INKY SQUIGGLES

While I found Dreamfall Chapters immersive and enjoyable, the various disparate narrative threads simply didn't come together at the end for me. I ended up looking forward to Zoë's parts of the game much more than Kian's, who I found somewhat dull. In keeping with this, I found Stark, Zoë's futuristic cyberpunk world, more compelling than Arcadia, which presents a much more typical magical fantasy setting. Because of this, I was disappointed at the fragmentation of the gameplay into three different main characters and settings, all of which had intrigue but none of which felt fully fleshed out (particularly Saga, the third character, who mostly remains a mystery throughout). While Stark and Arcadia appear large, atmospheric and interesting, most of the buildings are simply decorative and cannot be entered, and most of the city inhabitants cannot be interacted with meaningfully, only eavesdropped in on. Similarly, Riverwood and the Purple Mountains are stunning ...

The interviewer looked me in the eye and smiled. "Where do you see yourself five years from now?" "When will people stop asking me this ridiculous question?!" I groaned. "How am I supposed to know?! Anything can happen! Life can change dramatically in one afternoon, one year, let alone five! Having goals is one thing, but why do you have to put a timeline to it?!" Alright, I didn't say that. Out loud, anyway. I certainly thought it. There are two questions I never know how best to answer: "Where are you from?" and "Where do you see yourself in the next five years?" From this article I grew up moving between towns, cultures, and countries  –  I spent my formative years in England, South East Asia, and the United States. Thanks to my parents' work as pastors and missionaries, life could be shaken up overnight  –  an exciting, sometimes heart-breaking reality. Occasionally I wondered if I was alone in my struggle to ans...

Enter if you will, gentle reader, pull up a stuffed armchair by the fireside and join me in a true tale of small-town terror. As young teenagers, one of the biggest and most important obstacles my friends and I faced was convincing all our parents to allow us to stage spontaneous sugar-fuelled sleepovers and backyard 'campouts'. We would listen to cheese-rock ballads on a temperamental Walkman, play pass-the-buck-style dramatic storytelling games, conjecture wildly about our dream futures and generally achieve little to no sleep.

The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald  (Simon & Schuster, 9780743451505) Publication date: 25 June 2002 (first published 1922) My rating: ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ Would-be Jazz Age aristocrats Anthony and Gloria Patch embody the corrupt high society of 1920s New York: they are beautiful, shallow, pleasure-seeking, and vain. As presumptive heirs to a large fortune, they begin their married life by living well beyond their means. Their days are marked by endless drinking, dancing, luxury, and play. But when the expected inheritance is withheld, their lives become consumed with the pursuit of wealth, and their alliance begins to fall apart. (Vintage Classics description) 'Things are sweeter when they're lost. I know--because once I wanted something and got it. It was the only thing I ever wanted badly, Dot, and when I got it it turned to dust in my hand.'

Photo credit: Rick's Photo Thing With  Sarah  and  Lynette SUMMARY Los Angeles PI Philip Marlowe is working for the Sternwood family. Old man Sternwood, crippled and wheelchair-bound, is being given the squeeze by a blackmailer and he wants Marlowe to make the problem go away. But with Sternwood's two wild, devil-may-care daughters prowling LA's seedy backstreets, Marlowe's got his work cut out – and that's before he stumbles over the first corpse... (Penguin re-issue edition) IMPORTANT TOPICS AND THEMES L: Money – everyone's doing something for money. I think this book is set in the 30s, right? Depression era. So money is pretty high on everyone's mind. And honour – family honour and Marlowe's own honour code, which I thought was interesting; he's an honourable man even with his 'dirty' work. S: Ooh, I like those. I thought that, too – it's interesting that Marlowe is shown to not just be in his job for the money and h...

Photo credit: Rick's Photo Thing I remember the first time I had to study through the whole day, stopping only once I climbed into bed, defeated and dreading starting all over again the next day. I had been plagued by a particularly bothersome high school assignment for my least favourite subject, biology. It was the early noughties, and my household had no internet access; our only reference books comprised an outdated encyclopedia collection that pre-dated World War I. I particularly remember the intense dismay I felt at the knowledge that I wouldn't be able to play my recently acquired copy of  The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time that night.

I can remember the exact period in my life I played this game; like Sam, the protagonist, I had just moved to an unfamiliar British city on my own and was starting a new job. Through this game, I could imagine my uncertain independent venture was slightly more exciting than it actually was, and it brought me solace at a challenging time due in large part to its stunning soundtrack and deeply immersive atmosphere. Indeed, Jane Jensen's (see my review of her 20th Anniversary Edition of Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers here ) Anglophile tendencies are at peak potency here, resulting in a moody, gorgeous (albeit admittedly quaint and idealised) depiction of Oxford, England. Additionally, the mythos surrounding arcane members-only magic circles and the history of England lend to the intrigue of the game. However, this is a flawed game. The puzzle mechanics (especially those involving magic tricks) felt disappointingly simplistic, and the production values in terms of the ...

Photo credit: Rick's Photo Thing With Sarah and Lynette SUMMARY A young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing; one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover – these are the two couples whose story is told in this masterful novel. In a world in which lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and by fortuitous events, a world in which everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence, we feel 'the unbearable lightness of being' not only as the consequence of our pristine actions but also in the public sphere, and the two inevitably intertwine. (Harper Perennial edition) IMPORTANT TOPICS AND THEMES L: Probably a massively obvious one, but the nature of love. Tomas with all his women, yet love for Tereza. Tereza's jealousy. Sabina and Franz. S: Uh huh. And the ‘lightness’ vs. ’heaviness’ of love and sex. L: And of life in general. Meaning in life. I thought the book ver...

While it's difficult to find a legit (cough) copy nowadays,  Discworld is worth revisiting if only as a curious and charming relic of a bygone age (1995!), when the adventure game reigned and creative puzzles and witty dialogue were everything. This also hails from an era when authors collaborating with games developers made perfect sense. The result is a game infused with the hallmark (if sometimes arcane) humour of the legendary Terry Pratchett , which is   especially delectable when combined with the voice work of British treasures Eric Idle, Tony Robinson and Rob Brydon, among others (available only on the newer version). The music is uncomplex (but then that comes with the age of the game), but whimsical and appropriate, complementing the quirkily appealing cartoonish background art. And, while this is far from high res and needs to be played in windowed mode, I've always felt that this type of hand-drawn art style has weathered the ravages of time much bet...

This is a promising adventure title with lovely settings and visuals that have held up surprisingly well. The game has some rather charming and creative narrative touches and appealing musical moments. Visually, it evokes an impressive steampunk-style environment; in combination, these elements make for a quite immersive experience. However, at its core, the Syberia series is sadly limited; the puzzles are humdrum and unsatisfying, and there is little motivation due to a lacklustre, slow-moving plot. The protagonist, Kate, is never fully fleshed out; one of her main companions spends much of the game unconscious (her remaining ally is a largely underused automaton), while her relationships with others are primarily revealed through phone calls with disembodied (and rather stilted) voices and weak dialogue. Meanwhile, the villains of the tale are almost comical in how unthreatening they are. This is a shame, as the game is often beautiful (although I always found the design o...

'That constant humiliation to survive. If you're not angry, what kind of person are you?' – Ken Loach, director I've tried not to dwell on my time on the welfare system, which remains one of the darkest points in my life. However, even though I've now been in full-time employment as a copyeditor for around two and a half years, the spectre of unemployment hangs over me. Working at a small but busy company that has previously let go of a coworker due to financial strain and knowing talented, hardworking individuals who have met the same fate, the prospect of being made redundant is never far from my mind. As my time after graduation has shown me, sometimes one's best efforts don't count for much.

This was just OK. I purchased this in the hopes of finding a spacey adventure game with an intense atmosphere like that of The Dig (both involve mostly solitary exploration of strange, desolate alien environments), but was left distinctly underwhelmed by the game in general. Morningstar is diverting enough, with sufficient mileage to absorb somewhat for a few hours, but the plot and characters are basic and lacklustre. There's also no true climax/resolution to the game –   while there's a confrontation, it's expected and occurs as a cut scene that is over quite quickly, so there's no real sense of being in actual danger at any point or discovery of anything truly shocking. The voice acting is rather poor, with some lines read as though the actor doesn't fully understand their context (although, while fluent, I suspect they aren't native speakers, so they deserve some slack). I discovered after playing that this was originally an in-browser game that was ...

The most striking part of the 20th Anniversary Edition is the transformation into polished HD graphics. The moody, detailed environments – one of the game's greatest strengths – truly shine in the re-release, enabling Jane Jensen's vision of the New Orleans locales to be fully realised. Robert Holmes' remastered soundtrack is more stirring than ever. Additionally, the rerecorded voices are strong and don't jar with my recollections of the characters – a concern when I discovered the excellent original voice cast (including Tim Curry, Leah Remini and Mark Hamill) wouldn't be returning. Otherwise, there have been slight refinements (such as a helpful new hint system) and additions (new puzzles and scenes), although nothing drastic. The game is, for the most part, faithful to the original, which can be seen as both a strength and a weakness. Although not groundbreaking, the intriguing and well-paced storyline still holds its own (check out my review of the sec...