Slave houses at the Laura Plantation in Louisiana

I’ve been travelling across the South recently and wanted to read a book that would suit both my weird tastes and reflect some of the history of America. Being a fan of Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower I checked out her most well known books, Kindred.

In 1976, Dana, an emerging African-American writer is married to Kevin, also a novelist. While they are moving into their new apartment, Dana is overcome by dizziness and is transported through time and space to 1800′s Maryland, a state of slaves and masters. She is pulled between the past and the future multiple times, each in longer intervals. Each trip is tied to her ancestor Rufus, a young white boy who grows up over the space of the novel. Dana believes she is sent to protect her ancestor from dying before producing the daughter that would become her great-great grandmother.

I was the worst possible guardian for him – a black to watch over him in a society that considered blacks subhuman, a woman to watch over him in a society that considered women perennial children.

When Dana and Kevin are first pulled into Maryland, they assume the roles of slave and master. But as Butler progresses the story, Dana comments that she is no longer acting, she has taken on the role of the slave. Butler compares the role of fear in developing subservient behaviour to that of the Nazis in World War II.

Like the Nazis, ante bellum whites had known quite a bit about torture – quite a bit more than I ever wanted to learn.

Dana is eventually faced by a choice: to become fully indentured as a slave and protect the lives of many or protect herself and risk the life of the slaves on the plantation. Both a feminist and African-American novel, the choice she eventually makes demonstrates the importance of protecting her individual identity when the society of the time dehumanizes her.

What is most interesting about the book is Butler’s exploration of whether or not you can create a slave, taking a strong woman of the 70s and displacing her into history without even an explanation for her travels. While the lack of explanation for her time travel is disconcerting, the book breaks down how easily a person can be indentured to hard work by torture. The torture of the pre-war South is vividly described; Dana suffers not only the backbreaking work in the fields and home but whippings, beatings and physical abuse. What is a matter of years for the plantation owners is only hours and days for Dana; her wounds are not allowed to heal before she is transported again.

Octavia Butler at a book signing (Wikimedia commons)

Dana’s urge to help her ancestors turns when she realises that Rufus is torn between his love for a black woman and his role of plantation owner. In Rufus’ character we find a dichotomy of the desire to change but the impossibility of adopting 70s racial values in a world where whipping blacks is considered fair. The relationship between Dana and Rufus changes as the boy grows into a young man; he plays power games in a bid to gain control over someone who, despite color and gender, is more educated and intelligent than he is.

I never realized how easily people could be trained to accept slavery.

Kindred is an important story; Octavia Butler is an important novelist. While she is most well known for her science fiction, having won both Hugo and Nebula awards, Kindred is a “grim fantasy” and one of only two novels she wrote about the past. As I walked around the plantations in Louisiana, I could not help but imagine Dana and the characters of Kindred wandering the grounds, sleeping on the floor of dirt ridden cabins, fighting illness and avoiding the punishment of the slave drivers. While the story is fantastic in nature, it illustrates the nature of slavery and the way power can be used to indoctrinate someone into subservience.

It’s obvious that the developers at Bethesda have drawn on Mad Max, in both the detail of the world and the relentless storylines of survival. But having played Fallout: New Vegas on hardcore mode, I was a little disappointed that it wasn’t harder. When I tell my friends I played hardcore, I want it to be an actual achievement, rather than eating a packet of Yum Yum Devilled Eggs every 20 minutes.

More Mad Max in Fallout? Heck yes.

I think in the next game they’ll need to amp up the hardcore mode. To be honest, the hardcore mode in New Vegas should be standard. After all, it’s about survival. To play it without a thought for food, water and sleep seems a little easy.

Without further ado, here are some things I think would really improve Fallout’s hardcore mode.

Limited Ammo
One of the things that really struck me about Mad Max was the way his shotgun shells were treated with reverence. They were a limited supply, so every shot counted. Otherwise he’d simply use a knife or his hands. Similarly with The Road, where the father only had one bullet.  Hardcore would be much better if it were primarily unarmed or melee combat with the occasional sawn off shotgun. I love blasting green piles of goo with an energy weapon as much as the next girl, but realistically…

Formulating more weapons out of the wasteland
Rather than finding weapons everywhere (I mean I know the US is a bit gun crazy, but post-apocalypse America has a gun on every corner!), why not fashion weapons out of wilderness materials? Wood, metals and poisons could all be used to make weapons. After all, if everything’s been nuked, where would you get a weapon from?

No fast travel
This is one the ultra-hardcore players always talk about, some going so far to even play the game without fast travelling. It would be the single most difficult aspect of Fallout, to manage quests efficiently without being able to travel using the map. One of the parts I’ve always enjoyed about the games is simply exploring the world and clearing out faction dens. There just wasn’t enough of this in New Vegas (hardcore or not).

Realistic demands on sleep
I slept a matter of hours playing hardcore mode. Really? Anyone who has ever done survival (even Bear Gryllis) knows the importance of sleep. One hour of sleep is not going to keep you going for ten days. And why can’t you sleep anywhere you like? If I were off exploring the wilderness I could just camp up next to a radioactive swamp. Why not?

More reliance on hunting for food
By the end of Fallout: New Vegas, EDE was practically falling over with the amount of food he was storing for me. Why not live from day to day, making it more desperate to find food? Why not let the food spoil after a couple of days? Not knowing where your next meal will come from would be hardcore.

No need to find workstations or campfires
If I was a survival expert, don’t you think I could make a fire in the desert with only my bare hands and a flint? I wouldn’t need to go visit the Crimson Caravan every time I wanted to bake a squirrel on a stick. Why not be able to camp in the desert and create a fire there?

Less useless locations
How many locations in Fallout NV were really necessary? I tracked all over that map just to get those stupid blue bottletops, but how many places were there that didn’t even have anything except some crappy ammo?

And in a general Fallout note, the game could really do with some animated cut scenes instead of all the talking heads. Take a leaf out of the Red Dead Redemption book. I love the franchise but the PS3 is capable of better things. And please, fix the local maps. I can’t navigate two floors when they’re on the same screen.

Have you played Fallout: New Vegas on hardcore mode? What did you think? What could improve the game?

I can’t say it any better than that. But here I go anyway.

The Parasol Protectorate is a series of five novels, currently up to number three in publication. The first three are Soulless, Changeless and Heartless, and all three centre around Alexia Tarabotti, parasol wielder, tea drinker and determined spinster. Set in an alternate Victorian London, where Vampires and Werewolves live in uneasy truce with humans, Ms Tarabotti is the antidote to both species, being a woman without a soul and able to transform both species to their mortal state. Ms Tarabotti is accompanied in her adventures by Miss Ivy Hisselpenny, known for her extraordinarily bad taste in hats, and Lord Akeldema, her gay best-friend with fangs.

The books have been compared to both Wodehouse and Jane Austen, with a touch of modern sensibility thrown in for good measure. What they are is a lot of fun. I was hooked from page one, where Ms Tarabotti blatantly attacks a vampire with her parasol, simply because he is being rude enough to try and eat her. Her love/hate relationship with Conall Maccon, scruffy werewolf and Lord, is replete with the witty banter of a 1940s screwball comedy. As someone who is well versed in Victorian literature, Carriger does an excellent job of interweaving classic London with supernatural themes.

Yes, there is a little bit of romance, a small bit of “nookie” (in Gail’s terms), but not enough to put anyone off the book. In fact, the later books are less romance driven and more about discovering the truth about Ms Tarabotti’s supernatural state. In true steampunk style there is a smattering of dirigibles, ocular implements and steam driven machines.

What I like very much about these books is that I don’t need to work too hard as a reader; the pace is cracking and the dialogue sharp. I enjoy reading these after a hard day at work, when I need to escape to another place and time.

If you’d like to know more, there is an extensive FAQ on her website, where she answers questions about influence, the plots, the characters and anything in between. The books can generally be found in the fantasy/science fiction section of the bookstore. There’s an ample supply at Galaxy in Sydney, alternatively you can buy them from my favourite online bookstore Better World Books.

Publisher: Midnight Express Books 2009

213 pages.  $11.95

Reviewer: Christopher Zoukis

At the present juncture, vampire novels are in vogue.  The guy who started the whole thing was Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula.  Hollywood got a hold of the book and went crazy, producing many different movie versions of Dracula, from Bela Lugosi’s vampy depiction to Gary Oldman’s creepy, love-starved bloodsucker.

Next up was Anne Rice, who wrote any number of bestselling vampire tales.  Hollywood, forever eager to jump on the bandwagon, came on board once more.  They hired Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, and Kirsten Dunst to make the movie go.  And it was a hit.

Then along came Stephanie Myers, with her sensual, angst-ridden interpretation of the undead.  Bestseller-city followed by mega-movie hits.

All that to say this.  Vampires are hot stuff.

Larry Huddleston has written a vampire novel for Young Adults.  It’s called Sacred Curse, and it’s the tale of Peter Reborne, who is a vampire of the old-school type, which is to say he has no redeeming qualities.  The nastiest kind of vampire, unmerciful, vicious, lustful, and loving every minute of it.

The good guy in Sacred Curse is Michael Downs, who is granted eternal life by God because he “found favor in” God’s eyes.  He found favor by being merciful.

As the story opens, Lisa Havenridge sets off on an ocean voyage from London to North Carolina, where she is to bury the earthly remains of her uncle, Count Peter Reborne, who, of course, is anything but dead.

All hell breaks loose on the voyage, as Reborne sucks – literally – the life out of the crew.  In the end, Lisa finds herself floating on a wooden spar in the middle of the ocean.  And that’s where the story takes off.  The battle between Good and Evil begins.  Michael Downs versus Peter Reborne.

Huddleston’s a talented writer.  He knows how to build tension, and his dialogue and characterizations are deft.  Yet something is missing.  The story doesn’t grip the reader.  It doesn’t pull the reader in and make him/her participate emotionally.  At first, the reviewer couldn’t figure out what the problem was.  Then, after giving it some thought, the reviewer decided it was the genre.  Huddleston is simply not an accomplished interpreter of horror.  He can’t communicate terror on the written page.

There’s no sense of dread or mysterious malignancy in Sacred Curse.  Evil isn’t evil enough and good isn’t good enough.  The spiritual element innate in the battle of Good and Evil isn’t present.  Which means the battle takes place on a purely physical level.  Which, in turn, means the conflict is interesting, but only in a detached kind of way.

In other words, Sacred Curse is a good book, worth reading.  But it’s not as good as Huddleston’s other efforts, especially Just Beyond the Curve, which has nothing to do with vampires or curses.  Huddleston is a powerful writer when he’s dealing with real people.  However, when it comes to the supernatural – vampires, angels, curses, eternal life, eternal punishment – he tantalizes the reader yet cannot fulfill what he promises.

The end result is non-horrific horror.

Lately I decided to read Ursula K Le Guin’s Earthsea series, consisting of A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore and Tehanu. I’d tried to read the books while a young teenager, but never really got into them. Now as an adult, I’m really enjoying the style of writing. I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes these books special. Certainly, they’re very well written and the world is fascinating (Earthsea is a series of islands in an archipelago).

Ursula Le Guin

To me, the Earthsea books are Le Guin’s most human novels. They’re about the frailty of power and the nature of strength. Her hero, Sparrowhawk, is not a characture of so many heroes we’ve seen before, but a simple goatherder made archmage, a man whose humility and restraint make for a compelling story. There are no enormous battles between hoards of orcs and human warriors. Sparrowhawk’s battles are fought as much within the mind as without.

In the first novel A Wizard of Earthsea, Sparrowhawk is a young wizard must learn to deal with the evil he has brought into the world. A far cry from many of the stories where wizards must fight unspeakable evil, he is forced to reflect on himself and the consequences of his actions. The resolution is impeccable and very moving, in that the plot restraint shown by Le Guin compliments the world she creates. It feels like a desaturated world, one not filled with bright cities and pomp and circumstance, but dirty, real places, full of sadness and longing. The wizards in her books are practical – they make winds for the seas, heal pigs from illness and dye cloth in vivid colours.

My favourite so far is The Farthest Shore. Le Guin weaves in the importance of words into her magic, in that to create magic, one must know the true name of things in the old language. When the words begin to disappear, so magic is forgotten and the world thrown into chaos. It reminded me of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude, when the town becomes infected with insomnia. He writes:

Thus they went on living in a reality that was slipping away, momentarily captured by words, but which would escape irremediably when they forgot the values of the written letters.

This kind of higher thinking perpetuates the Earthsea novels. Sparrowhawk often reflects on his own ability to do justice in the world without creating injustice. It sets the books apart from many of her counterparts, not being afraid to think deeply or be limited by the expectations of the genre.

She writes:

When a rock is lifted the earth is lighter, and the hand that bears it heavier. When it is thrown the circuits of the stars respond, and where it strikes or falls the universe is changed. On every act the balance of the whole depends.

For any writers aiming to write fantasy, the Earthsea books are a must read. I wish there were more writers of humble fantasy, of kind and moving stories. The greatest fantasy novels have been about humble men and creatures, I think of the Lord of the Rings; while there are great battles and enemies, the saving of the world comes down to four small creatures called hobbits, with little power (and some would say common sense) between them. It makes for more interesting reading when the hero diverges from a reader’s expectations, and eventually goes beyond them.

The Earthsea archipelago

Robin Hood – A young Orson Scott Card. The author of Ender’s Game has got the same greying stubble and short cropped hair. Just give him some tights and a bow.

Wipe that silly grin off your face, Orson Scott Card! You're meant to be saving England.

Maid Marion – The ever lovely Margaret Atwood, who has that same air as a medieval Cate Blanchett. And the same kind of floaty brown hair. And plus, she’s old enough now to act in a remake of Robin and Marian.

Maid Marion: A Handmaid's Tale

King Richard – Alan Moore. He’s got the biggest beard factor out of all the sci-fi/fantasy crowd plus the scary eyes. And you can’t be a king if you ain’t got those rings.

Bling King: Alan Moore would make a great King Richard

Prince John – Hands down Audous Huxley, with notable mention for Anthony Burgess. Note the similar menacing stares and terrifying black hair.

The author of the Magna Carta, the Brave New World of it's age.

Queen Elianor of Aquitaine – A no brainer. Ursula K. Le Guin for the distinguished queen mother.

Where's my wimple?

William Marshal – Philip K. Dick. Note the identical grey streak through the beard.

They don't have Nice n' Easy in the middle ages

Godfrey – Perhaps the creepiest resemblance of all is how actor Mark Strong looks almost identical to China Mieville. Plus if there’s ever a bad boy of fantasy, I’d vote for Mr M.

(Ooh, and my copy of Kraken has just arrived…)

Take the L out of bald and you've got bad.

Have you ever seen a movie and thought “That guy looks exactly like…?” Tell me what you think here.

Jeff Vandermeer and his wife Anne have released The Kosher Guide to Imaginary Animals. They have a special edition for sale here. I haven’t read the book yet, but it sounds intriguing. I’ve read a couple of Jeff Vandermeer’s stories and they’re great, unfortunately there seems to be a real dearth of his books in Australia.

Now to the China Miéville front, and a big fat front that is. He’s just won the Arthur C. Clarke award for The City and the City, which I wrote a review of when it came out here. It makes him the only person to win it three times (damn over-achievers!). Personally, not his best book, but people seem to like it. He’s also finally got a website over at tumblr, but in true Miéville style it is full of slightly incomprehensible yet endearing quotes about socialism and giant squid.

Neil Gaiman is starting a world wide book club, funnily enough on the world wide web of twitter. He’s trying to get thousands of people reading the same book at the same time. They’ll be reading the classic American Gods, one of my Gaiman favourites.

More comic booky, but still weird enough, Mike Mignola is selling prints and original artwork on his website. Yay original Hellboy artwork! So sad that I can’t afford it.

And finally Ben Templesmith is releasing a book on sexy octopus women, called Squidgirls. While I don’t endorse the content, what could make a weird fiction fanboy’s life more complete than a book with naked kraken ladies?

The original game of choice: Blade Runner

Dubbed as an ‘interactive drama’, Heavy Rain follows four people and their pursuit of the Origami Killer, a desperate father, an insomniac woman, a FBI agent and a private eye. Each pathway has its own feel within the story, for example, the trials of the father are most reminiscent of Saw, while the private eye’s storyline has echoes of a Raymond Chandler novel. (Even the FBI agent looks a little bit like Mulder!) The whole game has the look and feel of Se7en, David Fincher’s masterpiece set in a city where the rain never ends. While this conglomerate of references could have turned into a hack job of old stories, the scriptwriting is excellent and the interactivity creates a whole new way of storytelling.

Yep, that's a sleazy guy. Couldn't you just tell from the zebra jacket?

How does this work, you ask? When you approach an object or a choice, pictures of your options show up on screen and by pressing certain combinations you can react in different ways. It could be as simple as moving the joystick to open a cupboard. You’ll also have to learn to shower yourself, feed a baby and even kiss… Slightly creepy. But there are much better things to do with your moves later on in the game, like beating people up and interrogating sleazy guys.

The game feels like a major development from the point and click adventure. You explore a location, find clues, solve a problem and then move on. But it is done in such an innovative way that it will never feel like pushing those old buttons “Talk to” and “Pick up”. The gameplay is completely original and a clear reason why Heavy Rain will be a major contender for game of the year.

Your choices determine the outcome of the game, but with so many possibilities everyone will have a different experience. If one of your characters dies, they are permanently dead and the story continues without them. The autosave function sees that there are no second chances. The first play through I resolved to go with my gut feelings and not try to reset in order to replay. I’ve never played a game where I’ve been so on edge about my joystick control. One false move could mean the end for a character, and there are some pretty horrific ways to die in this game! I had to ask myself “What would I do?” in this situation, which at times is harrowing and other times morally confronting.

Heavy Rain’s major contribution to video games comes in the way it deals with moral responsibility. It asks the question “How far would you go to save someone you love?” and is one of the few games that challenges a player’s sense of morality through the ability to chose, something that is impossible in film or literature. In a medium that often allows players to live out their fantasies without repercussion, Heavy Rain confronts players with the consequences of their actions. In that way it is entirely unique – where other games have used violence to justify their exploration of morality, Heavy Rain does the opposite, to the point where you may need to fail events to succeed in getting the best outcome. Part of the entertainment of the game is to see where another choice may have made a difference, giving the game a fantastic replay value.

The private investigator, Scott Shelby was my favorite storyline.

You can win trophies depending on the outcomes of certain scenarios. They can be as simple as the ‘Ludwig Van’, for playing the piano with no wrong notes, or as complex as an award for killing or not killing someone. I found myself wanting to unlock the trophies more and more, one of the few games I’ve actually wanted to fully complete (unlike Final Fantasy XIII – as if I am going to grind my way through those dumb trophies and screensavers). Completing certain chapters also unlocks interesting bonuses, again, something worthwhile like the stunning concept designs. This is a game that you will want to look at the extras – it’s a fascinating work of art, not just a video game.

It goes without saying that the graphics are excellent. I felt the lighting of the crime scenes was spot on, particularly the rotating beams of the police cars reflecting off the water in the first crime scene. There is a high level of detail in the cinematography; cut scenes use film techniques like steadycam and are carefully framed. Even many of the interactive parts are completely animated. The main characters are well done, although some of the supporting female characters (particularly Lauren the friendly prostitute) have an odd look about them. The sets and locations are well thought out, although I had a little bit of difficulty navigating in certain situations (Butterfly Trial anyone?).

Which leads into my one major frustration with the game. Walking. You have to use the left joystick and press R2 at the same time to move around. Why press R2? Why not just use the left joystick? It felt completely redundant to have to press two buttons to walk around a crime scene. And some of the combination moves will leave you feeling like playing twister on your controller.

Isn't there something familiar about this FBI agent?

There are also a few points where I could see better alternatives that weren’t offered in the game. In the Butterfly Trial (sorry, it’s the one that totally peed me off!), why wouldn’t Ethan brush away the glass? Or the FBI agent’s fancy glasses… how realistic is that? Or the way he dictates into his glasses the whole time like Kyle MacLauchlan in Twin Peaks! There are a few unbelievable situations like this but on the whole, it’s incredibly realistic.

Heavy Rain is a magnificent game. Despite the few misses, it has more than enough hits to land a power punch in storytelling. It is a genre changer and brings new life to the interactive story. I have never played a game that gave me so many chills or adrenaline rushes, yet has a story worthy of the top crime writers of our day. Play Heavy Rain and don’t look up the spoilers. It’s one of the best choices you’ll make.

The FFXIII story revolves around two things – the Fal’cie and the L’cie, although I’m not sure what the difference is between the two, nor exactly what they are. Basically, infected people are getting “deported” which is a fancy word for “taken away to die”.  One such person is the pink haired Lightning, a welcome break to Final Fantasy’s regular brooding male protagonists.

Ms Lightning, possibly a descendant of Cloud Strife?

Of course, Lightning doesn’t want to die, and as we find out, she’s an ex-soldier. Which is the first of many similarities between Ms Lightning and Cloud Strife. The second is their jpop hair.

The game begins in a world highly reminiscent of FFVII’s Migar, green lights, big machines and lots of train tracks. As always, the graphics are impressive, stunning on a HD TV. The cut scenes and action are closer than ever in quality, seamlessly blending film style graphics into the battle sequences. Final Fantasy has always been glorious to look at and XIII is no exception.

Hasn't he heard of Pantene? No need to hide bad hair days under a bandanna!

As the story progresses, you join Snow and a group of rebels fighting for freedom (I just want to hear one of the soldiers yell “Rebel scum!”). Snow’s the guy with the bandanna and greasy blonde hair, who talks much differently to what I expected; I thought that he would be more of a charming rogue character, instead he’s an uber-noble freedom fighter that talks way too much. Mr Greasy promotes his group NOVA suspiciously like FFVII’s AVALANCHE. Yet another ‘This worked before so let’s do it again moment’.

Then comes mom.

Now, when Square Enix did their budget, visual effects was a big one, then programming, maybe sound etc. Script revisions were on the bottom of that list, towards the basement, maybe even lower, heading towards hell. The FF crew obviously have never animated a HD ‘mom’ before and probably could have given her a few more wrinkles, ‘cause tired ol’ mom looks like a 16 year old with grey hair. Given that it’s pretty hard to raise children in this time of war, she’s looking as fine as an ad for Chanel. So, Snow goes up to a group of scared victims and says something like “Who wants to fight for freedom, blah, blah, blah.”

And Mom steps up. Snow asks “You sure?” And here comes the most awkward line in the history of video gaming.

“Moms are tough.”

It has all the delivery of a young Anakin Skywalker asking Padme “Are you an angel?” It made me laugh out loud and cringe with embarrassment… But searching on the internet has made it apparent that at least one person cried at this moment… Ahem. Of course, after she’s uttered these words we know she’s destined for the clichéd dead mom, orphan child plot basket.

Sigh.

The evolution of Final Fantasy perkiness: From left Vanille, Penelo, Rikku and Selphie

As for the other characters, well there’s your typical perky Rikku/Penelo/Selphie clone called Vanille, played by Australian Georgia Van Cuylenburg. And she bugs me. It’s not the accent (actually I rather like hearing an Australian in a video game). Nor is it the acting. It’s the callous way she’s so damn perky in a war zone, particularly towards said orphan whose mom just died. To paraphrase: “Oh your mom just died so sorry, let’s skip around and explore this zany temple/machine/thing. Oh you need a hug? Super. Ciao!”

The character I really enjoy is Sazh, the fast-talking, chocobo wearing, afroed man, who’s not quite sure how he ended up in this mess, or this video game. He’s a departure from typical Final Fantasy character stereotypes (the perky girl, the brooding hero with a sword, the kind hearted sidekick, the hot gothic chick). And the chocobo in his hair is so cute that it’s hard not to like him. The other characters include Hope, said orphan child, whose hair is as grey as Mom’s (obviously from bearing the burden of the world on his shoulders) and Serah, Lightning’s sister and Snow’s fiancée, who quickly becomes a npc, but I won’t give that exciting plot point away.

In case of an emergency, just press X.

Now that I’ve had my whinge about unbelievable characters, I’ll move onto gameplay, which is… alright. Square Enix have moved away from the real-time battle system in XII, which was at times a bit too much like autopilot (for an example of this, some people were able to leave the game overnight and level up). They’ve returned to interactive battles, in that you must come into contact with the monsters to engage the battle screen. It’s an interesting decision and for me it sometimes feels like a step backwards. While the system in FFXII wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t a bad idea and could have simply been improved.

However, the action is definitely more involving and face-paced than its turn based predecessors. FFVIII lacks the static camera of past games, so that every move feels like a different animation. Even if you fight the same monsters (as inevitably you will), the battles do not feel as repetitive as past games. And you can do some pretty cool moves while laying up your ATB gauge. It’s a little bit easy given that there’s a button which says “Auto-battle” which chooses the most effective attacks for you. Also, you magically heal after every battle with no penalty, so there’s no more running to the next save point to heal everyone up. Which is good and bad, I got a little irritated when I’d go through a hard part of FFXII and then the save point would turn into a bloody monster, but then it’s not so challenging.

Oooh... crystals... pretty... but strikingly linear.

You don’t really level up in this game, but use a pretty little system that’s called the Crystalarium which could have been drawn as a straight line in terms of linearity. You don’t get much choice in what roles your characters do, and even during battle you can only control the “commander”, normally Lightning or Snow. You can, however, assign the roles the other characters take during battle, such as a medic, ravager or synergist.

Overall, Final Fantasy XIII is like the pretty girl at school. She’s popular and good looking, but she’s also a little vacuous and shallow. Despite this, I’m going to play it through. Call me shallow, but the graphics are so pretty it’s hard to notice the flaws.

That’s it for my first observations. I’d love to see where this story goes, and if it makes any more sense with a few more hours gameplay (author’s note: after 6 hours and watching the Good Game review it’s starting to make sense!). I’ll write another post when I’m later through the game, although given that most Final Fantasy games take around 100 hours to complete, I have another 98 to go.

Have you played Final Fantasy XIII yet? What do you think? Is the script bad or are moms really tough?

Hammertime! Now strike a pose. The original visitors...

During my formative years, my dad made us work through the complete science fiction VHS section of Cambridge Park Video Store (which strangely was positioned right next to the porn section, and I would forever wonder through my childhood what those weird films were). From the shop came the entire Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Wars, War of the Worlds and the original Battlestar Galactica. V was one of my favourites and the most memorable series after Star Trek. I remember watching in eager anticipation as the humanoid aliens that came in peace gradually became more suspicious, until the horrid truth was revealed. So it stole a few ideas from great sci-fi novels… So what! Their badly animated machine guns, bright red outfits and guinea pig eating enthralled me. When they peeled back of their faces to reveal… Well I won’t tell you what, but if you’ve seen the original I’m sure you’ll remember.

The new V is an interesting remake, in that the context for the series actually seems more appropriate to a 2010 setting. I would suggest that there is now potential for a much deeper exploration of what the arrival of “peaceful” aliens means for humankind, than in the 1980s. An FBI agent investigating terrorist cells that as we find out at the end of episode one, are linked to the aliens, has a much greater impact in a post 9/11 world. As do the notions of surveillance, media control and censorship that the aliens begin to enforce.

Who is stupid enough to trust an alien that looks like Katie Holmes?

The Visitors themselves have more currency today, given their somewhat suspicious likeness to scientologists. I mean, who would trust an alien that looks like Katie Holmes? That resemblance alone would send me running to the hills. The tension builds simply by a very effective and creepy performance by Morena Baccarin as the High Commander. You know you can’t trust her, but her cult of personality still leads people astray. Also, Scott Wolf’s in it. Remember Scott Wolf? He hasn’t changed a bit since Party of Five.

Trust us...

While I know the ending, I will be interested to see how the V remake plays out for someone who hasn’t seen the original (or read Make Room! Make Room!). My husband is very much against science-fiction; he loves Star Wars and Independence Day, but to suggest to watch a sci-fi TV show is met with as much resistance as a Gerard Depardieu war film. Reluctantly he allowed me to watch it, so when the visitors first arrived, and the US plane came down, dead parachutist following, I was surprised when he said “Ok, that was cool”. By the end of the show, he meekly admitted, “Oh, that wasn’t so bad.”

Just wait until the end, when all is revealed. I’m sure I’ll hear a resounding “Wow”.