Know The Witcher before he was a video game star.

You may remember that I had a brief bout of UNBRIDLED FRUSTRATION with The Witcher a few months back.   I’ve recently dove back into it (dialing down the difficulty because my blood pressure is high enough, thanks) and have found it a pleasing experience.  While I’ve gotten to the point that I can’t stand a linear RPG (sandbox game play FTW), I still find this game fun: it is odd how the “RPG effect” has come full circle.  Action games snuck RPG elements into their structure, and now RPGs are more fast-paced and exciting than ever.

It is sad that due to some questionable business practices, The Witcher will not be coming to consoles; good thing I got it for PC when I did.  But if you are a console-only gamer (or if you are a Mac only computer person), then you can still experience thedelight of this game in convenient book form.

You see, Geralt of Rivia (the titular Witcher) was the main character of a short story series written by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski.  His first span of stories starring Geralt are collected in the book The Last Wish.  If you live in Poland, you can read all of his stories and the few novels he has written; if you live here in the States, you should be able to find and English translation of The Last Wish and the follow-up novel Blood of Elves at your local book store.

I love short story collections, and The Last Wish is among the best I’ve read.  Framed by the story of the atheistic Geralt recovering from a terrible battle wound at a nunnery, the tales of Geralt’s travel are gritty and real while being full of humor and humanity.  My only fault with the book is literally stylistic; there is no table of contents.  While, unlike most modern short story collections, this one should be read straight through, it would be nice to be able to revisit my favorites without having to flip through the pages.

And what are my favorites?  While I love them all, “A Question of Price” reads like one of my other favorite short stories, Robert Howard’s “The God in the Bowl.”  It has a much happier though just as satisfying ending, and it plays directly into the novel Blood of Elves.  The titular short, “The Last Wish,” has a well-orchestrated plot twist; it is one of my favorite short stories overall, not just of Sapkowski’s.

I’m reading Blood of Elves now, and it is a proper novel.  So far so good, though I prefer The Last Wish.  I can’t argue with the novel’s pace though: it’s smooth and logical.

If you have played and loved The Witcher PC game, do please give these books a try.  If you can’t buy them, check with your local library.  I’m sure they would love to do an interlibrary loan for you if they don’t have them right there on the shelf.  You won’t regret having read them, and your appreciation of the game and its characters will be much deeper and richer.  In case you were wondering, the story that the game tells is set after the events of the stories/novels and exists independent of them, so either way you’re getting a fresh narrative unhindered by obligations to another source.

Free Comic Book Day!

Today is Free Comic Book Day.  If you haven’t already, go to your local comic book shop (NOT Barnes and Noble or Books-A-Million, but a real comic book shop) and pick up some free comics.  No, you can’t go in and om-nom-nom all you want on your choice of books: there are some rules which the owner of the shop will be happy to explain to you.  Chances are, they also might be having a sweet sell so you can stock up on even MORE reading material.

Have a kid that doesn’t like to read, but want to get them excited about reading?  Take them to comic shop today.  Want to re-connect with your childhood?  Go to a comic shop today.  Want to wash the horrible taste of X-Men Origins: Wolverine out of your mouth?  Go to a comic shop today.

I had a great time at my local shop, and my little bro gleefully scored one of EVERY SINGLE free comic and picked up some back issues from some of his favorite characters.  We spent three hours  just hanging out with the local comic scene and talking about how bad the Wolverine movie was and–of course–our favorite stories and characters from years past (and the sweet Dark Avengers/Uncanny X-Men crossover happening this summer).

Now let me ask you something: why are you still reading this?  Go, go, go!  When you get back home, check out my Facebook page for some pictures of my local shop, Heroes Are Here, and their festivities (yes, Imperial Stormtroopers are involved).

YOU NO BUY POTIONZ YOU CAN NOT HAS WINZ!

I was so excited to finally get my hands on The Witcher, a PC RPG that I had been wanting to get into ever since it released but only recently had a gaming PC on which to play it.  I bought the game before I even finished buying the parts for the computer, knowing that it was going to be a favorite of mine.  Until today, it has been.

You see, at the end of the first act of the game there is this boss.  Earlier in the game, you had the option of buying a potion from a witch that would make killing this boss easier.  I forgot to get the potion and…well, come to find out when the developers said “easy” they really meant “possible.”

That is the problem with any kind of RPG except for the MMO variety: you are punished for not doing things just so.  Unless you are either a pre-cog or an OCD gamer that must gather all possible pick-ups, you will get ganked by the Big Bad.  It happens in every game that Square/Square-Enix has ever made (I swear they get a rise out of knowing that somewhere they have made a gamer cry), and it even happens with games that have RPG elements but are not themselves RPGs (I’m looking at you, Ninja Gaiden).

Isn’t this a bit unfair to gamers?  I mean, I didn’t expect to breeze throug the boss fight; I expected it to be challenging, especially since I wasn’t pimped out with all of the requisite power-ups, but I didn’t expect the AI to slap their “I Win” button just because I made an honest mistake.  I forgot the potion!  Big deal!  Let me load a game save right before the fight, run back to the witch, buy said potion, lay the hurt down and–Bob’s your uncle–I get to progress in the game that I paid for.

No.  Instead, I’ve got to reload a game save from way the deuce back and buy the potion, then re-do a whole bunch of quests leading up to climatic moment. It’s poor design in what is otherwise so far a good game.  No, it’s not poor design.  It’s sloppy design.  Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.

That’s okay though; in a fit of frustration, I just started clean over; I even scaled the difficulty back to “Easy” for good measure.  While I love overcoming a challenge and find more intense games more rewarding than cake walks (re: anything for the Wii), I get plenty of challenge playing competitively and/or working as a team in games with better balance.

Sure, I could uninstall and trade the game in, but I would lose money on that.  Besides, I did inherently like the game: the lead character Geralt is cool, I enjoyed the short stories from which the game was inspired (look up The Last Wish if you want a good read; Blood of Elves comes out April 28th and I cannot wait), and it’s a beautiful game with some deep mechanics.

I just doubt I’m going to like it as much now.

An Introduction to Alan Moore

If you find yourself asking “Who is Alan Moore?” don’t feel ashamed.  Not too many people outside of college English departments, IT professionals, scientists, and comic shop owners (you know: geeks) know.  He has written many great comics, and is a brilliant literary mind.  He is also an eccentric and a recluse and has been worked over by Hollywood and the rest of the entertainment industry more than a few times, so whenever an adaptation of his work is made he wants no part of it.  His most famous work is Watchmen, essentially a deconstruction of superheroes, and it inspired the movie that you’ve been seeing trailers for since you went to see The Dark Knight.

Watchmen hits theaters next week, and I’m prepared to be greatly disappointed.  You see, I know the Great Big Change that Zack Snyder made to the ending, and–admittedly out of context–I’m angered by it.  I will pass final (harsh, cold, unfeeling) judgment next week when I see the movie, but my hopes (which had been increased by the trailer attached to Friday the 13th) were dashed when I read this review earlier this evening. I guess I don’t have to say “spoiler alert.”.

In preparation for the movie, I’m re-reading the comic mini-series from which Snyder drew his inspiration.  It’s just as jaw-dropping and mind-blowing as it was when I read it for the first time shortly after college, when I was convinced I was a hip and edgy bad-boy of academia who was about to hit the literary world like a blood-soaked storm (re: before reality set in).

Now is the perfect time to get into Watchmen, if you haven’t already, so you can look all cool and stuff when you’re talking about how badly the movie butchered your memories of that final, numbing, a-rock-just-fell-into-my-stomach scene that closed out the book’s exhilarating climax.

Why stop at Watchmen however?  Why not delve deeper into the works of Alan Moore?  He is only constantly trading places with Neil Gaiman as the greatest comics writer ever (at least in my mind).

In fact, don’t start with Watchmen.  Let it be the second or third work of Moore that you read.  Put off seeing the movie if need be.  Start instead with something just as engaging and thought-provoking, but a little less multilayer and a bit easier to digest.  V for Vendetta is the other major work of Alan Moore.  You may remember the movie that came out a couple of years back.  It was a good movie, but a not-so-good adaptation.  I highly suggest you immerse yourself in the text and imagery of this work: experience a dystopia of epic proportions and the mad hero out to change it.  Witness the young girl caught up in it all, the young girl who wants to see change but doesn’t know if she wants to see how it happens.  Be prepared to walk away with a healthy distrust of government in general, coupled with this weird sense that chaos is brilliant.

Having polished off V for Vendetta, move on to Moore’s more traditional comics work.  Swamp Thing was one of the more popular horror comics titles, and the run Moore had on it is phenomenal.  He established it as a mature, intellectual comic; one not for kids or sensitive adults, one that dealt more with pain and loss and the human condition than it did with derring-do and damsels in distress.  You can find his run collected as trade paperbacks in the Saga of the Swamp Thing series; a recent hardback edition of Volume 1 sees a never-before-seen reprint of the very first issue that Moore wrote, and it serves as a fine wrap-up to the stories before it, so the reader can fully appreciate the brilliant narrative transition Moore made that claimed the series as his own.

Batman fans need not be without “The Killing Joke.”  It was a one-shot that Moore penned, a story that focuses mainly on the Joker.  The mesmerizing performance of Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight owes more to this book than you would think: Moore’s Joker is a frightening, unhinged, brilliant sociopath.  Not to mention the ending is a surreal treat that ranks among the greatest comics endings ever.  Pick up the trade that has a special bonus story where the Joker fantasizes about killing Batman in a variety of unique ways, or grab “The Killing Joke” as part of the trade paperback DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore.  This is a good one because you can see Moore put his spin on numerous classic characters.

Some other works of Moore: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, From Hell, Promothea, a few issues of Spawn, and the highly controversial book Lost Girls.  Lost Girls was Moore’s attempt at making pornography mean something; to make it a method of exploring human sexuality while still indulging in pleasures of the flesh–what erotica is supposed to be, but oftentimes ends up falling short.  Unfortunately (for sensitive readers) he does so using your favorite fairy tale and childrens’ stories characters.

Definitely read Watchmen soon though, no matter what you do.  I would say: “The Killing Joke,” V for Vendetta, Swamp Thing (at least the first volume of the trade series), and then Watchmen.  After that, it’s your playground.

See a complete list of his works here, and when you hit the highlights start delving deeper.  Your friendly neighborhood comic shop is happy to help you.  They’ll hook you up with any trade paperback you would like, and they may have some of those old back issues for which you are looking.  Plus, they know comics, so they can give you further recommendations and introduce you even more awesome writers and artists. Patronize them before throwing even more money at [INSERT NAME OF FACELESS CORPORATE ENTITY HERE].

So go out and read.  Have fun.  Discover one of the greatest writers that has ever lived, comics or otherwise.  Go see Watchmen next week.  All snarkiness aside, Zack Snyder had some serious wa-hoo-hahs to take on this film.

Just too bad it does not really have to exist.