The real comic book quickies 29/9/11

Well im some what late again but that's not all my fault, getting comics on Thursdays ? Its like the bloody dark age's and sorry I didn't get green lantern core but I think we can all assume John Stuart

may have killed some beloved sentient planet.

AVENGERS #17

written by Brain Michael Bendis art by John Romita JR

WHY dude ? Whyyyyyyy ? Its been seven months SEVEN MONTHS, has it ? Its FEELS like its been seven months. SEVEN months of reality show avengers. Of avengers being interviewed about how awesome it is to be an avenger, this is happening when the worlds ending ? Well it seems to be happening afterwords which sucks ass , yeah we know its not the end but come on man that aint cool. Well the avengers fight sin in the ruins of avengers tower that's aboot it. In all fairness its probably only been about four months but damn its felt like seven.

WONDER WOMAN #1

written by Brian Azzarello art Cliff Chiang

Well with the rebootaverse in full spring now's the best time to try something new and this book was pretty hyped up, best of new 52 some were saying and it was written by the the dude who did the batman flashpoint mini so I gave it a try and personally I thought it was pretty meh. I wanted to like it and there was nothing really wrong with it I just dident really dig it. Nothing in it really jumped at at me and was like hey MECHA !!! ill give it another few issues and see how it go's

BLUE BEETLE #1

written by Tony Bedard art by IG Guara

Now here's a book I did dig something I did think was pretty funky. It wasn't exactly what I was expecting but it was pretty damn fun. basically its the blue beetles origin story, written for the trade of course. This was the most issue one-ish book of the new 52 iv read so far, most of the other books have a kind of arc 2 feel to them with the heroes already having there powers and costumes and getting up to shenanigans and what nought. not so here with Jaime only getting his powers on the last page which is kind of un funky but meh it was fun plus its the restart of DC's very own spider man !

BATMAN #1

written by Scott Snyder art by Greg Capullo

Hells yeah this was fun! the not so grim dark batman being batman. This book was all about batman being batman doing batmany things whilst being batman in the bat cave with the bat mobile, punching dudes with bat fists, hitting them with batarangs, sneaking aboot with bat stealth and doing detectivey things with good old bat logic. This was the bat book everyone was looking forward to and they were right to do so.

SUPER GIRL #1

written by Michael Green art by Mike Johnson

MAN THIS WAS AWESOME !!! 15 PAGES OF SUPER GIRL FIGHTING MECHA !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!other comics could learn this book. Im sure there some of you out there that would have wanted 18 to 20 pages but dudes we have six or so issues more to go of this arc there's plenty of time for a hoal comic mecha fight so don't worry. Well this might be my fave of the new 52 so far, did I say that last week about another comic ? No worrys this was cool and worked out much better than wonder woman . So super girl turns up on earth and gets jumped by mecha my words cant really do it justice.

Apologies for the slightly bad grammar and no pics this week (and for being late!). We'll be back as normal next time!

Metroid PrimeTrilogy

This is a snazzy little number I picked up in Asda for about £15, so I’m quite pleased with that. The Metroid Prime series is a semi-spinoff of the popular Metroid series, developed by retro studios yada yada yada. It’s the thing with Samus that’s from a first person perspective.

The main Selling point of this game is A: you’re getting three games for the price of one on one disc and B: New Play controls for the first two Metroid games, and since decent Gamecube games became like gold dust when the Wii came out, that’s something worth considering. So let’s talk about the new features.

I can’t comment as to whether the gameplay has changed much between the consoles, but it does feel very natural and VERY immersive. Not being one for FPS games, I went in with a bit of scepticism, especially having played Hunters on the DS, but the game still feels like a Metroid game. And note that I use “game” in the singular there. I only completed the original Metroid Prime. This is mainly why this review has been on the back burner for about three months now. However, I have played enough to form an opinion, and one day I might go in-depth for each game, but for now we’ll just look at the complete package. But trust me: I have a good reason for not playing the second and third instalments nearly so much.   Metroid Prime is brilliant. Echoes and Corruption less so. I will Revisit this in a bit though.

One of the major complaints of the sub-series was the loading times. The original corruption could take up to a minute to open one door, and the PAL versions of the first two had extra time added on to doors opening to prevent the game possibly crashing, as it would in the NTSC version from time to time. Now, some of you may be wondering how you can fit three games, one of which has already filled the majority of a Wii Disc, on a single Wii Disc. It’s fairly simple actually. They’ve stuck them on two Wii Discs. The only other game that’s used a Dual Layer Wii Disc is Brawl, and I think you might remember some pretty noticeable loading in that. Thankfully, Metroid Prime and Echoes have virtually no load times (except when first booting up, but those are minor). As for Corruption...well that’s largely down to a poor design choice. The first two games tended to have long, narrow corridors between complex rooms. Like Metroid and Symphony of the Night would occasionally have (both games released on early disc based systems). This Allows for a little bit of the loading to be done in advance, as the character can only travel so fast, and felt fairly natural. Corruption never had those corridors, so each room needs to be loaded in one big dump. I think you can see where I’m going with this. The load times are worse. And I’m not talking about once or twice when I went into huge arenas teeming with character and object models with complex animation. Every. Fucking. Door. I feel like I’m not so much busting down the door with my arm cannon as sending in a reservation by carrier pigeon. I’d like to point out that early on in Corruption, you have five minutes to prevent a meteor crashing into a planet. This is how I know that one ENTIRE MINUTE was spent waiting for ONE door to open.

As for Echoes, well it does show promise, but the light and dark mechanics just feel gimmicky, so that’s why I haven’t played through that. But I’d definitely recommend the Trilogy. It’s kinda hard to find though, since it was an actual limited edition. You can pick up Corruption pretty easily for about £7, but the Trilogy will cost upwards of £40 on Amazon. I know that’s kinda normal for a game, but I rarely pay more than £30 so, it’s steep to me.

So yeah. Gosh, it’s been a while since I did a proper review. Did you like the Haikus? Sorry I couldn’t be on the podcast, but if I grudge paying £30 for a game, you can only imagine how I feel about a £20 ticket to sit on a train for 5 hours round trip.

Birth by Sleeps quite good by the way. Wanted to review that for a while, but it’d be a repeat of the Grandia II review. Not that the twist wasn’t really obvious from the Final Mix trailer.

I like Fire Emblem too, but that’s beside the point.

So what’s new with you?

How are the kids?

Please speak to me Jocasta. I know we’ve had our troubles, what with my mercury addiction and your affair with Derek, but we had some good times.

Remember the good times?

If I keep doing these reviews...

...will you love me?

Comic Book Quickies 14/9/11

Ah lateness! It's almost new comic book day again. Oh wells! - onwards into the rebootaverse!

GREEN LANTERN #1

Written by Geoff Johns art by Doug Mahnke

Oh guardians of the universe you so crazy! Hal Jordan's lost his ring and is now living as ordinary human. Hilarity ensues. Really now how many films are shot in a random house? LEGITIMATE films mind you. So Sinestro's the main lantern of the main lantern book, gotta love those guardians making space Hitler a GL again sure that's not going to come back and bite them in any way shape or form. I'd be happy with this though if sinestro went about being space Hitler doing space Hitlery things and the having the human lanterns be all like "DO YA SEE!?? DO YA SEE???" to the guardians.

RED LANTERNS #1

Written by Peter Milligan art Ed Benes

Credit where it's due DC, Dex-starr the red lantern cat hasn't gotten old yet. The leader of the red lanterns Atrocitus and his cat kill some standard sci-fi hunter aliens then they go home cos he's feeling less angry than normal. He banters about this with the mad dead guardian Krona and at one point Atrocitus refers to Krona as his lover. Not gonna lie guys that was a bit odd. The real star of this issue was some old guy back on Earth getting mugged by some punk, it's the standard old guy crack of I fought a war for you with the punk not listening but then then old dudes like PUNCH TO THE FACE sure he gets killed for it but damn that was awesome.

BATMAN AND ROBIN #1

Written by Peter J. Tomasi art by Patrick Gleason

Some times I forget how much of a scrappy Damien Wayne is meant to be then BOOM issues like this happen. Batman and Damien beat down some criminals that are trying to steal some radioactive junk. All fine and cool till Damien “accidentally” brutally murders them to death while Batman isn't looking. The first part of this issue was pretty cool with Batman deciding not to mark the anniversary of his parents death but their wedding anniversary instead, which is pretty cool and another unexpected move away from grimdark for rebootaverse Batman.

FRANKENSTEIN AGENT OF S.H.A.D.E #1

Written by Jeff Lemire art Alberto Ponticelli

Well I was in the mood to read some Hellboy and then this book happened, the universe is just weird like that sometimes. Man this was awesome I really should have been reading Frankenstein's flashpoint book cos damn was this to my taste AND really Hellboy-ish . Monsters attack a small American town and it's up to Franky and the creature commandos, a team of groovy ghouls to go in get the survivors out. And from there on it action all the way. Plus the mummy man's the team medic, I don't know why that amuses me but it does.

ULTIMATE COMICS SPIDER-MAN #1

Written by Brian Michael Bendis art by Sara Pichelli

Gotta love that Bendis, always writing for the trade. Well this is the origin of the new Spider-Man and was OK and very Bendis-ey. Come back in 6 months to a year and I'll have a proper feel of the thing. It does get points though for ultimate Prowler, love that guy. Sure he's gonna die but the dude's the man. Like at first we thought he was stealth Deadpool but naw its ultimate Prowler. Props to Norman Osborn as well who's in full Willem Dafoe mode here. And that's awesome.

FEAR ITSELF BOOK 6

Written by Matt Fraction art by Stuart Immonen

Bravo Marvel, September is very much DC's month what with the rebootaverse and all but here you are with maybe my favourite book of the month! The world's ending, the serpent is rising and heroes can't do a thing to stop him, but one man wont fall or give up or bow down. people of the internet I give you CAPTAIN AMERICA!!!! Bucky's dead again and his shield has been broken but I'd argue those things have only made him stronger. He's literally not taking any shite from no one. Dude just goes over and verbly pimp slaps Odin ya know cos he's CAPTAIN AMERICA AND THATS HOW HE ROLLS!!!

Next Week! - Batman, John Stewart being an idiot, and DC's version of Spider-Man

comic book quickies 25/8/11

Now that the Flashpoint filler fest is over with we can charge forward into a new era of comics! DC is rebooting its universe with 52 new titles. the rebootverse is here! A month full of new number ones!

JUSTICE LEAGUE #1

Written by Geoff Johns art by Jim Lee

So this is the first book of the new universe, the jumping on point for new readers and most likely the highest selling book of the year. As a comic on its own it was pretty gid but to me personally I didn't think it was a good start for the new universe. A team was not put together. I know it probably wouldn't have worked having all the league in issue one but it doesn't feel right, all we got was Batman and Hal Jordan being buddy cops chasing an alien and getting shot at by cops. Not the epic start I was hoping for but as I said as just a comic it was fine with some cool moments between the two heroes. Really its main problem is that it's being so clearly written for the trade making it an ungodly slow start.

ACTION COMICS #1

Written by Grant Morrison art by Rags Morales

Rebootaverse superman is kick ass. This is pretty much everything you could want for a #1 featuring superman. He keeps doing superman-y things! He bends guns, jumps tall buildings and gets hit in the face by trains. Ah, just like the old days. At the same time though he is quite un-superman-y and kind of Batman-ish, throwing wife beaters out windows and neo Nazis into sewage works. He's not proper Supes yet, he's young and incredibly arrogant but its only issue one and he'll get that kicked out of him eventually. But dudes its MORRISON writing superman it'll be fine.

DETECTIVE COMICS #1

Written by Tony S. Daniel art by Ryan Winn

So yeah in the lead up to the New 52 I heard nothing but bad things about this book that it was going to suck cos of the writer and that Batman #1 was where it was at. But I got it any being that it is Detective Comics #1 so it surprised me that it was a lot of fun. It's Batman's first run in with the Joker and it's handled pretty well, the Jokers still a sick bastard and surprisingly for me the Batman of this book is pretty balanced and by that I mean he's not grim dark he's focused on getting the joker but to too focused to forget about collateral damage and I'm not sure where this falls in the time line but he must be young as the Joker actually lands some hits on him. Yeah, he'd been hit by joker gas but he's still Batman. And yeah, something pretty mental happens at the end that makes me want to read more. Pretty good for a book that labelled filler in my head before I read it.

STATIC SHOCK #1

Written by Scott McDaniel art by John Rozum

This was just fine, nothing mind blowing but a good introduction to a young hero. One weird thing is Static is operating out of New York which is just odd to me I dont think of the America of DC having a New York, Metropolis and Gotham kind take over from it. So yeah nothing bad to say for this comic.

JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL #1

Written by Dan Jurgens art by Aaron Lopresti

See this is weird man, the JLI is all together before the proper JL is. Well this is set after the JL forms in comic book time but in real world time the jokey JLI seems more like a real team than the all star universe launchers back at the top of this page. The United Nations put a team of heroes together and make Booster Gold the leader. Hilarity ensues.

And finally an in depth look into the event comic that brought us this new era. FLASHPOINT: a retrospective:

THOMAS WAYNE. Nuff' said.

Haiku Reviews

The Legend of Zelda

Aimless Wanderings

Dangerous to Go Alone

Sword: True Companion

Super Mario Bros.

Jump on Strange Fungus

Say “It’s a Me, Mario!”

Repeat Forever

 

Metroid (Take heed Other M)

Use the Freezing Beam

Don’t Think with your ovaries

Never Say a word

Fire Emblem

Sword beats Axe beats Lance

Death leads to great sense of loss

Reset and Repeat

Final Fantasy

Garland stole the girl

Travel back a Thousand Years

Go Mediaeval

Castlevania

Vampire Killer Whip

Bathed in a Rondo of Blood

Eat hearts for more stuff

Mother

Don’t Speak Japanese?

Too bad. Make do with Sequel.

Except for Europe.

A Piece of the World is Missing

Pokémon

Gotta Catch ‘em All

I know it’s my Destiny...

Bugger. Missingno.

Sonic the Hedgehog

Fast. Faster. Fastest.

Golden Rings Festoon the Spikes.

Out of Extra Lives...

Kid Icarus

Fuck, this game is hard.

No wonder there hasn’t been

A proper Sequel.

Mad Hat Pirate Radio 06/09/2011

Welcome to the inaugural edition of the Mad Hat Pirate Podcast, wittily entitled Mad Hat Pirate Radio. It's still in prototype, so expect eating noises, coughing, and phones going off. There's also lots of banter about video games and comics to go along with it! Feedback would be appreciated.

Listen here:

http://soundcloud.com/madhatpirateradio/madhatpirateradioprime

Review: Toy Story 2 (PS1)

It may be hard to believe but there's a game better than Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue. Yes a game better than that genre busting, decade defining jumping simulator. People of the internet I bring you 1999's Toy Story 2: Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue. A godly game whose game play warps, rends and tears reality into something quite wonderful. A game that was my video game training arc of my childhood. As you may have gathered its the the tie-in game to Toy Story 2 for the PS1 and you most likely think it's crap as it's a licensed game but I'm here to prove otherwise. Oh, and its jumping is fairly good too.

Well as it's a film licence the plot is the same as Toy Story 2, Buzz puts a team together to rescue Woody who's been toy napped by the evil collector AL. It does what most tie in games do; expanding on the plot. Mainly because most film plots don't involve platforming, but this game gets away with it and I hold most of the expansions canon to the film series. Yes even the slimy energy being but we'll get to that later. You play as the legendary Buzz Lightyear, who must have had some upgrades at some point as his laser works, like EXPLODE other toys works and he can kind of fly but only to end the level also he seems to be made of some sort of Nintendium alloy. I guess this contradicts the core character development of the first film that he is a toy but to hell with that, his best friend has been kidnapped, clearly we can chalk one up to FIGHTING SPIRIT?

There are 15 levels, from the safety of Andy's house to the rain soaked airport tarmac for the final showdown with Stinky Pete. From Andy's neighbourhood with its towering bloody tree to a construction site with its towering skeletal building, this game has a thing for climbing - you have to climb stuff in every level but there's quite a few that are built around it like Andy's neighbourhood with that bloody tree! It gave me hell as a kid but this is where you are thankful Buzz is made out of that Nintendium alloy, yes lasers could hurt him but that fall from low orbit just kind fazes him for a second then he stands right back up again.

To progress in the game you have to collect Pizza Planet tokens, and to get them you will have to collect things. Lots of things, it's that kind of game. For example, Mr Potato Head keeps losing his parts or Bo Peep her sheep. Fair enough that's basically their thing but I find it hard to believe Hamm keeps losing all his coins in every level. Then again, it is exactly 50 coins he needs in every level so maybe its having that number of coins in him unlocks some kind of super mode for him, all fiery eyes and tron lines but we didn't get to see it for budgetary reasons. You also get tokens by racing other toys like RC or completing puzzles. Potato Head does help you out with more than just tokens though - getting him his parts back will unlock upgrades like rocket boots and grappling hooks. These upgrades help you get through the level at hand but some tokens in earlier levels can only be gotten with upgrades. Sneaky.

Then there's the bad guys you will face on your perilous journey, they're pretty awesome actually what with them being toys. That's right, you gotta KILL other toys to save dear old Woody, and they re-spawn as soon as you move away from where they EXPLODED so that's always fun. What's cool about them isn't just that they are just toys, it's that for most of the game they're toys from what seems to be the Buzz Lightyear toy line. There's Zurg mooks which explains why they want to kill you, and they're programmed like Buzz was at the start of the first film. That doesn't explain why they are every where though - like in Andy's house and in Al's Toy Barn yeah I get that - but at the construction site or in alleys and gulleys? The second lot of mooks follow the same way of thinking, they're cowboy mooks might not be from the same show as woody but they certainly fit with the theme which is damn cool and makes the world feel bigger with some thought out history.

The bosses in this game are just god damn awesome. Each level has its own mini boss usually at the top of something - like I said this game likes climbing. In addition there's the big bosses that have their own level. There's the ones you expect like the evil Emperor Zurg and Stinky Pete but most of the others the developers just made up. And they are GLORIOUS. There's the angry tin robot in Andy's attic (which despite the kill bot looks quite a nice place to be, just saying Toy Story 3, just saying) to the construction site's jack hammer Gurren, and of course the slimy energy monster that lives in a rubbish bin and gets stronger the more you shoot it. You may say this guy doesn't fit the tone of the Toy Story-verse but dude he's green so he's made of FIGHTING SPIRIT. Moving along. There's one boss I've never forgotten about - one boss that soars above the rest. Yes it's the ZURG KITE and my god he's awesome, you find him at the top of that bloody tree and he totally makes that bloody tree worth it because he's a thousand foot tall and made of fire - not really he dose spin though. In my head he went on to have adventures of his own after the end of the game.

This game was one of the greats, I'm sure you big bad people of the internet played bigger, badder games when you were kids but if you did play this game as a kid then you played it a lot as it's HARD, so many falls and that BLOODY TREE. But it was never so hard it was unplayable, in fact it's so hard it was addictive and to me that's the sign of a true great. To me its aged well and still looks pretty but I may be alone in that. I think some times I turn off the part of my brain that knows what current gen graphics look like. I'd recommend this to Toy Story fans, kite enthusiasts and fans of 3D platformers of its age.

10 ZURG KITES OUT OF TEN.