games

9 October, 2013

Fasten Your Seatbelts, October Is Now Underway

wuwfall

What’s Up Wednesday is a weekly meme geared toward readers and writers, allowing us to touch base with blog friends and let them know what’s up. It was created by created by Jaime and Erin. Want to join the party? Go right ahead, and remember to leave a link to your What’s Up Wednesday post in the widget on Jaime´s blog.

What I’m Reading

fangirlfanart — “Fangirl” fanart by Tumblr user foralllove

I just finished reading FANGIRL by Rainbow Rowell, and oh my god this book. I HAVE SO MANY FEELINGS ABOUT THIS BOOK. I really need to blog about it but I suspect it would devolve into just me squealing about it.

I haven’t felt so inspired by a book since I read BIRD BY BIRD. I kept feeling like I should stop reading to write, but I didn’t want to stop reading!

Now I’m chilling out with HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, which is part of a personal project to study a few middle grade titles and examine what makes them work. I’ll probably do a blog post with my notes. So far, it’s cute, fun and surprisingly British — it’s almost Neil Gaiman-ish.

After that I’m going to try and reading some of the authors I’ll be seeing at Angry Robot’s Halloween Takeover at Forbidden Planet in London. I’m starting with Anne Lyle’s THE ALCHEMIST OF SOULS (fantasy set in Elizabethan London) and then reading Adam Christopher’s EMPIRE STATE (superheroes in a parallel prohibition-era New York).

What I’m Writing

Yeah, about that…

Last week editing was going strongly and I got some writing done on the side, but this week… nada. I’m not really sleeping properly so writing time has been cancelled while I deal with things and wrestle my sleep back into order.

I’d say I’ll be back on track next week, but POKEMON X & Y IS NEARLY HERE. POKEMON POKEMON POKEMON.

What Inspires Me

600px-150Mewtwo-Mega_Y — New Pokemon Mega Mewtwo Y

POKEMON POKEMON POKEMON have I mentioned I am excited about Pokemon because I am SO EXCITED to see them bring this game up to the next generation of consoles. And there’s a new PHOENIX WRIGHT game out at the end of the month and I just. I can’t. *flails* *plays all the video games*

But seriously, I am also very excited about the WORLD FANTASY CONVENTION 2013 at the end of the month. It’s going to be scary and expensive and empower and education and so much fun. I get to meet my writing friends in the flesh! I get to be in the same building as Sir Terry Pratchett! I have a valid reason to visit Forbidden Planet in London!

I am really looking forward to this event, the first of hopefully many cons.

What Else I’ve Been Up To

I’ve been playing ZOMBIES RUN! lately, a fun little fitness app that weaves a story into your running routine. It’s been really motivating me to get my butt off the couch and onto a treadmill, and I’ve been weaving quite a story around my Runner’s adventures. Enough that I was thinking of blogging about it.

Then today I read the YOU’VE SUBMITTED YOUR BOOK: NOW WHAT? guest post by Karina Cooper on Chuck Wendig’s Terriblemind. I took a spin over to her blog afterwords and saw that she’s had similar inspiration, writing a story to accompany her missions. I won’t be going into that much detail but it definitely inspires me to get back to my Runner’s story.

8 May, 2011

Now You’re Thinking With Portals

Finished Portal 2 tonight, yay!

It was every bit as good as I’d hoped. Fantastic visuals (Valve’s Source engine is newly updated for the game) and Wheatley and GlaDOS were brilliant.

It’s worth a second playthrough just for the commentary, the missed dialogue and the achievements.

If anyone’s unfamiliar with Portal, it’s a first-person puzzle game that must be solved by teleporting the player’s character and simple objects using the “portal gun”, a device that can create portals between two areas.

In “Portal ” you play the human Chell who’s just awakened from stasis after several hundred years. Chell must navigate the dilapidated Aperture Science Enrichment Center and its test chambers with the portal gun while the facility is rebuilt by the reactivated GLaDOS, a rampant AI computer. [Paraphrased from Wikipedia].

If you’ve never played it, get a friend to show you it or try the first Portal for yourself. It’s available for cheap for consoles and through the PC ‘Steam‘ service.

10 January, 2010

When Book Cover Designers Get Lazy

I was sorting through some old images and came across this gem…

This is the original cover design I was sent for the slipcover of the Greek “Dragon Tamers” hardcover. Looks good, right?

If you’re not a gamer, reader or designer then yes – it’s shiny. Attention grabbing. Looks good.

…But there’s something not quite right. Apart from the strange character in the bottom (the publisher’s mascot?), the book’s protagonist is a black-haired girl. So immediately, some mental alarm bells are ringing about this cover designer’s attention to detail.

Wait, haven’t I seen that guy before…?

That’s the cover art for Final Fantasy X, voted by Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu to be the greatest video game of all time and fifth in IGN’s “Top 25 PS2 Games of All Time“. Selling 6.6 million units worldwide, it’s a pretty big deal – the Final Fantasy series is one of the best selling video game franchises.

I pointed out the mistake to the publishers and it was redone, though I never did get an explanation as to how that happened.

This amusing event shows that book cover designers are far too often really bad. There are plenty of great ones who can sum up a book in a simple image, and there are a lot of famous, stunning covers – but there are also thousands of ‘designers’ who think it’s acceptable to Google Image Search the keywords that are vaguely related to the work and badly edit it all together with a Photoshopped font on top.