Open letter to book readers (or How gaming should be respected more by book readers)

 Dear Book Readers

Originally I was going to write this nice lil' article to vent my frustrations on how you bookworms believe your medium is superior to all other. But instead I have decided to showcase my own superiority , not just over you but over the majority of the human population, by proving to you that our mediums and our groups should not be in the conflict they are but they should be allies. So let me drop the fancy words which you know I don't use and let's get right to it.

For starters our biggest strength is the biggest weakness the movies, the third big medium , has. Time. I have already discussed that. A movie usually has to be 2 and a half hours long. So when you take an 8-hours experience and try to cram it in such a small space you miss out. Let's look at my sister for proof. My sister's greatest grievance about the Harry Potter movies is Peeves. For those of you who have not read the books Peeves is kind of a prankster ghost that goes around Hogwarts and ruins stuff. Why is he important? World building mostly, as well as comic relief at certain scenes that could be considered awkward from a teenager's perspective, like asking someone you don't really like on a date just so you aren't alone at the party.He is a really minor character, but very loved, especially over the Internet. When the Scissor Time came thought , he was sacrificed as he was not historically important. And it makes sense really. If they kept every little detail in ,8 movies would not be enough to go thought the first book. However  there are times when Scissor Time gets out of control, like the sixth movie. My personal least favorite as they practically took out the titular mystery, the identity of the Half Blood Prince. Also Ron's scars, losing the scar trifecta of the Golden Trio, but it is sorta OK as Book 7 came after Movie 5.

Hue Hue Hue indeed!

Now let's look at the superior (sorry, bad habit) medium that is gaming.Above I mentioned that a book can be an 8-hour experience. That number is not completely random as it was the time my sister took to finish an 500-page book( both figures are approximations). And if we look at the average length of most new video games we see that most story-focused games tend to be around 10-12 hours( with open world ones going to around 16 for the main story). So we are talking about an experience that becomes longer, not shorter.This is why it is so hard to adapt 2 hour long movies to games,especially if your movie is called Iron Man 2. This mostly comes to the gameplay part of the game really. You see, gaming has all the positives of a visual medium ,like cinema, without most of the restrictions. We get to show environments and people instead of having to explain every single detail of them ( we are in book 5 Jo ,I know how McGonagall looks like) so we save time on those. Additionally , like in movies , the story in games does begin in a sort-of book form, which you may know better as "script". However when gameplay is added to the mix things take time.

This is where we must look at the Sauron sized difference  that has been glaring us like we have the One Ring.Interactivity. When you are reading a book or watching a movie you can't suddenly change the way the character on the screen solves the problem. If you did then you are likely playing some game of sorts. Designing a game means that you have to deal with a person who at the same time can  be too stupid to defeat a gnome or so smart that he is trying to break the rules of the universe. And while you could write " So Gandalf used this magic spell and totally owned that guy", during gameplay you have successfully made a wonderful faux pas. Firstly, Gandalf today might choose to beat the guy with a stick instead of that magic spell. Secondly, if Gandalf totally owned that guy, as well as any other guy, so quickly, you are left with an angry gamer screaming that your 60$ game was too easy. A game's difficulty should also go like a crescendo, so naturally obstacles should take more and more time to deal with.So naturally, if you are adapting a book to a game, you are unwillingly increasing the length of the experience.

There is however one more problem caused by interactivity. The existence of challenge. A game is meant to challenge you in some way. It puts objects in your way. Not just the main character's. It tests you. What is stopping you from finishing a movie or a book? Besides of course not liking it or being illiterate( in which case I need you to tell me how you got this long in my article),nothing. Sure I am having trouble reading Sherlock Holmes, but only because Doyle's English are a tiny bit absolutely too advanced for me. There are no dragons stopping my quest to finish the book. Where as in many games, there are in fact dragons between me and the conclusion of the story. However even today that is not even that great a problem. If you are stumped there are countless of people online very willing to give you tips or even the solution to your problem. And should you wish to completely bypass the interactivity all together there are many people on YouTube that play thought a game for your enjoyment, with or without commentary( like Darthleon13 shameless plug).

And should you need the final proof that gaming and book reading should be together like ,uuum, a very romantic metaphor with two people, then I present to you the hands down best interaction of our worlds. The first two Harry Potter games. Unlike many of the later games based on the franchise they don't follow the movies, but the books instead. Very closely too. You get pretty much everything that happened during the story, from Quidditch and a boss fight with Peeves ( rejoice sister) to the Potion Puzzle and the fight with holo-Tom Riddle.But the games are open world and there are a lot of side things to do. You also get the incentives of the house point system, so going and finishing classes will net you some new tools as well as points , while failing at missions or being caught out at night loses you points. The game goes as far as changing the ending if you screw up too much, so Gryffindor doesn't get the Trophy. Heck, if you love Quidditch so much there is a game that is just Quidditch, going from Hogwarts cup to World cup. And all these games are amazing.

So, the next time you are disappointed that your favorite scene was skipped at the movie, that your favorite character from Maze Runner had his origin story altered or that the deaths of all those children were glossed over at Hunger Games remember this. All that could be changed if you stopped reading for once in your stupid life and turned on a console for a change. Bloody nerds.

Yours truly,

a bigger nerd.

P.S.: Gaming industry, there has been almost 4 years since the Hunger Games movie and no Hunger Games MMO? Get your shit together game developers.

Why can't I hold all these Sherlocks

Yes it's another Sherlock article , with a vengeance. Basically I am writing this with a small hurry as I want to not have to write about the cool looking Christmas special in the same article as Mr Holmes. This might actually be the best time to be a Sherlockian. You know, besides the time when Doyle was actually writing new stories.

Firstly I would like to offer a half apology. In my last article I was called out by Metax when I said that the Elementary Sherlock was the least Sherlock-like Sherlock that Sherlocked in the (w)Holmes world. During Season 2,which I have partially watched, he becomes more serious indeed. He does become more classic . However I still stand by my opinion that he is my least favorite Sherlock, as I still find him a little too punky, for lack of a better term. He is just not my cup of tea. Furthermore,one more nitpick is the fact that they make his a little less misanthrope as part of his character development. He still is suspicious of everyone and everything, and he  is still strange, but he starts to shift a little. I can't really explain it as it is very subtle , but my best effort would be that he is becoming the Sherlock Watson wrote about, not the Sherlock Doyle wrote about. This is minor thought and the show is still great.

On the other end of the spectrum, I now expect some sympathy from you, as I made a terrific sacrifice. I watched Opera Detective Milky Sherlock . In Japanese no less. Now here we have  the least Sherlock-like properties of anything Sherlock. Let's break the title bit by bit. Firstly this has nothing to do with Opera so that goes out the window. Secondly there was zero milk in that show,not even in fucking tea. Thirdly, Sherlock is the nickname of a girl who is not only unrelated to Sherlock , she is not even our main character or part of the main group. It's like if the main focus of Fullmetal Alchemist was Armstrong (which I would force the Darth family line to watch for generations) or if Dragonballs was about the ears of that cat that lives in that tower(that I would not watch). And lastly let's go to the least right word in the title. Detective. In that universe Detective is not a person that stealthily finds information about crimes and then solves them. No. Detective is a term given to little moe girls (moe is likely not the right term but I don't give a fuck) with magic powers in their eyes that dress up like a combination between a maid and a dress made entirely out of the material the hunting cap is made. These Detectives fight a group of criminals ,who also have eye powers, so colorful and stupid that even Team Rocket is making fun of them. With a plot full of ass-pulls and a plot twist more telegraphed than an attack from a big God of War boss, I was unable to enjoy that show. Now here is the thing thought. People on the internet actually quite liked it. So either I am an uneducated and uninitiated buffoon in the moe girl anime genre or people on the internet like shit. Either is possible when you watch Eye-Powered Misdressed Lolis (that sorta fight crimes I guess).

Next on the list of opinions people will hate me for , Sherlock Holmes Videogames. One of them to be exact. I  am quite proud to say that at the timing of writing my Sherlock Collection is missing just the newest game that came out this year. Earlier this year I tried to play the Silver Earring one with one of my sisters. Truth be told we had fun. We enjoyed the aged voice acting and we did a synchronized "dun dun duuuun" when Sherlock dropped the title. The thing is that the game involved finding items hidden behind things and all that point and click jazz, which I am horrendous at. I definitely enjoyed the part where I was Watson and I was trying to follow Sherlock's logic of what the freak is going on, and the game really does expect you to look over your clues . Smart design all around. I was however unable to continue the whole look for stuff charade. I am just shit at it.

Lastly , Mr Holmes.  If you go in expecting to see Holmes kick asses and solve crimes then you went for the wrong movie. We follow Sherlock very late in his life, forgetful and fragile. It revolves around him struggling to remember his final case, which he failed to solve, even thought Watson wrote otherwise. I got kinda angry when the movie started making Adler noises but thankfully I was wrong. Essentially we look at a very old Sherlock trying to solve two completely new mysteries, the mystery of his forgotten past and the mystery of why his favorite bees are dying. Both mundane sounding but they were handled very well. The main actor [name here] also looked like he was having fun, probably because he wasn't forced to act at a green room for a change. And yes if you look at Hobbits behind the scenes footage that is acting at , not in, a green screen room.

While writing this article I came to the realization that this whole Sherlock wave , with his many incarnations in different times and ages ,might be a fad born thanks to Robert Downey and kept alive thanks to Cumberbatch.  Eventually people will move over it and go to another subject that they can put incredibly attractive men on. But let's face it , Doyle's work is timeless and a lot of care has been put in many of those projects, giving us a nice way to initiate people in this wonderful world. Normal people will become Sherlocked and Sherlocked people will become Sherlockians. And eventually this is going to come back and we will get a chance to greet those people with our deerstalker hats. That Sherlock never  actually wore.