Season's Beatings

It's that time of year again, and with a mountain of wrapping still ahead of me it's fair to say there won't be time for posting stuff until the holiday hoo-hah is all done and dusted.  So while I indulge myself with festive femdom, have a safe and happy Christmas and New Year's, and I'll get back to the swing of things whenever there's something that needs affirmated via vague rambling.

Now Playing: TOO! MANY! GAMES!

 GAH!

The holidays are a tricky time of year for most people.  Of course, 'most people' have bills and families to worry about, and I don't, so you'd think I'd be content, but never let it be said that I can't find something to gripe about in even the best of circumstances.  For example: having so many genuinely good games to play, which is a problem because I like to keep updating this blog with thoughts on stuff like that, and I just don't have the time to give each individual title the write-up they deserve before it's no longer timely to do so (read: before it's bloody mid-January again).

So, I'm gonna limit my thoughts to a couple paragraphs for each game I've played since late November, going in descending order of how much time I've logged into them.  Skim at your leisure.

PHICEN Nina Armoury Post 3

It's been a while, but with more figures in the collection now I've got more Things Nina Can Hold, and more amateurish photos to prove it!

Now Playing: GIRL FIGHT

 Lowest Common Denominator: THE GAME

Developed by Kung Fu Factory.

Published by MicroProse/Majesco.

Released mid/late October 2013.

Formats:  Xbox 360 (Live Arcade download), PS3 (PS Store download)

Version played:  PS3

You know...I can usually come up with an at least somewhat clever introductory paragraph for these write-ups, but this time?  This time, I don't know what to say.  This is Girl Fight.  It's a game where girls fight.

...that's basically it.

Film Reaction: THOR: THE DARK WORLD

"Darling, keep me safe from the floating people with no legs!"

And so onwards rolls the Marvel juggernaut (uh, not the Marvel character Juggernaut, although that dude does roll on quite a bit) as, after Iron Man 3 basically killed summer for every other movie this year, the coming of winter brings with it the return of the mighty Odinson, he of magic hammer, enviable hair and crazy popular evil sibling.  While there's only been one prior Thor movie, the use of Loki as the main villain in The Avengers made that film quite organically the 'step 2' of the brothers' story, and leaves The Dark World with a very different starting point.  Even so, it still has to tie things up neatly from its predecessor and succeed in being a superior film, so, how did it do?  Read on, mortals.

Now Playing: BATMAN ARKHAM ORIGINS

 The continuing adventures of the World's Grumpiest Dad.

Released October 26, 2013

Developed by Warner Bros. Games Montreal.

Published by Warner Bros. Interactive.

Available on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii U (forthcoming).

Version played: PlayStation 3.

Oh, Batman.  No matter how much mud I sling your way for your deeply tiresome obsession with things being 'dark', your horrible fanbase full of the absolute worst of the internet, and your irritating ubiquity that threatens to blot out all other DC heroes like the shadow of Unicron falling o'er that poor bunch of non-Autobot robot people at the start of Transformers: The Movie, I still can't quit you.  You're like a really mangy cat.  For every bit of roadkill you drag into my house and throw up on my shoes (see The Dark Knight Rises or the current 'Zero Year' comics that are dedicating 12 whole months to telling us that, yes, his parents are still in fact dead) you still do something that makes me reconsider putting you up for adoption/throwing you in a dumpster far away from here.  In recent years, those 'somethings' have tended to be the Arkham Insert Noun games from Rocksteady, which were quite rightly praised for giving players the sensation of 'being' Batman to a tee and just being really good Metroid-y puzzle adventures with a great combat system everyone else has tried copying.

The combination of 'properly good game' and 'Batman is in it' propelled both Asylum and the bigger, more ambitious City to crazy sales numbers, which made it deeply unsurprising that Warners chose to outsource the engine and art assets to another developer so they could churn out a third game super-quick and franchise the hell out of the Arkham name.  Whether or not this works is, at time of writing, up in the air; the transparency of this game as a cash-grab, I think, will likely hurt its numbers a bit.  But that's not really what I'm here to talk about.  What matters, after all, is whether or not they threw the weird cosplaying ninja orphan baby out with the bathwater...

Comic Musing: AVENGERS: ENDLESS WARTIME

Gloomy cover, oft-gloomy book.

If there's one thing I cannot stand about comics, it's the term 'graphic novel'.

Oh, I get what it's meant to be used for, don't get me wrong: it's to illustrate the difference between the typical comic book series (with individual 20+ page installments delivered monthly, each serving as a chapter of a larger book) and a full story told in one single volume.  It's just that the term has been co-opted by snobbish types who can't bear to admit they once read "one of the funnybooks" and actually liked it.  "Oh yes, I have read that GRAPHIC NOVEL by mister Moore, it was rather enjoyable - what?  Comics?  Pfah, no, dear boy, I never read COMICS..."  Say that last sentence in your best Mark Kermode voice for maximum impact.

Anyway, that nitpick aside, graphic novels (grrrr) are something that Marvel has been kind of ignoring for the past few years.  DC, on the other hand, have had a pretty good grasp on what the format can do - namely attract a different audience, the kind of people who have a passing interest in the characters and worlds found in comics but lack the patience or obsessiveness to throw themselves into the deep end with an ongoing series.  Stuff like the Earth One Batman and Superman stories have been pretty successful examples of this, but with the debut effort of their new OGN line, Marvel are perhaps being more ambitious; instead of retelling the beginnings of one of their iconic heroes, writer Warren Ellis and artist Mike McKone choose to drop the reader into a very of-the-moment universe, with a team of already-established characters, and trust that you'll be able to keep up with the self-contained story.  Does the gamble work?  Read on to find out! (or to save you some time - yes, it does)

Further Adventures of Minimate Nina, part drei: Canada's Foulest Export

Somewhere in the verdant rainforests of, um, Alberta...

???: *sniffing noises*

Silent Interlude

Toy Review: G.I. Joe Retaliation Wave 3

However troubled the release of G.I. Joe Retaliation was, it's fair to say that Hasbro have had it even worse trying to make the accompanying toy line work out how they wanted it to.  First, the movie's rapid pre-production cycle left the figure designers with no time to make true movie-accurate figures for the initial wave, instead being forced to settle for a mix of unused concept art looks and some of their own ideas that had been festering for a while.  Then word got around about the reduced articulation among those first figures - a necessity to keep costs down, but realities like that rarely mean anything to a fanbase united by the internet.  (IMHO, when I finally picked up those first figs, I found more to my liking than most did...but I do wish a few could be remade somehow with better joints, Zartan especially)

And then, of course, the movie got delayed almost a full year, despite Hasbro having got their act together and prepared a sensible release pattern for the latter, more appealing figures.  Those figures were promptly recalled and forced to sit in warehouses for long, long months, until finally the movie's promo train got back on the go.  As a result, the old scheduling went out the window, and with Wave 3 Hasbro have just said 'screw it' and combined two waves of releases into one, hence a full 12 new figures all arriving at once.  Me being a completionist dork, I had to buy them all on principle - but honestly, with a few pet peeves here and there notwithstanding, this was absolutely worth it.

TEKKEN X STREET FIGHTER: Wish List

I swear, these designs for Kazuya and Xiaoyu are ALL WRONG.

Dear reader, I sit down to write this today with a growing case of Tekken withdrawals.

"But how can that be, Craig," you might ask, "when there have been so many new Tekken games recently?"  Well, it's true enough that we are currently experiencing no shortage of Iron Fist branding.  The problem is that not a lot of it is what I want Tekken to be.  

Tekken Card Tournament (which I never got around to reviewing in full) is an interesting idea with some very simple, solid gameplay mechanics that just about anyone can pick up in minutes, a dedicated support team tirelessly working to sort out any issues brought up by the user base, and if nothing else has spawned an actual physical Tekken trading card collection, which will doubtless plague my magpie mind for a good long while yet.  But, it's very worrying that so many balance issues and tech errors are still being found in a game that's been available to the public for so long, and the in-game card marketplace - which lets anyone with sufficient real-world funds simply buy the best possible cards for their character right from the get-go and gain a ludicrous advantage - basically takes what balance there is and snaps it over its knee like a Venom'd-up Bane (I stand by the assertion that limiting premium purchases to the random booster packs, while perhaps frustrating for some, would be a major improvement).  On a personal note, the need for a constant internet connection kinda leaves me in the cold - I can't really play it 'on the go' so having the game on my Kindle is a bit meaningless, and playing the browser version feels odd because it's much too simple a game for a whole laptop...

Then there's Tekken Revolution (which I've already covered) and that hasn't really held my attention either.  In fact, I don't think I've gone back to it even once since posting that write-up in June.  That's partly down to snobbery - Nina's still not in it so I don't care - but mostly, it's because the game feels hollow to me.  Revolution is 95% copied assets from TTT2, which I already own; the stuff that's genuinely new is limited to flashier effects and some inferior music choices.  Yes, I know, as I said in my post, that this is a Tekken game for other people who are a lot less obsessed with the series than I am...but the fact that it's now taken up the lion's share of the developers' attention has resulted in me feeling like I've been left out in the cold.  Also: vampire Lili?  Vampire...Lili?  The prosecution rests, your honour.

So I've been thinking a lot about the future, and that inevitably means the still-gestating Tekken X Street Fighter, which will counterbalance Capcom's effort by forcing those movement-challenged World Warriors into an arena where the 3rd dimension exists on more than just a cosmetic level. (hey Harada-san, free idea - shoot a commercial for the game which solely consists of Ryu fruitlessly firing hadoukens at Heihachi, who dodges every single one by moving one step to the side while Ryu's eyes boggle and he screams, "WHAT KIND OF WITCHCRAFT IS THIS S***?!") After playing a hell of a lot of TTT2 and tentatively dipping my toe into the freezing waters of SFXT again, I've come up with a bunch of points that, IMO, Namco would do well to keep in mind as they plan their next opus.  GET READY FOR THE NEXT BASELESS SPECULATION!!

Film Reaction: THE WOLVERINE

...was, is and forever will be my least favourite X-Man, but what the hell, I guess I'll watch his movies if they have ninjas in them.

The shower-destroying plumber strikes again!

(goddamn, did I really remember that joke from 3 years ago?)

So, yeah, another movie about Wolverine.  Sure, only the second one with his name in the title, but we can all agree that every X-Men film save for First Class (my favourite, unsurprisingly) has been about the rapid-healing serial-killing hairy butthole, can't we?  And, yeah, his push to the front has made him the most bankable element of the series produced by Fox, but at this point, what more is there to say about Logan?  How many more trials can we force Hugh Jackman to go through?  Exactly how much more silly can we make his haircut?

That plus some generally uninspiring trailers and posters (like the shouty business above) made this probably the least-exciting genre flick of the summer for me.  I mean, it didn't look offensively bad the way The Lone Ranger did (haven't seen it and don't intend to, before you ask) but at least that trainwreck seemed memorable.  Iron Man 3 had the Mandarin and the 'Iron Legion', Man of Steel had the rebooted scent of newness and promises of crazy bastard action, Pacific Rim had goddamn giant robots and goddamn giant monsters, Fast Six had whatever Fast Five had but also with a tank...what did The Wolverine bring to the table besides the same bloodless claw stabbing we'd been seeing for years?

Let's have a look under the skin, before it heals again.

G.I. JOE 3: Fantasy Casting

With the summer movie season having shot most of its load already, my attention is now heading onwards to the future, and the perilous promises of sequels.  While there's a lot to say about how 'sequel culture' has had a negative effect on blockbusters over the last decade-plus, and I happen to agree with a few of those issues in principle, I'm also the first person to start theorizing about where the characters of any given film will go next, often before I've even left the theater.  (maybe in a future post I'll try to explain my logic for having Matt Smith turn up as the Doctor in the next Fast & Furious movie to take Vin Gasoline and his mates down after one too many violations of the laws of space and time)  And G.I. Joe Retaliation was no exception.

That said, the amount of deck-clearing action going on in Retaliation (both from the much-publicized extermination of 90% of the Joe roster, give or take, plus the revenge-deaths taking their toll on Cobra command) has made me a lot more curious about the players for the next film rather than the actual plot.  Not that I don't think the story will matter - the joint realities of Cobra as a known evil entity in the public mind and the world's nations having been tricked into depleting their nuclear weapon stockpiles can and should open up lots of new and intriguing places for the series to go - but I often find that a Joe story (be it movie, comic or cartoon) is determined by the characters involved.  They're like Lego bricks: interchangable and capable of being constructed into any shape...but, if you wanna make a car, you still need 4 Lego wheels.  Wanna make a house?  Gonna need a door-brick.  Ditto, if your G.I. Joe story has Shipwreck and Cutter in it, there'd better be some sort of naval battle at some point, preferably involving the old W.H.A.L.E. hovercraft, because otherwise you're asking 2 sailors to be land-lubbers for the duration and...why?

That was a load of waffling, yes.  Click through for my dream casting session pick things.  THIS I COMMAND~!

Film Reaction: THE WORLD'S END

Only just realising now that this poster kinda spoils

the climax.  Woops.

Edgar Wright is a very odd filmmaker, but I can't help feel a little kinship with him, even (or perhaps because of) when his films seem to make strange tonal shifts and swerve off in strange directions.  Take Shaun of the Dead, which was promoted as (and likely sold to its distributors as) a spoof of the typical zombie apocalypse movie.  And that's what it is for 70% of its runtime, until towards the end it drops the spoof and simply is a typical zombie apocalypse movie, albeit a very good one.  Ditto for Hot Fuzz and buddy cop actioners.  There's a sense of Wright wanting to have his cake and eat it with these films, and honestly, if I was in his position, I'd wanna do the same thing.  Most 'comedy' directors settle for just being comedy directors, but Wright has aspirations and he's somehow managed to successfully duct-tape them to what outwardly look to be comedies.

That pattern continues with The World's End, which is a comedy about five friends getting really drunk, and also about robots which aren't robots.  Okay, this one is going to take a little longer to explain, so grab a pack of Jaffa Cakes* and settle in.

* - WOOT SPACED REFERENCE

PHICEN Nina Armoury Post 2

Thought about sitting on these pics a while longer, but it's a slow period right now, so here we go.

Just A Random Bunch of Faora GIFs

I think I mentioned in my Man of Steel review post that I was impressed with Antje Traue's performance as uberstrong henchlady Commander Faora-Ul (she ditched the 'Hu' in the film*), bu-u-ut that's really understating things.  Faora represents two conflicting fixations for me: the nerdy, over-analyzing part of my brain recognises the presence of a truly strong female character, who is allowed to be prominent and dangerous in a film largely dominated by male characters, and whose gender is never once brought up as an issue, which is fantastic; the more simplistic, primal side of me sees an exotic, beautiful actress with an all-kinds-of-sexy pan-European accent, somehow made even more intimidatingly unattainable thanks to power armour and a frickin' cape.  IS THIS LOVE????

So, here's a bunch of GIFs of the lady I found by tooling around on Tumblr and Google.  This is really more for my convenience than yours, yes.


* - Nerdy subnote: For some reason, it's long established in Superman comics that female children of Krypton take the full name of their father as their surname rather than just the hyphened suffix that serves as a family name - so while Kal-El is the son of Jor-El and you know they're related because they both have '-El' in the name, Kal's cousin Supergirl is named Lara Zor-El, with Zor-El being her dad's full name.  I really don't know why this is the case, other than maybe some anachronistic misogyny that never got retconned...and if that's actually the case, it makes sense for Faora to shorten her surname down to just '-Ul', as it sticks with the crazy man-hating persona of Faora in the comics.  Just a thought.

Now Playing: DEADPOOL

"THIS IS WHAT THE COVER LOOKS LIKE" - Craig

Released late June 2013.

Developed by High Moon Studios.

Published by Activision.

Available on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Version played: PlayStation 3.

The story of Deadpool (the character) is an interesting one.  Not the actual in-universe 'origin' or whatever, that's fairly bland stuff existing solely to drag another character out of some part of Wolverine's past to further capitalise on the pointy-haired Bananaman lookalike's popularity, and perhaps to copycat DC's Deathstroke The Terminator because why not.  Anyway, he quickly evolved from just being a dude with swords who dressed kinda like Spider-Man into a kind of walking in-joke, the court jester of the Marvel universe - a means for his writers to satirise the ludicrous conventions of the very same cape comics their co-workers were hawking to the masses.  DP wasn't a huge success but he had his niche, and survived for most of the 21st century living on the outer fringes of Marvel...and then all of a sudden, people started noticing him.  Part of that was no doubt down to the awful X-Men Origins: Wolverine, although how anyone could see what Fox did with the character there and think, "yes, this is a guy I would like to know more about!" is beyond my understanding.  Whatever the case, Marvel jumped at the opportunity and cashed in big on Deadpool, and even now he's got at least 2 montly ongoing comic series all about him, not to mention an enviable assortment of toys and other merch.  I have a Deadpool logo polo shirt, for god's sake.  Y'know, in case I feel like playing golf and need everyone there to know I support Deadpool.  At golf.

The story of Deadpool (the game) is a lot less interesting.  Marvel wanted to make more money out of the character so they got some devs to make a videogame about him.  And here it is.  I have been playing it.  And now I have been thinking about it.

PHICEN Nina Armoury Post 1

If I didn't make it quite clear in my review, I looooove this 1/6 Nina fig, but if there is one department she lacks in, it's weaponry.  Her Glocks are cool, but Nina Williams is a master assassin, a spy, a saboteur, possibly a catwalk model AND a ninja all at once, so she knows a few more ways to kill folk than just through the John Woo school of twin-pistol dove-exploding gun-kata.  Hence this post, first in what will probably be a series*, showing off Nina waving around other various implements of pain.

Oh, and before we start, if you don't check my Twitter feed regularly (what is wrong with you):

Knife & strapped sheath sourced from 1/6 General Hawk,

by Sideshow Collectibles' G.I. Joe line.

I think we can agree that all versions of Nina need a superfluous tiny dagger that never ever gets used strapped to one thigh, right?  And yeah, I kinda wish I could attach it further down her leg, but the top needs to hook onto the belt to stay in place.  Anyhoo, click through for more pics.

* - it'll run until I can't find more weapons to steal off my other figures...which doesn't look likely to happen soon.

Film Reaction/Now Playing Double Date: MAN OF STEEL

2 seconds later, the bungee cord tightened and Clark

went crashing back down.

While I usually try to get these reaction pieces up nice and quickly (well, quickly by my own hopeless standards, at any rate), Man of Steel - Warner Bros' latest attempt to prove they can do a successful superhero movie not about Batman - has been something of a stumbling block, thanks to a few factors.  I couldn't see it until a few days after its UK theater debut, I was still fumbling through an attempted review of Fast & Furious 6 (probably gonna ditch that one - short version, it was silly and great fun, see it if you haven't) and there was no shortage of reviews from more official sources all over the net, many hitting in advance of release, to the point where I figured anyone who knows me could already guess what my opinion would be.

Nevertheless, I do want to get some thoughts on it down here, because it's one of the more 'important' films this summer.  And in the name of variety, I'm also gonna throw in my 2 cents on the MoS tie-in game for iOS/Android devices after the film stuff.  Who says I'm not good to you?  (SPOILERS FOLLOW)

Now Playing: TEKKEN REVOLUTION

Wait, what?

Developed & published by Namco Bandai.

Released June 2013.

Digital download only.

Formats: PlayStation3 exclusive.

Ordinarily, the wait for the next Tekken game around here at chez Craig is one of the most prolonged, soul-sapping ventures through misery ever undertaken in the history of mankind, something that would likely be true even if the last 2 main entries in the series hadn't both been the subject of excessive delays.  My brain simply cannot cope with the notion that there might be a 'new' Tekken game out in the world somewhere and it's not in my possession yet.  There is screaming, a lot of screaming.  Things get broken.  People get hurt.  The police are called.  And then run away.  It's just not a nice scene for everyone, at least until the game in question arrives and I calm down.

This time, though, the wait wasn't so bad, since I (and everyone else) only found out about Tekken Revolution 4 days, tops, before its release.  That Harada-san sure does work his team like hamsters in wheels, doesn't he?

Toy Review: PHICEN LIMITED 1:6 NINA KILLER ver 1.0

From Twitter: Wesker getting kicked because reasons.

At this point, detailing my obsession with the Tekken series in general and Nina Williams in particular for the umpteenth time is a waste of bandwidth...but I don't know how else to start this post, so pretend that I said something meaningful and revelatory here as well as the usual 'gaaah nina so amazing and hot and badass, would gladly try and marry her even though I know it would end horribly, fuck everything about that other blonde girl who doesn't deserve to be named' spiel.

Of course, the downside to being a Tekken fan is that Namco have historically done a terrible job of pushing the franchise in terms of merch.  Oh, sure, if all you need to be happy is a custom fight stick, you're golden, but clothes?  Few and far between, usually convention exclusives.  Manga or comic tie-ins?  There were some hilariously terrible ones around the time of Tekken 2 but nothing worth mentioning since then.  Toys?  Palisades did a line of 5" figs based on Tekken 3 but they were generally pre-posed and had very little articulation, not to mention the sculpt quality is, well, of its day, which means they look pretty dated and simplistic now.  After that, Tekken figs have only come in tiny bursts; a group of rarely-seen 1:6ers based on Tekken Tag Tournament came and went, a group of tiny plastic statues with swappable parts styled on Tekken 5, and the still-running TTT2 additions to the Kotobukiya line, which takes ludicrously proportioned girls in super-skimpy outfits and makes their clothes more revealing, because Japan, basically.  Even with the advent of the TTT2 Play Arts Kai figures, it feels like there's been a lot of missed opportunities over the years - the fact that I can honestly say the best Tekken figures money can buy are the sodding Minimates from the SFxTK series says it all.  It's not so bad if all you're after are polystone statues, but...where's the fun in a statue?

So, when this little beauty cropped up out of the blue, I was very excited.  Of course, it's not officially endorsed by Namco on any level and doesn't mention Tekken anywhere on the box and is only COINCIDENTALLY similar to a character from Tekken with the same first name *cough* so it's totally okay to buy it so long as you make sure to never ever mention it to Harada-san and/or his lawyers.  We clear?  Okay, let's get down to brass tacks.

Film Reaction: STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS

In the tradition of Jack Sparrow:

"STOP BLOWING 'OLES IN MY SHIP!"

 

 

I am by no means a Star Trek fan (I refuse to call them 'Trekkies' since I've heard they hate the term) although if pressed I couldn't tell you why, given that the various TV series are built around using heavy sci-fi as a means to explore the human condition, something I find fascinating, and also they're full of spaceships, which I also find fascinating in a different sense.  My distaste for the series might simply be down to seeing the wrong parts of it; the one series I've been most exposed to is Voyager, which is apparently the worst of the lot by some margin, and after that I watched a bunch of The Next Generation, which I'm told swings sharply between great and awful.  So, maybe I don't know what good Trek should feel like.

 

Even so, I'd wager heavily that Star Trek, the pseudo-reboot movie released in 2009, wasn't hitting the sweet spot either.  Deploying a 'parallel universe' plot device to excuse a clean-sweep of the franchise's continuity and bringing back the original series' crew in their rookie years, Trek '09 was a competently made and usually exciting bit of blockbuster filmmaking that neither achieved higher plaudits nor made the effort to reach for them in the first place.  When it wasn't borrowing from the franchise's own history, it was borrowing from Top Gun as Kirk/Maverick gets told off repeatedly because he DOESN'T PLAY BY THE RULES and is a LOOSE CANNON until he (theoretically) gets his act together enough to impress Spock/Iceman.  And also there is a super-old clone of Iceman from the future who tells Maverick how to win because Maverick is too dumb to figure this out for himself.  That last part was omitted from Top Gun when the writers realised it needlessly threw the character under a bus, but the makers of Top Trek left no stone unturned.  Good work there, fellas.

 

Whatever the case, that film made enough money to warrant an immediate sequel, which became less immediate when JJ Abrams forgot he'd made a Star Trek film (fair enough, I forgot I'd watched it for a good while...) and wandered off to do something else.  Eventually though, Paramount dragged him back, and here we are with the ominously titled Star Trek Into Darkness.  "SHALL WE BEGIN?"

Say Hello to my Future Favourite Show

I'm so used to disappointment with pilot season and most American TV networks' inability to pick things that are actually promising as opposed to just box-ticking bollocks that, on the occasions when they get something right, I fail to notice 'til much later.  This time?  Not so much.  ABC, smart people that they are, chose to greenlight what will doubtless wind up being my favourite TV show whenever it hits these shores.

And they greenlit 'Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.' too.  What, you thought that was what I meant?  Nnnn-nope:

Killer Women, a.k.a. Tricia Helfer: Cowboy Cop.

Tricia Helfer.

Driving fast and shooting people.

Often wearing an awesome hat.

Sometimes wearing...very little (which is also awesome in a different sense).

Tricia.  Helfer.

Universe...however much stick I rightfully give you, for this I say thanks.  You done good.

'SHADOW OF THE ETERNALS' Crowdfunding Drive

Okay, full disclosure, I didn't start doing this blog just to advertise things.  I'd like to think I'm 'above' that, and that I'm providing what readers I get with something more thought-provoking or entertaining, or at least distracting.  But right now, with this post, I'm straight-up just promoting something that demands money - your money, as well as my money and anyone else's money it can get - before it can be real.  Just so we're clear.

Shadow of the Eternals is a new survival horror title from Canadian start-up Precursor Games, targeted at an eventual release on PC and Wii U (and maybe other formats if it's a success).  It's also the spiritual successor to Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, one of the ultimate "oh, you MUST have played that one" titles of modern gaming, a personal favourite of mine, and something I honestly believed I'd never see again.  Why?

Because the modern game industry is goddamn broken, that's why.

Everything about the industry has grown so bloated and driven by marketing excess that new ideas simply don't get the chances to succeed like they did even only 1 console 'generation' ago.  The major publishers swallow up promising developers and handcuff their performance to sales stats, telling extremely talented artists and crafters to follow the Generic Shooter Blueprint to the letter, time after time.  If you're not Call of Duty or World of Warcraft, you'll be expected - nay, demanded - to perform like them and heaven help you if you don't.  If any devs out there really do want to make something different...well, they could keep it cheap and try for an indie release on Steam or XBLA, which is great if it's a retro-styled platformer with a minimalist 'arty' visual style, but for anything more elaborate, they'd have to get desparate.

As it turns out, we're living in a world where something as awesome on paper as Shadow of the Eternals needs to get desperate.

You can visit the game's website or its YouTube channel and browse around if you want an in-depth understanding of what it's all about (and a better explanation as to why it's doing crowdfunding), but the short of it is, you start off playing as a detective trying to get to the bottom of a cult-related mass murder, and as you scratch away at parts of that story you're taken back in time to fill the shoes of another person tangled up in a presumably related series of events, which involves much puzzle-solving, running away from monsters, and if its predecessor is any indication, the game turning heel on you and pretending to break down just to wind up your nerves a little more.  The first planned 'episode' pits the player as a handmaiden in the court of Erzebet Bathory, long the historical inspiration behind many a vampire tale.

Look, I'm as leery of crowdfunding as you no doubt are, especially in the wake of the Veronica Mars/Zach Braff nonsense; I think I've previously contributed to a whole whopping 2 Kickstarters, only 1 of which succeeded.  But in this case, I fully sympathise with the reasons behind the choice to use it, and...and I'd just really like to play a well-made, smart horror adventure that doesn't devolve into a co-op shoot-em-up.  Can we all agree this is a thing worth fighting for?

If you're interested, pledges can be made through a PayPal portal on the game's main site (no Kickstarter since there's apparently some kind of restriction on non-US/UK companies opening one) (UPDATE: They sorted things out with Kickstarter, and I've added the relevant link to the bottom of the post!).  I'll put the links up again at the bottom of the post.

Thanks for your time.

Game Site | YouTube Channel | Kickstarter page

Now Playing: INJUSTICE: GODS AMONG US

One day Warners will give the general public a reason to care

about a DC property that isn't Batman.  This is not that day.

 

 

Released April 2013.

Published by Warner Bros. Games.

Developed by Netherrealm Studios.

Version played:  Wii U

 

Fighting games and superheroes really ought to go together like peanut butter and jam...no, wait, I hate peanut butter...and most jams...okay, better turn of phrase: they ought to go together like convenient DNA-altering lab accidents and losing a relative/guardian/love interest.  Given that basically every traditional cape comic in existence eventually boils down to a simple good guy versus bad guy showdown, translating those stories into a beat-em-up sounds really simple on paper.  But in practice, I can't recall ever being fully satisfied with the results.  Yes, I know, Marvel VS. Capcom has a large, long-lived fanbase, but it's...it's a Capcom fighting game through and through, so irrespective of appearances I have never been able to convince myself, in any incarnation of the series, that I'm really playing AS Spider-Man (or whoever).  No, I'm controlling someone from Street Fighter that kinda looks like Spider-Man.  Superheroes don't just stand 4 feet apart and throw rapid punch-kick combos at each other, they fly, they flip, they shatter the ground with every footfall, hoist 80-ton weights above their head and blast lasers from every orifice!  The only game off the top of my head to try and nail that style of battling was EA's Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects, which unfortunately falls under the heading of 'A for effort, D for execution'.

 

And now the artists formerly known as...whatever their team name was at Midway are taking their second stab at Marvel's 'distinguished competition' after Mortal Kombat VS. DC Universe (a game we DO NOT TALK ABOUT EVER except when we mention it like I did just there) with Injustice, which if nothing else has seen a publicity blitz vastly beyond the reach of any other fighter in recent memory.  The ads were everywhere, there's a tie-in comic series, there's a whole line of 4" action figures (which I'm sorely tempted to sample, especially since Green Arrow and Deathstroke are pack-buddies) - this is the kind of media saturation normally granted only to AAA shoot-em-ups of the most boring variety, and I've no doubt it'll reflect well on the sales figures.  But the question is, will the game prove good enough to keep on rotation for months to come...?

Film Reaction: IRON MAN 3

Knowing all too well the sight of Pepper's 'bedroom hair',

Tony's suits decide to step out for a late lunch and give the couple some room.

 

 

We're really up to the third Iron Man film already?  Wow.  I don't really know how to feel about that; on the one hand, it still feels like barely any time at all since I was astounded to hear that the first would actually become a reality, so this crap is starting to make me feel really old.  But on the other hand, it's testament to the bold (but well-deserved) confidence that Marvel Studios have had with their multi-property 'Avengers Series' movies to date, and I love the fact that they've got so sure a handle on everything about their little universe right now.  Plus of course, Iron Man was and is my nostalgic favourite amongst all superheroes, for admittedly simple reasons - I'd already fallen for both the '80s Transformers series and '90s Spider-Man series before I even knew Tony Stark had his own show, and man, getting Marvel Universe action AND robots at the same time?  Mana from heaven for Junior Craig.  Iron Man 1 remains to this day one of my all-time favourite movies - I gladly forgive its somewhat flimsy 3rd act for how deftly it flies through the preceding 70 minutes, and not since Raimi's Spider-Man had any single comic book movie feel so right, like every single part and piece was operating at full capacity with nary a hint of strain.  And Iron Man 2 was, well, it was alright.  Fun, inoffensive, its greatest crime being...laziness?  3 years on, it seems pretty clear that the sequel was something of a rushed job, made purely since the first had done such good business that Marvel couldn't pass up the chance of lightning striking twice, and though it set up a few elements that bore fruit in Avengers (Assemble) I expect there was already a plan to put those pieces in motion during Thor and Captain America.  Even so, I can't bring myself to hate a movie that realised armour-in-a-suitcase.

 

But all of that's behind us now anyway, since it's time for 'Phase 2', with the 3rd (last?) solo outing for Tony Stark and his tin can, facing off against his most sinister enemy yet - that unnamed, unknowable force that prevents the 3rd movie in any series living up to its predecessors!

 

Don't worry though, he kicks its ass.  (POSSIBLE SPOILERS FOLLOW)

Wrestling: SHINE 9 In Review

Ooo pretty colours!

 

For someone who cares as much about pro wrestling as I do, you wouldn't know it from the contents of this blog so far.  Let's change that!

 

Shine Wrestling is a Florida-based all-womens indy outfit, ostensibly started with the aim of providing talent from SHIMMER and similar promotions with more regular work (SHIMMER generally makes its money from DVD sales and tapes multiple releases' worth over a single long weekend per year).  However, the production staff behind Shine - and of course the wrestlers involved - have done such a stellar job with the group that it's almost outgrown its own inspiration, and shows no sign of stopping.  That being the case, it's a surprise that only now, with the 9th monthly show, that the company has begun the road toward crowning its first World...Floridian?...let's just say 'champion', alright?  They'll have a belt.  Doesn't matter what fraction of the globe it claims to cover if there's only 1 of them.

 

Anyways, I bloody love Shine - it's basically the only wrestling I'm willing to pay actual money for right now (the odd New Japan supershows aside) and it's worth talking about why.  So here's my rundown of Shine 9, which aired live from The Orpheum in Ybor City the night of April 19th, 2013.

 

(or, for me, really damn early in the morning of April 20th, because timezones)

Toy Review: G.I. Joe Kre-Ons Wave 1 + Checkpoint Alpha

Let the battle begin!

Also: admire my hamfisted efforts to erect a white background for

better pics.  Blergh.

 

 

Long-time readers of this blog do not need to be reminded of my fascination with G.I. Joe - actually, nobody does, since my last post was on the subject...but of all the things I'd previously wished for from the toys, 'get even smaller' was not on the list.  That said, when Hasbro announced the first bunch of Joe products for their Kre-o building block range, I was smitten at first sight, albeit cautiously so.  Lego was an obsession of mine growing up, of course, but I'd also been hooked into buying some of their newer superhero-themed sets - getting some Joes on the same scale who could interact with dinky Superman, Captain America and co.?  Intriguing.

 

 

I dub this piece 'Battle of the Ninja Ziggurat'.

I do not entirely know what a ziggurat is.

 

 

So I went and bought the cheapest set, Checkpoint Alpha, and...pretty much fell in love with the thing, and with thanks to a very helpful eBay seller I also got my grubby hands on the full wave of 12 mini-figures (Kre-ons) sold individually in blind bags.  None of this stuff seems destined to make it beyond America, thanks to Hasbro having chickened out over marketing the Joe brand internationally after the mess they made with the Rise of Cobra toys (too much early stock clogging up shelves, limited promotion, overestimating production etc.) - which is a shame since, taken on their own merits, I think these little guys have the potential to catch on in a way their 4" progenitors never did.

Film Reaction: G.I. JOE RETALIATION

And what sort of time do you call this...?

Anyone who has been reading this blog since the early days (so, none of you) don't need reminding of this, but I'm one of those weird people that really, genuinely loved 'G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra', and I give that movie all the credit for kickstarting my enthusiasm for all things Joe, which four years and over a hundred 4-inch plastic men later, shows no sign of halting.  Of course, us weird people are in the minority, which explains why it's taken so long to bolt together a sequel (it's still kinda disturbing that a movie can make a $300million+ profit and be considered a commercial dud...) and why, when it was all good and ready to debut, Paramount chickened out and delayed it by nearly a whole year so they could make it 3D.  Part of me - a very vocal part of me - considers it a knock on the Joes' honour that some douchey film execs didn't think they could hold their own against hands-down the worst interpretation of Spider-Man witnessed by a paying audience in history, but then I guess they were right, since that bloody awful reboot killed at the box office and gave me another few thousand reasons to doubt the existence of a benevolent god.

Still, it's here now, at last, and having caught a late afternoon showing on the 28th March with my folks as a belated birthday thing - and let the memories slosh around in my head for a while - I think I'm ready to put some concrete opinions down.  Good ones, thankfully.  (WARNING: SPOILERS FOLLOW)

(And seriously, f*** everything about Amazing Spider-Man)

Comic Musing: CAPTAIN MARVEL and X-MEN LEGACY

I may have mentioned this before, but, I'm a terrible comics reader.

Not because reading comics is bad in any sense - of course not - and not because I'm slow or stupid and thus incapable of following an illustrated story effectively - well, unless it's Grant Morrison, but since I threw out my The Return of Bruce Wayne from His Not-Dead Death by Time Travel Omega Eyebeam blah blah something ANTILIFE and Now He's A Robot until Wonder Woman Punches Him Back to Normal* trade I don't feel so bad about that.  No, I mean my problem is twofold; I never buy single issues, and I never listen to any sort of hype for new releases unless it's hype that agrees with me.  Because obviously, if something doesn't tally up with my opinions it's WRONG and should not exist.  Like Wolverine, who I'm fairly sure is only popular due to a mass brainwashing program/Hugh Jackman's dreamy eyes.

Okay, enough stalling: the two books I wanna talk about today are prime examples of my Second Failing, things I was interested by because they tickled parts of my brain I'm already fond of, but for a change I decided to pick them up one issue at a time...and they both turned out so well I've stuck to it.  Now I'm only a singular failure!  Wayhey!

(The following is a reaction piece to, and may contain spoilers for, issues 1-10 of Captain Marvel and 1-6 of X-Men Legacy.)

* - you only think that's a facetious summation of that story because you haven't read it yet.

Toy Review: Transformers Masterpiece Soundwave

Oh, where have you been all my life, you?

It's been a while since I talked about toys that aren't Minimates here, mostly my own fault - I've been buying plenty of stuff but I've had other distractions that made it tricky to focus on writing anything about them.  Why has that changed?  Maybe a gap in my schedule.  Or maybe that I've got my mitts on one of those rare toys that feels like something I've been waiting years for.

And Masterpiece Soundwave is exactly that sort of toy.

'INJUSTICE: GODS AMONG US' Character Designs in Review (UPDATED)

Ten quid says Batman killed Green Arrow out of spite.

Bruce's always been jealous of my boy Ollie's awesome goatee.

To say I've been less than thrilled with the pre-release hype for Netherrealm's Injustice: Gods Among Us would be...more or less accurate.  It got to the point where I couldn't resist the urge to complain about the recent teaser trailer for the game's story mode on Twitter and unwittingly caught the eye of the game's own PR account, who told me to reserve judgement until I'd at least checked out DC's tie-in comic miniseries.  At £2.99 a pop for at least 4 issues.  Sad thing is, I probably will buy those comics just to be sure, and I almost certainly will buy the game despite what the voices in my head tell me.

Still, just because I can't nitpick the story yet doesn't mean I can't speak out on other things - like, for example, the character designs, which have foregone the straight-from-the-comics look of Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe in favour of...uh, something.  Involving leather.  Again, to be totally fair and whatnot, I'm only covering the characters for whom I could find the hi-res promo renders; for some reason guys like Deathstroke and Green Lantern, who have been confirmed for a while now, don't have renders out yet.  If I find more I'll update this post accordingly.

UPDATE 10/05/13 - Added Ares and Killer Frost.

In Memoriam: My 18 Best Games for the Nintendo Wii

Well, here we are, then.  Journey's end.  How many years was it, five?  Six?  God, it makes me feel old when I can't remember a time before you were in my life.

You didn't have an easy time of it, that's for sure.  Even beyond me being a fool and holding off on buying you for three months - totally mum's fault - you always had that stigma to rise above.  The 'Casual Console', they called you.  As if that ever meant anything.  But they kept repeating it like a mantra, trying to spurn you for daring to be different; a spark of ingenuity amid a thick, noxious cloud of stagnation.  They tried to drown you, but I like to think I did my bit to keep your flame alive for as long as it was.

Even so, times change.  People grow old.  And lo, as you replaced your father, so now your son has come to replace you.  I've already started courting him, I'm not ashamed to say - he's got a little bit of growing up to do, a little more expansion of his repertoire, but I've got a good feeling.  You raised a smart kid.  Let that thought give you comfort as the final sleep takes you, my darling Wii.

...not that you're actually going anywhere, of course, I still need you for the occasional Eternal Darkness or Rogue Leader run-through.  *cough*  Uhm...yeah, so here's my picks for the best Wii games ever, I guess.

THE STRONGEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD ~!

...seriously, what a f***ing stupid thing to call anyone...

???:  HEY YOU!

Nina:  Hm?

Chun Li:  You hurt my friend!  Now it's time for me to get some payback, and you better believe it's gonna come - WITH INTEREST!!

Nina:  Uh-huh.  And you are?

Chun Li:  Like you don't know!  I'm Chun Li!  Interpol detective!  Master of the Spinning Bird Kick!  Panty-flasher extraordinaire!  STRONGEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD!

Nina:  Stop shouting, Chubby.

Chubby Chun Li:  No, it's CHUN...LI!

Nina:  That's what I said.

Nina:  I don't even know who your 'friend' was - 

Chun Li:  Cammy!

Nina:  That name means nothing to me.

Chun Li:  She was the super-awesome commando!  Y'know, with the, uh, braided pigtails and the leotard and the...weird paint splotches on her legs?

Nina:  OH!  Girl-scout sleazy apartment wrestler, I remember that one.  Thought I killed her.

Chun Li:  She's just resting!

Nina:  Yeah, resting.  In a pine box, in the ground.  Tch...

Nina:  Y'know, if I had anything else to do right now, I'd just walk away and leave you to stew.  But as it happens, my schedule's open, and this whole 'Strongest Woman' crap has seriously pissed me off, so let's do this, Chubby.

Chun Li:  Okay!  Get ready to feel the brunt of my ultimate technique!  HAJIME!!

Craig's Most Wanted Games of 2013 (So Far)

Does exactly what it says on the tin.  These most certainly won't be the only games I buy over the next calendar year - I've got a lax understanding of fiscal responsibility - but they're the ones I'm really anticipating, and would definitely put money aside for in advance if I had that kind of sense.

Professor Layton and the Azran Legacies (3DS)

The Professor Layton series has been a pretty recent obsession of mine.  I completed the first game, Curious Village, almost 2 years ago, then forgot about the series, and only recently remembered them in the run-up to the arrival of the most recent game, Miracle Mask (also the first 3DS outing, and developers Level 5 made the transition very well).  Since then I've beaten Pandora's Box, Lost Future and Miracle Mask and am in the midst of Spectre's Call.  Whilst the simple logic puzzles are addictive in their own right, it's the quirky world, characters and stories that form each game's framework that have made me a fan, and with the promise that game 6, Azran Legacies, will both wrap up the overarching plot of the 'prequel trilogy' and be the last game to feature Layton himself as the protagonist (!), I'm very anxious to get my mitts on this one.  It's due out in Japan in February, but given the massive volume of text to localise, I'm not expecting it to drop in the UK until much later in the year.  It'll be worth it.

Aliens: Colonial Marines (multi-format)

Probably the most imminent arrival of everything on this list, Gearbox Software's love letter to Aliens doesn't look to be the most original or daring FPS I or anyone else has ever played, but it does look set to play to the strengths of the Marine campaigns in the various AVP games (typically the best parts of those titles) and the universe of Aliens is the sort of world I never mind returning to.  It helps that the devs have been hyping up the Wii U version as the 'best' version, though what this means beside using the GamePad as a movie-accurate motion tracker is beyond me.

Now Playing: DOOM 3 BFG EDITION

Winner of Gaming's Most Angular Font since 1993.

Released October 2012.

Developed by id Software and Nerve Software.

Published by Bethesda.

Available on Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC/Steam.

Version played: PS3

Now this takes me back.

Not that I had any particular memories of Doom 3 in its earlier form, at least not of playing it.  Though I'm effectively a console gamer alone these days, there was a time when my computer - or rather my mother's work computer which her council overlords smartly didn't fit with blocks against installing foreign programs on - was my main gaming format of choice, and most weeknights were a haze of Command & Conquer Red Alert 2 and Serious Sam: The Second Encounter.  Doom 3 was still very much a mirage on the horizon back then, a looming herald of the next generation, and much though I lapped up the hype, I knew I'd never really be able to sample its delights.  It was made with beefier systems in mind, you see - something which would eventually drive me away from PC gaming.  All power to those who can, but having to essentially take apart and reconstruct your games machine from scratch every year or so to keep up with the medium was both expensive and scary to me.  And so Doom 3 passed me by.

Until now.  Question is, was it better off unattainable?

Further Adventures of Minimate Nina, part deux: Prelude to a Something

In which the groundwork for future stories I haven't bothered plotting out yet is laid!  GET EXCITE!!

Nina:  Time to go see 'the boss', I guess.  I hate this part.

N:  Seriously, he can't just have an office...?