I don't know about the NA version, but I have the European version and you can toggle the voice acting for battles and for cutscenes.
I think Moore's also got a case of Specula Rosatintis. Pop culture has been derivative ever since the term came into being. Repackaging other forms of culture and making them accessible to the masses is pop culture's raison d'être. Andy Warhol was already parodying and deconstructing pop culture during Moore's idyllic 60's.
I'll keep an eye out. #observationdeck
I suddenly find myself wanting one. Very, very badly.
I just watched yesterday's Person of Interest.
It was good.
"...I found your car." #observationdeck
My family and I thoroughly enjoyed Horton hears a Who. Despite the liberties it takes with the book, it's a very good animated movie. And I remember the animated movies with fondness as well. Not every adaptation is bad.
My girlfriend has lots of dummy Facebook accounts so she can play Gardens of Time without having to interact with other players. In her opinion, this improves the experience drastically.
I'm going to play devil's advocate with you here for a second.
How are the Watchmen prequels any different than what Alan Moore himself did with, say, Swamp Thing? In both cases, a new writer was brought in to work on an IP not originally created by said writer. The two situations aren't identical, but there are enough parallels that I feel that Alan Moore is being hypocritical with his comments.
"No, no, see, whenever I do it, that's okay, it's whenever you do it, that's the problem."
I have a friend who has an irrational fear of wigs. He maintains that he acquired it when a shelf full of wigs fell on him. It was in the back room of a costume store his uncle used to own.
The phobia was so bad that he was once almost ejected from a plane due to a hysterical fit he threw when he saw that the woman sitting next to him was wearing one.
I have an irrational fear of all arthropods, by the way. My motto is, "if it has more than four legs, and an exoskeleton, IT IS THE ENEMY."
EDIT: I was going to mention that this book didn't sound very interesting, but after re-reading some of the comments I think I'll give it a shot.
The beauty of FFV is that any battle can be won through smart play. Theoretically you could beat that dragon (Shinryuu) at very low levels with the appropriate equipment/ability setups.
Just saw Alcatraz last night. The whole episode was bland, and then at the end they throw in not one but TWO mysterious plot thingies in the last three minutes.
You guys, it's happening again. #observationdeck
I'm starting to think that Olivia "dying" means that the Olivia of this timeline gets erased and replaced with the original Olivia(s), and not that someone kills her, necessarily.
It's not that I disliked anything specifically about it, just that it bored me to tears and wasn't very good. Like, it attempted to create this rich, detailed world and failed spectacularly.
I thought this was interesting, but then I saw that it was from the author of City of Saints and Madmen. Can safely ignore.
Look a bit to the left of the man's shoulder.
Nah, the line references two distinct Heroes characters: Ando, and Takezo Kensei.
I liked the shoutout to Heroes, where the Japanese prostitute talks about "Ando's brother, Takezo"...
I see that many people are disappointed with Reamde because they were expecting something along the lines of Snow Crash or Cryptonomicon. I think this is unfair. Sure, this book isn't as philosophically or mentally taxing as Stephenson's previous novels (hello Anathem), but it doesn't claim to be, either. The book is never sold as anything but an action-packed thriller with geeky sensibilities, and in this sense it succeeds.
As always, Stephenson does his homework when he writes about a topic. Everything about this book screams "well-researched", from the firearms to the MMO to the ways gold farming works. I never thought I would be engrossed in a topic as bland as terrain-building software, but with this book I was all over it.
The pacing in Reamde is fantastic. There's always something exciting going on, but since the point of view shifts between places and characters, I never felt saturated with action sequences. Even though the book is tremendously long, it was easy and fun to read.
The characters could have used some fleshing out, but were otherwise likable and interesting. Many of them suffered from "action as characterization" (we are never told what goes on in their heads but we get to know them by their actions, the motivation for which isn't clearly stated), but in general the cast was fantastic. I was particularly fond of Sokolov and Olivia, and the dynamic between them.
My only complaint about the book is that it spends way too much time jerking the reader around with the main conflict. Zula seems to spend an eternity trying to escape her captors, and failing, and trying again. I felt that several chapters of the book that involved with subplot could have been cut out without affecting the main narrative. It made me feel like the bad guys were all-powerful and had all the cards, while the good guys ran after them like comically-inept cops. The final sequence, too, could have used some editing, if only to cut down on some of the elaborate, but unnecessary, descriptions.
I'd like to write more about this book, but I'm out of time. Suffice to say that, even though it's not like Stephenson's other books, I enjoyed Reamde all the same. I'm looking forward to his next book, as always.
