Riona (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rionaleonhart) wrote2017-12-01 09:29 am
rionaleonhart) wrote2017-12-01 09:29 am
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I Put On My Shoes So My Feet Don't Hurt.
I've been watching an inexperienced gamer play Heavy Rain, and it's one of the funniest things I've seen in my life. Everything's so needlessly complicated! Ethan constantly fails at simple tasks like sitting down, opening the fridge or pushing his kid on the swing. The actual story is distressing stuff (it's a crime thriller about a murderer who targets children), but it's a sort of magical experience when the characters muddling through it don't have the basic competence to take a sip of orange juice.
I think my favourite part may be the attempt to tie someone else's necktie.
I also enjoy how distressed the player is when Ethan takes a shower and then puts the same pair of pants he slept in back on.
On a note that isn't 'this very serious thriller is absolutely hilarious': the way button prompts get shaky when the character you're controlling is panicking is a pretty neat touch.
The Wind Singer by William Nicholson was one of my favourite books when I was a child, and I've vaguely intended to reread it for... a very long time. I suppose on some level I've been going 'oh, I've read it so many times there's no point in rereading it, surely,' but by this point it must have been well over a decade since I last picked it up, and I think the time to reread it has come at last.
I was a little afraid it wouldn't hold up, but I felt my love for this book surging back almost immediately. There's a strange beauty in the straightforwardness and simplicity of the writing style, and I love the 'you don't have to be the very best; you don't have to compare yourself constantly to other people; you can love the people who are important to you, and that's enough, that's a worthwhile existence in itself' message of it.
The Hath family are a delight; the characters are so well-drawn, and they're all held together by their fierce love for each other. It never occurred to me before, but maybe a part of my love for family dynamics in fiction stems from this book.
I've always remembered how magnificently passive-aggressive Ira is towards anyone who harms her family. I think my favourite instance might be where two officials are waiting in her house for her daughter's return, so they can arrest her, and Ira asks whether they'd like a drink while they're waiting. Then she just leaves them for ages to get thirstier and more impatient, and on her return they go 'where's our drink?' and she acts very surprised. No, you misunderstood; she never offered you a drink. She asked you whether you'd like a drink. She was just making conversation.
I think my favourite part may be the attempt to tie someone else's necktie.
I also enjoy how distressed the player is when Ethan takes a shower and then puts the same pair of pants he slept in back on.
On a note that isn't 'this very serious thriller is absolutely hilarious': the way button prompts get shaky when the character you're controlling is panicking is a pretty neat touch.
The Wind Singer by William Nicholson was one of my favourite books when I was a child, and I've vaguely intended to reread it for... a very long time. I suppose on some level I've been going 'oh, I've read it so many times there's no point in rereading it, surely,' but by this point it must have been well over a decade since I last picked it up, and I think the time to reread it has come at last.
I was a little afraid it wouldn't hold up, but I felt my love for this book surging back almost immediately. There's a strange beauty in the straightforwardness and simplicity of the writing style, and I love the 'you don't have to be the very best; you don't have to compare yourself constantly to other people; you can love the people who are important to you, and that's enough, that's a worthwhile existence in itself' message of it.
The Hath family are a delight; the characters are so well-drawn, and they're all held together by their fierce love for each other. It never occurred to me before, but maybe a part of my love for family dynamics in fiction stems from this book.
I've always remembered how magnificently passive-aggressive Ira is towards anyone who harms her family. I think my favourite instance might be where two officials are waiting in her house for her daughter's return, so they can arrest her, and Ira asks whether they'd like a drink while they're waiting. Then she just leaves them for ages to get thirstier and more impatient, and on her return they go 'where's our drink?' and she acts very surprised. No, you misunderstood; she never offered you a drink. She asked you whether you'd like a drink. She was just making conversation.
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(I read a thing about the game Loved, that was all "Yeah, try playing it for yourself, it only takes ten minutes to play the whole thing." After thirty minutes of failing to make it more than a quarter of a way though, I gave up and watched videos of someone else playing it.)
I never read that book. It sounds interesting.
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Heavy Rain, though, is particularly entertaining because there's no reason for it to be possible to fail some of the things you can fail at. Opening the fridge doesn't need to be a challenge!
(I... think I may have been the one who made that entry on Loved. Whoops.)
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Like how even are you supposed to open the fridge? Stand in front of it and press a button?
(It does sound like something you'd buzz through effortlessly in ten minutes.)
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This is the sensible fridge-opening method that most fridge-containing games employ! But no; you have to stand in front of it and then push a miniature joystick forward and then move the joystick to the right in a semi-circular motion. You can then, if you like, have some orange juice by pushing forward on the joystick to pick up the carton, shaking the entire controller up and down repeatedly to shake the carton, and then pushing the joystick forward and holding it there to take a drink (if you don't hold it, you'll just raise the carton to your lips and fail to actually drink from it). Everything in this game is a needlessly complicated affair.
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