Friday, June 24, 2011

It's a Penny Arcade trifecta!

I've read a few reviews of F3AR this morning, and so I was interested to see what the guys at Penny Arcade had to say about it. It looks like an interesting concept, and I am looking forward to my chance to check it out. While reading Tycho's thoughts, I came across 3 different grammatical errors I would like to address here. Now, Penny Arcade posts generally take a lighter, conversational tone, but that doesn't mean they can completely throw out the rules of grammar.

First of all, Tycho left out a word. While in some cases, this is acceptable for the conversational tone of their work, in this case, it appears to be completely unintentional and interrupts the flow of the piece:
Each you conquer a level, you are allowed to play that level as “Paxton Fettel,” a kind of ravening superghost core to the fiction. (The word missing here is "time," as in "Each time you...")

Not too much further in the article - in the very next sentence, actually - he again omits a word. Though it does fit with the conversational tone, it fails to fit the parallel structure of a list.
He can hoist enemies on a cord of spectral blood, possess human hosts, and a couple other tricks.
Each of the actions listed begins with a verb except the last one. Taken on its own, this is an incomplete statement ("He can a couple other tricks"), necessitating the use of the verb do.

And finally, Tycho is the victim of one of the more common mistakes: tense shifting. He explains a situation in the present tense, then inexplicably switches to past tense.
[Expletive] Run is a four player race against a Wave of Mutilation that ends the round if it touched any member of your team (I edited the expletive out of the title - this is a family-friendly blog, after all).
The correct statement would be to have both of these verbs in the present tense. This is the same trick used in literary criticism - historical context is in past tense ("Shakespeare wrote"), but the internal narrative is present tense ("Romeo goes").

Source: http://www.penny-arcade.com/2011/6/24/enervator/

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

The E3 Edition, part 1

During E3, there are loads of announcements coming from all parts of the industry. This can be a lot to keep up with for any news outlet, and mistakes will happen. Case in point: the following was found in a follow-up article on the newly-announced title Fable: The Journey.

What about the Fable series' two other offensize components, shooting and melee?

Source:
http://www.joystiq.com/2011/06/08/fable-the-journey-preview-speak-and-spell/