I called in sick yesterday with some kind of sniffling/ sneezing/coughing/ aching/stuffy head/fever kind of illness only one brand of terrible tasting liquid can cure. So, instead of drinking something green, I chose a Microsoft brand cure in the form of an Afro Samurai loaded Xbox to pass the time. I am late in the game, near the end, fighting the Empty 7, when the actual issues of this game rear their ugly head. I got just far enough to face the final bad guy today and I decided the system for boss-fighting is way too broken and I’ve put the game back on the shelf never to be played again. Unless DLC comes along. I do like the Chambara-style killing moments, though, which is strangely the best part of this game.
Maybe a passive experience will make me feel better so I put in the original Director’s Cut (ie not the Spike TV version) and watched the first three (of five) episodes. It is so much better than I remember it on TV, but it was edited back in 2007. I started comparing the plot points and character moments between the show and the game and I found that I really like the story told in the game better than on TV. Now I need to read the Manga to jack my whole experience up. The different levels of the game are set to different moments in the show, but a bit rearranged and drawn out for gaming purposes. So, my recommendation is if you like the show get the damn game, just hit the forums for ways to get past the cheesy bosses.
When I wasn’t napping during a CSI:NY marathon I continued reading a new Trek Book that came out last week, A Singular Destiny. What struck me in this book was it’s weaving of TV, movie, and book plot points, creating a much better tapestry of the Star Trek universe, post-Nemesis, than I expected. The main characters are Mining company heads, diplomats, Klingon ship captains, Federation bureaucrats and the like, all set as a sequel to the Destiny trilogy released last year. The book does a good job of keeping me informed of past events from older books, while creating a desire to read them anyway. You can easily step back into Trek at this point and not feel left out of 4 years of storytelling. If this new Trek movie is successful, hopefully we could have a new show to watch. And, I hope that those writers take cues from these books and not re-hash old treaded ground from the previous series. In fact, a new series based on these books would be awesome.
For those that might not have any idea what I’m talking about, here’s the scoop. Star Trek books have never been canon with the show or movies and usually not even canon with each other, The Shatnerverse not withstanding. I’ve noticed of late the current batch of books dating back to the era around Star Trek: Nemesis started a perpetual thread of a story telling that continued well past this point, with more books to come this year. This is as close to canon as you can get from books and since we don’t have an post-Nemesis TV shows, why not read these. Here is a list I have compiled, in roughly chronological order, of novels to read of the continuing voyages.
Prior to Nemesis:
A Time to Be Born
A Time to Die
A Time to Sow
A Time to Harvest
A Time to Love
A Time to Hate
A Time to Kill
A Time to Heal
New Frontier: After the Fall
A Time for War, a Time for Peace
New Frontier: Missing in Action
After Nemesis:
The Next Generation: Death in Winter
Titan: Taking Wing
Titan: The Red King
Articles of the Federation
Titan: Orion's Hounds
The Next Generation: Resistance
The Next Generation: Q & A
The Next Generation: Before Dishonor
Titan: Sword of Damocles
The Next Generation: Greater than the Sum
Destiny I: Gods of Night
Destiny II: Mere Mortals
Destiny III: Lost Souls
A Singular Destiny
This roughly runs from late 2378 to mid 2381. See Memory Beta for a complete chronology of novels. Now I want to drop all my planned reading for the next couple months and just read Star Trek. There is also a series of “re-launched” books for both Deep Space Nine and Voyager which I believe also work as prequels to the above. I’ll list those in the future. Also, crew members from the IKC Gorkon/Klingon Empire novels are referenced adding them to the new book-canon as well as events from The Lost Era novels and Peter David’s series, New Frontier. As he is my favorite Trek author I have no problem added his work into the mix. More on all that in the future. Happy Waitangi Day everyone. BTW, check out the Weekend Ronin unnamed Podcast at its test location here. Click around the site if you'd like, but keep in mind it's in its Beta phase and not a lot is going on. See you next broadcast.
No comments:
Post a Comment