Tag Archives: reviews

Best of 2012

Posted on by

Sleeping Hedgehog, like most art and culture mags everywhere, has been talking about the best of 2012 (with most of the entries running New Year’s Day). I wouldn’t say there were a lot of huge stand-outs this year. What’s perhaps interesting is that a lot of my reading did not come from the usual suspects, or perhaps even that I may not even have any current usual suspects. I did say, and I’ll quote:

As far as brand-new works go, 2012 saw worthy follow-ups to a couple of individuals with very strong debuts in previous years. I’ve quite enjoyed both Hannu Rajaniemi’s and Howard Andrew Jones’ series continuations. But I’d have to give the nod to Jones for best new title for Bones of the Old Ones.

But as good as my best new book of the year was, it didn’t manage to surpass its predecessor, The Desert of Souls, in my mind, which was all the stronger for coming completely out of nowhere from an author I hadn’t previously heard of. In other words, it’s tougher when there are already high expectations of you.

So that’s new titles, of which, despite my myriad review gigs, I haven’t read that many this year. Most of my reviews at AE, for example, were re-releases of Canadian-written SF originally published as much as a decade ago. What of the “new to me” stuff? I’ll quote myself again;

Best new old title? I’ve read a lot of back-listed material that has seen new editions this year. This has included one of the all-time fantasy classics, T.H. White’s Arthurian work,The Once and Future King, which has to take the prize. Runner-up: Robert Charles Wilson’s excellent 2001 novel, The Chronoliths, was a happy discovery.

Besides several from Wilson, this was also the year I discovered (via my editor at AE) Geoff Ryman (whose short stories I soon realized I had read and enjoyed previously). I also finally got around to reading Peter Watts, though only in the last few days of the calendar year (the catalyst being an upcoming essay for AE, which will probably be this month since I’ve already handed in my first draft).

And we can’t forget the non-fiction, of which I’ve ready plenty, but I won’t single anything out at the moment. I’ll do another round-up of my Library Journal science reviews in another month or so, as I’ve already written a couple since the last posting.

Film: I wasn’t really thinking of this, but someone did ask me recently. After a moment’s thought, I cited The Hunger Games and The Dark Knight Rises as my favourites this year. And I think I’ll stick with that gut, on-the-spot assessment.

Blurbed

Posted on by

Side-note to my previous post: when my review copy of Bones of the Old Ones arrived, I was pleased to discover that the top blurb on the inside jacket cover was actually mine, quoted from my review of Jones’ previous novel. Though I’m not mentioned by name, I immediately recognized my Green Man Review coverage from early 2011. I didn’t actually see it until after I’d finished the book, when I idly checked out some of the jacket copy.

I probably shouldn’t have been surprised since I had already seen I was the leading blurb on the Amazon page for this latest title (and a longer quotation from that same review is also on the Amazon page of the original book in question). But it’s cool to have it on paper in a book I actually held in hand.

Since I frequently receive advanced reading copies, it is possible, if my reviews are published early enough, to end up on the jacket cover of a first edition, though what’s more likely to happen is for praise for one book to end up on the jacket of a later book, as was the case here. It’s simply good luck that I signed up to cover this one late enough that I received a finished book, blurbing my earlier review, rather than an ARC which would probably have included no jacket copy.

My first time being blurbed? One of Neal Asher’s Polity novels, probably about eight years ago. But I never actually held a finished copy of the book.

More on The Quantum Thief

Posted on by

If we were simply looking at Marlowe or Holmes in a genre pastiche, I’d say add it to the pile (though it may well be an excellent pile), but Arsène Lupin as a quantum criminal? That’s a new one on me.

You may recall that I’ve covered both this novel and its sequel during the last few months. Last week my editor, Cat, asked for a write-up on the series-in-progress as a whole. You can read it at the Green Man main page (for the moment), or go directly to my post here.

Book Review: Blood & Water

Posted on by

It’s not that dystopias are anything new, or even stories of environmental collapse. But the SF stories and novels of the last several years have to be placed differently than the catastrophes imagined in the 40s, or even the 70s and 80s.

We’re living in a heavily depressed economy. Our countries are waging resource wars. We’re seeing the effects of a changed climate. The stories written today . . . exist in a different real-world context, and therefore might be part of a new speculative genre that couldn’t have existed until recently.

Read my full review of this excellent Canadian anthology at AESciFi.

Book Review: The King’s Last Song

Posted on by

In the modern-day story, emotionally-damaged survivors of the war put a human face on a national ordeal. In Jaya’s epic kingdom-building tale — what I like to think of as Shogun, the Cambodian edition – the plot still comes down to individual human will and spirit. In the conquering of nations, sometimes even the lowliest slave has a necessary part to play.

Read my full review at AESciFi.

Book Review: Wonderful Life with the Elements

Posted on by

One of the publicists at No Starch Press alerted me to this recent title, knowing my enthusiasm for the excellent Manga Guide science text series, whose English editions they publish. I was expecting this latest made-in-Japan outing to be similarly quirky, and it did not disappoint.

Would it have ever occurred to you to visualize the noble gases as afro-sporting Japanese men? It hadn’t crossed my mind, but after reading this book of comic-strip style element characters, now I can’t summon up xenon or helium without a full, puffy top. Halogens like chlorine, meanwhile, have a cueball look, while other chemical groups share anything from punk rock spikes to buzz-cuts.

On the other hand, each unique element is also dressed up in anything from an apron to a lab coat to a business suit — or even a simple pair of white underwear — depending on their most common uses. The basic idea of the book is to put the elements in a real-life context of where we’re most likely to encounter them, their important properties, and their uses and threats to people individually or society in general.

A slim read at 200 pages, just over half of this space is given over to brief descriptions of each element in a standardized format. A brief paragraph illuminates a few of the more significant facts of each type of atom, perhaps a bit of its history or important uses. Some other basic data (density, atomic mass, etc.) and an epigram also accompany each profile (radium is the element that “bit the hand that fed it”, no doubt a reference to Marie and Pierre Curie who discovered it, then perished from radiation poisoning), but the centerpiece is always the anthropomorphic sketch.

Other parts of the text include brief sections on the most expensive commercially available elements, elements necessary to human health, and an argument for rare element conservation as part of an ecologically-sustainable future. But the book is never text-heavy, and can be read from start to finish in just a few hours.

The central conceit is cute; an original approach to connecting the reader with abstract yet critical components of our world. It doesn’t make memorizing the periodic table a breeze (what could and who would?), but it has resulted in some patterns sticking in my head better than before. The fold-out poster-sized table is a nice bonus, though educators might be careful of how they use it, or images from the book itself, both of which sometimes contain some cartoonish male nudity (the Japanese simply aren’t as uptight about that stuff as us).

All in all, it makes for a fun little coffee-table book for either the chemically-minded or the simply curious.

(No Starch Press, 2012)

Reprinted with permission from The Sleeping Hedgehog
Copyright (2012) The Sleeping Hedgehog

Game Review: Pokémon White Version 2

Posted on by

It’s hard to believe the Pokémon series is still going strong when all logic suggests it should have completely saturated its own market position. The series began when I was 14, and has now been running long enough that I could have gotten married, had kids, and bought them their own brand-new Pokémon games by now.

Pokémon Black and White marked the fifth generation of Pokémon games, and as was the case with every previous generation, the games make up a duo. Released together, they are essentially the same game with some minor changes in the Pokémon type availability or frequencies, and a single in-game area unique to each version.

Unlike previous games, Black and White provided a sense of “back to basics”, perhaps in a bid to introduce a whole new generation that had grown up since the start of the franchise. Like the very first games in the series, the available Pokémon have not appeared previously. Now, with the release of Black Version 2 and White Version 2, this generation has offered another first for the series: a direct sequel to a previous game.

While previous series have always seen an enhanced follow-up or deluxe edition a year or two later on the same handheld (from the original Game Boy all the way to the current DS/3DS titles), not to mention a flurry of spin-offs and tie-ins on other systems, both iterations of Version 2 provide a whole new story set in the same Unova region as the first Black and White, but with new characters and towns, a brand new main character (which, as a stand in for the player, has no defining characteristics whatsoever; not even a default name), and some new mini-games.

The basic gameplay is unchanged and includes the same features introduced with this generation of the series. However, the availability of Pokémon is different. While 151 new species were introduced with Black and White at the expense of seeing any old favourites (series mascot Pikachu, for example), Version 2 includes a selection of previous Pokémon mainstays along with the new set introduced for this generation.

The basic story is two-fold. As always, the player character (who could be either eighteen or eight) is sent out by his mother to travel the world and become a Pokémon master. To do this he has to capture and train up Pokémon (through the usual RPG expedient of battling, levelling-up, and learning special moves in multiple ways), defeat eight different gym leaders for their badges, and then enter a major tournament in order to battle and best the greatest Pokémon trainers around.

As a parallel and interweaving plot, the player, through no fault of his own, will find himself constantly battling against an organization of supervillains, the remnants of Team Plasma from the previous games, ultimately stopping their nefarious world-dominating plots while en route to Pokémon mastery.

The player eventually has the opportunity of encountering one of the two legendary Pokémon of the Black and White games. In Pokémon White Version 2, it’s the Vast White Pokémon, Reshiram. His anti-thesis, Zekrom, the Deep Black Pokémon, was capturable in Pokémon White, where Reshiram appeared as a boss battle, but was not obtainable by the player. So players of both the original and this sequel can get the matching set of legendaries. The same end may be achieved by trading, or by playing Black Version 2 along with this game.

I find the battle strategy in Pokémon is not as deep as other RPGs. Though the sheer numbers of Pokémon available, not to mention the potential for move customization in each one, mean there are many, many ways to skin a Meowth, it’s also true that, by simple weight of variables, the results of a given match-up can be a bit of a crap-shoot.

Not all Pokémon are created equal, and while it would be nice to pull out one’s fire-type Pokémon to wipe the floor with an opponent’s grass-type choice, the player is probably better served pumping up the all-around fighters with few weaknesses. I have a Genesect who never loses to anybody, and a little Sunkern who can’t win against opponents 15 levels lower than him. Que sera sera.

Of course the theme song of the uber-popular anime series is “gotta catch ’em all”, and indeed, the collection of pocket monsters and completion of the Pokédex is what plays on the obsessive-compulsive personalities old-school gamers are known for. The battles aren’t particularly interesting because most any match-up is one-sided, and the story is pretty bland. The world-building has reached a point after so many games where credulity is nearing the breaking point.

(Is every non-human living thing a Pokémon? What do people eat? How does an economy function where anything and everything has something to do with Pokémon? What about basic things like farming and manufacturing? And if every ten-year-old goes out to capture weird monsters for glorified cock-fighting instead of attending school, where do nurses, engineers, and other professionals come from?)

The battle animations, though revamped already for the first Black and White, are still basically NES-era Dragon Warrior. The sprites move slightly, an effect happens. I know Nintendo’s handhelds have always striven for gameplay over power, but this pseudo-animation is a bit weak for a 2012 RPG on any system.

But with the main game finished, will I still pick up my DSi for a few more rare Pokémon hunts, some online trading, and a more complete Pokédex? You better believe it. Despite my nitpicks, this series is still quicksand for completionists. Stay far away if you don’t have forty-plus hours to spare in the near future.

Article first published as Nintendo DS Review: Pokémon White Version 2 on Blogcritics.

Game Review: JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure HD Ver.

Posted on by

Even after Sega officially stopped production of the Dreamcast system, the console continued to sell steadily, used Dreamcasts quickly being gobbled up from second-hand store shelves. It became, for a short time, the gaming equivalent of Latin: a dead interface that would never see any new works, the beauty of it and the quality of its existing library drew gaming aficionados to it.

As I contemplated reviewing this particular title, I wondered if this manga-based port might be one of the ill-fated console’s many hidden gems. Only one way to find out, of course.

JoJo‘s Bizarre Adventure is a Street Fighter-era 2D brawler with a cast of characters that, excepting the chihuahua, seems no more bizarre than any other fighting game of its time. The fighting system seems fairly typical at first, with various types of punches, kicks, and projectile attacks, depending on the character. What sets this title apart is the “Stand” ability–a second fighter–possessed by each character.

A sort of inner spirit or projection of the fighter, both the appearance and behaviour of this second self varies wildly from character to character. Some will hang back and let their Stand do the work, allowing the player to control it directly. Others manifest the stand as a shadow that mirrors their movements, allowing every attack to, potentially, hit twice.

Others are in-between. Jotaro, for example, can send his Stand forward as a type of projectile attack. A certain attack calls up the Stand to rush forward and let off a flurry of punches before fading away. One useful strategy therefore is to have the Stand perform its one-off as either an opener or a distraction, while simultaneously diving in after it with a follow-up attack.

The strategic possibilities of this tag-team style fighting are intriguing, though they’re also very different from character to character and Stand to Stand. And, of course, there’s a defensive side as well. A character takes damage either from direct attack or attacks on his Stand.

Use of the Stand can leave the main character wide open to attack, especially for those characters who stay still while the player controls the Stand remotely. Too much damage on the Stand itself also has its risks: the Stand will fade and the character will be left dizzy and open to further punishment.

The game is 2D sprite-based so the HD aspect of this re-release is less important than it might otherwise be. Some parts of the game are a bit dated. The gameplay is perhaps a little less fluid than Street Fighter and other series would become, but the Stand system is also unique, even today. Somehow the idea hasn’t (to my knowledge) been copied and appropriated into other game franchises.

Perhaps the most notable quirk of the game (I hesitate to call it a weakness) is its high learning curve. No effort is made to ease the player into it’s fighting system. There is no tutorial, no in-game hints, no move lists, nothing. You have to experiment and play around if you want to master your character. This is old-school 2D brawling, arcade style: play, lose, get frustrated, experiment, and make joyous discoveries.

Since many likely missed it the first time around, this might just be a chance for classic fighter enthusiasts to experience a new game like it’s 1999 all over again.

Article first published as PS3 Review: JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure HD Ver. on Blogcritics.