Posts tagged review
Comic Reading Log - April
Welcome to the new feature I plan on doing at as each month wraps. Aside from books, I also read comics and though I write for a comic book website, I don’t do a ton of reviews because it always seemed odd to have thousand-word reviews on a twenty page comic book. Instead I plan to keep a monthly log of the books I read and my thoughts on the recent issue/storyline.
REVIEW: ‘The Tattered Banner’ by Duncan M. Hamilton
The book follows one character, Soren, through a pivotal slice of his life as he is plucked off the streets by a nobleman hoping to pull a diamond out of the rough. Though the book is in third person, for the most part, you experience the world from Soren out, with Hamilton’s world growing as Soren becomes more worldly. This writing style offered readers the experience you can get from reading urban fantasy, but with a more classic fantasy feel. It fit well with the fast paced tale. We follow Soren from the streets, into the academy where he begins to learn swordsmanship, and then into a variety of adventures of ups and downs.
Assassin’s Creed 3…
Well, I finished the game today. Played a little side stuff, but not a lot, mostly focused on the story. Actually, I did a lot more side stuff first, but as my enjoyment of the game waned, I started doing more and more main quest just so I could finish the game and pass it off to my son.
Fans of the series will love it and it probably is the best of the bunch, but for me I’ve been a casual fan of the series so far. I have found as many things I didn’t like as I loved about the game and the third was no different.
I honestly feel like I truly got to “play” about 25% of the time I was in the game. About 50% was cut scenes and the other 25% walking/running/riding/whatever from cut scene to cut scene. This has been something that always bothered me, I don’t mind cut scenes in general, but they should be few and far between. I don’t want to feel like I paid $60 for a so-so movie.
The naval battles are cool and the hunting is neat. But not being able to save when you want to pretty much kept me from hunting after a while. Once you get killed and lose progress by a deer because you can’t pull out a weapon once the game locks you into “animal duel” mode, it all seems silly.
The “open world” is in no way open. It’s just that the closed portion is much bigger than usual (sometimes - it depends on your “memory” of whatever is going on). And it also isn’t open in the sense that you travel around do whatever, seasons change, time passes, etc. Seasons change because memories change and game loads a new version of the world.
The controls are horrible. I constantly hit buttons to trigger things and nothing happened. I still jumped onto or off of objects randomly, falling to my death as per usual AC gameplay, though it was better than previously. There were several times you have to chase someone and getting it to trigger tackle is a pain, little annoyances like that. Not to mention the normal AC nonsense of death sentence issued for guards seeing you on a rooftop and the fact that you suck at parkour.. not because you aren’t good, but because everyone, even the shittiest guard is as good as your “highly trained” self.
It’s a shame there aren’t more reviews out there from sites that aren’t given freebies hand over fist by companies and in turn tend to give good reviews. Combined with the fact that bigger games are bigger hitters for unique site hits b/c of fans looking for info and you also can piss off a bunch of fans. Yea, well, fans of AC don’t need reviews, they are already buying the game and will love it. It’s casual gamers that need to know what they are getting into…
If you were mixed on prior AC games, hold off on this one or rent it. If you don’t like cut scene heavy games, this one will drive you crazy. If you want to just be a Native American hunter, and run around outside of the story, then maybe you’ll get something more from it. I’d give Assassin’s Creed III an average score and recommend testing it by renting or buying it later used if you aren’t a big franchise fan. Or honestly, if you want to “play” it, just watch the youtube walk-throughs of the cut scenes and play some AC2 between videos and you’ll get just as much from it.
Avengers VS X-Men Review
warning: If you enjoyed this story, you’re going to have a bad time
Our latest book review at Reading Realms is Michael J. Sullivan’s first volume of his Riyria Revelations series: Theft of Swords.
Did a second ‘issue’ of my Geek Readers Geek Review comic strip where the readers take a look at Avengers: X-Sanction #1
Stephen King fans should love this, although I would say this has more substance than anything King has done in a very long time. If you’re like me, and have never read a Haruki Murakami novel before, “1Q84” is as good a place to start as any …
My first attempt at my comic strip/comic review mash up idea, hopefully it will improve from here but you gotta get your feet wet at some point. If you like it, or even tolerate it; subscribe. There will be more coming.
Check out my column at The Outhouse: Geek Entertainment Site — “What Outhousers Are Saying”
I find the conflict of opinions we see in comments amusing and have started collecting little one sentence quotes from readers about the latest comics each week.
Up to #5 now
Past articles: #4, #3, #2, #1 & NYCC edition
OurValuedCustomers.tumblr.com has also let me start featuring one of their comics in the column each week, so huge Thank You to MrTim over there.
Short review with some videos about Imelda May’s latest album: “Mayhem”. Click the image to visit the article.
With his first major label release, blues rocker Gary Clark Jr. shows everyone why he’s been a major local talent in Texas for years. Click the album for more.
Living with an iPod touch
Seveal weeks ago I was at the store debating on whether to buy an iPad (or wait for 2nd gen version) and started looking at the ipod touches. After going back and forth and playing with both for about an hour I decided the ipod touch did everything I would want out of an ipad + was more portable + was half the price. Needless to say I bought one.
I have attempted to make my life more portable after moving about four times in the last couple years; living out of boxes a bit even in between and having another moved plan out to California in a few months. I sold about 75% of my comicbook collection, donated tons of clothing I didn’t use and other miscellaneous stuff. The biggest problem I still have is tons of books I don’t want to part with. But I have also purchased a Kindle a couple months ago, so that is at least helping me not collect as many additional physical books.
As for the ipod… I spend a lot of time on the computer and wondered how well I would be able to live my computer life off of that. Obviously all of the apps are awesome, many of them free. Banking, facebooking, tweeting, video, music, etc. and of course tumblr. I’ve set up a few new accounts made just for mobile devices like my instagram picture account. I deleted over 400 facebook friends to clean up my feed and actually help me keep up with and communicate with the people I really wanted to. I’ve added a bunch of site specific apps to skip the safari need and check news, geekstuff, etc. So there is plenty of cool gadgety stuff to enjoy that has gone well so far.
One of the big things I was concerned about was typing… I am a very fast typist and was worried I might be annoyed at having to work the virtual keyboard (a problem that wasn’t any better playing with the ipad in store). After a couple weeks I can say that doing long posts like this are easier on a keyboard, but outside of that I haven’t had any real issues. It is much better than typing texts on a phone, I actually like the smaller board and being forced to just use a finger or two instead of trying to use both hands on an ipad sized keyboard that never quite measures up. The text correct works great as well, I probably have better grammar and spelling in most forum posts and tweets than ever before.
The resolution on the thing is amazing. You can actually read entire non-mobile websites zoomed out on that tiny screen if you want to, but all you have to do is tap the text area and it immediately zooms into the column you want to read. The best part though is how many sites have mobile versions, cutting out all the clutter you normally have to look around when browsing on a normal computer (not to mention gizmodo, lifehacker, io9, etc. all have sucky redesigns lately that I don’t have to look at in the mobile version).
I think one of the biggest issues I’ve had are trying to save images. Sometimes it works fine, although it automatically puts them into a set folder and doesn’t let you select the destination. Other times… often in site specific aps, you cannot save an image at all. Some apps have setups to work with facebook, twitter, read it later, etc; some don’t. So I guess I’ve found managing all the twitter accounts I run, writing columns for book reviews and other tasks that require a variety of steps sometimes between bit.ly, photobucket, browser, etc. are much faster on the computer still. I guess all in all there are several little clunky things about having to work between multiple programs that you encounter on the ipod/pad you wouldn’t on a regular computer.
In the end though, it’s a great device. It makes it a lot easier to keep up with things while still doing whatever else. I don’t have to get on the computer to check anything, it just beeps if someone emails me or messages me on twitter, facebook, etc. One of these days I’ll upgrade to an actual iphone, but for now this works great for me. If you already have one (or similar android device or whatever) then you know what I’m talking about, if not you might want to pick one up if you don’t want to go all out for a smartphone yet. I’m sure plenty will go for the new iPad, but I couldn’t see any need for it over the iTouch really.
