Updates:
Media Reviews:
2. The Lego Movie - [COMPLETED]
3. Hero Factory [COMPLETED: RELEASE DEFERRED] - I'm waiting to see what will happen with this series, whether it will continue or stop or what. It's inconvenient to do an incomplete review for a series this short.
Other:
3. Possible G&T game[ABANDONED]: After some thought, I have multiple ideas on this, but I'm not sure any are viable enough. At this point I'm downgrading it from an official project and throwing it into the ideas sector.
4. Rereading The Perfect Cage, and finishing the map of the Paracosmos thereof.[COMPLETED]
Decision: I've decided not to post my notes or the map at present, in order the retain what little theorizing advantage I may have. At some point I may decide to post the map, but I may wish to reread EB again (reaaallly...??!!!111!!??) before considering it final. (That TPC update has me wondering on some of the EB directions. Whatever. I'm not Hujo lol.) Also I want to do an analysis on Kuambu, but that may have to wait...
Categorical GregF Reference: Moving slowly. I've patched together a fix for a problem that came up and started work on preparing the second document (Greg Quotes) for work. I haven't finished the Greg Dialogue yet, but I'm hoping the smaller document will allow me to jump over some of my other problems, given that it's short, and not so cluttered.
Mostly I've been bogged down by real life. I'm hoping to get more time next week, and then hopefully I'll have time between the 25th and the 1st of August. Then after the 1st I'm going to be tied down, then I'll have ten days between the 8th and 18th. BZP itself hasn't exactly been helping - the forum turnover is seductive because of the summer rush - it's quite fast lol. *must resist*
Notes:
1) And then we get to the irony - I have an assignment on children's programming IRL on TV. I've already watched the most recent episode of Ninjago, so I'd thought I'd use that for easy street. Then I thought I'd also include the latest episode of Lego Friends in my analysis, for variety and stuff.
This turned out to be an interesting mistake. That show has waaaay too much sugar. And pink. I hate pink. Pink must die. The girls in that show are all the stereotypical airheaded ditzes who are soooo excited about the most mundane and ordinary things. "Isn't this sooo exciting?" My answer: "No! It is incredibly boring and no amount of your excitement will ever interest me!"
2) Then, to get all of that sugary Tastes Like Diabetes noxiousness out of my head, I went and finally played HF IFB. That one's a reflex burner that lends itself to lots of key spam. I finished the entire game in about two hours - the key is to spam the play again button about as much as all the other keys.
It's not as good as Breakout, and technically Von Nebula would rate higher if that gameplay model wasn't overused to the point of annoyance, but I digress. (I got tired of all the character transfer glitches on VN.) But it's not a bad game, and I enjoyed playing it.
3) I'm actually confident that all computer games boil down to these three categories: reflex burn, strategy, and adventure RPG. A lot of games combine two of these categories: For example MNOG II was an adventure RPG with lots of reflex burning minigames. I've ran into a lot of games where you can strategize and completely own everything, or you can just spam a bunch of keys and win anyway. The Chima RPG is like this: you can strategically open portals as you go to make your life easier, or you can just spam the mouse button.
4) I think I've already said this in some form or fashion already, but I started Bionicle in 2005, and I started by reading most of the Adventures books out of order. #7, #4, #8, #5, #6, #10...then I read Chronicles #1, then delayed reading the rest of the Chronicles because it was out of order chronologically, then Adventures #1-3, then the rest of the Chronicles and Mask of Light. I remember thinking that Mask of Light tied the story together well. Then it took me forever to get #9, but that was when I finally figured out why the Turaga were so worked up about the tales, so it was a satisfying mystery solution.
Then I watched all of the movies in order, and I got my parents to buy the Legends books, which I read in chronological order. But with the serials, etc, one thing Bionicle sticks out in my mind for is chronology screw.
But reading it the way I did, Bionicle never stuck out to me as a mystery series, or even that mystery was something to be wanted in Bionicle. If you had hit me over the head in like 2008 and asked me what made Bionicle so good, I probably would have said "characters" or even "Vakama". Bionicle was the characters with cool powers series. So I was disappointed with 2001-03's lack of characterization, and the powers weren't as cool as the Toa Metru's. I've known this for a lot of years: I pay a heck of a lot more attention to the characters when reading than to anything else. Good characters who use logic and make sense and even have cool powers? Sold. Poorly written characters who are complete ditzy cool dudes? I'm out of there. I didn't even know mystery was a thing until I joined BZPower lol.
Mystery, however, is a useful tool to add depth to characters. It establishes what the character knows and doesn't know by necessity. It provides reasons for their choices. It drives the plot along and gives us more time to get to know the person.
But that's NOT what happened in 2001. In 2001 we had a bunch of characters that were near-blank slates. They had lost their memory. The Turaga didn't have any characterization to be mysterious. Mystery took away from the characterization of the characters. It didn't add to them. And I found that to be annoying.
Then I come here on BZP and find all these people who like 2001...
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