Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Why I dont want to read Ender's Game 3

Nobody probably cares, but I wanna tell anonymous people anyway.

Predictability.
First of all, I didn't really like the story for Speaker for the Dead. It was good, interesting (somewhat) but TOTALLY PREDICTABLE. What I thought was gonna happen half way through the book--happened. The end was pretty much what I thought it was gonna be... except they did some weird stuff before the end.

So I started Xenocide (Ender's Game 3) and I read the first chapter or so. It picks up right after where Speaker for the Dead left off. So I'm thinking... this is how the story is gonna go: Valentine will meet Miro, they'll go on some side-tracking quest then go meet on Lusitania. Then Ender will be doing random stuff with the Pequinos and other junk. Then eventually the hundred world congress will erupt into chaos or civil war over the discovery of the buggers being reborn or something. But, BUT, they won't nuke the planet. They'll make some wierd treaties and people will be prejudiced against buggers for eternity, but they'll try to live in peace. Then they'll tie up some loose ends and stuff.
That's how I THINK the story will go after reading the first chapters.

It will probably be different and have some surprises/interesting scenes, but I'm too tired to concentrate my attention on the same, boring, predictable like dialogue and writing.

Retelling the story
E.G.:
Miro has slurred speech, and he's somewhat paralyzed, so they have to spend three pages explaining what happened to him in the previous book.

They did this in speaker for the dead, and it annoyed me. They did it even more in the first few chapters of XENOCIDE and it irritated me. Point is: I already know what happened to these characters in the past. Don't tell me again, over and over. Yeah, there might be someone who's reading this book without having read the previous two, but come on... who really wants to start a series on book 5/6, then go back to 3/6, then 6/6, then 1/6, then finish 2 and 4 simoultaneously? And besides, I think it'll make the NEW reader WANT to go back and read the previous books even more, because they don't know WHY characters are certain ways.

Same Writing Style
Orson Scott Card. He is the author.

His writing style is predictable after 2 books, and some dialogue scenes are so familiar, I'm thinking im getting De-Ja-Vu. It seems like he's trying to make the dialogue witty, and interesting by making characters speak their minds FLAT OUT, but it gets old...
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I liked Ender's Game alot. I liked the first 1/3 of Speaker. Since then it's been kind of a weird decline for me. So, I don't feel like reading the next book...

...

...but I'm probably gonna read it anyway...! :P

Why? ...Well.

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Monday, May 22, 2006

Ender's Game 2

...or, the haunting title that sounds like a horror novel: Speaker for the Dead.

Good:
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A new plot. I was afraid of a boring, generic plot about unrelated matters from the first book. Luckily I was saved. A new alien race is discovered? That's interesting! ...Right?

Returning Elements. The concept of having star-travel only taking two weeks, while for everyone else twenty years passes is cool.
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Bad:
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There were times that it felt like Ender was a "super" human, psychiatrist guy. I thought it was just weird and it went overboard.

There was a little too much soap opera drama for me... that whole "thing..." you know what I'm talking about...

Gaping plot holes. There was basically no reason for Novinha to seal up that secret. It was kinda stupid. All you have to do is let somebody discover it, but you don't go crazy and tell the piggies about it!

The idea that Jane constantly changes forms (like turning into a genie, than an old man, then a young lady) reminded me of a terribly corny scene from a movie that I can no longer remember. It was just a little corny describing it in the book, but if they would show it in a movie... man that would be awkward.
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Ender's Game is better than Speaker for the Dead. (In my opinion)

As far as I'm concerned, Ender's Game had a better plot, better characters, a slightly more interesting concept, better conflicts, a much better story, and it was less preachy toward the destruction of the buggers.

One thing that confused me about the end of Ender's Game, was how could Ender be certain that the buggers were peace loving after the first two attacks? I thought he was imagining the conversation with the Hive Queen in his head, like, this is what you would've said if you were alive. But it turns out, he has telepathic powers! He actually does talk to the hive queen and the hive queen does read his mind!

Amazing.

But anyway,
I prefered the concept of a future where Aliens were attacking us and we needed super geniuses to save us (Ender's Game), rather than a Psychiatrist diagnosing a family while trying to solve a mystery (On another planet! Wooh!) (Speaker for the Dead).

And I kind of hated the ending. I wanted Ender to travel tons of more planets with Jane, not become some old guy on a backwater planet and then die. Or maybe his nephews/neices will continue his legacy.

If Ender's Game is a 9.6, then Speaker for the Dead is a 8.4.

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Thursday, May 11, 2006

Adventure Games are Boring

I used to like adventure games alot... I did... like them... alot.

I don't know why, but now I don't like them anymore (and lots of other games for that matter). They're just so... boring.

Playing Half-Life 2 is waaay more exciting and adrenaline pumping than your typical adventure game, which is; walking around, picking up random items that aren't nailed to the floor or that aren't being used by any NPCs, talking to characters about option choices 1-5 until you've exhausted every sub-choice of dialogue (despite being bored to tears listening to them), and then finally, after 2 hours of trying to use every item on every other item you realize you have to use the ARM BAND with the BLADE OF GRASS while the bugs are walking the OTHER WAY!!

Puzzles in adventure games are boring when you don't understand them. There's a difference between understand and "know what the answer is." If you can understand a puzzle, then you start thinking of how to solve it. But if you can't even understand the puzzle, then there's no way you're gonna know how to solve it.

E.g: You see a balloon tied up somewhere. You have to get past these guards who are afraid of an attack by the mafia. First you have to understand you need to POP the balloon to scare the guards away. Understanding... Done. Now you know you need something to pop it with. You either already have that item, or now you know you need to get it. Once you find that item, you "know what the answer is."

I used to love computer games; especially adventure games. If I got stuck back in the old days, I wouldn't scream at my computer and say "this game sucks!", and then quit. Nope, I would calmy try and figure out the puzzle myself for hours on end.
...But then came the internet, and walkthroughs, and faster paced action games with intense thrill riding chase sequences.

You see, Adventure games are like old 1950s movies. They have lots of dialogue, and not too many special effects or action scenes.
FPS games are like blockbuster movies with big budgets and fancy effects (except some of the games have terrible voice acting).
RPG games are Dungeons&Dragons with a story.
STRATEGY games are just like board games.

So...

I'm tired, and need to sigh, really really badly.

b (^_^) d

(-_-) zzz.

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