Zoe E. Whitten's Blog, page 62

Game review: Super Stardust Delta

As one of the Vita's cheaper launch titles, I was drawn to Super Stardust Delta by the graphics, and by early reviews that had compared the game play as similar to Beat Hazard, which is one of my favorite arcade shooters to waste time on. The comparison isn't quite right, but Super Stardust Delta is a fun arcade shooter with plenty of challenges in its six levels of hot and twin-sticky death.

You move the starship using the left analog stick, and the right shoots. The game can be run in Delta or Pure mode. Delta makes use of the Vita's touch features, but given how often I accidentally set off a black hole or a flurry of missiles when I didn't mean to, I tended to play pure more. So this isn't quite a knock to the touch screen options, just an admission that I'm a bit of a klutz.

What makes this game different from Beat Hazard is the globe you fly around. You're in a geosynchronous orbit with one of six planets, always keeping an eye on the horizons for the arrival of enemies or giant space rocks. The objective is to clear all the junk out of the airspace using a fire-whip to bust up asteroids, and an ice gun to break up comets. Both types of space rock contain green glowing chunks that will yield power ups for your weapons. Rocks and enemies also release stardust, and by collecting this glowing green dust, you increase a point multiplier and unlock some extra gifts along the way.

I'm not doing the game justice, though. Each planet is vastly different from the last, and the background graphics are gorgeous. The music is pretty standard fare for shooters, but it isn't grating on the ears. The music and graphics in combination with the simple game play make for a "sticky game" that keeps you coming back for more.

The main weapons are pretty cool. The fire whip can be wagged like a tail or fired around the ship at any angle. Or, to clear a lot of little asteroids quickly, rolling the right stick around fast will make a fire lasso. This can sometimes be a bad idea, as you end up hitting things you didn't mean to. So part of the game play is sorting out when is the right times to use one of three different shooting strategies, and that's just for the fire whip. There's also an ice gun, which grants higher levels of rapid fire multi-shot as you collect more power ups. Both the guns can be temporarily super-charged, meaning they'll lay waste to both space rock types with equal extreme prejudice, as well as any enemies unlucky enough to get caught in your crosshairs. Finally, for situations when the screen is feeling a little too tight for movement, you've got an EMP pulse that will clear a circular patch around your ship of everything; rocks, comets or enemies. But since you don't get these often, you'll want to spare these until you really, really need them. Also, they only give you a second of breathing room, so don't relax just because you've fired one off.

Playing through the game on normal mode didn't take me very long, but I've been going back to play the same levels over and over. The game can be fiendishly hard, particularly on one planet where nearly every square inch is bombarded with alternating rows of asteroids and comets, forcing you to switch weapons back and forth rapidly. And while you're busy focusing on clearing the rocks, you may never notice when more waves of enemies arrive.

There's probably about six or seven base enemy types at most, and 6 bosses. Each planet is divided into 5 stages, with the boss battles taking place after some real ugly firefights. And, as is typical of space shmups, once the big boss arrives, they often pump out enough energy bolts that you can get out of your ship and walk on them. But there's a pattern to the fire rates, and it is possible to fly between the bullets and get closer to the boss in preparation of a killing blow.

Even on Casual and Normal modes, the game is hard. Enemies aren't particularly bright, but when you've got a screen full of asteroids and comets, it's sometimes hard to see those suckers sneaking up on you. So you can be setting up a shot for something right in front of you, and never notice the jet that's creeping on your six. For as hard as the game is, and for as often as I died, I just kept restarting for "one more try." In fact, I drained my Vita twice in one day playing through the planets, AND I was still playing while the battery was charging back up. To me, it's just that much fun, that I can't put it down until my hands are sore and my eyelid is all twitchy.

I wish I could say the mini-games were as enjoyable, but the Vita specific gimmicks just aren't as much fun compared to the main game. The tilt axis games were really lame, and only slightly better was Crush, where you have to use the touch screen and rear touch at the same time. Pinching has been annoying in every game I've tried, and I'm not convinced there's a legitimate use for it. This is not to say the back touch doesn't have uses. Witness how much fun it is to use a sniper rifle in Uncharted: Golden Abyss or Unit 13, and then you will agree the technology has fitting uses. But pinching rocks (or characters, as in Escape Plan) is not all that useful, or fun. Finally, there's a mini-game where you get a tractor beam, and you have to swing green asteroids into each other, triggering explosion that will clear out all the surrounding enemies. But again, this isn't as much fun as the main game.

But setting the mini-games, the main game is mesmerizing and addicting. I'd be happy with this game if I'd paid 34.99 for it, and for 7.99, it's was a great deal. There's also a bonus pack that can be bought separately for 2.99, or as a combo with the game for 9.99. I like the main game enough that I'll be buying the other pack later on. I give Super Stardust Delta four stars out of five. I'd give it the full five, but the mini-games don't do anything for me. I'd still recommend this game to anyone looking for a PS Vita shooter with lots of action, great graphics, and addicting game play.

Game review: Mutant Blobs Attack

Having beaten Uncharted: Golden Abyss on every mode except for crushing, I decided to look at some of the lower priced PS Vita games until I can find free time to get to Fnac for my next game card. (I'm waffling between Shinobido 2 or F1 2011.) My first choice was Super Stardust Delta, but after seeing so many great reviews for Mutant Blobs Attack, I figured that might be good for a laugh. In fact, it's not good for ANY laughs, or much of anything else, either.

The premise sounds interesting: a "Humane Blob Torture Museum" is host to a bunch of blobs that the humans made as a result of torturing one blob who crash landed on Earth. (This being a sequel to a PS3 game, I'm guessing the spiky main character is the descendant of the first blob.) This torture makes the main mutant blob angry enough to arrange for an escape, and so our game begins. But, thereafter nothing about this game makes much sense, and not in a cute cartoon kind of way. No, it's more like an "incomplete project from a kid snorting too many Pixie Stix" kind of way.

Before I start bitching, I'll mention what I liked. Before they're shrunken and impossible to see, the humans moving around in the early levels used a cute and simple animation style. I also liked how the outer edges of the screen are made grimy and reflective, like you're watching all of this on an old tube TV. And, as I said to the artist of the game on Twitter, the art used for the humans and the backgrounds is nice in an old cartoons kind of way.

But despite the art and music trying to capture old campy feelings from a long-gone era, the level designs are absurdly and haphazardly assembled without taking advantage of the new concepts the game makers are introducing to the familiar attacking blob trope. It doesn't help that the blob's half lidded eye conveys a sense of boredom more than anger. He looks bored going through every level, and in this regard, I was able to identify with him well enough. Right from level one, I was bored too.

While most space blobs shown in the intro seemed resilient to all forms of torture, the blob I'm playing is slow, hard to control, and frail. So pretty much everything can kill it, and probably has a few dozen times. This wouldn't be so much of a problem if levels weren't designed to make every move a life or death decision. Which would kinda make sense if our blob was trapped in the bowels of a lab still desperately trying to contain the "hero." But the blob easily escaped the scientists' clutches by hiding in a student's bag, and his course begins in a mundane college dorm.

And yet, there's lasers in the dorm living room; floor-to-ceiling lasers that force you to rush through the room or be insta-killed. (Yet don't set fire to all the trash lying around, or burn the carpets…or the people.) There's moving lasers in the air conditioning ducts, lasers in the plumbing, and lasers on the "football training field". There's even a blob-seeking laser. Clearly, the men behind this game are fond of lasers, whether they fit a location or not. Or, maybe they didn't have any other ideas for what could harm a blob and just kept tossing out the same crap answer over, and over, and over and… I mean, heaven forbid they should make it go through a walk in freezer (a known problem spot for ALL space blobs) and perhaps avoid ice cubes or touching the frozen metal floor. Nope, just lasers, lasers, and more lasers.

And for those of you who don't like lasers, there's glowing spikes! In an early level, these are arrayed in tandem with a dozen heated vents all placed side-by-side to blow the blob up into said spikes…which are mounted under a coffee table. Because lots of people have death traps set up in their college dorms under their coffee tables, right? (I never went to college, so maybe I'm wrong on this.)

The game's main theme of growth isn't conveyed very well from one level to the next either. But then again, none of the objects you're supposed to eat are made to proper scale. There's baseballs and apples that should be on the same scale as the humans and surrounding books and pizza boxes, but are as tiny as six-sided dice. The plastic drinking cups and coffee mugs are also the size of dice. No self-respecting frat boy is going to chug beer from these thimbles. Meanwhile, hamburgers and milk jugs in later levels are the same size as people and garbage bags.

Even if you ignore these scale problems and just focus on the blob, his starting size doesn't make sense. When the intro plays, the blob is shown to already be bigger than a human hand. Yet in level one, you're smaller than a mouse. Why? Because. And the blob will constantly shrink between levels without any rational explanation. The blob must grow large enough to absorb corks to enter new levels after eating enough to grow, but after munching some tanks and helicopters on Earth, the blob's dimensions shrink in the ship so that astronauts are close to the size of the blob all over again. So even your method of measuring progress, your size, is meaningless from one level to the next. Why? Come on, just guess this time.

And let's talk about those level "corks." I've seen dumb ideas work in old cartoons, but this is one dumb idea that gets worse as it goes along. It starts off stupid because you have to eat a cork from inside a toilet in level two. Yes, because people normally stopper their toilets between uses. A stopper in the sink, I'll buy. A stopper in the side of a warehouse wall? No, I can't take enough stupid pills for this to work.

Once you make it past the dorm interior, the number of moving laser traps meant to kill the blob grows, and none of them makes any sense for the scenes the game background is trying to depict. Why are there rows of lasers near a barbecue pit in a public park? Because. A home the blob must enter has guided missile turrets. Sure, that's standard issue for home security, I guess. Why couldn't the game makers come up with some challenges that didn't involve lasers, spikes, or missiles? Because.

After a few levels to get used to triangle jumping on a delay, the blob picks up the power to manipulate certain objects, which you move using the touch screen. What a tragic waste of the touch screen for this stupid gimmick. Just like the traps, nothing about the items you use makes sense. The blob will use some levers to move food around a warehouse, (Why? Because.) or to launch yourself over a field of glowing spikes. (Again, a field of deadly traps…in a public park.) Or you move some barriers to act as platforms or shields. But as to why these moveable objects are mounted there in the first place, there is no reason to have them. They're just extra doo-dads and widgets with no use in the world except to aid the blob.

The blob gets magnetic powers, but only certain metals are magnetic, and most pipes are designed so that you will land on glowing spikes on either side of the pipe you needed to land on. Or veer into the path of a conveniently placed laser. Why? You know the answer by now.

Every level is just thrown together like this, with no rhyme or reason to the designs, except to be "challenging." Food might be hidden in some strange locations, or you might find one of the blob's "friends." (Even though there shouldn't be any blobs on the moon from the lab. Or on the rocket itself, now that I think about it. (The blob eats its friends too, so I guess he's getting back old parts of himself.)) But in trying so hard to challenge players, it seems no thought was given to whether or not the levels were designed well, or were at least fun to play. And the pull of the "funny ads" that many other reviewers mentioned aren't funny. They're tired memes that were old jokes 6 and 7 years ago. The signs might as well ask, "Why did the chicken cross the road?" because that's the banal level of humor used throughout the "punny" ad theme.

I got up to the rocket ship going to the moon, and after pushing through some really badly drawn "pipes" (The whole foreground is rendered a flat black that hides the prettier background art and looks like a five-year old attempting to draw a rocket interior) and "gears" (which don't mesh up like proper gears, or serve any purpose except to crush the blob over and over) I was presented with a maze where everything had a laser mounted on it. My every effort to move past was thwarted, and the game's "tip" is to engage rockets and "flatten" my blob against the wall. Instead, the rocket makes steeing the blob nigh-impossible. So instead of clinging close to the wall while being killed with a laser, I flew wildly through the lasers until I died. Oh yeas, that's so much better. And I assume that if I stick with this and make it past ANOTHER set of randomly placed lasers, there will be many more levels of this kind of "fun" to look forward to? Question: Why would I want to abuse myself for the sake of something that isn't fun, nor even mildly amusing?

Much Like Escape Plan, the premise sounds better than the actual game, and the attempts to use the Vita's new features are a pain in the ass. I have to wonder why some game makers confuse frustration for fun, or why there's so many people praising this for being a hard game while ignoring the fact that it's so repetitive and uninspired. It's my guess that some gamers are masochists, and that being killed over and over by the same kinds of traps is fun, in any context. So because they view the game as hard, they see it as "fun." I just find it tedious, and I have better ways to waste my time. Other video games, for instance. But not this one.

Lets' see, what else? There's no setting the game level from easy to hard. There's just one setting, "fuck off and die." There's no way to change the button controls, despite there being a controls button in the options. (It just tells you which buttons do what.) There's no restart level button, so if you flub a section and pass your consumable friends without munching them, you have to quit the game, wait to load the main page, and then go back through all the menus to restart the level. Since so many levels are this poorly made, I would like to see a level skip button in a future update, like Escape Plan had. So then I could at least attempt playing the levels that weren't clones of Laser-rama: The Revenge.

There's a common trend of the billboard ads in the backgrounds ripping off internet memes and using them in "punny tributes." There's nothing of a tribute in this, and much like the rest of the game, there's not much thought put into the humor. Even though I knew all the memes, there was no sense of fun at discovering the new ads. I also love puns, but none of these were worthy of a laugh or a groan. They're tired, like someone trying to tell an arrow to the knee joke even though everyone's already told them, "that joke isn't funny."

I need to note, it's not the difficulty of the game annoying me. I'm getting my ass handed to me in Super Stardust Delta, and I'm loving it even if it's hard. I love that game because the game play is so addicting, and all of the elements make sense, even if they are equally nonsensical. I'm not really stuck in the game just yet, but I don't care enough about this ball of spiked snot with no personality to keep trying.

Mutant Blobs Attack looks like it might have had a personality, with a little more effort and play testing. Instead, it tries to fake being interesting by cribbing internet memes and throwing the blob into ever more convoluted laser/glowy spike scenarios to escape from.

So, let me recap: sloppy controls, uninspired level design with dully repetitive threats, and a "borrowed" sense of humor that isn't funny. If this were a first effort from a high school computer literacy student, I might find something nice to say like "Good first effort." But this is a game designed by Drinkbox, who supposedly have several successful games in their portfolio already. That's what makes this game so sad to me. It's coming from pros, but looks like it came out of a failed school project. If this were a freebie I downloaded as a sample, I wouldn't even bother with a review. But I paid for this crap, and I feel ripped off.

I give Mutant Blobs Attack 1 star, and much like Escape Plan, I can't delete it fast enough to make room on my memory card for better games. A waste of money and time, I can only hope the next generation of Vita mini games have more thought put into them. Cause otherwise, I'm going to be pissed if I have to keep wasting money on half baked designs and last year's worst jokes.

 

Book review: Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr

I wanted to like this book because I liked the characters. Well, most of the characters. But Wicked Lovely has a lousy villain, and a plot centered all around said villain. The bigger crime of this book lies in the cover, which proclaims "Enter a world of faery romance." In fact, there is absolutely nothing the faery king, Keenan, does that could be considered even slightly romantic. That's because he's not courting the main character, Ash, because he loves her. He's doing it because if he doesn't, THE WHOLE WORLD WILL DIE.

WHY? Why must a freaking romance novel eschew all pretense of romance in favor of a plot that MAKES NO SENSE. And why must a romance book about fae go all the way to a plot about saving the world just to build tension? I… *deep breaths. I need to calm down.

Okay, I'm going to list what I liked. I liked Ash, and I liked that Ash already had a great guy who had been courting her long term. I liked how their relationship developed, and I give kudos to the writer for covering oral sex, even in the coy way in which she did. I liked Keenan, at first. But the more desperate he gets about saving the world, the stupider his ideas are. It's like he's the dumb teenager, and Ash is the millennium-old fae.

But the whole reason all of these characters are interacting is because Keenan's mother, Beira, has seen one too many Disney movies and thought, "I could be a villain too." Her plot is stupid, and frankly pathetic, and because her plot is the only reason all of this is happening, it strips away all the great possible conflicts that could have come through these same characters and a different motivation for their actions. But having a crappy cardboard cutout standing in place of a plot is still a plot device.

Also, what is the deal with YA and their unhealthy fixation on preserving virginity until one is 17? I used to read penny porn as a teen, and there was this recurring plot were a girl just turns 18 and becomes hot to trot. We can all agree that's ridiculous, and this books tries to address the cliche by giving Ash a boyfriend, Seth. But he's not sexually active with her despite his being a "player" and them being together 7 months. Why? Because Ash is worried about keeping their relationship "pure." If this wasn't bad enough, with two separate subplots, Ash is made to worry about whether or not she's still a virgin, and this is the best the writer could come up with for tension, apparently.

That's why, with a broken heart, I give Wicked Lovely 2 stars, and would recommend that romance fans avoid it because there's not a whiff of romance anywhere in the story. The closest the book came to a romantic scene, the author "fades to black" and then implies with one coy sentence what an awesome cunnilinguist Seth is. Oh, be still my Puritan heart.

The romance label is false advertising from the publisher, in my opinion, and I will not bother picking up the next book in the series. I also wouldn't suggest this book to anyone, unless they just had to have a complete collection of texts on faeries.

I wanted to like this book because I liked the characters...

I wanted to like this book because I liked the characters. Well, most of the characters. But Wicked Lovely has a lousy villain, and a plot centered all around said villain. The bigger crime of this book lies in the cover, which proclaims "Enter a world of faery romance." In fact, there is absolutely nothing the faery king, Keenan, does that could be considered even slightly romantic. That's because he's not courting the main character, Ash, because he loves her. He's doing it because if he doesn't, THE WHOLE WORLD WILL DIE.

WHY? Why must a freaking romance novel eschew all pretense of romance in favor of a plot that MAKES NO SENSE. And why must a romance book about fae go all the way to a plot about saving the world just to build tension? I… *deep breaths. I need to calm down.

Okay, I'm going to list what I liked. I liked Ash, and I liked that Ash already had a great guy who had been courting her long term. I liked how their relationship developed, and I give kudos to the writer for covering oral sex, even in the coy way in which she did. I liked Keenan, at first. But the more desperate he gets about saving the world, the stupider his ideas are. It's like he's the dumb teenager, and Ash is the millennium-old fae.

But the whole reason all of these characters are interacting is because Keenan's mother, Beira, has seen one too many Disney movies and thought, "I could be a villain too." Her plot is stupid, and frankly pathetic, and because her plot is the only reason all of this is happening, it strips away all the great possible conflicts that could have come through these same characters and a different motivation for their actions. But having a crappy cardboard cutout standing in place of a plot is still a plot device.

Also, what is the deal with YA and their unhealthy fixation on preserving virginity until one is 17? I used to read penny porn as a teen, and there was this recurring plot were a girl just turns 18 and becomes hot to trot. We can all agree that's ridiculous, and this books tries to address the cliche by giving Ash a boyfriend, Seth. But he's not sexually active with her despite his being a "player" and them being together 7 months. Why? Because Ash is worried about keeping their relationship "pure." If this wasn't bad enough, with two separate subplots, Ash is made to worry about whether or not she's still a virgin, and this is the best the writer could come up with for tension, apparently.

That's why, with a broken heart, I give Wicked Lovely 2 stars, and would recommend that romance fans avoid it because there's not a whiff of romance anywhere in the story. The closest the book came to a romantic scene, the author "fades to black" and then implies with one coy sentence what an awesome cunnilinguist Seth is. Oh, be still my Puritan heart.

The romance label is false advertising from the publisher, in my opinion, and I will not bother picking up the next book in the series. I also wouldn't suggest this book to anyone, unless they just had to have a complete collection of texts on faeries.

Game review: Escape Plan

I went into this game wanting to love it. I was a HUGE fan of Limbo, and many comparisons have been made between the two games. Which is a complete sham because aside from both games using the same color scheme, they've got nothing else in common. The worst part that they don't have in common is that Limbo was fun, while Escape Plan is so dull, it couldn't even provoke my famous gamer rage.

The premise, like most indie games, is very simplistic. There's an evil guy, and he wants to kill your characters. The game breaks fourth wall to reveal that you will be the silent accomplice to these two "lovable" characters. Without you to guide these simple creatures, they'd otherwise just stand around and wait to be killed. And that would be a real shame, that idiots die when someone else could save them and let them breed future idiots. Why doesn't anyone think of the shallow end of the gene pool, huh?

Anywho, let's start with the biggest problem, the scoring system, which requires an extremely low number of gestures to get a positive score. This despite the fact that your fingers will hit the back touch pad or the front screen all the time in your efforts to find some way to hold the Vita for best effect for each level, resulting in false gestures. In theory, I could go back and replay these levels to get a better star rating, like on Angry Birds. But that assumes that I had fun playing the level once and care to try for a better score. This was true of Angry Birds, but since I didn't like the levels in Escape Plan the first time through, I see no reason to try for a better score. In fact, I'd rather masturbate with a cheese grater than play any of these levels over. It's really that dull.

Next, let's talk about levels that require pinching a tiny character the size of a housefly to make them fart and speed across trap-rigged areas. (Side note, the sound effects in this game suck. From the canned audience to the machinery sounds, everything sounds like it came off a low grade sound effects CD.) I can't see my finger through the device, obviously, and the tiny size of the character Lil means I spent more time trying to get a hold of the character than I did navigating the courses. Even when I was sure I was pinching the right spot, my finger wold be off a micrometer, resulting in two extra gestures, and still no movement from the helium-bloated Lil.

Then there's the levels where you must tap items in the front, and then the back in rapid order. There's no comfortable way to hold the Vita to accomplish this, and since the items that must be taped from the back are so small, you can count on killing your character with your inaccuracy more than any of these so-called diabolical traps.

AND THEN there's level where you must herd sheep by tapping the back "wall", move electric rods by tapping the front, shepherd your sheep safely through a long fall AND operate the screen camera using the right stick. Even if you somehow manage all of this, your right hand is forced to hold the whole weight of the unit on three fingers. This is so, so not comfortable. And, did I mention that the game regularly shifts the camera back to the characters, even if you were across the level trying to herd the world's stupidest sheep?

About halfway through the game, I found the skip button, and afterward just made a few attempts at levels before skipping them. Every level idea that the designers must have thought was clever is instead clumsy and a poor use of the Vita's hardware. I said on Twitter, about the only reason I think you should get Escape Plan is to see the WORST implementation of touch controls for a Vita game. About the only other thing I can think to mention is, the fat guy, Laarg, got off real light in the game. At the end of my playing for real, (before Skipopalooza started, that is) Laarg had 25 deaths to Lil's 68. So, clearly the folks who made this game hate skinny people. They also may think fat people are mentally retarded. Or, that's the message I'm choosing to take away from this game.

I really can't think of anything nice to say about this disaster. Oh wait, I liked the selections for background music. Also the end credits song is a personal favorite of mine, the remake of Lean on Me by Club Nouveau. Oh, and during the credits, you can bounce the characters into each other, which was more fun than most of the game. Yeah, that's about all I can think of that's nice about this miserable pain in the ass. (That pain is my wallet complaining, by the way.)

Dull, uninspired, and a complicated mess to play, I give Escape Plan 1 star out of 5, and I'd recommend it only to people I don't like.

Found a vendor…

So, thanks to a tip from Becka over on Twitter, AKA @shutsumon, I've gotten in contact with No Boundaries Press, and they have agreed to carry all of my titles. My first email was sent asking about my banned books to make sure I wasn't violating some moral code for them too, and they said they would carry those titles as well as my less triggery stuff.

This is good news, but there's a catch. I'll need to send along books at the rate of 5-6 per month, so for a while, many of my back catalog books will only be available at Amazon. The main problem is, if I dump all my books into the NBP queue at the same time, I'm making it harder for other authors to get their books processed. This isn't fair to the others or to the staff at NBP either. Also, NBP publishes a release update for their newsletter, and I don't want to flood that with 37 titles. It's a bit much. Releasing a few titles at a time means being able to keep my name in the promotion list for many months, and in this way, I hope to be able to make some kind of positive impression with NBP's established reader base.

As for my freebie novel, My Gay Sparkly Vampire Romance: A Twilight Parody, I'll have to move it over to this blog and give it a separate link in the sidebar so people can still find it.

Anywho, I have to sort out paperwork, and then I have to start going over a release schedule that balances triggery titles with something more friendly to casual readers. Once I have a release schedule, I need to go back through the titles for another round of edits. Might as well, since I have to make my own epubs, PDFs, and mobi files. And speaking of mobi files, I'll be sure to upload updated versions to Amazon too. So once my new and improved books are out at NBP, the improvements will also show up for Amazon customers. (Even though I totally hate Amazon, I still love their customers. ^_^ )

So, have I missed anything? No, I guess that's it for now. I want to once again thank folks on twitter for the tweets of support. You've been helpful in finding me alternate solutions during this minor crisis, and I wouldn't be half as calm if I didn't have so many folks sending their condolences and what not. I'm sure I'll eventually get back around to rants about "you people," but for now, I'm feelin' the love, and I'm trying to return it.

Bye, Smashwords…

So, Smashwords has banned three of my books, Little Monsters, Peter the Wolf, and Penny for Your Debts. Curiously, they'd left Dogs of War despite it containing the same themes, and they left up Bran of Greenwood and the Scary Fairy Princess despite it having bestiality themes. With this inconsistent handling of my titles, I've decided to remove all my books from Smashwords. I'll be removing all links to Smashwords from my sidebar, but some old posts may still point to bad links to them.

Also, I will no longer promote titles from authors working with Smashwords. By this, I mean that if you tweet a link that leads to Smashwords, I won't retweet it. I want to be clear that this does not mean I wouldn't promote the same title as an Amazon link, or as a link from the publisher's site. Also, do not think that I am telling you other authors that you should boycott Smashwords too. You're all grown adults and can make your own decisions about who you sell through. I am just making the personal choice not to promote their store, or any products sold through it. No one has to follow me down the same path.

I apologize to all the Smashwords-affiliated indie authors who are losing my Twitter promotions because of this fiasco, but Mark Coker has made it clear that he does not support freedom of expression, nor does he really support the authors he works for. Yeah, I know, it's his sandbox, and his toys, so he can make up whatever rules he wants. But the dude has standards so ridiculous, he couldn't sell books that traditional publishers and brick and mortar stores have no problems carrying. For a dude running a porn ebook shop, he's pretty hypocritical, in my opinion.

I want to stress again, Mark took down books that were not erotic in nature, but left up my one porno title. That's seriously inconsistent policy making, and it's par for the course with Smashwords. Despite my many problems with Mark and his policies, I have always worked to promote Smashwords over Amazon. I did so because to my knowledge, Mark was not censoring authors the way Amazon was. Clearly, I was misinformed on my opinion, and Smashwords is no better than Amazon about arbitrarily deciding what they are willing to sell.

And, rather than rant about how unfair it is, I'll just pack up the rest of my toys and walk away. I'll be looking at another vendor today, but this may or may not work out. So for right now, my books are Amazon-exclusives. No, I don't like that, so I will be working to find other options.

To my readers who bought through Smashwords, I apologize for the inconvenience. I've appreciated your support, and should you choose to stick with Smashwords to support other authors, that's your decision to make. But Smashwords has lost me as an author, and as a customer.

Finally, I want to close this out by asking a favor. If I can find a new vendor, I hope that you will be willing to try them out instead of shopping at Amazon. To me, Amazon is the other gorilla waiting for their turn to smother authors with their arbitrary policies. Right now, they're playing pricing games, forcing folks to raise or lower prices as they see fit. They've also been known to ban books, so I can't delude myself enough to believe it can't happen to me. It just happened to me on another vendor, after all. So if I can find a vendor willing to carry my titles, please, help me prove that I'm worth the trouble by buying my books on their site. That's really all I can ask, and if you still buy my stuff on Amazon, well, all I can say then is, "Thanks for the support."

All right, one last thing. Thank you to everyone on Twitter who wrote with messages of support last night. I can't say I was upset about this, because I had a week to prepare myself for the inevitable. Nevertheless, it felt good to get so many messages agreeing that this decision by Smashwords stinks. I appreciate that, and I hope I don't come across as complaining at you.

Open versus linear: a ramble…

My recent adventures in gaming have left me wondering why some games that are open worlds fail to hold my interest, while linear games with a single story and perhaps a few subplots work for me better. This is a ramble more than a rant, and before I start, I want to make clear, I'm not saying, "This is why games like this suck." I'm listing why they don't work for me.

The biggest problem with open worlds is the lack of a guiding narrative. When playing Enslaved: Odyssey to the West or Uncharted: Golden Abyss, there's never any doubt about what your goals are, and what you need to do to win the game. But a lot of open world games like Skyrim and Red Dead Redemption give you a basic intro before you're pitched into the world and told to make your own way through the games. The story will emerge if you play long enough, or if it doesn't, you'll end up forming your own story from the fragments of the world that you choose to engage

Now I've seen a lot of people talk up these games about having "unlimited" choices, but the problem is, there's not a real choice offered, only the illusion of choice. Using Red Dead Redemption as an example, when you approach strangers to talk, they give you jobs. You have no options in the cut-scene dialogue, and you don't have a choice about accepting the task. Once you have a task given, it will sit on your map forever, no matter how unrealistic that may be.

An old man I was supposed to rescue lay "dying" with a gut wound. After waiting a week in game for his map icon to go away, I finally tried the mission twice and had the old man die on the way to town both times. Not from his original wound, but from the robbers who were still hanging around A WEEK AFTER THEY SHOT HIM. This is so, so fucking stupid, but game makers just love to come up with bullshit challenges like this. Other players probably think the mission is loads of fun, but I don't have enough fucking fingers to drive a horse team, maintain their course, and also have a gun fight.

And honestly, no one in real life was able to drive a coach and shoot bandits at the same time. That's why they had someone riding shotgun, for fuck's sake. It's where the fucking term "riding shotgun" originated, and in a game about the Old West, you'd fucking expect them to…I said this was a ramble rather than a rant, didn't I? Right, I did…deep breaths. I digress, the game is asking me to be Superman as a starting mission. My answer is a sincere "fuck that."

Anywho, since I was escorting an honest to God snake oil salesman to ensure that he could keep conning the local people, and since the game threw six bad guys at me while I'm driving and reading a map, I decided "Fuck it, I'll let the old man die of thirst." Well, another seven days have passed in the game since then, and despite the fact that he was on death's door when I arrived, that marker is still there. His condition won't become critical until I arrive. That is some serious drama queen bullshit.

In another encounter with a stranger, a dude tells me he's a dowsing specialist, and he wants me to convince someone to sell their land to him. My guy, a man of the law, goes, "I might do that." I wanted a button to refuse this idiot, but instead, I just let myself get shot and restarted the day, thus never taking the con artist's assignment.

And, I need to point out that not having a choice about refusing jobs means I just don't talk to strangers at all. Maybe some of the other strangers have real problems that I want to solve, but after being told twice to help scam artists, I now must assume that all strangers are the same. So my illusion of choice means cutting myself off from an aspect of the game precisely because I don't have the choice of saying no to a work offer.

Another problem in Red Dead Redemption occurs when the game informs me, "You can use a lasso to tie up criminals without killing them." Well, hey howdy, that's right up my pacifistic alley! So I set out on a bounty hunt with intentions of sneaking in and roping the entire gang before riding off with the one guy I needed. That was the plan, but every single time I roped the first cattle rustler, my character would yell "John Marsh, I've come to arrest you!" So the entire camp piles down on my idiot character, and he either shoots everyone and kills them all, or he dies. I couldn't even hobble the fuckers because they just limped along in their efforts to shoot me. Shooting their arms also did not harm their aim any. The supposed option for stealth is a lie, and it's a lie because the game makers REFUSE to give you the option of sneaking in quietly. Or rather you can sneak into camp. But the moment you start to do your job, your character obliterates the stealth mission in favor of a suicide mission. The same is true for wounding criminals. Sure, you can do it. But when that means they'll probably kill you even after being winged, it no longer is a valid choice, is it?

You might ask, "But Zoe, if you don't like not having choices, why does a linear world that forces the story on you work better for you?" That's a question that puzzled me too, but I think it's because the story is presented to me directly without the preamble that I have to go looking for the "real story" first. I'm told who the bad guys are, who I am, and then I'm given a simple objective. If the story is interesting, then my desire to see the rest of the story overcomes my dislike of being told what to do. I don't need a better motivation than reaching the end, because that was my whole point for playing the game. I want to see the story, and so I play to uncover more of the story even if I don't like some of the individual goals I need to accomplish.

Take for instance the requirement to kill X number of enemies before an area is unlocked. This is the case with Uncharted: Golden Abyss, and with many stages in Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. Enslaved gave me the option in several levels not to fight the robot enemies. All I had to do was sneak very carefully around them and I got an award for not killing anything. And what's sad is, having that occasional illusion of choice pleased me because I was given a choice about how to approach a problem. My end goal is still the same whether I choose to fight or sneak, and there's still no choice about wandering off to do something else. But just giving me the chance to sneak sometimes is illusion enough for me to accept the other constraints placed upon my character.

My enjoyment of Uncharted makes this distinction very clear to me, because I had quickly developed empathy for the people Nathan Drake was killing despite their actions or those of their fearless leader. Still, I knew I couldn't see the rest of the game without taking out those digital denizens. So even if I don't like shooting people in Uncharted, I still did it because it was part of the game, and I accepted the rules.

Compare this to the scene I left Skyrim on, where an execution was taking place as I walked by on an unrelated quest. I would have made it past the whole ugly thing if this one brat hadn't asked "Momma, can't we do anything?" And the mother was like, "No, it's best just to look away." And so I got pissed and walked over to hit the executioner with a dragon shout. Everything went to hell and I died, rebooted to a point before the execution. In theory, I could play the rest of the game, if I could just walk past that execution. Another person suggested that I could enter town through a different gate. But like the LOLcat joke goes, I can't unsee what I done see'd.

The fact is, in the world of Skyrim, I'm so disgusted by the game's black and white morals that I can't even watch hubby play it. When I try, all I seem to do is find more flaws. Hubby acknowledges these, and he has said, "Being charitable, the writing is dismal." But, hubby continues to play by way of not playing. He goes dungeon crawling for magic items, or he takes on side quests if they don't seem morally questionable. He collects books, and he reads them all, no matter how awful they are, because some of them contain clues to dealing with quests. Hubby uses the smithing forge and makes armor. He's studying potions and item enchantments. He rides a giant black horse around to gather herbs for recipes. When the random dragon attack occurs, he kills it. But he's not even remotely interested in the main story because like me, he finds both the Imperials and the Stormcloaks to be equally repugnant.

Hubby is aware that his choice not to engage the main story is not a real choice, but is instead the illusion of choice. But he's accepted the illusion, and he continues to play because he likes the way the world looks, and the way the fighting plays out. He agrees with me that the writing is lousy, but he's willing to forgive that because he loves hitting things with a warhammer and making them bleed. (He's a simple creature sometimes.)

On a completely random note, hubby has three characters, and all three are permanently equipped with a mug and a set of wooden dishwear. Not because he needs them, but because to him it feels more realistic that a wandering adventure should have them in their traveling pack. In this way, hubby is making up his own game rules inside the game world, one that ignores all the problems with the writing. For lack of a better term, hubby is becoming his own writer and ignoring the story that the game makers want to force on him.

This marks a big difference between us as gamers. Hubby is willing to overlook major problems with a game's rules if he still feels the world is fun. But I'm way more picky, and much like my reading habits, if something early on in a game displeases me, I lose interest in seeing the rest.

Let me get back to Red Dead Redemption for a final point. I haven't been back in the game since I realized that there was no such thing as a stealth mission. I gave thought to simply riding out to Fort Mercer to kill Bill Williamson, but part of me suspects the game won't allow me to bypass the schmoozing with country folks in favor of capping the only reason I need to stay in town. Before reaching the point of the failed stealth mission, I also gave thought to attempting hubby's method of game play by just being a cowpoke for Bonnie. But after I finished a few missions for her, she vanished, forcing me to either look for someone to kill, or to finally go rescue the snake oil salesman.

After leaving the game, I've also given thought to going out to gut shoot the old man and kill him. But since just walking up on him triggers a cut-scene and forces you to rescue him, shooting the bastard would result in a failed mission and a reset. In other words, in a game with so-called unlimited choices, I'm the idiot who insists on "breaking" the world by always looking for and finding the choices I'm not allowed to make. I accept and forgive this lack of choice in a linear game because it's the nature of the beast. But I rebel at the same idea in open worlds because it defies their claims of having choice. Something as simple as not having a no button can be a deal killer then, when it might not be so if the game was linear.

This is not the same thing as my reason for not playing MMORPGs. There, you have open worlds with the same illusions of choice, and you have a setting that says to players, "You can make up your own story."At first, I got into some of these games because I liked the idea of playing a role play game online. Except, the one thing most MMORPG players ignore is any sense of role-play. In-game chats are filled with talk of trades or guild recruiting efforts. There's no attempts at acting out roles, and any attempts to create a character in game are constantly hampered by people who HATE role play. "Yeah, whatever with your story, are we gonna raid or not?" So here, it's not the game stripping away my choices, but other players who show up for the pretty lights and flashing colors, but can't be bothered to engage their imagination for role play.

So, the bottom line is, if you want me to stick around in a game, it either needs to be linear, or it needs to give me enough real options in the game that I don't feel frustrated by perceived limitations in a so-called open world.

Behold! A SEVEN page review for Uncharted: Golden Abyss! (with only one mild spolier)

I've just completed Uncharted: Golden Abyss, and while I was taking it on easy mode to make treasure hunting easier, all throughout the final chapters I've had sweaty hands. Thankfully, the PS Vita is not like my Win Phone, because when I get sweaty hands while gaming with my phone, that sucker is like a bar of soap in a bubble bath. I digress, I was taking the game easy to ensure that I could collect all the little artifacts and statues hidden in each level, and so I could take photos of…but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Before I really begin, I want to warn y'all that this is a LONG review. Some game reviews are like "It had pretty graphics, and I shot some stuff. It was great! I give it a 9.5!" But I'm a blabber mouth, and I want to talk about more than just the game play and graphics. I will cover those, and favorably in most cases. But I also want to talk about the story, which wasn't so hot in several places. I will try to avoid spoilers, though, so you folks who haven't played yet won't feel cheated.

So, moving on, not having played any of the PS3 Uncharted titles, this is my first entry into the world of Nathan Drake. Drake is a brash treasure hunter who fancies himself as a "nice guy." That he's a tomb raider and a killer with a bigger trail of bodies than some horror movie monsters is somehow not important to this nice guy presentation. But I actually kind of like this because he's not a completely good guy. No one in this game is truly good, except perhaps Marisa Chase, but I had more problems with her story than with anyone else in the game. More on her later.

The story opens on a prologue chapter, using a sequence that you'll also play later in the game. In the prologue, the treasures and other objectives are removed to create a tutorial level about working the controls. This is where you first get used to the platforming and combat aspects of the game, and where you learn how to use the touch screen for interaction. Now, on my phone, touch gestures are sometimes iffy. I'll swipe the screen for a jump, for instance, and have no response from the game. But there was never a time where I got tripped up by simple swipes to accomplish some goal in the game. The only time it tripped me up was when it wanted something like a curvy Z or figure four shape drawn, and that happened because my thumb gestures were too clumsy. So I had to let go of the unit on one side to use my finger. Thankfully, all of these complex swipes take place when you're not in danger, and they don't have to be done fast. They also aren't life or death swipes. When those happen, you usually need swipe straight up, or to the side. It's like quicktime events, but with a screen gesture instead of a button press.

The thing about this game that really pulled me in was the graphics, and the emphasis on jungle-choked temples is so exotic and beautiful that I sometimes walked right off a cliff because I was looking at the mountains and waterfalls in the distance, and not the ground right in front of poor Nate. This however, is not a complaint, more like an observation that the game is pretty to the point of distraction. There's so many pretty places in this game that after you clear an area of threats and treasures, you may just walk around to admire the view.

Most of the story is revealed as you play, but there are several mystery subplots that you unlock by finding clues, or by taking photos. For instance, to sort out what happened to the mining company that got ran off by guerillas, you collect items like a GPS with a bullet hole in it, or take a picture of a mining company truck. And then other times, you'll find a torn up document and have to piece it together like a puzzle. The touch interface here really shines, and I LOVED the larger puzzles whenever I was given one. Given my love of puzzle games and jigsaw puzzles, I may be biased. Thus, your mileage may vary.

Another touch screen-based part of the game is finding faded stones and taking charcoal rubbings. These can be damned hard to collect in some chapters, but the reward of finding that one last rubbing after replaying the level a few times is extra special. Lastly, some artifacts you collect will be covered in dust, and you use the front screen to wipe the object clean while you use the back touch panel to move the object. This too was something I enjoyed, but not quite as much as the puzzles.

The platforming is nice whether you use the screen for input or the dual sticks. I did note that in some places, my thumb sticks went wonky, and I had to switch to the touch screen and tilt-axis gestures to navigate these tight spots. But I think these were a glitch made by the tricky camera angles. The game uses a combination of chase cameras that follow the character and fixed angles during certain scenes. Sometimes this is a trick used to hide treasures or the entrances to secret areas. On this point, I'm not so fond of the game because I had to jump out of the game's action movie pace on every level to run around in circles looking for all the extra artifacts.

Briefly bringing up the tilt controls again, there's a recurring situation where Nate must cross a beam, and then loses his balance. This, of all the added goodies, felt pointless to me, and I've felt the same way when games ask me to wiggle a stick to maintain my balance. It doesn't really add any sense of immersion, and since it gets overused so badly, I end up being pleasantly surprised on the one or two beams or logs where the game doesn't make me slip to use the tilt axis to balance again.

Another aspect of the game is taking photos as evidence, and you use the back touch panel to control the zoom. These pictures are supposed to match up with the samples in your journal, and if you're graded badly on a photo, you have to retake it. You can touch the little stamp of an image to get a larger black and white preview of what your photo should look like, so you aren't flying blind. For the most part, I found getting the right position and zoom level were easy, and I liked the addition of taking photos of the game's various locations. I just wish the "sweet spot" that causes the camera icon on the right hand side of the screen to pop up was a leeeetle bit bigger. You HAVE to hit these spots to find the right place to take a photo, and it's all too easy to run right past the right spot, or to circle around it without actually hitting your mark. You can't just enter camera mode on your own, or those pics will get added to you journal as being unrelated to the mission objectives, even if the picture you take looks dead on balls accurate to the B&W reference photo. (That's a scientific term, by the way.)

And in between all this item collecting, photo-scrapbooking, and platforming are the combat sequences. You carry whatever guns that Nate's opponents drops, which offers you a range of machine and sub-machine guns, handguns, and shotguns. You also get to chuck grenades, and you use the touch screen to direct where they land. In later levels, you get a few nicer toys to blow shit up with, or an electric chain-gun that mows down even armored enemies like a weed-eater passing over green grass, but these are only offered in a few places. I like that, though. If you could use the RPG just anywhere, why would you bother picking up any handguns? There's also a handgun that launches grenades, and you only get to use that twice in the whole game. But when you can, oh, what a satisfying weapon. Oh, and then there's the sniper rifle, with the zoom feature tied to the rear touch panel just like the zoom on the camera. Normally, I'm not a fan of sniper rifles, but the improved aim I got from motion controls, plus the simplified zoom controls, made every chance to snipe into a fun challenge.

Almost from the start of chapter 1, guerrilla fighters are shooting at you, and your first "guide" Dante has a lot to do with that. His hired guards have angered a local warlord, "Generale" Roberto Guerro, a deposed dictator who continues to operate a resistance movement in the jungle. Guerro is a nasty guy, someone who likes to use fear to control his people. So during the first parts of the game he makes Nate and Dante look good by comparison. Dante quickly proves that he's also a scummy dude, and this comparison again leaves Nate smelling like a rose. (Even if Nate is a bit of a dickhead.)

Dante introduces Nate to Marisa Chase, or just Chase, as she's called throughout the game. This is fitting, because her name is pretty much her only role in the game until the very last chapters. And here is where I have to stop and complain. People, do y'all remember when we used to have games where there was a male and female, and you chose which one to play? Like in Resident Evil, where the two characters are split up, and each got a slightly different story? Man, I loved those games that let me play as a woman who is equal to the male hero.

Well these days, women in a lot of games have been reduced to a lower status as sidekicks to the male heroes. Now please note, I'm not saying the formula can't work, or that it shouldn't be used. I gave a positive review to Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, and one of the games I'm anticipating this year, The Last of Us, (Also developed by Naughty Dog, who developed the Uncharted franchise. (Golden Abyss is actually made by Bend Sony, for those wondering.)) will also use this companion method of storytelling. But I don't really like when these games turn the "little woman" into a panicking idiot who NEEDS a man to always save her. I had the same complaint about the two times Trip did it in Enslaved, and Chase becomes an extraordinary idiot many, many times in the game. So you will literally spend a lot of time chasing Chase, and picking off soldiers from around her before they can run up and strangle her. Yes, they have guns, but they prefer murdering women with their bare hands. No clue why. I suspect a man in charge of the story thought this was heightening tension, but I just found it irritating.

To be clear, Uncharted tries to break up this "rescue the woman" stuff by pairing Nate with male sidekicks, but he's usually rescuing them too, and during one sequence where you're partnered with Dante, you're STILL having to save Chase from a horde of soldiers. You have always have to save Chase because Chase won't use guns.

*Slight Spoiler* This ADAMANT stance also leads to the worst part of the story during the final levels, when Chase picks up a freakin' Desert Eagle hand cannon and starts shooting guys with Nate. Her accuracy was way better than either of the men I'd been paired with, and twice, her sniping with the handgun saved my life. BUT, this is a problem in writing because Chase has never handled any firearms, and suddenly she's Sly Stallone? WTF? About the only attempt the writer makes to balance this out is Chase commenting, "My hands feel like they're about to fall off!" Yes, but isn't it amazing that no one had to warn her about the kick of a large caliber handgun, or give her lessons about squeezing the trigger instead of jerking it? She just takes to a hand cannon like Paul Atreides took to the ways of the Fremen. GASP! Maybe Chase is the Kwisatz Haderach!

Anywho, the story brings in another character mid-game, Sully, who I assume Uncharted fans already know. He reminded me a lot of the actor Stacy Keach, and his role can be summed as "old man who makes a lot of 'that's what she said' jokes. When I was "forced" to leave Sully behind near the end of the game, I gotta admit, I didn't miss him that much. Sure, as a sidekick, Sully is an improvement over Dante, but that's like saying dog shit tastes slightly better than cat shit. Either way, it's still shit. I kid, but yeah, Sully's sexism was grating after five minutes, and I had to put up with him for a few hours.

Since I'm complaining, I may also point out how everyone in Guerro's Columbian army speaks fluent but accented English, even when talking to each other. Guerro only briefly speaks Spanish, and once Nate reveals that he knows Spanish, Guerro reverts back to English. I need to point this out because I had subtitles turned on for my game, and every time some dude spoke in accented English, and I kept wondering, "Would it have killed them to hire a voice Spanish speaking actors to improve the realism a little bit?" It's not like they couldn't use subtitles to translate, since subtitles are a part of the game already without being obtrusive or distracting.

I should hit on Dante, who Nate claims is a gambler who needs to pay off his bookie. Yet Dante is filthy rich, so much so that he can hire a small army, arm them with the best gear, and rent helicopters for transport. He's so fucking rich, you have to wonder why he's wasting his time hanging out in a jungle shack looking for ancient treasures. I know that rich people are never rich enough, but I find it highly unlikely that a guy this well heeled is also a low-life thug with a Jersey accent. It's a HUGE contradiction in character, so Dante often threw me out of the "flow" of the story for being so unbelievable.

And regardless of which companion you're traveling with, their REAL purpose in the game is to push you to "hurry up and keep going," so that you will guaranteed finish every level with most treasures, photos, and clues missing. The game also tries to get cute by putting a treasure right on top of the trigger for a cut scene, and once the scene is done, fuck you, gamer. You have to go back and replay the level to get back to this one spot. And you may have to do this several times before you sort out how to avoid triggering the cut scene until after you've completed your scavenger hunt.

Now just stop and think about how stupid this really is. "Yeah, General Guerro, I see you right over there holdin' a gun to Dante's head, and I'ma let you finish. But first, I just wanna climb this cliff side to explore for some turquoise, and then maybe snap a picture or two behind you. You won't mind just standing there doing nothing for ten minutes, will you?" And he really doesn't mind. That's a metric fuckton of stupid. (Like dead on balls accurate, a metric fuckton is also a scientific term.)

And finally, there's Nate, whose pithy comments reveal a lot of ignorance and privilege on his part. He's not opposed to making a fat joke here and there, and the people in Guerro's army are called brats, idiots, and losers, without Nate ever once acknowledging the impoverished conditions that all these men live in. This is even more pathetic because many of the chapters take him throughout the soldiers' compounds, so it should be obvious to see how their loyalty to Guerro is impoverished desperation. These are hungry, angry men who may have valid reasons for their outrage. Yet, Nate, great scholar and detective, can't sniff out the blindingly obvious. So yeah, he said some ignorant things throughout the game that made me so mad, I walked Nate off the nearest cliff intentionally. Okay, like I said, I'm cool with him not being a good guy, but his bullshit does get a little grating when he's trying to cast himself as a "nice guy." Nate Drake ain't no nice guy, and the only people who would agree with him are other "nice guys." Which I think is enough said about that.

The thing is, this whole game was written on a stale Hollywood formula, the Indiana Jones model. So there has to be a pretty and helpless female for the hero to woo. The hero is always right, even if he's a privileged white guy in a foreign country killing brown people indiscriminately. Every few jumps, the game has to add a slip or something to add an element of illusory danger. The whole plot is one long cliché after another, so if you're looking for originality, this is not that great a game. Also, you know how some video games overuse the word fuck to establish who's a badass? Well this game doesn't do that…no, they just drop a shit bomb instead. At a certain point, I would have liked a fuck added here and there, just to break up the monotonous shit, pun intended.

And on the character designs, while the facial expressions and body animations were superb, I really didn't like the way the eyes looked for any character. They often have black splotches of shadow in the corners that makes their eyes look messed up, and while it's not quite as bad as having dead eyes that don't move at all, often those shadows ruined what otherwise might have been a perfect presentation. (But ignoring the eyes, the facial animations are really good. One character makes a wincing smirk during an early chapter that almost looks like a real person instead of a CGI model.)

Setting those complaints aside, the game play was engrossing and immersive, and every chapter had gorgeous scenery to keep me entranced and focused on solving the mysteries and finishing the game. Aside from the occasional "waves of enemies" set pieces, I enjoyed the combat aspects, both ranged and melee. The motion controls are FANTASTIC for improving aim, and where I usually have to aim for center mass when playing FPS games with a twin stick gamepad, I was soon confident enough in my aim using motion controls that I was racking up trophies for head shots.

Then again, I also got a Master Ninja trophy for 70 stealth kills, accomplished by sneaking up behind someone. If you catch them unaware, Drake will alternately crack the back of their head or snap their necks. If you fail to sneak up, a fistfight occurs, and sometimes you win right away. Other times, your opponent will get an arm hold on you. This will activate an arrow swipe, usually in a diagonal direction. This is easy to do with either thumb, so you don't have to let go of the unit or reposition your hands.

The arrows! I almost forgot to complain about them. (And what a tragedy that would have been.) Whenever the game wants to you do some touch gesture, they run a big yellow arrow over the middle of the screen, blocking all the gorgeous graphics. These prompts really needed to be moved to the top or bottom of the screen, because they're so big as to be annoying. They aren't used all the time, so this wasn't a deal killer for me. But during moments like a near fall where a swipe would get my other hand on a good handhold, the arrow is so big it covers my character and the object he's clinging to. Very ugly, especially compared to all the other prettiful things going on in this game.

But ignoring the arrows being way too big, this control system is so simple and fluid that I could beat the shit out of one guy, shoot another in the head, spin to pummel the dude trying to sneak up on me for a flanking attempt, and then make a running leap for the next cliff to take on more of Guerro's gauche guerrilla army. Credit for this speedy pace goes less to my leet skills and more to the Vita's smooth controls. The four face buttons, despite being small, rarely caused me to suffer fat finger syndrome. (But when I did press the wrong button, oh, fuck was it ever wrong!) And the shoulder buttons are easy to use for taking aim with the left and firing with the right. It is also possible to shoot "from the hip," but I found this to be such a huge waste of bullets that I never used it past chapter 4.

The boss fights (there's only two, and they're both near the end) are all finger swipes, made fast one after another. This is not a problem because you aren't expected to press any other buttons or move around. So for these fights, I held the unit in one hand and left the other free to make fast finger swipes in any direction. You have a set of Xs at the bottom of the screen representing your number of failed strikes. Fail a strike and you're treated to a scene of Nate being used like a punching bag. Higher skill levels will give you less Xs to work with, and the time delay for the swipe gestures isn't as generous. Still, I liked this style of boss fight, especially compared with the fights in Enslaved, which were long slog fests that left me aggravated and with sore hands. (And recall, that's a game I LOVED.)

Something else I need to mention is replayability. I was all the way up to chapter 6 in the game before I sorted out the treasure hunting and photo taking aspects, and I decided to go back and make sure I collected all the goodies from every level. This, was not so easy, and I had to keep playing the prologue and opening chapters in an effort to get everything. AND THEN I realized that once a chapter is completed, you can go back to it and collect missed treasures without needing to finish the level. This freed me to really enjoy the movie aspects of each level. Then when I was done, I could look at my journal and see how many treasures I'd missed.

Around chapter 12, I discovered that Sony put out a treasure map for the game on their online market. You download it, and it adds a graphic to your journal, a map of all the treasures, photos, and artifacts. For 99 cents, it sounds like a great deal. There's just one small problem. The map is microscopic, and there's no way to pinch zoom it or touch the items to get a closer view of the rooms. So this means that even with a map, I was often running around the same levels over and over and over and… but I didn't really mind so much because I didn't have to finish the whole level, just find what I'd missed, quit to the main menu, and then continue the game's next chapter.

In fact, I've just finished the game, but now I want to go back and start over on normal mode. I'll never make it to hard or crushing modes, as I'm not that good a gamer. (Just look at how many of my reviews involve me giving up and watching the rest on YouTube as played by someone with better skills.) But I could see repeating this a few times without it feeling old or tired. That may change after the fourth or fifth full replay, but my point is, I already want to play again, even with the criticisms I've given about the plot and characters. The story is so Hollywood that I'm forced to forgive it and admit that Hollywood writing is still a step up from what many video game companies call good game writing. So comparing this to some lamer stories I've seen in video games, (Remember Bionic Commando's plot? Yeah, now that was shitty game writing there.) the story line in this one wasn't so bad.

And so, this is why I'm giving Uncharted: Golden Abyss 4.5 stars out of five. It's a great game that shows off the Vita's graphics and interface nicely, and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a fun adventure game. And now, I apologize for the length of this review, but upon finishing the game, I felt inspired to gush. But please, don't take my word for it. If you're hesitating on getting a PS Vita cause there might not be any good launch games, I can point you to at least one launch title that I felt WAS worth the price of admission. And I mean both the cost of the game, and of the Vita itself. Uncharted was really fun, and I hope Sony is able to produce more action games with this caliber of graphics, a passable story, good voice acting, and engrossing game play. Have I gushed enough? Probably not, but I will shut up and leave you in peace.

You're welcome.

Okay, now I'll really shut up.

Dogs of War cast of characters…

Based on a suggestion by my editor, I've committed to make a brief bio list for the characters in Dogs of War. This is meant to help people who didn't read the first book and want to get up to speed on the second book. It may be considered as spoilers for the events in Peter the Wolf, so if you plan to read the first book, you may want to skip this post. For this reason all the details are behind a cut. In any case, here's the cast of characters in Dogs of War:

Peter Holmes: Formerly Peter Lupita, Peter is a survivor of sexual abuse from his parents and many other people, as he was "rented" to clients for use in porn films. Peter escaped after he was told by his parents that his sister was dead. Taking tapes from his parents' library, Peter went to the police. He went through a string of foster homes before settling in with the Preston family, only then learning his family's other secret: lycanthropy. Living in Dallas, he meets Alice Culpepper, and through her begins training in gymnastics. However, his close relationship with Alice eventually leads to his being removed from the gym team, and Peter becomes a cheerleader with mild prodding from his foster sister, Judy Preston.

Peter grows a lot in the story, both gaining height and weight. He has an athletic frame, but not bulky, given his years of strength training for stamina in gymnastic events and cheerleading acrobatics. He has dark brown hair, nearing black and worn shaggy, grey eyes, and prefers black clothing. (Not because he's goth, but because it complements his "moon tan.") Peter is a goth poser, though, and hangs out with the goth kids to have some place to fit in without having to hover around his foster sister's cheerleader friends.

Alice Culpepper: Peter's biggest mistake, in a nutshell. Being five years younger than Peter, Alice is a temptation that Peter should have left alone. But even with Alice's father Jean being hostile to Peter, Alice refuses to stop sneaking around to visit Peter. This results in Alice being kidnapped by Peter's mother, Naomi Lupita, and bitten. She was also tortured and raped by Naomi, and the abuse caused Alice to snap and become feral. As a result, even if Peter should leave Alice alone, he cannot because they are bound as packmates.

Alice's height also changes a lot over the course of the first book, since it covers a much longer span of time than Dogs of War. She has wavy brown hair worn relatively short, but which is starting to grow out in book two. Being a gymnast, she has an athletic frame, although puberty is starting to give her some small curves.

Jean Culpepper: Jean Culpepper has often had problems with Peter, but as Dogs of War opens, the results of Alice's abuse has left her so unstable that Jean has no idea how to heal the damage done to his daughter. He has grudgingly accepted Peter as being a part of Alice's life, but never resists the chance to let his displeasure be known.

Jean is short like all the men in his family, barely topping the five and a half foot mark, making him half an inch shorter than his brother John. In book one, Jean's hair was dark with a few grey strands, but as of Dogs of War, he's mostly grey now. Peter and Alice have a lot to do with that, to be sure. Jean has brown eyes, wears a handlebar moustache, and usually wears a uniforms of black slacks and a polo shirt for his toy store, despite his being the owner. (He does this so employees can't complain about wearing a uniform.)

John Culpepper: John Culpepper is a former Olympic gymnast who now runs his own gym. Unlike Jean, John is fond of Peter, and was even before Peter had rescued Alice from Naomi. As a result of Peter rescuing Alice, John has given Peter lifetime access to the gym without fees, and whenever Peter needs help, John is usually one of the first adults Peter looks to.

Short and still in fantastic shape from his years of training, John is starting to show his age with his white hair and white handlebar moustache. But no matter what he's wearing, he always looks striking despite his short height.

Beth Culpepper: Initially as opposed to Peter as her husband, Beth Culpepper has come to accept Peter as part of her family. This is due in large part to him saving Alice, but Beth will not speak out against her husband, believing that it's not a wife's place to argue with her husband. Beth is a stay at home mom, and since Alice's return, she has acted as Alice's teacher.

Beth is very short, four feet and nine inches, and she tends to favor a homely appearance. She keeps her curly brown hair cut short, and she likes wearing flowery blouses with pastel colored pants.

Jake Forrester: Peter's rival and declared worst enemy. Jake and his friends originally began collecting videos of Peter in an attempt to blackmail him, but Peter rejected Jake's offer and instead threatened to turn him over to the cops for collecting child porn. Since being humbled and forced to see how monstrous his plans were, Jake has kept his distance, until the start of Dogs of War.

Jake is tall, six feet, two inches, and he is extremely muscular, looking more like a bodybuilder than a football quarterback. Like all his friends, Jake likes to wear coordinated outfits, dark jeans and slightly undersized T-shirts to help show off his rippled stomach and stacked chest. Blond and with bright blue eyes, Jake is so handsome that his smile can charm most anyone. Anyone except for Peter. (Who is still willing to admit that Jake is hot, even if he is a jerk.)

David Preston: Peter's foster father is a defense attorney and a champion of "little guys." But Peter's problems often tax David's seemingly boundless patience. David has earned Peter's complete trust, and like John, David is always high on Peter's list of adults he can turn to in a time of crisis.

David is tall, five foot, eleven inches, has blue eyes, and still has blond hair despite his advancing age. Being a lawyer, he tends to a neat appearance, with his hair styled in a mousse hard helmet, and his dress shirts and dress slack being neatly pressed.

Kathy Preston: Peter's foster mother is also a public defender, and like her husband, she genuinely loves Peter as if he were her own son. She's the parent most likely to prod if she notices Peter moping or brooding, but she prefers to use timid interrogation methods rather than opt for a tough love approach.

Like her husband, Kathy likes to keep her appearance very neat. She still has all blonde hair, but then she's been having her hair dyed and styled the perfect shade for the last ten years. She favors pastel suits and blouses with frock collars. She never met a pair of low-heeled pumps she didn't like.

Judy Preston: Judy could almost be mistaken for a stereotypical bubble-headed cheerleader until one looks closer at her grades, or her intense interest in science. Like her parents, Judy has a great amount of empathy for the suffering of others, and so she tries to help Peter in every way she can. She acts as his tutor and as his personal cheerleader.

Judy is trim, tall, and athletic. She wears form fitting clothes, has blue eyes, and is obsessive about brushing her long straight blonde hair.

Miguel Ortega: Jake's friend Miguel is actually the jock attracted to Peter, while the other guys shared his interest in exploiting Peter "for some fun." Because of this attraction, Miguel also carries a larger burden of guilt for the jocks' plans to blackmail Peter.

Miguel is two inches shorter than Jake, but still carries the same body weight thanks to a few extra pounds of muscle. (Half of it between his ears, it would seem.) Miguel has shaggy curly black hair and brown eyes.

Tyrone Marsh: The walking definition of tall, dark, and handsome, Tyron is likewise burdened by guilt over blackmailing Peter. He has the least to do with Peter after their failed blackmail plans, and avoids Peter like the plague whenever he can.

Tyrone is half an inch shorter than Jake, and only slightly leaner. He prefers shaving his head, and sometimes to make himself stand out from his friends, he wears a gold chain.

Pi: Pi is a great mystery, an androgynous person who has not willingly shared their gender, sex, or sexual preference with anyone at school. Not even Peter knows whether Pi is a he or a she, so like every one of Pi's friends, Peter uses they, them, and their when speaking of Pi. During the first book, Pi's help was the only thing that saved Peter and Alice, and Peter considers Pi to be his best friend.

Pi is five foot five and is slight-framed. Their hair is dark black, straight, and is worn long and loosely pinned in the back with goth hair barrettes. Like Peter, Pi is not really a goth, but simply wearing the clothing for a place to fit in. But due to Pi's unique gender presentation and their even more bizarre family arrangements (Pi has one mother and two fathers), even among the goths, Pi stands out.

Josie: Peter originally met Josie working at the mall in Wilkes-Barre, but later on, Peter discovers that Josie and Pi have become a platonically romantic couple when they ask him to attend their "commitment ceremony." Like Peter, Josie is a victim of family sexual abuse, but her shaky recovery has led her to be sexually repressed, where Peter became sexually aggressive. Despite this seeming contrast, Josie and Peter remain good friends, and both coach each other on a path toward what they hope is recovery.

A fan of wild hair colors and wilder clothing styles, Josie's appearance is eclectic and ever changing. She has green eyes and she keeps her hair short, usually in some kind of pageboy or pixie-cut style.

Naomi Lupita: Peter's mother, still being held in a maximum security prison following her first and only escape attempt from prison.

Naomi is lithe and almost frail looking, but this causes many people to underestimate her. Being remarkably attractive, she has long black hair and grey eyes, although these days, she always wears the same prison uniform.