Tag: First Impressions

Opinion

First Impressions: Pyra’s Boo—Err… Xenoblade Chronicles 2

By Aidan Moher on January 17th, 2019

Going into Xenoblade Chronicles 2, I knew the experience might not be for me. I enjoyed the first game in the series—especially its scope, colourful setting, and story—but burned out of in forty hours in after getting stuck on a boss. So, I was excited when the second game was announced, but critical and fan reception was mixed, and for all the wrong reasons. Still, I was able to snag the game on sale, and, in the wake of Breath of the Wild, looking for something sprawling and epic, decided to take the chance.

And, let’s just get this out of the way:

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a heaping mess.

But.

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Opinion

First Impressions: Street Freaks by Terry Brooks (Grim Oak Press)

By Aidan Moher on September 18th, 2018

I’ve written at great length about my relationship with Terry Brooks’ epic fantasy series, Shannara. After Tolkien, Brooks’ work reinforced my newfound love of elves and adventure, magic, vast landscapes, harrowing escapes, and epic battles between good and evil. One of my main/ongoing criticisms of the Shannara series, however, is that Brooks has a tendency to repeat himself—dipping his pen in the same inkwell too often. Themes, story structure, and characters archetypes repeat themselves in each new Shannara series, which makes reading a new Shannara book sometimes too predictable. He’s shown however, through his other fantasy series, such as Word & Void, a contemporary fantasy, and The Magic Kingdom (a humourous secondary world fantasy) that he has the chops to write original fiction outside of his most famous series, and I’m always curious to see what happens when he turns his eye toward something wholly new.

Street Freaks (Grim Oak Press, 2018) is a major departure for Brooks in a lot of ways. It’s his first pure science fiction novel (if you consider his post-apocalyptic Shannara novels to be a science fiction/fantasy hybrid), and it’s an absolute blast to see him playing in a new playground and worldbuilding from the ground up for the first time since 1997’s Running with the Demon. In many other ways, it’s familiar ground. Thematically, Brooks is sticking with his tried-and-true formula of coming-of-age meets adventure, which has proved immensely successful in the Shannara series. In all, he finds a nice balance between new and familiar, which appeals to the long-time Brooks fan in me.

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Opinion

First Impressions: Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty

By Aidan Moher on September 13th, 2018

I’ve long been a fan of Mur Lafftery’s work as a podcaster (I Should Be Writing and the Hugo-winning Ditch Diggers) and editor (I mean, heck, she was one of the first to buy a short story from me), but, until now, I haven’t been exposed to any of her fiction. Six Wakes, her first science fiction novel, earned a lot of raves this year, and ended up being nominated for some prominent SFF awards, has been on my to-read pile for several months. After finishing off Peter Frankopan’s tremendous (and tremendously heavy) The Silk Roads, I needed a palate cleanser, and Six Wakes seemed like the perfect thing. A generation ship story AND a closed room murder mystery? Sign me up.

I’m listening to the audiobook, and the first pleasent surprise is that Lafferty herself is doing the narration. She’s not as dramatic as some narrators, choosing instead to let the text itself do the speaking, but her experience is obvious and her authorial voice brings forward an interesting perspective on the story. 

And what a story it is. Things come together quickly, as the cloned members of a generation ship wake to find their previous bodies brutally murdered. Lafferty’s prose is whip sharp, and she relies on natural, well-paced dialogue to move the story along. I’m about 20% into the book, and at this point the handful of main protagonists have already established personalities and separate themselves from one another easily. Its pace, coupled with a high number of characters, and a mystery plot, could easily have made for a huge mess, but Lafferty handles things with ease. In a lot of ways, it reminds me of Agatha Christie’s famous, And Then There Were None. The conceit that all but one of the principal crew members on the ship is a former criminal partaking in the mission with the promise of a full pardon adds to the Christie-like air. It’s immensely compelling, especially as the secrets of their pasts are slowly revealed. Mystery and suspicion abounds as each of the characters tries to juggle uncertainty with the need to trust their fellow travellers.

In all, I’m hooked. The mystery is compelling, the characters are rich, the pacing is breakneck. I gotta know what happens next.

Opinion

First Impressions: Green Rider by Kristen Britain

By Aidan Moher on September 7th, 2018

A couple of weeks ago, I was spitballing on Twitter about wanting to read more ’90s-style epic fantasy. You know the type. Lots of pages. Travelogues. Plucky heroes. Coming-of-age. Magic. Quests. Adventuring parties full of D&D stereotypes. It was my bread-and-butter growing up. I loved Terry Brooks, R.A. Salvatore, Raymond E. Feist, and their contemporaries. I received a lot of great recommendations, but eventually settled on my first choice: Green Rider by Kristen Britain.

Green Rider tells the story of Karigan G’ladheon, a young woman who, after being expelled from a prestigious school for duelling, becomes snared in the magical and political machinations of Sacoridia’s elite. Like most epic fantasy of the time, Green Rider is a story of hope and perseverance, and grows larger in the tellings as the conflict around Karigan gets bigger and more deadly with each turning page.

Things pick up quickly (no Lord of the Rings-style easing into the story here) with Karigan getting caught up in the murder of F’Ryan Coblebay in the novel’s early pages. After that, it’s an avalanche of appropriately epic set pieces, escalating levels of magic, several seemingly impossible-to-escape scenarios, and just enough hints of a larger threat to keep things interesting. Karigan travels on her own for much of the book, and each new chapter reads in an almost episodic manner as she stumbles across some new character or two, who present danger or succour, until Karigan eventually moves on or escapes.

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Opinion

First Impressions: Octopath Traveler (Square Enix, 2018)

By Aidan Moher on July 31st, 2018

The JRPGs of the mid-’90s have influenced me more than any other media outside of fantasy fiction. I grew up OBSESSED with Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI; poured hundreds of hours into Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete, Xenogears, Grandia, and Suikoden; have replayed games from that era over-and-over again in the 20 years since. It’s no exaggeration to say that Octopath Traveller, a new JRPG from Square Enix and Nintendo for the Nintendo Switch that hearkens back to the halcyon days of Squaresoft, was made for me.

I’ve spent a fair bit of time with it now, and I’m pleased to say that not only does Octopath Traveller do justice to the classics of its genre, it manages to take the feeling of those games and create something that feels both nostalgic and modern at the same time.

The first thing you’ll notice about Octopath Traveler is its unique blend of 3D-environments and 16-bit style spritework/pixel art. I left a playthrough of Final Fantasy VI unfinished to pick up Octopath Traveler, and the similarities are obviously striking—but, the more I play, the more I’m reminded of the 32-bit RPGs that melded 2D sprites with 3D environments, like Grandia or Xenogears. However, rather than trying for a 1:1 emulation of the old style, as many throwback JRPGs do, Octopath Traveller combines the 16/32-bit aesthetic with modern sensibilities. As someone who grew up on 16/32-bit JRPGs, it’s a heady combination that manages to look the way I remember those games looking, which is a high compliment.

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Opinion

Second Impressions: Grandia (PSX – 1999)

By Aidan Moher on June 28th, 2018

I played Grandia to completion back when it was first released, and have always considered it one of the high-water marks of PSX-era JRPGs. However, in a lot of ways, it hasn’t aged well, particularly while playing it on original hardware (or PSP, where I first attempted to replay it) due to slowdown, so I’ve never made it more than a few hours into a replay. This time, I’m playing it via Retroarch, using GPU overclock for a consistent 30fps, and it’s like a new experience.

I’m currently two hours deep and exploring the game’s first dungeon: the Sult Ruins.


Some thoughts:

  • I *love* the sense of optimism and adventure. One of my favourite games of all time is Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete, which shares these attributes, but Grandia takes it to another level. There’s no overarching horror encroaching on the world at the get-go. In fact, it’s a time of peace. Justin wants to follow in his father’s footsteps and become an adventurer—to explore the world, discover knew things, dig up knowledge. In this day and age where we have grizzled Geralt from The Witcher, Lara Croft dousing people with gasoline and lighting them on fire, and beautiful but excessively violent games like Ghosts of Tsushima, it’s so refreshing to return to a time when game settings were fun and joyous.
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Opinion

First Impressions: Solo: A Star Wars Story

By Aidan Moher on May 28th, 2018

I saw Solo on the weekend! Yay.

First thought: I saw a Star Wars film on opening weekend and the theatre was only 30% full. That’s… odd.

Second thought: Holy smokes. I liked it. A LOT.

Admittedly, I went into the viewing with middling expectations (despite being a HUGE fan of The Last Jedi). This was due to a lot of factors, but mainly I didn’t like the idea of recasting one of the iconic characters from the original series. Han Solo is Harrison Ford. Harrison Ford is Han Solo.

So, imagine my surprise when, thirty minutes into the film, I was enjoying the hell out of it. Everything I love about Star Wars is there and works brilliantly. The film’s production hell is well documented, and the fact that Howard was able to make not only a watchable film, but a goodfilm is remarkable.

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Opinion

First Impressions: Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller

By Aidan Moher on May 4th, 2018

Earlier this year, I was blown away by Sam J. Miller’s debut YA novel, The Art of Starving. It was a beautiful, raw, warm, funny, and heartbreaking experience. I was already familiar with Miller’s short fiction, but that did little to prepare me for the emotional rollercoaster of protagonist Matt’s journey of self-discovery, super powers, and overcoming the perilous challenges of teenagedom.

Finishing The Art of Starving was like adding rocket fuel to my anticipation for Blackfish City, Miller’s debut adult novel. As soon as it released, I bought an audiobook copy, and, boy howdy, Miller’s outdone himself. Blackfish City is a tour-de-force of incredible, prescient worldbuilding, lush prose, and characters that are achingly real.

The eponymous city, called Qaanaaq, is a floating refugee city ruled by crime syndicates and landlords. It was constructed in the Arctic Circle, post climate change-fueled worldwide flooding, and, like any city populated by people fleeing dead or dying cultures and societies, is rich and diverse, but also suffers from many challenges. Blackfish City follows four people—Kaev, Soq, Fill, and Ankat—and their intertwined conflicts. Life in Qaanaaq is disrupted by the arrival of the Orcamancer, a woman riding an Orca, accompanied by a polar bear, and it soon becomes apparent that the lives and fates of Kaev, Soq, Fill, and Ankat are entwined with the mysterious visitor’s arrival. It’s a story about privilege and self-identification, hope, colliding cultures, and oppression. Like all of Miller’s work, it has a lot to say about the state of the world, and the dangers we face moving forward if things don’t change.

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Opinion

First Impressions: Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

By Aidan Moher on May 1st, 2018

It kills me to write this post, but I bounced *hard* off of Tchaikovsky’s lauded SF novel, Children of Time. I picked it up during an Audible sale several weeks ago, and coming off of Brandon Sanderson’s excellent (but looooooooooong) Oathbringer, it seemed like the perfect palate cleanser. Relatively short, totally different, and I’d never actually read anything of Tchaikovsky’s before.

However, this is one of those times when I can honestly look you in the eye and say, “It’s not you, it’s me.” There’s nothing egregious about Children of Time—in fact, I was immediately taken in by the generation ship aspect of the story (because I’m a sucker for social conflict generation ship stories), and Tchaikovsky’s writing and storytelling were clear and effective. There were other eight-legged reasons.

Children of Time is split across two converging plot lines. The first is a traditional generation ship/survivor story. A group of humans crash lands on an alien planet and has to learn to survive. The other half is about spiders. Imagine Spiderman. Now, imagine if Spiderman, instead of being a human who gains spider-like powers, was a spider who gained human-like sentience and intelligence through rapid, viral evolution. Sounds cool, right? Alongside the survivors are a group of intelligent, social spiders. A lot of people *loved* this aspect of the book, but I hit it like a brick wall and bounced off super hard.

So, if that concept sounds interesting (and I’m told it’s executed very well), jump right on in. Just wasn’t my cuppa.

My loss, I know.

Opinion

First Impressions: Crash Override by Zoë Quinn

By Aidan Moher on April 23rd, 2018

Like everyone online, I watched Gamergate crash through gaming culture with a look of horror and surprise on my face. In its wake is an industry and community that is still reeling from the vitriolic hatred that hid itself under the guise of an ethical crusade.

After listening to Felicia Day’s memoir, You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) (impressions here), and finding myself intrigued (and once again horrified) by her recounting of abuse during the Gamergate campaign, I wanted to find a more in-depth exploration of the events.

At the centre of Gamergate was a young independent video game developer named Zoë Quinn. Crash Override: How Gamergate (Nearly) Destroyed My Life, and How We Can Win the Fight Against Online Hate is both Quinn’s memoir, and also a handbook for how to understand the culture—both on the Internet and off of it—that led to Gamergate, and continues to shape much of the sociopolitical landscape around the globe.

Where Quinn goes above-and-beyond is the way she’s able to pick the movement apart, piece-by-piece and analyze the way it acted as a canary in a coalmine for the events leading up to and preceding the 2016 US election. I’ve looked back on Gamergate, and also the Sad/Rapid Puppies campaigns that took aim at the Hugo Awards for several years, and often thought to myself that they were a warning of what’s to come. Quinn, in the bullseye, had a clear view of the events, and her analysis is bought thoughtful and well-grounded.

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