Nerdy Adventures: 27 October 2013

Crochet...

It was a productive crochet week this week! I finished the tiny ghost pattern by A Morning Cup of Jo and made up my own pattern for a baby Squirtle. Here are a few pictures. I even made a Pokeball to brighten up the pictures.

I'm not sure I'm 100% happy with the pattern yet. I think his shell is too big... what do you think? I'm planning to make another version with a slightly smaller head and a smaller shell before writing up the pattern. Still he's pretty cute for my first try :-)

Gaming...

I've been playing a lot of Pokemon X, in fact I am writing this in between Pokemon battles! I haven't been this engrossed in a Pokemon game since the days of Gold and Silver. The move to 3D graphics definitely makes a difference - the fully animated Pokemon have so much more personality in X and Y than they have ever had before. Even Pokemon that I used to think were weird looking (Mr Mime, Volbeat and Illumise for example) are endearing in the new games. A lot of the Pokemon designs just seem to make more sense in 3D. Plus it's adorable to watch your Eevee get ready to pounce at its opponent or giggle at Whismur falling over when it feints (so sad, yet so cute!). It's not all about the graphics of course. I like the addition of character customisation (although it's fairly limited) and the Super Training mode that lets you increase your team's base stats. If you're a fan of the series and are unsure of whether or not the latest version is worth your time, I'd definitely recommend it. It seems like a big step up from the Black and White games! If you're interested check out this review.

In contrast to Pokemon I've also been playing a bit of The Stanley Parable. This is a hard game to describe! It's getting a lot of hype at the moment so chances are you've already heard of it. The game is essentially a choose-your-own-adventure that could have been submitted as project in a communications course on subjectivity in gaming. The game offers an excellent demo on Steam that gives a very good idea of what it's like to play that game (although you might not get that impression when you play it!!). Although the game isn't much to look at, the writing and voice acting are some of the best I've seen (heard?). I think my time with the game will be very short - I've "played" it for a few hours now and I don't think I'll be going back to it again. That said, I really enjoyed my time with it and it was definitely worth the price tag. The real value of the game is likely to come in talking about it afterwards. I'm currently waiting for the boyfriend to hurry up and play it so that we can DISCUSS!

Reading...

This week I've been reading Divergent by Veronica Roth. I've been going through a post apocalyptic sci-fi phase lately having just read MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood and Dust by Hugh Howey (both excellent books!) and I decided to keep it going with Divergent. The book has been out for a few years now and I believe the sequels have also been released. I've heard that the book is similar to the Hunger Games and I guess that's true. Both books have badass, teenage, female protagonists, both feature violence and young children and both have a future society based around factions. I liked both books equally, although I'm thinking that I will enjoy the sequels to Divergent more than I enjoyed Catching Fire and Mockingjay. Although I liked the book and will probably keep reading the trilogy, I think I'm done with post apocalyptic sci-fi for a while!

That's it for my nerdy adventures this week. Next week is going to be a busy one as Nanowrimo starts on Friday - hopefully I'll find time to keep working on some of my other crochet projects!

Hope you have a good week!

- Em