You read that right. I am the proud owner of a 2007, 40 inch, plasma tv. And been tweeting about it.

I also started making limoncello. And been tweeting about it.

I am settling into a new writing schedule. And been tweeting about it.

Probably should ease up on the tweeting.

Pride & Prejudice (2005)

I believe I watched this only once before in high school. I remember thinking it was a beautifully shot movie, nothing more. But, boy howdy. Rewatching this over a decade later —

This movie is certainly beautiful. Big fan of the naturalistic lighting and the swing sequence used to demonstrate the change of seasons. Yet, the true beauty lies in the portrayal and interaction of these characters. The hand up into the carriage. Sisterly confidences under candlelight. Supporting a friend as he steels himself to propose. And the father’s expression as it dawns on him his daughter has found love.

Prone to draw a tear to the eye.

Dawn

Adrian Patenaude strikes again with an excellent recommendation.

Dawn, book one of the Xenogenesis series, is part of an exceptional breed of sci-fi that forces you to sit and think every page or so. I couldn’t help myself and finished it in only a few days. I’m now a fan of Octavia E. Butler and looking forward to book two.

There isn’t a wasted chapter in Dawn. Each scene does something to move the story forward. I never felt like any pages were only there to fill space. Since I knew an action would occur or a consequence would surface in the next chapter, I never wanted to put the book down.

I appreciated the emotive main character. There is plenty of introspection here, but not every emotion is explained. Actions would be taken, emotional reactions would occur or be felt and they wouldn’t always make sense to me, and the main character didn’t really understand them either.

Emotions tend to evade our understanding like that.

Close Enough

I was a fan of the goofy Regular Show and expected much the same with J.G. Quintel’s next project. Close Enough retains the humor and charm while also depicting the myriad struggles of the millennial generation through a magical realism lens.

Your laughter will be intermingled with, “Oof, that’s a little too real.” Not what you’d expect from a cartoon.

Far Cry 3

My first experience with the franchise. When it was released in 2012, Far Cry 3 was lauded for its novel open world (for the time) and exceptional villain. Eight years later and Far Cry 3 is still fun to play, but I finished it feeling like it didn’t fulfill its potential.

Far Cry 3’s open-world falls into the same traps as many of its contemporaries: big world, feels empty, lots of busywork that doesn’t directly impact the world or story. Although the choice of a remote island setting lends plausibility to the sparsely populated game world.

This leads to the first stumble in my mind: Far Cry 3 can’t decide if it is an arcade game or a simulation. Its predecessor, Far Cry 2, was infamous for gameplay mechanics which firmly placed it in the simulation arena. Innovative, but many players did not find those elements fun.

Far Cry 3 seems to have taken note and leaned more into the arcadey direction. The game clearly wants the player to feel like they are in an action movie. Crazy guns, explosions, zip lines, car chases, increasingly elaborate options for executing the enemy. The whole upgrade tree feeds this power fantasy, tracing a character arc from vulnerable prey to deadly predator.

But then there’s this excessively petty fall damage that seems to come right out of Death Stranding, the definitive terrain traversal simulation, not an action-adventure FPS emulating a Hollywood blockbuster. The entirety of Far Cry 3’s experience screams at the player to be reckless, but as soon as you fall more than eight feet, “sorry, looks like your legs are broken.”

I could also complain about the platforming chores they shoved into this game without the proper precision in player movement, or the excessive action animations obviously put there to aid in immersion but ultimately are huge time wasters. But my main point is the gameplay of Far Cry 3 is fun, but there is a frustrating dissonance between what the game tells you it is, and what the actual mechanics are.

Far Cry 3’s story and themes are promising. They hit the Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland references pretty hard, several loading screens display excerpts from the novel. I usually find this overused and lazy, but with Far Cry 3, I find the parallel apt. The player character is a rich kid from LA that happens to parachute onto an island infested by human traffickers while on vacation, as literal as you can get to “falling down the rabbit hole.” The game also features several drug-infused sequences replete with psychedelic visuals. A level that has the player torch marijuana fields with a flamethrower is particularly memorable.

One element video game narratives often struggle with is squaring gameplay mechanics with character arc, especially when the central mechanic is killing enemies. Far Cry 3 has to be applauded in this respect. We, the players, watch (and participate in) the protagonist’s evolution from a powerless victim into a powerful warrior that revels in violence. Driven by revenge and the desire to defeat some truly monstrous villains, the character mows down hundreds of pirates and mercenaries. Most games would have stopped there, but Far Cry 3 offers up a couple moments where the protagonist begins the recognize the carnage left around him and a growing horror at what he is becoming.

The story as a whole is good, though there are a few choices made by the character that did not have convincing motivations for me. They also made the gutsy choice to kill off an excellent villain at the halfway point. Unfortunately, the antagonist that replaced him was far less interesting.

I have a lot of complaints about Far Cry 3, but that is because I genuinely like it. It captured my attention and drove me to complete it in its entirety. Recommended.

Recommended listening:
On vampires and class with Elizabeth Bruenig