Media Recap: June 2012

• Novel: Incommunicado by Michel Reimon
  Actually a leftover from last month, a quite fascinating political book. Never thought I’d pick one of those up but I someone I respect quite a lot told me he was looking forward to reading that book and I got curious. There is a lot about that book that I don’t like, like its in-your-face approach and its onomatopoeia. Also I am not particularly fond of Reimon’s style of writing in general, but I respect that he had something to tell with his book and he brought that message along clearly.

• Novel: Dark Frost by Jennifer Estep
  Cured one of two issues I had from former books. One was the lazy and ridiculous repetition of its own content instead of using different espressions when reestablishing facts for readers who might not remeber the facts from the last book. I got annoyed quite a lot of times when I felt that Estep just copypasted whole paragraphs from the last book into the current one. The second issue that is still unresolved is the fact that it is mentioned on several occassions that there are a lot of other warrior styles on the academy yet we never get to see one. We never even get to walk past one, which strikes me as odd, considering they can’t all be ninjas.

• Game: Mass Effect 2
  Played that again in order to change course of plot as mentioned in this article

• Game: Guild Wars 2
  I bought the game and played through the second beta weekend. I didn’t play during the most recent stresstest since I had other things to do.

• Let’s Play: Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories
  Was also a leftover from last month. I initially intended to watch the one for 358/2 days but got sidetracked when I realized I don’t know the story of Chain of Memories.

• Video: Apple special event Oct 2011
  I was late to the party but on the other hand the keynotes just aren’t that amazing anymore without Steve.

• Video: WWDC 2012 keynote address
  Interesting, but I had already read about most of the announced things, so that was just recap.

• Game: Mass Effect 3
  Enjoyed myself some multiplayer. Did not get the drops I wanted. Everything as usual.

• Game: Star Wolves 3
  Did another playthrough of Star Wolves 3. Got a different ending this time. Realized that my computer is still too slow for both battles with 20+ ships and 8x speed.

• Let’s Play: Pokemon Platinum
  Very cynical, amusing let’s play. Definitely recommendable, though some parts felt long and streched. This is due to Pokémon’s battle system, however, not due to the author’s writing style.

• Game: Little Farm
  Grinded through some stages of Little Farm since I really want to know how the small story ends. While I initially really enjoyed this casual game, the final levels are getting more and more frustratring.

• Game: Bastion
  I bought Bastion a while back and have listened to the Soundtrack several times. This time I got around to playing it and was quite surprised that it has addiction potential. On the other hand it makes me furious just how mean some of the challenges are that you have to master in order to get all secret skills.

Summary: 2 novels, 2 let’s plays, 2 videos, 6 games;