Nice day. It rains. Nice rain. It wets. That guy slipped. His head is bleeding. Ah! Damn funny!

Upgraded my computer. Fresh Linux. Fresh Wine. Now Peanut and Cripto both work. Gave both a quick go. Will type quick post for both. Starting. Now.

Peanut is not a text thing. It is a classical point-and-click graphic thing. You click on things in pictures. You choose options from menus. Didn't find the pictures that interesting. Neither the text. Neither the setting.

Criptozookeeper made my eyes bleed. Well, not bleed, just wet themselves. Well, maybe not wet themselves either, just suffer a tiny bit. The conjunction (conjunction... what a word!) of shapes, oversaturated and low resolution photography (something like Phantasmagoria marries Martin Parr), and colorized text and text boxes is just not my cup o' Joes - and I don't even smoke. It distracted me so much I didn't even have a good time playing the text part. So, what I'm trying to say is that the aesthetics of Criptozookeeper don't work for me. Maybe I'll get back to it one day, when I finish covering my monitor with black tape over the pictures section.

Well, am I in a good mood today or what? Maybe It's just post-traveling depression and it will wear out in the next ten or eleven months. I'll post a tiny postcard from Bosnia to cheer the place up. Greetings.
Picture
 
I just wanted to warn the two point five one three million people who daily read this blog that I'll be going away until September. The Balkans have called for me and told me not to take any laptop, netbook, personal desktop computer or even the portable ENIAC that gathers dust in the top drawer.

The dates of my travelings will take two interesting events away from me: the presentation of the photography book Pilgrims, by Paulo Alegria, a nice friend; and the IntroComp party in the company of mister Floyd.

I hope all goes well with both these events and I'm deeply sorry I'm not there to badmouth everything.

Hugs and kisses,
Leandro
 
Been dancing (or trying to) these last few days, at an International Traditional Folk Dances Festival called Andanças. It's held near the beautiful woods of São Pedro do Sul, in the district of Viseu. Camping in the wilderness, bathing in the waterfalls of the Blue Well, learning the Scottish, the tango nuevo and the sevillanas, listening to folk concerts 'til 4 am, sweating like a pig, not showering, eating poorly, drinking badly; Oh, marvelous!

And after that, home. A sofa. Hot outside. Most of my country in flames.

So let's play games. IntroComp. Deadline. Last entry. Urray!

Fang VS Claw, by Oliver Ullmann

All Things Considered...
Once again I didn't write any notes as I played with this one. Not for the same reasons as with Memento, but because it is too damn hot. Even bad for the circuits, I think. So I'll just give it a brief summary of my thoughts.

Thought number one: Fang VS Claw has an awful title and a cuchi cuchi cover art (sorry about that, Martin Oehm).

Thought number two: the writing and implementation is solid and robust.

Thought number three: I did like the way the game was paced and divided. A liked that a lot. Everything was told as in a movie: the intro in the creature's nest; the cut to the ship's approach; the return to the creature's evolution; the jumps in the narrative; etc. It all paced well... but...

Thought number four: ... for me, an ignorant as far as episode one is concerned, most of what was happening was impossible to grasp. This didn't clamped the first story arc (the birth and evolution of the lizard thing), but it clamped the vessel approaching arc, since most of the dialog options depend on me knowing stuff about stuff and I don't know stuff about stuff. Tough luck: I slipped the angry girl a drink and everything went fine.

[+] I really enjoyed the lizard arc, that everything-around-me-destroyed-or-abandoned feel of it all, the feel of past epic events. The writing also impressed me for being solid and the story seems to be well thought.

[-] That title and that cover art*. Other than that, not much, really. The problem with me not being able to connect all the events in this intro is not the author's fault, as far as I can judge, but a result of me not having played the first part of this trilogy. Oh! I almost forgot: as an intro, it felt for me as ending in the wrong place.

So, how bad do I want to play the full-game?
I think that, more than wanting to play the full game, this Fang VS Claw intro (Really, what a title! Geezz...) made me want to play the first game. I also would like to know that this trilogy will see a fulfilling end. Ullmann obviously has a strong worthy story in his fingers. So this obviously scores high in the competition's wishes.

* And yes, I took this game last because the idea of playing something called Fang VS Claw, with that picture representing it, just pushed me away.