always sunny in the desert

This month I've mostly been playing ASSASSIN'S CREED ORIGINS. And it's okay. Certainly not the worst in the franchise, but pretty far from the best either. To be honest, although I've clocked up a decent amount of hours so far, I feel like I've hardly scratched the surface of gameplay, but that might be because I've only just been given a mission that involved any sneaky assassination. I've also only recently unlocked the hidden blade, or found any building higher than two storeys to climb. Now, call me a traditionalist, but the things I associate with ASS CREED are a) climbing buildings and b) stabbing folks, and not being given either of these options at the outset felt a bit strange. No, it felt like I was playing ASS CREED BROTHERHOOD again, and nobody needs that.

Also, I suspect I'm further through the game than it looks. This sneaky assassination mission is the third main target, out of five. So... am I two thirds of the way through? That can't be right. Look at the size of that map! The rest of it can't all be filled with empty desert and weirdly aggressive hippos, can it?

Oh, wait, it can? And you're going to dissuade me from exploring by making some enemies impossible to kill (helpfully marked with a red skull above their heads) until I reach a certain level? Of course you are.

I do like the ability to "borrow" boats rather than stealing them (the rightful owner complains a bit, then settles down in the bow of the boat until you've finished scooting wherever you're going, at which point they'll take their boat back and go on their merry way, which makes a heck of a change from the protagonist randomly throwing people out of vehicles whenever the whim takes him). And I like my camel, Reginald, and the "follow road" option, where you can autopilot your camel to the next waypoint. Although obviously Reginald is not smart enough to stop BEFORE the waypoint if it is, for example, in the middle of a heavily fortified garrison full of unkillable enemies.

Every time, Reginald. Every goddamn time.

Also, who the heck was in charge of animating that poor camel? I salute Ubisoft's commitment to employing "team members of diverse religions, sexuality, and gender-orientation" (as they tell us at the start of every game, in a slightly defensive way tbh) but next time could they employ someone who knows how a camel is put together? Or who at least could look up a video on youtube? But noooo, let's just use the same animation framework as the horses, and make poor Reginald run like a lumpen horse with little-to-no sense of self-preservation, straight into prickly arrow-death.

OTHER THINGS I'VE LIKED THIS MONTH:

BOOKS:

The Tale of the Duelling Neurosurgeons - Sam Kean
Brains are weird. That's the first takeaway from this book. The other is that my absolute favourite kind of non-fiction is Extremely Knowledgeable Expert Talks About Specialist Topic in Super-Excitable Fashion. I'll read pretty much anything that falls under that heading, which this book definitely does.

Middlemarch - George Elliot
WHY IS LITERARY FICTION SO HARD. I'm 20% through this ebook. I suspect this may take a while.

TV:

Oh Asia, baby, what made you think it was a good idea to put live butterflies into a dress? My heart breaks.

what the heck, lego star wars: the force awakens?

Our youngest is five years old and his favourite things are Lego, Star Wars, and video games. So obviously the first thing we introduced him to was the Lego Star Wars games, which we used to have on the PS2 but have recently repurchased for the PS3. And, I have to tell you, those games have held up well. They're still funny and clever and simple enough for an uncoordinated five-year-old (and his thirty-seven-year-old uncoordinated mother) to get the hang of relatively quickly.

They've also toned down the difficulty since the PS2 version, although opinion is currently divided on whether that's a good thing or not. Personally, I like a game I can play. Others like a game that challenges them. Everyone in this house likes a game our youngest can play without constantly asking us to assist him through the tricky bits.

(As a side note, I once again stand by our decision to let our kids play video games from a young age, but that's perhaps an argument for another day.)

So we bought LEGO STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS for our shiny PS4, expecting great things. Or at least more of the same things.

And immediately we found problems. For starters, they've complicated the crap out of the controls. It used to be jump-hit-interact-force. Now we've got jump, hit, interact, force, climb, blow up, throw sabre, shoot, and a bunch of other stuff. Some of them, for example the throw-sabre move, gets used once during the training level then never explicitly used again (that I've seen). You've got grappling hooks to drag stuff around. You've got specific objects that can only be shot by certain characters. You have special binoculars that can highlight special areas.

None of this is necessarily a bad thing. Variety is good. But the Lego games thrived on simplicity. There were only rare moments when you got stuck because (for example) you were trying to force an item that could only be shot. The puzzles were clear enough to be solved but still involved enough to give you a sense of achievement when you completed them.

And then FORCE AWAKENS throws in some cover based shooting.

Seriously now, what's the point of this? If I wanted to crouch behind a chest high wall and pop out to shoot baddies, there are literally a hundred other titles I could play. Why bung it in here? Is it just that the designers wanted "variety" and cover based shooting was the first thing that appeared when they googled "stuff that goes in video games"?

Ditto the quick-time events. QTE always feels like lazy button pushing to me. It's not vastly challenging and it breaks the flow of the gameplay. And, going back to our uncoordinated five year old, it's tricky enough that I inevitably get the controller shoved into my hands to get past these sections.

Oh yeah, and one other change that FORCE AWAKENS has introduced - they've added voices.

This won't sound like a big deal to anyone who hasn't played the originals. But the originals were hilarious, and so much of that humour came from the lego dudes being silent and conveying everything with exasperated expressions and visual gags. So now we've got a bunch of dialogue from the movie, which makes everything more dramatic and less funny. Even the amusing lines aren't so amusing when being fed through little plastic people.

In fairness, this only really hampers the main missions of the game. For the first week I played it, the voices grated horribly, and all I could think was how much more fun it'd be without them. Now that I've got into the side-missions and bonus sections, where they've either recorded new dialogue snips or just ditched dialogue entirely, it's noticeably more enjoyable, and I've laughed out loud at a good few bits.

So my capsule review is: man, it's difficult to make a new game in a beloved franchise. If you leave it exactly the same, people will be all like, but we've paid for this game already wtf?, and if you make alterations they're like, why have you dicked about with a winning formula ffs?

Although, bonus points for having JJ Abrams as an unlockable character.

books I really liked in 2016

It was rather a good year for books, don't you think? For starters, three of my top five favourite authors had new books out in 2016 (apparently in an effort to make me spend more money I haven't got), and I also discovered two new authors to add to my top ten. So here, in no particular order, are the best books I read last year:

FUTURISTIC VIOLENCE AND FANCY SUITS - David Wong
This came out in 2015, but I didn't read it till after new year, so it counts as 2016 for me. Anyway, it's brilliant - everything you'd expect from the fella who brought you JOHN DIES AT THE END and THIS BOOK IS FULL OF SPIDERS, and features my favourite female protagonist in ages.

MISTLETOE AND MURDER (and its prequels) - Robin Stevens
The fifth in a series of very English, cosy murder mysteries, which have earned a place on my best-of list because I read all five in quick succession. They're like being wrapped in a huge softy blanket with a mug of hot chocolate - comforting and delicious.

FANGIRL / CARRY ON - Rainbow Rowell
FANGIRL is an absolute delight. It's the story of a college girl who writes fanfiction about Simon Snow, who is definitely not Harry Potter. It gets right everything I love about fanfiction and the community that surrounds it. And CARRY ON is the logical conclusion - a novel-length Simon Snow fic, which I didn't enjoy as much as FANGIRL, but which does have Baz in it. *swoons a bit*

THE LIE TREE - Frances Hardinge
Oh my gosh, this was good, wasn't it? Thoroughly deserves every superlative thing everyone's said about it.

SIX OF CROWS / CROOKED KINGDOM - Leigh Bardugo
I don't think I've lost my shit so badly over a fictional work since Firefly. This duology is legitimately beautiful, with its world-building (familiar to anyone who's read Ms Bardugo's Grisha books), its cunning twisty-turny plotting, its characters... oh man, the characters. I have a girl-crush on at least three of them. It made me laugh out loud and cry like a baby. I honestly thought I was too old to have a new favourite book, but this has proven me wrong.

LONG TIME LOST - Chris Ewan
No one will be surprised by the inclusion of Chris Ewan on this list. That man could write a shopping itinerary that'd have you biting your nails in suspense. LONG TIME LOST is a great story about what can go awry with the witness protection programme. Tense, smart, super-well-paced, and set partially on the Isle of Man, wonderful.

THE FIREMAN - Joe Hill
Oh, this was great too. I've not read any of Mr Hill's other books (I'm such a slacker), but this has really turned me into a fan. It managed to be full-on apocalyptic fiction without falling into the constant doom-cycle that afflicts so many similar books.

ZEROES - Chuck Wendig
This year I discovered audiobooks. I'm still not wholly convinced, but I'll admit they are useful - I spent a long weekend painting and decorating while listening to ZEROES, which made the task a lot less horrendous. Also, I thoroughly enjoyed this smart tech-thriller. Mr Wendig looks likely to become one of my favourite authors.

EX-ISLE - Peter Clines
Speaking of favourite authors (and audiobooks). EX-ISLE is the fifth addition to the EX-HEROES saga, and Mr Clines is still on top form. Zombies and superheroes AND characters you care about so much you draft angry emails to the author when he inevitably does something unforgivable to them, hashtag angryface.

BREAKING CAT NEWS - Georgia Dunn
BCN is quite possibly the most beautiful comic strip available on the internet at present time. It's funny, it's smart, it's so true to life, and the artwork is gorgeous. I'm in awe of this lady's talents. And now it's available as a book!

EMBED WITH GAMES - Cara Ellison
Woo, new girl-crush alert! Ms Ellison writes games and writes about games and is generally everything I aspire to in life. For this book she travelled around the world, visiting independent game developers and crashing on their sofas. A wonderful blend of travel writing and game theory.

IF WOMEN ROSE ROOTED - Sharon Blackie
I picked this up because Dr Blackie was a visiting author at Manx Litfest this year, and I'm very glad I did. A fascinating account of Celtic myths and stories, told from a feminist perspective. I'd recommend this to everyone.

FORSAKEN SKIES - D Nolan Clarke
Annnnd last but most definitely not least, David Wellington is back yet again with a new pseudonym and a new genre, proving (again) that he's a terribly talented bastard who can spin story-gold out of everything he turns his hand to. I loved this epic sci-fi space-battle tale and can't wait for the next instalment.

I think that covers most of the very best books I read last year, although I'm sure I missed a couple. Next time you're in your favourite independent bookshop, please do check out some of these recommendations. At best you'll discover something wonderful; at worst... well, you can always shout at me, I suppose.

MTV Cribs - Sanctuary Hills Edition

It's no surprise to anyone that I love Fallout 4. I'm not a casual gamer - I don't dip in and out of games, I don't impulse buy, and I squeezed every drop of gameplay I can out of games. So the games I go for tend to be those I know in advance I'll love (Assassin's Creed can stay out of this for now).

So, I love Fallout 4. But, even though we've had it since Christmas, I've not completed the main mission yet. I've spent my time tooling around doing side quests, accumulating companions, and establishing settlements. Oh, such settlements.

In fact, the one thing that's consistently disappointed me in the Fallout series is the main storyline. The denouement of Fallout 3 irked me, I disliked the whole business in New Vegas where we had to pick sides in order to progress, and in Fallout 4... well, it's telling that I've halted my game before the end of Act I, preferring instead to build towns in mirelurk-infested swamps.

Here are five things I love-love-love about the game:

1. VATS

I suck at first-person shooters; no one's surprised by this either. My coordination's rubbish, I have no spacial awareness, and the controls of anything more complicated than Llamatron confound me. So HURRAH for a game that lets the good players use iron sights and the sucky players use a dedicated targeting system (an opinionated targeting system, I've realised - what internal criteria lets it decide whether a certain enemy is "Raider Scum" or "Psycho Raider" or whatever? How prejudiced.)

Without VATS, I wouldn't enjoy Fallout nearly so much. I like dumping all my bonuses into intelligence / charisma and not having it significantly hamper my character. I'm certain I never progressed far with Skyrim, in contrast, simply because I was rubbish at combat.

2. Watercooler moments

This is what Fallout (and Skyrim) does best, isn't it? When four or five people get together and start comparing stories:

My sister accidentally seducing her companion in a crowded submarine when all she'd wanted to do was have a nap. My son dressing Jun Long in the Grognak costume to cheer him up. The Fat Man my husband modded to fire eight nukes at a time, with which he frequently blows himself up.

Some of the moments are scripted (the teddy bear reading on the toilet! The sentry monkeys in the insane asylum! The Witchcraft Museum filled with nope!) but the best are the random stupid things you do, then immediately run to tell someone about.

3. Settlements

Not so much my own settlements, which are functional and un-ridiculous (with the exception of Sanctuary Hills, see below), but everyone else's. My husband (who never got into Minecraft or Sim City or anything like that) freakin' loves building settlements. His towns have market places and bars with disco balls and dining rooms with play areas for the kids, and all his walls line up and all the lights work. He has towns you could live in. I have two shacks and a confused brahmin wandering through the vegetables.

Every time my husband logs in, he has to give you the tour of his latest settlement. God love him, he is so proud.

4. Trolling

Something we discovered along with the husband's keen love of virtual towns is his equally keen love of physics. Or, more accurately, his vast annoyance when you ignore the gravity and, say, build a stairway in the middle of your settlement leading to a shack balanced on nothing. He twitches every time I walk past it.

Logging in on someone else's save is also popular. I changed Jacob's username to Jaybum, he changed mine to TitsMcGee. I removed his power armour, put him in a dress and selected TAKE ALL from his workbench. He built another staircase in the middle of Sanctuary, put a platform at the top, stood my character on the platform, then removed the staircase so I was left balancing fifty feet in the air with no way to get down. He was careful to take off my power armour first so I couldn't jump, and to place the fast travel pad up on the platform so I couldn't fast travel to the ground.

I am currently plotting revenge.

5. How much we care

Everyone else in my extended family has played the main mission, so when they want to discuss it, they go up to the bathroom, shut the door then complain in overexcited whispers. When the husband puts an extension on his swamp-mansion, he calls us to come look. We giggle to ourselves when someone is strolling unawares towards a queen mirelurk. We complain about our favourite companions. We've each picked a different faction to support, and complain greatly about them too.

We love this game.

The reasons we love it, sadly, have little to do with the main storyline. We've found our own fun. Which is great in one way, but I'm sad that the story itself hasn't captured us. And, I'll be honest, even though we love this game, we don't love it as much as we could. I'm not invested in anyone like I was with Boone, for example. Or even with Charon.

But then again, I haven't finished the game. Maybe it'll change my mind yet.

2015 - end of year writing stats

That's a boring heading, isn't it? Anyways, fresh from the Rakie-spreadsheet, some stats about my writing progress in 2015:

Total Word Count: 359,224
(Total for 2014: 295,670)

I'm happy with that. The main projects I worked on this year were:

Finishing The Extra (my Nano novel from November 2014 which I finally completed in March and have ignored since).
A small amount of work on YA superhero story Search & Destroy.
Rewriting and editing Fourth to the Devil (including dreaded synopsis and query letters).
Finally redrafting my YA time-travel, haunted house bonanza 2114, which was started for Nano 2013 and has now been renamed 2116 in honour of how unnecessarily long it's taken me to complete.
Notes on a supernatural crime story, White Death, that I really want to start work on.
Completed NaNoWriMo 2015 with Animal Bones, a rewrite of one of my earliest stories.
And the first draft of Floor 156, a dystopian thriller which I'm pretty sure no one will ever get to read, ever (some things are only written for our own funsies).

Oh, and the ebook of Home Ground came out. :)

One resolution for last year was to write every day, which I just about managed, although it was a close call on a few days and frequently I achieved only a few scribbled notes. Even so, I appear to have averaged approximately 980 words a day (allowing a margin for my shoddy maths), which is very respectable if true.

I also resolved that drawing counted as writing. This was to encourage me to devote more time to drawing, and I assigned an arbitrary word count to time spent (given a picture's worth a thousand words, and all that). I didn't finish anything major, aside from some wedding invites for my sister that turned out okay, but I'm happy that I spent a little more time than usual on a skill I've sadly neglected.

Soooo... projects for 2016...

First and last I need to finish the rebranded 2116. I'm at the horrible stage of editing where you read everything aloud and agonise for hours about word choice ("Do I mean bright or do I mean clear? Is spiderwebbing a real word? Is a culvert what I think it is?"). After that I need to redraft all the crap I wrote last year.

And then I have a stolen idea about dragons that I want to pursue...

In 2016 I will write. I will read. I will draw. I will blog. It's also likely I will drink too much wine and shout at cooking shows on TV. In my spare moments I might sleep. Also, Fallout 4.

Best wishes to you all for a shiny 2016. ("SHINY! That's the word I want!")

visiting sunny Los Santos

So, we've just finished GTA V. Don't worry, no spoilers - if you've got this far without being told anything about the ending, kudos, I won't spoil it for you.

I'm a big fan of the GTA series. It's given our household hours of entertainment, shared memories, and occasional moments of trauma (the last instalment made my husband phone me at work to have a cry, for example). We've all thoroughly enjoyed V. For myself, the jumping physics were worth the price of admission alone. Running up to a fence, attempting to jump over it and instead catching your shins and face planting into the concrete? Never gets old (except maybe when it happens during a crucial moment in a chase sequence).

So it feels churlish at best for me to complain, especially when my complaint boils down to... where are the girl characters at?

Accusing GTA of misogyny is like complaining the sea is a bit wet and smells of fish. It's kinda what it does. But still, by this point in time... no playable female characters? No significant female characters at all, in fact, who aren't wife/girlfriend/daughter, and also highly shrill and annoying? The male characters are equally unlikable, granted, but they're also hella-fun to play. So, Rockstar, what's your excuse?

Girls don't play GTA? You're not even going to try that one. Anyone who brings up that argument can go stand in the corner with the "Games Cause IRL Violence" crowd, because your reasoning is just as valid. Girls aren't our target audience? Okay, that feels closer--let's face it, the target audience for these games always has been and always will be 14 year old boys, or those who are still 14 years old in their hearts (and their pants). But, extrapolating from that, are you inferring boys don't like girl characters? That they might put down a game because it's got a female character in the lead? I'm not sure that argument is going to fly either.

Girls are less interesting as characters because they don't act like Trevor Philips? I think we can call shenanigans on that as well. I know plenty of women who are (hypothetically) capable of drinking, fighting, stealing cars, or passing out drunk on beaches amongst the bludgeoned corpses of their other party-goers. Hypothetically, as I say.

So what's up? I don't get it. And, I know it's not a major point in the grand scheme of things, but with the amount of effort Rockstar go to building worlds and realistic characters and interesting missions and Trevor Philips, would it really be so difficult to write some female characters into the game? When I saw the poster art of the woman being arrested by the female police officer, I was really hopefully for this instalment. I would've liked to see someone like that running amok in Los Santos.

Will this prevent GTA V taking the coveted Game Of The Year trophy at the Rakie Awards 2013? Ehhh, it's possible. More likely it'll either be the ridiculous, repeated, unnecessary use of the N-word, or the existance of Bioshock Infinite. But misogyny doesn't help, that's for sure.