Stuff I've been eating.

[prog]

JONATHAN STRANGE & MR NORRELL was my train-riding book today because I had no other, and I found that the very next chapter addressed the continuing fates of the characters I had taken for forgotten. I stand by my earlier criticism, because there is a very real difference between a reader anticipating missing characters' return, and wondering if the author's simply misplaced them.

LOST continues to be a soup of delightful and spicy meatballs floating in a broth of stale television cliches. Usually I have no palate for it, and sometimes I just have to have five bowls of it. I slurped down a good half-dozen episodes over the last 24 hours, and have three more to go before I know what half my flist is so happy about.

PSYCHONAUTS is wonderful, and is currently a $15 download for XBox 360 users. (I understand PC users can enjoy it via Steam, as well.) I have a lengthy post about it that I may actually finish someday. Suffice to say it's certainly the best written platformer-genre game I've ever played.

RACE FOR THE GALAXY is an amazing card game and I wish to play it again right now. I will almost certainly be purchasing a copy soon.

Comments

[cortezopossum.livejournal.com]

Its great you can download Psychonauts -- otherwise it is a somewhat difficult game to find and it's a shame because it is a very good one.

[ahkond.livejournal.com]

I agree about Strange & Norrell; I loved it but that was in spite of that sort of "first-book" flaws.

I've seen the Lost finale and I'm not so sure what the big deal is. They've been gradually filling in the pieces lately and it was more of that: good but not sudden.

Psychonauts is awesome and I got it for the PC using the Steam system from Valve (they of Team Fortress 2 and Half-Life and whatnot). I really enjoyed it but then I got stuck on some platformy-type stuff (rolling around on a big marble and doing tricky jumps and hovering) that, to me, get in the way of the story. I love everything about the game except for the running and jumping.

Race for the Galaxy seemed random, confusing and arbitrary to me, but that might be because it was explained to me very poorly while playing in a room full of shouting people.

[chocorisu.livejournal.com]

It really is testament to Tim Schafer's superb writing that Psychonauts is magnificent despite being a terrible platform game. I am tempted to buy it again on 360 just to make sure they know I want more games like that.

[radiotelescope.livejournal.com]

I don't think you can say it's a *bad platformer* just because the authors succumbed to the "last level must be stupidly frustrating" fallacy.

It is, overall, a terrific platformer game with a lot of variety, which means that nobody will like all the parts equally. I had trouble with several of the hurry-up-hurry-up levels (not just the last one).