What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Lives of Lichens’

LONDON: Way back in 1999, “Donkey Kong 64” was a genre-defining release for the Nintendo 64. It was the first 3D Donkey Kong game, a generation apart from the first time the gorilla appeared in computer games in 1981.

The return of “Donkey Kong” in this newly released high-definition title for the Switch, offers nothing as groundbreaking as some of his previous titles but is rather core fun for a new generation of younger players.

Indeed, it offers a rehashed, polished and enjoyable platformer for a console that is about to welcome its first major upgrade in the coming months.

At its essence, “Donkey Kong” is platformer ballet, requiring a combination of timing of directional jumps and a small variety of attacks to proceed. Set against the lush backdrop of a tropical island that takes you across nine worlds: from jungles to ruins, underground mines to factories.

With jaunty music and a storyline no more complicated than trying to rescue stolen bananas, Donkey Kong is very much a pick and play rather than a brain teaser.

The game’s simple premise has a degree of depth within it when it comes to the search for perfection. Completing one setting straight through is one thing, doing it whilst collecting all jigsaw puzzle pieces, Donkey Kong letters and bananas is another entirely.

Charming music and enemies and allies alike make up part of your journey. Diddy Kong is your key ally, in single-player mode he rides on DK’s back providing that extra jump boost, in two-player mode he can take down enemies with his banana throws.

Puzzles are straightforward enough for the younger gamer (the game is advertised as age 3 and over) and the biggest frustration is how far you have to go back if you are felled by a bad guy or in a bottomless pit.

Racing minecarts or buccaneering rhinos offer more variety away from the core jumping and the end-of-level bosses are imaginative.

A nice new touch is the use of perspective, accessed through blasting barrels, to conquer more distant parts of each world. Something that is slightly harder on the handheld versus the console as your character vanishes into a miniature.

“El Salvador Could Be Like That” covers the bloody civil war in El Salvador from 1979-1986. The author draws from his vast trove of articles written from the frontlines, interspersing the reporting of facts with personal stories — some funny, some tragic. 

Broad in its sweep, focused on the daily lives of the war’s victims, the book is an important contribution to remembering the lessons and recording the history of this mostly forgotten conflict.

The book “puts the reader on the ground as a witness to the unfolding of a civil war, and provides the political and historical background that surfaces the underlying factors that led to the conflict.” 

It is both a memoir and a cautionary tale of the true costs of war as seen from the ground and in the lives of Salvadorans.