VIDEO GAME: Murder by Numbers (2020)

Murder by Numbers Year: 2020 Rating: T Time Played: 35+ hours I haven't played many visual novel games, so it only figures that the first one I fully completed was also a nonogram (or picross) game. Murder by Numbers mixes the point-and-click adventure of a visual novel mystery with the blocky puzzle styling of nonograms. Divided into several "episodes," the player follows an actress who plays a detective on TV as she solves actual crimes with the help of a mysterious robot known as SCOUT. It's cute and the characters are pretty fun; however, there are a few things I would change. The most frustrating part about this game was how close I came to completing it 100%, only to find that I could not go back and find one puzzle I missed in one of the episodes and instead had to go through the entire episode again. Since the game gives you an update of how close to "S Rank" you are for each...
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BOOK: City Monster (2020)

City Monster Year: 2020 Author: Reza Farazmand Length: 112 pages I'm not sure when I started reading Reza Farazmand's Poorly Drawn Lines webcomic, but I have enjoyed his simple art style and humor for quite a while. City Monster is a graphic novel in this same, simple style with a plot that's quite a bit longer than the handful of panels he uses to tell a joke in his webcomic.  With all-new characters that don't regularly appear in the webcomic, it was nice to see something different than just another adventure with bird, mouse, turtle, and maybe Kevin. Even at 112 pages long, it's a quick read, and the ending is satisfying. Still, City Monster has a few minor flaws. Again, I love Reza's simple drawing style. However, there's a danger in making something look simple because some might think this book is appropriate for children. The occasional strong language might put some people off, mainly because it feels a little out of character and is...
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MOVIE: Knives Out (2019)

Knives OutYear: 2019Rating: PG-13Length: 130 minutes / 2.17 hours One of the most under-utilized genres to date, a good mystery movie is hard to find these days. This is partly why Knives Out (2019) is such a joy to watch. With plenty of twists and turns—and a murderer that subverts all the numerous tropes of the genre—this film is almost on the edge of self-aware satire of mysteries on the whole. This is partly why I found Knives Out to be delightfully amusing: the absurd nature of some of the genre’s most tightly-held motifs were playfully subverted for a couple of genuine laughs. Of course, part of the problem of Knives Out being so self-aware is that it is inevitably predictable at several key moments. Depending on how far ahead a viewer can deduce the solution to a critical piece of evidence might determine how predictable it is for them. I did appreciate that there was always one piece of the puzzle...
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BOOK: The Bridge (2018)

The Bridge Year: 2018 Author: Jim Frishkey Length: 240 pages ***THIS BOOK WAS RECEIVED FROM A GOODREADS GIVEAWAY*** I’ll be honest when I say that I entered the giveaway for this book based on the attractive cover and the premise. Unfortunately, the book delivered on neither (it says it’s a “mystery,” but it had none of that either). There are too many amateur mistakes in this book for me to take any of it seriously. Some of these mistakes are so frustrating that I can’t honestly recommend this book to anyone. It’s a bit sad because a story featuring the spawn of Hitler would probably be pretty interesting. Maybe these interesting stories were in the previous four books, but judging on the errors in this one, I don’t want to read them. Let’s start with the formatting: it’s a mess. Right-aligned text, odd gaps in the paragraphs, and even some text that’s gray for some reason. Moving on to the proofreading errors, they are sprinkled enough...
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