That's right. Sometimes you don't know how much you need something until it's taken away from you. And before anyone says anything, yes, ponies are a need.
New Ponies on the Block I've finished reading now. Wow...I didn't mean that to take about two weeks but err...Well, it should be nice and thorough, right? So! I have four Fan Fiction reviews and four film reviews for you over the coming amount of time that I can get these things out in. Yes...that makes sense. So, we have the works of Dilly Star, 51m0nn and something I wish I'd never read to come. Right now, we have Valor's volunteered work. Remember that week when Everypony was down for a day? I could only get at Valor's and he'd gotten more of a review done first. So, there's no real reason to the order I'm going to shove these out in. Without a further ado... [size=+1]New Ponies on the Block - By Valor8878[/size] Valor wants to make you laugh, that's the bottom line here. I think he might just succeed. Humans invading Equestria seems to be an oddly popular genre for pony Fan Fiction according to my intensive, 30-second research. Well, it makes a lot of sense to me. Sometimes people like to just see what happens when you throw things from one world into another one. We're experimenting because it's fun. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies for example wonders what it would be like for characters built for a story that centres around duologue while 'poking fun' at social norms and adds monsters. Why? Because the writer can. We've got the same thing here: what if people traversed the 4th wall? Sometimes we have it going from Fiction to our Reality. I recall hearing about a Fan Fic where the Mane 6 discover Four Chan for the first time. More often than not it's Humans invading Equestria. Either for self-insertion of some kind or just for the sheer hell of finding out what a foreign character would do in a world like that. To explore and maybe find a new side to the world we've only been watching up until this point. Even I'm in on this sort of thing. Sending in an outsider just to see what could happen is a speciality, if I do say so myself. Maybe more of a preference. Valor has, apparently, chosen to take the mickey out of such a premise. The story goes thus: Three...er...I'll reservedly call them 'misfits', have appeared in Equestria after an unexplained forest fire. They travelled from Earth to The Everfree Forest in billowing smoke only to find that they'd also transformed into colts along the way. How and why are two questions that Valor isn't really interested in answering right now. Instead, we're treated to Bruce, Kyle and Devin attempting to get a grip on what was going on, getting used to their new bodies and then figuring out a plan of action from there. Valor can rest easy that I found this to be an entertaining and daft story. It finds little things to poke fun at in the whole idea of human beings having to adapt to life in Ponyville. Things like walking on four legs or having to find new, pony-appropriate names for themselves only to settle on the most horrifying collection of handles I've ever read. 'Fishcord' sounds like a terrible new food from Norway. The odd thing here is that the comedy will come from the characters attempting (then failing) to appear as though they belong while having the other half revolve around the relationship between these three. Lots of gags hang from both Kyle and Bruce having a hatred for Devin too; a character that enjoys antagonising the other two. They're also, quite obviously, not very good at anything a pony is supposed to be able to do, such as Kyle failing to figure out how to land. Here, that's blown up a bit in proportion to make it sillier. I think it works, although it's not perfect. Some ponies might not be able to groove on the silliness of what's going on, possibly expecting something more than characters being grossed out about being naked or immature when having to look at each other's cutie marks. There aren't many crafted jokes where a situation or idea is set up then paid off later. Not to say that it has none but it seems to rely mainly on not taking itself or anything seriously. It's a mindset that makes flinging ponies with trees like their catapults obvious. Valor is having fun with the concept of messing with three characters by putting them out of their depth and I'm happy to let him do that. I found it fun to read as a result. Now we get back to the nitty-gritty grammar stuff as well as some picky-wicky structure malarkey. Firstly, it's not the quality of writing that lets Valor down as it's clear thought has gone into this. They all arrive standing up on two legs like they would have when human. Devin's lies are actually believable, if only because there's no reason to think otherwise. And the cannon characters seem quite close to what they're meant to be like. They don't have much of a role, sure, as they're not the focus of everything but their not wildly off in anyway. But it's obvious that if this had to pass through Aynine (our Fan Fiction Mod) when I first looked at it, she'd ask you to fix the numerous spelling and grammatical errors. I know it's a pain in the backside but presentation can turn people off when they come to read something. Not everyone, of course, but all the capitalisation issues or occasionally misspelt words undermine any interesting ideas going on. FiM Fiction seems less bothered about that, however. Or, so it would appear, anything that passes by their moderators. Anyway, back to Valor. The other thing I picked up on, especially about the beginning of the story, was the introduction of names. I always find it awkward when you read something like this: Two ponies approach each other in the street. "Happy Birthday, Bill!" said one pony. "Thank you for remembering, Jeff." said the other pony. "That's OK, Bill. Oh look! Here comes Bob!" Said Jeff. Now, we've introduced what each characters called rather quickly in my exaggerated example. It just doesn't sit right on the tongue. As you can guess, these two are familiar with each other and the third approaching pony. Because of this information, naming each other in their sentences is overkill. You tend to do that when you wish to exert a degree of emphasis (like telling someone off) or make it clear who your talking to. Since they're only talking to each other, the extra emphasis sounds weird. They know who their sentence was intended for because no-one else is present in this conversation. Natural speech doesn't sound like that usually. It tends to be better to do this: Two ponies, named Bill and Jeff, approach each other in the street. "Happy Birthday!" cries Jeff. "Thank you for remembering." said Bill, blushing. "That's OK Bill." Jeff said. His eyes are drawn away. "Oh look! Here comes Bob!" Right. Now the dialogue sounds natural and attempting to name each character doesn't get in the way unless necessary. We need to name Bob to make clear who is approaching. Make sense? Ask me if it doesn't. Another thing I could think of was a little lapse in logic in regards to why the newly-dubbed Scales Honestly (Kyle (took a bit of time to figure that one out)) was incapable of stopping. Something about having a panic attack, I think. If that's the case, rather than Aquiarius just making fun of Scales, a little more explanation of why he can't stop might help. There doesn't appear to be a reason why. Something about a fear of crashing maybe? It just doesn't quite make sense... Lastly, and I seem to keep on muttering on about this, detail on locations is important. Just a tiny bit more. It's there, it's just might not be there enough. Just to set the mood and to make picturing most of the scene better. Little details can add slants to a paragraph such as what other ponies are doing in the background or even the level of cleanliness of a room. For example, how about when Twilight is searching the library for anything relating to smoke. The mess or lack of mess gives us information about the level of single-mindedness Twilight is giving the task. Twilight seems to have shown at least a small amount of obsessiveness about her research when it's called upon so showing that she's just piling books around her that don't contain what she needs shows how absorbed she is in finding the answer. If the tables are heaving and the floor littered with piles of the half-open volumes, then it lends to explaining Twilight's exacerbated mood that little more effectively. Little other things like this could add bits of colour here and there. How is up to you and what kind of air you want for your scene. But these are all fixable. Annoyingly, Valor has probably already fixed them as I write. After receiving a short message from me before this went up containing the first draft of this review, he has gone and began to fix things early. Once complete, I may have to revisit the polished version of the story along with War Never Changes. Apparently, Ciphered has added some more to it. Furthermore, he's planning season 2 of this. No idea what that'll be like but I see myself coming back to these three...idiots in the future. Presumably called "Still Rather Green Ponies in the Town". To sum up, this is a story that's happily clowning around for your amusement. It's got some thought into logistics of what it's like to infiltrate this world but it generally plays with the concepts rather than analyses them. It's a fun adventure of three characters that are designed to find Devin annoying, which doesn't seem hard. And Devin's designed to find every way of irritating the other two as much as possible. Jokes are largely these three uncomfortably get around the problems they are faced with. It's daft but fun, I thought and that's the sort of thing I can get behind. Go look if your looking for something to unwind with between larger, serious stories, me-thinks.
Polychromatic Funk Monkey All right. Let's look at something that's been sitting quietly somewhere...hmm.... [size=+1]Polychomatic Funk Monkey[/size] Now that's a title! Are you bored of Minesweeper? Have you filled up the score board on that little pinball game Windows XP has? Are you looking into a multiplayer version of Solitaire to liven things up? Are you growing ever more weary after realising that Paint brings you no greater joy than re-re-re-re-organising your desktop icons in order of usefulness, actual coolness percentage, file size, resemblance in relative to each other, resemblance to Jeremy Clarkson, tessellation potential, success in using them in a puppet show, proximity of the development team to Swindon, England and flavour? What I'm trying to ask is whether your bored of the tiny games that come with Windows or not. Because Funk Monkey feels like one of them, but a whole lot better. Polychromatic Funk Monkey is a very simple platformer game that has procrastination written all over it. The idea is simple: your a small white block with a monkey face on it and you have to collect small glowing circles the game calls 'telefunkers'. Well, I say have to but it's more of a kind suggestion. These are all dotted around the map and you get to them by building platforms for you to bounce up towards your preferred goal of either these circles or just seeing how high you can go. The circles happen to allow you to carry a greater number of the multicoloured blocks that you can pick up, make follow you, then place where you like. However, you have to take into consideration that you can only place a colourful blob of matter directly in front of you or in the position your currently standing in and can only jump one block high. Maybe two with momentum. Any of the white and black blocks can't be moved no matter how much you pout. This is the challenge, fillies and gentlecolts. You have to get around these limitations to reach your goal of either greater carrying capacity or making a colourful smiley face. To help you collect blocks or help you get around the map faster, the telefunker-things are assigned to a number on the keyboard. Press that number and you get whisked back to that telefunker. The Alt key will take you back to the highest assigned telefunker automatically if your getting annoyed with the agony of choice. You can use this to help yourself out of tight spots or to go backtracking for blocks faster. It's vitally necessary for keeping your sanity. All of this is very, very simple to grasp. You'll be up and running within a minute. You'll probably be making some good progress in less than thirty seconds of the ten second tutorial. It's really simple to pick up and play Funk Monkey. The challenge comes from how you build all the flights of 2D stairs to get to the next telefunker. Or get high enough to finish that 'tasteful' image your spending your lunch break making. You can't jump through blocks so you will have to make a gap in the steps to hop through whenever you change direction. Usually because your heading towards a wall of white blocks or something. I like that the puzzle here is simple. It's repetitive, yes, but I found the simple act of figuring out the most efficient route through the floating maze oddly more addictive than Solitaire. Also, I'm not sure whether there is an end point either. You can collect up to 10 telefunkers for each number on the keyboard, yes, but the map appears to go on forever. Your unlikely to run out of room on this game. There's little chance for experimentation so people thinking that you can simply to what they tend to do in Minecraft and build a tower under themselves will run short of that plan quickly. The to-ing and fro-ing to make such a tower puts the plan at a stand still as you'd have to get off the top to get get more blocks. Stairs are the only way to go and you'll find that out soon enough. Building a straight path is very difficult too. To do so need lots of blocks floating in the general area of the area you want to build. You then awkwardly figure it out from there. It's awkward to say the least. Sometimes building straight is the best plan but the game makes the process sloppy. I could only manage it by throwing myself off a ledge and placing blocks mid fall. The game will also come down hard on mistakes too. While accidentally falling off your construction is remedied in a nanosecond with a tap of the Alt key, unintentionally blocking a path to wherever your going is met with a the harsh punishment of a detour. The Funk Monkey cannot pick up blocks directly above it, meaning that it is possible to block of routes through to your destination. To fix this, you must now build your staircase in another direction to get around the blockage. This means you have to undo all your handywork before moving it where it's now needed. The sound seems to be OK. The music appears to be a band jamming and, to me, it's inoffensive. You can easily tune this stuff out if you like, it doesn't really detract from the experience but does lend a lightly silly tone. What might get up the noses of players are the sound effects. You get dings for every block you pick up and place and a bass note every time the Funk Monkey jumps. And it's the same note every time. That can and probably will get annoying if I were to play the game for about an hour. It should be fine in ten minute jaunts though. Your sanity will be thankful for the mute buttons through. What I do like is how it will save the progress of the last game you played. Got bored or your Boss/Teacher come in the room? Hit escape twice and your game is saved. When your ready to play again, you can carry on from the point you left of. Handy if you feel like going for all the telefunkers. You only get one save, however. I'd accept such a thing from something like Pokemon Yellow, not a program that has a share of 650GB of hard drive space to roam around in. I don't mind, use as much as you need. Otherwise, I might have that horrible situation where I hit 'New Game' rather than 'Continue'. That's effort and productivity going down the drain there. However, complaining can only get you so far as the best part of the game is that it's free. You pay nothing and you get a nice alternative to Spider Solitaire. Unlike Spider Solitaire, you'll actually want to play this. It's a little like Super Mario Bros. meets Minecraft and you can pick it up for nothing. It's hard to make complaints stick after a sentence like that. Procrastination has gotten that much easier.
The Leather Bound Book Competition I was going to make this into a video but it wasn't really working.... [size=+1]The Leather Bound Book Review Competition[/size] Howdili-Doodili-Doo! Happy Birthday Everypony.com! Now, to get us off with a bang I thought I'd run a little game and a chance to pick up some swag. So, I sat down and spent all of...ooo...3 pictoseconds thinking of what I could get you to do. So, rather predictably, we're asking you to write us a review and we'll pick the best of the bunch to get a prize! Your prize, filies and gentlecolts, is a gift code to claim your very own Humble Bundle. This can be claimed for at any time you like and you can run these games on Windows, Mac and Linux. Even your Andriod phone. No complaints about stuff not working. What you'll get inside is: Canabalt, Zen Bound 2, Cogs and Avadon: The Black Fortress. Now, the review can be about litteraly anything. You can review a game, a brick, a Fan Fic, one of the plushies someone was making somewhere, the sandwhich you just ate, a book, a film, the song the birds are singing outside your window or maybe even your own foot. We really don't mind what you do or how long the review is. However, we do have categories to help you drum up and idea for your review. There's 11 categories to shoot for and they're kinda set out like XBox Achivements to make them nice and simple. So in no particular order:
Competition Categories [size=+1]Seeing Everything with a Film Grain[/size]: This is for all film reviews that get sent in, whether they came out on DVD, video, thought-waves or still being shown in cinemas right now. There's no limit on the movie you can look at too! Dig up a forgotten classic or tell us your opinions on what's new. Trailers are allowed if your so inclined. [size=+1]Square Eyes[/size]: You will gain this honour with a review on TV shows. Anything you can find or thinks worth talking about. Supernatural better than Torchwood? After a certain point perhaps but thats not my place to talk about that here. And no, doesn't matter if you didn't actually watch a Television to see what your reviewing. It only needs to have appeared on a television at some point in it's life. [size=+1]The Anti-Noob[/size]: Have you noticed a pattern emerging? You think you can guess the next one? Nope, it's Games. You can review demos here too if a full game and a decent review seem like a daunting task but I think you'll get a good amount of time to get entries in. Anyway, platform isn't important and the older or more obscure games are more than welcome. [size=+1]Twilight Would Be Proud[/size]: For reviewing services to Fan Fiction and Reading Material of all kinds, we have a nice pile of games waiting for you. Oh yes! Your going to carry on reading? All right, we'll leave them here. [size=+1]Net Surfer[/size]: It's very simple: like a miner - shifting through code, hyperlinks and idiotic Youtube comments - you have delved into the World Wide Web and brought back tales of websites and internet videos that will dazzle the mind. Then given some sort of verditc on them. Easy enough. [size=+1]Audacity with Rythemosity[/size]: This'll be interesting as myself, and I'm sure JJWCool, no absolutely nothing about music. Sure, we listen to music but we're better at narrative techniques and....what...whatever JJ does. Anyway, we're prepared to hand over a prize for the best, zen-like explanation of what's best to go tune into out there.
More Competition Categories [size=+1]Esteemed Professor[/size]: Simply put, we'll give a prize based entirely on how well you can make yourself sound like your a seasoned expert in whatever your talking about. Can you throw around words like "epistolary" or "GUI" or "gelatinous" with some level of reassurance that you know everything about the subject? Then we have a little something for you. [size=+1]Out-foxer[/size]: I'm going to live to regret this...Yes, I've also got Fan Fics and a few bits and pieces that haven't every really been looked at before. They're scattered around a bit, though and relatively short. Which is good for the purposes of this competition, I suppose. Just a chapter or two, won't take you long and you've got about...what? Four possible, hare-brained and personally-written pieces of Prose to work with. Good luck and pull no punches. I'll be judging this one personally. [size=+1]Doing that voodoo, that JJ does so well[/size]: JJWCool gets to take his pick of every single review of anything with a Horror theme. Him and his best pal, Slendy, will pick out a favourite for an extra prize. [size=+1]Agreed Favourite[/size]: All the currently active and regularly posting reviewers on The Leather Bound Book (so, me and JJ, so far) have looked over every single review and have decided to award a prize to our favourite one. It's the one that we think is 100% fantasticness. [size=+1]Everypony's Favourite[/size]: All right. This needs a little explainin'. Every review we recieve, we'll display in a new thread. Here, other ponies can read what's been sent in so far and then vote on their favourites. Simple! You can vote by sending me a Private Message with 'Vote' in the title and putting the reviewing pony's name on it, somewhere. You can also vote via e-mail in the same fashion. Vote in the title and make sure to put the name of the pony your voting for. Unless your voting for imaginary ponies. In which case, I agree, they should win as well.
That takes us up to 11 categories. A little more idotic rambling before I let you go like a bull in a china shop...Hmm...Gives me an idea... [size=+1]A few notes[/size] - So that you can have plenty of time to read stuff, play stuff or watch stuff and have enough time to write a decent review, we're giving you 3 weeks from today. Ehyup! That should be just about long enough. - Like I said; length is of no consern but we also don't mind being sent videos or audio files if that's the way, uh huh, uh huh, you like it. Uh huh, uh huh. - While anything is fair game, please make sure that you keep this kid freindly. I'm not expecting wall to wall cursing and nudity but it's best to make sure. I wouldn't be surprised if we get a Cupcakes review somewhere... Lastly, a few tips to help: - Tearing into something is really easy but it's much more useful and difficult to give praise and to suggest ways of improving. - You should be looking for a happy medium between information and entertainment. Information is what the reader came for but the entertainment keeps them awake. - Backing up declarations and opinions with solid reasons tends to be a good way of avoiding people arguing with your reviews verdict. OK. I'm going to slink back to my little hovel and play some more Rayman Origins. I'll still be posting reviews and I'll still be about for questions and stuff. Good luck. [size=+1]To enter, send your reviews to me via PM or send them to leatherboundbookreviews@gmail.com Entries should all be in by midnight on the 15th of April. Goooooooood luuuuuuuuck![/size]
Haha, count me in on this. This'll be my first review and it sounds like a blast to be honest. I think I'll try to review Earthbound and Mother 3 and compare and contrast the two highlighting key differences between the two games specifying how it improved the game or softened the experience overall. It'll take a bit though, still hammering my way through Mother 3.
I'm pulling my hat out of thing already haha. I tried typing it out and found myself making too many loose ends and running off topic every two seconds. It'd be fun but it's not my things. Was worth a try though.
I'll be typing a review for Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Dead Rising, and Desperation by Stephen King. UMvC3 will be Video, possibly Dead Rising as well.
Doing a review is something I've always wanted to do. Maybe I might just get into this. Gotta find what to review though.
Well, a brain wave has entered the vast expanses of my cranium (haha), and I think, considering I am purchasing one very soon, I will be reviewing the Penny Nickel Skateboard. The most successful way of reviewing an object of sport is by showing a video, no? I think it'd be enjoyable and entertaining to piece together a video review for this one. Complete with bails and my sarcastic sense of humour. Be ready.
Oooo....Give me an idea for a future review too...hmm.... Anyway, that sounds really cool. Go for it! Don't hurt yourself.
Reviews can come in the form of any medium, hmm? Then I do believe it's time I get my video editing tools out...
