I reviewed the original and Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle and the Donkey Kong Adventure expansion a number of years ago around the time of release. It has been just over five years since the release of what turned out to be one of the best games of 2017. The sequel, Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope has finally been released this year and was probably the title I was most looking forward to. My thoughts on the game follow below.
Dan the Destructor: Barbarians of the Storm – Book I by Rob Rimes
January 10th, 2022
In beginning this review, I find myself wondering whether I have been overly harsh in previous reviews I’ve written. As I’ve pointed out before, I’ve not published any fiction myself and as such, I can’t claim anything I write would be better than those I criticise. I am also a big supporter of the “Iron Age” pulp revival and the advent of independent publishing and I want to support these creators. However, this doesn’t extend to calling bad “good” and generally I’ve chosen silence when I have disliked work by independent authors and creators. In the case of Rob Rimes’ Dan the Destructor, I have decided to make an exception as this is one of the most crass and juvenile books I have ever read.
American Pilgrim by Roosh Valizadeh
Kings Media, February 16th, 2021
One of the earliest posts I wrote when I started this blog was a review of Roosh’s Free Speech Isn’t Free which chronicles his notorious speaking tour that sparked outrage — most notably in Canada. I opened that review as follows:
Roosh V is an understandably polarising character but not really for the reasons often portrayed in the media. He gets a mixed response among the alternate right because he promotes sexual licentiousness while advocating traditional societies and sex roles. There is an obvious contradiction between the two which from what I’ve read and heard of him, he seems conscious of. While I don’t agree with the behaviour he both engages in and promotes, I support him because whatever he may be; he is not a leftist. I also get the impression that he is moving towards traditionalism and I pray that in time, he will come fully to Christianity.
At the time, I was still a recent Catholic convert though I hadn’t yet been received into the church. I first came across Roosh after I was married so understandably wasn’t interested in reading the kinds of things he wrote but I always found his socio-political writing interesting (and still do). As must be obvious by the title, my prayers were answered as I’m sure were the prayers of many more people. In short, Roosh came to a dead-end with the sinful life he was living (and promoting) and in turning away, he turned to Christ. This book chronicles the journey he went on across the United States sharing his own personal journey to Christianity. I don’t live in the United States but I did purchase the video of his What I’ve Learned About Life speech when it was released and the text of this speech is included as an appendix in the book.
This is similar to a topic I covered back in late 2020 about perceptions of reality but related to a different subject. That is alcohol which I freely admit I have had struggles with. In fact, I pledged to abstain from alcohol all this year but failed pretty early on and then again before one more slip around the middle of June. Since then I haven’t had a drop and in my defence, the vast majority of the year has been alcohol free and I’m confident it wouldn’t have been had I not tried at all. This experience has taught me I probably need to generally abstain altogether for the long-term. On a similar note, I have also failed in limiting the amount of books I buy but have basically given up keeping to this.
This post is generally related to alcohol consumption but not my own struggles though I do think it helps to admit them. As I am quick to tell people, my decisions about limiting my alcohol consumption shouldn’t be taken as a judgement on others as most people I know keep this consumption within healthy limits. I am simply one of those people who needs to be a lot more vigilant as my drinking is similar in habit to an on/off switch. I either am always on or completely off. Were I prone to violence under the influence, I would consider it absolutely necessary to abstain completely.
There are a lot of terms of different types of science fiction and fantasy and people can get quite pedantic about these different sub-genres and exactly how to define them. Off the top of my head there is cyberpunk, hard science fiction, military science fiction and sword and sorcery. A common example is Star Wars which it is rightly pointed out is actually a fantasy work and not real science-fiction at all. This is why you get the more specific “hard science fiction” so as to avoid comparisons with stories that are merely adventures in outer space. Although I don’t often get into this, there are important distinctions that need to be made though people reading merely for enjoyment don’t much need to bother about sub-genres.
This post is not really about the though genre but about works set in outer space specifically and what is often a lack of imagination I have observed in many works within the genre. This is related to outer space merely being a substitute for the ocean and the planets being substitutes for the earth’s different climate regions.
When thinking of a title for my post on Daikatana, I decided on calling it a “fascinating failure” quite on my own. After having such a neat description come to mind, I couldn’t believe I could have been the first to come up with it so I made a quick search of the term after posting. Sure enough, I got quite a few hits including this post from 2015. The writer’s fitting description mirrors mine:
Fascinating failures are products of passion, ambition and originality, where the lofty goal has exceeded the reach of the creator. Fascinating failures take risks.
So I didn’t originate the term but I had the same idea in mind as this indeed describes Daikatana perfectly and certainly the subject of this post as well.
The subject is Raven Software’s Singularity which originally released in 2010 and I recently replayed on PC. I first played it about a decade ago on Xbox 360 and though brief, the game stuck with me. Singularity differs from Daikatana as it wasn’t heavily promoted and had the budget and development time shortened which meant the developers had to make significant cuts to get the game out on schedule. It was generally well-received by those who played it but unfortunately that wasn’t very many and it was a commercial failure. This article and this rather excellent video give an overview of the game’s development and my thoughts on the merits of the game as released follow below.
This is the first time I’ve mentioned Blade Runner on this blog which is not surprising as it is one of those films that has had so much written about it that it is hard to come up with anything original. This post will likely be no exception though after recently re-watching it, I was inspired to make an attempt.
Before getting into the meat of the post I do want to briefly dwell on something I’ve been contemplating with regard to films like this and other media in general. Since converting to Catholicism, I’ve progressively come to notice how much inappropriate content is present — particularly in films. Not so long ago, any sort of nudity, sexual intercourse, profanity, violence or strong horror was strictly banned. Today, it can almost feel odd to watch a film where none of this is present. I used to think little of this but more and more I’ve become careful with what I allow myself to watch.
Blade Runner features almost all of this and I found myself averting my eyes from the screen on a number of occasions but I don’t think this is good enough. I have decided that this will be the last time I watch this and even other films I used to really enjoy. I can well understand that this would appear peculiar to modern minds but I don’t think my thoughts depart much from what used to believed by the vast majority. I also don’t think I can use “engaging in the culture” or film analysis as an excuse. It wouldn’t work for pornography.
This by the way also includes literature. I read Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 this year and multiple sections of that work were pornographic as were sections of Kafka on the Shore and A Wild Sheep Chase. These are the only novels of his I’ve read and Murakami is a genuinely great writer but I won’t be reading any more of his fiction unless sanitised versions are one day published.
With that out of the way, let’s get to the film.
Over the last few years I’ve been discovering a lot of early fantasy and adventure that I previously had little or no knowledge of. This includes authors such as Lord Dunsany, George MacDonald, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard. The latter of whom I have now dedicated a number of separate posts to. One I was familiar with was H. Rider Haggard and I read King Solomon’s Mines about five or so years ago. What I didn’t know was just how prolific he was and after reading this article, I learned of his other arguably more famous story She: A History of Adventure. The linked article is highly recommended and perhaps the most interesting revelation is that I had never heard of this book yet it “sold almost 85 million copies, and has never been out of print since its initial 1887 release.” I soon found a copy of the book which included two other novels and the beautiful cover from this copy is displayed above.
What follows is a review and some commentary on passages from the novel.
The Penguin Book of Australian Short Stories edited by Harry Heseltine,
Penguin Books, August 30th, 1976
Earlier this year I wrote a review of Modern Japanese Short Stories which was a collection by a selection of Japanese authors from the early to mid 20th century. A few months ago I happened to come across the similar collection of Australian short stories that were written within roughly the same time frame above. I mention the Japanese works because I will be drawing some comparisons in my commentary below so these posts will be related.
This post is the culmination of something I’ve been thinking about for a while but have never put into writing after years of playing, reading about and reviewing games. There are obviously a lot of problems with gaming journalism as I’ve detailed in short and at length but one of these problems applies to other mediums as much as video games. This problem is the difference with how a product is received at the time and its lasting legacy. I’ve brushed this problem before with regard to film in these two posts but I don’t recall applying it to video games though it certainly applies.
It can be amusing to look at reviews for many games going back decades and wonder how the reviewers came to the conclusions they did. There are games that have remained popular for decades that got middling scores and games that have been all but forgotten that received high praise. A good example is Diablo II which was recently remastered and has been widely loved and played since the original release over twenty years ago. Yet, if you look at the reviews from the time, you’d wonder how that could have possibly come to be. There are games released every year to high praise that are forgotten soon after and the inaugural winner of the “Game Awards”, Dragon Age: Inquisition is good evidence of that. Then there are games that for whatever reason are ignored at the time but gradually become better appreciated as time goes on despite their initial lukewarm reception.
This doesn’t mean gaming journalists are useless as games still need critical appraisal and can benefit from promotion at the time of release. A high quality game with a low advertising budget could be rescued by positive reviews. A lot really depends on the reviewer too. For all my criticism of his literary output, Yahtzee Croshaw has a good sense of what makes a good game and I’d say most of his Zero Punctuation videos hold up well though I don’t always agree with him. There are plenty of other individual journalists who have a similarly sharp critical eye. A lot of problems come with lazy reviews by critics uninterested in the genre or those who have to smash through a game on a deadline. This can lead anyone (and I’ve certainly been guilty of this), to produce hasty conclusions — negative or positive that later don’t hold up. I’ve had to re-evaluate my opinion on a number of games over the years that I later came to appreciate or realised weren’t so good as my initial enthusiasm supposed.
So one really important consideration is time but this is in short supply when deadlines, embargos, advertising budgets, sales etc. are factored in. Time is not all though but it is necessary to consider what makes a game truly great. The heuristic I have come up with can be remembered with the acronym GREAT.
