Is your Halloween feeling dead? Bring it back to life with these nifty purchases! By Angela Espinoza, Arts Editor ey, guess what’s happening next Monday. H: involves dressing up in wacky costumes, eating candy, and waking up the next day with a hangover and a class at 8:30 a.m., because life is merciless. That’s right, another Halloween is nearly upon us! Some years it feels like Halloween is the most hip happening shindig in town, while in others it feels barely noticed until the day of; to me, this year has been leaning more towards the latter. This is largely due to the fact that for the first time ever, I’ve discovered this thing called a life... which is not a computer, and is therefore weird to me. As a result, I’ve begun noticing little acts of fate that have somehow been forcing a Halloween atmosphere to commence. Thus I will share these things with you, because, with any luck, they’ll get you into the Halloween spirit, too! First up is a little PC/Mac game I purchased about two weeks ago called The Binding of Isaac. The game takes its name from a story in the Old Testament of the Bible, where God asks a dude named Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, because God was having a bad day I guess. In the game, which was a project between Edmund McMillen of Super Meat Boy (2010) and Florian Himsl, you play Isaac: a naked, terrified little boy who’s just escaped from his nutty, God-fearing mother. Whether it’s the fact that your tears are your ammo or that you occasionally fight the seven deadly sins, you’re going to realize this game is very dark. However, thanks to the amusing doodle-like artwork of McMillen and a fantastic array of randomly generated items, dungeons, and some crazy-as-hell villains, this game is far too much fun to really be freaked out by. Some villains spit blood at you, others pop out maggots that chase you, and there are freakish demon baby skull things with spines for necks — if that doesn’t scream Halloween, I don’t know what does (and it’s only five bucks, just saying). As you'll see on page (see page 5), I also recently purchased Batman: Arkham City, soon to be remembered as one of the biggest games of the year. I went all out and purchased a rather expensive collector’s edition that came with a soundtrack featuring “hit artists.” No indication of who these artists were was scary enough, but then I realized Batman belongs to Warner Bros., which owns Warner Music Group, which owns everything, so these artists couldn’t be too bad. What I got was an album that included Panic! At the Disco, Coheed and Cambria, Serj Tankian, and a number of others performing original pieces apparently about Batman. On the downside, these songs do the Dark Knight little justice. But hold on, with songs by the name of “Creature,” “Shadow on the Run,” and “Afterdark,” well now I’ve got me one heck of a pretty sweet Halloween playlist! The album (also titled Batman: Arkham City) is on YouTube by now; I suggest giving the track list a peek and getting yourselves a pretty sweet list of Halloween party songs. Some other purchases I made recently have initiated quite the demonic monkey on my back. These include the Steve Jackson-produced dice and card games Cthulhu Dice and Chez Cthulhu (2010), which really are insanely fun. The first volume of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman series has also finally found its way to my bookshelf, and if I’ve heard correctly, it’s deliciously creepy. So there you are: hopefully some of these things will find their way into your life, and provide you with a hellishly entertaining Halloween. And if you can get a couple of these things together, well then you’ ve just found yourself one kicking (albeit somewhat geeky) ‘Halloween party! “Bd. | just want to be Perfect Does Ellen Hopkins’ latest novel deserve its title? & By Livia Turnbull llen Hopkins is no stranger to the Bee of young adult fiction. Her books are often critically acclaimed, dealing with subjects such as drug abuse, rape, and suicide in a careful and respectable manner. However, these books are written in a way quite unlike most others in their genre: Hopkins’ books are written in free verse. One wouldn’t expect a novel filled with such heavy subject matter to be written this way, but it works surprisingly well. Hopkins’ latest novel, Perfect, which continues the free verse style, is a companion piece to her earlier novel, Jmpulse (2007). This time, however, instead of exploring themes like suicide and self-harm, Hopkins’ book focuses on what it means to truly be perfect. Perfect follows four high school seniors: Cara, Kendra, Sean, and Andre. We are first introduced to Cara: smart and athletic, she’s got a bright future ahead of her—at least, that’s what everyone else thinks. In reality Cara is just trying to please her overly demanding parents, while struggling to make sense of her twin brother’s suicide attempt. Kendra’s clearly a woman with more beauty than brains, as she desperately wants to become a model no matter what the toll is on her body. Sean is a baseball fanatic who wants to bat for Stanford’s baseball team, but he needs a little extra “help” to make that happen. Finally, Andre, an aspiring dancer, is torn between his parents’ plans for him and his own dreams. Much like Impulse, Perfect manages to - sum up the four main characters’ thoughts and feelings in few words. Unfortunately, while this technique can be effective with a single narrator, it doesn’t work well with four. Some stories, especially Cara’s, move far too quickly, while others feel unfinished. In the end, it’s difficult to tell if the characters have moved past their trials at all. Overall though, I recommend giving this book a read. The writing style is interesting and the characters are realistic, even if the pace of the novel does drag things down. If you have a few hours to kill, it might be worth giving Perfect—or any other of Hopkins’ novels—a try.