Purkake

Don't mind me, I'm just trying to draw a humorous parallel between your post and the late poster known as "Lord of Flies" general style of posts. I welcome thoughtful discussion, .

"If LoF did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." - Me, now.

Don't you have friends who won't get off your case until you've read something or succumbed to high internet praise and forced your way through it just to see what all the fuss is about? I mean eventually you'll learn to avoid such things, but I'm sure there's that one book that lured you in with sweet promises and then let you down like a Peter Molyneux game. Or perhaps you decided to force your way through an all-time classic just to add that little bit of cultural identity to yourself even though you hated every second of the pretentious post-modern crap?

It's nice if they have some quality stuff as well. You can check here for what I was referencing. FWIW, I use BBC for my world news usually.

If this is serious, then I hope you're all aware that RT is pretty much a direct mouthpiece for Russian propaganda.

Not sure if serious.

Don't forget the focus groups that turn bright new IPs into boring old by-the-numbers cliches.

World building is just one part of writing a good book and Tolkien is hardly the only one who's good at it. Have you read R Scott Bakker? China Mieville?

I'm cool with Pidesco's opinions, but starting out with absolute statements is a good way to piss off lots of people. I like a variety of books from a variety of genres and don't think setting one series or author on a pedestal is particularly constructive.

Interesting that you should bring up Piers Anthony. I just read On a Pale Horse and while the premise seemed good, it turned into a "weird weird let's gang up on Satan because of a contrived plot device" thing by the end. Also, the weird pseudo-magical future was completely unnecessary. If they weren't written when they were, I'd say mr Anthony read American Gods and decided that it wasn't straightforward enough and diluted it some more. Also, his 50+ page afterword didn't help either. As for giving up, the real contenders here are the books that manage to lull you into reading them until the end.

Ouch, you disregarded a whole genre there, brah. I look forward to the aftermath.

Oh man, that was a bad book. It was hip, cool vapidity masquerading as William Gibsonesque science fiction. I haven't read anything by Stephenson since. Maybe he's gotten better? Question re: this thread content guidelines: Can I trash a book if I've only read part of it? I don't usually make it more than halfway through a book I don't like and sometimes less than that. I try to give a book 100 pages at least before I toss it, but after that I often don't stick around if I think it's really bad. I haven't touched Stephenson since then either. Maybe he has, but is it really worth the potential horror? I guess halfway through is good enough, if you got a clear idea of what it was about, but I'd prepare myself for lots of "it gets better" in any case. I read 3/4 of The Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe and decided that while I could see what he was doing there, I needed to be taking a lot more drugs to make any sense of it.

Like The Asylum? I can dig that, but Gameloft kind of has that market somewhat cornered already

I guess I can't argue with that. Even though technically Valve brought in the students who made Narbacular Drop and gave them the resources to make it.

And that's why you shelve franchises instead of running them into the ground when you could be making new IPs to run into the ground. They could create the new IP Robber, then no one would complain. New IP, no Thief in the tittle. That's the spirit! But the name needs to be more modern, a single semi-nonsensical word like "Strongbox" with an optional(but highly recommended) overly long subtitle like "The grim tale of cursed soul". Then you tag it with as many genres as possible(be sure to include at least action, adventure, stealth, person and cinematic in it) and it's good to go.

Tale and Bos pretty much nailed it. It's also not particularly "cutesy" or "casual" if anyone has been lead to believe that.

Instead of derailing all the other book threads, let's just have one where we list books that we have a personal grudge with and explain why. Bonus points for hating critically acclaimed books and no "trololol Twilight is teh worst!!111" without having actually read it and giving a semi-intelligent explanation. Feel free to use copious amounts of snark and be as clever as you want, we're all supposedly educated people here. Please use spoiler tags where appropriate. I have quite a grudge against Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. What was once declared the best cyberpunk since self-slicing nanobread is actually a barely coherent sequence of "cool stuff" ranging from cyberspace katana fights to pizza mafia punctuated by the most boring and inane history lesson in a non-history book. You have characters who would need another dimension just to be able to fall over in a breeze, complete with self-referential post-modernist names just for the sake of it. I'd go into more detail about the plot, but I find that this excerpt from the wikipedia summary does a much better(and more hilarious) job than I ever could: (bear in mind that this is still cyberpunk) I guess one might argue that the whole book is a clever piece of satire, but if that's the case then I lack the mental capacity to distinguish it as such. The only thing the book taught me is to switch my brain off the moment the phrase "neuro linguistic programming" comes up.

I like them, it's just that the last one was somewhat lackluster and the next one has taken 6+ years to come out. The fandom was really cool as well pre-TV show. I just don't like praising something to high heavens when it's only half-way done and will probably remain that way for a while.

I've had Portal for years but have never played it and i don't even plan to. What's wrong with you?

And that's why you shelve franchises instead of running them into the ground when you could be making new IPs to run into the ground.

I can't believe there are still people who didn't play Portal when it was free for like a month last year... Better late than never, I guess. Enjoy!

lol. Mine really wasn't meant as bookhate, per se. But more just as comparison to GRRM's contemporaries, by which measure, I think he's a pretty good writer. And I don't even like his stuff paritcularly. Although if I had no choice I would probably read it over others. It was mostly Calax, but some constructive hate is fun every now and then.

Mmm, so many snide venom-dripping remarks(not that I disagree). Maybe we should have a separate thread for which books you hate(I have a few as well). The book hate seems so much sharper than the regular dull game hate around these parts

That looks awesome, as does Evochron.

So not really news, but a recap of where the game is at at the moment.