The lows are low, but the highs are home

I’ve been reading a fair bit since Christmas, so I thought I’d make a post about what I’ve read. Let me know if you like the format! I’m trying to give recommendations without getting too spoiler-y, but sometimes you have to give out a few spoilers to tell people why a book is actually interesting.

        All You Need is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka: A time-travel sci-fi action novel from Japan. I realize action isn’t a genre for books, but it was a lot like an action movie in book form - but maybe it would be more appropriate to think of it as an action game instead. Basically, aliens are invading Earth and they’re just brutalizing the human race. The main character is killed in his first battle, but then he wakes up the next morning - thinking it was just a dream. He goes off to the battle again, and does something differently from the dream - hoping it will turn out better. But he dies. And wakes up again the next morning. The day of the battle. He’s trapped in a loop, doesn’t know why, and tries a variety of things to get out of it - eventually he just decides to learn from his mistakes and become an alien killing machine. Nothing particularly deep and thought-provoking here, but it was pretty badass and I liked it well enough.

        Metagame by Sam Landstrom: I got this one as an ebook for free online, and it was pretty good. It’s a sci-fi adventure novel in a kind of super-internet future, and in a way it reads kind of like MMO fanfiction. The kind where they keep their completely non-fantasy usernames for the character names. The characters have underscores and numbers in their names, they say “noob” and other internet slang that’s getting to be a little outdated… The book is a few years old, I think? So whatever. Anyway, there were a few interesting things in here, the best one I can remember is that in their future timeline, marriage is abolished in favour of civil unions and then all kinds of relationships become ok. Because marriage has such religious connotations, and the religious folk get all upset about the “sanctity of marriage”, their solution is just to make marriage a special option for people who want it and let everyone else be happy and love whoever they want.

        Pretty neat, I think. Also at one point in the book the main character hacks the source code of life. That may be spoilers but it’s so badass that you need to know.

        Azumanga Daioh by Kiyohiko Azuma: OH MY GOD SO FUNNY

SO AMAZINGLY FUNNY

        I laughed OUT LOUD, physically hahahahahaha, on a regular basis while reading this manga and that should be all the recommendation you need. It’s about girls in high school and that’s really about all I can tell you, it’s hard to get more specific than that. But it’s so funny. Oh man.

        Buy the official English translation, because it’s localized really well (as far as I know) and you can get the omnibus (the whole series) for like $30. Or you can watch the anime if you prefer that. I’ve been told by everyone ever that it’s hilarious too, so you can’t go wrong.

        All That Lives Must Die by Eric Nylund: The second book in the Mortal Coils keeps the same great style from the first book with DBZ our-powers-are-getting-stronger kind of cool. I can’t really give you any specifics about their super duper Immortal/Infernal (gods and devils respectively) powers but it’s pretty sweet. Like the first, it also does the thing I love most about young adult fantasy - mixes and matches myths and cultures from all over the world to get the very best selection of supernatural beings possible. I feel like a lot of “traditional” fantasy either wants to make its own epic mythology (with mixed success) or use elements from one specific place (Celtic, Norse, whatever) and be as “true” to the source material as possible. Which is what makes young adult books that have Norse gods hanging out with Greek gods so appealing.

        One other thought about young adult vs regular fantasy: Young adult books don’t play with point of view, and for that reason they tend to be a lot simpler than more mature fantasy books. At least, my favourite fantasy books (Stephen Erikson, George R. R. Martin, R. Scott Bakker) all use point of view to craft incredibly intricate plots and constantly surprise the reader. All that Lives Must Die has a couple of chapters from points of view other than the two main characters, but even aside from that I was actually genuinely surprised by a few things in the book. So hats off to the author for that.

                Harmony by Project Itoh: Another Japanese novel, this time a sci-fi thriller set in a hyper-socialist future where human beings are considered public property. Basically, World War 3 happens and nukes are tossed around like spitballs, and nearly everyone dies. Governments are decimated, and eventually dismantled completely as “admedistrations” - health care providers - gain power by offering health and security. Everyone agrees more war would be bad, so standing armies are disbanded along with traditional governments - admedistrative conglomerates become the unofficial government. Because so many people died, humans are the most valuable resource, and so everyone takes care of each other and people start to “suffocate from all the kindness.” Lots of philosophical musing, comparisons to Nazi society and their advances in health care, and ultimately a number of questions about the idea of consciousness itself. Oh, and mass suicides and other thrilling, globe-trotting adventures. It was one of those “can’t put it down” kind of books, so I do recommend it if you want to grab a copy off of Amazon for ten bucks!

Note: This isn’t anywhere near as good as I imagined it would be. Send me your ideas for making it better! You may think it’s ok, but I can guarantee it wouldn’t make the front page on Destructoid, and THAT is what I had in mind. Probably asking too much there.

There’s a pretty unfortunate trend in big-budget games these days: creative new IPs don’t sell, and sequels do. So every game that comes out is a “franchise opportunity” if it sells well, and it’s abandoned if it doesn’t. Rather than publish something like Brutal Legend, publishers like Activision will put their money where they see potential profit: Call of Duty and Prototype. They’re allowed to do that, of course, because video games are a business and businesses want to make money. But they’re leaving gamers like me behind.

        When Dead Space 2, Mass Effect 2 (and soon Mass Effect 3), Uncharted 2 (and soon Uncharted 3) come out, you can’t spend two minutes on the internet without hearing about how great they are. I’d love to play them, but there’s one problem: I haven’t played the previous games. I just don’t want to play sequels without playing the previous games and understanding the context and the characters. That’s even more true for games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age where you literally transfer your character from the previous games to the new one.

        I barely have time to play one game, and I certainly don’t have the time to play one game and its prequel (or two). So instead I buy games like Stacking, Costume Quest, Inside a Star Filled Sky, Super Meat Boy - games I can play in short sessions and know I’m still making progress. Or I play freeware games like Desktop Dungeons or Cave Story. Five minutes here, five minutes there, half an hour during a boring computer science class… That’s how I game these days.

        So when I look at the list of releases for 2011, discounting any sequels to games I haven’t played, here’s what I see that I might like to play: Okamiden, Portal 2, The Witcher 2, inFamous 2, Resistance 3… Then there’s five times as many sequels I’ll never play. I’m sure they’re great games, but they’re great games for someone else. Maybe Dragon Age II will be unanimously declared the Game of the Year, but I’d have to play Dragon Age: Origins first in order to enjoy it.

        Of course, I’m part of the problem too. There are still new games coming out in 2011, but none of them really catch my eye… because they’re new IPs and I don’t know if I’ll like them. If I have to buy only one game, like most gamers these days, I end up going for the sequel I know I’ll like over Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom, or Singularity, or any of the other good new IPs that came out last year. That’s how I got into this situation in the first place. Dead Space, BioShock, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Uncharted, God of War, all those AAA games that are still getting sequels years later - I looked at them, wasn’t sure I’d like them, and played my part in the vicious cycle.

        I’m not here to make dire predictions about the future of the industry. I can’t honestly say “we need more new IPs to keep the industry alive,” because people like me will keep those games from selling. I can’t honestly say “sequels are killing the industry,” because if it weren’t for those games, there wouldn’t be any money to fund new IPs. But I’m buying fewer and fewer games, and the games I do buy aren’t the AAA titles. What’s to stop Call of Duty or Uncharted from being the next Guitar Hero? How many sequels can they make before people stop buying them?