1. DLP Flash Christmas Competition + Writing Marathon 2024!

    Competition topic: Magical New Year!

    Marathon goal? Crank out words!

    Check the marathon thread or competition thread for details.

    Dismiss Notice
  2. Hi there, Guest

    Only registered users can really experience what DLP has to offer. Many forums are only accessible if you have an account. Why don't you register?
    Dismiss Notice
  3. Introducing for your Perusing Pleasure

    New Thread Thursday
    +
    Shit Post Sunday

    READ ME
    Dismiss Notice

WIP The Gam3 by Ephemerality - Original Sci-Fi

Discussion in 'Almost Recommended' started by Betosa, Aug 23, 2015.

  1. Betosa

    Betosa Third Year

    Joined:
    Jan 29, 2011
    Messages:
    86
    Title: The Gam3
    Author: Ephemerality
    Genre: Adventure,Fantasy,Sci-Fi,Virtual Reality
    Fandom: Original Universe
    Published: 23/01/15
    Status: In Progress

    Summary:
    The Earth is changing. Aliens invaded, bringing with them social upheaval, advanced technology and an armada of peacekeeping robots. But Alan, a college student pursuing a now-useless degree, cares little about all of this. He has only one thing on his mind: the Game.
    A fully immersive virtual reality, the Game appears to be a major part of the invading civilization. And Alan can’t wait to play. Soon though, he realizes the Game is anything but simple, and the stakes are higher than he ever imagined.
    Link:http://royalroadl.com/fiction/1193


    This one is a pretty unique virtual reality fiction, a more science fiction setting than usual, which is an advantage because not many wrote similar things, this gave the author the opportunity to go to places I did not read about before.

    Honestly at first I was reluctant to start readying this, I think it was the summary that didn't sell it for me, it was too far-fetched? I didn't think that the author would succeed to not stray from my "guilty pleasure meter", but once I started I finished readying what I could in one sitting, and it was fun.

    For now the author published 23 chapters, each chapter approximately 6k words.
     
    Last edited: Aug 23, 2015
  2. Clerith

    Clerith Ahegao Emperor ~ Prestige ~ DLP Supporter

    Joined:
    Jan 7, 2008
    Messages:
    176
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Finland
    High Score:
    1645
    I have one thing to say.

    um um um Um Um Um UM UM UM <head explodes>

    The protagonist starts roughly 80% of his sentences with "Um", with a good amount of "Oh" thrown in as well. It's incredibly annoying. Most displeasing dialgue I've read since Traingham's eternally stuttering Negi.

    All right, about the story itself. A massive, incredibly complicated universe within the game, and the mystery of the game itself is naturally accompanioned by massive infodumps. Kinda necessary, but also very much infodump.

    The protagonist is a normal guy. Completely average. He's lazy, foolish, a little stupid, and completely, utterly ignorant and out of his depth. He gets a special class and shows very high potential for protagonist specialness pretty quick, but he's still disappointingly normal nerd guy, awkward around girls, virgin, zero combat experience, lazy, who's really just been coasting through life... the only good thing about him that he's got some promising mercenary tendencies. He gets slightly better as the story progresses.

    The world is a melting pot of sci-fi in a vrmmorpg. Yeah, it's a unique setting. If you like sci-fi, you should like the setting.

    Still, the story has a lot of potential. The EU LCS finals are going on right now, yet I read this entire thing instead. It's gripping and pretty interesting.

    I hate the protagonist's dialgue, and he's a bit of an ignorant wimp, but that can change and has been changing. Still, the entertainment value is 4/5.
     
  3. disturbed27

    disturbed27 Professor

    Joined:
    Apr 8, 2010
    Messages:
    450
    Location:
    Limbo
    This was interesting. I found the world building to be super cool. I like how the character and his AI both honestly don't give a shit about politics or culture, and instead are just focused on becoming stronger. It's a good excuse to seep that kind of knowledge in through the story instead of massive info dumps. However info dumps about game mechanics and such are fairly common, but not usually super long. Honestly, I don't really mind infodumpy stories, so that's not a problem for me.

    The actual gaming aspects like classes, quests, leveling and skills are handled real well. The reason why the game is so important is a unique idea and I thought it was pretty cool, and it makes everything that's happening more important than some kid running around playing a game.

    I agree with Clerith, the MC didn't blow me away with his unique and charismatic personality, but I think this is a good thing. He's kind of an everyman protagonist (for nerds). I disagree about him being lazy, however. He specifically mentions that he used to just scrape by in life because he hadn't found anything he was passionate about, until he discovers the Game. In fact throughout the story he's the opposite of lazy, especially with Eve (his AI) to egg him on.

    This story is never boring. Shortly after his entry into the game the action begins and more than half the story is him fighting, and the other half is him preparing to. There are a couple scenes that read weird, but the author doesn't seem to get a lot of useful feedback so I'm not surprised. Most of the comments are of FFN quality. I plan on leaving constructive feedback in the future.

    The biggest problem I have with this story is minor, the update rate is kinda slow. He posts consistently, but only once, maybe twice a month. I blew through it real quick, and I'm hungry for more.

    4/5
     
    Last edited: Sep 18, 2015
  4. Styx0444

    Styx0444 Minister of Magic

    Joined:
    Feb 11, 2010
    Messages:
    1,217
    Location:
    Between here and there.
    It's a descent story. The worldbuilding has been, while not excellent, pretty interesting, and the most recent author's note implies he's going to get rid of the stupider bits. The overall plot has promise, and I'm really interested in seeing where this goes.

    The constant 'Uh' and 'Umm's from the MC is kinda irritating, particularly when it stops making sense. At the current point of the story, the MC has explicitly been tutored for a week on how to talk without making a fool of himself, and yet this persists.

    Far more irritating, to me, is the constant use of 'anyways'. Every fucking character uses the word, with every fucking topic change, as though the author has no idea how to write conversation without using it. It would be far less irritating if it were only used by characters established to have a casual manner of speech, but it really is used by everyone, be they crimelord's kid, political official, ancient alien or emotionless AI.

    4/5
     
  5. Francis D. Saber

    Francis D. Saber Second Year

    Joined:
    Oct 29, 2008
    Messages:
    71
    A fun way to kill a few hours,

    4/5
     
  6. Glimmervoid

    Glimmervoid Professor

    Joined:
    Dec 21, 2011
    Messages:
    423
    Location:
    UK
    In a less spammy bump to this thread, the version of this story on the Game3 website has started updating again after a year long break. Haven't had a chance to read them yet but thought some people here might want to know.
     
  7. theronin

    theronin Order Member

    Joined:
    Jan 17, 2013
    Messages:
    867
    This has a ton of potential, and it was a fun read, but there are two things I think holding it back. The first is the main character's overdependence on the AI. There are way, way too many places where his thought process is just "hey AI, what should I do?" and then he does exactly what the AI told him. There's a feeling of lack of agency at times because it gets so bad.

    The 2nd is the repeated Indy-Harry style training montages. We are two full books in at this point, and all action just ground to a halt so that he could sit on a roof and train with his AI... The story's strong points are where he says "fuck it" and runs off to do something crazy (e.g. everything he did in the "tutorial" section, or when he went dungeon diving in the Abyss because he was planning on dying anyway). Instead we are being treated to repeated training scenes and "hacking" training that feels like an Indy-Harry "mindscape" at its worst.

    Overall, still a fun read, and a solid 4/5 despite the faults, because the world is so damn engaging.
     
  8. kwrobes

    kwrobes Squib

    Joined:
    Jul 24, 2014
    Messages:
    8
    I read this a couple months back and I got a bit annoyed since the author stopped writing and kept his patreon active. However, I found out not too long ago that Ephemerality's been working on getting the first books publish ready but I think he just updated last week. Honestly, the story pulled me in even with the artificially created mysteries and I think the author might have retconning some parts of the story because
    Omega is behind everything that has happened to Alan
     
  9. Absolutista

    Absolutista Fifth Year

    Joined:
    Jan 30, 2011
    Messages:
    141
    After almost a year of hiatus this was recently updated -- two new chapters at once. I am yet to read them so I can't comment on the quality/content but hopefully this means regular updates are in the works.
     
Loading...