The Sword is not Broken – Review

November 14, 2015November 14, 2015 / somhodie / 1 Comment

Not many spoilers ahead but still approach with caution

So I have a problem. I’ve recently signed up to GOG.com and now I receive newsletters of the Sales. The last one I received was about sales to celebrate the Fall or whatever, and I bought the whole series of Broken Sword! This is getting serious…..

So as I had already mentioned on the previous:

https://obscurasomnia.wordpress.com/2015/09/24/geek-alert/

I’m not that big fan of Broken Sword. I appreciate but didn’t love them. Now that I have the complete series, I’m hoping to change my mind.

Against my typical behavior I started from the last release of the series:

The Serpent’s Curse

We meet again the American George Stobbart and the pretty Frenchwoman Nico Collard. I remember in the past, not feeling a connection with these characters, and on this game this wasn’t an exception. I actually enjoyed Nico more, but George stayed bland.

We start with a murder and a theft of a painting called the Le Malediccio. As we can imagine, the painting turns out to be more than expected, with an obscure dark significance.

Graphics

I love cartoonish games! Off with 3D and all of those high tech stuff. Bring me back 2D and cartoons!

All of the places that we get to visit are beautifully colorful.I loved it.

Gameplay

It is a basic point of click, which is fine by me. That’s how I like that. None of those stuff of keyboard + mouse. I’m an old-fashioned gal.

Puzzles

I found them easy. But that’s just something that I noticing in recent games. It appears that developers don’t want the gamers to stay stuck for long. In this game, we have complete hints. They appear in a style that I was already used to with UHS hints (not sure if you know this), and are only used if we wish too. But still, too damn easy.

Also, at any time George explains us what we need to do by speaking with himself or Nico. We can do no wrong. We can’t go to a place before the games wants us to. We can’t do an action before we are supposed to do. We are merely a pawn in this game.

Story

It felt like another Broken Sword game to me, from what I recall. It seems that it all ends up in using a map or a painting to solve the quest. We just need to follow the leads there. Which is fine. Just not surprising. I found the whole story about the Agnostics and the Dominicans extremely interesting and I ended up googling it to understand if it was really true. It’s great that it is.

All in all

I really enjoyed the game. I wasn’t expecting to like it that much. I loved the pace of the game, the dialogues, the switching from Nico to George and the re- encounter of familiar faces ( Yes Goat, this is with you) and places (Nico’s apartment). Really surprising for them to do a game like this in this day and age. Nowadays it seems that everything needs to be over the top and this one seems just about right.

I’ll be playing the rest of the Broken Swords in due time.

The Joys of Motherhood Part 5

November 13, 2015November 11, 2015 / somhodie / 3 Comments

Sometimes my kid makes me regret trying to establish her rules.

We were all gathered round at the table having dinner, and my daughter starts to call me:

Mum? Mummmmmm? Mummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm?

I tried to finish chewing the food that I had in my mouth, while she continued in a crescendo:

Mum! Mum! Mum! I need you! Mummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm?

I finally swallow what I was trying to chew, turn around to her and ask: What?!

MUM! You shouldn’t speak when your mouth is full. It’s a rule.

Sharp Objects, a Tale of Horror and Pain

November 13, 2015November 12, 2015 / somhodie / Leave a comment

After reading Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, which I truly loved, I wanted to read more from this author. so I’ve bought and just finished reading Sharp Objects, her debut novel.

In Sharp Objects we follow Camille Preaker, a reporter for a small Newspaper, going back to her hometown, because of the murders of one little girl and the disappearance of another. As normal, the plot then thickens and we have our own protagonist surrounded by evil.

Everything about the book is intriguing. I found myself totally absorbed in the perverted town and the portrait of the characters, while being scared shit of the adolescents of the book.

While in Gone Girl, I had no idea whatsoever of the plot twist and was completely taken by surprise ( I tried really hard and managed to succeed in not hearing anything about the book or movie), on Sharp Objects, I figured it out since the early stages that the killer had to be one or the other. It didn’t affect in any way the thrilling experience that is reading this book.

Gillian Flynn manages to write about a character that is painfully broken in any way possible but still so strong that lived and survived her nightmarish childhood. To escape, Camille turns her body into a living narrative of the words that haunt her daily. For me, this was really well explained throughoutthe book. I could feel that need to write on her coming at certain parts of the story, slowly whispering in the narrative.

Camille’s beauty is contrasted perfectly with her imperfect body, carved by her dark pain.

“Every time people said I was pretty, I thought of everything ugly swarming beneath my clothes.”

I’m not sure what the author has against women in general, since this book and Gone Girl targeted psychotic and twisted women, but please keep on coming.

I’m going to buy Dark Places, but first I need to breathe for a while. Sharp Objects was complex, terrifying and totally absorbing. I need to stand back, read Maeve Binchy for a while, which I love….and doesn’t portrait scary dark characters.

“Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom. I have known so many sick women all my life. Women with chronic pain, with ever-gestating diseases. Women with conditions. Men, sure, they have bone snaps, they have backaches, they have a surgery or two, yank out a tonsil, insert a shiny plastic hip. Women get consumed.”

Mood of the day

November 13, 2015November 12, 2015 / somhodie / Leave a comment

The snow glows white on the mountain tonight,
not a footprint to be seen.
A kingdom of isolation and it looks like I’m the queen.
The wind is howling like this swirling storm inside.
Couldn’t keep it in, Heaven knows I tried.

Don’t let them in, don’t let them see.
Be the good girl you always have to be.
Conceal, don’t feel, don’t let them know.
Well, now they know!

Let it go, let it go!
Can’t hold it back any more.
Let it go, let it go!
Turn away and slam the door.
I don’t care what they’re going to say.
Let the storm rage on.
The cold never bothered me anyway.

It’s funny how some distance,
makes everything seem small.
And the fears that once controlled me, can’t get to me at all
It’s time to see what I can do,
to test the limits and break through.
No right, no wrong, no rules for me.
I’m free!

Let it go, let it go.
I am one with the wind and sky.
Let it go, let it go.
You’ll never see me cry.
Here I’ll stand, and here I’ll stay.
Let the storm rage on.

My power flurries through the air into the ground.
My soul is spiraling in frozen fractals all around
And one thought crystallizes like an icy blast
I’m never going back; the past is in the past!

Let it go, let it go.
And I’ll rise like the break of dawn.
Let it go, let it go
That perfect girl is gone
Here I stand, in the light of day.

Let the storm rage on!
The cold never bothered me anyway…

Blogging 101 Day 9 or Love is like a Taylor Swift song

November 12, 2015 / somhodie / 7 Comments

Today’s assignment: write a post that builds on one of the comments you left yesterday. Don’t forget to link to the other blog!

Yestesday I left a coment on this sweet post from this lovely blog:

http://acookingpotandtwistedtales.com/2015/11/11/15-years-later/

It was such a simple comment but it was heartfelt. Why did I chose this one to be the comment I want to write a post about?

It actually reminded me of a conversation that I had recently with a friend of mine… about THE ONES. You know…that one person in our life that made such an impression that we just know that we will always have a soft spot for them.

She had just been contacted by her THE ONE and she was afraid that it would hurt her boyfriend’s feelings to have coffee with him.

I don’t think that having coffee with THE ONE will necessarily make you jump onto his lap and leave your boyfriend, but I do understand where he might have issues. I think I would too.

I also have one THE ONE. I’m not quite sure whether my boyfriend has one though. I hope not. And if so, I would persuade him to befriend her once again. The power in THE ONE is actually what might have been and the idea that we remember of that person. Probably if we got along with them, we wouldn’t still be thinking What If.

Do I wonder? Do I think What if? I have to be honest. If I do it’s for a nano second. But I do have a soft spot for our story, but not him actually.

We had love at first time. I went to a concert to meet a guy and then I locked my eyes with this one, and I totally forgot anyone else. Literally. I remembered a year later that I went to that concert because I was supposed to meet the other one that turned out to be my THE ONE’s best friend. Really….I still feel bad for this. How on earth could I forget a person?!

It was the best of times. We were in so in love that is was disgusting. (Insert Taylor Swift’s Love Story music here)

We fell apart because I went to university far away and as he was older, he had his life already settled in his home town. I was young and didn’t understand why he just couldn’t be with me all the time.

We parted ways and I didn’t forget about this feeling that I shared with him.

Along the years he always found me in the few social media that I use. I don’t really feel anything about that. That love was young, pure and sincere. But it was something that I can’t do anymore. I grew up and forgot how to believe in fairy tales (Again, Taylor Swift keeps running through my head with her “White Horse” lyrics. What’s up with me and Taylor today?!).

I would never trade a minute of my life with my boyfriend and the father of my daughter for something with him. Our love had its time and now it’s gone. We can’t go back and I can’t change who I am now. And who I am doesn’t love him anymore.

Mood of the day

November 12, 2015November 12, 2015 / somhodie / 3 Comments

When the tantrum is on me

November 11, 2015 / somhodie / 2 Comments

How to ruin a perfectly good day in 5 steps:

When you boyfriend gets home, instead of receiving him with a smile, give him a list of tasks to do, because you just want to do other stuff.
Complain that he is not following the tasks by the order that I gave him.
Yell at him when he is not stirring the food correctly. Even more when he is a gown up man who is perfectly capable of cooking…actually better than me.
Yell at my daughter when she starts a really small tantrum at bedtime.
Then proceed to yell at my boyfriend because he is the reason our kid is doing that tantrum

That pretty much does it. I feel like crap.

Mood of the day

November 11, 2015 / somhodie / 2 Comments

Walking around in Quinta da Regaleira, Sintra

November 10, 2015November 10, 2015 / somhodie / 7 Comments

Have you ever been to Sintra in Portugal? If you haven’t you don’t know what you are missing….For real.

The pictures that I’m sharing below were taken this weekend in Quinta da Regaleira.

Quinta da Regaleira is one of the many attraction in Sintra, along with Palácio da Pena, Seteais and Monserrate.

This is a beautiful place with a small palace, a nice chapel and enchanted gardens. The gardens have lakes, fountains, a huge well and grottos. There are several stories behind Quinta da Regaleira is praised also by the references to the Masons, the Knights Templar and Alchemy.

I apologize in advance for so many photos, but it’s really haunting.

Kindly Stop Stalking me

November 10, 2015November 10, 2015 / somhodie / 14 Comments

In response to Daily Post “Secret Admirers”

You return home to discover a huge flower bouquet waiting for you, no card attached. Who is it from — and why did they send it to you?

I’ve had my shares of secret admirer back in my time. They were more on the stalker side than the admiring actually.

I’ve had a man who “admired me” for several years leaving me poems, roses and displays of great love wherever I went. When I refused or asked for him not to do those things, he’d become rude and violent.

I’ve had one that used to stalk me by car. Wherever I would be, there he was, in his green car. One time he left me a love letter stating that I was a flower in his garden or something like that.

I had another one that used to call me at my parents’ landline and used to ask what I was wearing.

In a nutshell, if I discover a flower bouquet that wasn’t sent by my boyfriend, I would burn it without hesitance. I don’t care who sent it or where it came from. Please leave me alone.