue with the game. The flashbacks always hold my interest. I was a young teen when I first played the games and the Laguna flashbacks are still the most memorable parts of the game. Aside from Squalls transformation from self proclaimed outsider to leader of the garden. The whole orphanage twist certainly threw me as well. You also have to love the gf's.

Now that I am older, wiser and hairier I can put my finger on what I love so much about the Laguna flashbacks. The message it conveys is that nothing lasts forever and nobody waits forever for you. You must go after the opportunities you have before they are gone. They are very powerful messages and are done very well. Laguna missing out on Julia and Raine makes the conclusion with Ellone all the more powerful. The one single thing that did last through Lagunas life was the friendship of his comrades. Friends were always there for him.

I felt like the game was over for me at that point. I have played it through before. I hadn't even got Ragnarok yet this time. There are other things I need to do before committing more time to gaming. Not that I have much on, I still need to work on avoiding a real job. Gotta hate those.

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52 novels and other goals.

I dedicate todays entry to the 4 visits this blog had yesterday. (Before I changed the template and forget to re-add google analytics code again). You know who you are. Ok it was all me.

Always so early in the year I get to thinking about what I want out of this one. Its a fresh new year, like a new platform to work off of thats just had a good polish. Although nothing really does change in reality. I will most likely be doing the same things this time next year. As it was with last year. I may be a little bit smarter, know a few more random facts like the RBA has a goal of 2-3% inflation for each year. I also grew to dislike children much more this year. Sticky, small fingers.

Last year I drew up one bitchin' list of goals to achieve. I completed probably 75% of them. I missed out on a couple of the more important ones. I do happily report that I did slap a tree while driving 80km/h in my car this year. Put a big tick next to number 14. Cheers.

This year I only have a few achievable goals. I've given up on the social goals I had. How does it go? If at first you don't succeed, try again.. then again.. then again.. then realise failure, give up and play your ps2. And I have. The 75 hours I played FFXII where done in some time intense 10-12 hour sessions in the beginning.

The most ambitious goal I have this year is to read 52 novels. Ambitious, yes, but it is quite achievable. Just as long as I don't attempt to devour too many Wheel of Time novels in too shorter time. At 12 books and 300,000 a piece they do take a while. I have four books on the fly at the moment.

• Enemy Glory by Karen Michalson
• The Fires of Heaven by Robert Jordan (Wheel of Time)
• Greek Fire by Winston Graham
• The Outsiders by SE Hinton

I do confess that I borrowed the idea from another blog that I came across. It's because it's a good idea. I found it at a very convenient time as well. A couple of days before the turn of the year, I find a concept that could work well. A delicious coincidence.

So it is already two weeks into the new year. My progress has been.. well there has been some progress. I have read one book in total. Its not exactly the book a week target I have been going for. I could polish off Fires of Heaven in about 6 hours. 300 more pages to go. Some books aren't even that long. It is worth it though.

The book I have read is Dexter in the Dark by Jeff Lindsay. The story that spawned my current tv obsession, Dexter. A serial killer who kills serial killers. Twisted morals. Disconnected feelings. It is awesome. I'll right up a review thingo of it later on. As I will with all of the books I read this year.

The other largish goal is to stock up on some more dvds. My goal is to hit the 200 mark this year. In my collection now I have 129. That should work out to be about $1000 worth of dvds. The trouble is finding more decent dvd's to buy. I know tonnes of tv series I can buy, but its also a good recipe for time acid. What I don't want is another Tongan Ninja situation. Even if it was $3. Stay away. Don't be lured in by Jermaine Clements of Flight of the Concords fame like I was.

Oh yeah. I should get a job.

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Final Fantasy XII review

The newest in the core arm of the Final Fantasy franchise takes you to the technological wondrous Ivalice. Where unique ships fly amongst sky scrapers, technology and magick are blended together. The world of Ivalice is vaster than any of the previous installments. With environments large enough to spend hours exploring every corner if you want to.

You take the lead as the sword wielding, rat exterminating thief, Vaan. An orphaned teenager who's Brother was killed defending the fallen Kingdom of Dalmasca. Vaan gets swept up in a resistance movement against the current occupants of Dalmasca, the Archadian empire. You set off on an epic journey collecting a party of 6 playable characters that most tend to overshadow the main. Theres Basch, the former captain accused of treason. Ashe, the vengeful heir to the Dalmascan throne. Balthier the swarve sky pirate along with his bunny eared companion Fran. Then theres Penelo the tag-along friend of the tag-along lead character Vaan.

Thats the gist of the setup for Final Fantasy 12 (FFXII).

75 odd hours of gameplay later I can happily press eject on my ps2 and shelve the latest Final Fantasy game. A sense of relief washes over me rather than accomplishment. I almost gave up on this game, the last 15 or so hours I was indifferent to playing on. Being that I usually like to bolster my party up with high levels and the best weapons the game has to offer.
There was no real incentive to play every side quest and level your characters. I just wanted to finish the game, so I soldiered on to the final battle with characters around the 55/56.The exception being Vaan, the lead character at 59. Surprisingly for a final fantasy game the final boss was done with quite easily at this level.

Gameplay:
You can control 3 characters at any given time. With another 3 in reserve depending on the stage of the game your at. Sometimes you can have a fourth, a 'guest'. A completely computer-controlled character.

Square Enix have decided to mix things up a little. In FFX they did away with an RPG staple, the world map. In FFXII the do away with the standard random encounters. The areas you explore and the battlefield are one and the same. You can now see enemies before you are attacked. While it appears very different, you can still perform all the basics.. attack, magic(magick), items and technicks which I used once at the start of the game then found useless. Characters still have their turn bar that needs to be filled before they can perform an action. It still really is the same system as before. Its refreshing for a while, but it did not hold my interest for the entire game.

It's ok, but you lose control to an AI system called Gambits. A simple programming language that has a bunch of conditional statements that you can make. eg Foe: nearest.. attack. You can have a healer cure when an ally's hp falls below a percentage. You must use this system to get the best out of the characters. Otherwise you would lose time. You can input instructions manually. I used a combo of the two, I had gambits for attacking and healing mostly. Cures for status effects like blind, sleep, petrify and casting of magick other than healing I done manually.
Pretty much all of the fighting involves this: 1. Move to bad guys, 2. Watch party kill bad guys, 3. Move to more bad guys

The system had me missing random encounters. A system similar to this, but way better can be found in Star Ocean: Till the end of time. Another rpg from Square Enix.

Mark Hunts are this games mini-game. A very boring and tedious answer to Blitzball, card games or chocobo racing. It doesnt have the power to pull you away from the main story like they did. It just involves wandering around trying to find a monster to kill. Lots of 'theres a monster, go kill it.' situations.

FFXII takes the sphere grid system from FFX, chews on it, digests it then craps out a system called the licensing board. All of the characters have no real separate class now. Other games have healers, fighters, black magic casters.. Its like having 6 Kimahri's to deal with. This board is used to gain further abilities and bump up your stats. eg Increase magic potency, HP +50. Also you need to obtain licenses to be able to use equipment, weapons, magic, accessories and technicks which for the most part you can ignore. Unless one of your characters drew the short straw and has to make his way through technick crap alley to get a quickening.

Quickenings, FFXII's overdrives, limit breaks etc. I thought it was a pretty neat idea. The one problem is that is takes all your mp. That aside it is a fun system, where each character can eventually learn 3 quickening's from the licence board. They are great for finishing bosses. You start a quickening from one character, from there you need to chain together others characters quickenings to deal some massive damage. Sometimes its just easier to attack your enemy and heal. You'll get the same end result, but you won't be left in the dark with a slowly recovering mp. They are an orgasm for the eyes. Pretty.


Graphics and Sound
Both top notch as you would expect. This is probably the best you can get as far as the PS2 goes.

The soundtrack was good alone, but it didn't really lend itself to the emotion during the game. I guess its hard when the characters don't have many emotions themselves but more on that below.

Graphics were very sheek. Everything was very detailed and well rendered. The fmv sequences stood out amongst everything, there was always so much going on during them . The amount of detail that goes into battle scenes is amazing. As always they have that unique final fantasy Japanese flare to them. The characters during these are beautiful. During the game the lead Character Vaan looks like he has a pug face. I really cannot get over his nose. Its just blehhh, puggy.

I think it somehow manages to lose its epicness. I can't quite pinpoint how and why but I'll give it a go. In other 3D final fantasy installments, you always had the cinematic camera angles to move your character around in. FFXII you have full control over your camera, most of the time it just sits behind the character. It grants the freedom to see more. In the process it loses the cinematic epicness that adds so much to the games. In other games I sometimes found these annoying, but I did miss it once it was gone. With the set angles it felt like art, with FFXII its just another 3D environment.

The graphics are good in this. But for the backgrounds and environments I still prefer previous installments. Although I don't miss the lego FFVII characters.

Story and Sidequests
This is the most important part of an RPG. This is the main reason I play this genre so much. To be swept away into something epic that has me saving the world from the clutches of evil.

In FFXII this took a notably back seat to this content backed installment. There is so much in terms of side quests to do. You could easily double the time it takes to just do everything that is necessary to finish the game by playing through Mark Hunts, finding all the optional Espers and finding special enemies. For the most part the Mark Hunts are harder than the actual bosses, which is disappointing. Near the end of the game before I confronted FFXII's villain, Vayne Solidor. I decided to do a few more Mark Hunts. One of these Marks dealt more damage that really any of Vayne's attacks in any of his forms with one magick spell. Plus the mark had his goblin buddies hopping around getting in the my way.

The trouble with this story is that you never really connect with any of the characters. The cut scenes that have characters conversations are really far apart. I have played for hours without getting a minute of character banter. You spend most of your time traveling around massive landscapes needing to consult a map to make sure you aren't going to waste more time. Being the perfectionist that I usually am, I like to explore every part of a map regardless. I don't want to miss out on a rewarding treasure. In this case I usually do anyway. I take a detour down a long dead end to find the treasure chest contains pocket change gil or a knot of rust. Cheers.

The story starts off really promising, but gets lost in the hours of running around and backtracking through Rabenastre. You remember kind of what happens. You don't really progress anywhere though. Other FF's have the sense of actually progressing through the game. With FFXII you are always hovering around the capital of Dalmasca and home city of the hero Vaan. Every location is within a teleport stones use, that is useful. I certainly wouldn't want to be going through endless terrain again.

I find that through the main character you should be connected to all the others emotionally. Vaan is the worst leading character ever. He's some chumpy little thief kid who really just tags along for the ride. He really doesn't need to be fighting. He has no motive, no useful emotion relevant to the main story. His brother dies right at the start. Thats kinda lost through the hours.

Vaan has what I like to call many 'me too' moments. This isn't giving too much away, but eventually they confront Reks' (Vaans Brother) killer. There are bigger arcs to consider then. The princess is in the middle of one of her speeches to the killer and Vaan is just like 'And Reks!'.

I couldn't really give a damn about these characters. They are all there for the most flimsy reasons. Balthier and Fran just seem to be there. Some twist is given as to why Balthier joins them later on. But it would of just been all the same if the twist wasn't there. Penelo tags along. So does Vaan. Basch is kind of justified in being there. A loyal, honorable protector.
Ashe is so dry. They voice actor mistakes emotion to a girly grunt she makes all the time. She is supposed to be a strong leader conflicted between saving Dalmasca or avenging Dalmasca with the powerful nethicite.

When you break the plot down all it seems to be is a 'go here' and 'collect powerful item x' kinda story. They go for a more political angle with a dash of warfare between Empires. I don't feel they gave it enough time to build such an ambitious story. You could compress all of the cutscenes and FMV sequences done to about half an hour. Maybe an hour, which would be generous.

Another lacking point is that you never get to talk to your characters yourself. They only time they make an appearance is in the battlefield and during cutscenes. Other Final Fantasy's have parts of the game where you can talk to characters optionally. This would help to build atmosphere for the story.

None of the characters have much of a back story either. There is little to no character development.

Conclusion

I may sound like I really hated this game. But overall I enjoyed it. I am a huge fan of Final Fantasy. While still a good game in itself, Final Fantasy XII is definitely the worst 3D final fantasy I have played. I haven't played FFX-2 or FFXI. FFX had a memorable ending that I don't want to ruin. The other is an online game. I would say its worth one play through. Replay value it low. It has massive amounts of content. Content alone is not a good reason to replay. This installment meddles with the battle system, and lacks a decently executed story with memorable characters.
It is worth buying, for the hours and hours of gameplay.

7/10 when comparing with the other Final Fantasy's. A little higher if you view this as a completely separate game.

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This is a blog?

I'm not sure either title. Thanks for asking.

So I've been floating this idea for a couple of days. True story is I've finished FFXII now so I'm finding myself some other stuff to do. This seemed like a nifty idea.

This won't be a personal blog of myself. I know, i know, I'm awesome. 'Aw why isnt it?' you ask. Maybe it will have a few choice personal anecdotes once in a while.

The gist of this place will contain reviews, thoughts, general worshipping of fiction. Books, tv, movies, games. Anything that holds a plot or tries to.

I AM BRAD.
END TRANSMISSION.

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