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| |  "Re(1):End of the Year Round-up Quarantine" , posted Mon 31 Dec 21:50  
This year has been... "OKAY". Like, not great, not bad, it could have been worse. Slightly.
The main game that sticks to my mind remains Obra Dinn. It wasn't as bold as Papers, Please, just a very solid detective game. It's the Hollow Knight of Sherlockholmsery. There's not a lot of concurrence here. A good experience. I like.
Speaking of new games from developers from a prior masterpiece, Into the Breach was a disappointment. It was not bad, more than OKAY even, but it was a tall order to follow FTL, and while ITB had very interesting ideas, its over simplification prevented it from being the classic FTL was.
In the same vein, The Hex, from the guy of Pony Island (yeah, quite a different pedigree) was fun, but far too long. These kind of metanarrative games can hold up for 2 hours maximum. 6 hours was too long. It did have interesting ideas with the jumping between each character's actual games (the platformer, the JRPG, the Fallout/wasteland, the first person perspective...) and the criticism of some people in the industry was quite humorous.
Minit was good. Really good. A Zelda game where you die every minute and need to achieve as much as possible during that minute before having to start over. Excellent concept and execution.
Venturing into the realm of weird indies, The Shrouded Isle was a nice surprise, but could have been better. It's surprisingly close to Obra Dinn: it has almost as few colours on screen, and it's, once the trappings of the delirious end-of-days cult have been set aside, a solid detective game, where instead of finding who's a murderer, you're trying to identify who has doubts against the true faith, who is reading books (sacrilege!), or, even worse, who is NOT a murderer. And since you need to find and sacrifice a culprit every season, the game surprisingly ventures into the realm of Papers Please's faceless bureaucracy: you need to meet your target of a sacrifice per season, and if you haven't found the culprit in time, anyone will do.
The added layer of balancing the diplomacy with the families of the sinners makes the thing even more lively, since you sometimes will need to let the culprit go away in order to appease tensions with a certain clan.
I just felt the game became too repetitive after a while, and once you're in the loop of things, you just end up clicking on names to the end.
Chuchel was really dumb and good. Eastern-European classic animation into a point and click? Well, yeah!
Vampyr was... OKAY. Many flaws, but an interesting proposition and atmosphere go a long way. I want to believe AA games will be able to survive when the AAA bubble finally bursts. I can live with upscaled-PS3 games.
Soulcalibur 6 has a proper scenario mode, and that alone makes it the best game of the series. I really don't care about anything else.
Dead Cells was fun for a while. It's one of these games I liked better during Early Access, until they added too many things and I stopped being interested. Another case of "more is too much". But it was OKAY.
Swery's new game, the Missing, had a very interesting story. I'm quite happy to know he managed to get funds to make a game about such powerful and gripping topics. It's unfortunate that Swery still doesn't know how to properly make games. I uninstalled halfway through and watched the rest on Youtube.
Rockman 11 came and went. It was properly done. Except the music, there's no garish issue. It was... OKAY.
I have quite a few games on hold at the moment, but instead of finishing them, for some reason I remembered I hadn't played DMC4, so I'm trying to go through it now before 5 is released. 10 years late is not too late!
For 2019, to my surprise, I have 3 mainstream games on my to-play list. The Bio2 remake, DMC5 and Sekiro all intrigue me in different ways. Hopefully I won't be too disappointed!
Early 2019 should see the release of Sunless Skies, the sequel to Sunless Sea. I haven't touched the early access version even though I backed up the project, because that's the best way to ruin your own fun with this kind of games. The catch phrase "Betray a Queen, Murder a Sun" is almost as good as "Lose your mind, Eat your crew" from the previous one. Hope it's good!
Indivisible should also be released. I really wish them all the good in the world (in term of quality and of sales), but I have the feeling their time has passed? It's been quite a while since the kickstarter. I hope they'll be able to make it.
The Sinking City, the other half of the project that went into development hell and got split into two games (last month's Call of Cthulhu and this one) will also be released. It has really good marketing (and more importantly, a third person view so I can actually play it). Moreover, it will be very interesting to see whether the game manages to be good after the weird development cycle it went through.
There's quite a few other small games incoming (Baba is You, Untitled Goose Game, maybe Shakedown Hawaii, and who knows, Wattam finally?). I have high hopes for Godhood, the blandly named god game from the makers of Renewed Explorers and especially Reus, one of my favourite games from 5 years ago. Hopefully it delivers.
However, this is an old person forum, so my biggest hope for 2019 is to have more classic PS2/3 games properly ported to PC (and whatever other platform). Capcom has been really good at it, with their belt scroller collection, DMC1-2-3, Killer 7 and soon Onimusha (and I hope the PC version will be able to be modded to get the original sound track back). Hopefully, Onimusha 2, 3 and Shin will follow, and more importantly God Hand. If the drab SF anniversary thing was successful enough, I hope the amazing PS2 Vampire compilation will follow. Besides that... I don't dare hoping for a Justice Gakuen compilation, since it probably wouldn't have the dating sim in it, but, well, who knows. Maybe some sort of BASARA resurgence, or at least some up-port?
Sega has ported most of the games I care about. They even did End of Eternity, which I may very well maybe play! Sakura Taisen 1-2-3 would be nice, but I'm not holding my breath. The true issue with Sega now is rather Atlus, who continues to be a shit company AND hold Vanillaware hostage. Someone needs to release Dragon's Crown on PC yesteryear.
SQEX continues to be irrelevant. I don't think Scarlet Grace will be released in the west, and we'd be lucky if they do finish RS3. The chances of them porting any other important game from their library (Legend of Mana, Vagrant Story) are slim to none. Best of luck for KH3, I guess. Bamco... who knows. Who cares. Ah, and I wish all the best to KT to not screw up Ni-Oh 2.
So, yeah. It was OKAY.
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| | "Re(3):End of the Year Round-up Quarantine" , posted Tue 1 Jan 07:38:
I have The Missing and my interesting story about it is that there's a part early in the game where you learn to throw things and need to dislodge some boxes in order to move on. Shortly after that, out of morbid curiosity I had the character stand under a lowering bridge or lowering box or something like that to see if she would just pop out from under it or would cause some other funny collision related issue.
What happened is that she got absolutely ROCKETED into the sky at terrific speed, to a height so high I have no idea if she hit the limit or not, but she was travelling upwards for a REALLY long time before she eventually started falling. I had no idea where she was going to land. Eventually she landed back in a forest, and I seriously wondered where in the game I was, and I also wondered if the game was going to let me continue. Before long, I saw rabbits suspended in the air that ran off on invisible paths, and reached the big field of flowers and windmills, and the game went into its full and expected Twin Peaks mode.
Except that I had no idea what I might've skipped between when she launched and now. Was there something interesting I missed? Was there nothing at all, and maybe I just hit the scenario boundary? Who knows. In any case, the feeling of suddenly descending into the dream was full and complete, and it is one of those delightful cases where a bug in a game fully maintains the conceit of the game being a game while being fully consistent with the surreal scenario of the game.
The memorableness of this makes this a solid moment of 2018 for me. I somewhat agree that as a game, it feels heavily inspired by Limbo and Inside, but the basic game elements like moving your character around and the visuals are rather more crudely made. However, having a more concrete scenario with talking characters makes the game a little more approachable in a rather different way.
[this message was edited by Spoon on Tue 1 Jan 07:40] |
| PSN: zonepharaoh
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|  "Re(4):Nier of the Year Round-up Quarantine" , posted Tue 1 Jan 08:28
Amazingly, I played some games that were even as recent as 2017-2018, some of which I'll mention elsewhere, so consider this a thrilling (huge lie) Maou Preview!
 Iggy of the Year: I finally met Iggy for a most Londonian adventure after years of virtual courtship camaraderie. Among other things, we chuckled over the British attempt at a "Japanese" restaurant, and I realized about 36 hours later that "aubergine" is apparently what British people say when they actually mean to say "eggplant."
 Nier of the Year: Nier Automata is still the Nier of the Year for 2018. Spoon-kun, I certainly hope "second half" means seeing Ending E? Anyway, it's a work of such monumental genius (and fun!) that I'll continue to deploy the same bemused smirk and raised eyebrow to people complaining about true but irrelevant facts like how "the map is kind of crappy" and "Route B is boring" as I did for people who said that Flower "doesn't have many extras" and that Wander and the Colossus' horse "didn't always obey me [i.e. acted like a horse]."
 Sonic of the Quarter-Century: Sonic Mania is magnificent, and yes, I do mean that quarter-century since Sonic 2 and CD (eat it, Sonic 3). I'll write more on this somewhere else.
 Still whippin' ass every year: As anyone foolish enough to set foot near the Dracula thread noticed, I finally got a proper PCE copy of Dracula X: Rondo of Blood, and it's never let me down. Now with fewer ISOs!
 Princess Maker 3 Soul Calibur 6 Princess Calibur 6: I said it somewhere else, but SC 6 is worse than SC 1 and 2 but better than 3-5, making it the best one in 15 years! One day I'll stop trying to play it as if it were SC 2, but in the meantime, those sure are some hilarious costumes you guys have made.
 Books: Most of Minato Kanae's books are way too scary for me to read, including Confessions which was made into an alarming movie I accidentally watched one time, but her "Boukyou" ("Nostalgia for Home") is a great collection of moody or moving stories set on the same depopulating island modeled on the Seto Inland Sea, with occasional murder mysteries. Speaking of British things, Rumpole of the Bailey is still great fun, both in print and TV.
 I'm still late: Meanwhile, my guilty stack of physical games I'm overdue to play has been augmented by a virtual stack of digital games I'm overdue to play via Iggy, many of them obviously brilliant even if too scary for me to launch on most days, such as the exciting-looking Obra Dinn or the has-too-many-bugs Hollow Knight.
人間はいつも私を驚かせてくれる。不思議なものだな、人間という存在は．．．
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| | "Re(3):End of the Year Round-up Quarantine" , posted Tue 1 Jan 23:28
This year I didn't play many titles, I didn't buy almost anything, and I still have a lot of backlog to complete.
I think the game I liked the most this year was Odin Sphere Leifthrasir, very charming game, story, artwork, a bit repetitive gameplay but not too much, I usually don't go for platinums, but I platinumed it.
I also started playing Okami for the first time, but I didn't complete it yet, so it doesn't count for 2018.
quote:
I also managed to watch the Gundam series under the Universal timeline. This was in preparation if the new Gundam NT released this year. Some series I have seen before and some I have not. Below is a rank list of the best Gundam series under the UC timeline.
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You are missing also Victory Gundam, UC 153, but seeing where you put Z, I suspect that you will not like it much.
It's one of the most polarizing series, with (many) people hating it and (few) people loving it.
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| PSN: DefensorVirtuoso
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| "Re(4):End of the Year Round-up Quarantine" , posted Sun 6 Jan 00:57
This was my second year as an adult who has an stable job, so I'm slowly starting to realize that I definitely don't have the free time that I had on school or even college. Also for some reason, I have only played 50-80 hours kind of games, so I also realized that I definitely I couldn't play a big array of games.
So in that regard, I think that my most special game was YS 8 Lacrimosa of Dana (Which even though I bought it on 2017, I started it last year thanks to Nisa terrible localizaton job, although at least they patched it. Anyway, I loved this game since the second that I saw the title screen in the intro, since my childhood that I didn't started a game for such a long time only because I was hypnothized watching the intro,while also being the first game that impressed me in 4k (I played Destiny 2 which obviously has better production values, but it was too gritty for my taste) YS 8 has sub par graphics, but I really love the art direction in this game, everything is so "Sega Blue Sky" that it really felt like a love letter to older games. And the actual game is so tight, is very rewarding to pull out attacks, guard, dodges, and specially on nightmare, and the music was from another level (classic falcom) overall, it was definitely an experience that made me fall in love with gaming again.
As for anime, this year I definitely didn't watched much of it (adult free time) to the point that I wasn't suscribed to any streaming service, until October where I subbed to Crunchyroll to watch Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Part 5. To my surprise, Vento Aureo is very boring (although the opening is my second favorite after great days, and is still jojo so I'm going to watch it anyway) so to justify my sub, I started watching other animes from the season, and I fell in love with 3 series, Golden Kamuy,Zombie Land Saga and Bunny Girl Senpai to make this shorter, I love how the relationship between the characters was developed, and the 2 later series pleasently surprised me, since the first impression that the crunchyroll thumbnail gave me was that those series would be utter trash, but they were amazing, and I'm sad that all of them finished (until next season)
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| | "Re(6):End of the Year Round-up Quarantine" , posted Mon 7 Jan 10:38
quote:
I could probably edit this in to my previous post but I'm too lazy.
 On the anime front I've recently been catching up on the muscular madness of Grappler Baki. It's the type of story where a thirteen year old boy can get in a death match with his father and the supporting cast is so into fighting that they enthusiastically enable this lunacy. Anyway, on the game front I like that there is a Chinese martial artist in the story is obviously the inspiration for Tekken's Feng Wei. He even has the same distinctive facial structure. However, at around the same time proto-Feng is introduced Rei and Yuda from HnK somehow end up becoming background characters in the Bakiverse. Depending on your mood, pop culture is either derivative or constantly builds upon itself.
The recent Netflix airing of one of the Baki arcs is kinda interesting if only as a reminder of what a bizarre and nihilistic story that arc was. It has a tremendously exciting prologue that is terrifically grand, and then it eventually takes all of these new characters and degrades them into such a state that you feel bad for witnessing it all. By the end of it, though they are a bunch of murderers deserving whatever justice visits them, you are just left with a sense of being appalled at the almost casual callousness and cruelty put upon them by previously existing cast members of the manga.
In some sense it is a sort of tremendous diametric opposite of the shounen fighting/competition manga style, in that effort/lineage/friendship/virtue/morality/etc are all considered meaningless and people die horribly, which makes it overall very much in tune with many seinen works whose principle theme tends to be "you aren't important/special and what you do barely matters". Indeed, what mirth there is in this Baki arc is often of a sadistic and schadenfreudic kind.
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| PSN: gekijmo
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| "Re(2):End of the Year Round-up Quarantine" , posted Wed 9 Jan 00:45
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This year has been... "OKAY". Like, not great, not bad, it could have been worse. Slightly.
I have to say "OKAY" describes my recollection of the last year for me as well.
I played most of the big games from last year except Nier and Red Dead Redemption 2. I finally got a Switch and have to say the best game I played all year was Breath of the Wild, which came out in early 2017, but DAMN what a game.
God of War was REALLY good, but a lot of small stuff added up for me. First and foremost is the over the shoulder combat camera. Sure there is a threat ring and the boy telling you where enemies are, but I could never get into it. The camera angle works great with throwing the axe and most enemies aren't too troublesome, but when I would get into an encounter with multiple dark elves it felt frustrating. The combat system itself didn't open itself up until you got your second weapon which was well into the second half of the game. The cooldown on runic sub attacks felt too long. I know cooldown decreased when you leveled up, but at that point it was so late in the game for me to really get into it. I could go on and on, but I really don't see myself looking back on this game in a couple of years.
Spider-Man is another game I would describe as REALLY good. I loved all the extra costumes the game had that each had their own gameplay quark. It really reminded me of the PS1 Spidey game which had suits with different stats and bonuses. The web swinging if great, but I would still say I prefer Spider-Man 2's style. NYC is beautiful and filled with NPCs to make it a bustling city. There were some design choices that felt really dated though. Forced Stealth, Audio logs and pipe maze puzzles? I thought we were passed that 10 years ago. Mission design felt fairly old fashioned too. Especially the science stations. Swinging through smog felt like something I should be doing in a PS2 game. Combat was okay. The game doesn't give you a great crowd control option until a few hours in. There is some problems with fighting in an open street where a low barrier or light pole will get in your way, but the big issue is when there are jetpack enemies that are hard to track with the camera. I also have issue with some art direction with the enemy designs. There is a whole gang that dresses in black and white and in one stage you are in a black and white "realm" where it is a pain to see what is going on when a half dozen enemies all blend into the background. I could also go on and on.
The only anime I got into this year was Pop Team Epic. It is silly, but the bite size jokes made it work for me. I really liked the "Freeza" and "Cell" episode.
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| PSN: KTallguy
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| "Re(8):End of the Year Round-up Quarantine" , posted Wed 16 Jan 16:25
Games I've put substantial time into in 2018:
SSS Tier
Spiderman - "You really feel like Spiderman!" Good combat, great traversal, excellent camera, super polished. There are things to nitpick but really the highest quality game I've played all year.
Obra Dinn - Extremely well done puzzle game with a great mystery and ending. Made me feel very smart when I figured out things. Very smart scope decisions, but it's still unbelievable that a single person made this.
God of War - Excellent combat, great storytelling techniques, beautiful looking, and the one shot camera (and overall camerawork) was very cool. Overall story was strong but the ending felt a little meh to me though.
Gorogoa - Must play, very creative and innovative puzzle game. Amazing storytelling through gameplay. I met the guy who made it and he's exceedingly humble. Glad that it succeeded.
Monster Hunter World - Got close to ruining my marriage. Got kinda sick of it after 100+ hours. Amazing world design, beautiful monsters. Anything outside the core systems are clunky as f, core systems are clunky unless you know how to play Monster Hunter already. But for a nerd like me it scratched a really nice itch, and the high quality art finally allowed me to enjoy the series.
A Tier
Hollow Knight - Great world, music, simple but effective character control. Addictive and sprawling. Felt a bit long but I enjoyed my time with it and played until the "True Ending".
Tekken 7 - Finally, a game that kinda makes up for VF not existing any more. Customization is kinda shitty but other than that, a great game. Single player is very high quality too.
Tetris Effect - Excellent game in VR, really great music, fun gameplay additions. Tetris is still amazing after all these years. Almost as good as that Ubisoft Tetris game (LOL).
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice - Combat is shallow, but this game had moments that really scared the shit out of me. Excellent horror/drama/narrative game.
B Tier
FFXV - Lots and lots of jank, but I thoroughly enjoyed the experience as a whole. The way some of the story moments were expressed through gameplay really impressed me. But the jank got in the way of all those great ideas... glad I played it after everything was patched up the wazoo, apparently there wasn't a real ending when it was released (lol square). Also the DLC was polished and fun. The multiplayer mode was pretty meh.
Romancing SaGa 2 - First time playing this game, and I haven't finished it yet, but it's so expansive and ambitious, and equally hard to understand without a FAQ. I really want a modern, high budget version of this game but it will probably never exist...
Danganronpa 2 - I enjoy this series because of the story, but I can barely tolerate the weird art and music. I can't wait to finish the third game and put it to bed. I still love the core gameplay loop, but I hope the 3rd one mixes it up more.
One Shot - Very cool PC only indie RPG. It does some really innovative things that I won't spoil. Starts off really slow but once you're in it, it grabs you kind of like Undertale.
Florence - iOS "game" that you may have heard something about. It has some really cool moments that were inspiring to me. Smart storytelling with gameplay.
C Tier
Elite Dangerous - I played this a lot in VR during lunch. Was basically a space trucking simulator for me, but it really convinced me that VR was awesome. Just the act of landing my ship, soaring around the galaxy, etc. felt so immersive. The core gameplay is kind of shallow but the immersion really grabbed me. Now I want to play Star Citizen in VR, 3-4 years later when it actually releases :)
Vignettes - Another really cool iOS game. It only has one gimmick but it uses that gimmick extremely well. Great example of exploring one gameplay possibility to the fullest.
Dragon Quest Builders - I know it's just Minecraft with a skin, but the core is really fun, and I think the progression is much better. I had to stop playing it because it started consuming my life a bit... It's comfort food...my brain began melting as I chip chip chipped away at the terrain. I want to play the sequel but the demo left me cold, not sure what I want to do.
Games I'm excited about in 2019:
Death Stranding?
Cyberpunk??
Um... can't really think of much else right now.
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| | "Re(8):End of the Year Round-up Quarantine" , posted Thu 17 Jan 07:20
quote:
In some sense it is a sort of tremendous diametric opposite of the shounen fighting/competition manga style, in that effort/lineage/friendship/virtue/morality/etc are all considered meaningless and people die horribly, which makes it overall very much in tune with many seinen works whose principle theme tends to be "you aren't important/special and what you do barely matters". Indeed, what mirth there is in this Baki arc is often of a sadistic and schadenfreudic kind.
You're right, there is something subversive about the way Baki approaches the genre trappings it deals with. The first anime season plays out like one long set-up for the final "joke." Baki spends the entire season getting stronger like the shonen protagonist he is only for the final battle to turn into an immediate one-sided ass-whooping. The capper was all the friends he made through combat looking on aghast as the expected outcome of the story arc went out the window. I've only watched the parts of the convict arc that are on US Netflix but so far it already feels like the criminals have gotten more than they expected. Instead of traveling to Japan to find a group of heroes they meet up with a large gang of dead-eyed monsters who are just as brutal as the convicts but manage to function in society because they mostly only attack each other. So far it looks like the reason the convicts will lose is because they waste their time with petty cruelties to innocent people and aren't dedicatin
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There's an entire arc where Muhammad Ali's son is introduced, beats some guy amazingly, enrages Baki's invincible father... only to get horribly beaten by one person after another, requiring him to even get his tongue surgically repaired, where he proceeds to get trained back up by Muhammad Ali so that he can fight Baki, only to lose to Baki in like one page by Baki kicking him in the groin immediately at the start of the fight. That this comes after the convicts arc make you think that the readers should've seen it coming, but it was still quite something.
There are times when I think the person who writes Baki hates the series as much as he loves it.
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| | "End of the Lunar Year Round-up Quarantine" , posted Fri 8 Feb 04:56:
quote:
I was going to share some stuff but now it's so late! I'll wait for CNY/Lunar New Year.
Happy Lunar New Year!
So, I didn't play all that many games last year. But I did play some game things and read some book things.
BATTLETECH:  
Ah, the Front Mission of the West. Something I'd surely have loved in high school, and something I really enjoyed the heck out of in 2018. A really fun damage model for the giant robots lets you blow parts off haphazardly or aim for a specific part. You can try to disable a mech or even kill the pilot to salvage enough parts to add that mech to your roster, or you can try to instantly "core" an enemy mech if you manage to land a fortuitous strike to their midsection from the right firing angle... though there won't be much left to salvage in that case. Minding the total weight of your equipment and effectively managing heat generation (i.e., not firing every weapon every turn to keep your mechs from overheating/shutting down/frying your pilot alive) is also cool, though the weight/heat/power balance for certain weapons seemed a bit off when I first played.
I won't bother to list my other minor complaints here, but I recommend it without reservation to giant robot fans.
MONSTER HUNTER WORLD:  
I played this game an awful lot with a group of friends from my old work place (200+ hours). Lance was my preferred weapon. Somewhere between farming HR Elder Dragons, everyone kind of dropped it around the same time. But the game really does indicate to me that Capcom is still capable of greatness and may once again be on the right path (meaning of course the path that pleases me personally).
I haven't logged in quite a while, but I will be seriously tempted to do so when they finally add the new ice environment.
SOUL CALIBUR 6:       +
Shamefully I have barely touched the game, though I did do some difficult combos in training mode to satisfy my ego and make a spooky skeleton warrior for the Libra of Souls... more like Libra of Bones!!!  But not having anyone to play against in person killed it for me. Fellow cafe-goers, please accept my apologies for not joining the lagfests. I did not have the patience for the costume editor and felt ashamed I did not have a better Ivy costume to use than the default. I did not get the season pass and I have not downloaded 2B.
It's too bad, too, since I was pulling off Summon Suffering pretty reliably with the Hori Fighting Commander. Maybe I'll see everyone in Soul Calibur 7.
WANDERING GHOST: THE ODYSSEY OF LAFCADIO HEARN: 
Lafcadio was an interesting guy. A true World Warrior (IRELAND! USA! FRENCH WEST INDES! JAPAN!) who lead a rather remarkable life. There is no evidence that he practiced kobujutsu like Geese Howard, but he did wear hakama. The cynical hater might derisively refer to him as "the patron saint of weeaboos," "a self-indulgent master of purple prose," or "a real weirdo and a closet animist." But the truth is, to be quite frank, this guy fucking rules (despite being dead). Maybe not a man to idolize, but a man worthy of understanding and respect. Possessed of a sharp intellect and a colorful vocabulary, Hearn produced some really entertaining writing. He'd have been a great MMCafe Poster, I think. The guy makes a great subject for a biographer...you will not believe some of the stuff he gets into. Even better, Hearn's own writing comprises much of the book: true crime stories, ethnographic sketches, musings from his personal journal, letters, and fiction.
I feel that a few people here would really enjoy this book, and I tell all my friends to read it (though none of them have yet). If anyone takes the recommendation, let me know!
THE WORLD AS I FOUND IT: () (not not )
Extremely literary fanfiction about philosophers that were hanging around Cambridge in the early 20th century. Well, kind of. The individuals in question are Wittgenstein, Russell, G.E. Moore. This book has an incredible scope and deep, deep characterization. There's also some harrowing passages concerning The Great War, and no small amount of philosophy to chew on as well. Not a quick read (I think I had to renew the book twice), and rather slow to start from my experience, but pretty good! You may well feel smarter after finishing this, but you might also be thinking, "Huh, I didn't expect there to be so much sex in there. Well, philosophizing does tend to make one horny."
Random observation: "Impassive" is to Duffy as "Indolent" is to Nabokov. My implication is that, if both authors were facing each other down for a "Family Feud" face-off, and the host were to say:
We surveyed 100 people, top 7 answers are on the board— what's another word for "inert?",
Both authors would be flop-flail-scrambling to slam upon their respective buzzers so they might expel from their lips their aforementioned very-most-favorite synonyms for the word in question. For the record, I myself am firmly on the side of Nabokov.
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[this message was edited by Mosquiton on Fri 8 Feb 08:03] |
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"End of the Year Round-up Quarantine" , posted Mon 31 Dec 11:39
