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Drawing Energy From The Rotation Of Deceased Authors
First off, not too long ago I asked about Ultima X. On a whim, I plugged it into Google and came up with this little tidbit of news. Thanks, EA. You really know how to pick winners. Keep on churning out Madden football year after year and milk that franchise until it bleeds. Electronic Arts used to be a great company, with wonderful games like Archon and MULE. Now they're... well, who can tell. My opinion of them is fairly low. This is more like a nail in the coffin.
Anyway, I have started reading The Butlerian Jihad and as many have learned, overall reception to the Dune "prequels" has been less than enthusiastic. Indeed, I find myself in agreement.
Butlerian Jihad is halfway decent SF on it's own. Though I wish that KJA hadn't used the names he did for the Titans, overall it was interesting. Some would say it only needs to stand on it's own merits. If he had called it, 'The War Against The Machine,' that would be fine. However, it is Dune: The Butlerian Jihad, and it is most certainly not Dune.
It's kind of arrogant, isn't it? To boldy declare, 'This is not Dune!' when none of us, last I checked, were a living, breathing Frank Herbert. Even so... we can at least tell when something just doesn't have the feel for Dune, and Butlerian Jihad is one of those things.
I don't think it''s that the good guy/bad guy roles of the Atreides and Harkonnen are reversed. Well, maybe it is. Atreides being the bastard son of one of the Titans is bad enough. Vladimir Harkonnen was said to be quite genuinely charming and handsome in his youth, so it was no surprise that the Harkonnen ancestor was likewise quite likable, so I'm fine with that. But this is a jarring bend to a feud that apparently spanned generations if not thousands of years. I can understand the desire to do a jarring role-reversal for the Atreides and the Harkonnen. But in this case it just doesn't seem to work out all that well.
There is also overuse of foreshadowing. There was a book called Raptor that was a historical novel set at about the fall of the Roman Empire. It was absolutely littered with bad foreshadowing. Everywhere the main character turned (it was written in the first person) he would write hints about what horror or tragedy was about to happen. It was getting frustrating. The character was so angstful about what he'd done and brooded over the decisions he had made that I wondered why he hadn't just nipped off and hung himself already. At one point, about halfway through the book, I read the line, "It was a decision I was to regret for the rest of my life." And I closed the book and put it away. KJA commits this sin a few times with several characters. It becomes quite irritating by the time Xavier Harkonnen learns of the fall of Geidi Prime.
I don't know. Maybe we've been innundated by the Borg and the Berserkers so much that the idea of a war between humanity and machines is blase.
Anyway, running out of steam here. Comments welcome. ^^
Anyway, I have started reading The Butlerian Jihad and as many have learned, overall reception to the Dune "prequels" has been less than enthusiastic. Indeed, I find myself in agreement.
Butlerian Jihad is halfway decent SF on it's own. Though I wish that KJA hadn't used the names he did for the Titans, overall it was interesting. Some would say it only needs to stand on it's own merits. If he had called it, 'The War Against The Machine,' that would be fine. However, it is Dune: The Butlerian Jihad, and it is most certainly not Dune.
It's kind of arrogant, isn't it? To boldy declare, 'This is not Dune!' when none of us, last I checked, were a living, breathing Frank Herbert. Even so... we can at least tell when something just doesn't have the feel for Dune, and Butlerian Jihad is one of those things.
I don't think it''s that the good guy/bad guy roles of the Atreides and Harkonnen are reversed. Well, maybe it is. Atreides being the bastard son of one of the Titans is bad enough. Vladimir Harkonnen was said to be quite genuinely charming and handsome in his youth, so it was no surprise that the Harkonnen ancestor was likewise quite likable, so I'm fine with that. But this is a jarring bend to a feud that apparently spanned generations if not thousands of years. I can understand the desire to do a jarring role-reversal for the Atreides and the Harkonnen. But in this case it just doesn't seem to work out all that well.
There is also overuse of foreshadowing. There was a book called Raptor that was a historical novel set at about the fall of the Roman Empire. It was absolutely littered with bad foreshadowing. Everywhere the main character turned (it was written in the first person) he would write hints about what horror or tragedy was about to happen. It was getting frustrating. The character was so angstful about what he'd done and brooded over the decisions he had made that I wondered why he hadn't just nipped off and hung himself already. At one point, about halfway through the book, I read the line, "It was a decision I was to regret for the rest of my life." And I closed the book and put it away. KJA commits this sin a few times with several characters. It becomes quite irritating by the time Xavier Harkonnen learns of the fall of Geidi Prime.
I don't know. Maybe we've been innundated by the Borg and the Berserkers so much that the idea of a war between humanity and machines is blase.
Anyway, running out of steam here. Comments welcome. ^^
no subject
Ah, EA, I remember them ... I try not to link my memories of that creator of a great many fun games back in my old Amiga days with a company that just happens to have the same name these days (I keep telling myself this).
Brett
Legasus
(Anonymous) 2004-07-27 10:27 am (UTC)(link)Even if the changes are mostly cosmetic, and irrelevent (Though, I don't know how I lived without the Playmaker mode) the rosters, and other little changes really do make a Sports-Geek like me desire the new one. I know, Im going to have to pur Ricky Williams into retirement though, when I get the game in two weeks.
Uh, sorry to hog your web space. Only multiplayer RPG I've ever played is NWN, and I like it, so I think I'll stick with it. Other then that, I've only played... Zelda, Ogre Battle64 (Which is an awesome game, that anyone who hasn't played, should) and the first Final Fantasy, for my NES. My party was four red haired fighter dudes, because, I was eight, and didn't understand the strategy part of it. Heh.
Leg
Re: Legasus
I guess games come down to personal preference. And maybe I'm getting kind of crochety about games in general. It just seems to me that there's so much that the game industry has lost. Maybe it just hasn't lost them but there's not that much more innovation left in the medium. Not being a football follower, it baffled me how Madden Football could come out year after year and be, essentially, the same, though I guess it does make cleaning up the rosters easier.
The cynic in me looks at something like XBox Live and thinks, "You know, one coppy of Madden, and with the right interface you could automatically update that copy of Madden to the latest and greatest stats and rosters!" Well, no, that's the technophile in me. The cynic in me says 'Shyearigh, like that's going to happen!' EA is pretty much garaunteed sales of Madden every year, so why should they go to a cheaper subscription system when they can make people pay full price for games?
But I'm not one to talk, honestly. The entire gaming industry has just... moved along. I guess updated rosters/stats/teams is reasonably justifiable to make a new game each year, especially if they update the graphics, textures, engines, etc. It sure beats Deer Hunter. (WARNING: Rants commencing!) I still can't believe Sierra cancelled Into The Fire for *choke* DEER HUNTER. Augh. And I remember when Sierra made games like King's Quest, and Space Quest, and, Mother of All, Gabriel Knight. Epyx had Summer Games, and Winter Games, and the wonderfully oddball World Games (who here remembers CABER TOSS?!) and several flavors of Temple of Apshai. Electronic Arts had Archon (I want Archon's box art as a poster!) and Bard's Tale, and Pinball Construction Set, back when they had the Cube-Sphere-Pyramid logo that everyone was sure was representative of 'ECA' or ElectroniC Arts.'
And, oh my lordy.... Origin Systems. We Create Worlds. Wing Commander was great but there's something else. ULTIMA IV. Let me repeat that: ULTIMA IV: Quest of the Avatar. Has any game anywhere ever done anything at all like what U4 did? No world-shattering danger, no hordes of evil monsters, no cataclysmic hordes of demons. Just you, your companions, and a quest to better yourself and achieve a sort of enlightenment. And then U5, well, let's not go there. But then U6 comes along and turns it upside down: whoops! There are other ways to enlightenment!! And then there was U7 which had, bar none, the second-most-coolest box art in gaming history. Ultima VII: The Black Gate. I got chills just looking at the box, and the game delivered. U6 and 7 were a return to the roots of 'destroy the evil menace!' but 7 had some really great themes in it.
*sigh* Guess I just miss games like that, and am a bit jaded by games that come out, and just don't grab me like older games did, and are just seen as quick money makers for their companies. And I guess EA cancelling UX pushed a button with me, sinc eI see it as just another 'make money fast' decision on the part of EA. But I suppose this is symptomatic of modern capitalism. The goal is to just make money in whatever way is best rather than make money by selling a superior product.
'Scuse me while I shuffle off to relieve my grumpiness somehow. ^^