![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
May. 7th, 2021 07:44 pm• Subnautica was one of the games Sony offered players for free last month, and though I've only journeyed in a short way I would firmly declare it one of the better survival games around, or at least the most personally appealing I've come across to date! It crashlands the player in a gorgeously rendered alien ocean, which immediately offers a fun twist by letting you live your secret dream of being a marine xenobiologist. I adore the ocean almost as much as I fear half of what lives in it, and Subnautica offers delight and terror in turn throughout its varied biomes. It also offers a reason to keep going beyond simple survival: there's a plot that doles out pleasantly attainable goals and clues to muse on as you dart around gathering kelp and fleeing giant alien sharks. My only complaint is that finding tool fragments to advance said plot can sometimes be a pain, but t'is the nature of survival games to require some grind.
• The Bone Ships held the skeleton (ha ha) of something I'd truly love, but fell short on providing any real meat. The opening chapter was solid; some of the world-building elements were interesting; the fundamental plot conceit should have grabbed me. Alas, protagonist Joron Twiner is so devoid of personality that even once he starts developing a spine, it's mostly a copycat pastiche of his captain's - sorry, shipwife's. (The decision to take as notoriously jargon-thick a profession as sailing and reinvent all the terminology was... questionable.) Had the story dived deeper, it could have been something great, but it never seemed to really drift beyond the shallows. The author's acknowledgement speaks of writing to a deadline. Maybe that explains some of it.
• Somehow I fell into re-reading the Harry Potter series for the first time in what has to be more than a decade. It's been... well, you know. The first three books retain a good amount of the charm I remember from my childhood; four and five show some promising nuance, but also some dangerous clumsiness. Six and seven? I still just do not like them much at all. I have to give Rowling some credit for managing to cram in so many romances at the last second and have NONE of them resonate with me.
• As can be gathered from previous entries, I've also watched Infinity Train Book 4: Duet, and The Mitchells Vs the Machines, both of which were very enjoyable.
• The Bone Ships held the skeleton (ha ha) of something I'd truly love, but fell short on providing any real meat. The opening chapter was solid; some of the world-building elements were interesting; the fundamental plot conceit should have grabbed me. Alas, protagonist Joron Twiner is so devoid of personality that even once he starts developing a spine, it's mostly a copycat pastiche of his captain's - sorry, shipwife's. (The decision to take as notoriously jargon-thick a profession as sailing and reinvent all the terminology was... questionable.) Had the story dived deeper, it could have been something great, but it never seemed to really drift beyond the shallows. The author's acknowledgement speaks of writing to a deadline. Maybe that explains some of it.
• Somehow I fell into re-reading the Harry Potter series for the first time in what has to be more than a decade. It's been... well, you know. The first three books retain a good amount of the charm I remember from my childhood; four and five show some promising nuance, but also some dangerous clumsiness. Six and seven? I still just do not like them much at all. I have to give Rowling some credit for managing to cram in so many romances at the last second and have NONE of them resonate with me.
• As can be gathered from previous entries, I've also watched Infinity Train Book 4: Duet, and The Mitchells Vs the Machines, both of which were very enjoyable.
