3 of my 4 books I ordered arrived yesterday; 1001 Movies You Must Watch Before You Die, 1001 Inventions That Changed The World, and 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die. Alas the book that I want to read first, Reality is Broken, hasn't arrived, but it has shipped so I expect it should be here today or tomorrow. In searching for books online (I ordered them from bookdepository.com) I also noticed they had a Graphic Novel section. I used to collect comics so I might get back into them. So I'll break this blog up into two sections.

1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die
Of the books above, I expect this is the one that would interest most of you. I haven't opened it to read the foreword yet or browse the list. As Foolz3h mentioned in the blog I wrote when I said I was ordering the book, video games are young. A list of 1001 video games is probably going to include some chaff. Of course the title of the book does not include the words 'best', 'greatest' or any other such synonym. So I expect the list to include a bunch of games that are not great to play by todays standards, but instead were pioneers in technology or gameplay mechanics. So before I open the book, I wanted to rack my brain for five or ten minutes, to see if I could come up with a quick list of what I expect to be in the book.

Space Invaders (no brainer seeing as it is on the cover)
Pong
Pitfall
Zork
Donkey Kong
Mario Bros
Super Mario Bros
River City Ransom
Ninja Gaiden
Wonder Boy
Sonic The Hedgehog
Contra
Super Mario World
Super Mario 64
Doom
Wolfenstein
Elite
Command & Conquer
Red Alert
Starcraft
Prince of Persia (original)
Afterburner (Arcade)
Lethal Enforcers (Arcade)
Time Crisis (Arcade)
Street Fighter 2 (at least one of the billion iterations)
Virtua Fighter
Tekken
Double Dragon
Streets of Rage 2
X-Men (Arcade)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Arcade)
Half-Life
Crysis
Gears of War
Uncharted
Planescape : Torment
Diablo
Prince of Persia : Sands of Time
Ico
Shadow of the Colossus
Unreal Tournament
Quake
Super Mario Galaxy
Wii Sports
Gran Turismo 4
Forza 2
Burnout Paradise

Ok, I can't be bothered to think of any more. I was pondering this list earlier and I'm sure I thought of more. Let's see how I did...

So there was no Pitfall, Mario Bros, River City Ransom, Wonderboy (but there is WB3), Contra (but some sequels), Wolfenstein (but Enemy Territory there), Afterburner, Lethal Enforcers, Streets of Rage 2, X-Men, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Ico, Unreal Tournament (but sequels are in there), Gran Turismo 4 (but preqeuls were in there).

That was a bit worse than I thought. I thought I might get a couple wrong. 14 wrong out of 47 guesses. No Streets or Rage 2? Where is the love for beat-em-ups? I noticed that Castle Crashers is on the list, which makes me glad. While browsing the alphabetical listing I saw a number of other titles that popped out that I can't believe I didn't remember. Like any Zelda game. Should be an interesting read. Heck, I might even download some emulators and give some of these old dogs a try. For the record, the first listing in the book is The Oregon Trail, and the last listing in the book is Alien Zombie Death (PSP).

Graphic Novels
As mentioned earlier, I decided to look at the graphic novel section of book depository when I went and visited. Many years ago, I used to collect comics. I was more in to the Marvel universe than anything else, and my main deviance from Marvel was to Dark Horse Comics for their Predator and Aliens series, as well as Spawn from Image, and a few others here and there. So I started doing so research, wondering whether maybe I would get into graphic novels.

So the other night, I went through my collection, and there are some I think I would re-read again. I don't think I want to get back into collecting comics on an ongoing basis; I'd rather have a story that is self-contained, rather than be left hanging each month until a new issue comes out. I've been doing some research by looking up "top 100 graphic novels" and such and found a few contenders. A common one is Maus, a depiction of Jew Concentration Camps using animals as the various races. Sounds like an interesting way of depciting these events. I expect I will stick with mostly Marvel just because I know the backstory for a lot of characters, but I also want to be open-minded.

I've considered The Marvel Zombie series, as this sounds like a bit of fun. I own The Infinity Crusade, but I'm considering getting The Infinity Gauntlet and perhaps The Infinity War (prequel series to Crusade) because I've read them before but don't own them. But there are also probably some good Batman ones, or from other stables I haven't considered. I haven't seen the movie, but everyone seems to think Watchmen is pretty good as well. If anyone has any suggestions let me know.

Spiderman : Carnage
So in flicking through my stack, I pulled out this story to get me back in the graphic novel/comic mood. To be fair, I think I was a little disappointed, though I suspect that may be because I am not used to the medium, and the medium itself imparts certain restrictions on the authors. They simply can't have a wall of text on one page to explain in depth how the character is feeling, something I'm used to in books, or something that can be easily expressed in movies or even video games.

Eddie Brock (better known as Venom) is in a cell with Cletus Kassidy, who is about to become Carnage. The suit that Eddie 'wears' to become Venom is actually an alien symbiote, and it comes to rescue him from his prison. In the escape, a residual amount of the symbiote is left behind, which bonds with Kassidy. While Venom has his own twisted sense of justice, Carnage is an out and out socipath who kills people just for fun. The symbiote provides him with superior strength similar to Venom, and can use the symbiote to create various shapes or weapons.

As mentioned earlier, I think I just need to shift my mindset to the fact that I'm reading comics, and it employs a different styIe For example, when Venom escapes the prison, a though bubble above Cletus Kassidys head indicates 'it's all over', but then a narrators panel sas 'No Cletus. It has only just begun!'. It seemed a little infantile at first. But I did find some of the writing effective, such as when Peter could not meet with Mary-Jane on time for a meal in the park. The narration went something like "The warmth had gone from their meal" -cut to picture of Mary-Janes face- "just as it had from her eyes". Sounds cliche but I found it effective.

The premise of the story was that Spiderman was not a match for Carnage, and needed help from the one person he never wanted to ask; Venom. While Venom hates Spiderman with a passion, he hates the idea of Cletus killing innocents even more. So Spiderman makes the hard choice of visiting Venom (who believes Spiderman dead, which happens outside of this storyline) and making him aware he is alive, so that he can elicit his help.

In places the information given seems to imply that the reader is a little dumb and can't figure things out for his/herself, and the feelings expressed and pretty basic one-dimensional, though I suspect again this is part of the medium. I have several Venom miniseries in my collection, though in doing research one blog indicated that most of these were rubbish, so I might be disappointed re-reading those. I've also got Maximum Carnage, which is another Carnage story that is much bigger than this one. Perhaps I'll pull out an Aliens or Predator story instead. Who knows, maybe more recent graphic novels have progressed in their storytelling methods, as Carnage is probably 15 years old.