First Impressions and Gameplay
I’ll try to keep it from having any spoilers, I’m actually on my second gameplay and the story branched much differently from my first gameplay. Note: I purposely tried to not read too much info about the online casino games. I avoided comments/reviews that mentioned anything that may reveal how this version of Cinderella differs from the Disney version (or any other versions that I'm aware of) because I wanted to see how well the story was written for myself. I mean yeah its pretty and all, but if the story can't live up to its part in the game, then I would personally feel the game is hollow and a waste of money. Plus, being the bookworm that I am, I'm also picky and I ain't afraid to admit that. Graphics Art Style: Eeepit..it moved! Usually, in visual novel games, the art they have there doesn't really move so they're usually still-pictures. Cinders, however, uses motion graphics with their gorgeous painting-like art styles, which I loved because it actually made me feel like I have a story book in front of me that's alive if that makes sense. If you look at it closely, the devs really put a lot of detail into them. From the dancing flames, to the moving rays of light, I found myself trying to absorb everything. I saw the characters background basically come to life so to speak, and even the characters themselves have some motion graphics going on like when their mouths moved and when their facial expression changed as they spoke. I wish I can show how gorgeous this scene was because it was brought to life with motion graphics in the game. It was magical to my inner child. While we're on the subject of characters animated by motion graphics, there was an incident that scared me a little, though some might find it as a nice touch. I know some may find this silly but while I was deciding on what choices to make, I at first thought that I was hallucinating from lack of sleep (I ended up playing until 5 am) because the evil step mothers glaring eyes were definitely aimed at Cinders, however, when I looked back up at her face, she was dead on staring daggers at me! So I stared at her longer, and I saw that her eyes indeed move side to side, which for me was a little unsettling.
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Book Title: The Third Secret
Author: Steve Berry After Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code’s success, it was inevitable that a spate of similar inside-the-secret-world-of-religion books would follow. What better target than the Catholic Church with all the rumours of centuries of hidden and arcane knowledge stored in the Vatican and only available to a few fusty priests buried in oaths of secrecy and years of devotion to the Church. Into such a mythic, apocryphal world, comes Monsignor Colin Michener, a former papal confidante and lead character of Steve Berry’s, The Third Secret. The Third Secret is based on the Catholic belief in the appearance of the Virgin Mary to three peasant children in the Portugese town of Fatima in 1917 and the notion that three secrets were revealed by the divine presence, only two of which were immediately published to the world. The book’s premise is that sinister forces have worked within the Church to prevent the release of the third secret. All of the usual suspects are here in this novel: the sinister megalomaniacal senior cleric eager to do anything to prevent renewal in the Catholic Church, the greedy priest whose allegiance to “manna” overwhelms any allegiance to his God and the holier-than-though hero powerbroker whose love for Mother Church will assure continuance of the Vatican. Most irritating of all is the mandatory priest (or in this case, Monsignor) who can’t keep his vow of celibacy. To me, much of society’s insistence that most Catholic priests can’t fulfill their vows of celibacy is symptomatic of a society that believes that unless we all bed-hop like some sort of clan of rabbits, then we can’t be normal. It is the religion of “modern” sexual worship insisting that no-one values celibacy and being damned angry if anyone is! That Berry has pandered to that childishness in this novel is quite sad. Naturally celibacy isn’t for everyone and this writer has never sought to be celibate himself, but to insist that people who embrace it as a lifestyle, cannot adhere to it, seems to me a type of arrogance and denial of a person’s right of freedom of worship. That the “good” former pope in this novel had always wanted to experience his love of a particular woman (even if platonic) and his equally good and leading character of Monsignor Michener had actually broken his vows of celibacy appears to be a criticism of the Catholic priesthood, most inappropriate in a novel. Had this book taken on a less tolerant religion or indeed fundamentalist elements of a religion, and parodied them in a like fashion, I doubt that Mr. Berry would be leading a peaceful life. The Third Secret is published in Australia by Random House. |
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