January 15, 2012 – It is rare that I hear about indie games from mainstream video game press outlets, as it takes a great deal of time and effort to cover the AAA blockbuster titles of the industry, but thankfully “To the Moon” caught the attention of the gentlemen over at Gamespot – so much so, in fact, that they dedicated a whole podcast solely to this title. Doing something that significant and unexpected certainly gave the game some much needed attention.

And this is truly a game that deserves eyes. This is a title that earns every bit of love, perhaps more so, than any of the big sixty-dollar games. It is a game of power, heart, charm, humor, drama and humanity. For all its flaws, this is a game that lifts the medium beyond mere entertainment into the realm of literary art.

Wow, that sounds like unreasonable hype. But before we get to the story of the game, which is the true star, there is some very important missing context. “To the Moon” is a game that creates and destroys typical expectations. The gameplay is sparse and minimal, the difficulty is either brutal or a cakewalk, and the graphics practically demand the gameplay to match that of the classic 16 bit Japanese Role-Playing Games of the Super Nintendo days, when it is anything but – which leads to a very self-aware joke early in the game that is simply priceless.

Of course, those same graphics have other effects. They are beautiful, but simple. Nostalgic and comfortable, yet capable of magical and unexpected things. Perhaps their greatest asset is the fact that they require involvement, imagination and the attention of the player to fully grasp them. In much the same way that books gain their power through the enhancement of the imagination of the reader, so too these graphics demand the reader to embellish the scenario. While a fully rendered 3d graphics engine might have been able to convey more direct emotions through digital acting, that sort of magic requires a budget. Under the circumstances, the graphics are not only practical, they are ideal.

The gameplay, however, is where expectations fall apart. In truth, “To the Moon” is barely a game, instead it would better be described as an interactive experience with light puzzle elements. The gameplay consists almost entirely of using the mouse or the movement keys to move around environments and click on people or objects to interact with them. It is a point-and-click adventure in a traditional sense.

Meanwhile there are puzzle sequences that consist of flipping clear tan tiles to try and get rid of them. At first the puzzles are infuriatingly difficult, primarily because the game makes no effort whatsoever to explain the goal of the puzzle. Furthermore, even though there are instructions on what actions you may take, they aren’t thorough enough, and make little sense for some time. However, once you’ve figured the instructions out, the puzzles become simplistic. To the point that completing them takes seconds.

Needless to say, the gameplay is the weak point of the game. There are places where the gameplay doesn’t live up to its potential, such as the puzzle sequences, but it utterly fails in others, specifically a sequence late in the game that turns the mechanics from point-and-click into a sort of crude sidescrolling shooter. Presumably this was to add further interactivity and game-ness, but while the moment fit the story, the controls were weird, a bit out of place, and it didn’t feel like the same care and attention had been paid to it as the rest of the game.

The story, meanwhile, more than makes up for these flaws with a powerful tale about human relationships. It is exceedingly rare to find a game that has a story to tell at a level of literary merit. “To the Moon” is one such game.

As a reviewer, it is a scary thing to praise something you love too much. All too often, good or great works can be over-hyped to the point that no amount of quality can live up to it. And that is my greatest fear in praising this story. The story is not particularly flashy. It does not involve epic stakes, or winding tales of far-off lands. Instead it deals with regular people. Individuals with daily problems, and their relationships with one another. And yet in these simple topics, the game developer has managed to find deep and emotional drama that feels authentic, subtle and very, very real.

But for as grounded as the story is, it does rely on a science fiction premise – one that seems at least partially inspired by the film “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” In the near future, scientists have the ability to attach a machine to individuals, and then enter their memories to witness them. They can them simulate these memories in the machine, manipulate them around, and then transmit them back to the individual who will take these new memories to be their actual memories.

It sounds complicated, but the essence of this story element is this: there is a company who can be hired by people on their death beds to come and manipulate their memories so that they will remember their deepest desire had come true. If a dead-beat janitor wishes to have his memories changed so that he thinks he actually lived his dream of becoming a rock star, they can do that.

The Importance of a Platypus

The story addresses numerous themes. How hard communication between people really is. How much of our relationships are built around assumptions, faith and hope that we are somehow understood. The importance, but also the frailty and danger of memories. The effects that past events have on the present.

In many ways, this game could be the subject of a dissertation. The more you look into it, the more everything in the game is obviously a symbol that reinforces the themes just as they figure in so seamlessly into the plot, and ultimately show the player something about humanity as a whole. Like any excellent story, there are layers of meaning that simply aren’t as obvious until you’ve thought it over once or twice, and that is, in itself, enough reason to come back and play it through again.

The structure of the story itself is also particularly brilliant. Since one of the primary themes of the story is how much early events in our lives can shape everything that comes afterward, it allows John’s very earliest memories to become a sort of climax in the tale – a turning point whose revelations put everything that comes after into sharp clarity, and charts the way forward once more, as the scientists grapple with what to do.

The structure is also divided up by the aforementioned puzzle sequences, which always represent a transition to a memory from further in Johnny’s past. While these puzzles are nice metaphor for the process, it’s a shame that they couldn’t be better and more directly tied with the storytelling.

John’s characterization is the prime element of the story, but there are no wasted characters around him. Pretty much everyone has depth, intricacies, and flaws and charms of their own. The most important of these characters is River, Johnny’s deceased wife. The relationship between Johnny and River is central to the plot of the story, and also the source of some of the saddest and greatest moments of the game.

But Dr. Wyatt and Dr. Rosaleane are not cardboard cutouts either. They can be goofy, and oddball at times, being pretty much the sole source of the brilliant comedy in the game (which is used expertly to offset and emphasize the drama and tragedy), but they also go through changes as they experience Johnny’s life, wrestling with the ethics of their own actions, and the way they see Johnny and the other characters of Johnny’s memories. There are many other minor characters as well, but none are used lightly, often serving as foils for Johnny and River to accentuate their personalities and issues.

For all this, the ending will either strike the player as wonderful or a disappointment. I found myself loving it, even as it left me both happy and hollow at the same time. That hollow edge is what will drive some players to despise the ending, and it is hard to blame them. Every player’s reactions will be largely governed by how they interpret what happened, what they believe regarding memories, and quite frankly what they believe happens when we die. “To the Moon” asks complicated questions just under the surface of the events it presents, and there are no easy answers.

The music is wonderful and a terrific parring with the game itself. While I didn’t pick up on this particular note personally (I was introduced to the idea in the Hotspot spoilercast for the game, which I highly recommend after you’ve played it through), the music of the game actually parallels some of the thematic and personal elements of the story. River’s theme, through its repetitive nature, actually matches with her personality. It’s not only a beautiful score, it’s thematically appropriate, and thus brilliant.

Closing Comments:

It’s hard to do the game justice in a simple review. And of course that is the problem of reviewing great works of art – the ideas within the work cannot be as eloquently told in a summary fashion. These elements need to be explored they way they were laid out in the game to be fully understood. So the best I can do is to say that this game has flaws, it has minimal and weak gameplay, but for all of that, the story, through its excellent dialogue, humor and illuminating approach to examining the human condition, has become one of the best games of last year, one of the best stories in games and literature, and one of my personal favorites of all time.

STAR RATING: (4 Stars)

Four out of Five Stars

For those of you who stuck around after the rating, I’ve got a extra segment for you called Spoiler Talk. It’s a segment in which I discuss what I thought of certain elements of the story or themes that are too spoilerish or high-concept for the main review. What I say here doesn’t ever trump my review, instead it might give insight into what exactly made me give something the score I did. So let’s get started.

Spoiler Talk:

There is so much material that could fit under this section that I’m not sure where to begin, or end. In that regard, this section might seem a little bit stream-of-conscious (because it more or less will be).

I suppose I’ll start with the characters. Johnny, for all that he is the primary subject, is not particularly likeable for most of the game. He acts selfishly in many respects. It is hard for him to truly see what is going on inside of the people around him. In that, he is entirely relate-able. Yes, he’s selfish, but aren’t we all? And his selfishness isn’t unreasonable either. In many ways, he truly has given up so much of himself. That’s the whole reason he calls out to science for help. He feels hollow. He was never truly allowed to be himself.

This is largely because of what was done to him as a child. He was forced to forget the memory of his brother, who died in a terrible accident. This loss of memory may have driven out the basic facts from his mind, but the effects of that event are still very much entrenched in his mind. So when his mother, who is driven more or less crazy by the accident, calls Johnny by his brother’s name, it’s terrible. Not just because of the tragedy behind her delusion, but because it signifies something important. All his life, Johnny has been living out his brother’s life. He was trying, without realizing it, to fill the hole in his mother’s life left by his dead and forgotten (by him) brother.

When these things are finally revealed, I found that I didn’t hate johnny at all. I pitied him. He was a victim of his past, and his own forgotten memories – filled with emotions and sadness he didn’t have solid reasons for. He never really was himself. Which is why when he meets and falls in love with River for the second time, he never fully connects with her as he did in that one, brief and beautiful moment before his memories are erased.

And River tries so hard to help him remember...

Of course this does nothing for River who at least was more mature and perceptive than Johnny, and so could see his love for her, even though she couldn’t express her own back to him. The whole situation around her medical condition, Asperger’s Syndrome, is fascinating to me. In many ways, despite this real problem that makes connecting with other people difficult, she is more successful at truly connecting with others than Johnny is.

This game made me cry multiple times. Tears-on-my-face-sobbing, too, not the bare misty eyes other games give me. When it hit home to me the pain and sadness, yet deep love these characters had, it would just do me in. It was so sad, and so wonderful.

I think that scene with little Johnny and River sitting on the log looking at the stars is one of those seminal moments in my gaming life. All gamers have them, those moments that define our experience with the medium that make us love our hobby. This was one of those for me.

There are so many more things I could go on about. The wonderful symbols of lighthouses and stars, the moon, and the endless origami rabbits, not to mention that dear old platypus… I could go on for hours I think. But I have to stop sometime, and that image of Johnny and River together as young, innocent children is the perfect punctuation mark on this marvelous game.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

Of course the challenge has been thrown at the games before that they do not, in fact, innovate. There are some definite and good reason for that. Most of the games since Ocarina of Time have tried walking in those same footsteps to try and recapture the magic of that seminal title, and none have fully succeeded. While each have had their charms, from Wind Waker to Twilight Princess, there have been several constants that make them feel either dated or not quite up to par. Twilight Princess had a slow start, and Wind Waker had an endless expanse of bland ocean to traverse that took ages to explore with little to show for it. And every Zelda game, ever, seems to have the same progression, the same structure, the same weapons, the same enemies, the same controls.

Forgetting my love of those games for just one moment, it is true that they simply do not stand up to the same level of mastery that was Ocarina of Time, for all their unique charms. And it’s impossible to not compare these games to Ocarina. Ocarina set the standard for the Zelda franchise in 3d a long time ago, just as A Link to the Past did for the 2d games. So the bar for Skyward Sword is very high.

And that is when Skyward Sword decides it doesn’t want to compare itself to Ocarina and tries to set a new bar of its own. The same charges of lack of innovation that have been laid against every Zelda Game from the days of the Nintendo 64 on (save Majora’s Mask, with its own wildly different experience), simply cannot be laid against Skyward Sword. Do you play as Link? Yes. Do you still have bombs? Yes. Arrows? Check. Slingshot? Sure. Are there dungeons? Well, yes… but these similarities are fairly superficial. If every single thing were different then it wouldn’t be a Legend of Zelda game. It would be like criticizing a Mario game because he still jumps. While Skyward Sword never ceases to be a Zelda game, it also never ceases to bring new elements to the formula which are fresh and innovative.

The primary, inescapable innovation Skyward Sword brings is, of course, the controls. With Wii Motion Plus hardware, nearly every action in the game, every sword swing and every item, uses motion controls. This is both the games greatest triumph and its greatest fault. The controls work the way you want them to approximately 90% of the time. I say this without any sort of scientific backing, of course. The exact percentage could be more or it could be less, but the point is, every so often the controls will fight you instead of aid you, and it brings you out of the experience just as much as they bring you in when they work correctly.

When the controls are working, the game positively sings. Swordplay is fantastic, and while calling every fight a puzzle may be a tad generous, you cannot sleepwalk your way through any encounter. There are monsters that you can kill with no skill besides waggling, sure. Bats and generic green slimes are pretty much simple moving targets. But these monsters, in their generic state, mostly live on Skyloft and in Ferron Woods, the first area you visit. Pass that and you start meeting more vicious versions, and the electric slimes are a pure headache.

In the grandest fights, especially those against mini-bosses and their bigger, badder brethren, the precision needed, as well as the clever use of items elevates the combat beyond anything in the series to date. Pattern memorization is less useful, and quick reflexes and the ability to shift strategies on the fly become a much bigger part of the fighting.

Skyward Sword's Boss Fights are awesome.

Items in general are more interesting this time around, largely because of the motion control implementation. Bombs can be thrown or rolled, giving some variety to bomb puzzles and some interesting uses in combat situations. The bow, gust bag, and slingshot all work beautifully with the pointer, and the beetle is the single most useful addition to Link’s repertoire since the boomerang (which makes no appearance in this game, by the way).

The ability to upgrade these items is also a nice twist on the formula as well, though some upgrades are more useful than others, and I never felt like any of them were a must have, which is something of a shame.

Thankfully the ridiculous controller overlay can be removed eventually.

There was one type of item I never really used until the very end. It was, strangely enough, the shield. You get several kinds of shields throughout the game, but their usefulness was never apparent to me. Switching between the sword and shield always felt a little clumsy, and not fast enough to really react to the enemy attacks. This is partially due to the poor motion sensors in the nunchuck attachment. Furthermore, it always seemed like I received a shield right before going to an area where the type of shield I just received would be useless against the monsters there. The only time I used a shield readily was at the very end of the game, when I had finally acquired the Hylian shield and the remaining enemies were simply too tough to beat without a stronger defense than the ever useful jump.

Of course the best defense in the world is two fingers.

The way motion controls were implemented in other ways made the experience much better as well. Swimming in games has never been something I liked to do. The inverted control scheme always got in the way of being able to accurately handle the situation. Swimming in Skyward Sword, however, is much better. If a player were to imagine the controller in hand as if it were Link’s body, the front being the direction he’s swimming, then it becomes natural to move him about in the water. It’s nothing less than liberating from past control schemes.

The same can be said for flying through the skies around Skyloft. After a minute or two getting used to the sensitivity of the controller, I was able to fly around easily. It was, in fact, fun. This is not something I could readily say about most of the methods of travel in Zelda games, however much I loved Epona (don’t get me started on the boredom that was the train from Spirit Tracks). Flapping the loftwing’s wings felt natural and involving, and pulling off minor acrobatic tricks around the floating islands was entertaining. Leaping off of the bird and falling to an island for a landing never got old.

*woosh*

Simply put, the motion controls are a complete blast. In many ways they are superior for their individual tasks than regular controls, and in most others they are at least as capable. There were times I was more connected to my actions, however simple they may be – like thrusting a sword into the ground, than I have in any other before or since. In that respect, making a hardcore game with motion controls that not only work, but excel, the developers at Nintendo have succeeded.

But, and it is a big but, that is when the controls work. Very occasionally Link will do something that you simply did not intend. There are fights when you’ll try to swing your sword from the left, but instead Link will swing from the right, or vice-versa. Sometime you want to swing up when you actually swing down. This gets especially frustrating in boss fights when a miss-swing often results in an immediate and painful counter attack.

As frustrating as the occasional wrong swing may be, nothing is as frustrating as trying to stab into the screen. 70% of that 90% of failed motion controls I mentioned earlier could be set at the feet of this one motion. And it’s necessary against certain bosses. There is nothing more frustrating than knowing exactly what to do, and doing the motion, and instead Link flails wildly in every way except the simple stab.
On a side note, some reviewers I’ve read have said that they were frustrated about having to re-center the aim so often. Re-centering was never much of a bother to me, and seemed to be an elegant solution to the problem. Calibration was similarly painless, and only took a second before the game started up.

In general there is no denying that the controls work, and people will argue back and forth on the merits of motion vs non-montion controls, but I firmly come down in favor of them. They not only work better than regular controls in most instances, but they also do something much more important. They set Skyward Sword apart, and provide it with an identity all its own in the Zelda canon. Every dungeon, puzzle, and most encounters are built around the controls, and in doing so, the game charts a new way forward in the medium that simply hasn’t been done before. The controls aren’t gimmicks, and they aren’t broken. They work beautifully most of the time, and fail only occasionally. It’s the first true step forward for alternate forms of controls, and for that, any game afterward that implements this mastery owes homage to Skyward Sword.

But that’s just the nitty-gritty of the gameplay. There is much more to be said for the ways Skyward Sword innovates on the standard Zelda formula. The overworld has long been a staple of the Zelda franchise. It has been a place usually for travel and awe-inspiring vistas that give the player a sense of the scope of the world. In Skyward Sword, the overworld formula is severely overhauled, and for once in a positive fashion (Wind Waker’s ocean and Spirit Tracks’ railways were poor excuses for overworlds). Namely the “overworld” is split up into different mini-overworlds that all accomplish different tasks.

Flying around in the sky around Skyloft is Wind Waker’s ocean overworld done much better. It is easier to cross quickly, it provides a sense of space and distance, and as I mentioned before, most importantly, it is fun to fly. The sky is a little barren, there is no denying that. There could be more places to go, more things to do, but it’s nevertheless a step in the right direction.

Meanwhile the overworlds on the surface, while smaller, and less spacious, are all densely compact, full of interesting traversal, some puzzles, and a variety of encounters with opponents and characters. I’ve seen it said that these sections of the overworld are really just the dungeon extended into the entire region. That goes a little far, I think. Dungeons are especially condensed and built around very specific puzzles and pacing. These mini-overworlds are, however, a lot like light versions of the dungeon, and in that respect, the actual gameplay is always at the forefront of the activity of the player. It was always possible to grow bored of the overworlds of the past, but the quick traversal of the skies and the challenge of the surface world make the “overworld” another place to highlight the gameplay mechanics and involve the player.

And you'll go see some really neat places.

Since the game limits itself to only four major areas, the forest, a volcano, the desert and the sky, it’s inevitable that there is some extensive backtracking. The difference between backtracking here and in other games, however is in how Skyward Sword manages to show each area from an entirely new angle every time you return. The areas simply feel different, and the mechanics of each area change as well, though saying how is Spoiler Talk territory.

Another reason to return to each area involves a place called the Spirit Realm, sort of a shadow version of the world, in which Link must collect tears of the goddess to advance his abilities. These areas are guarded by these spirit warriors that can end your time there with a single blow.

While some people will simply despise these sections as mere fetch quests, I found the atmosphere and challenge a welcome variation from the typical gameplay. The spirit versions of these different areas are always serene and beautiful, and yet the entire ordeal is tense and frightening. The threat of the time limit and the creepy guardians will have players on their toes the entire time, and the sections are brief enough that they don’t wear out their welcome.

Speaking of fetch quests, many of the missions in the middle of the game send Link after everything imaginable, this is also true of the side quests the player will do for the inhabitants of Skyloft. Most of these quests are actually quite interesting and involving, especially because of the characters who give you these tasks, but when I was first exposed to them I had the sinking feeling that many gamers will have. If, however, players manage to get past this initial distaste for the mere thought, they will find fetch quests that are actually enjoyable (especially if they have been keeping their eyes open and already know where the various items are).

You'll have Fun Fun

That doesn’t mean they’re perfect, however. At times they will simply be too blurry to have any impact, and some textures look terrible even at medium distance. The terrain and architecture are simply too blocky, and the jagged edges of some objects look ragged enough to hurt. The game, and pretty much every game on the Wii, especially the pretty ones, are just begging for the HD of truly modern systems. I can only imagine (and drool over) what the designers at Nintendo could have done with this game if they had that kind of horsepower and disc storage space.

As it is, it's a little bit like digging up a game from the past.

But those are meta considerations. The specific story that Skyward Sword tells feels very much like the legend it is. It’s probably as close to living out a myth, and yet still feeling the reality of it at the same time, as anyone has achieved yet in the medium (perhaps in any medium). The characters are larger than life, more so than they’ve ever been, and yet they are simultaneously the most human too. I felt these characters in a way I haven’t since Ocarina of Time, and I’m not nearly as susceptible to emotional attachment to characters for little reason as I was then. The emotional connections I got with Link, Zelda, Ghirahim, Impa and even the minor ones like Groose were all very strong.

And you HATE him at first. HATEHATEHATE.

The plot itself is also different from past Zelda titles in that Zelda and Impa are, in their own way, having a completely different adventure from the player. Zelda isn’t held captive somewhere. She is an active participant in the events of the story. Quite frankly, during the first half of the game, Link’s quest to find her is the background to the real story, which is Zelda’s quest. Link sees all this unfold mere minutes after it has happened. He is a step or two behind the main action, as is Ghirahim, the bad guy for the majority of the game, and everything rides on who will catch up first.

Even though the pacing of the plot is really well done for the most part, it is also easy to see the seams. Some of the fetch quests seem shoe-horned in. There is one late-game quest in particular that, while I enjoyed it for what it was, had me utter a verbal “Oh, come on!” when it was introduced. These late bits slow the story’s pacing down pretty significantly, though it is otherwise well done.

The ending is climactic and epic in all the right ways. The final battle feels ominous, and is ridiculously difficult if you don’t have the right tools. The closure and little touches and surprises are perfect and fitting.

The music in this game mostly lives up to the quality expected of the Zelda franchise, which has long had some of the best music in gaming. I say mostly because there are times and places where the music just doesn’t seem as great, and there aren’t as many memorable tracks as there are in Ocarina of Time. The title track however, the Ballad of the Goddess, is musical manna from heaven. Somehow this track, a brilliant backward and reworked version of Zelda’s Lullaby from Ocarina of Time, has launched itself to become one of my all-time favorite Zelda tunes, period.

Closing Comments:

In many ways that final sentiment, that a reworked and backwards rendition of an Ocarina track could ascend to such great heights, is a great metaphor for this game as a whole. In may ways Skyward Sword shares the same backbone as Ocarina of Time. It has Link, Zelda, the Triforce, a classic good vs. evil epic quest and many of the same items and tropes, and yet in many ways it’s backwards, and tweaked and reworked until something so familiar is simultaneously vastly different, and in its own way, exuberant and exalting. While it has some hang-ups in comparison to contemporary games, and minor flaws that refuse to be ignored, there is no question that The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is one of the best games of the year, and quite possibly the best Legend of Zelda game of all time.

STAR RATING: (4 1/2)

Four and one-half Stars

For those of you who stuck around after the rating, I’ve got a extra segment for you called Spoiler Talk. It’s a segment in which I discuss what I thought of certain elements of the story or themes that are too spoilerish or high-concept for the main review. What I say here doesn’t ever trump my review, instead it might give insight into what exactly made me give something the score I did. So let’s get started.

Spoiler Talk:

There are so many things I could talk about here, but when I think spoilers, the very first thing I think about is endings. Boy what an ending. The lead in, everything from the final dungeon, which was brilliant, to Ghirahim stealing Zelda and Link’s desperate fight against the bokoblin hordes to get to her, to the revelation of demise, is so well paced. The final confrontation with Ghirahim is a visual stunner, as is the revelation of Ghirahim’s true nature as Demise’s sword (nicely paralleling Fi and Link’s relationship). But Ghirahim is still ultimately a pushover, so it’s great when Demise shows up and takes charge.

That final fight with Demise is epic. The lightning strikes overhead, the mirrored surface of the otherworldly plane, the way the fight goes from relatively easy to outlandishly hard as soon as he lights up his sword with that first lightning strike – it all makes it feel like you’re fighting some sort of god.

And he does share some visual similarities with Ares from the God of War games. I love how he was designed visually. He looks every bit the dark god, and the force of evil he should be. Imposing, freakish yet grand, powerful yet deliberate. Freaking perfect.

The one problem I have with the fight is how easy it is to break if you have the right tools. The Hylian shield makes you pretty much invulnerable if you use it correctly, and if you have the Guard + potion (which isn’t hard to obtain) you’re pretty much unstoppable. Combine this with the Potions Medal and you’re basically fighting him on training wheels. I was able to appreciate the fight for what it was, especially when I went into the fight the first time without the potion and was trounced. However, I could see how that invincible strategy might ruin it for some people.

The whole cinematic you watch once you beat him is excellent as well. The curse he speaks, which ties Link, Zelda and Demise into an eternal conflict, sets up the rest of the series beautifully. Here is the origin of everything. This is the beginning of the cycle that ties together the spirit of the hero (Link), the soul of the goddess (Zelda) and the hatred of Demise (every bad guy, especially Ganon/dorf) in every game from here on out. The mythical synergy of that moment, tying up threads that have been a part of my gamer life for years into this one point in time, was perfect.

How wildly fantastical was it when Zelda is revealed to be the mortal reincarnation of the Goddess Hylia? It’s so much more impacting because of how human she is at the same time. She is Link’s best friend, and they act like it. It feals real. As does the unspoken, under the surface love that is so obviously there (and come on, Nintendo! One kiss! That’s all I ask!) That relationship between Zelda and Link has, right beside the relationship of Demise and his successors to the heroes, been one of the key stones of the series, and Skyward Sword nailed it.

Other elements of the final cinematic that I loved were the revelation of the identity of the old woman as that of Impa. I guessed this much earlier in the game, but I felt the way the revelation played out was spot on.

The way Groose’s character changed over time was also excellent. I never really liked his character design (that… that hair…) and he was as annoying as he could possibly be at the start of the game, but by the end he’s really managed to change into a character that I liked. Not loved, by no means, but liked.

Fi’s last scene was very touching. I didn’t realize how attached I’d gotten to her, despite her little annoyances that are inherent in any helping voice like that. The humorous percentages, the robotic sensibilities and the inability to understand human emotions were all wrapped up in this strange but likeable figure (and the crush the one robot has on her is cute and funny). To see her then go to an endless sleep as the seal on Demise’s consciousness in the Master Sword, it wasn’t teary or misty-eyed, but it was sad all the same.

The cinematics that played during the credits that outlined some of the important moments of Zelda’s off-screen quest were wonderful and really drove the point home that there were two adventures happening this whole time. The scene after the cinematics was also great and full of happiness and joy, with the perfect send-off that implied Link and Zelda actually got together (though what I would have given for an actual kiss or something, my word).

All the side characters were great. The Mogmas were a cool additional race, along with their gloves which was a cool addition to the gameplay. I loved the Goron archeologist. I can’t get over how great the shop-keepers were. I loved the dragons and great spirits, each one had great personality (though when Faron sent me on that last fetch quest… I thought I was going to smack something.)

And speaking of that fetch quest, I know most people are going to hate it with an undying passion, but I actually enjoyed it. Of course I took it from a relaxing, zen-like approach and just had fun floating through the water after the bouncing musical note things. It was very peaceful.

How many more things could I talk about? There is simply so much stuff! How genius were the puzzle and dungeon designs? How adorable where those robots? Could Timeshift stones, a desert and a boat be any more genius? There’s too much to cover in one review.

So how many of you have finished the game? Sound off in the comments! Did you like it as much as I did? I didn’t mention a lot here in Spoiler Talk, and that’s partially because I want you to drive the conversation. What did you think of the game? Just please mark your comment with a **SPOILERS** tag so other people can be aware.

December 16, 2011 – Confession time – I’ve never played either ICO or Shadow of the Colossus before now. While this deprived me of some truly fantastic experiences of the previous generation, by all accounts I couldn’t be playing them at a better time, now that hey are in HD on the Playstation 3, since the original frame-rates for both games were reportedly atrocious but are now fixed. Aside from the resolution and frame-rate, the graphics haven’t been touched whatsoever. This is both a bad and a good thing. Good for the nostalgic purists, and bad for those who would have liked to see what kind of beauty more polygons could have squeezed out of an already beautiful game.

And when I say it is beautiful, I do not mean in its graphical prowess. It wasn’t especially amazing in terms of particle effects, polygons and geometry during its own time. No, I mean that the art style, and sheer design of the game complement the graphics so well that polygons are practically a non-issue. I feel that this is much the same effect that plays in Minecraft, which is the very definition of normally terrible graphics being perfectly suited for the game. What we have in ICO is a perfect blend of subtle music and art style to create stark, powerful imagery. The beauty is in the purity of the images presented. Where moden games like Uncharted 3 create beauty in lavishly sculpted surroundings and character models that show a wide variety of expressions, ICO relies on the imposing darkness of tall imposing castle walls, an the simple imagery of a beam of light shining through an open window. The image of a girl of white holding hands with a horned young boy.

Hm, I get ahead of myself. For those unfamiliar with the premise, it is quite simple. A child born with horns is taken by armed guards to a seemingly empty castle. All children born with horns are met with this fate, being sacrifices to the castle. The child, ICO, is left imprisoned in a strange egg-like shell. When the guards leave, ICO struggles withing his strange cell, which tips over and breaks open. He hits his head and has a nightmare. Upon waking up, he climbs to the top of a tower and finds a mysterious elf-like girl, Yorda, held in a cage. He frees her, and though they cannot understand each others languages, they set out to leave the castle. Along the way they are besieged by mysterious shadowy figures, all the while being monitored by a greater power within the castle. Without resorting to some pretty serious spoilers, that is the majority of the story. Aside from several key moments, the rest of he game is free of narrative. It is natural to then ask why the game is hailed as much as it is for its story.

Like most of the best stories in the medium, ICO’s story mostly takes place during the gameplay. The simple narrative of a child, lost in a dangerous and foreboding castle, desperately attempting to lead another, more mysterious child out to safety, is most effectively told through the mechanic of hand-holding that is central to the relationship between Yorda and ICO. This image, of two lost children holding hands, together in this dark world, is what makes ICO so inherently powerful.

The mysterious, lonely atmosphere is also fantastic. The melancholy is inescapable. As you trek through winding staircases, shimmy along ancient rusting pipeworks and over broken chasms, the fact that you and Yorda alone are the only two living beings in the entire castle that isn’t some sort of shadow wraith begins to settle in and you feel like the last people on earth. The insubstantial nature of your enemies only enhances the sensation that there is a vast gulf between you and any recognizable reality. The castle may very well have been a dark and cloudy sea. It seems as endless, as lifeless and otherworldly as that great watery deep, except perhaps more oppressive, more claustrophobic, for all the cavernousness of its rooms.

The eventual plot points that are revealed through cinematics and through the gameplay of the final act are all magnificently done, all while remaining in that same style of minimalist explanation, and simple imagery. The story is practically mythical in its telling, like a dark fairy tale. No one should miss the sequence after the credits. It is the perfect emotional and mysterious ending that the story needed, which the final sequence before the credits simply wasn’t quite strong enough to provide. The story of ICO stands the test of time, and remains a classic of gaming.

If there is any one place where the game could be said to stumble, it would be the gameplay. There is no question that the controls do not age particularly well. Between the occasional terrible camera angle (and the frustratingly wild ability to move it) and the sometime imprecise movement controls, players will find themselves dying more than once due to accidents. I cannot tell how many times I jumped at a chain or ledge only to discover that the angle wasn’t quite right so I’d go plummeting to my demise. This becomes controller-smashingly annoying when your last checkpoint is a long string of platforming and fighting away.

The platforming and minor environmental puzzle solving are well executed, but anyone weaned on modern 3-d platformers like Assassin’s Creed will find the climbing controls limiting. Despite the game’s short run-time, some of the puzzles seem to drag a little, and the player will see the same castle courtyard perhaps one too many times. It is hard to say that it feels like filler, when the experience is so good, but it does drag a little in the middle.

Combat can become annoying, partially because of the lack of variety. All of the shades have essentially the same tactics, and once you know those tactics you can easily bait them into opening themselves up for a good thwacking with a stick or slashing with a handy sword. The real threat is when they attack in droves, so getting hit is a higher possibility. You never die from their attacks, but getting thwacked once by one of these creatures will leave you lying on the floor holding your stomach while they grab Yorda, their real prize, and take off with her. All the combat prowess ICO has at his disposal is in the rapid pressing of the attack button, which is a fine enough defense against the shades usually, but the player will be craving more variety in terms of combat options before long.

This simple combat system leaves the player feeling incapable and somewhat helpless, especially when compared to the sensation of power playing characters like Kratos, from God of War, gives. I personally find that sense of helplessness to be a feature rather than a poor design choice. I truly felt like a lost child playing ICO. I wasn’t some great warrior. I was a boy with no real experience trying to protect myself with a stick and the desperate flailing of my arms. The simple combat system helped me inhabit that sensation.

ICO was made in a time before multiplayer add-ons were a vital part of every game package, and the focus of that single player experience shows in its craftsmanship. Despite its short running time (less than four hours if you get really good at it and don’t really die) it was worth the money; to be honest, getting ICO and Shadow of the Colossus together, with better frame-rates at a cheaper price point than when they came out pretty much makes this a must for every PlayStation 3 owner looking for more out of their game time than just cool explosions and endless shooting galleries.

Closing Comments:
ICO is an indisputable classic. The story and atmosphere are just as, if not more, compelling than they originally were (due to the higher frame-rates and resolution). Despite aging gameplay and the just-slightly-too-slow bits near the middle, it cannot be denied. It was a powerful game then, and it remains one of the great experiences of the video game medium.

STAR RATING: (4 1/2)

Four and one-half Stars

For those of you who stuck around after the rating, I’ve got a extra segment for you called Spoiler Talk. It’s a segment in which I discuss what I thought of certain elements of the story or themes that are too spoilerish or high-concept for the main review. What I say here doesn’t ever trump my review, instead it might give insight into what exactly made me give something the score I did. So let’s get started.

Spoiler Talk:
The beauty of ICO is pretty much all in its minimalist story. There isn’t wasted time on exposition, or on unnecessary background information. Like a fairy tale, it provides you with the exact pieces of information you need to get the most emotional weight out of it. In that regard, the room for spoilers is pretty small.

But what spoilers! The break in the story, when the simplistic running through the castle with Yorda is ended by the return of the shadowy queen, is a fantastically done, if somewhat expected development (one does not simply walk into – or out of, as the case may be- Mordor). The entire final act is what makes the game for me. The utter loneliness without Yorda, the darkness, the rain, the grays and blues that permeate the watery world in the belly of the castle complex, all add layers to the already brilliant atmosphere of the game. The platforming also felt more interesting in these parts, which might partially be because you no longer have to worry about Yorda being ambushed by shadow cretins, thus drawing you rushing back to her side.

I could see how the fight beside stone-Yorda against the near endless shadow children could be considered tedious, but I couldn’t shake the feeling of pity I had for these creatures. They share the likeness of ICO, being children with horns. The fact that these spirits are likely all that remains of the poor children sacrificed to this place makes them tragic figures, and cutting them down to save Yorda as much a symbolic and spiritual process as basic gameplay.

Then the final fight with the Queen. Now that was a boss fight. I felt that it was pretty damn well done. Not too long, but every second of it felt epic. Her power felt so far beyond mine, and yet the power of that place, and of the sword in my hands could just keep her at bay. One wrong move would spell doom, but the player is given every tool to defeat her, which, while not terribly difficult, makes her final demise so great.

The ending seems to be pretty much up to interpretation, but I have a tendency to agree, at least partially, with one opinion that I found online, which is that both Yorda and ICO die in the ensuing destruction of the castle, and that the beautiful scene at the end of the credits is the afterlife; that scene being the seemingly endless, even dream-like beach that ICO wakes up on. But that is the beauty of endings like this. In their mystery they invite every player to make that ending themselves, and thus become a part of it in a way that they might not otherwise be.

Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception

November 22, 2011 – Uncharted has always been a series that has done fantastic things with setting, characters and cinematic storytelling. In many ways, Naughty Dog has taken the next step up, crafting a story that manages to avoid some of the strange elements of the first two (no maniacal generals using super-powered sap here) while building upon the existing characters with interesting new additions and small tweaks that make these characters deeper than they already were. At the same time, the gameplay still has all the hallmarks of what made the first two games great, as well as the tiny stumbles that remain a pain in the player’s side.

Beginning with the game’s most important aspect, the story, I can say with surety that it still follows in Indiana Jones’ footsteps marvelously while adding its own twists and flairs that show for every sensibility it takes from that venerable film series, it rises to the occasion to chart *coughcough* a unique path for itself.

The Characters are what really set Uncharted apart.

A lot of what I could say means little, but there are two things you really should know. First of all, the writers of this game change up the formula in interesting ways. There are entire sections that involve no shooting or platforming whatsoever and have a great deal of impact, with some of the greatest vistas in the medium. There are chase scenes in crowded marketplaces, horse-mounted combat, desperate firefights in burning buildings, life or death brawls in the opened cargo hold of a plane in mid-flight and much more. Things don’t always go the way you expect, some surprises really catch you off guard, and perceptions are played with almost constantly throughout the game.

Marlowe and Talbot, while never fleshed out themselves, are menacing and memorable.

There's no doubt that Drake has seen his share of troubles.

The level design is impeccable, and some levels go by without a hitch. The cruise-ship level, for example, is fantastically built, and Naughty Dog really knows how to turn your world on its side (yes, there is a pun involved).

Oh how I love puns!

I’ve seen at least one website where this game was compared to Dragon’s Lair, and while the game isn’t as linear and do-or-die as that particular example, there are times when it doesn’t feel far from it.

The stealth segments are short and almost always end in a gun fight, which I suspect is intentional, because honestly Drake’s ability to move stealthily in this game is pretty much nill, but the short while they last they are fun breaks in the otherwise endless platforming and bullet spewing. The puzzles are similarly fun breaks, and while they are generally quite simple they are also well designed and involve a nice amount of level traversal and some light thinking.

Stealth in Uncharted is the equivalent of a preemptive strike in a gun fight.

I’ve heard the gunplay isn’t as responsive as previous games, and while I haven’t played those games recently enough to know the accuracy of that statement, I can assure you that the gunplay does have issues. At times the reticule is super jumpy and aiming at a target is far harder than it should be (there is little to no aim assist in this game). Throwing back grenades also seems to be a bit more hit and miss than it should. When it works it’s a great sensation, and when it doesn’t you feel cheated of your life. I think the problem has to do with how close you have to be to the grenade to throw it back. There were times when I swear I was right on top of the thing and I couldn’t throw it for the life of me.

Don't worry, Drake, there are always more bullets.

As the game progresses enemies become more difficult; not through more intelligent AI, but rather through through how much they become bullet sponges. Of course this is a problem that has carried over from the last two games, though Uncharted 3 manages to be better in this than its predecessors. That’s not to say that the AI isn’t decent. It is. Certain enemy types work different than others, some gun men will flank you – some charge you – some snipe you – some are heavily armored, etc, but there were maybe three different kinds of shooters, and two kinds of melee brawlers. Enemy variety is definitely something I would like to have seen more of, especially by the eighth time you fight a big heavy brawler who has the exact same move pattern as all the previous heavy brawlers. Some gunfights in the game felt dynamic, fun and energetic. Others felt like a slug fest I was perpetually losing. I’m still not sure how I finally got by the mini-boss on the pirate ship.

A pirate's life for Drake.

And what a polish! The graphics in this game are gorgeous; not quite the step up from Uncharted 1 to 2, but significant nonetheless. From the decayed glory of a French Chateau, to the rolling waves of a stormy sea, to the hot sand dunes of the desert, this game is gorgeous, and provides some of the best visuals of any game to date. Of course the number of vertexes and polygons can only do so much; the design and attention to detail are what really make the game as gorgeous as it is, and the team at Naughty Dog have managed to create some truly beautiful sights.

Would you deny its beauty?

Closing Comments:

Whatever I say here cannot really do justice for this game. If you love that Indiana Jones sensibility to characters, setting and story – if you love more than capable third-person shooters – if you love superbly crafted works of interactive art – then play Uncharted 3. No amount of tiny flaws could take away from what Naughty Dog has managed here. If you own a Playstation 3, but not the entire Uncharted series, and especially this 3rd entry, the crown-jewel of the bunch, you are doing yourself a serious disservice. If you don’t own a Playstation 3, you have no better reason than these games to make it up to yourself and get one. This game is a shoe-in as nomination for game-of-the-year, and is the best part of a game series that has become an instant classic and one of the greatest ever made.

STAR RATING: (4 1/2)

Four and one-half Stars

For those of you who stuck around after the rating, I’ve got a extra segment for you called Spoiler Talk. It’s a segment in which I discuss what I thought of certain elements of the story or themes that are too spoilerish or high-concept for the main review. What I say here doesn’t ever trump my review, instead it might give insight into what exactly made me give something the score I did. So let’s get started.

Spoiler Talk:

The breadth of places Drake travels to in this game is fantastic. Everywhere from London pubs to France, Syria, Yemen, pirate junked-shipyards to the expected ancient lost city, the Atlantis of the Sands (which was gorgeous, wasn’t it?). Choosing a favorite is hard, especially considering that gorgeous lost city, but the Chateau in France probably takes the cake. The scenery is gorgeous, the level design is terrific and the attention to detail by the team at Naughty Dog is some of the best in the business, coming in alongside teams like Irrational Games’ work on Rapture. Of course the action set-pieces were terrific as well, even if the horse chase felt a tad too reminiscent of Indiana Jones (wait… is that really a bad thing?).

And how about those desert scenes, eh?
Part of it confused the heck out of me – I still want to know whose voice he heard in his head, etc. – but it was all beautiful. The scene where Nathan gazes at the stars was particularly striking, and the mirages were marvelously done.

For all this game was gorgeous, the character moments really made this game pop. The flashback to Nathan’s childhood – his first meeting with Sully and Marlowe, and the theft at the Museum – was great. I really wanted to know what happened between Nathan and Elena since Uncharted 2, but the emotional scene where Nathan’s head in in her lap and he says “I’m Sorry.” … my apologies… I was… I was getting a little… teary-eyed there. That had to be one of the most simple, yet touching moments in gaming, and while the other scenes didn’t quite rise to that same level, they were all great.

And how about that ending, eh? Fantastic, wasn’t it? The entire city crumbling around you (though that bit did seem a little too similar to the last game’s ending), the bad guys are defeated in spectacular fashion with nary a bloated boss battle in sight (much more interesting to have Marlowe disappear into the quicksand and to have a knife fight with Talbot),

Snarl all you want, Marlowe, you've got a mouthful of sand in your future.

But my word, how many little bits are left hanging. Of course, the real discussion would revolve around one simple question: What is the “deception” in the game’s title, exactly? On the one hand it can very much refer directly to Sir Francis Drake’s deception about what he found on his mission for Queen Elizabeth. On the other, it may very well refer to Nathan’s deception of everyone in his life about his true identity (I vote for both, of course – Naughty Dog, you scoundrels).

Quick note: I really like Charlie's character. Great addition. Really breaks up your expectations.

This game started plucking at the threads of who Nathan really is at the heart of his character. We’ve seen something of his background, and the darker truths about his past have had one layer of mystery taken away, but so much remains. Add in the complications of his relationships with Sully, Elena and everyone else, and there is plenty of fodder for the next game – and let’s not kid ourselves, there will be another game.

Though how they can top set-pieces like this one I have no idea.

Believe it or not, I would love it if the next game began in the middle of Nathan’s new domestic life. Take a Heavy Rain approach to the setting for a minute. Let the player explore Nathan’s marriage with Elena briefly. Does he have a kid? Is he satisfied with daily life (An interesting and wonderful answer to this might be “yes”)? And then have him be pulled back (unwillingly?) into his former life. Perhaps it has something to do with this unnamed father of his? Something that happened to him at the orphanage? Some brush with a dangerous someone while he was in the care of some nuns (and who is better at keeping long hidden secrets than the Catholic Church, eh)? What effect would this tumbling back into danger have on Nathan and his relationship to Elena and Sully (particularly if it is revealed in the process that he isn’t who he always said he was)? There is so much material to mine here.

And Chateaus to burn down!

Indiana Jones had a purpose that drove him in his adventures. He believed in two things: 1. knowledge is for all of humanity; 2. bad guys don’t have the right to monopolize it, and the power it brings, for themselves. What does Nathan have in all this: 1. Treasure = Money. Money = good. 2. It would kinda suck if a bad guy had the power to rule/destroy the world, so I better stop them.

But now we see glimpses of something deeper. He was trying to live up to the legacy of Sir Francis Drake. He felt like he has to prove himself. Sure, but may I ask why? Yes, by the end of the game we know he has nothing left to prove, but there is still so much to work with here. What makes Drake tick?

So, dear Naughty Dog, please (please, please, please) give Nathan a good, personal reason to be out there again, doing what we all love to see him do; namely, explore lost cities, search for ancient secrets and make wisecracks while shooting and climbing everything in sight.

Aug 28, 2011 – “Coyote Frontier” has finally taught me what the first two books tried to impart. I should not listen to my expectations. The next book will not be about what you think it will be. For those of you who remember the ending of “Coyote Rising,” Carlos sent his sister, her lover and the Savant Castro into temporary exile in an attempt to both punish and save them, much like what he did to himself in the original “Coyote.” This left what seemed to me to be the perfect set up for an adventurous, character and conflict filled third book focusing on the trio’s exploration of a wild new world. Instead, “Coyote Frontier” takes place many years later. Twenty, I believe. Whatever possibilities lay in that untold story are buried.

So my big question going into this review is if it is Frontier’s fault that I am disappointed with it. – Let me be clear: Frontier isn’t a bad book. It’s a good book; it just isn’t a great book, like I consider the last two. – But back to my question; is my disappointment the book’s fault, or mine?

In the end, my conclusion is that it is primarily the book’s fault. “Coyote Rising” managed to overcome my dashed expectations for the sequel to “Coyote” by providing interesting characters and exciting action. “Coyote Frontier” stumbles in a number of respects, and while it was never enough for me to put down the book, it is disappointing when you consider what came before.

The plot of “Coyote Frontier” is split into two major threads. The first is the inevitable re-opening of communications and transport with Earth, and the conflicts that arise there, and the second, which is the study of the “Chireep” the native sentient population which is carried out by several key characters, such as Susan Montero, Hawk Thompson, Savant Castro and Johnathon Parson.

Both previous books had tense, or poignant endings that were built up from the rising action of the plot. Frontier has a sort of double ending, where the first ending is a lame resolution to the plot elements, and the second ending is interesting, but has little connection to the plot at all.

Despite this, there are many scenes in the book that are just fantastic. The first European Alliance ship to arrive on Coyote brings interesting characters that show not every person from Earth is bent on dominating the new world. Captain Anastasia Tereshkova and her crew become fascinated with Coyote, and her trip to the Barren Isle with Carlos is a great nod to the original explorations of the new world that I loved so much from the first book.

Another nod to the first book was the story of one of the men who was supposed to be an original colonist, one of the D.I.s from the first book, his surprising tale of survival and sacrifice, and his eventual creation of the wormhole technology that bridges Earth and Coyote. His meetings with his old friends and colleagues were all well done, and a chance for the readers to look back on the first book and feel nostalgic for the good-ol-days.

Pretty much all of the scenes involving the Chireep were intriguing, and the only times I got any sense of the newness and foreign nature of Coyote. That alien nature is something I always felt Steele wasn’t very good at eliciting. Of course they were also some of the most frustrating moments of the book because of Lars Thompson who makes a good villain, if extremely stereotypical. The obvious message is the importance of environmentalism, so who do you make the villain for such a message? Why a misogynist, drunken logger, of course.

Lars’ demise, however, was one of my favorite parts of the book. Not for the gruesome revenge of it, but for the complexity of emotions it lends to his son Hawk.

On the other side of the coin we see Carlos and Wendy go once more to Earth, to visit the place of their birth and fight for the political rights of their new world. The international moon base was fascinating, and very sci-fi feeling in the face of all the rugged frontier survival back on Coyote. This was a refreshing segment, and it’s a little ironic that some of the greatest sensations of exploration in the book come from re-visiting Earth and its political mires, which this far in the future is both familiar and creepily foreign, not to mention depressing.

Both of these threads come to a head in an inevitable showdown over the future of Coyote not just as a sovereign nation, but also its natural life and its status as the greatest hope for mankind. Environmental warnings are everywhere, as are warnings of the terrifying potential of humanity to forget the lessons of the past, especially when dealing with the natural world and native peoples. What makes this more interesting than the stereotype is that Steele muddies the waters into gray by showing how desperately humanity needs this new world to survive. The needs of humanity, and the needs of Coyote are in conflict.

Of course this is part of the reason why I felt like the first ending was so bland. It wraps up the conflict, puts a bow on it and considers it taken care of. It’s the plot equivalent of saying and not showing. We hear that they will take the native world and it inhabitants more into consideration. Great… now how so? We never find out. Carlos assures us with his words that the circle of humanity’s foolishness is broken. But what use is a simple assurance when so much is at stake?

But these are all plot considerations. The characters are still interesting, even if some of the new ones begin to show signs of a cardboard edging. I won’t say they aren’t believable, it’s just that we never get any real indication of any inner mental processes or turmoil in characters like Susan, who are birthed from the plot fully formed (in her case as the dedicated, unyielding environmentalist from the university) and never change.

The writing is solid and descriptive. The pacing is much better than “Coyote Rising,” and the competing plot threads are well placed to come to a head. Steele is in better format form than his last book, even if the content isn’t as enthralling.

Closing Comments:

I think I would have been more positive on the book had the ending felt less rushed. Most of my other quibbles are just that: minor quibbles. There is still a lot to like in this book. A number of scenes were very well put together that I did not mention, and it’s hard to convey the satisfaction of re-visiting Earth, or the scenes involving Castro, Parsons and visiting the Chireep. Despite all this, the most intriguing moment of the book comes at the very end, and you know what? After the last two books I’ve learned my lesson. “Coyote Frontier” is an interesting and well constructed book that ultimately left me unsatisfied.

STAR RATING: (3 Stars)

For those of you who stuck around after the rating, I’ve got a extra segment for you called Spoiler Talk. It’s a segment in which I discuss what I thought of certain elements of the story or themes that are too spoilerish or high-concept for the main review. What I say here doesn’t ever trump my review, instead it might give insight into what exactly made me give something the score I did. So let’s get started.

Spoiler Talk:

Of course the ending I’m talking about are the returning lost crew of the Galileo (I think that’s what it was called) and the introduction of the new expanded universe, i.e. alien civilizations. I felt like I was finally being tossed a bone I was teased with all the way back in “Coyote” when Gilis first saw what could be construed as alien life. But as I said, who’s to say the next book will follow up on that.

The Chireep storyline frustrated me so much because I kept banging my head against the desk as I watched everyone under the sun question their intelligence when the evidence is staring them right in the face. This is worst in the case of Carlos, who discovered them and their intelligence in the first place.

Carlos’ character disappointed me the most, not from a writing standpoint (deconstructing a character this way actually is pretty skillfull) but because of the way he forgot the lessons and wildness of his youth until it was almost too late.

The cave paintings scene was neat, and I loved everything about Savant Castro and Parsons finding friends in each other, as well as colleagues in the study of the Chireep.

Hawk’s murder of his own father was a dark turn I saw coming, but was still sorta surprised by. How this will play out in his future will be interesting to see (well, hopefully).

The way Barry’s true sexuality was treated was either tasteful or unnecessary and I can’t decide which. Maybe both? He was more or less a cameo in the whole thing.

Eh, I could go on about every little scene that I either liked or was disappointed by, but It means I’ll just keep dancing away from the first ending, that is when Parsons, Castro, Susan and Hawk took the Starbridge hostage.

I could tell when they first set about doing it they weren’t really sincere in blowing up the bridge, and even when the Magellan showed up I never really felt tense about the situation. We were at the very end of the book, at the end of the planned trilogy for that matter, and leaving actually important cliffhangers like an impending war with Earth would have been, while shocking, a bit disingenuous. Things were going to work out somehow. So I never felt tense.

Oh, and as I said before, the hostage-taker’s environmental cause is given lip-service for being answered, but we’re never shown that anything of substance ever happens to protect Coyote’s natural habitats or the Chireep. We’re just left with that hope.

And so I felt left hanging. After a bunch of interesting ideas floating around, and a great set up for some sort of conflict, the last book in the first trilogy ended on a whimper, with a second ending that’s full of promises, and so far I’ve been taught that these sorts of endings are just that. Promises.

Aug 14, 2011 – Coyote Rising is (mostly) the story of revolution, fighting against overwhelming odds to clasp hold of freedom. Just as Coyote was basically a sci-fi retelling of the pilgrims landing in the Americas, Rising is a retelling of the American revolution, at least in spirit. There are a number of distinct differences between Coyote and it’s sequel, and the end result is not better, nor much worse, just different.

I’ll assume that you’ve read the first book, though at times knowledge of the first book seems unimportant. I say this because that the first three sub-stories of the book’s narrative have little to do with events of the first book at all. Sure the setting is the same, but our exposure to the original cast of characters is practically nonexistent. What we have instead is an assortment of three story arcs focused on characters that are largely peripheral to the main plot. First a story about a musician newly come to Coyote, second a story of a religious cult, and third the story of a bridge builder.

Each story is interesting in it’s own right, to be sure, and each is very character driven. The story about the musical composer details the struggles and relationships of those who arrive on Coyote under the banner of social collectivism. The bridge builder is probably my favorite, showing a reclusive eccentric getting in touch with his sense of community and humanity, somewhat ironically in his defiance of the “communal” government.

The religious cult story, while interesting, was truly bizarre. Much of the rest of the Coyote story is grounded and realistic, but this tale of a grotesquely modified man, mad science, religious insanity and ill-fated treks through the wilderness bolts directly in the other direction. In that respect it sticks with you. You can’t help it as it is so disparate from the rest of the book, and the characters are intricate, yet I don’t feel it ever made the case to me as to why the story needed to be here. The characters make appearances elsewhere in the book, but they never felt necessary.

I understand why Steele did this. He wanted to give us a picture, to some degree of the new arrivals on Coyote, to connect us to them and show that they aren’t a bunch of communist sheep come to claim the land. In that he succeeds, but the entire time I read these stories I was itching to get back to the meat of the book, to get to what I came back to the series for, the original characters. Where he excels in character and setting development, he somewhat fails in connecting the plot.

When we finally get back to the original characters it was very refreshing. I became once again fascinated by the sense that I was watching the history of this alien world unfold through the eyes of people I’d come to care about. But while this was great and all, it wasn’t everything I could have hoped for. While he got back to the plot, he didn’t keep his character focused writing. The trade-off isn’t extreme. We still get some very nice character sequences, such as the reunion of Chris and Carlos, and the return of Wendy’s journal, but the focus becomes mostly plot centric. It’s an odd dichotomy, where the first half of the book is so strong with character but mild on plot, while the second half is strong on plot but medium on character.

There are a few personal disappointments I had with the book that stem with my expectations or hopes leading out of the first. Primarily I was sad to see a downplaying of the fantasy epic Gillis wrote. I understand it can’t be earth (or Coyote) changing after only a decade or two, but I still want to see how it impact the local culture, which hasn’t really happened yet. I suppose this yearning mostly stems from how much I loved the way culture can mold itself in new ways in works like the Change series by S.M. Stirling. I recognize this is a bit unfair to Steele, but there you have it.

My second qualm is how little exploration I felt the book had. While the terrain does seem more diverse now, I still never got much of a sense of “the new world” so to speak, and that was one of my favorite elements of the first book. Despite setting up shop on a whole new continent, we got very little exposure to new and exciting flora and fauna.

One last notable difference between this book and the last is that I don’t recall Steele switching in and out of Present and Past tenses anymore. This may be a symptom of having all the characters in the same general time frame, as which wasn’t always the case last time. Whichever way, it made the reading experience smother, if a bit less artistic.

For all these differences I want to stress that they are mostly differences, and not flaws. The book is more uneven than the last one, and it doesn’t have nearly as gripping a beginning, but I would be lying if I said there weren’t several stand-out moments that kept me glued to the page. The ending is also great with a climax that doesn’t end quite the way you’d expect, but mostly the way you would hope, while leaving threads wide open to new story possibilities that should come to fruition in the third book.

Closing Comments:
The parallels to the American revolution are much lighter than those between American history and the first book. The plotting is uneven, some characters you wish you could see again are removed too soon, and some story sequences, while unforgettable, are also largely out of place. Despite all of that, I came out of the book at the other end largely satisfied with my time back in Coyote. It didn’t follow through on all the promise of the first book, but what it did deliver was ultimately a convincing portrait of a world in need of revolution, and an exciting struggle from the people who make it happen.

STAR RATING: (3 & 1/2 Stars)

Three and One-Half Stars

For those of you who stuck around after the rating, I’ve got a extra segment for you called Spoiler Talk. It’s a segment in which I discuss what I thought of certain elements of the story or themes that are too spoilerish or high-concept for the main review. What I say here doesn’t ever trump my review, instead it might give insight into what exactly made me give something the score I did. So let’s get started.

Spoiler Talk:

The religious cult story was baffling. I didn’t know whether to laugh at it, feel admiration or feel disgust. Well, I settled on disgust near the end. Cannibalism in the wilderness and the treason of trust will do that to you. Rev. Zoltan Shirow was ultimately a monster, though at times I felt pity for him. The story evoked a storm of emotions across the spectrum, and I suspect it was meant to do so. Greer and Ben’s tragic part in the whole sordid tale was kind of heartbreaking. To see her and Zoltan show up again near the end of the book seemed out of place, needless, and dragging out a point that did not need extrapolating on. I would have preferred to leave their fates after the disastrous trip through the wilderness a mystery, and left Zoltan to become a legend.

Savant Castro’s demise was pretty chilling and fascinating, as was his surprising return. I hope there is some exploration of his place in (or out) of society in the future. It certainly seems there is no getting rid of him at any rate.

The demise of the Alabama was sad. Clever writing, but sad. I mostly wish they could have salvaged Gillis’ painting before it’s untimely demise, but ultimately freedom is more important than a work of art. And ouch, ouch it hurt to say that.

Robert Lee’s death wasn’t surprising, but it was well done, and a great symbol of what was lost in the rebellion, as well as what such a high price gained. In many ways, the twin loss of the Alabama and Lee was a way of shaking lose the last true bindings to the old world and their old lives. This is no longer just a colony, this is a civilization, an independent nation, sovereign.

The most disappointing death was that of Tom Shapiro. He essentially gets a cameo as a corpse. Not being able to get much time with him is bad enough, but then they go and kill him off screen. A tragic end to one of the early stalwarts of the new world.

The volcano blowing was neat. No getting around that. I didn’t see it coming. Well, I guess I did once they said there was a volcano. You don’t lay a Chekhov’s gun, cannon rather, that prominently without shooting it. But they placed that information out there late, which made it very much a last minute surprise.

July 23, 2011 – The men and women of science fiction novels have launched themselves into the stars for many reasons. They are escaping a doomed planet facing some sort of apocalypse. They are sent off by their government to explore. They’re heading off to destroy the alien enemy. It’s time to colonize. Etc. The spacefarers who are the stars of “Coyote” are most similar to that last one, sent off to colonize the remote moon from which the novel gets its name. But there’s a catch.

This isn’t a story of a bunch of simple colonists, rather they are fugitives, intellectuals and dissidents oppressed by their government, escaping a certain and horrible future in internment camps, lead by a conspiracy of government officials to steal a billion dollar space craft on its way to colonize a small moon many light years away. The novel grabs you at the very beginning and drags you along through an intense heist and finally, despite several close calls, into space. What follows is a story of a colony landing on an alien world, learning to cope and survive in a hostile environment, while working out internal strife and conflict.

Steele’s writing style is straightforward and descriptive, never veering too far into techno-babble that plagues some works of the genre, but providing just enough insight into the science behind the story, and with just enough nod to the realism of the scenario to satiate those readers who are more interested by the numbers and the theories than the characters.

Yet it is the characters who receive the most attention in “Coyote.” Complex motivations, political idealism and basic human drama serve to flesh out the characters and connect them to the reader. The politics that pushed these escapees into space serve as a backdrop, and inform us of where these people are coming from, but it’s the simple matters of survival, love, hate, curiosity and the explorer’s spirit that really make the characters shine.

Where some books exploit character deaths to try and tug on heart strings, “Coyote” uses them as a matter of fact. These people have taken risks. Risks which sometimes cause death. None of the characters ever seem safe, and characters that have been followed and built since the beginning can still die. The book isn’t a slaughter house by any means, but the dangers of space colonization aren’t glossed over either.

The book has, in my mind, three primary standout elements (I’ll spare the details.) The beginning is a wonderful an intense heist, fraught with danger and excitement. On the journey to Coyote, an accident occurs, and the reader is treated to witnessing a man’s life in isolation in what is easily my favorite sequence of the book, and then near the end of the book, a lone man’s journey through a foreign landscape while discovering himself. The rest of the book is great, but these three elements are what make the book a joy to read.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t some issues. Steele shifts in and out of Present tense to emphasize the difference in when a scene takes place, which is nice and artistic, but some people will not be able to get over having to read Present tense. I admit that it took me some time to get used to.

The biggest issue to me was how familiar the world seemed. For a book about exploring an alien moon, much of the alien life is very familiar. Of course there are obvious reasons, both scientifically and from an author’s perspective why this would be, but at times I wondered how the book might be even better if I truly felt out of place on this world. There are glimpses of exotic life on Coyote, but in a way I felt like they had landed on another Earth. This somewhat shortchanges the exploration elements as you never really feel like you’ve stumbled upon something truly out of this world. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Lost World” felt more exotic.

On top of this, the colonists truly have smashing luck. I mean, aside from the predators, they couldn’t have landed in a better place. It’s not an easy life but it is also pretty darn manageable. I can see why the author would write it that way, as he wants to deal with more than just survival concerns, but in the back of my mind it sometimes felt like the universe was being rather gracious to these people.

Closing Comments:
My concerns aside, this book did a great job of investing me in the characters and their successes and failures in this new world. The thematic elements calling back to the Pilgrims’ journey to America feels novel and inspired, bringing out a surprising nostalgia for the beginnings of our own nation and the burning desire of mankind for freedom. But what really makes this book stand out is it’s humble focus on the daily struggles of individual people, and how that the journey across space and time is just a backdrop to the real journey, the exploration of our own souls.

STAR RATING: (4 Stars)

Four out of Five Stars

For those of you who stuck around after the rating, I’ve got a extra segment for you called Spoiler Talk. It’s a segment in which I discuss what I thought of certain elements of the story or themes that are too spoilerish or high-concept for the main review. What I say here doesn’t ever trump my review, instead it might give insight into what exactly made me give something the score I did. So let’s get started.

Spoiler Talk:
I can’t wait to go get the sequel and read it. The arrival of new people from Earth, so strange in their advancement, are more alien than the world they’ve landed on, while being simultaneously terribly familiar. I’m very hopeful for what comes of these events, but I hope Steele doesn’t paint them in a black and white paintbrush. I want them to be as complicated as the colonists.

The boids are interesting, I suppose, but they just don’t do it for me as creepy creatures. They’re dangerous to be sure. The case is made there as good as it can be, but they just don’t give me that vibe that I get from predators here on earth.

A lot of my reaction to the blandness of the alien life might come from how much of the world is presented as flat plains and marshes. I know there are trees, but I never really felt like we saw any forests to speak of, or other plant features that would make it interesting. While we only saw one selection of wildlife, it felt as if it was all boids and grass as far as the eye could see.

This contributed, I’m sure, to the catwhales and sandthieves portions of the exploration by Carlos and the others being such favorite bits of mine. That and I’m a sucker for massive sea creatures and sentient life.

I’m hoping that now we’ve established some ground rules for the planet and the colonists that we might see some more exotic elements of living on a new world. They are traveling elsewhere, after all. It would be a shame to drop the exploration elements, which were some of my favorites in this book.

Oh, and the sequence where Leslie Gillis is woken up and lives out thirty-plus years of his life writing that book and drawing murals was fantastic. There’s simply no other way to put it. I felt like I was watching history as Gillis unwittingly created his masterwork which I’m sure will shape the future generations of the colonists from then on. It felt like watching the man who first chipped Gilgamesh into a stone tablet, or Moses scribbling down his account of the ten plagues. He’s formed what will become a backbone of their future’s culture, and I find that fascinating. If this isn’t followed up on in the sequel, I’ll be very, very disappointed.

August 1, 2011 –
Captain America has been compared to Indiana Jones in an number of reviews I’ve seen, and I can see where they would get that impression. Some of the basics of Indiana Jones are also present here. The setting of World War II, the adventurous tone, the romance between a strong and strong willed woman and the main protagonist. At the very beginning there is even a nod to the archeological elements when the Red Skull makes a visit to Norway. But in many respects Captain America is a different film that, while never quite reaching the heights of an Indiana Jones film, is worthwhile all the same.

Oh the things you can find in Nowegian gift shops

It's a big change.

When the regiment of Rogers’ best friend Bucky go missing in action, Rogers ditches the USO to go save the men, beginning his turn from propaganda figure to war hero. The rest of the film follows his continuing fight against Hydra and the Red Skull who have grand ambitions that outstrip those of their unaware Nazi masters.

The writing here is very straightforward, but clever. The plot makes a lot of basic sense, for the most part, and the audience can follow along readily. This could be seen as a negative, as the film is, in many respects, very predictable. There’s not really a single twist that comes as a genuine surprise. It’s a thoroughly trodden path, but it’s told so well I never really cared.

Framing the WWII story with snippets from present day works out very well, both foreshadowing the ending, and setting everything up for the Avengers. Some people call this film just a massive advertisement for the Avengers, but I disagree. Aside from the trailer after the credits and the presence of Howard Stark, I felt that this story was mostly self contained with a smooth progression from start to finish.

I thought the Super Soldier experiment was very well put together.

Marvel has been a little hit and miss with their romantic relationships in their films. Incredible Hulk saw no real chemistry all between Edward Norton’s Bruce Banner and Liv Tyler’s Betty Ross, and as much as I loved Thor, that film’s relationship felt more like an infatuation waiting to blossom into a real romance. On the other hand, Iron Man’s relationship between Pepper Pots and Tony Stark feels genuine, if never serious.

In this film, Marvel has hit the mark, providing the first true romance in their collection between Rogers and Hayley Atwell’s Peggy Carter. The relationship between the two has time to grow and bloom, and you see her like his spirit before he gains the body of a greek god. It’s the subtle growth of the relationship that makes it believable, as opposed to the sudden, if sweet, one in Thor.

It should practically not need stating that Hugo Weaving does a suitably dastardly performance as the Red Skull. Tommy Lee Jones does a fantastic job as Colonel Chester Phillips and delivers all the best lines of the film. It may be his best role in any movie, he’s so good. Pretty much every bit-part in the film is played very well, from Toby Jones’ Dr. Arnim Zola to Neil McDonough’s Timothy “Dum Dum” Dugan (Even though Dum Dum and the other Howling Commandos are never mentioned by name.)

And to be perfectly clear, the Howling Comandos are awesome.

The details of the time period are especially fun. The way the rampant American propaganda of the time is handled, and the inherent element of propaganda that is the main character, is brilliant. The USO scenes, involving a song and dance number, the goofy first costume, and the contrast between the reception at home versus amongst the troops, is all very well done. Sometimes real patriotism is ignoring the flag-waving and just getting a task done right, which is an important thing to remember in our paranoid first decade of the new millennium.

I like how realistic the visuals are when compared to the bright colors of something like Spiderman

There is also a motorcycle chase that is VERY reminicent of the speeder chase in Return of the Jedi.

The Red Skull’s face was another stand out effect in the film.

A face only a mother could love

Closing Comments:

Captain America’s only real flaw is its predictability and simplicity, and if you come at this film with the right mindset, those might very well be virtues. Captain America is just about all it could be. Clever writing, excellent acting, explosions, science fiction, fisticuffs, tragic romance, a memorable villain and a fresh take on the World War II backdrop make this film one of, if not the best Marvel movie to date. It may not be the most exciting action movie, most romantic romance movie, or most historically accurate (haha) war movie, but it combines it all so well under the superhero banner that it doesn’t really matter. This isn’t just a movie to see, it’s a movie to keep. Marvel has done it again.

STAR RATING: (4 & ½ Stars)

Four and one-half Stars

Spoiler Talk:

For those of you who stuck around after the rating, I’ve got a extra segment for you called Spoiler Talk. It’s a segment in which I discuss what I thought of certain elements of the story or themes that are too spoilerish or high-concept for the main review. What I say here doesn’t ever trump my review, instead it might give insight into what exactly made me give something the score I did. So let’s get started.

The demise (or not) of the Red Skull is a little bit of a cop-out. Captain America doesn’t defeat him. Instead he is sort of melted by the Cosmic Cube. What almost certainly really happened was that he was teleported somewhere, like we’ve seen in Thor. After all the beginning of the film ties the Cosmic Cube to Odin’s store house, so it makes a lot of sense, especially when you see all the images of the cosmos that appear when the cube’s power is activated raw. So we know that the Red Skull is still out there, and no great surprise, really.

Hydra was a good choice for an underling service for the Red Skull, making them sort of super-Nazis, and those always make for good villains and cannon fodder. On the other hand, I’d like to see them expand from here and become the more distinct group we know from present day comics.

One element that makes my heart get all warm and glowing is how egalitarian and truly peaceful the message is. It isn’t a glorification of war, but rather the reasons we fight against evil. It’s an easy well to mine, as World War II is truly the most justified war we’ve ever fought. The most black and white. And yet to a degree Captain America subtly undercuts that black and white image of the time period. As Dr. Erskine says, “people forget that the first nation the Nazi’s invaded was their own.” There is definite good and evil, but it’s not the races, genders or nations. It’s about the powers and principalities (wink-wink to all the Christians out there) that drive them.

Complete with a selfless sacrifice.

July 31, 2011 – Having not gotten around to this review until well after the film hit theaters, I find that I’m glad it took so long to get around to so I could put my thoughts together about it. Being an unabashed Harry Potter fan, particularly of the book series, it is a sad thing to see the very last car of the Harry Potter train pull into the station. It’s unlikely we’ll ever see anything of this scope for quite some time. While the films have never been perfect, they have still been a great addition, a compliment, to the magical world Rowling built, and in that sense, this final film follows directly in that tradition.

Let’s get the obvious out of the way. I’m not going to summarize any of the story bits because if you don’t know it by now, it isn’t going to help. This is a film meant specifically for fans of the series. There is no bringing in the uninitiated, and for what it’s meant to be, it shouldn’t waste time with such things. But when I mean fans of the series, I mean fans of the book series, because people who’ve only watched the films will be left nearly as confused and dazed as someone who has had no experience with the series at all. Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but the basic point is still there. Plot points, character appearances and motivations will pop out of nowhere and return to nothing in mere minutes, or even seconds. These aren’t minor elements either, but huge chunks that provide the backbone of the story. I could fill in the gaps because I’m in the know, but that simply isn’t true of the uninitiated.

This fundamental flaw, that the movies simply can’t be as intricate as the books, has been the bane of every single one of these movies since they were first projected on the silver screen. It takes the punch out of the emotional weight and significance of many of the sequences in each film. In “The Deathly Hallows, Part 2” major questions remain unanswered regarding the shard of mirror that Harry Potter suddenly had for no good reason two movies ago. Pretty much all of the complicated political machinations that make the current situation in the wizarding world what they are are absent, and how exactly did Hagrid get captured by Voldermort again?

These things are, in a sense, understandably glossed over. After all, you can’t show everything. But they are the cracks that threaten the stability of every movie. Really, given the complexity of what has come before, it’s a bit of a surprise that the writers managed to make this last film as cohesive as they did. The film makers might have bee able to rectify this further if they didn’t have so many slowly panning shots of the main trio throughout the film,and given some of that time for other things.

The other big problem with the film is simply how the ending seemed anticlimactic. This wasn’t a problem in the books, where there was a suitable cheer and celebration in the event of Voldermort’s death. We’ve had three straight movies before this of intense introspection and grief, with little to no reprieve. The books were smart enough to give us the victory lap, so why couldn’t this movie? I felt the fight between Harry and Voldermort was suitably harrowing, but it was like a brick falling in an empty room. A big bang, followed by a hollow echo. The epilogue scene at the end was not, nor should it have been, a replacement.

There are lots of little things to go on about, but those two were this film’s true failings, so now that I’m done ragging on it, let’s talk about what the film got right. This begins with the acting. The main trio of Harry, Ron and Hermoine (Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson respectively) are all at their best, being a great showcase for how they have grown as actors with their characters, but the real standouts are Voldermort (Ralph Fiennes) and Severus Snape (Alan Rickman.) What little time Rickman is given on screen, he manages to imbue Snape with the hidden sadness that comes to light in the final installment of the book series with great subtlety and power, meanwhile Fiennes chews the scenery with a captivating performance as Voldermort, one of the most iconic screen villains, right up there with “The Dark Knight”’s Joker and Darth Vader.

The film also manages to highlight Neville Longbottom (Matthew Lewis) and turn him into the (mostly) unsung hero of the Harry Potter universe, and Lewis portrays him as the simple and brave figure he is, not a hero wrapped up in a grand destiny, but rather a man doing what is right despite the circumstances. Other performances of merit include all of the Malfoy family, who manage to convey in the little time they have on screen the complexities of their relationships and who they are as people.

One scene that I felt was actually better in the film than the book was the Epilogue sequence. Without giving anything away, the ending of the book was, while sweet, a bit too sappy and so thoroughly wrapped up nice and neat (complete with those terrible name choices – fans know what I mean) that big red bows practically hit you from out of the page. The film’s epilogue is shorter, and while it doesn’t fully give satisfaction, it avoids much of the sweet sugary sap of the book, while still giving fans a heavy feeling of nostalgia as the circle of life begins anew for another generation of wizards and witches.

Outside of the acting, the special effects are terrific as usual, providing great visuals to accompany the story, and the music is, of course, terrific, though nothing gets to quite the same incredible heights as the theme from the first film. The action is generally spectacular, with lots of explosions and bright flashing lights, even if it’s not as evenly spaced out or placed as it could be.

Closing Comments:
What this film does best is, as always, translate the atmosphere and heart of the books to the big screen, even if it stumbles over plot and specifics. For all of it’s faults, it is a loving tribute to one of modern literature’s landmarks: a children’s book series that grew into something much more, and transformed culture as we know it, with a wondrous world, high-flying adventure, powerful and complex characters, and a deep well of moral understanding that will be an influence on generations to come.

STAR RATING: (4)

Four out of Five Stars

For those of you who stuck around after the rating, I’ve got a extra segment for you called Spoiler Talk. It’s a segment in which I discuss what I thought of certain elements of the story or themes that are too spoilerish or high-concept for the main review. What I say here doesn’t ever trump my review, instead it might give insight into what exactly made me give something the score I did. So let’s get started.

Spoiler Talk:
Most of the spoilerific things I could talk about center around my problems with the film, rather than it’s strengths. Wow did they shortchange Fred’s death. For that matter, I had hoped that the filmmakers would actually take the opportunity to make something of most of the off screen deaths, but we don’t get that sort of closure here. The deaths of both Lupin and Tonks are just as out of sight as the books, with at least the benefit of the beautifully sad image of them lying next to one another, almost touching hands. There was a chance to do these sorts of things, but it wasn’t taken.

I actually really didn’t like the fact that Voldermort could feel his Horcrux’s being destroyed. Part of what made the books so satisfying was how he couldn’t see it coming, and was arrogant and sure until his demise. In the film, we see him become mentally unraveled. He becomes less and less sure of himself. More and more paranoid. It was interesting in it’s way, but I think it made him slightly less intimidating than he was in previous films, and in the books.

Boy, Snape was kicked out of office fast. Quite frankly, for his importance to the story of the entire series, I was saddened by how little we got to see of him. Couldn’t the writers have taken a little bit of extra time with his scenes, especially the pensieve memories? What was easily one of my favorite sequences in the book was given barely a few minutes in the film. Poo.

I was disappointed in the Hogwarts grand hall. It felt gigantic in the first few movies, but in this film, it feels tiny. What is the seating capacity like? Two-hundred with standing room only? I understand that the directors want to communicate that this isn’t your freshman year’s Hogwarts, but it doesn’t feel realistic. A massive hall that is left mostly empty and dark by children being kept out of school is a much more powerful image.

As for the final battles, I wanted to see the house elves get in on the action. Heck, when it comes down to it, if they are going to take inspiration from sci-fi films in having a massive shield around the school and a spell barrage, then why not make Hogwarts feel more like a battlefield with beams of light shooting everywhere. To be honest, the battle felt sort of muted once they got past the barrier and the moving armor.

That said, there is a lot of good to be seen as well. I enjoyed pretty much the whole breaking into Gringotts sequence, with Helena Bonham Carter doing a truly bang-up job pretending to be Hermoine pretending to be Belatrix. I like everything with Neville too. Good show.

Molly Weasley’s fight with Belatrix could have used some more punch, in my opinion. The fight as is, under a different context and with the wrong music, could have practically been slapstick comedy.

I could go on, but to sum up my feelings nothing in the film really ever reached the level of epicness that I had in my mind when I read the books, and as I said in the review, that has always been a problem of the series, and not one easily solved. People long said that Watchmen was an unfilmable work, but I personally think that Harry Potter is a lot harder to film successfully.

"The Light of Other Days"

That’s about when it planted it’s first real hooks. You see, this book is about ideas. There are characters, and they get more interesting as the story goes along, to be sure, but it’s the ideas that really drew me in. In that sense, it deftly uses the greatest tool of science fiction: the ability of science to change the very fabric of our world, and ourselves. What would happen if all privacy became an obsolete concept? What would happen if all time and space were available to the common man, like watching a television set? What if mankind became omniscient?

Watching the revelations of what “really” happened throughout history, how that crime really happened, what it was really like in the civil war, the crusades, the life of Jesus himself, were all fascinating. I know it was fiction and yet the “realities” these characters were seeing were heart wrenching. I don’t envy them their entire historical identity being broken, but it is a wonder to read.

The characters of the book are really just windows through which we can see how all of society would be wrenched apart and rebuilt into something vastly different, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t uninteresting. Once the book gets going, Bobby, Kate and others all show complicated sides of themselves, question their broken realities and strive to make changes against forces that seem well beyond their control, or rather forces that have always been controlling them. The character arc for Bobby, in particular, is well done and interesting to watch, as his personal history and family identity unravel around him.

Closing Comments:
There’s no getting around the issue that the beginning is terrible. It will turn many readers off, I think. But if you can get past the slow, slow build, to when the characters get interesting, and the scientific advancements become world shaping, you will be absorbed. The last half of the book I could hardly put it down, and the last fifty pages or so blew my mind. It’s not for everyone, but if you like what a god idea can do, or if you’re a fan of science fiction’s ability to reshape our perspectives of the universe, you will enjoy this book.

STAR RATING: (3 & 1/2 stars)

Three and One-Half Stars

For those of you who stuck around after the rating, I’ve got a extra segment for you called Spoiler Talk. It’s a segment in which I discuss what I thought of certain elements of the story or themes that are too spoilerish or high-concept for the main review. What I say here doesn’t ever trump my review, instead it might give insight into what exactly made me give something the score I did. So let’s get started.

Spoiler Talk:
Wow, there was some sex in this book. Here’s an interesting glimpse into my sordid brain, but I’ve always wondered how much of our perspectives on sex are cultural barriers we’ve set up, and how much are truly a product of our beings, born from the genetic code, so to speak. Of course this is easier to answer if you know for sure how life began, or feel like you do at any rate, but if you give thought to how it might be… well it gets interesting. This is why I like to read books that question these things. Not to say that this book dwells on sex constantly, but there’s no escaping that is a dominant theme.

I won’t lie, every time a biblical truth was found to be false or different from my beliefs, I felt like I was hit in the gut a little bit. Yeah, it’s fictional, but it made me wonder what would happen to me, psychologically if I ever found out, beyond a shadow of a doubt, otherwise. I would probably be very much like David in the book, torn apart on the inside for a very long time.

I’m not sure how much this contributed to how much I loved the ending, where every human being is being “reborn” in the future. It’s hopeful. An optimistic promise that science can make everything better. Though it would seem to me to be a false hope, it is an image that will stick with you. The idea that mankind, through it’s boundless ingenuity can branch out, expand to the stars and, just maybe, save itself.