Heavy Nova

(Yeah, I’m in it)

Interview With New Author, Kelly Edwards

I got to “sit down” and talk with Kelly Edwards, author of Scorcher, and ask her what it’s like to have a book out, how and why she chose the route she did, and a lot of other things that have absolutely nothing to do with writing at all. She was a fantastic sport and great fun to talk to.

You can get Scorcher in physical copy or ebook.

Nerdmobile: So, Kelly, tell everybody what the book and series are about.

Kelly: Scorcher explores the concept that supervillains are people too.
They’re not always megalomaniacs with dreams of world domination.
Sometimes they’re just people doing whatever they must to get by.
Aidan Grey is a college student with goals for the future, a drive to
succeed, and little time for romance. She’s also a woman with a
secret. At eleven, she was orphaned due to the accidental use of her
pyrokinetic abilities. She was taken in by the secret criminal
organization known as Iris and trained to use her abilities for the
organization’s profit. Marty Knox is a police detective who loves his
family, tries to genuinely make a difference in the world and falls
hard for Aidan. He shows up just as Aidan is starting to question her
loyalties to Iris and she’s surprised to find that she can’t resist
him, even if it would be dangerous to get involved with someone on the
right side of the law. What Aidan doesn’t realize is that Marty has a
secret of his own, one that would endanger both their lives if
discovered by Iris.

The series itself expands on this topic as Aidan struggles with
figuring out where her loyalties lie and fights for the freedom to
make that choice for herself, as opposed to allowing the organization
that’s owned her for half her life to continue to make all of her
decisions.

Nerdmobile: You are a brand spanking new author, but that doesn’t mean you just now picked up writing. How long have you been at it?

Kelly: I’ve been telling stories since I was a kid. I used to write plays to perform for my parents. In middle school and high school, that morphed
into poetry and short stories. And I must say, thank goodness the
internet wasn’t really a thing back then. Or else there might be some
of that middle school poetry coming back to haunt me.

Nerdmobile: What drove you to the method of publishing you used?

Kelly: I’m a control freak. Seriously though, I really liked the idea
of getting my book out there on my terms and spending time building my
audience instead of spending time trying to sell my novel to
publishers. I also enjoy some of the other things that have come with
marketing, from working closely with my cover artist to designing my
own website and running my own promotions on Facebook and Twitter.

Nerdmobile: Will you continue with self publish, or are you hoping to be picked up by a publishing house?

Kelly: At this point, I’m really enjoying the self-publishing process
but I wouldn’t say no if the right offer came along. Right now, I
think that my books fall into a niche market as they are unabashedly
genre fiction. While genre fiction can and does sell to traditional
publishing houses, it is a tougher sell.

Nerdmobile: In your opinion, what is the difference between the two?

Kelly: The biggest difference between the two is the degree of control
an author has over the finished book. With a traditional publishing
house most authors have very little, if any, say in what the cover or
layout look like. They are also under deadlines from the publishing
house instead of self-imposed deadlines. Of course, with a traditional
publishing house there is a chance for wider distribution so if that’s
what you’re interested in, there are many times when it’s worthwhile
to give up some of your creative control so you have the chance to get
your story out there to a wider audience.

Nerdmobile: Is writing your first love?

Kelly: Actually, my first love was a boy named Jimmy who was the He-Man to my She-Ra. Sadly, no one told us that they were brother and sister. But
after Jimmy, telling stories was my first long-lasting love.

Nerdmobile: Would you marry writing?

Kelly: No, I’ve already got a wonderful husband. Writing is just the sexy,
alluring mistress that I lavish with gifts and spend most of my free
time with. (Sorry, honey!)

Nerdmobile: If you and writing had babies, … oh wait. That would be your
book. What was your inspiration for this particular story?

Kelly: This story, like most of my stories, started with the characters.
Aidan came to me first. I really liked the idea of a character who has
reasons for being a villain and who might not be looking for
redemption at the start of the story but isn’t fully evil either. The
story evolved naturally from there. I had help from a dear friend,
Paul Leone, in developing Marty as someone who is both the anithesis
of what Aidan is but is similar enough to forget a strange sort of
connection.

Nerdmobile: So you’re a character driven writer, have you ever attempted to write a story that focuses not on the people but on the situation?

Kelly: I’m working on a story now where I came up with a basic sketch of
an idea first and then started filling in the characters. I would say
that the plot or situation tends to feed and inform the characters and
vice versa.

Nerdmobile: Do you fall in love with your characters?

Kelly: All the time. It’s getting rather full in my heart because every
character I’ve ever written has carved out a spot. If I don’t write
with them for awhile, I will start to miss certain characters. I also
frequently feel guilty if I’m not writing often enough to get their
stories out.

Nerdmobile: Writers read, that’s a given. Who is your favorite author?

Kelly: I have a confession. I am a book slut. My favorite author changes on a semi-regular basis and I’ve never committed to just one favorite.
Authors I’m loving quite a lot currently are Seanan Mcguire, Jim
Butcher, and Jim C Hines. Susan Ee is also my new favorite up and
comer to watch.

Nerdmobile: So there’s not one author that you’ve read since you were younger that still holds up for you today?

Kelly: Lois Lowry and J.R.R. Tolkien both stand out, though it’s been
awhile since I’ve reread either author. Unfortunately, my reading time
is very limited now so I usually try to seek out books that I haven’t
read yet and don’t have as much time as I would like for reading the
old favorites.

Nerdmobile: What is your favorite book of all time? How many times have you read it?

Kelly: See above, re: book slut. The Harry Potter books are my go-to comfort books for when I just want to read something familiar. I’ve lost count
of how many times I’ve read those. I’ve also lost count of how many
times I’ve read the Dresden Files.

Nerdmobile: Do you have other nerdly pursuits?

Kelly: Aside from the standards: reading comics and sci-fi and fantasy books, watching sci-fi and fantasy TV shows and debating them online, I’m
also really into making superhero costumes and of course, wearing them
to conventions and charity events.

Nerdmobile: What was the first comic you read?

Kelly: While I have loved superheroes for most of my life, I’m actually
relatively new to reading actual comics. I started reading them about
7 or 8 years ago. The very first comic I read was the trade of Batman:
Year One.

Nerdmobile: Who is your favorite superhero? Why?

Kelly: There are a lot of superheroes that I absolutely adore, but I
would have to say that Black Canary (II, ie Dinah Laurel Lance) is my
all-time favorite. I could write an essay or two on why I love her but
I’ll try to spare you all the reading. I love her because her
backstory includes a mother-daughter relationship that is complicated
and not cut-and-dry. Dinah took up her mother’s mantle against Dinah
Sr’s wishes, and so you have both an act of rebellion and following in
her mother’s footsteps in one. In the best comics where Dinah is
featured, this informs her character beautifully. Dinah is also a
character who has a great power (her sonic cry, which can knock people
out, shatter just about anything, etc) but chooses to rely on the
abilities that’s she’s gone out and learned as opposed to simply
relying on the fact that she has a superpower. She was also
essentially ‘fridged’ in that she lost her superpower in a heinous,
violent way and yet instead of ceasing to be a hero, she continued on
and became even stronger for working through that loss and finding
ways to thrive without her superpower. And for all my good intentions,
I’ve still written you a novelette so I’ll leave it at that.

Nerdmobile: What is your must watch show currently?

Kelly: Once Upon a Time is currently my must-watch show. I’m a sucker
for fairytales and especially when they’re told in an interesting way.

Nerdmobile: Do you have a show that you go back to a lot? Rewatch again and again?

Kelly: Buffy and Firefly are two of them. I adore Joss Whedon because he
is always pushing the limits of the genres he works within and he
writes some of the most well-rounded female characters around. Even
today, that’s still something that’s harder to find than well-rounded
male characters.

Nerdmobile: Batman or Superman?

Kelly: I love them both, but for me it will always be Superman. Why? Because he is unabashedly a square. He has his morals and he sticks by them,
in spite of the fact that he has the powers of a god and could simply
pummel people until they had no choice but to see things his way.

Nerdmobile: If you were able to choose a superpower, what would it be? Why?

Kelly: Is the ability to run on no sleep considered a superpower? If so, I
would definitely choose that because there are not enough hours in the
day. Otherwise, I would choose teleportation because I’m impatient and
hate waiting to get places.

Thanks to Kelly for taking the time out of her schedule to chat! I wish her luck in her future ventures and hope she enjoyed the interview as much as I did. I’m still curious as to her favorite villain, but maybe that’s a closely guarded secret for a reason.

Maybe she’s her own favorite villain…

DUN DUN DUN!

Raptr’s new… whatever.

I’m completely serious when I ask – what the hell is with the way that Raptr works now? I am completely befuddled. This makes absolutely no sense to me. There doesn’t seem to be logic there. If there is logic there, I would like to know about it.

Does Raptr get something out of making people download and run a desktop app to get all their achievements run through? Is there some kind of partnership with some company out there? Something hidden within the desktop app itself that counts how many times you use it, thus getting them revenue? Is there some secret benefit to having this desktop app that I’m just not seeing? I would think that having to connect through two different places would make the burden heavier on Raptr, not lighter. And you can’t tell me that people who are using the app immediately dislodged their machines from the web-based account, since I am pretty sure that you can’t do that, just have all the info on the app and not the website. And if it can be done, show me 10 people who have actually done it. That means that the Raptr website and the Raptr app are pulling the information through the aether to display to the world.

I signed up with Raptr to share with people the shit that I’m playing and so that I could see what my friends are playing. I like to compare achievements and some of the people on my Raptr list aren’t on my XBL list, so the only way I have of seeing what they’re up to is Raptr. This may seem a bit stalkery, since I don’t generally play multiplayer games. And maybe it is. I just like to watch, okay?

But now, like half my achievements don’t show up unless I run that stupid app. Or leave it running. Since I don’t do any kind of PC gaming, I see no reason for it to always be on. And I’ve just discovered that there’s not a version of this desktop app for Apple machines.

So if you’re going to force people to use this app in order to see all of their achievements, and so their friends can see all of them, why don’t you have something compatible with MacBooks or whatever? How does that make sense? These people literally cannot have their correct information displayed on their profiles because there is no way for them to do it unless they want to manually input all of the details themselves. And who the fuck wants to do that? Nobody.

Seriously.

Nobody.

I would like a very clear, very descriptive answer to these questions: Why? What is the point? Where is the benefit? (Not just the benefit to US, but also the benefit for RAPTR.)

An Open Letter To Netflix

Dearest Netflix,

What the fuck.

No, seriously. What the fuck is going on with you? Why is it that you don’t seem to fucking function anymore? Not even in the “I hate the way you tried to ‘streamline’ your shit” kind of way, either. But in the “I don’t think your employees are actually doing their jobs” kind of way.

I guess it started a while ago, maybe even before you decided to start charging more for shit. Splitting up the DVD and Instant services was just an asshole move. But things were rocky before then, weren’t they?

You started suggesting things that you thought I might like that were NOTHING like the movies and shows I had just watched or were in my history. Okay, I can see that I suppose. Maybe there’s something in this romance movie I might like even though 70% of what I watch is drama or horror, and 20% of it is comedy. Maybe somebody dies, I don’t know.

From there it went to what you were comparing with what. In your “More Like ___” sections, I started to find more and more things that were NOT alike at all. Not in any way. That got paired up with the fact that you started grouping things wrong. Care Bears in science fiction? That’s not how that works.

Then it was like a trainwreck happening, one that’s still happening. One that I just don’t even try to understand anymore.

– You say there are new episodes in a series when there aren’t any.

– You list things on the New Releases tab when they’ve been out for four or five years. If you just got it, and are just now able to let us see it on Instant, it should go under Just Added.

– There is no longer any way to search by actor if you’re not online doing it. It just tells you that shit doesn’t even exist. I’m sorry, but I’m pretty sure that Marilyn Monroe did a couple of movies and that you’ve got them all stashed somewhere. The fact that I have to search each one by title instead of being able to bring them up by her name? What the hell?

– Your copy is wrong. More often than I would like, I find myself watching something because of the description I read. And hating it. Or, on the flip side, not watching it because it sounds like something I would loathe, and then finding out later that I would have loved it.

– Your employees aren’t paying attention to what they’re doing. Did you know that for a really long time after you added Life to Instant that you had Charlie Crews’ name completely wrong? Hm? You did. Shouldn’t have happened.

– Episodes for shows are actually skipped over during regular play. When I watched Supernatural, it skipped over half of a season when I was hitting “play next episode”. When I watched Ugly Betty, the first few episodes of the first season had the wrong information tied to them, and weren’t in order. A couple might have even been missing, but since I don’t know the series, I couldn’t say. But it was all very confusing.

– Recently Watched randomly just doesn’t show up at all. Doesn’t seem to be any reason for it. I’ll just turn on my 360, fire up Netflix, wait to see my Recently Watched so I can easily pick up where I left off, and … it’s not there. The whole goddamned field is just gone.

Now let’s add into the things I’ve spoken of before, shall we? I’ll just copy and paste it to make things easier for both of us.

“To make it worse, Netflix also changed their dashboard to coincide with the Xbox change. And the Netflix dashboard is so goddamned useless sometimes that I want to throw things. They show you movies you might like to see during the last bits of movie you’re watching (some movies have stuff going on during or after the credits, so I’m not particularly happy that they reduce the screen) but they don’t give you a description of the movie, you have to seek it out after to see what it’s about. There’s no way to rate a movie without playing it. There’s no longer any way to mark that you’re not even interested in the movie anymore, so stuff you really don’t want to keep seeing pop up will, unless you go to the site. For tv shows, you can’t go in and pick an episode unless, again, you start playing the series. So if you haven’t watched in a while and want to see if the “new episodes” they’ve added are really and truly new, you have to start playing, then go to the episodes list. This is completely stupid.”

That’s just something I tacked onto a rant about the 360 dashboard. I think it’s good here, too. Since it’s about you. And the things you’re slacking on. Or forgetting. Or just don’t care about anymore.

The money I shell out to you for this service might not mean much to you. But it means a lot to me. I’m on a really strict budget. Netflix is one of the things that is completely unnecessary to life that I allow myself. A fun little thing that I enjoy having quite a bit.

It might not matter to you that all this shit is broken, but it matters to me, because of this money I hand to you every month. I know it matters to other people as well. Maybe they don’t use Instant as much as I do. Maybe that 10 bucks isn’t a really big deal to them. But it still matters. You know why?

BECAUSE WE PAY YOU FOR THIS SERVICE.

It’s not something that you give us for free. It’s not an add on to DVDs like it used to be. It’s a stand alone service that shouldn’t be as fucked up as it is. It should work. It should be functional. It should be valid. It should be fun, and not frustrating.

I’m not going to threaten to not use your service, because that’s unrealistic at this point. But I am going to ask you to fix your shit, because I’m tired of it, and there’s a good number of people I know who are also tired of it. It should be seen as a courtesy to us, your paying customers.

To sum up?
Get your shit together, Netflix.

-Mila.

House (Not the show. DEAR GOD, NOT THE SHOW)

This is not a writeup about the show House, where a snarky doctor pops Vicodin and solves medical mysteries. If that’s what you’re looking for, turn back now. This has nothing to do with that show, and never will. There are no similarities, except for maybe that some of the actors are male.

There are lots of movies out there about haunted houses and people getting trapped in them. Or people spending the night in one and then getting trapped in them. Or people going to a house because they’re lost/car’s broken/think it’s a nice hotel and then get trapped in it. It’s a familiar story, and it can be said that it’s a little played out. But then, you could really say that about every movie out there, couldn’t you? All stories have already been told, it’s the way in which they’re done that we should be looking at.

And by god.

I think I originally began to watch this because I thought it would be crap, and maybe it would help me fall asleep. Michael Madsen was obviously another pull. He’s okay in my book. But it’s very likely that I didn’t really have much hope, though I swear to you now that I recall no such thoughts happening.

Mostly because this movie just blew all such thoughts right out of my pretty little brain. Then said brain was splattered against the wall.

This is, apparently, also a book. Which I’m going to have to seek out. Because wow. If this is what I get from the movie, I can only imagine what I’ll get from the book (*knock wood* please, don’t jinx me, please don’t let me be wrong, please don’t let it be horrible since I opened my damned fool mouth).

This doesn’t just get you through plain old every day fear, either. This really fucks with you all over the place. It’s like it had a party in your brain with Motley Crew and Guns ‘N’ Roses and didn’t tell you. It also didn’t tell you that it invited some heroin junkies and gave you some acid in your sandwich. Every single angle, this thing is coming at you. I loved it.

I think that more horror should be all encompassing, instead of just focusing on the physical horror or the psychological horror. Combining it can make some very beautiful music. Haunting, melodic music carrying a chainsaw. Oh, I know it can go the other way, too. I’ve seen it happen. I’m not an idiot. But more should at least try. If we do not try, we do not learn.

We can take notes from this movie, and spread them all over the place, and hope that little baby movies with this much intensity are born. Or something.

Prince of Persia (Movie)

I waited a very, very long time to see this movie. I knew how I would feel about it pretty much right away. I love the Prince of Persia franchise. From the very first one that I used to play in elementary school on the school computers, right up until the Two Thrones. I am wildly, madly in love with these games. I remember being pretty excited when I heard that they were going to make a movie, trepedacious, but excited as well. I hoped beyond a hope that this would be the video game movie to break the bad streak of video game movies.

Then I saw the star.

Now, please, for the love of god, do not get me wrong here. I also very much adore Jake Gyllenhaal. I have seen pretty much everything that he has done in his career, and I have found very little to complain about. I think he’s an amazing actor, and has a great range. So it’s nothing at all personal to Jake.

It’s just that… well.

He’s not the Prince.

My excitement didn’t just waver, it sort of completely and utterly deflated and left me with absolutely no wanting to see this movie. That’s a pretty big drop, really. I see now that I should have expected it, given Jake’s appeal and stardom, who was producing the movie, and the fact that there are only a handful of video game movies out there worth their salt (and no, I cannot name them off the top of my head currently, so don’t ask. [but I can say none of them are by Uwe Boll.])

I waited for it to come up on Netflix Streaming until I would watch it. And I wasn’t even really waiting for it. I was just browsing one day, bored, and realized that it was there. I thought “hey, I have a few hours to kill and no desire to think about anything or put much effort into life, why not”.

While I will say that it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be, it was bad. It disappointed me that they had to fuck with the story, they had to give everyone names. There wasn’t enough of the Prince jumping around like a supermonkey. It all sort of fell flat. Especially the ending. Flat. Predictable. Boring. About what I had come to anticipate.

I am glad that I watched it. It’s behind me now. I’ve seen it. I have an informed opinion. I wish Netflix had an added star for “meh”. Between “didn’t like it” and “liked it”. I didn’t turn it off. I didn’t loathe it to the core of it’s being. It was disappointing. I won’t ever watch it again, but I sat through it once. There’s no way to reflect that feeling on the Netflix rating system, and there really should be. I have felt that way about more than one movie.

I know it was exciting for Jake to have a role like this, who wouldn’t say yes to being the Prince? But maybe, just maybe, he should have taken a moment and really just thought it out. Asked himself if he was really right for the part, or if he was a fanboy getting his ultimate dream.

My vote? The latter.

No Country For Old Men

The movie where fucking everybody and their mother dies.

Good VS Evil

Today, kids, we talk about games with morality engines. Good VS Evil. The right thing VS being a complete dick. They’ve become quite popular in games, and since their early days, I’ve been very fond of them. Putting in my hands the option to be a good guy or a bad guy, a sinner or a saint, that’s my kind of thing. I get really excited about games that have this particular kind of structure. The more involved it is, the happier I am.

It’s just that, well, I tend to play instinctively. Which means, and here’s something that might just shock you, 99.9% of the time, my character is the bad guy the first go ’round. Even if it just ends up that the morality engine is so involved that I’ve managed to make choices that place me more along the lines of Chaotic Neutral (yeah, I’m that much of a prick), I’m certainly not the Knight In Shining Armor. I’m no Hero.

It kind of surprised me to learn that most of my friends are. Not even just friends, but people I encounter randomly and discuss games with. We that play our characters wickedly because it comes naturally – and it’s way more fun – we are a very small percentage of the world. Very. Fucking. Small.

Most players will go through their first plays of these games with golden hearts and halos that (somebody like me would shove up their asses given the chance) gleam with all the glory of the righteous. They do the noble things, the brave things, sacrificing themselves and/or their loved ones so that it might save an entire race of beings (barf). When the game is complete, then, and only then, will they traipse through the world again, this time choosing the dark side. The majority of players like this will not find these actions easy. You will see them struggle with themselves, even though they’ve made the decision to be bad. Oh, WHY is it that you people cannot see how glorious it is to walk on the other side of the tracks?

There are even some players, a fairly good fraction of those that are good at heart, who cannot – no matter what – bring themselves to play a bad guy. And some that, beyond that, can’t even be mildly morally questionable.

Okay, I will admit. I usually save the “white hat” run through for the very last. I don’t generally have as much fun being nice. I’m not into all that … self sacrifice and putting the good of the whole before the good of myself. I like being reprehensible. I like how the Dark Side alters the way one looks when one uses it too much (KOTOR). It makes me giddy to see that I’ve screwed somebody else over so that I can have an easier life.

But it’s not impossible for me to play through as a good guy. I do it. I do it to see different endings, to see how differently characters will react when you’re not threatening to burn down their village. I do it to see the changes and the subtleties. It’s still fun, just not as much fun. So why can’t those do-gooders see my side of it? Why can’t they just admit that for a little while, it’s kind of interesting and entertaining to be evil? Hm? I think it’s a little biased, really. I can play how you play, but you don’t even want to try it my way?

This is starting to sound a little … naughty, isn’t it.

Some people are surprised when they discover the nature of my gaming. Most, however, not so much. Once you get to know me, you really can’t ignore the fact that it bleeds over into real life. I am who I am. I make it no secret. I don’t lie about it. I laugh when people get hurt. I enjoy tasteless jokes. So my friends? Really not startled when they see my achievements always pop up with the “you won the game as a complete heartless bastard” first. Not surprised when I talk about the dark endings before I talk about the light ones. Not at all taken aback, but highly amused, when I rage quietly about accidentally getting the Light Side ending in Force Unleashed the first time I played it. ACCIDENTALLY GOT IT. SON.OF.A.BITCH. Yes, I’m still angry. I also harbor resentment and grudges, fyi.

All I want you people to do is try to see things my way. That’s all I ask. Is that so much?

Evil. Try it. You might like it.

Silent Hill: Homecoming (Frustrations)

I cannot even tell you right now how long ago I got this game. I borrowed it first from a friend, then decided that I liked it too much to not own it, and that it was going to take me a fairly long time to play through it, so holding onto his copy wasn’t really nice.

I have this frequent problem. Or I did. I am trying to correct it. It’s a bad habit, and it’s how I ended up with a giant fucking stack of games that were only somewhat played through. I would be in the middle of a game and something would come out that I was more interested in. Now, instead of buying said game and waiting until I finished what I was working on, I would play the new game, leaving the other sad and alone. Crying. On my shelf.

While I did this with Silent Hill: Homecoming, I did manage to pick it up again fairly quickly after I finished whatever wondrous thing had floated my way. I was playing along quite happily, too. Enjoying myself. Yelling at the television when things wouldn’t die. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I have a potty mouth. It’s not just when I write.

Then the most horrible of horribles happened. The one thing that every gamer dreads and curses the sky for.

I got stuck.

I did it to myself. I can wholly admit that. It was all entirely my doing. No question. I went into an area with maybe two bullets, a quarter of my health, a crowbar, an axe, and a flashlight. No medical kits. No health drinks. Just wandered on in, didn’t even think about it. Didn’t consider that I’d just found something pretty significant and maybe, just motherfucking maybe, I should take a moment to gather myself so that I wouldn’t be walking into the massive clusterfuck of assrape that I did. No. Not me. I’ll just go right down this pretty creepy ladder here, and… oh. What’s that? Boss you say? Can’t go back, you say? Fucked myself, did I?

I did.

I literally spent weeks trying to find a way to defeat Scarlett with what I had on me. I can admit that I didn’t even come close. Not even mildly. It’s actually pretty laughable how not close I came to killing her and proceeding with the rest of the game. I would laugh, except it’s my problem. Laughing at yourself often gets you a white padded room and a special jacket. Or maybe that’s just how hard I would be laughing, and with the release of emotion might come some added screaming and…

Let’s move on, shall we?

I have previously talked about my quest to wrap up the above noted games, bringing my backlog into some realm of sanity. Coupled with the vow that once I have picked up a game, I will complete it before starting another. (This vow is hard to keep. Obviously I was not made for vows. Or with much willpower when it comes to video games.) The time for Silent Hill: Homecoming did roll around, and lo, I picked it up and with heavy heart did erase my previous game, thus confirming the restart that was fated to occur.

I’ve been enjoying it… I suppose I should say that I had been, had being a very key word here… I had been enjoying it during the replay. There had been enough time and enough other games in that time that I didn’t remember the story perfectly, I didn’t automatically know how to solve the puzzles. It was a little new despite how far I’d gotten. It was okay. It really was.

Until I started thinking about getting to that boss level with the goddamned giant fucking puppet of massive sphincter bleeding. Then I started to get upset. Not with the game, though, with myself. I kept thinking of all the things I could have done differently to prevent this replay from happening. Replaying because you want to is one thing. Doing it because you’ve shoved your own head up your ass is entirely different. It’s just aggravating.

I had to stop playing again. Now it and GTA 4 are the ones staring at me from my shelves, asking me why they aren’t yet finished. SH:H pleading with puppy dog eyes and little whimpering noises. “Just finish me, I’m a good game, I’ll show ya, you enjoyed me before, just pick me up, we’ll have a good time together, promise”. Bastard.

I’m just so annoyed with myself over things that I’m taking it out on the game. I have to get over it, that’s what it comes down to. I have to, and I will. Somehow. Because I cannot just let it linger. It will drive me crazy (obviously we’re significantly down that street, aren’t we?).

There will be another update on this when I finish the damn game.

Bioshock (finished)

I am proud to say that shortly before I made my massive cross country move, I managed to finish BioShock. Not that it took a lot of effort. As it goes with games that you’ve fallen in love with, the time slips by unnoticed, you’re startled and confused when you see the sun coming around your curtains or peeking in through the little window in the kitchen door. Really, if I’d only had one day to go through this whole game, I would have done it. Even if it meant driving 26 hours with blurry eyes and the inability to think about anything but Little Sisters and if I should Harvest them.

Overall, a very enjoyable game. Very enjoyable. I will be playing this game again, there is no doubt about that.

Despite my small inability to save the Little Sisters, as I spoke about in a previous post, I did not regret the choices I made or the actions I took. I can play it again and try to save them this time, instead of saving one and then harvesting the next three on reflex. Or… I can try and fail. We’ll see.

I was very happy, very very happy, when I got to put on a Big Daddy costume and lumber about. There are certain sounds that I’m attracted to in games, and I can’t quite explain it or even really know when a particular sound is going to grab a hold of me and make me adore it. The sound of the Big Daddy is one of them. So the fact that I not only got to dress like one, but that I ended up sounding like one, well, it really tickled me. If I could have had more time with that, gone back to some old places and just kind of kicked around for a while, killing those fucking weird ass half dead junkie assholes wantonly, I think I would have been a happy girl for at least a few hours without further need of plot or direction.

I don’t know how I escaped knowing about that particular feature of the game. It’s not like (even though it may at times seem so) I have been living in a cave. People around me have been playing and talking about this game since it came out. SINCE IT CAME OUT. Yet, I had no clue. Somehow the spoilers of this joy flew by me like greased pigeons. I was well and truly surprised at the discovery. And joyful. I cannot go on without saying the word joyful some more. Joyful.

I’m excited to play the next game in the series, whenever I can get my hands on it. Which, given how long it took me for this one, might very well be right around the time they’re making the fourth. I would roll my eyes at myself, but then I’d have to get up and go look in a mirror, and I’m just not that into moving at the moment.

There is nothing more that I can really say. Truly. Love. Deep, penetrating love, filled to the brim love, a little glad I’m behind so I don’t have to wait for more love. Play this game. Play it a lot. Never sell it. Not even if you’re going to starve to death if you don’t.

Kameo

Let me tell you a little bit about my history with Kameo. It needs to be said, or I don’t think it’ll make much sense, my feelings about this game. My inability to truly feel much about what’s going on.

Once upon a time, I decided to try GameFly. I thought that it might be a good idea, renting games, getting to see what I might like and what I might hate without paying for a whole game. In theory, it’s brilliant. I suspect that for most people out there, it’s a wonderful tool. For me? Utter failure. Complete waste of time. Even though I didn’t pay anything at all for my two week trial with them, I feel like I wasted a lot of effort.

I tried games that I thought I might like, and when I did like them, I went out and bought them anyway. With my track record of games I like when I buy them VS games I hate, there’s not a lot of risk there. I could see where it would be risky for people who just pick up every game they see and give it a try. GameFly would be great for them. So you can see, effort wasted. Time wasted.

One of the games that I tried with GameFly was Kameo. I did like it pretty goddamned quickly, and it also happened to be at the very end of my trial. So I sent it back, went to the store with the intent to buy it and promptly saw something shinier. I can’t tell you now what it was, just that I had to have it more than I had to have Kameo.

Months later, I was back in the store, and lo – Kameo. Cheaply. So I picked it up. Why not? I’d had fun the first time, though I hadn’t gotten very far at all. I took it home and put it directly into my machine, happy as a clam.

And I shit you not, the next day something came out that would once again eclipse my playing of Kameo. And once again, I cannot tell you what that thing was, just that it was bigger and bolder, and called to me so deeply that I ignored the small cries of this newly bought game as I pried the disk out of the tray and shoved it back into it’s case, then onto the shelf. I should note here that I got exactly as far through the game as I had the first time.

A year later. Kameo again. Again it is usurped.

Forgotten in the stacks of games to play, I finally came upon it this year in my quest to finish every half touched game that I owned. I decided that now was the time to let this game shine. Now was the moment. I placed it where it needed to go and sat my ass down on the couch, ready. I restarted my game, because by this time, I had no memory of what I’d learned – however little – and what had happened in the story.

After about a half hour, I realized that I hadn’t gotten very far at all and caught up to where I recalled leaving off very quickly. Kind of sad, really, given all the efforts I’d gone to previously (*cough*). It also occurred to me that not once in my former tries had I ever gotten further than this into the game. Always, something more had come forward and taken my attentions away. For a few hours, I played with fear and trepidation. What if something fantastic were to fall into my lap as I held the controller in my hand? What if it demanded to be played instantly and once again Kameo was thrown to the wayside?

And then I got over it, because I realized I am my own downfall, and if I didn’t go seeking new shiny games, they would not appear.

It didn’t take me long to get through this game. And I did have fun with it. But I just have this kind of apathy going on about it. I don’t care that I played it, really. I guess I’m glad I did, it’s done with, it’s not on my shelf anymore. It’s not waiting for me and mocking me every time I walk by. But I have no sense of satisfaction. I have no feeling of accomplishment. I didn’t put down my controller and think to myself “Holy shit, that was a good game” and I didn’t by any means desire to play it again. It wasn’t a bad game, it really wasn’t. Plus, I am an avid, nearly insanely so, replayer, thus my lack of desire to go through again was and is surprising and confusing.

I don’t know where this feeling – or lack thereof – comes from. Is it because I just let it sit for too long? Is it that I tried too many times to get into this game and it never happened, thus leaving me with an empty hole where my enjoyment should be? I don’t know. I just don’t.

I have passed this game on, a thing I don’t really do, as I like to keep them around so I can play them again at a later date. But I know that I will not ever pick up Kameo again. I won’t ever give it another go round. PLEASE. SOMEBODY EXPLAIN THIS. My world is upside down (I’ll get over it).

Beautiful Katamari

When I first got this game, I really adored the concept. I loved the story that set up what you had to do. Everything about it suited me just fine. I was excited to play it, and popped it into my machine as soon as I got it home.

I enjoyed it for about 20 minutes. A couple of levels.

After that, it was just tedium for me. I stopped being intrigued by all the things that I could roll up into a ball with me. Then, on top of it, the music started to make me feel like I wanted to put a hole in my head. There were all these little annoyances that I might have been able to handle individually, but all together, were just too much.

I put the game down for three years. I didn’t touch it, and I didn’t look at it. I didn’t even think about it. I’m not against giving something another shot after I’ve had some time away from it to cool down and maybe get out of whatever mind set I might have been in at the time. Look at it freshly, you know? Under different mental circumstances.

So while I was going through all of my partially played games, I noticed that it was still there, and decided to add it to the end of that pile. I figured by the time I got through all the other games, I would be ready for it again. I could give it that second change. Let it show me that I had been wrong, or just in a bad place for it the last go around.

It’s time finally arrived. I popped it into my Xbox and sat down to play.

I discovered that I felt the exact same way.

I went ahead and did a couple more levels, just to be extra sure. But nothing changed for me. I wanted to like this game, I wanted to like it so very much. But I just didn’t. I couldn’t even get halfway through it. There was no way to force myself. I ended up giving it to a friend who I knew would appreciate it more than I would, and she did. She played through it pretty quickly, actually. I’m glad that somebody got joy and enjoyment out of it, because I couldn’t.

There haven’t been any sort of large number of games that I have started and were unable to finish because of my dislike. In fact, the only two I can really think of are this one and Watchmen: The End is Nigh. Oh, and don’t get me wrong. My apathy toward Katamari is nothing close to my loathing of Watchmen: The End Is Nigh. I am of a general indifference toward Beautiful Katamari. I hated Watchmen deep into the core of me. There was nothing redeeming about that game, and I think if anybody handed it to me, I’d light it on fire.

It does actually make me a little bit sad that I couldn’t get into Katamari. I know that a lot of people had fun with it. It makes me wonder why I couldn’t manage to have fun with it.

Oh well. We can’t win them all, can we?

But considering my point of view compared to all the others out there, I can’t honestly say that anybody should or should not pick this one up. I feel as if I’m in the minority here, thus making me an unreliable source.

The Force Unleashed II

I know a lot of people who have played this game and found it to be disappointing. I have heard plenty of complaints about the story and the gameplay, that they were haphazard the both of them.

I, however, very much enjoyed playing the Secret Apprentice again. I thought the story made sense, and I thought that it was very interestingly played out. I didn’t have any issues at all with the game itself.

Of course, there may be some that argue that this is due to my overwhelming love for Star Wars. But I can assure you, there are things within the Star Wars universe that I don’t enjoy. Like the first two prequel movies. And as a gamer, I wouldn’t say that I enjoyed a game if I only liked the concept of it. I play video games because I think they’re fun. If a game is not fun, I put it down. I have done this a couple of times, though for the most part I’ve been pretty good at picking stuff that I enjoy very much.

So yes, I genuinely enjoyed having Starkiller brought back, and I think that they made it so it could happen again. Both endings for Force Unleashed II open things up to another game. Which was something I was concerned about going in, since Force Unleashed didn’t exactly leave room for that. I didn’t know how they were going to pull off explaining how a second game could happen. But I’m satisfied with what they did.

I’m also happy with the mild changes in control of force powers and leveling them up.

On top of really loving this game, the fact that it’s Star Wars and the game itself, I also gained an added bonus for it while playing. I broached 20,000 gamer points with it.

Dante’s Inferno

Have you ever been really bad at a game you really loved? I haven’t. Well, not until Dante’s Inferno. And that sounds really arrogant, but it’s true. When I find a game that I adore, it’s like I already know what to do. My brain and my hands communicate perfectly, and everything comes extremely naturally.

Again, that was until Dante’s Inferno.

I picked this game up as soon as I could. The moment that it started to be talked about, I was interested. I am a huge fan of the Divine Comedy and have had multiple copies of it over my life. Currently I have an older set in a three book arrangement, and a giant copy complete with the woodcuttings. You can imagine that I was pretty excited to hear that they were going to make a game from this.

I knew, of course, that they wouldn’t be following the story exactly. How could they? And that things would be left out, other things would be added in that weren’t there originally. I made peace with these facts long before the game was released. The point was, it was going to be Dante’s Inferno. That’s all it needed to be, for me.

When I got the game, I was more than pleased with what I was seeing. I had no complaints to make, and happily worked my way through levels, deciding (of course) to damn everything as much as possible on the way.

The only problem was – I kept dying.

There’s something to be said for getting used to a game and dying a couple of times in the very beginning, but that wasn’t what was happening here. This was an extraordinary amount of dying. This was me kicking the bucket every few minutes. This was the sort of dying that makes you feel really bad about yourself as a gamer. It was getting to the point that I was only able to get through one level each time I played before I found myself extremely frustrated and having to quit. This is not the kind of thing you want happening in a game you adore. And despite my inability to stay alive, I was still in love.

It got to the point that I decided I was going to have to go for the easiest difficultly level. I just couldn’t do it anymore. So I went to the options and lo…

I have it set on the hardest. The hardest is called “Hellish”. Yeah. No kidding. It appears that Dante’s Inferno doesn’t work the way that other games do, with an “easy” “medium” and “hard”, but rather “Normal” (medium) “hard” (Holy crap) and “What the fuck” (dear god, save me). When I saw it, I thought that “Classic” was what they were calling “Easy”, so I skipped to “Zealot” which I thought was “medium”, and accidentally went down too far on the list, putting myself on “Hellish”.

You see, I do all my games on Medium. I’m arrogant, I’m not cocky. I know my level of gaming, and I know what I’m comfortable with. I like a challenge, but I don’t like to be constantly frustrated. Rarely will I go above Medium, and really, those times, it has to do more with getting an achievement. Like if you beat a boss on Hard and don’t have to do the whole game on Hard in order to get it.

So I’m pretty proud of the fact that I got through so much of the game on Hellish, but I was really happy when I knocked myself back down to Classic and stopped dying all the time. The game became fun, and my love grew. I could actually get through entire sections without a single death.

I enjoyed the game enough to play it through twice back to back, and loved all the interactions with Virgil (there could have been more). I loved the way that they made the circles look, there was definitely a feel of what kind of people suffered within them. There was no sugarcoating of what was going on, and the damned echoed (alright, and amplified) the kind of brutality that Dante wrote about. In the Divine Comedy, he certainly doesn’t give mercy to the souls he speaks about, and it was nice that the game didn’t either.

Games waiting for me

Games that are partly played:

Viva Pinata (actually, mostly played)
Viva Pinata Trouble in Paradise (I want to play this, but they consume me so, I decided to wait until I got through the others)
Grand Theft Auto IV
Silent Hill: Homecoming (this is getting it’s own post)
Mortal Kombat VS DCU
SoulCalibur
Viva Pinata: Party Animals (mostly done)

Games that are completely untouched:

Red Dead Redemption
Bayonetta
Mafia II
Prototype
Mass Effect 2
Alan Wake
Wet
Superman Returns
Mirror’s Edge
Ghostbusters
Lego Indiana Jones the original adventures
Eat Lead
Crackdown
Assassin’s Creed
Damnation
N3 Ninety-Nine Nights
The Darkness
Prey

Games I know I can’t play on my non-HD tv so they are sitting on my shelf:
Dead Rising
Dragon Age II

Games I want as soon as possible:
Arkham City
Skyrim
Hunted: The Demon’s Forge
Monopoly Streets
Lego Pirates of the Caribbean
L.A. Noir
BioShock II
Borderlands
Fallout 3
DOA 4
Marvel Ultimate Alliance
Dead Space
Fallout: New Vegas

Upcoming Posts Post

This is just the keyword list that I wrote down to remind me what I need to write about.

Beautiful Katamari
Dante’s Inferno
Good VS Evil
Knight and Day
Kameo
Force Unleashed II
Rango
GI Joe
Prince of Persia
All the games I have left to play
Silent Hill: Homecoming
the physics of explosions in movies
all the guy ritchie
Goth (movie)
Achievements for playing online.
Jes Gistang
All things Vader

They probably won’t appear in this exact order.

The Tudors (Completed)

Netflix got the rest of the Tudors for streaming, and I decided I wanted to watch it. The sad thing here is that I didn’t remember at all that I’d already seen the first two seasons. I completely blanked all of it.

Then when I started to watch, all the episodes of those seasons were at 99% watched. I was a little confused. Even sadder is the fact that I made a whole post about how much I loved the goddamned show.

I have no idea how I managed to forget it completely. I just don’t. Luckily, all it took was rewatching the final episode of season two and it all came back to me. It was like I was an amnesia victim who had triggered the release of information to bring me up to speed on my own life.

Anyway. I did enjoy the rest of it as much as I loved the first two seasons. I found myself more infatuated with certain characters than I was previously, and still quite envious of the way the women dressed. I don’t care what anybody says, if I can ever afford it, I’m going to have a whole wardrobe made in that style, and then I’m going to wear the dresses all the time. All. The. Time. Even to the grocery.

I was pleased that Jonathan Rhys Meyers held up his end of things perfectly to the end. I was happy to see some characters die. And I was only mildly perturbed at the actress choice for the last wife. I just don’t like her as an actress, though.

There are very few shows that have a definite ending, and it’s kind of nice to have everything all wrapped up neatly. Most shows get cancelled before they have a chance to decide how the story should flow, and have to rush to get it to a point where people won’t have to wonder. Of course, sometimes shows just get cut off and you don’t get anything even close to an ending. Not that I want all my shows to have a pre-imagined end point.

It’s rare for me to find a show that does end and I’ve liked it all the way through. Arrested Development is one, and I hold all shows to that kind of standard. The Tudors Arrested Development standard, I think I’ll call it from now on. The Arrested Tudors Development standard… Arrested Development Tudors standard…

Anyway. Start to end, I adored the Tudors. Very rich in imagery, very factual (though I’m sure some things were fudged, but without Henry the VIII standing there telling you the story, it’s hard to know every single tiny detail).

Backlog

I have not only a backlog of posts to make here, they kind of got caught in the net of trying to move things over and not wanting to post anything either place due to how much trouble we were having getting it all figured out.

But I also have an fairly enormous backlog of games that I haven’t played. I have 20 games that I have not touched at all, and 7 games that have been diddled with a little bit. 2 of these games I actually can’t play right now, because my television set is not HD, and attempting to play said games on a normal tv is akin to pounding your head with a hammer while squeezing lemon juice into your eyes.

I’ll make an upcoming posts post, so you all can keep me on track, and then for the fun of it, I’ll make a list of the games I’ve got going on along with the ones that I’m anxiously waiting for and wanting.

Why not torture myself for your amusement? Isn’t that what this is all for?

BioShock (oops)

It’s been a while since anybody played BioShock for the first time, I know. I’m behind in some areas of gaming like nobody’s business. I have a stack of games (that’s going to be it’s own post) that I have yet to touch and some of them are ancient in the terms of game life.

BioShock is one of them, and I’ve been finally playing it. Thanks to a friend, I managed to finally find it at a price that I could afford and when I actually had money. (I’ve been having this issue where every time I found this game for sale, it was more than I was willing to pay, or I didn’t have money to purchase it.) And I am enjoying it. Now, I did get to play a teeny bit a long time ago, but I didn’t get very far at all. Like most games I only get to play a little of, I’ve been itching to finish it off since.

My oops comes in to play with the Little Sisters. I really, really intended to save them all, no matter the personal cost. I did. I wanted to see what the special prize was at the end for saving all of them. I really liked the doctor who was encouraging me to save them, and wanted to be on her good side.

I saved one.

Then came the next one. Accidentally or instinctively, I harvested her. Same goes for the one after that. I gave it one more try, and harvest I did. Which, at that point, I realized was what was going to happen for the rest of the game. No need to try to save them all now, was there? I’d already ruined it with the doc.

I think it really goes to show that I’m brutal by nature. Evil to the core of me. I just cannot for the life of me be good without a whole hell of a lot of effort. And sometimes, it’s just not worth that effort.

At least in a first playthrough.

Outpost Kaloki X (Finished)

I actually finished this game not long after I made the post about finally buying it. I guess I should have written this up then, but I didn’t even think about it.

As I said previously, I first played this game when I was a game tester. I would fiddle around with it when I was on breaks and when there was nothing else for me to do. I loved it then. The second time I played it, I was sharing an Xbox, and when I finally got my own, the game wouldn’t transfer.

Well, this time I was finally successful in playing through the whole thing. Maybe not the whole thing, because I didn’t know about all the extra stuff that they’d added since the last time I’d gotten a chance to play. The downloadable content is crazy. There are all sorts of challenge maps to do now. I haven’t even started on those.

But the core game, the thing that I’d been aiming for, was everything I remembered. It held my attention through the entire thing, and even managed to make me angry a couple of times. There’s nothing like trying to build a space station with a specific goal in mind when you’ve got aliens bombing you and a timer ticking away to raise the ire.

I’m glad that I finally made the purchase and that I finally got to play through the game all the way. I’m also glad that I didn’t have previous save games to start from, because I would have been lost pretty quickly. I had forgotten what every button did by the time I started it all back up again.

Next up: Trying out those other maps. They seem pretty interesting.