Four reviews today: a good cross-section of media.
• Ticket to Ride (boardgame)
• Sputnik Sweetheart (novel) by Haruki Murakami
• Paranoia Agent (DVD) by Satoshi Kon
• Gallbladder Removal by Dr. Chang
Board Game: Euro-Lite
Players: 2-5
Time commitment: An hour or so
Price: $49.99 (retail)
Publisher: Days of Wonder
Official website: http://www.daysofwonder.com/tickettoride/
Way back in September of Oh-Seven, I did a little post called 16 Games—in which I honoured sixteen games that I enjoy playing. Mostly board games. In the post's comments, a certain
spartican Mark said:
Ticket to Ride. It's all about ticket to ride.
He was, unfortunately, a liar, a lunatic, or the... well, no. He wasn't the lord. The other two choices are up for debate.
My initial concern with the game had been with its theme. Trains. Trains? No really, trains. You can probably see from where my hesitation arose. There may have been an age in which trains were in any way something by which one could be overawed. That time is distant and very much not now.
Still, I never ceased to hear good things spoken of said Ride and said Ticket. It is, in fact, currently the forty-third most highly rated game on Board Game Geek. And! In the intervening months I had been convinced to buy and try Railroad Tycoon—which has been an unquestionably cool sort of game. As I remarked in January, "Quite honestly, it's been a lot of fun. We can't wait to play again."
So, my bulwark defenses against locomotive games laid flat, I asked for and received Ticket to Ride as a Christmas gift. Perhaps I'm just being surly, but I don't really like the game. Certainly I've played worse, but Ticket to Ride will not, I think, ever make it into my heavy-duty play rotation.
Unless there is duress involved. Extreme duress. Or maybe six-year-olds.
So here's the deal, Ticket to Ride has two good things going for it: 1) it's ridiculously easy to explain (which shows itself to be even more wonderful when one considers the difficulty I've recently had explaining games like World of Warcraft or Tigris and Euphrates to the willing); and 2) it's a relatively short game, one that can be played in under an hour.
The game essentially works like so. Players are presented with a game board map of America, its principal cities, and the routes that connect said cities. In a fit of arbitrariness. each route is coloured according to the kind of trains that will take that route (e.g., red trains, blue trains, green trains). From the first, each player receives three random route completion cards, also known as Tickets (signifying routes that should be completed for points), and may keep one, two, or all three of these cards. Completed routes add to one's overall score but uncompleted ones subtract from one's score. Ah, risk!
During one's turn, a player chooses one of three actions: 1) drawing Train Cards; 2) drawing Tickets; and 3) laying routes. Tickets are going to be where the big points come from, but to fulfill tickets players will need to lay routes, but to lay routes players will have to draw the correct colours of trains to complete the route. So, it all works to the same end. Of course, the correct colour of train is not always available and other players might lay route where you had been planning to build, thereby blocking your path, causing you to weep and moan and try a different tactic. If you can.
Really, it doesn't sound all bad and really could have been a pleasant diversion for an evening with friends. But the game is fundamentally broken in the state it comes in. The problem is the Tickets (route completion cards) with which players begin the game. This random assortment of options handicaps the game from the start. A month or two back, we played a five-player game and after receiving my three Tickets, I kept all of them, knowing my victory was assured. Each Ticket built on the others and were to be built around the outskirts of the where I was in little danger of being blocked by players forging opposing routes. I easily completed my routes and near the end of the game drew from the few remaining routes to find that they all coincided with what I had already built as no one else had any need to build there, the cards were always abandoned in favour of Tickets that favoured routes that coincided with other player's rail empires.
In the end, I finished the game a hundred points ahead of the second place player—who herself was far ahead of the other three. But my victory was hollow because I didn't earn it. It was given to me. It was like winning at Candy Land.
In summary, if you find games like Settlers of Catan too complex, you might find Ticket to Ride is more your speed; but for myself, I'll play it again if requested, but I'd rather play any number of other games. I'm glad I didn't pay for the game myself, but also sad I didn't ask for something else too. (Actually, I just looked at the retail price of the thing and Yikes!)
Rating: 
Book: Novel
Author: Haruki Murakami
Year: 2001
Pages: 224.
After the excellent Kafka on the Shore and the perhaps much better Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, I've been on something of a Murakami kick. I find his storytelling fascinating, both in device and in style. His use of the extraordinary-as-mundane is a tasty joy for me to indulge. Sputnik Sweetheart, while not as wonderful an experience as the two aforementioned works, was quite a bit of quick fun.
Thematically not dissimilar from Wind-up Bird, this short novel revels in questions of identity, conscious vs. subconscious, and the real vs. hidden world, and the nature of sexuality. The book is lean and packed with Murakami-style mystery—that is, both mystery in the detective sense and mystery is something closer to a Pauline sense, a revelation that is baffling to those who don't get it and uncanny to those who do.
Sputnik Sweetheart revolves around three characters: 1) the largely passive narrator, K, a thity-year-old elementary school teacher and passionate reader who is madly in love with 2) Sumire, a former classmate of K's who dropped out of school to become a writer and who has fallen madly in love with 3) Miu (whom Sumire calls her "Sputnik Sweetheart"), a married woman who imports wine, has a hidden past, and holds no ability to care sexually for her husband, Sumire, or really any other creature. All three are tortured by their own lives and despite the plot involving Sumire's abrupt disappearance off a secluded Greek island (a la L'Avventura), the story is less about the disappearance and K's subsequent investigation, and more a discussion of who people are and what is it that both separates and binds humanity from and to itself.
Sputnik Sweetheart is not the best I've read from Haruki Murakami, but it was certainly worthwhile and a book I hope to revisit in a few years.
Rating:
Television: Animated
Director: Satoshi Kon
Year: 2005
Length: 325 minutes/13 episodes.
I had thought of doing a Capsule Review devoted wholly to the works of Satoshi Kon, detailing his complete available collection of films and television. But then i realized I had already reviewed Tokyo Godfathers and Paprika, leaving only psychological thriller Perfect Blue, sentimental ode to film Millennium Actress and his television series Paranoia Agent left to cover.
So, since I just finished watching Paranoia Agent with the Monk, I thought I'd talk about it and hit the other two another time.
I've been following Kon's work ever since seeing Perfect Blue in 2000 and with the exception of that first film,* I have been universally happy with everything of his I've engaged. Paranoia Agent is no exception and curiously, many of the themes Kon explores across the stage of his thirteen twenty-five-minute episodes, intersect well with the content of the novels and short stories by Haruki Murakami I've been devouring over the last several months.
Over the course of the creation of his first three films, Kon discovered there were a number of ideas that he wanted to explore but just couldn't justify squeezing into the stories he had already created. Those ideas find themselves winding their way into Paranoia Agent, which presents an ideal vehicle for such examination as each episode focuses on a different character, allowing for a wide discussion of themes and ideas.
Yet even with Kon's ability here to investigate a greater variety of aspects of his nation's culture and history, the series does follow certain particular themes from start to finish. Just as Murakami finds interesting questions of identity and responsibility, violence and sexuality, so too does Satoshi Kon. Paranoia Agent examines Japan's post-war abandonment of responsibility and visceral need for the peace that irresponsibility offers. In some ways devastatingly satirical, the brief series treats many of the cultural peculiarities that have grown to strength under the shadow of the Atom bomb: kawaii culture and its embodiment in Hello-Kitty-like animal mascots; otaku extremism; suicide cults; youth violence; bureaucratic ineptitude; and the ever-increasing dissolution of the real individual in favour of the technologically removed superself.
In the end, the show offers considerable grist for the thoughtful viewer over which to mull after the series' cataclysmic finale. In the end, Kon seems to be saying that Japan is trapped in its inability to take responsibility for really much of anything and that even its complete destruction can only serve bring the culture/nation back to a point where it can begin the cycle anew.
Huh. I almost forgot to talk about the show's actual premise. In the first episode, the creator of cuddly kawaii icon Maromi is under increasing demands to create a new cuddly mascot to fuel society's need for ever-cuter icons. At the height of her panic she becomes the first of many victims of Shonen Bat (literally, Bat-Boy, but translated as Li'l Slugger on the dub), a juniour-high-aged kid on rollerblades wielding a baseball bat. Gradually, as the number of victims mount, a pattern emerges. Et cetera.
All in all, an excellent series that seems to flag for a couple episodes around the three-quarter mark only to rally again in the last few episodes. Highly worthwhile.
*Perfect Blue, while interesting and somewhat engaging, is not a perfect movie and suffers at times from plot holes that a little tightening might have fixed. It's a film that I enjoy but not one I return to over and again.
Rating: 
Operation: Laparoscopic
Surgeon: Dr. Steven Chang
Year: 2008
Operation Duration: Couple hours
Recovery Period: Seemingly interminable.
Despite all the rave reviews, having one's gall bladder out is really not the amazing experience one would imagine. Sure, there's the glamour and allure of several hours of unconsciousness, the signs of stigmata in all the wrong places, the shaved belly, the two weeks off from work, the überhip Dr.-Pepper-coloured splotch of settled blood that stains one's belly subcutaneously, and the newfound celebrity amongst friends and family alike. But to let in on the secret, there are disadvantages as well.
Indeed.
Chief among these, I think would be the freaking excruciating pain one experiences nearly constantly in the days following. Pain killers might be said to dull the pain and they may very well do their job, but if this is the case, pity above all earthly creatures those that endure such surgery without availing themselves to such medicinal remedies. For days after, getting into and out of bed is what is known in scientific circles as a quantum impossibility—a body at rest must at all costs remain at rest and a body at stand must at all costs remain standing. Or terror shall ensue.
The real surprise comes when one comes to find just how deeply the average, non-vegetative person relies upon the abdominal musculature for every aspect of daily living. In the days following such a surgery, do not expect to: stretch while yawning; turn to face a speaker; laugh, chuckle, or chortle; breathe more than the shallowest of breaths; shift in one's seat; shift in bed; survive having one's pillows adjusted; cough. Performance of any of these tasks may render one unconscious for several moments—or at the least make one wish for the Apocalypse. Bowel movements may actually kill. Which is ironic considering that one's surgeon will inevitably prescribe the liberal use of stool softener.
Also, the absence of usable abdominal muscles will cause the performance of urination to well-resemble the accomplishment of the same task performed by a ninety-year-old man with a swollen prostate. A twenty-minute dribble (a.k.a. gradual evacuation) should not come as entirely unexpected. One imagines that a ninety-year-old man with a swollen prostate who underwent such a surgery would really just have to give up on urination entirely.
As well, hot tubs are apparently out of the question for several weeks—a revelation to which all the faithful must assuredly say Boo. Further, spousal caretakers will generally be overwhelmed with frustration of their inability to really do anything to make the pain go away or assist in any way save for providing pitying glances.
Currently there is no reliable data on how long continued pain should last. Of course it gradually recedes and within a week one should find the ability to putter around the house a gratifying experience. Poop no longer stands threat as a mortally feared enemy after five or six days and is merely relegated to an adversarial role. At two weeks one will likely not be able to sleep yet on one's side and rising from bed may still present some challenges.
My personal recommendation is to engage one's mind during such trials on a plane divorced from common levels. This state may be most readily attained through the use of technological substances rather than medicinal substances. Particularly useful in this divorce from reality is the engagement of realtime strategy games such as those cut from the Age of Empires, Civilization, Total War cloth. My personal remedy included much early involvement in Sid Meyer's Railroads! and, as strength permitted, a deep involvement in a solitaire version of the WoW boardgame.
All in all, there are better ways to spend one's weeks.
Rating:
Labels: anime, games, literature, reviews, surgery
