Esther Plays: Dishonored

Usually around the scheduled school breaks, I find a video game to occupy my time. This is because by the time breaks come along, I find that I desire nothing else than to sprawl myself out on a couch with a three-foot long Twizzler in one hand and a game controller in the other. I had been interested in playing Dishonored for a while, after I saw the intriguing trailer. (Ages 16+)

I'm a big fan of steam-punk style games. I'm also a big fan of the stealth genre, ever since Beyond Good and Evil. I have just recently finished the game. So, how good was it?

Plot

This is the tale of Corvo Attano, the silent and unsurprisingly handsome bodyguard of the Empress of a fictional land.

Don't you want to hug him?

The empire is in chaos. A deadly plague is sweeping the city and turning everyone into angry jerks. (This is probably because they are vomiting blood and their brains are turning into mush, but manners are still important.) Just as Corvo gets home from a long trip, the Empress he is supposed to be protecting is killed in front of his eyes. In other words, he's terrible at his job. He is framed by the government for his boss's murder, and is sentenced to be executed. With the help of some allies, he escapes and sets out to take revenge against those who wronged him. Apparently Corvo is bad at protecting people because he's really, really good at knocking people out.

The plot is streamlined and easy to follow, with just enough intrigue to keep you interested. There are very few plot twists, however, and all are predictable. As fantastic as the setting is, with its brooding skies, strange machines, and dilapidated buildings, there isn't a lot of story here. As you traverse the surroundings, it would be nice to have larger snippets of the history of the city you're trying to change. It would allow for an immersing experience. However, the main plot is pleasing and has a tight narrative, so getting bored shouldn't be an issue.

If you chose to kill everyone who has wronged you, the story acts out differently. The more you kill, the more the plague spreads, the more plague victims you see, and more rats try to rip the flesh off your bones. You also  get a different ending.

If you chose to be a saint, then you get a happier ending and less things trying to kill you at the end of the story. You can get through the game without killing anyone, a plot which I chose to follow.

The variations for the story are very nice, however each of the endings are unsatisfying. For all the work you put into not killing people, which can be very hard, you get a rather short and non-immersing ending. If you chose to join the dark side, surprise, you get a rather short and non-immersing ending. I would have rather had one really good ending than have several slapped-together ones.


Gameplay

Gameplay is the best part of Dishonored. Because the way you act affects the story, you may want to play through again just to see how your actions affected the world around you. It feels great to successfully get through a level without being detected by anyone, or to jump from a high building directly onto the person you're targeting.

The stealth aspect of the game is made stronger with the presence of magic. A magical spirit has taken interest in you, and has blessed you with the power of being awesome. These powers include teleportation, seeing through walls, controlling people's minds, summoning swarms of rats, and turning your enemies into ash. In order to get these powers, you buy them with runes, magical objects that you find throughout the game. You will probably find yourself searching everywhere for these runes, and it is a lot of fun to collect them all.

However, you don't need any powers to beat the game, really. And only two powers are actually incredibly useful. The other powers, while flashy, only offer different solutions to the problems you can solve in a more straight-forward way. Most of the powers are offensively based, which doesn't offer a lot for the players who are trying to get through the game without killing anyone. In the end, I had a ton of runes to spend because there were no powers left that I hadn't maxed out that weren't used to slaughter rooms of people.

If you do use the powers to kill people, you will find the game ridiculously easy. People really don't stand a chance against Corvo when he is a demi-god of insane proportions.

They turned to ash a few seconds after this was taken.

This imbalance is a little infuriating, but then it's also cool to blast your way through your enemies in a flashy, dramatic blur. It's kind of like you're a ballerina dancing through the city with strobe lights sewn onto your tutu, except the strobe lights happen to be lasers.

The combat is fleshed out and stealth is really good, so you'll have fun however you play. It's a shame that the game isn't fleshed out in many other areas, however. Your enemies are all clones of each other, just with different faces. There are a lot of cases of unique dialogue, but you'll also hear the same pieces of dialogue repeated every level. If I took a shot every time I heard someone say, "Stupid rats, stupid plague, stupid god****", I would die of alcohol poisoning. It's also strange how sometimes your enemies are blissfully unaware of you at times, but a few moments later have superhuman hearing.

It's also a shame that everyone in the city is basically evil. Since there are so many soldiers, you would think one of them was at least a moral sort of person. However, everyone is corrupt. The lack of variation makes it very easy for all your enemies to blur together, and make you question if the city is even worth saving.

You can also collect bone charms, which offer superficial bonuses to your character. For example, one lets your breathe underwater longer. Some of them are very useful, but for some reason I never felt inclined to hunt for them.

Fighting, sneaking, and infiltrating are great fun. It's also fun to find no-kill solutions to your enemies. The city is built in such a way that you'll find there are half a dozen ways to get into any building, and it's fun to test them out.

Graphics

The art direction is very good, and the buildings are clean-cut and clear. I especially like the lighting, which seems perfectly placed. I found that the faces of most characters were rather ugly and less detailed compared to the rest of the surroundings, which is a shame. Still, a very pretty game. It runs very slow if your computer doesn't have a good graphics card.

Sound

The voice acting of this game is awesome. Corvo never speaks, which is something I find kind of stupid, but all of the other characters do. The villains are especially well done, which isn't saying much because everyone is basically evil. However, I found the delivery of all the lines very well-done, even though the lines are often repeated a lot. There isn't much in the way of a soundtrack, which is all and good. It would be kind of hard to get in the stealthy mood with To Glory playing in the background. Sometimes I found sounds to miss their cue, like when a bottle drops and the sound of broken glass comes too slowly.

Overall

Dishonored is a good game, but something holds it from greatness. While the gameplay is fleshed out and there are a lot of things to collect, plot is lacking and character interactions are shallow. The only way to humanely deal with enemies is to sneak by them or to choke them out, which gets rather repetitive. The characters represented are usually only on the darker side of the personality spectrum, and it would be nice to have enemies who weren't so obviously bad. It would have added depth to the game. All three of the endings are unsatisfying. Still, it's a great game and should not be missed just because it misses a few places.

8/10
 

We Need To Talk About Kevin -- Book Review

Hello everybody! I recently finished a thought-provoking novel titled We Need To Talk About Kevin. I have wanted to write a review about this book for the past few days, and so now I am. I hope that you may read this book too and see if you share my opinions. If you've already read it, please share your thoughts in the comment section.

Title: We Need To Talk About KevinGenre: Literary fiction/psychological
Author: Lionel Shriver
Length: Long
Summary: This is primarily story about Eva Khatchadourian and her son Kevin, who is the sole culprit of a school shooting which killed many students and two faculty members. Told through a series of letters from Eva to her husband Franklin, the story discusses what spurned Kevin murder, and if Eva's lackluster parenting caused him to turn out this way. The story goes from before Kevin was born and up to the shooting. Some focus is given to Eva's relationship with her husband, and how it deteriorated with the progression of the novel. However, this is not a romantic book.

PLOT

At first I was disappointed when I realized that this novel would be told through a massive string of one-sided letters. (Franklin never writes her back, for reasons explained in the book) I thought of this particular method of story-telling too limited -- even more so than the traditional first person. However, Shriver does a very good job of executing the plot in this way, providing each chapter (or letter, rather) with a decidedly good cliff-hanger that keeps the reader wanting more. Each letter contains interesting stories, comments, and character interactions that keep the novel moving successfully.

The plot is not without its errors, however. The novel is entirely ponderous; it takes slow, heavy steps towards its all too short climax. Each scene is relatively interesting, but often I considered the question "is this part truly necessary?" The scenes that truly brought me on the edge of my seat were incredibly powerful and completely worth reading, but they were stuffed in between scenes that didn't seem to add to the story other to give it a complete sense of drudgery. This drudgery does add to the book's tone though, which is a bonus that saved me from putting it down more often.

At points I do feel that Eva gives away too much information. Actually, one of the book's weaker points is towards the end, when Eva discusses the climax where she wasn't even present with such detail it shatters the reader's suspension of belief completely. Eva says she knows these things from previous sources, but this fact is written in such a offhanded way that you feel like this is a tacked on excuse for just giving too much information to be believable. Don't get me wrong, the climax is lovely and powerful, but it doesn't quite fit. The massive build up for just thirteen pages of questionable climactic material makes me feel a little cheated.


CHARACTERS
The characters are Kevin's weakest point, which is a complete shame because the characters are what ultimately make a book good. Eva is the protagonist, and she grows more unlikable as the story progresses. You can have a functional book without a likable protagonist, so long as you can relate to the character in some way. Eva almost seems inhuman: her incurable pathos and her determined dislike for nearly everything in the world around her is unbelievable. She contradicts what actually matters to her throughout the story. The one things she seems to appreciate is travel, but she often admits that she doesn't like it until she's in a foreign country and there's no going back. She is what literature calls an "unreliable narrator", and of course this can be a very effective story telling tool, but only used, well, effectively. Later in the story, Eva is diagnosed with post-natal depression, but that doesn't explain the depression that lasted for forty years before that.

Franklin, the husband and the recipient of the letters, is one of the more fake characters ever written. It is said that the two characters love each other, but no proof is ever given to make this a fact. When Kevin is born, Franklin goes from ambiguous lover to the role of nonsensical father. Although Eva is admittedly a terrible mother, Franklin never hesitated to take Kevin's side. Whenever it was suspected that Kevin had done something horrid (from something like tampering with a kid's bicycle and cause said child to crash and nearly die, to just making a giant mess and not cleaning it up) Franklin never considers it a possibility that Kevin did something wrong. It became Kevin and Franklin vs Eva (as she like to put it) and it is not a believable relationship in the least. Franklin at most is a fuel to help Eva rant about the little terror that is Kevin, but I suppose that the book is about Kevin in the first place.

Kevin is ultimately the best character in the book. He is a monsterous person down to his withered core, but he is a successful character. His morals and drive remain ambiguous, but he stays a constant in between the two other leading characters. That is, until the end of the book. In the entire story, we are lead to believe that Kevin was irredeemable. Yet, in the face of a new fear, he undergoes a turnaround that is almost a 360 by Kevin standards. It's frustrating. Shriver's inability to create characters that can tell a cohesive story is Kevin's greatest weakness.

PROSE/WRITING QUALITY

The writing quality of Kevin is the book's best feature. It has a wonderful flow to it. You are compelled to keep reading even through the book's more mundane sections. Eva's character makes it difficult to continue reading sometimes, but actually, sometimes it's her unique (if not natural) mind that makes you want to read. Sometimes the author puts things in such a way that the reader is forced to pause and think, "wow, that's totally how I feel", or "that's the perfect way to put it". Sometimes you don't agree with Eva at all, but you still find it interesting how intense her psychological insight is. Whether right or wrong, this novel is a thought-provoker.

There are moments when the novel gives too much information to a detail, while not giving bigger, more interesting moments their time in the limelight. It seems that the author has difficulty focusing on what aspects of the novel to elucidate. Eva's stream of consciousness technique is a bit of excuse for it, but whether the narrator is reliable or not, the author simply must consider the important aspects of a novel and realize them.


THEME/FOCUS of THE NOVEL

I am still trying to discern Kevin's true purpose. At first I thought it was a psychological probe into the minds of psychopaths or sociopaths. Not even half way in, I realized that there wasn't enough focus on this subject to be the true purpose of the book. Kevin touches on several different themes, but doesn't adhere to a single one. It feels like the author is trying to make a definite point, but she never quite manages. Therefore, I can only ascertain that the theme and the focus of this book is rather fuddy duddy, to put simply. I was rather disappointed that I couldn't walk away with a genuine feeling for this book. Rather, I simply received a mishmash of different ideas. Thought-provoking, intelligent, and scary thoughts to be sure, but all vague and not truly realized. It would have been more satisfying for the author to submit to a single theme than pursue them all at once. But maybe the point of this book is that there is no real meaning, no true answer to the things people do and why they do them. An interesting observation, but it doesn't make for satisfying reading.

OVERALL

We Need To Talk About Kevin is an above-average book, and is filled with clear and vibrant moments of pure literary genius. Its problem lies in its execution. Its inability to retain consistency in its characters and its narrative focus hamper this novel extremely. Still, those bright moments make this book worth reading. The climax is exciting and has an excellent plot twist, but the last two pages will have you reeling with confusion over who Eva and Kevin really are.

It is a chilling and captivating read, but also a heavy undertaking. Don't expect to read this book in one or two sittings.

3.5/5

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Well, there you go! See you guys next time.
Esther

Prometheus Review

Big things have small beginnings.

Hi, my friends! Sorry it took so long for yet another update. I have been busy these past two days. It really isn't much of an excuse, though. I will work harder in the future.

So, I finally went to see Prometheus yesterday! I have been wanting to see it for quite some time now, and can you blame me? It looked, quite frankly, like it would set your pants on fire with its sheer atom-vibrating awesomeness.

Before going to see Prometheus, I learned that it was actually a horror movie.

Oops.

You see, my overactive imagination causes even some of the more mundane of images to haunt my nightmares. Why, the other day, I looked up pictures of opussums and I nearly scared myself sleepless. I never thought opossums were nightmare worthy. Seriously, Google them.

I also looked at the Parental Advisory Warning on IMDB for this movie, and I grew terrified. In reality, the Advisory Warning made the whole thing scarier in my mind. When I actually watched the darn thing, it wasn't nearly as scary as I thought it would be. Actually, it doesn't really qualify as horror. It's more gorror. It wasn't nearly bad as that manga I once read called Uzumaki.

*Shudder*

Here is my review of Prometheus!

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While on an excavation in Ireland, two researchers make a fantastic discovery. Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) finds a cave panting that is a replica of a dozen others. The only quirk is that all of these replicas were made by different civilizations, during different time periods. All of these paintings or glyphs show a person staring up into the sky, looking at a certain star constellation.

This constellation is way to far for our ancestors to have known about, but for some reason, it actually exists. And there is a moon, completely capable of sustaining life in that little cluster of atronomy. After jumping to some conclusions, the researchers decide to head over to that moon because they think that the creatures that live on it are what created humans. They call these aliens engineers.

After riding in cyrostasis for two years while the spaceship glides through space, the crew wakes up and sees the moon looming before them. It's time to go on an adventure to find if the engineers still exist, and if they can answer all the questions about the origins of humanity.

Instead, they find a parasitic lifeform that is doing its darndest to kill them all.

Myahahahah....

Visuals

Prometheus, simply put, is a beautiful movie. The special effects are fantastic and realistic to boot. The director, Ridley Scott, does not push the use of CGI. Instead, he uses real sets and characters as often as possible. This gives a tangible feel to the movie, which adds to the creepy feel. Let's face it, you're going to be more afraid of things that actually exist, than things that are drawn on a computer.

The engineers and the aliens are well designed. The engineers look very real, and human too, just with a ridiculously high uncanny-valley appearance.

The horrific aspect of this movie is the gore, and it is very well done, I must say. Any bodily damage delt is anatomically correct. Bones that are broken jut through the skin in just the right way. I totally almost gagged!

The makeup is also excellent. Anyone who has been -- erm -- violated by an alien gets some very realistic makeup effects.

Please tell me why I want to lick this three-dimensional projection.

                                                                                                   
The CGI is crisp and clean. Spaceship Prometheus looks awesome. I love its propulsion design. The 3D space maps that always touch my inner geek also make me squee.

Squee!

Characters

Prometheus has a relatively large cast of characters, but you don't get attached to any but two. Elizabeth Shaw (Rapace) and David (Fassbender) are two incredibly memorable characters. Rapace's performances as the shell-shocked and resourceful Elizabeth is great to watch. Her bravery, especially during a particular scene including a ceaserean, is almost haunting.

Fassbender plays the android David, an invention supposedly devoid of emotions, but for some reason capable of jealousy and intense pride. It is impossible to tell whether David is neutral, evil, or even good, and his is a refreshing character. Fassbender's performance is spectacular, and I have a crush on him. A very large crush.

Charlize Theron plays the nearly-unflappable Meredith, who is the boss on the ship. Her character is predictable and shallowly written. It feels like Charlize was wasted a little here. However, Meredith does have a few moments that make you cheer her on or just smile. Meredith is also very genre-savvy. She seems to know that letting a suspicious creature on the ship is a bad idea, and that flamethrowers are the answer to everything.

Idris Elba has a notable performance as Captain Janek. He is arguably the only comic relief in the movie.

Any other performances aren't notable, and actually fit typical cliche stereotypes. You can actually predict which characters that will die based on the character they play. For example, the arrogant guy usually dies first, and this is the case here. The only characters that aren't cliche are David and Elizabeth.

Plot

Plot is where Prometheus falls on its pretty little face. The premise is interesting, the lore is seemingly well-thought out, and this movie has the potential to be quite deep.

However, there simply isn't enough plot in this two-hour movie. Questions are in abundance, and barely any are answered. In fact, we get even more questions as the movie progresses. It leaves a certain mysterious feel to the movie, like we are only catching a glimpse of the major events of history. In this way, it's pretty cool. Still, the movie feels underdeveloped, like the director didn't quite know which way to go with the movie. At some points, the movie feels philosophical, and then it switches over to the typical traits of a horror movie. It's frustrating, but forgivable. The story that exists is interesting, although at many points it is predictable.

Sound
Prometheus has a relatively impressive soundtrack. No song in particular stands out. Even the Prometheus Theme is only somewhat impressive. The sound effects and the general ambiance are very impressive from the soundtrack is impressive, however.

I've always found sound to be the thing that scares me the most. I think lots of others would agree. It would have been nice to have the sound contribute more to the horror, instead of having the visual effects doing all the work.

Overall

Prometheus is a haunting movie that I thouroughly enjoyed. It is a peek into a fascinating type of lore, but only a tiny peek. You may feel disappointed for the lack of plot, but ignoring that you'll find the characters and the experience very enjoyable. It seems that the director was unsure whether to make this movie a phillosophical commentary or a straight up horror movie, and this unprofessional blend makes the movie's tone and moral abiguous at times.

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Don't touch the squid,

Esther

Final Fantasy XIII-2 Review

Hello my friends! Recently, I just finished playing Final Fantasy XIII-2, the sequel to the promising but ill-carried out Final Fantasy XIII. If you read my other blog at all, you'll know that I found FF XIII to be rather disappointing. Still, I looked for the sequel to redeem itself. Did it?

Final Fantasy XIII-2
Genre: RPG
Pros: Beautiful graphics; exciting gameplay, plenty of sidequests, good monster catching system, manages to pull off time travel in a fun way; replay value
Cons: Poorly developed characters fail to give story emotion depth, side quests almost impossible without manual, frustrating ending, gathering some materials for leveling too difficult; Snow is in it.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 takes place after its predecessor ended, of course. After people left Cocoon to live on Gran Pulse, things have gotten pretty quiet. Serah is pretty content too: she's getting married to her fiance, she has a good teacher job, and everybody loves her.

The only bad thing is that her sister Lightning has gone missing, but she is the only one who noticed. Everyone else thinks that Lightning died fighting on Cocoon, but Serah is positve that Lightning had given Snow and Serah her blessing -- a memory only she remembers. Snow believes her eventually and he leaves her to find Lightning.

Turns out Lightning has been chosen by the goddess Etro to kick evil's butt, so she is in  place that is rather inaccessable because its inbetween time and space or something like that. So she sends Noel, a young man with a beautiful face but hideous pants, to get Serah and bring her back to Lightning. Noel comes from a future he is determined to make sure never happens -- via time travel! And Serah wants to find Lightning -- via time travel! So they hook up and ultimately try to save the world.

Plot

This may sound kind of convuluted, but XIII-2 does a very good job with the whole time travel thing. Even though you are going through dozens of different time periods, they all link together in a believable way. However, time travel has never made for a very . . . tangible story line. Since anything can happen and technically be reversed, you can't get attached to anything. Because it tries so hard to keep time straight, the actual plot is actually very simple and lacks any real development. However, I like the plot more than XIII more because XIII-2 is not deliberately trying to confuse you. Barely any references to L'cie, Fal Cie, Cieth or any other "CIE" here.

The simplicity is what makes it work. Honestly if the plot were any more complicated, it would die.

You will feel cheated with the ending. There are fragments that are scattered throughout the game, and if you collect them all, you'll get a better ending, but only after you beat the main story line. Which means you'll have to watch the "bad" ending and just might be yelling at your TV at the humanity of it all.

Characters
Characters are one of this game's downfalls. There isn't much character development, probably because the game can be completed in many different orders because of time travel. If an aspect of character development were one thing in one era, but different when you go to a different place,  there would be continuity issues. Still, it's disappointing. It's hard to cheer for characters you don't care for much. The strongest characters in the game are Noel and Caius, the latter being the villain of the game. Noel and Caius have a backstory that is revealed and has good emotion. I actually began to like Caius because he was only fueled by his love for a single girl, and I'm not spoiling this because it is obvious from the beginning.
Serah is adorable and strong-willed, but that is about it. She doesn't grow like Lightning did in the previous game. I like her, but she is pretty 2-dimensional.

There are cool side characters too. Hope and Alyssa were an awesome duo, and had interesting character quirks.

Snow was included in this game and because of that I hate the game more. Snow might just be the worst FF character in the history of FF characters. He is obnoxious and cliche, and I hate his voice-actor. He treats his fiance like a younger sister, rather than a lover. To make it worse, he treats her like she can't do anything of value. I loathe him to death. There is no chemistry between the two. Final Fantasy VIII this is not.

Music
I miss Nobou. Still, the track of this game is pretty good. Not a memorable track in the game, but the ambiance is good enough. The song played while fighting the giant Flan was so ridiculous it made me laugh, but it was the only bad song in the bunch.

Gameplay
The game keeps the fighting system like its predecessor, except more polished. So that means it is awesome. Leveling up is a lot easier than in the previous game.

 If you've always wanted to be a Pokemon master like me, this game is a dream come true. You can capture monsters, train them, and use them in battle. For the first time you can have a chocobo consistently fight at your side, valiantly "KWEH"-ing as he stabs your enemies through the heart with his perfectly manicured talons. Or maybe you want a giant robot? Or a giant cactar? Or a tonberry? You must have them. Sometimes the materials you need to make your creatures grow are too difficult to obtain, which is frustrating.

You'll spend a lot of time capturing and training monsters, but that isn't all the game has to offer. Besides the main story line, there are also plenty of sidequests. But unfortunately, most of them are fetch quests, and you get tired of stealing the Jewel of Thadmus off the Cliff of Eternity after a while. Or fetching a watch. (Seriously? A watch?!) Most quests have you go look for an item, but do not give you directions, so you bumble about in search of them. The bad thing is that the items are often in DIFFERENT TIME PERIODS, so not only do you have to search ground, you have to search time. Not having a manual will make the task almost impossible.

There is also a place called Serendipity where you can gamble and race that Chocobo you have been training all this time. Chocobo races are awesome, and a good call back to VII.

You can also reset levels and beat them over, which unlocks alternate endings to the game. These endings are fun, but honestly unsatisfying.

OVERALL
FF XIII-2 improves on its predecessor in every way. The characters are less obnoxious, but they don't develop much at all. Snow is so annoying I want to shoot him. Noel is a sexy beast though, and kind of reduces the Snow thing. Caius in all his purple and feathery glory will kind of melt your heart and then stab it with his Soul Calibur-esque sword. Gameplay is much improved, but monotonous side quests are detrimental. The ending will make you sad for many reasons. I won't gives spoilers.

I still continue to play the game, collecting my fragments. I need to get some money so I can get a downloadable outfit for Noel. His pants make me sad.

NOEL: Whaddid you say 'bout my pants?

Nothing, Noel. Go back to being eye candy.

NOEL: Mm'kay.
*sighs* He needs a woman.

FINAL SCORE

8.5/10