Half Life: Full Life Consequences
This fanfic is based on a game called Half-Life 2, and the author writes about the story's main character named John Freeman trying to save his brother Gordon Freeman (main character in Half-Life 2) from a "final boss" character. Throughout the story, we can tell that John Freeman's journey to rescue his brother is fraught with danger. Sometimes it seems the most simplistic "road blocks" if you will, are the most dangerous to John Freeman, as danger can be anywhere.
Even though this fanfic is humourously (and possibly intentionally) misspelled, the author has seemingly tried very hard to make their idea come to life in a mix of narrative and dialog. John Freeman's own speech is very convoluted and drawn-out, making us feel that, even though he has no time to find his brother, he has the time to come into conflict with various lifeforms throughout. The development is also quite a problem, as John Freeman, who has no real emotional development at all, is basically straight out of his office and thrown into a race to save his brother. Overall though, it was quite a whimsical and funny piece riddled with cliches. As well as this, the grammatical and spelling errors seem to almost uplift it to a state where it might've been badly written intentionally to gain notoriety through the site. That must have worked, as it has spawned a youtube creation of the same name and based on his series, here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHxyZaZlaOs
Wangan Star
Wangan Star
(Note: Last names come first in Japanese)
This fanfic is based off of the manga series 'Wangan Midnight' and the game series of the same name. The author writes about the main character Sasaki Jotaro and his journey to become a notorious racer of the Wangan route, or Bayshore route in english. Throughout the story, he is helped along in his 'quest' by his friends Inoue Shinya and Nakamura Ichigo, who each have their own vehicles they use to race. They are also challenged by many other racers along the Wangan to see who can control, or 'rule' this amazingly long stretch of highway.
Seemingly a homage to the old days of the Mid Night Club along the same Wangan in Japan, this story brings A LOT of the cars in the story to life. Excruciating detail is put into naming the vehicles and engines, telling me that the author knows a lot about cars in general. Also, seeing as they wrote this story, they must have a passion for racing, or they may just like the manga series. However, the story is very hard to follow in some places, and the repetition of the word 'screamed' becomes more tedious and boring the further on the story goes, which made me want to stop halfway through. Overall, the story was a wonderful, action-packed read. The author managed to not clog up the whole story with romance and 'fluff' as they sometimes call it, and their knowledge of cars helped to engage me in the car-centric storyline. Then again, being a car-centric storyline, it suffers from a very closed audience and the use of language in the story is grounds for immediate dislike from normal readers. I'd recommend it to car enthusiasts who understand the language used, and people who have read the manga series, and/or played the games.
Dogfight: Training The Experienced
Inspired by the game series "Ace Combat", the author of this fanfic writes about the main character Captain Mark "Puke" Greenfield, a pilot in the VFC-13 Saints which is most likely a team of airforce pilots stationed at their base in Nevada. He and his wingman Parker are putting a group of new marine and navy pilots, affectionately named "nuggets", out on a training flight. Mark and Parker are meant to be their aggressor pilots and flight leads for this flight, and it turns out that things up in the air are more difficult than they seem when looking from the ground.
The author does a good job describing each and every components in and around the jet and the base itself, even going so far as to word out the abbreviations given. Because of this, the story can be hard to follow if you hadn't been reading closely. The author also expands on the feelings of the pilots, showing that even when they're in the air concentrating on their flying, manoeuvering and shooting, their thoughts may sometimes go elsewhere. One example is when they are refuelling in mid-air, where Mark, Don (another aggressor pilot) and Parker are talking about how "It's a good lunch break to be on, but we never get any food." In this case, they're talking about their jets being "fed" fuel, while they get nothing to eat while on their "lunch break," showing that the simplest thing can mean a lot to a pilot. Other than the above, the use of simple sentences while the characters talk on the ground (I.E "How was the flight?" "Same as usual.") gives us insight into how lonely they are up in the air, which translates to their dealings on the ground. This just goes to show that they are at their most comfortable up in the air. Overall, apart from a few misplacement of letters and a few grammar mistakes, this story was excellently written, making full use of the radio chatter up in the air and the simple, albeit constantly repeated, sentence structure helping to speed up the spoken dialogue throughout.
Streets of Rage: The New Recruits
Based on the popular SEGA game series Streets of Rage, this fanfic centers around the 3 main characters in the first game: Axel Stone, Adam Hunter and Blaze Fielding. The author has stated that this story is a prologue to the first game, as it involves the three being recruited into the police force's new "Gang Unit," which deals with the increasing amounts of gang activity in the city. However, they don't use guns or cuffs like normal police officers, they use their fists to take down the criminals.
The fanfic has a lot of action, in the style of fight scenes and attention to detail in the case of attacks and the condition of the characters during these fight scenes. Also, we can tell that the two male characters are quite attracted to the female character (Blaze Fielding) through how they act around her, and how they treat her. She puts on a brave face however, and also quite enjoys the attention she garners from the two, saying that "It's okay, it's good for my self esteem." This makes her feel different from the traditional helpless and needy female character that currently fills up the Twilight series. Instead, she is portrayed as a "tough as nails," smart-talking, fist-fighting police officer, which is most likely seen as an empowering role for a woman. Overall, aside from minor yet repetitive grammar mistakes (like using they're instead of their) and little change in spoken dialogue, this fanfic makes up for all of that by taking full advantage of the premise and the situation to add in as much action as they could. This makes for an adrenaline-fuelled story, filled with fights and grisly detail for the real fans of the series.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7140300/1/Insert_Wandering_Kamikaze_Shrubs_Here
Insert Wandering Kamikaze Shrubs Here
Completely based on the indie game phenomenon known as Minecraft, this fanfic is about a group of people who call themselves the ACMSES (Anti-Cliche and Mary Sue Elimination Society), namely two members called Michael and Tash. They are playing Minecraft one night at the "Library" and as stories like this go, they come across a blatant Mary Sue called (a). (a) has installed herself into their server and has begun to wreak havoc by destroying their fort and rendering them relatively dead. (a) isn't the worst of their problems though, as their enemies from the "Society" begin to place themselves in their server. This whole catastrophe then culminates into a dramatic TNT explosion, which crashes the server and forcefully removes Michael and Tash's enemies, as well as themselves.
Full of wit, sarcasm and the occasional internet "meme," this work of fanfiction throws readers into a complicated series of events, which may utterly confuse most people. This fanfic also leaves readers unable to piece together who most of the characters were, namely the "Society" (however they do have an Author's Note at the beginning, which explains to readers that they can learn more about them if they read their other fanfics). Besides all that though, this is quite a well written piece of narrative. It does have some cliche word choices ("Yeah well my British instinct says that you need a cup of tea...") and missing punctuation in random places, which makes a few sentences seem quite clunky and overused. Also, this fanfic is not to be read by people who have never heard/played Minecraft before as a lot of the terminology and creatures, especially Creepers, come from the actual game itself. Overall, it's a rollickingly good read which keeps interest for a long time with its wordplay and internet lingo, plus the cliches allow us to understand and navigate through the narrative with ease.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7140300/1/Insert_Wandering_Kamikaze_Shrubs_Here
Insert Wandering Kamikaze Shrubs Here
Completely based on the indie game phenomenon known as Minecraft, this fanfic is about a group of people who call themselves the ACMSES (Anti-Cliche and Mary Sue Elimination Society), namely two members called Michael and Tash. They are playing Minecraft one night at the "Library" and as stories like this go, they come across a blatant Mary Sue called (a). (a) has installed herself into their server and has begun to wreak havoc by destroying their fort and rendering them relatively dead. (a) isn't the worst of their problems though, as their enemies from the "Society" begin to place themselves in their server. This whole catastrophe then culminates into a dramatic TNT explosion, which crashes the server and forcefully removes Michael and Tash's enemies, as well as themselves.
Full of wit, sarcasm and the occasional internet "meme," this work of fanfiction throws readers into a complicated series of events, which may utterly confuse most people. This fanfic also leaves readers unable to piece together who most of the characters were, namely the "Society" (however they do have an Author's Note at the beginning, which explains to readers that they can learn more about them if they read their other fanfics). Besides all that though, this is quite a well written piece of narrative. It does have some cliche word choices ("Yeah well my British instinct says that you need a cup of tea...") and missing punctuation in random places, which makes a few sentences seem quite clunky and overused. Also, this fanfic is not to be read by people who have never heard/played Minecraft before as a lot of the terminology and creatures, especially Creepers, come from the actual game itself. Overall, it's a rollickingly good read which keeps interest for a long time with its wordplay and internet lingo, plus the cliches allow us to understand and navigate through the narrative with ease.
Your reviews were in depth and descriptive, you really seemed to know the games you wrote about and your comments were productive.
ReplyDeleteChoice!Articulate reviews.
ReplyDelete