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ljones41 · 3 years

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"THE DARK KNIGHT RISES" (2012) Review

"THE DARK KNIGHT RISES" (2012) Review Seven years after it had begun, Christopher Nolan's three-movie saga about the D.C. Comics character, Batman, finally came to an end. The saga that began with 2005's "BATMAN BEGINS", ended with 2012's "THE DARK KNIGHT RISES".

The trilogy’s third film, set seven years after 2008's "THE DARK KNIGHT", began with the aerial kidnapping of a nuclear scientist by an escaped terrorist named Bane. The scene shifted to Gotham City, where a fund-raiser was being held at Wayne Manor. The only person missing was millionaire Bruce Wayne, who had given up his vigilante activities as Batman after claiming he had murdered former District Attorney Harvey Dent. During the fundraiser, Bruce caught a maid breaking into his private safe. She turned out to be a resourceful cat burglar named Selina Kyle. Aside from a necklace that once belonged to Bruce's late mother, Selina did not steal any other object from the safe. Curious over Selina's actions, Bruce resumed his Batman alter ego and tracked down Selina. He discovered that she had been hired by a rival corporate CEO named John Daggett to lift and steal his fingerprints. Bruce also learned that Daggett had hired the terrorist Bane to attack Gotham's stock exchange and bankrupt Wayne Enterprises. And along with Police Commissioner James Gordon and Wayne Enterprises executive Lucius Fox, Bruce also discovered that Bane was a former member of the League of Shadows and planned to continue Henri Ducard's (aka Ra's al Ghul) goal of Gotham City's destruction. Bruce asked fellow millionaire Miranda Tate to take control of Wayne Enterprises to ensure that Daggett and Bane will not gain control of their clean energy project, a device designed to harness fusion power. Re-reading the above made me realize that Christopher and Jonathan Nolan had created a very complicated plot. For me, the plot became even more complicated two-thirds into the movie. "THE DARK KNIGHT RISES" obviously exists under the shadow of its two predecessors - "BATMAN BEGINS" and "THE DARK KNIGHT". I would say that this especially seemed to be the case for the 2005 movie. Batman and James Gordon's decision to lie about the circumstances behind Harvey Dent's death in the second movie had a minor impact upon this third movie. But Bruce's relationship and later conflict with Ra's al Ghul seemed to be the driving force behind his conflict with Bane in this third film. I had heard rumors that Christopher Nolan was initially reluctant to make a third BATMAN movie. Personally, I found that rumor a bit hard to believe, considering how "THE DARK KNIGHT" ended with Batman accepting the blame for Harvey Dent's crimes and death. But there were certain aspects of the script he wrote with his brother Jonathan that made me wonder if he had truly been reluctant. There were certain aspects of "THE DARK KNIGHT RISES" that I found troubling. It seemed a pity that the second movie ended with Batman and Jim Gordon's decision to lie about the circumstances behind Dent's death. I found their decision annoying back in 2008 and I still do. The impact behind their lie proved to be hollow. It merely kept Batman off Gotham City's streets and led Mayor Anthony Garcia and the city to pass a strong anti-criminal law that proved to be hollow following Bane's arrival in Gotham City. I also found Bane's mid-air kidnapping of a nuclear scientist and escape from a U.S. marshal (portrayed by Aidan Gillen) rather somewhat idiotic. I understood that Bane needed that scientist to weaponize the Wayne Enterprise device. But I never understood why that U.S. marshal failed to take the trouble to identify the hooded prisoner (Bane) before boarding the plane. In the end, the movie's opening sequence struck struck me as unnecessarily showy. Was this the Nolan brothers' way of conveying Bane's role as a badass to the audience? If so, I was too busy trying to comprehend the villain's dialogue to care. I understood why Batman had not been seen in Gotham for so long. But what was the reason behind Bruce Wayne's disappearance from the public eye? His physical state was not really that severe. Rachel Dawes' death? Rachel's death did not stop him from going after the Joker and Harvey Dent in the last movie's half hour. Was it an injured leg? How did he injured it? And why did Gotham's citizens failed to put two-and-two together, when both Bruce and Batman finally appeared in the public eye a day or two apart after many years? The only person who managed to discover Bruce's alter ego - namely Officer John Blake - did so through a contrived reason. For me, the movie's real misstep proved to be Bane's three-month control over Gotham City. As a former member of Henri Ducard's League of Shadows, he planned to achieve his former leader's goal of destroying Gotham City. And he planned to use Wayne Enterprise's energy device to achieve this. One - why not simply build or snatch his own nuclear device? Why go through so much trouble to get his hands on the energy device? Why did Wayne Enterprises create a device that not only saved energy, but could be used as a bomb, as well? And why did it take three months before the device could become an effective bomb? The Nolans' script could have frustrated Bane's attempts to acquire the bomb during that three-month period . . . or anything to spare the audiences of that second-rate version of the French Resistance. The latter scenario seemed so riddled with bad writing that it would take another article to discuss it. And what was the point of the presence of Juno Temple's character Jen? What was she there for, other than being Selina's useless and cloying girlfriend? And Wayne Enterprises executive Lucius Fox was last seen declaring his intentions to leave the corporation for good, following Batman's misuse of cell phones in "THE DARK KNIGHT". In this movie, he is back, working for Wayne Enterprises. What made him change his mind? But not all was lost. I found Bruce's introduction to Selina Kyle very entertaining and sexy. Even better, the incident served as Batman's re-introduction to Gotham City and allowed him to discover Bane's plans regarding Wayne Enterprises and the energy device. One of the more interesting consequences of "THE DARK KNIGHT" proved to be Rachel Dawes' last letter to Bruce. Its revelation by Alfred Pennyworth after seven years led to an emotional quarrel between the millionaire and the manservant and their estrangement. At first, I had balked at the idea of Bane carrying out Ra's al Ghul's original goal to destroy Gotham. After all, why would he continue the plans of the very person who had him kicked out of the League of Shadows? But a surprising plot twist made Bane's plan plausible . . . even when I continue to have problems with his three-month occupation of Gotham. Many critics had lamented the lack of Heath Ledger's Joker in the movie. As much as I had appreciated and enjoyed Ledger's performance in the 2008 movie, I did not need or wanted him in "THE DARK KNIGHT RISES". Tom Hardy's performance as the terrorist Bane was good enough for me. Mind you, I found it difficult to understand some of his dialogue. And when I did, he sounded like the late Sean Connery. But I cannot deny that Bane made one scary villain, thanks to Hardy's performance and intimidating presence. Before I saw the movie, I never understood the need for Marion Cotillard's presence in the film. I thought her character, Miranda Tate, would merely be a bland love interest for Bruce. Not only did Cotillard ended up providing a subtle and intelligent performance from the actress, her Miranda Tate proved to be important to the story as the co-investor in the energy device and for the plot twist in the end. "THE DARK KNIGHT RISES" provided some solid performances from other members of the cast. Matthew Modine shined as the ambitious and arrogant Assistant Police Commissioner Peter Foley, who proved to be capable of character development. Another solid performance came from Brett Cullen, who portrayed a lustful congressman that had the bad luck to cross paths with Selina Kyle. Both Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman continued their excellent performances as Bruce Wayne's "heart" and "mind", manservant Alfred Pennyworth and Wayne Enterprises executive Lucius Fox. In the end, the movie was fortunate to benefit from four outstanding performances. One came from Gary Oldman's excellent portrayal of the now weary, yet determined police commissioner, James Gordon. His guilt over the Harvey Dent lie and discovery of Batman's true identity provided Oldman with some of his best moments in the trilogy. Another came from Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who was superb as Gotham City beat cop John Blake. The actor did a wonderful job of balancing Officer Blake's intelligence, passion for justice and disgust toward the bureaucracy. When I learned that Anne Hathaway would end up being the fifth actress to portray Selina Kyle aka Catwoman, I must admit that I had my doubts. Then I remembered that Hathaway was an Oscar nominee, who has also done action before. Watching her sexy, yet complicated performance as the complex cat burglar removed all of my doubts. She was superb and her sizzling screen chemistry with star Christian Bale made me wish Selina had been Bruce's love interest throughout the movie. Speaking of Bruce Wayne, Bale returned to portray the Caped Crusader for the third and final time. I must admit that I found his performance more subtle and complex than his performances in the previous two movies. Bale did an excellent job in re-creating a slightly aging Bruce Wayne/Batman, who found himself faced with a more formidable opponent. I was a little disappointed to see that "THE DARK KNIGHT RISES" lacked the Chicago exteriors of the 2008 movie. In the end, Gotham City resembled a collection of American and British cities. But I cannot deny that I found Wally Pfister's photography very eye catching. And Hans Zimmer's entertaining score brought back memories of his earlier work in both the 2005 and 2008 movies. I have a good deal of complaints about "THE DARK KNIGHT RISES". It is probably my least favorite entry in Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy. For me, the movie's main problem centered around the script written by Nolan and his brother Jonathan. But despite its flaws, the movie still managed to be both entertaining and intriguing. It also has an excellent cast led by the always superb Christian Bale. It was not perfect, but "THE DARK KNIGHT RISES" did entertain me.

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whentheynameyoujoy · 4 years

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Women in SPN—Seasons 2 and 3

Previously on Joy Obsesses over a Show That Creatively Expired in 2010

Tessa

Introduced back when the Winchesters dodging the coffin actually qualified as an episode, she follows in Meg’s tracks by continuing to make monsters seem more approachable and less a malevolent force of nature. Starts off with a completely flat affect but gets annoyed with the Winchester bullshit real quick—a sure-fire sign of an SPN character with a brain. A powerful being capable of returning one’s memories by a smooch which is… convenient. As is the fact that bad guys keep using her for their ebul plans. Serves the typical secondary-character function of a springboard for a main guy’s development. Plants hints of the “natural order”, “destiny”, and “inevitability” which will become major themes down the road and be explored by characters with deeper writing.

Status: Alive as of s5

Importance: Minor, remembered primarily because she keeps popping up.

On her own: A nice addition to the lore.

Jo Harvelle

Originally Dean’s love interest until she got written out for the crime of having tits around the fandom’s husband. Driven by a wish to honor her dead father and become a hunter, she’s held back by the unfortunate fact of not being all that good at it. Cheerful, temperamental, and a pretty skilled hustler, she’s mortally wounded when charging in to protect Dean. Ends up sacrificing herself so that others can escape and attempt to end the Apocalypse.

Status: Dead as of s5, dragged back and disappeared again in s7

Importance: Major

On her own: A soldier going out in a blaze of glory. I bawl every time.

Ellen Harvelle

Unlike her daughter, very good at what she does. No-nonsense authority figure, she’s one of the few in the show to pull off a combination of a hand-wringing mama bear and a pro-active badass with a life outside her family. Not perceived as a threat because fans don’t know the meaning of MILF yet, and so is allowed to stick around for the season 2 finale. Dies to make Jo’s plan to obliterate Meg’s hellhounds work, though it’s strongly implied she mostly refuses to survive her kid.

Status: Dead

Importance: Major

On her own: SPN’s Molly Weasley, sullied by the implications of her death

Lenore

A head-strong leader of a nest of vegetarian vampires, she’s deliberately contrasted with Gordon’s Terminator schtick and to a lesser degree with Dean’s black-and-white monsters vs. humans kill-everything grief-cope in order to further cement SPN’s ongoing crusade of challenging who in fact is the monster around here. Has a crowning moment of awesome when she refuses to feed while covered in Sam’s blood. The entire point of her is her determination not to give up her humanity even when no longer human. Would be shame if the show decided to later abandon this essential part of her character and twist it for cheap drama…

Status: Alive as of s5, annihilated in every way in s6

Importance: Minor in the overall narrative, major in the episode and the boys’ development

On her own: An effective mirror to Dean’s stroll down the slippery slope

Diana Ballard

TheGoodCop manipulated by her professional and romantic partner, she has a surprisingly functional tension with Sam. Luckily for Linda Blair it goes unnoticed because the fandom doesn’t view older women as competition. Noteworthy mostly because she actively participates in uncovering the episode’s mystery which automatically elevates her above the standard clueless civilian, man or woman, who needs the duo to save them. Despite fewer appearances arguably more memorable than Henriksen, precisely because of her active involvement.

Status: Alive as of s5

Importance: Minor overall, a major player in the episode

On her own: Interesting take on the usual boilerplate cop

Ava Wilson

To present a very, very generous interpretation, she foreshadows Sam’s eventual turn to the dark side. Spirited, a little bit airheaded, and freaked about her Azazel-given powers, she gives enough of a damn to prevent her visions of people dying from coming true, though she clings to her intention to lead a normal civilian life. Does a complete switcheroo off-screen to become a villain because… power is awesome? Ends up the most advanced special child in season 2’s battle royale, the very concept of which is just… eh? Still gets dispatched no problem because… why not?

Status: Dead

Importance: Minor

On her own: A prime example of why the special children subplot is just…wot?

Molly McNamara

Memorable primarily because of the experimental (for SPN) narration which frames her as the duo’s partner when in fact she’s one of the things being hunted. For plot reasons spends her episode switching between being terrified, worried for her missing husband, and heartbroken. Can be somewhat tortuously argued to fit the theme of (not) overcoming grief and letting go, one of the few detectable threads in the directionless slog that’s season 2.

Status: Dead

Importance: Minor overall, major because she’s arguably the main character of her episode

On her own: Torture porny. Very torture porny.

Madison

Intelligent, educated, and with an endearing love of soaps, she’s responsible for one of the three watchable sex scenes in the entire show. Has a nice theme of personal growth and healing from trauma going on, although it’s cut short and undermined when she’s revealed as a werewolf and euthanized by none other than Sam himself. Her death is filmed as a narrative-changing tragedy before it goes on to become a joke in season 4.

Status: Dead

Importance: Major

On her own: No matter how you look at it, she’s a diseased dog that needs to be put down for her own good while the menz wallow in their manly manpain. A rare example of a storyline I don’t think can be tweaked to be even marginally less awful.

I believe maestro may have wanted to portray sadness here.

Tamara

Told to be an excellent hunter, she’s shown as needing to be saved in order not to end up like her husband who’s literally forced to gargle bleach. Introduces the notion of growing hostility against the Winchesters in the hunting community. Full of wrath to fit the episode’s one-off seven deadly sins schtick, she’s emphasized as emotional and not in control of herself to such a degree that it overshadows how she’s in fact fairly competent in the second half of the episode.

Status: Alive as of s5

Importance: Minor

On her own: Wouldn’t stand out this much if she weren’t one of the few POCs in the blinding whiteness that’s SPN’s Americana.

Ruby

Doesn’t have the most organic introduction (A cool intriguing sexy French fries loving not like other gurls sassy badass, with a superdooper special knife? How 2000s cringe can you get?) but quickly becomes one of the show’s most distinctive villains allies. She’s an ally. Totally. Don’t worry about it. A sarcastic smartass jerk who breathes lies and manipulation, she’s resourceful, thinks on her feet, and throws herself into the thick of action without hesitation—a trait that gets especially interesting in retrospect as it suggests a fanatic devotion to her real goal. Sadly, her motivation doesn’t get fleshed out beyond “she really likes Satan, I guess” (which, hey) as the writers prioritize the surprise of the revelation over her further character development. Has the second watchable sex scene in the entire show; the fandom weeps itself to sleep. Gets killed by her own weapon when the writers decide that a character who’s smarter than both protagonists combined could well do with a bit of the good ol’ lobotomizing.

Status: Dead

Importance: Supermegadoublemajor

On her own: The stupid nature of her demise and occasional wooden acting do their best but never overshadow the awesome that’s Ruby.

Lisa Braeden

Dean’s past fling who becomes a living symbol of his desire for the white-picket fence. Is implied to possess mad financial skills as she owns property on a yoga teacher’s salary while a single mom below the age of 30. A blank slate the likes of Cassie, she’s salvaged by better acting. Frequent frowning suggests the presence of an inner life though it doesn’t tend to manifest itself on screen or affect the plot. Her single established trait—blow-out assertiveness the moment things get too far—is exercised mostly in service to her son. Exists solely to give Dean something to pine for.

Status: Alive as of s5

Importance: Major

On her own: A tertiary character who so-so sustains her own episode.

Bela Talbot

The best expansion of the show’s lore after the host of heaven, she’s unequivocally a bad person who nevertheless evokes huge amounts of sympathy. A cynical self-serving dealer in supernatural objects who mirrors Dean’s cracking tough guy persona, due to her abuse and the resulting trauma she refuses to open up and rely on anyone out of principle, or be indebted to them. Her pride makes her clinically unable to ask for help until it’s too late, and even forego mentioning personal history when it’d actively benefit her by softening the horrible impression others have of her. Switching between being an antagonist and the duo’s reluctant ally, she manages to outwit them roughly 90% of time. The fact that she has sexual tension with Dean while Sam lusts after her to the point of literal drooling sends fans apoplectic.

Status: Dead

Importance: Major

On her own: A complex character brought down by her own flaws.

Casey

A demon, she’s torn between wanting to enact the Apocalypse and just chilling with her soulmate. Definitely a fanfic reader because her idea of dealing with danger is to shut herself with her enemy in a room and have a lengthy theological debate. Very outspoken about humanity’s propensity for evil. Outcomplexes Lilith and to a lesser extent Ruby as she’s allowed to openly address her life philosophy. While the dialogue format of her scenes is designed to give Dean space to talk about his feelings regarding his impending demise, it’s more or less an equal push-pull exchange. She’s smart, captivating, capable, and in love, i.e. things SPN just isn’t interested in keeping around.

Status: Dead

Importance: Minor in the overall narrative, major in the episode and Dean’s development

On her own: Could have been so good if allowed to stick around

Gertrude Case

A rich elderly creep whose gropy ways are played for laughs because she’s a woman I guess. Either can’t read social cues or doesn’t give a fuck about people’s obvious discomfort. But don’t worry, it’s hilarious. She’s a woman, you see. What harm have those ever done.

Status: I’m going to assume dead by now, otherwise alive as of s5

Importance: A major figure in Sam’s life since she sexually assaulted him. Otherwise minor.

On her own: Sexual harassment is fun, kids

Lucy

Take Molly McNamara, strip her of any pretence at thematic relevance, minimize her importance while playing up her suffering, and then remove her like a broken Christmas decoration while making sassy remarks—voilà, you’ve ended up with the exact simplistic image that pops into one’s head when the words Supernatural and women are mentioned in a sentence.

Status: Dead

Importance: Non-existent

On her own: Just… why

Astaroth

Approaches awesomehood as her demonic business operation is built around preying on bored suburban hausfraus and taking their souls in exchange for magical powers, which they then use to secure benign materialistic keeping-up-with-the-joneses crap and devour one another like a bunch of assholes whose death you can’t help but eagerly anticipate. Srsly, eff those ladies. Stands out as the only (implied) lesbian in the Kripke arc.

Status: Dead

Importance: Minor, not even the real monster of the week when compared to the coven

On her own: There’s probably another discussion about Doylist sexism hidden around somewhere that I’m not really interested in having. Go Astaroth.

Nancy Fitzgerald

Sugar and spice and every other cliché about kindness combined in a pretty sweet package. Plot demands her to be a virgin for some reason, even though this aspect of her character doesn’t amount to anything in the story and only serves to contrast Nancy’s… purity with Ruby who we’re being constantly told is a “slut” and a “whore” and I have no idea how that’s supposed to work. Then again, Nancy’s virginity is framed as a valid personal choice in a rather empowering moment so that’s good. Has standards because even after deciding to let go of her chastity vow, she won’t settle for just any loser who happens to stand around converting oxygen into CO2. Her “cause manpain out of nowhere”-type death is one of the few of this category in the show which actually work because the cruel pointless nature of it is precisely the point (and at least she’s not the only one who doesn’t survive, please ignore how the episode literally says her demise is the most tragic because she never got laid, barfs).

Status: Dead

Importance: Minor

On their own: A textbook definition of a cinnamon

Lilith

An overarching menace that doesn’t spend too much time on screen, she’s a prop rather than her own person. This gets highlighted the moment the show stops casting her as a clichéd creepy child who likes to larp as that Twilight Zone kid, and turns her into the standard hawt chick in a will-they-won’t-they episode. No interiority as she goes along with a plan which requires her obliteration, without at least allowing her to explore her religious motivation. Ruby does all the heavy lifting in this partnership.

Status: Dead

Importance: Major

On her own: For the life of me I can’t make sense of her actions in s4. But the clichéd creepy kid is adorbs so points for memorability.

Maggie Zeddmore

The straight man to the Ghostfacers’ utterly delightful douchefacery. Manages to keep up with Harry and Ed in terms of hilarity because not only is she exactly as out of place as them, she decides to role-play her childhood-friends-to-lovers fanfic in the middle of a haunted house as the best sister that she is.

Status: Alive as of s5

Importance: Minor

On her own: Love at first geek

Next, season 4 and 5 before I try to figure out what this all adds up to.

#spn #spn critical #supernatural #supernatural critical #sexist writing #tessa #jo harvelle #ellen harvelle #madison #ruby #bela talbot #lisa braeden #nancy fitzgerald #lilith

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idkwhoiamanymorebutwtf · 4 years

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Below imma put my reasoning for each of these if you were confused about why I put certain characters where I did.

(note that this is about the show Harley Quinn 2019 so most things outside of this show won’t be taken into account when discussing the character’s alignments)

James Gordon as Lawful Good: He’s group and order oriented, and will cooperate with authority in all cases. You’ll never see Gordon team up with anyone who isn’t strictly on the ‘good’ side of things. He’s convinced that order and laws are absolutely necessary to assure that goodness prevails and continued to uphold the law even when Batman was gone. A lawful good being kills whenever necessary to promote the greater good, or to protect himself, his companions, or anyone whom he's vowed to defend. In times of war, he strikes down the enemies. Gordon was very much willing to kill Two Face and basically went into an all out war against Harley. He admitted himself that he got into the police force to shoot bad guys. So long as it’s within the letter of the law and the people in question deserve it, he’s very much willing to maim and kill. Gordon responds to authority and when there is no authority figure around he does his best to uphold the law on his own.

Bruce Wayne as Neutral Good: He, like most neutral good characters, values life and freedom above all else, and despises those who would deprive others of them. Neutral good characters, including him, sometimes find themselves forced to work beyond the law, yet for the law, and the greater good of the people. Multiple times throughout the series he teams up with people the law dictates he ought to be fighting, like when he helped Harley in season one and even sacrificed himself to save Harley and Ivy, or when he helped Harley and The Joker get the Justice League back in season two. He’s a super hero, he tries to stay within the law, but he’s willing to work with those who aren’t strictly on the side of ‘good’ if it’s for the sake of goodness.

Barbara Gordon as Chaotic Good: A chaotic good character acts as his conscience directs him with little regard for what others expect of him. He makes his own way, but he's kind and benevolent. He believes in goodness and right but has little use for laws and regulations. Babs, within the context of the show, does work with law enforcement, but she isn’t exactly bound by codes and laws. She worked with Harley and Ivy to take down the Riddler in Season 2 (and lets be real lawful characters...probably wouldn’t work with criminals) and she actually tries to befriend and hang out with the two. Working with them wasn’t just because she had to and there was no other option, she actually wanted to be friends with two criminals which again shows that she isn’t exactly bound to the law. In fact, she actively goes against it when she warns Harley about Gordon coming to take her down and tries to dissuade her father from going through with it, actively sabotaging the police to do what she believes is the right thing.

Pamela Isley as Lawful Neutral: A lawful neutral character acts as law, tradition, or a personal code directs her. Order and organization are paramount to her. She may believe in personal order and live by a code or standard, or she may believe in order for all and favor a strong, organized government. Traditionally, when people think ‘lawful neutral’ they think the latter of those possible motivations, someone who believes in the law and government, however in Ivy’s case she’s much more dictated by a personal standard. A lawful character trusts someone or something better than he trusts themselves, but they still pick which thing that is, it doesn’t have to be the laws of the land, it can be anything so long as it’s a solid principal or code or set of ideals rather than “whatever I feel like at the time”. Ivy’s moral code focuses mainly on saving the earth and she doesn’t every stray from that. She has a strong ideal that she’s completely dedicated to and doesn’t ever really change. She’s an eco-terrorist, and terrorism is usually enacted over incredibly strong beliefs. She isn’t exactly ‘good’ because although her goal is respectable she does things that most people consider immoral to get there, showing she isn’t too concerned about doing what’s good towards people. However she also doesn’t exactly go out of her way to harm or do evil (i mean she hurts people who try and hurt harley or the environment but this is moreso a form of vigilante justice than doing something ivy sees as immoral because she inherently believes that most of humanity is below the environment and below harley too “she’s my only friend but that’s by design, because she’s the only human I think is worth a shit”.)

Harleen Quinzel as True Neutral: True Neutral character’s fully think of good as better than evil. After all, they would rather have good neighbors and rulers than evil ones. They’re just not personally committed to upholding good in any abstract or universal way. True neutral characters are known to behave in a good, moral way towards friends and allies. They support the people who support them, often out of genuine love. True neutral characters also typically only go out of their ways to hurt people who they think deserve it. Basically people who tried to hurt them or their loved ones first. Beyond that they don’t care. They don’t go out of their way to hurt people who don’t deserve it but if these people haven’t done anything to earn this character’s affection then these people don’t really matter. True neutrals often believe in lex talionis forms of justice. True neutral individuals do not lack interest, ambition, or passion--they value their own well-being and that of friends and loved ones. They may struggle passionately on behalf of themselves or others, as well as feel compassion for those they barely know. But overall they aren’t bound with any loyalty to doing what’s good. They aren’t bound to the law. They don’t feel an obligation to go against morality or law just for the sake of it either, though. I honestly think this is the most fitting for Harley. She doesn’t see any reason to follow the laws so she doesn’t. When someone fucks with her she’ll fuck right back, but generally she isn’t known to go out of her way to hurt people. It really feels like she’s mostly out to protect herself and her own. She’ll fight for things her friends care about and to help the people she loves. She has no qualms about lying and killing when the people in question hurt her or someone she cares about, though. She said herself that she can’t really even be considered a bad guy. Harley turned down the chance to take over the world because she isn’t evil and doesn’t want to inflict unwarranted suffering on random people, but at the same time she’s taken down multiple people who mess with her with little remorse for doing so. The broader conflicts between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ and ‘law’ and ‘chaos’ don’t seem to mean much to her, she’s just out to protect her and her own.

Selina Kyle as Chaotic Neutral: She, like all chaotic neutral characters, strives to protect her freedom first and foremost. Chaotic neutral characters follow their whims without any regard for good or evil or law. They often don’t have much actual concern for personal relationships. Chaotic neutral characters do not necessarily want others to suffer as a result of their actions, but do not care if others do suffer. They tend to behave in a good manner towards friends and allies, unless their friends and allies do not agree with them. Within the show, Selina has betrayed her allies multiple times, first abandoning her to steal a blood diamond and leaving Ivy to pay for her hotel bills, then stealing the the diamond Kiteman wanted to use to propose. She generally isn’t concerned with the wellbeing of Ivy, Harley, or any other allies, and prioritizes her own interests over all else with very little loyalty to...well...anything.

Darkseid as Lawful Evil: A lawful evil villain methodically takes what he wants within the limits of his code of conduct without regard for whom it hurts. He cares about tradition, loyalty, and order but not about freedom, dignity, or life. He plays by the rules but without mercy or compassion. Darkseid is difficult to please and demands grand gestures of obedience and power in order for people to prove themselves, as was the case of Harley and Doctor Psycho offering to conquer planet Earth for him. Any acts of betrayal or disloyalty towards him is met with anger on his part and an oaf of vengeance. Despite this, he is not without a sense of restraint, as was the case of him returning to Apokolips after Harley refused for a second time to rule over Earth. He keeps his promises (when he offered harley the ability to rule earth after she showed her strength, for example), but doesn’t take kindly to disobedience or disloyalty and is undoubtedly evil, going out of his way to maim, kill, and conquer.

Edgar Cizko as Neutral Evil: Neutral evil characters are primarily concerned with themselves and their own advancement. They have no particular objection to working with others or, for that matter, going it on their own. Their only interest is in getting ahead. If there is a quick and easy way to gain a profit, whether it be legal, questionable, or obviously illegal, they take advantage of it. Although neutral evil characters do not have the every-man-for-himself attitude of chaotic characters, they have no qualms about betraying their friends and companions for personal gain. These characters willingly cooperate with anyone who will further their own ends. They often seek the easy road to fame and fortune, with little concern for the people they trample along the way. They value strength and ability alone. If the neutral evil can use laws to weaken those who stand in the way of his success, he will use them. He may betray a family member, comrade, or friend if it is convenient to do so and it advances his agenda. Dr. Psycho was fully willing to completely betray Harley over an offer of power, something that everyone else on the team viewed as reprehensible (this is why he’s the only one who i’d consider ‘evil’, btw, because king, clayface, harley, and ivy all value their friends/allies over power and control and view each other as friends wheras Dr. Psycho was willing to betray all of them even after everything they’d all gone through together). He does whatever it takes to elevate himself and goes out of his way to hurt people (like trying to take over the world or broadcasting revenge porn of harley and ivy into the sky).

The Joker as Chaotic Evil: As Harley said, he’s a sociopathic narcissist. As with all Chaotic Evil characters, he is hot-tempered, vicious, arbitrarily violent, and unpredictable. Thankfully, these character’s plans are haphazard, and any groups they join or form are poorly organized.The Joker may be a ‘genius’ but he often fails to really think things through or execute plans successfully (I knowwww I said we were just analyzing this show and not the character’s other appearances but there’s such a good example from another show to what i mean when i say the joker isn’t as effective as he could be. remember when harley literally came closer to killing batman than joker did and improved his original plans? and the only reason batman survived was because joker threw her out a fucking window and screwed everything up? yeah.) He’s smart and powerful and rutheless and all that but he doesn’t think things through or organize his thoughts well enough. The major precepts of this alignment are freedom, randomness, and woe. Laws and order, kindness, and good deeds are disdained. Life has no value. By promoting chaos and evil, those of this alignment hope to bring themselves to positions of power, glory, and prestige in a system ruled by individual caprice and their own whim. The chaotic evil creature holds that individual freedom and choice is important, and that other individuals and their freedoms are unimportant if they cannot be held by the individuals through their own strength and merit. Thus, law and order rends to promote not individuals but groups, and groups suppress individual volition and success. The Joker abused his girlfriend ruthlessly, goes out of his way to hurt innocents, tries to kill people on a regular basis weather they deserve it or not, and generally goes out of his way to exert his power over other’s simply for the sake of proving he’s dominant to them.

#harley quinn 2019 #harley quinn #harleen quinzel #selina kyle #catwoman #poison ivy #pamela isley #darkseid #dr psycho #the joker #joker #james gordon #barbara gordon #batgirl #batman #bruce wayne

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madscientistjournal · 5 years

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An Interview with Madison Estes

Today, we’re chatting with Madison Estes, who will have a story in the final quarterly for MSJ!

DV: Tell us a bit about yourself! Madison Estes: I’m a horror addict who comes from a family of horror fans. My dad and I went to Las Vegas this year so we could do the Saw Escape Room, which was one of the coolest and most intense experiences of my life. Several of the rooms are duplicates of traps from the movies, and they got Tobin Bell to do narration in each room. My mother and I went to Texas Frightmare several years ago and we got to meet some of the Saw stars, plus Robert England, Sid Haag, and Sean Patrick Flannery. With two parents who are horror fans, I had a lot of horror influences growing up. I remember the crypt keeper from Tales from the Crypt used to scare me, but when I got a little older I’d watch reruns of it whenever I could, in addition to The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits. Like most contemporary horror writers, I read a lot of Stephen King when I was growing up, starting with The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, which is still one of my favorites. I also read On Writing sometime in the fifth grade. It helped me connect with literature in a way that I hadn’t before, and I believe it shaped me into the writer that I am today.

I live in southeast Texas and I have three dogs, two black and white Chihuahuas, a boy and a girl (Leo and Mayhem), and a Shih Tzu named Mika. When I’m not writing, I’m usually snuggling with them and reading or watching movies. In addition to my obsession with horror, I’m a huge nerd for Harry Potter, Star Wars, Marvel, DC and some of the old school anime shows like Yu Yu Hakusho.

DV: You’ve got a story coming out in February in Strange Girls: Women in Horror Anthology that sounds like it will be of interest to our readers. What can you share about your story without giving too much away?

ME: My story “Revival” is about a medical student who believes the cadaver he was assigned to dissect is coming back to life. He’s grieving the loss of his sister and suffering from nightmares and sleep deprivation, so he’s not mentally stable. He doesn’t trust his own judgement, but since he couldn’t save his sister, he’ll stop at nothing to save this girl if she really can be saved.

DV: You’re also working on a horror writing guidebook with other authors. Tell us more about this project.

ME: I’m working with five other writers on The Complete Guide to Writing Horror Vol. 1, commissioned by Dragon Moon Press. I’m in charge of five chapters, which cover topics such as horror subgenres, horror basics, the history of horror, business etiquette, and market resources. At the moment, I’m still working on subgenres. I’m designing this chapter to help writers learn how to categorize their own writing, and to give them an idea of what is out there so they can find their niche or niches within the horror genre.

In the basics chapter, I’m covering character struggles, decisions, consequences, and other related topics. One subject of special interest to me is character agency. I feel that in horror stories, character agency is often lacking. It’s tempting to write a passive, reactive character in a genre where the villain is often the star, but characters should have some control over their lives, or at least the appearance of control, even if by the end of the story you’re going to pull the rug from under the reader and reveal the characters had little to no chance at all. Think about the movies In the Mouth of Madness, Knowing, or Cabin in the Woods. The main characters in these stories are active. They fight back, but more than that, they ask questions and investigate. Even if they fail, they make efforts to take control of their lives. It makes stronger characters and a more entertaining story than a character that only runs from the maniac with the knife.

In the business etiquette chapter, I cover topics such as communication and conflict management with editors, and how to write cover letters, query letters, author bios, and more. Market resources covers topics such as networking opportunities, horror writing conventions, critique groups, where to find submission calls, and a list of active horror publishers. I haven’t started writing the history chapter yet (please don’t tell my editor!), but I plan to cover the origin of horror and the movements that have shaped the genre, such as the invention of film, video games, and the internet, as well as how certain authors like Stephen King forever changed horror.

I’ve very excited about this project. I can’t wait to share my knowledge and help aspiring horror writers. It takes me back to being in fifth grade with On Writing and the way that book filled me with excitement for writing. I hope to not only help writers elevate their craft, but to inspire that feeling within them as well.

DV: What’s the coolest thing about being an author?

ME: When I go on Amazon and read a review from someone who enjoyed my story, or when a book blogger reviews an anthology I’m in and singles out my story as one of their favorites, it gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling. It makes all the hours of writing and revising worth it.

DV: What’s on the horizon for you?

I just had a short story called “Crossroads” featured in Horror USA: California (Soteira Press) about an actor who goes through a midlife crisis when his girlfriend gets pregnant. His mental stability and fears of fatherhood are worsened by his Porsche, a haunted car that carries a terrible secret. I recently published my first paranormal romance/erotica story in The Devil’s Doorbell (HellBound Books) called “Visions of Blood”. A psychic has visions whenever he touches people or certain objects, but it comes with a side-effect of searing pain. A beautiful vampire convinces him to use his ability to help her track down the vampire who murdered her friend. Sexual tension leads to some very creative sex scenes between them despite the character’s disability.

My short story “Servant of Death” is going to appear in the last issue of Mad Scientist Journal. It’s about a child dying from cancer who is stalked by a shadow creature that he perceives to be Death. After he escapes the grim reaper’s clutches, his cancer goes away, but when he grows up, he finds out that remission came with a price.

I have a short story coming out next year in a time-themed anthology by Transmundane Press. My story is called, “The Time Loop Loophole”. It’s a horror comedy about a guy trapped in a time loop who thinks the only way to escape may be to kill his best friend. The premise sounds really dark, but the story is mostly humorous. The main character is kind of a self-described loser. At the beginning of the story, his biggest regret about being in the time loop is not being able to finish his video games or see the ending of Game of Thrones (a blessing in disguise according to most fans, not that he could know that). He’s not even that bothered by the time loop until the girl he has a crush on starts showing interest in him. Secrets come out, and everything gets complicated as he starts to wonder just what he’s willing to do to be with the girl of his dreams.

Thanks, Madison!

An Interview with Madison Estes was originally published on Mad Scientist Journal

#Interview #Madison Estes

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thecomicsnexus · 6 years

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Heroes for Hope

HEROES FOR HOPE DECEMBER 1985 BY CHRIS CLAREMONT, ANN NOCENTI, JIM STARLIN, JIM SHOOTER, STAN LEE, ED BRYANT, LOUISE SIMONSON, STEPHEN KING, BILL MANTLO, ALAN MOORE, HARLAN ELLISON, JO DUFFY, MIKE BARON, DENNY O’NEIL, GEORGE R. R. MARTIN, BRUCE JONES, STEVE ENGLEHART, MIKE GRELL, ARCHIE GOODWIN, BERNIE WRIGHTSON...

JOHN ROMITA JR, JOHN BUSCEMA, BRENT ANDERSON, JOHN BYRNE, CHARLES VESS, RICHARD CORBEN, MIKE KALUTA, FRANK MILLER, BRIAN BOLLAND, JOHN BOLTON, STEVE RUDE, BRET BLEVINS, HERB TRIMPE, GRAY MORROW, PAUL GULACY, ALAN WEISS, JACKSON GUICE, HOWARD CHAYKIN...

AL GORDON, KLAUS JANSON, JOE SINNOTT, TERRY AUSTIN, DAN GREEN, JEFF JONES, JON J MUTH, TOM PALMER, AL MILGROM, BILL SIENKIEWICZ, P. CRAIG RUSSELL, CARL POTTS, AL WILLIAMSON, SAL BUSCEMA, BOB LAYTON, JOE RUBINSTEIN, STEVE LEIALOHA, WALT SIMONSON...

DAINA GRAZIUNAS, MARIE SEVERIN, BOB SHAREN, PETRA SCOTESE, CHRISTIE SCHEELE, MICHELLE WRIGHTSON, GLYNIS OLIVER, GEORGE ROUSSOS, LESLIE ZAHLER AND JANET JACKSON (NOT THAT JANET JACKSON)

SYNOPSIS

The X-men are attacked by a strange entity that makes them feel despair and end up going to Ethiopia to help people against the famine (and fighting this entity after a while).

OFFICIAL CONTEXT

CONTEXT BY CHRISTOPHER PRIEST

The most heated racial episode in my career occurred during Marvel's production of their charity book for Ethiopian famine victims. Promoted as work from "the top writers and artists in the industry-- the very best of the very best," profits from this effort were going to be donated to help the poor starving Africans. It was a truly noble effort, one the entire industry rallied behind (at least until DC decided to do their own book, thus dividing the talent pool along company lines). Denys Cowan dropped by and mentioned, amused, that he'd seen the list of talent working on the famine relief project. There wasn't a single African American creator invited to participate. This actually amused me tremendously, and I went over the list myself to make sure, but, yup, no blacks had been thought of as, "the very best of the very best," and none were invited to work on this book.

Tickled, I picked up the phone and called Larry Hama, telling him no blacks were on the list. Larry was hugely amused, and suggested we do our own charity relief book for the poor white trash of Appalachia. He and I howled with laughter, and then shook off the dumbness of it all and got on with our lives.

Only, a white staffer had overheard part of the conversation (I assume the notion of my "recruiting" Hama to do my "own alternate charity book"), and some warped interpretation of my conversation with Hama got reported down the hall to the X-MEN office (where the book was being developed). The editors became incensed and loudly demanded my head on a plate for, essentially, inciting the black talent to stop working for Marvel. I mean, this thing got blown to huge proportions, so much so that, by the end of the day, it was largely accepted as fact that I was organizing a walkout of black talent, and the EIC kind of put me and the X-Men editor in a room to negotiate a deal.

I just couldn't stop laughing. I mean, it was all so stupid. These were stupid people. It was extremely stupid to do an African relief charity project and not invite any damned Africans to work on it. It was even sillier for these stupid people to invent some massive protest out of a silly joke in a 30-second phone call with Larry Hama.

The X-Men Ed was not amused, and refused to believe me when I said I had no intention of bad-mouthing the project. I was invited to participate, but I just chuckled and said, "No affirmative action, please." And this just set the Ed off into a screaming match that could be heard everywhere in the office, "What is WRONG with you? Why do you have to make a RACIAL ISSUE OUT OF EVERYTHING?!?!?!"

It just got out of control, and the episode (along with my paying my assistant to stay home on MLK's birthday once it was ratified as a national holiday but Marvel refused to recognize it, other than the numbingly patronizing "We got us our own holiday" speech by Luke Cage in the VISION & SCARLET WITCH Miniseries) fairly cemented my pariah status at Marvel. Without saying a word and without actually doing anything, I was routinely assumed to be some radical activist who saw everything as a race issue.

I felt trapped in a world of loons. It was totally no-win, and I tended to simply withdraw from the office more and more, from people who, in my view, had now invented a justification to do what they'd been doing all along: fencing themselves off from me.

CONTEXT BY JIM SHOOTER

Pam had arranged for Oxfam America to receive our donation. Their reaction to our offer, at first, was what one might expect from people who had never seen a comic book up close: “Comic book? There’s nothing funny about famine!” Sigh.

For some reason Pam was determined that we should donate the money to them, though, and we convinced them that comics weren’t always comic. They still demanded to review the finished book before they would commit to accept our donation.

When the book was ready to go to press, we sent a mock-up to Oxfam America to review.

Their response was that they wanted nothing to do with it. Flat rejection.

Furthermore, they said that the book was unbelievably offensive and that we, the people of Marvel Comics, were racist, sexist and reprehensible.

When this was told to me by Pam and Marvel President Jim Galton I felt as if I were being called on the carpet. I was flabbergasted. I showed them the mock-up.

They didn’t see anything wrong with it.

Galton called the exec at Oxfam America we’d been dealing with to ask what their specific objections were.

Their response was that, while under no circumstances would they have anything to do with our project or with us, they would send an executive to meet with us and explain the many horrific, repugnant, disgusting elements that made our “comic book” anathema.

So they did. Oxfam America’s representative came to meet with Galton and me. The meeting took place in Galton’s office.

I do not remember the man’s name.

He was a nice-looking, thirty-something man. He had on a suit that probably cost more than my entire wardrobe. Designer shoes. He had on more gold and diamond jewelry than I’d ever seen on a human being. Jeweled watch. Cufflinks. Stickpin. Bracelets. A neck chain that would make a rapper blush. Doubt me, go ahead. Discount by two-thirds what I’m telling you and you should still have an image of a guy wearing clothes and jewelry that at market price would feed a thousand starving people for a month.

After the greetings and handshaking, Galton, making conversation, said that he imagined that Oxfam America and other charitable organizations had, at least, gotten a lot of people to focus on the ongoing tragedy in Africa, and had inspired many efforts such as ours from musicians and performers and artists.

This Oxfam America fellow, let’s call him Midas, just plain gushed about how good for business the East African famine was, how donations were rolling in at record levels. He talked about the millions dying as if it were a great marketing opportunity.

Galton and I were stupefied. We couldn’t believe how thrilled Midas was that his business was booming.

Midas explained that the purpose of his visit wasn’t here to request changes or negotiate. He had come to save us from our own folly. He made it clear that Oxfam America had nothing but contempt for us and our work. He came as a favor, to urge us not to publish the abomination that we had created. He assured us that it would destroy Marvel Comics.

Right. Well, naturally, I wondered why.

Midas flipped through the mock-up. Again and again he pointed out black characters that he said “looked like Michael Jackson.” We were obviously trying to capitalize on Michael Jackson’s image and fame.

Michael Jackson in particular and the Jackson family in general were huge supporters of Oxfam America, by the way. Every drawing of a woman, he said, was sexist and exploitative. He was particularly offended by depictions of Storm, which he thought were more than sexist, a denigration of women of color.

I mentioned that the men were heroic and glamorous, too. Just like in the movies, stars tend to be good looking.

He pointed out a panel in which Chris had a carnival barker saying: “Yowza….” That, he said, was racist in the extreme. I don’t have the book handy, as explained above, but wasn’t that character Caucasian?

Moore and Corben’s pages? Yikes.

I cannot begin to tell you all the racism, sexism and hate that he (and Oxfam America) read into the words and pictures.

Wow.

The punch line is this: Midas accused Marvel of “stealing Janet Jackson’s logo.” He believed that the Heroes for Hope logo, credited to Janet Jackson, was ripped off.

I offered to introduce him to the designer on our staff who had created the logo, one Miss Janet Claire Jackson. He dismissed my obvious attempt at a cover-up.

No, really, we have a designer named…. Oh, never mind.

No wonder Janet Claire Jackson eventually started going by the name “Blog Elf.”

Finally, the lunatic left. Galton and I shared a moment of “what a jerk.”

Pam was instructed to find some other organization to which to donate the money. She came up with the American Friends Service Committee.

Heroes for Hope was a huge success. Thanks to our sales department, we got donations from downstream—distributors, retailers, even fans.

Can’t find the press release and the picture of me and Galton giving the AFSC honchos the PR “Big Check” created by our production department to symbolize the real check. I think the initial donation was $500,000. Much more came later.

It was a great thing. Jim Starlin, Bernie Wrightson, Ann Nocenti and Chris Claremont are great heroes in my book. Heroes for hope. There are people alive today who wouldn’t be without their efforts.

AND ABOUT THOSE STEPHEN KING PAGES

The non-comics writers who participated needed some help in most cases, which Ann and Chris provided. The biggest challenge was Stephen King’s contribution. I may be exaggerating here, but not by much—he gave us something like 5,000 words for three pages. Almost overnight, by the way. Chris, Ann and I somehow cut that down to what would fit on three comics pages. 500 words? I forget. Has anyone else ever had to cut out 90% of Stephen King’s brilliant words?

REVIEW

This was bound to not be a nice comic-book to review. The famine in Ethiopia at the moment had political origins that people decided to look over in favor of Live Aid and We Are The World.

Let’s just say that sending super-heroes there to help doesn’t guarantee a success (although they could have done something more against politicians, but let’s not go there).

The story is a bit abstract and the characters pretty much end up making sense of it without ever checking their facts (like the entity being a mutant and why it exists). The sequences about each X-man being tortured psychologically was too repetitive. By the time they end up in Africa (something that happens on a wild guess), the book is almost over.

The art doesn’t have a nice unifying feel. Something that could have been possible with breakdowns and less inkers and colorists.

But you know what? I understand why it had to be like that. This book was made ad honorem, and people did a great effort to just put the damn thing on the stands.

My other concern is that the X-men weren’t the right fit for a story like this. I understand they were popular back then, but these comics should attract non-readers as well (it’s for a good cause after all). And to be frank, things like Rachel Summers, Storm not having powers, Magneto being the leader... those are things of that time. Very hard to relate to. The Avengers would have been a better choice, or even Spider-man and the Fantastic Four (even if Spidey was looking a bit different at the time).

I like the message of not losing hope, and hope being the one thing keeping people alive in such tragedies... but then they kind of go back home. Leaving hope?

I don’t think the ideas in the book were brought down on something concrete or to keep thinking on. It is just confusing.

I give the book a score of 5

#heroes for hope #famine #marvel comics #x-men #1985 #comics #review #modern age #live aid #arthur adams

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leepacefansnetwork · 7 years

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Visit to the Halt and Catch Fire season 4 set

SPOILER WARNING.

Piotr Grabiec visited the set of Halt and Catch Fire back in mid-July when the final episode of the series was being filmed. The text below is more or less a raw Google translate from his report for ‘Spider’s Web’. Everyone can google translate and the only added value here is that you don’t have to do it as it’s copy/pasted below, with some minor editing. DISCLAIMER: we had to omit some parts because the translation made no sense, and we had to guess some parts. No guarantees we got it right...It’s obvious we don’t know Polish (heck, sometimes we don’t even know English) but if you do, let us know if there are glaring errors. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting interview, enjoy!

27.09.2017 I flew to the other end of the world to stop and take care of the fire - we were on the set Halt and Catch Fire PIOTR GRABIEC @PGKRZYWY

I had the opportunity to visit the set of Halt and Catch Fire during my past vacation. On location I looked into Comet's fictional headquarters and I was able to talk about the final season with the actors. The questions were answered by Joe MacMillan, Donna Emerson, John Bosworth and Joanie Clark. Halt and Catch Fire is one of the better series that modern television has given us. It quickly found his own identity. It may never have earned such recognition among the audience as the likes of The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones, but it has created some really great, multi-layered heroes. Toby Huss (John Bosworth) was asked why the PC series was so popular with fans, and he rightly remarked that "it's not about computers, it's about people." After watching three seasons I know well that tracking their fate is a real emotional roller coaster. Despite its poor ratings, AMC TV has allowed Halt and Catch Fire to make its fourth season, about the birth of the internet. Lee Pace, Joe MacMillan in the series, admitted that, for the first time, the crew knew that this was the final chapter of their story. Previously, they were never sure whether it was over or whether they would have a chance to return. "It's nice that we can finish it, not finish it and then find out that we are coming back. I think we worked hard on the story and told it as we wanted it. I am proud of what we have achieved, "comments the actor. Lee Pace said these words in Atlanta, where I went in mid July.

As I reached the location, AMC was finishing filming the last scenes of the final season of Halt and Catch Fire. I saw how a big-budget American production works. I looked closely at the work of cast and crew. I went straight to series reality, bending my head against carefully crafted set designs and props. During my set visit, there were actors playing almost all the main characters - characters who we have been watching on TV for three years. The stars included Lee Pace (Joe MacMillan), Kerry Bishe (Donna Emerson), Toby Huss (John Bosworth) and Kathryn Newton (Joanie Clark). I had the opportunity to talk with everyone.

They had one thing in common: each actor was very enthusiastic. We headed out of the hotel early this morning. We drove to the outskirts of the city and upon arriving I got my headphones and was shown to my seat where I could observe the place. It was a glaring hot day. Nobody took my phone, but the amount on the signed document effectively discouraged me from pulling it out of my pocket and taking souvenir photos. After a moment, Lee Pace appeared in the distance, where a woman ran with a suitcase full of sunglasses.. The actor, towering over everyone around, could choose how his character would appear in one of the last scenes. Around him, 30 people were busy. Everyone knew exactly what they was doing - someone was pitching a microphone, someone else was scattering autumn leaves, Lee Pace was talking in a sports car. The whole crew was like a well oiled machine. In its 4th season Halt and Catch Fire jumped to the 90s, and it can be seen at a glance. During the visit I visited several different stages where various scenes from the series were filmed. The spirit of the 90s floated in the air, so Halt and Catch Fire is getting closer to me like never before. The previous series showed events historically placed before my birth, and season 4 is the time I can recall in my memories. As soon as the crew finished shooting Lee Pace and the car scene, we were invited to the next building where we waited for the callers. On the table in the hall where I conducted interviews, the organizers scattered themed decorations. They gave the context for the conversation and reminded us of what America was like in the days of Halt and Catch Fire.

After a while, Toby Huss appeared at the door. The character of John Bosworth is, in fact, exactly like his character. Characteristic accent and intonation are not forged. "[Bosworth] is not restless, but he can not be called seduced. He is looking for a business that he could take care of in the next phase of his life, "Toby Huss [...] admits his character is not looking at the past with bitterness. Although people who have been protected from being sent off have failed in their personal and professional lives, it does not regret saving them in the first season. John can and is retired, but he can not sit still, it's not his nature. The actor believes that his hero was not about to end, as he finished. Such a person would not have allowed his business to be taken over and then go to jail for Joe and Cameron to realize their dream. "He was preparing for retirement and going off to the sunset with his wife and children," he explains. Toby Huss noted that if Joe MacMillan had not crushed Cardiff Electric, the world would not have opened up for John. Connect with Cameron and his decisions made him change. The Texan understood that women too could run a business and somehow came to terms with the fact that they had taken over the baton. "What a great hero, what a wonderful journey he is going through," comments Huss. He asked if it was initially assumed that John would join the dream team and become a member of the cast. Toby Huss admitted that the story of his character could have ended much earlier. The creators of the series, however, decided that it would be useful for the character to look at everything from the side. Taking advantage of the occasion, I asked about one fascinating issue. In the first season Bosworth led Joe MacMillan's beating by the police to show him his place. The characters never came back to this and ... will not come back. In the 4th season, however, they will have a small common scene in which they will recall the past. Of course the actor did not betray the end, but he admitted that all the scenes with him had already been filmed. Asked about how he liked the ending of his character's history, he said that the last scene was "moving".

The next person I talked with was Kerry Bishé. Her character Donna’s story is no less bumpy than Bosworth’s. At first, she was in her husband’s shadow. Although she was treading in a different direction to the other characters - she cannot look at her like a one-dimensional villain. However, it is impossible to hide that Donna came out as the black character of Halt and Catch Fire. Kerry Bishe herself twice calls her character "a real monster." Looking back, she realized that her character made a terrible decision, but it couldn’t be helped. "It's the best and the worst. Such deep, multi-dimensional characters are rare and playing such a character for four years has been a dream come true", commented Kerry Bishé. [...] she called him [Scoot McNairy] "her husband from work". She said that when shooting Halt and Catch Fire, they used photos taken during their previous joint performance at Argo. I was very curious if Kerry Bishé had any influence on her character. She replied that the role of Donna has played a big part in her life and for the first three seasons she tried to beg the writers to change some scenes. In the case of the final season she changed her approach. "I was aware that I could not be objective and the changes that I would probably like to introduce should not happen. I could not trust myself that the changes I would ask would improve the series, not just my mood. I promised myself that for the 4th season I would not ask for anything,” declared the actress. The question immediately came from my question about whether this promise was kept and Kerry Bishé said with a smile that it was. She recognized that she trusts people who write the character - which, as she adds later, she has played the longest in her career - but whether it was a good decision, remains to be seen. I asked the interlocutor whether or not she gave the character something in spite of herself. "A story of bad, awkward jokes," she replied. After a moment of reflection, the actress, with a smile on her face, added, "But it's humiliating." Kerry Bishé confessed that she regretted she could not work so much with other cast members. This does not mean she did not work with them at all. She said she had spent a lot of time with Mackenzie Davis in recent weeks, and both had a lot of fun together. We can also expect a new chapter in Donna and Gordon's relationship after the divorce, which the actress describes as "one of the most moving, personal, beautiful things this season." I also laughed at her reply to the question of the reaction that the characters in the previous series had split up. "Thank God. Thank God. What more can you tell these two people to go? Apparently a lot of things, " recalls Bishé. She also admits she envied some of the actors, especially Lee Pace. His passionate character was able to inspire people, and her character, though responsible and wise, could not pull the crowds. "[Donna] finds her way in the last episode, in her own way [...] I feel happy to have reached this place. It's a beautiful, comfortable place to end up, " she concludes on the end of the story for her character. During our interview, it was too early to talk about further career plans for the actress because she had yet to shoot 6 more days. We talked a while back about the third Narcos series, in which my interviewee played a woman from the United States, wife of one of the members of the cartel. I suggested to her that there is a similarity between these series: in both cases we know what will be the end. We know that Donna is not going to create Google. This is probably the only point of contact between the two series. You have to focus on the journey itself, because you know how it ends. We know Joe MacMillan is not Steve Jobs. We focus on what's going on between the beginning and its effect we know, "commented Kerry Bishé. She also joked that she always wanted the Halt and Catch Fire heroes to invent things we did not yet have such as teleportation or time travel, but she was disappointed. Although she thinks that going sci-fi could go down well, she likes the fact that the series is pretty good at the true story of computers.

The third actor to enter the room is Lee Pace, the lead actor I saw earlier when filming one of the scenes outside. In real life he appears even taller than on the TV screen. It seems that the actor dominates every room which he enters. Also, the character he plays is dry and annoying, but talking to him it was obvious that it was just acting. Actually Lee Pace is a nice and enthusiastic man. Like Kerry Bishé, he mentioned that the best part of his participation in Halt and Catch Fire was working with the rest of the cast. "Usually we prepared some dinner and had a few bottles of wine and read the script, including the actors who were not with us. Toby Huss always read the stage instructions, and if Annabeth [Gish] was not at hand, then Mackenzie [Davis] was reading Diane's questions. I read Joanie if she was not there, "recalls Lee Pace, who shared the same talk about the characters and the world they live in. This allowed him to understand why heroes are constantly falling over - they simply do not have to wear masks in their company. "They do not necessarily get along. They are not very good at what they do because they are constantly failing; Maybe they are good at what they do, but they just do not have the luck. But they can be their weird selves, "explains the actor. The actor also notes that Halt and Catch Fire is not conventional television, it is not a story of winners. "I love how Joe is crushed each season. He loses everything and always comes back, always finds the way. He still has optimism. After the end of the previous season, after Ryan's death, he was thought he was tired with technology. But these people [Gordon and Cameron] are constantly dragging him into this world. The prospect of returning to the sandbox with them fills him with optimism and hope, "concludes Lee Pace. What's complicated about Joe? The actor was asked how he sees Joe MacMillan today, 20 years after the events of the show. He replied that he believes Joe now "thinks he is worthy of the love he is looking for". Lee Pace calls the search for acceptance and self esteem the key to understanding this character. "He is battered, tortured, and does not think that he is worth loving. It is sad that there are people in the world without self-esteem. They think that they have to get it, create value, they have to create jobs and make money, they have to do something to deserve the love that comes easily to other people.” It is conceivable that Joe MacMillan is a very distinctive (and characteristic) hero. I wondered if it was a writers’ work, or if Lee Pace added something to him. He briefly remarked that it was not his job to correct the scenes, but to interpret them. Interpreting this character was very interesting. "The screenwriters could have modeled it [Joe MacMillan] on Steve Jobs, but it was not interesting to me. It was intriguing that he was modeling himself on Steve Jobs. He is aware of what he does. Joe does not know who he is. He does not know who he is. At the beginning of this story, people are looking for people who can pretend - just like Steve Jobs or Mickey Michelson, the 80s winners - that's the idea of the winner, because Joe wants to be the winner, "explains Lee Pace. As spectators, however, we know that Joe is losing all over again and changing. The actor is convinced that the character does not want to win at all costs. They start to draw shades of gray, and this season probably finally know who he is. The actor also admitted [...] he did not always fully understand his motives. But he has a weakness for this hero. "I could make friends with him. He is a fascinating and complicated person, and I'm interested in complicated people, " he confesses.

Toby Huss admitted that he likes computers and social networking sites. He noted, however, that as humanity we have come to a strange point in relation to social media. He’s noticed that on the one hand it was a great place, but social networking sites could be full of hate. "People used to talk and everybody smoked. So we smoked those cigarettes, and we talked. Today everyone pulls the phone out of their pocket and does not talk to others, "remembers Toby Huss." We've lost something in the social media world, but we do not know if the change is for the better or for the worse. " Lee Pace, in turn, admitted that he has phases when he enjoys social media, and then stops paying attention to it for weeks. "I recently installed Instagram [...] and I can spend hours watching some silly photos of 15-year-olds dancing, but I found some great photographers there," admitted Lee Pace. Still, he does not know exactly how computers work, but he knows the basics of the machines Joe and Gordon built. He was most fascinated by the development of the internet and the genesis of the global network.

Kerry Bishé called herself a freak, an opponent of technical progress. "I am going on big expeditions and I travel without a phone. It is very important for me to break free from all technology. We do not have a TV at home. This is a specific way of life, "commented Kerry Bishé. But she noted that although she does not like technology in the form of phones, she loves learning [...] promote computer science education among women and minorities. The actress, who plays in the personal computer start-up series, pulled her iPhone's out of her pocket just to show that she had a phone - because she admitted that she did not know how to use it. Asked about the coolest gadgets of the 80s and 90s, she said she would like to have a Game Boy.

[...] Kathryn Newton [...] said that after finishing her work, she brought Joanie home with her, and now she is trying to dress like her character. The coolest element of the 90s for Kathryn Newton was the clothes that are now fashionable again. "Joanie's style is so great - she's cooler than me. Joanie is much cooler than me. We had a lot of fun creating Joanie and her style. Even Joanie's walking style is different from mine, my way of speaking has changed and it starts with her clothes. This is definitely one of the things l liked best, "says Kathryn Newton. As for the impact on her character, Newton admits that much of her work comes about organically. What she wanted to show in her was a certain susceptibility, fragility. Not only is she pissed off, but also lost and lonely. "You can not just be angry and keep rubbing. There must be a reason for this, you have to get the reason for the anger, " explains the actress. However, even if she prepares and repeats the scene hundreds of times in her head, on the set it all changes. I saw this from the director - the sequences of the same scene at times were very different from each other. We met with the young actress a little later. On the day I arrived on set, Newton was shooting her last scene on the show. Asked about the hardest part of the work on the set, she acknowledged that the work was intense and Joanie was not easy to play in the new season. "My character has changed a lot. I joined the show in Season 3 and I was thrown there as a rebellious teenage daughter. But the characters in this series are deep enough, rooted and connected that [Joanie] quickly became a very multi-layered person. She’s not just a girl, a teenager, "she recounts. “Is the actress happy with the ending of her heroine's story?" She admitted yes because Joanie travels and has no fear in her. Newton stated that she would not have the courage to do something similar, but the heroine "has a purpose, and realizing it, she discovers who she is."

Piotr Grabiec has written another account of his set visit, concentrating on the set and costume design. Check it out here: x

#halt and catch fire #hacf #hacf season 4 #joe macmillan #lee pace #Kerry Bishé #toby huss #kathryn newton #lpfn #interview #translation

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delhi-architect2 · 4 years

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Journal - The Long Shadow of Minimalism

Architects, interior designers, rendering artists, landscape architects, engineers, photographers and real estate developers are invited to submit their firm for the inaugural A+Firm Awards, celebrating the talented teams behind the world’s best architecture. Register today.

The New Yorker recently published an interesting piece by Kyle Chayka titled ‘The North American Maximalism of Gigi Hadid’s and Drake’s Home Design.’ Chayka states approvingly that, in 2020, “a new North American maximalism” is getting “revenge” on minimalism, which has been trying to “vanquish” purely ornamental detailing for over 100 years.

As evidence, he points to two celebrity homes that have recently been covered in the architecture press: model Gigi Hadid’s eclectic Manhattan apartment and Drake’s extravagant Art Deco mansion in Toronto. Both of these projects were overseen by architects and designers (Gordon Kahn in Hadid’s case, Ferris Rafauli in Drake’s) but with significant input from the famous homeowners, who hoped to create “dream homes” that reflected their personal taste.

Gigi Hadid’s apartment, designed with architect Gordon Kahn, mixes colors, patterns and textures in a way that screamed “maximalism” to the New Yorker. Image via Hello Magazine.

Drake’s Art Deco-inspired Toronto mansion, designed with Ferris Rafauli, represents a monumental form of maximalism. Photo by Jason Schmidt via Architectural Digest.

What stands out about this piece isn’t the observation that some celebrities are drawn to ornate decor — as Chayka points out, “maximalism… never really goes away” — but rather the author’s treatment of the subject of minimalism. By presenting Hadid’s and Drake’s homes as daring outliers, Chayka implies that minimalism is still the hegemonic aesthetic of our time.

More than 60 years after Mies van der Rohe said “less is more,” it seems that ornament still carries a hint of taboo. Include enough of it, and you are making a statement, even a provocation. As a reader, I wondered why this is. Does modernism, with all its utopianism and its prohibitions, still have a grip on contemporary design?

Ornament and Crime

Chayka’s article opens with a summary of one of minimalism’s canonical early texts, Adolf Loos’ 1908 lecture ‘Ornament and Crime.’ As a way to set the stage for a defense of maximalism, this was a canny choice, as the lecture is one of the least convincing architectural treatises ever written. It is also one of the most racist.

Walking The Walk: Adolf Loos built the minimalist Looshuis, in Vienna, in 1909. Hostile critics at the time called it “the house without eyebrows,” noting Loos’ pointed decision not to include detailing around the windows. It was said that the Emperor Franz Joseph avoided passing by Looshuis for the rest of his life. Photo by Thomas Ledl, via Wikipedia.

In ‘Ornament and Crime,’ Loos argues that ornamentation is uncivilized, reflecting a lack of moral restraint characteristic of children, criminals, and certain people from non-Western societies. As evidence of the “degeneracy” of ornamentation, Loos points out that criminals often decorate their body with tattoos, a tendency they share with “the Papuan” — Loos’ stereotypical stand-in for various indigenous groups — who also “kills his enemies and eats them.” Like the Papuan, tattooed men are murderous. “If someone who is tattooed dies in freedom, he does so a few years before he would have committed murder,” Loos theorizes.

It follows that architects of the ornate Art Nouveau style (which Loos disliked) are similarly inclined toward violence — or at least more so than the modernist architect, who has evolved beyond the need for ornamentation and is able to find pleasure in the sheer rationality of his living space. Essentially, Loos posits a continuum between the amoral realm of nature and the moral fortitude of modern man, and he places himself and his preferred style of architecture at the advanced end of moral development.

Le Corbusier’s ‘Plan Voisin,’ a never-realized scheme to tear up central Paris and replace it with a series of minimalist concrete towers. Image via Business Insider.

Loos, I would say, is a less than ideal ambassador for minimalism. But the core ideas buried underneath his strange examples are pretty representative of how modernist architects thought about the subject. The titans of what was called the “modern movement” — Mies, Le Corbusier and Gropius — were less colorful writers than Loos, but they basically agreed with him that modern architecture would liberate mankind by stripping away the oppressive decorative trappings of past centuries.

Mies famously said that “architecture is the will of an epoch, translated into space,” echoing Loos’ idea that minimalism wasn’t just a stylistic preference, but embodied the very essence of modernity. And one glance at Plan Voison, Le Corbusier’s never-realized scheme to remake central Paris, illustrates that Corbu cared little for local details, and would have happily sacrificed the visual identity of Europe’s most iconic city on the altar of functionalism.

Populist Revolts

Most people find Plan Voison horrifying. And indeed, the zeal of 20th century modernists helped create a rift between architects and the public that still exists today, even as the profession has become far less evangelizing and doctrinaire than it was in modernism’s heyday. Populist denunciations of architecture are still written all the time by both left- and right-wing critics, who generally paint the profession with a broad and reductive brush.

In 2017, left-wing writers Nathan J. Robinson and Brianna Rennix wrote one of these polemics for Robinson’s popular socialist journal, Current Affairs. The piece is titled ‘Why You Hate Contemporary Architecture’ and the complaints are extremely familiar: once “beautiful” cities have been blighted with “ugly,” “cheerless” and “grim” modern buildings. The authors accuse architects of harboring a “paranoid revulsion to classical aesthetics” and condemn both the icy minimalism of modernism and the “irritating attempts” of postmodernists to “parody” the architecture of the past.

Peter Eisenman is no minimalist, but his deconstructive architecture has been criticized on similar grounds, as it is said to deny people simple aesthetic pleasures. His City of Culture of Galicia is among his most divisive buildings. Image via Current Affairs.

For Robinson and Rennix, all the “isms” of contemporary architecture are irrelevant. Each one of them shares the same problem: the architect’s stubborn insistence on denying the public what it wants, which are buildings that are comfortable, familiar and — yes — even nostalgic. They identify the deconstructive architect Peter Eisenman as a modern-day Loos, an ideologue and a moralizer who relishes the fact that his buildings lack popular appeal. This quote of Eisenman’s, taken from a 1982 debate with fellow architect Christopher Alexander, is presented as evidence for the charge: “If we make people so comfortable in these nice little structures, we might lull them into thinking everything’s all right, Jack, which it isn’t.”

Minimalism Today

The idea of the grim and fanatical architect standing between the common man and the charming, sensible buildings he craves is extremely common — as a trope if not a reality. In Chayka’s piece, it factors in almost as a truism, and the invocation of Loos and his treatise gives it a sense of solidity. Good for Drake and Hadid, the piece argues, for standing up to the austere and self-denying dictates of minimalism!

This interior is minimalist, sure, but it is hardly cold and imposing. Minimalism today is often lyrical, and adapted for a more human scale. Image: Zhuyeqing Green Tea Flagship Store, X+Living Architectual Design Co. 2020 A+Award winner for Commercial-Retail Spaces.

Yet a glance through recent winners of the A+Awards reveals that architecture, today, is a diverse, global field, and it is no longer dominated by these factional debates between modernism, postmodernism, deconstructivism, and the rest. Architects all over the world are working to create buildings that meet the needs of local communities, often paying careful attention to issues like sustainability. And while they don’t always get it right, one thing you don’t usually see are self-righteous condemnations of things like “ornament” attached to the projects.

If the best contemporary architecture often features clean lines and an emphasis on raw materials, this is not usually due to an ideological commitment for function over form, but a reflection of a real aesthetic preference. (Cost concerns, too, play a role). Architects like Eisenman, who relish aesthetic difficulty, are in fact a rarity in the profession. (Nathan J. Robinson and Brianna Rennix don’t want you to know this, but there is beauty in clean lines too).

There is real beauty in clean lines and unadorned surfaces. When these elements are favored, it is not necessarily for arid ideological reasons. Image: La Point by L’Abri, 2020 A+Award winner for Concepts-Living Small.

When minimalism is proposed as an ethos, today, it usually has a much more personal character than that seen in Loos’ essay. For instance, the tidying guru Marie Kondo sees minimalism as a way to make your living space more personal and intimate. Her view of the good life is not one in which everything is fully optimized, but in which people are surrounded only by objects that “spark joy.” In this, her philosophy is exactly same as noted “maximalist” Gigi Hadid, who wrote on Instagram about “enjoying all the little corners” of her carefully curated space.

Zombie Modernism

There is one way, however, that minimalism continues to oppress people in the 21st century, but it is connected to mass production, not architectural theory. The most revealing part of Chayka’s article comes toward the end, when he complains of “the bland start-up minimalism of Article couches, Casper mattresses, and knockoff Eames chairs from Amazon.”

These products, Chayka explains, might seem modern or tasteful on first glance, but what they really represent is a “lowest-common-denominator style” that “has had its shortcomings exposed during these endless months of quarantine — there’s little pleasure in staring at a set of Floyd table legs strapped to plywood all day.”

The New Yorker’s Kyle Chayka says he has spent too much of lis life staring at tables that look like this. Image via Architectural Digest.

Years after its heyday, modernist design is popular once again, but in a zombielike form. Stripped of its utopian dimension, wherein it held the promise of a better and more orderly world, this type of decor is now just another readymade style. Chayka is right that there is no more individualism in this stuff than there is in the forced eclecticism advertised by an outlet like Pottery Barn. There is also nothing wrong with it, per se, but its omnipresence has made it feel monotonous and derivative.

However, if you find mass-market minimalism uninspiring, the solution isn’t necessarily “maximalism.” It is cultivating a space with pieces that have personal significance, which, again, is what many of today’s minimalists are already advising. The minimalist/maximalist divide Chayka lays out really belongs to another era.

The Loosian minimalist ethos lives on in the popular imagination far more vividly than it does within the architectural profession. To borrow an idea from Sigmund Freud, Loos’ contemporary in Vienna, minimalism has been widely internalized as a harsh dictum of the superego, which is why certain people feel compelled to argue forcefully against it. Even devoted maximalists and classicists, it seems, are tormented by a voice in the back of their head saying that form should follow function. This suggests that — for all its supposed unpopularity — modernism still has a hold on public taste after all.

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entergamingxp · 4 years

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DualShockers’ Favorite Video Games of 2020 (So Far)

July 31, 2020 1:00 PM EST

Now that we’re halfway through 2020, the DualShockers staff shares the games that have been the highlights of the year so far.

As we’ve already seen so far, 2020 has been a very unusual year for video games. In light of the coronavirus pandemic, which has caused numerous delays and cancelled most of the events that we’d traditionally see during the year for the games industry, this year has still brought us a ton of gaming experiences worth celebrating and sharing. Given that the next-gen consoles are on the horizon later this year, the first half of 2020 has already had some generation-defining games worth playing, and we still have several months to go for 2020.

Now that the first half of the year is behind us, the DualShockers staff has gathered together to share some of our favorite games of 2020 so far. While we’ve already discussed a lot of the games that we’re considering for our Game of the Year awards for this year, this time around we’re focusing on each staff member’s highlights for games that have been released in the first half of 2020. From some of the most acclaimed games of the year to hidden gems that are worth a look, here are the games that DualShockers‘ staff have made 2020 an exciting year for video games.

Nick Blain, Video Editor

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

New Horizons was the first Animal Crossing game that I’ve committed to since the original back on the GameCube, and I adore it. It really makes no sense why I like it. The tasks are menial and there’s no central objective to accomplish. Yet, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is the most I’ve ever been invested in the series yet. I find myself getting lost in the charm of its harmonious world. There’s just something about the mainline Animal Crossing games’ design that is always so cozy. For a brief couple of hours I can forget the outside world and be lost in its brilliance. Animal Crossing makes things feel normal.

Final Fantasy VII Remake

I have a weird confession to make: while I love Final Fantasy as series, I never found Final Fantasy VII to be all that compelling. Even replaying the original before the remake came out, I found it to be a chore at some parts, so my expectations for the remake weren’t extremely high. Playing through it, I couldn’t have been more wrong. The little things that Final Fantasy VII Remake does to flesh out the characters and overall world help give so much more context to even the original Final Fantasy VII. At times, it feels like it’s not only paying homage to what came before it, but also feels like an FFVII sequel unto itself. Much like the RE2 remake that came out last year, Final Fantasy VII Remake proves that a remake can be more than just a glossy new coat of paint; it can also be a re-evaluation of what came before.

The Last of Us Part II

What can I say that hasn’t already been said about this amazing game? The Last of Us Part II is just as grueling of a tale as what came before. Never has a game actually made me feel bad for fulfilling a QTE. Although, underneath that rough exterior is a beautiful inspection of love, pain, and sacrifice. At the end of The Last of Us, I felt that I had seen the end of the story and was absolutely fine with it. However, Naughty Dog proved that there was a significantly more meaningful story to delve into with Joel and Ellie. If they felt that they have more story to tell I’m here for it; but again, I don’t think that there has to be.

What I admire about Naughty Dog is that if there’s nothing left to say: that’s it. Chapter over, book closed. You can just tell the passion that was behind the team at Naughty Dog when they were developing this game. Naughty Dog is really proving that video games can be more than they set out to be initially. I can’t wait for more.

Kris Cornelisse, Staff Writer

Deep Rock Galactic

“Dwarves in Space.” Anything you can think of that would fit that phrase, Deep Rock Galactic embodies. It’s a four player co-op game where you pick a class and go on an alien mining expedition. You’ll navigate (or dig) procedurally-generated tunnels, find the resources or objectives you seek, defend yourself against angry alien bugs, and then get out. Extracting gets you a cut of the rewards, with which you can level up your classes, upgrade equipment, and customise your appearance further. Then you have a drink with your mates on the space station before doing it all again.

It might not sound like much on paper, but in practice? Deep Rock Galactic is something else. The passion and creativity of the devs is on full display, as they’ve filled the game with a ton of nuance and little details for you to find. Its graphics and sound design are well presented and stylised to suit, and the different environments are extremely well realised and fun to explore or dig through. Even with a strong core gameplay loop, there’s a decent chunk of variety in objectives. There’s also public games and solo options for those not interested in the co-op aspect, so if any of this looks or sounds interesting to you? Check it out. You won’t be disappointed. Rock and Stone, brothers!

DOOM Eternal

I’m rarely the sort to replay games often, mainly because I just never have the time. Imagine my surprise when I found myself replaying DOOM Eternal the day after I finished it. Any flaws in the game’s platforming or level design fades away the second that the music amps up and an intense combat scenario begins. Then there is nothing except an intricately designed dance of death, in which I am encouraged to use every tool at my disposal to rip and tear. Always pressured and always right on the verge of death and defeat, yet still always feeling powerful and with the means to turn the tide and raze hell. DOOM Eternal’s combat is absolutely phenomenal, and just writing about it now makes me want to start it up yet again.

Despite the controversies surrounding Mick Gordon and Denuvo, DOOM Eternal remains a highlight for me this year. I’m even one of the people who thinks that DOOM 2016 is actually the better overall package, but the sheer intensity of the combat in Eternal is like a drug that makes it impossible to go back to its predecessor. Kar en Tuk! Until it is done!

Hades

Supergiant Games have yet to deliver a bad game; in fact, Hades puts them at four for four in making excellent games that stand tall in my personal pantheon of favourites. It’s an action/roguelike where you play as Zagreus, son of Hades, on his quest to escape the Underworld of Greek mythology. And it is awesome. The combat is fluid and has impact to it from the very start, and that only gets more intense as you gain more upgrades and unlocks. The story and characters are engaging, and the entire thing is packaged with the usual Supergiant art, music, voice and style, which is to say that it is superb.

The game is still in Early Access, but since the launch version is due out this year, Hades absolutely counts for my GOTY 2020 considerations. Even then, there was a ton of content and variety even in the first iterations, and every major patch has expanded that dramatically. So far, it leads the pack by a country mile as my favourite. Hades is the most playable, content dense game that Supergiant has ever put out. If Dead Cells is the benchmark for what roguelikes aim to be, Hades is already past that and pushing higher still. “Godlike” is the only fitting descriptor.

Ricky Frech, Senior Staff Writer

Desperados 3

I will continue to beat the drum for what is, thus far, the best game I’ve played in 2020. Desperados 3 is a stealth-focused tactics game with sublime level design. The care developer that Mimimi Games put into crafting each level is astounding. As you lead a gruff band of Wild West mercenaries, you’ll take part in some of the most memorable sequences I’ve seen in the tactics space.

Every level feels unique. This is largely done by how Mimimi mixes up your party. Your squad is made up of five diverse characters; however, you almost never get to bring them all into battle at once. Instead, each mission gives you a unique combination and forces you to constantly adapt your playstyle to your team’s abilities. It’s a beautiful design that kept a smile on my face throughout the entire campaign.

Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout

I was very tempted to put Deadly Premonition 2 in my final slot. I love that game in spite of its many problems; however, it’s a tough one to recommend for several reasons. Another game that I heavily considered for this final slot is Murder by Numbers. It’s the best Picross game since Picross 3D, but it’s a niche genre that non-Picross fans are unlikely to check out.

Instead, let’s talk about a game that isn’t even technically out yet. I was lucky enough to play the beta for Mediatonic’s Fall Guys recently. It’s the most fun I’ve had playing a game since Gang Beasts, but takes it to a completely different level. As someone who grew up on Most Extreme Elimination and the vastly superior Japanese version of Ninja Warrior, Fall Guys’ brand of wacky game show antics really speaks to me. All it’s missing is Vic and Kenny’s hilarious commentary.

So, make sure to join me next week when it launches as part of August’s PS+ lineup (and also when it comes to PC). You won’t regret it.

Ori and the Will of the Wisps

Even in adding combat, Ori and the Will of the Wisps controls just as tightly as the original. Just moving through a level in this game is pure bliss. There are a handful of sections I didn’t love, but for the most part, developer Moon Studios absolutely nail gameplay.

However, that’s not why it makes my shortlist. Will of the Wisps is one of the more emotional stories I’ve played through in games. There aren’t many characters I’ve cared about more than that stupid bird. And I’m petrified of birds in real-life. Getting me to consider something with feathers as a friend is a big move. Plus, the game looks absolutely gorgeous. It’s a must-play.

David Gill, Staff Writer

Ghost of Tsushima

Ever since its announcement in 2017, I was so excited to play Ghost of Tsushima. Sucker Punch’s Sly Cooper and inFamous franchises are some of my favorite PlayStation exclusives, and I was interested to see what the developer would do next. From the moment I started rolling credits, I was so invested in Ghost of Tsushima and exploring Tsushima island even further.

One of the main things I love about this game is exploring the world and everything in it. There would be days where I didn’t do any story missions and just focused on side quests, raiding Mongol territory, and looking for collectibles. The game’s story went in directions I didn’t expect and I was always curious to see where it went. Sucker Punch also added cool mechanics such as the wind guiding you in the direction of your objective, which makes the game even more unique from others out there. You also can’t talk about the game without mentioning its gorgeous visuals that are just made for photo mode. After finishing Ghost of Tsushima, all I want to do is explore more, upgrade my skills, and get the platinum trophy. It’s up there with The Last of Us Part II as one of the best PlayStation exclusives and an amazing way to close out the current console generation.

The Last of Us Part II

With 2013’s The Last of Us being my favorite game of all time, my anticipation for The Last of Us Part II was high. I tried keeping an open mind and not letting my expectations getting the best of me. After finishing it four days after its release, The Last of Us Part II impacted me in ways I didn’t see coming.

The game took so many risks in telling its story, and I commend Naughty Dog for that. There were moments where I felt disconnected from the narrative but it ultimately succeeded in telling a story that’s multilayered and could be looked at through several different perspectives. On top of that, the game’s graphics are gorgeous, and in scope it is larger than any Naughty Dog game before. There are so many collectibles and environmental storytelling moments going on, and I couldn’t help but explore every area. Additionally, the game’s combat is better than ever and throws challenges at the player with almost every encounter. While The Last of Us Part II may not be for everyone, it’s one of very few games this year that I couldn’t stop thinking about days after I finished it.

Persona 5 Royal

Over the past few years, Persona 5 has been one of the games I’ve been meaning to play. It wasn’t until Persona 5 Royal released in March where I decided to finally play it. After reaching the credits in 80 hours, Persona 5 Royal is currently my favorite game of 2020, if not one of my favorite games of all time.

From its amazing story and characters to its incredible sense of style, Persona 5 Royal has so many things going for it. On top of that, there are so many side activities to do which make time go by so quickly. The game also has its amazing Confidant system that ties together your relationships with other characters and your main character’s progression. The game also features great writing and music you can’t help but jam to at times. While Persona 5 Royal’s length may turn some people off, it puts you on a journey you won’t regret taking.

Cameron Hawkins, Staff Writer

Final Fantasy VII Remake

The original Final Fantasy VII is one of my favorite games of all time, and Final Fantasy VII Remake has been one my most anticipated titles since its announcement back in 2015. Leading up to its release, Square Enix seemed shaky to say the least when it came to the development cycle of other previous big titles like Final Fantasy XV and Kingdom Hearts III, with Remake showing similar signs. Thankfully though, Remake was not in the same boat.

Final Fantasy VII Remake is arguably the best JRPG of this generation, and it may be my favorite game in general this generation once the new consoles hit shelves later this year. Square Enix was able to recreate a game that is so special to so many hearts that they easily could have messed up, but they didn’t. The characters are stunning, Midgar is beautiful even during the most dreadful times, and the combat system blends the best parts of Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts‘ gameplay into one. Despite some minuscule setbacks, being able to reestablish such a beloved title that will give both new and old players different things to be compelled by is an incredible achievement that we haven’t seen in gaming before. It deserves all the praise it has been getting and more.

The Last of Us Part II

I’m not a big fan of The Last of Us. I think the original game is overrated and a lot of things that it gets praised for other games did beforehand and better, but I enjoyed my time with The Last of Us Part II. It was different and took some interesting narrative risks that worked in its favor in some areas and hurt it in others. I have issues with the level design and how Naughty Dog wanted you to explore around Seattle, but the main reason I picked up The Last of Us Part II is for the story.

This sequel feels like a worthy (and better) follow-up to its predecessor. In the original, I had issues regarding certain character choices that most of who I talk to normally don’t agree with. But in The Last of Us Part II, I felt validated that my issues were an important part of the narrative throughout. At the end of the day, I found the story to be memorable with a lot to unpack. I just wish I didn’t have so many general issues with the game at ground level, or else I would have placed it on a higher pedestal.

Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore

I never thought I would see the day where my favorite Wii U title would get a second chance at life. Even with being a remastered port, Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore is currently my favorite Nintendo Switch title. For some, the direction of teenage Japanese idols may turn you off, but that is just the face of a wonderfully fun and engaging JRPG. Being originally made by Atlus for the Wii U, it doesn’t meet the standards that people know from Persona 5, but there are aspects of Tokyo Mirage Sessions that I like over Persona. The combat system is diverse and addictive at times, the puzzles can give you a real challenge, and of course it oozes that Atlus charm.

It is a beautiful homage to the Fire Emblem franchise, telling a Fire Emblem story in a completely new way while still having the Atlus vision behind it. If you love Persona, play Tokyo Mirage Sessions. If you love Fire Emblem, play Tokyo Mirage Sessions. Unless you don’t like JRPGs, you should play Tokyo Mirage Sessions.

Allisa James, Senior Staff Writer

Final Fantasy VII Remake

This game has absolutely captured me from the first moment I played it. Expanding on the entirety of the Midgar section from the original Final Fantasy VII, FFVII Remake offers a crazy deep dive that fleshes out every last component. The expansions made to the plot managed to create more intrigue and better convey the inner workings of Shinra and the various villains. In turn, the heroes have more chances to shine as they spend more time cooperating with each other while expanding their team and character dynamics. The Avalanche members Jessie, Biggs, and Wedge are fleshed out themselves and actually feel like real people, making their (most likely) tragic fates even more poignant. The setting has never felt more alive with tons of shops, NPCs constantly scurrying around and chatting about their daily lives and current events, and side quests that give the residents agency and personality. And all of this is rounded out by some stellar voice work.

This isn’t even mentioning the action/turn-based blended combat system that requires strategy to prevail (and will crush you for button spamming). The revamped combat system in FFVII Remake features tons of combo creation that relies on both an intimate knowledge of each attacks’ timing and on quick reflexes to build those chains in the first place. There’s also an incredible amount of weapon and Materia build customization options for players, depending on the roles you want each character to take on.

Persona 5 Royal

Pushing past the dense pacing before Okumura’s Palace, Royal offers everything you could ever ask for in an updated re-release. It introduced sorely needed gameplay balances, brand new mechanics that liven up and condense otherwise boring dungeon layouts, revamped boss battles, and added tons of new minigames. That’s aside from the fact that there is a new prefecture to explore, it introduced two new characters and added more Confidants, completely overhauled a pre-existing Confidant, added brand new events, added a new school semester and an new dungeon coupled with two new endings, more voice work, and more. The sheer amount of new content in Persona 5 Royal is staggering and shows how much work Atlus put into this title to make an already amazing game even better.

Pokemon Sword and Shield: Isle of Armor

The first of two DLC packs releasing this year for the brand new main entries in the Pokemon franchise, the Isle of Armor expansion features tons of new content as well. More Pokemon are introduced in the National Dex, there’s a fun introductory plot that also brings in your (self-proclaimed) rival and gym leader hopeful, a huge island filled with secrets and hidden areas to explore, item fusion, and new Gigantamax forms.

The best part of Isle of Armor is getting to train up an adorable Pokemon named Kubfu. This Pokemon will let you take part in the Towers of Two Fists challenges and completing one of them — the Tower of Darkness or Tower of Waters — will evolve your Kubfu into Urshifu. The Tower you choose will determine Urshifu’s fighting style, with each style having its own moveset and strengths. For Pokemon fans, the first DLC expansion is guaranteed to keep you entertained for hours while making you wish for the upcoming Crown Tundra pack even more.

Mehrdad Khayyat, Staff Writer

F1 2020

I’m not a big fan of Formula 1 tournaments in the real world, as I know very little about the sport’s leading teams and basic rules. But when I got the chance to play F1 2020 this year, it started to turn me into a Formula 1 professional fan. It even got to the point that I began reading about the history of the sport, dig up its current teams, and follow the live real-world races of Formula 1.

Of course, if you put a lot of time on a certain game, you would become a veteran fan of it sooner or later, but the progress that I made in F1 2020 was significant enough that all I can do is to praise its gameplay design. F1 2020 is a game that will adapt itself to the level of your driving skills without losing its highly stressful realistic experience. It’s impossible to describe all the amazing features of the game in a few paragraphs, but F1 2020 is my favorite racing title of this year, as I enjoy it more and more by winning every lap of a race over the opponent drivers. Simply, it’s like my Dark Souls in the racing genre.

Minecraft Dungeons

As the one of the first branches of the Minecraft series set in a totally different genre from that of the original game, Minecraft Dungeons is a gameplay-focused entertaining experience that I would be playing for months if there were more chapters to jump in.

Despite its short campaign, Minecraft Dungeons is a highly replayable game where you are encouraged to challenge yourself more and more with higher difficulty levels and better gear for fighting enemies. Dungeons features a very simple combat design that some may find as a negative point, but if it’s enjoyable enough, then why bother ourselves with more complicated stuff?

Stela

Despite being a brief gaming experience, Stela is surely the most beautiful game that I’ve played so far in 2020. The game nails perfection in art and sound design, featuring various gorgeous locations accompanied by strong and impressive song pieces that I couldn’t stop listening to even days after finishing the game.

Of course, Stela has its own downsides in the case of gameplay, but it doesn’t mean you can put it aside easily. If you ask me, Stela is a must-play title for those who are looking for a relaxing puzzle-adventure to take a break from the routine mature video game experiences, at least for a few hours.

Ryan Meitzler, Features Editor

Half-Life: Alyx I’m not a huge connoisseur of VR games; I have an Oculus Rift headset but, for the most part, I prefer keeping my gaming to traditional experiences on console and PC. That said, Half-Life: Alyx changed that for me earlier this year and, in a lot of ways, it showed what I’ve been missing out on in VR. More importantly, Alyx feels like not just a tremendous VR game, but a huge step forward for the medium as a whole and an incredible example of immersive storytelling in a VR experience.

As a long-time fan of the Half-Life series, seeing the familiar sights of City 17 once again was a thrill in and of itself. However, the experience of witnessing it all again in Half-Life: Alyx was only enhanced by playing in VR, as Combine structures loomed in the distance and Striders towered over with their shambling legs. Everything I love about the Half-Life series is distilled perfectly into Alyx and fueled by its technical innovations in VR. Though I know a lot people most likely haven’t played it due to not owning a VR headset, trust me; when you do, this is the game that is worth having it for.

The Last of Us Part II

Even well after finishing The Last of Us Part II last month, it’s still a game that I haven’t been able to get out of my head after playing it. As much as I went into Part II unsure of whether Naughty Dog would be able to deliver an experience that could hold up to the original The Last of Us, by the end of Part II I had no doubt that the studio managed to pull it off and then some.

Though some might consider The Last of Us Part II the most “controversial” game of 2020 so far as a result of internet discourse around the game’s story and ending, to me, the game’s strengths lie in its willingness to take risks and ask questions with no easy answers. The moral complexities at the heart of Ellie and Abby’s stories in The Last of Us Part II are ones that I myself haven’t fully come to terms with yet even after finishing the game, and speak to its engrossing and unrelenting story. Though The Last of Us Part II was messaged as a game about “hate,” by the story’s end, you’ll see that it compasses much more than that, and is easily one of the most memorable (if gut-wrenching) experiences that I’ve had so far this year.

Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore

While normally I wouldn’t usually consider a remastered version of a game on my year-end lists, I have to give a bit of the spotlight this time around to Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore. Having missed out on the game when it first released on the Wii U and in the past several years becoming infatuated with the Persona series, those two events led to the perfect confluence of finally getting to play Tokyo Mirage Sessions this year and loving it.

Taking the elements of the Shin Megami Tensei and Fire Emblem series and mixing them together, Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore by today’s standards isn’t a JRPG of the caliber of Persona 5, but is still an incredibly fun and refreshing experience in its own right. With its J-pop infused theme and music, an eclectic and memorable cast of characters, and an engaging combat system, Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore is an excellent way to experience an underrated JRPG, regardless of whether you’re an SMT/Fire Emblem fan or otherwise.

Logan Moore, Managing Editor

DOOM Eternal

DOOM Eternal rules. In my own estimation, Eternal is a drastic improvement in nearly every way over the original game. The combat is more visceral, the soundtrack is heavier, and traversal around each environment is more enticing. It’s not just what I believe to be the best game of the year, it’s very well the best shooter released in this entire console generation. Play it.

Ori and the Will of the Wisps

I did not expect to like Ori and the Will of the Wisps like I did. Blind Forest never clicked with me when I played it a few years back like it did for many others, so my expectations for Will of the Wisps were pretty reserved. The final game ended up being far more engrossing, especially from a storytelling standpoint, than I thought it would be.Will of the Wisps is likely the best Metroidvania game I have played in the past few years and is deserving of endless attention. Make sure you give it a shot if you have an Xbox or PC.

Persona 5 Royal

I never got around to playing the original Persona 5. It has basically been my white whale for years and was a game that I knew I’d love if I just fully committed to actually playing it from front to back. When I found that Persona 5 was finally set to be re-released in its new Royal iteration, I knew this had to be the point where I rectified my mistake from the first time around. Fortunately, that turned out to be the best gaming-related decision that I have made so far in 2020.

Persona 5 Royal, despite having not yet finished it, has already become one of my favorite games of all-time. In a year that has been rife with stress, anxiety, and a multitude of other hardships for me personally, Persona 5 Royal has been a consistent joy to ease into regularly at the end of some very long days. I can’t wait to (hopefully) finish it up in the next few weeks.

Laddie Simco, Associate Staff Writer

Dreams

Dreams is a tough one to put a label on. I remember when Media Molecule first announced the ambitious project, I was immediately intrigued but couldn’t fully wrap my mind around exactly what it was trying to achieve. It’s a constantly evolving set of tools that is somewhat overwhelming at first, but Media Molecule takes you by the hand and guides you through the scary stuff. If creation isn’t your thing, Dreams gives you instant access to every type of game or multimedia experience you could ever imagine created by other dreamers. You become part of the “Dreamiverse,” which is the built-in community and social network where you can meet other dreamers or check out their works. So far that includes everything from all original games to re-creations of things like the PT demo or the opening section of Metal Gear Solid. Admittedly, I’ve still not created anything I’m proud enough to publish for the Dreamiverse to see, but I’ve had tons of fun trying it out. My favorite thing is tinkering with the music tools.

Dreams includes a campaign known as “Art’s Dream,” which acts as an advanced tutorial to show what the game can do. It was created entirely within the game and using the same tools that are available to anyone with a PS4 and a copy of Dreams. It’s a bit on the short side, clocking in around two hours, but not a minute is wasted. It features a cast of likable characters and incorporates many genres including platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and even throws in a few unforgettable musical numbers for good measure. I’d love to see more of “Art’s Dream,” perhaps even a new adventure starring Frances and Foxy. If you don’t finish “Art’s Dream” with a smile on your face, you are either a monster or you’re dead inside.

Ghost of Tsushima

These three games not only represent my best of 2020 so far; in many ways they also represent the best of an era as we prepare to say goodbye to the console generation that gave birth to the PS4 and the Xbox One. While initially one of my three picks went to Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Ghost of Tsushima came in at the last minute and knocked it out of the list. The game is an absolute joy to play. It features stunning visuals and environments, spicy combat, and an engaging story complete with well-written characters. It’s a massive open-world game that I’m still happily exploring without feeling that fatigue I get from so many other open-world games. This has a lot to do with the side missions not feeling like they were an afterthought; some are just as enjoyable as the main missions.

Throughout the game you play as Jin, who is one of the last samurai during the first Mongol invasions of Japan. However, there are a series of side missions that feature a story arc centering around Jin’s allies and friends. I found this to be a cool feature that lets you get to know the supporting characters better, and could even set up the possibility of spin-offs or sequels. Aside from being an expert with the katana, Jin is equipped with a small arsenal of other weapons and equipment that noticeably gets more deadly as you progress to the top of the skill tree. There are a few quirks with button responsiveness and erratic movement at times, but honestly, there’s so much to love about Ghost of Tsushima that after a while, you won’t even notice.

The Last of Us Part II

Naughty Dog made a few bold choices with the direction that The Last of Us Part II took. Not everyone was happy with the outcome, but for me it not only lived up to my high expectations, it at times surpassed them. It’s brutal and violent in a way that often makes you uncomfortable, and yet, it didn’t feel gratuitous. I’m sure playing it amidst a real-life pandemic heightened my experience and made it even more poignant. While playing my emotions ran the gamut of everything I’ve ever felt. Just like in the first game, it’s hard to tell who (or if anyone) is the protagonist. You can love or hate a character in this game for exactly the same reasons. I have to say, without blatant spoilers, the way that Naughty Dog dropped you in new character Abby’s playable shoes without a formal introduction was shocking and brilliant.

The gameplay of The Last of Us Part II is much improved over the first game, but it still retains many of the same core mechanics. As far as graphics go, it’s Naughty Dog, so of course the game looks amazing. We are introduced to a few new variations of the infected, some improved and new weapons, and an entirely new playground which largely takes place in Seattle. The voice acting is top-notch with Ashley Johnson once again reprising the role of Ellie. The campaign is lengthy and depending upon how you play and if you are a treasure seeker, it can take up to 40 hours to complete. Despite having many “giraffe” moments, The Last of Us Part II isn’t the “feel-good” game of the year. It shows us a harsh reality and some of the subjects explored are not for the squeamish, which was obviously going to divide the audience. Weeks after finishing The Last of Us Part II, it still haunts me. Despite its critics, The Last of Us Part II will be remembered as one of the greatest games ever made, and I think it deserves every bit of that praise.

Nick Tricome, Staff Writer

Final Fantasy VII Remake

Part of me is still in awe that this even exists (the part of me that watched that PS3 tech demo on loop all those years ago), and another part is trying to comprehend something I never could’ve expected upon completing the game: Final Fantasy VII is brand new again.

Let’s face it: the ending of this game and the new story elements it introduced along the way are pretty divisive, and scary for some even (hell, even the characters themselves were uneasy stepping into a quite literal unknown). The development team behind this game, composed of veterans from the original and new blood that grew up playing it, knew exactly what they were making here and how important FFVII is to so many people. And it’s obvious how far they went to be faithful not just to the original game, but everything about its world and characters that came after.

Final Fantasy VII Remake is only the first part of the story, but is such a grand celebration of everything the original game has become over the past 23 years. And then it sets itself up for the story to play out differently. It’s gutsy for sure, and to me, incredible. For the next part of Remake–be it “Part 2,” “Reunion,” or whatever Square wants to call it–I legitimately don’t know what’s going to happen, and that’s all really exciting to me.

Kingdom Hearts III: ReMIND

Kingdom Hearts III was hit or miss with fans, and the ReMIND DLC fell into pretty much the same boat. For me, they were both hits. The last third of Kingdom Hearts III is still one constant exposition dump, and ReMIND didn’t reinvent that. Instead, it just added to it with more story content, some extra, more challenging boss fights, and finally giving Kairi something to do. Combine that with the merciless boss battles, the Final Fantasy fan service that was noticeably missing from the core game, and that massive cliffhanger of a secret ending that came with the “Limit Cut” episode, and ReMIND is pretty much a small encapsulation of why I enjoy the series at the end of the day. It’s an ultimately nonsensical story that’s presented so sincerely that I can’t help but love it, with gameplay that can make me question my sanity but feel so incredibly satisfying and smooth when it all finally clicks, and has an ending teaser that’ll keep me theorizing for however long it takes to get the next game.

Plus, ReMIND reaffirms that Donald Duck is the most powerful being in existence.

The Wonderful 101: Remastered

By and large, this is more of a current-gen port than a straight up remaster (granted, that term has a pretty wide definition), but that’s perfectly fine. The Wonderful 101 was a commercial bomb when it released as a Wii U exclusive seven years ago, but it was also one of the most unique and highly creative action games I’ve ever played. So just having a modern, widely accessible version of the game, I think, is a huge win both for returning fans and players who’ve heard about it but never had the means to play it for themselves.

You don’t play as one character in The Wonderful 101, you play as an entire team of Super Sentai/Power Rangers-inspired heroes all at once, all colorful both aesthetically and in their personality. You draw basic shapes to summon weapons and fight alien invaders, being able to start out with a giant fist, then switching on the fly to a sword, a whip, or a gun to keep combos going. You play through a simple but earnestly put together story, one with plenty of wit and humor, that consistently escalates towards massive scale boss battles with some of the greatest quick-time events I’ve ever seen. However, then it will throw you into a gameplay section that’s just one big tribute to another game entirely, because why not?

The Wonderful 101: Remastered is excellent, but won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. That said, the game’s first mission captures everything it’s about, so if you’re curious but still on the fence, go check it out. It should be more than enough for you to make a decision.

Scott White, Associate Staff Writer

Dungeons & Dragons

So, the world is in a pretty crappy spot right now. I miss being able to have board game and Magic nights with my friends, but one game I’ve been able to continue to enjoy is Dungeons & Dragons. And boy-o-boy has the bug bitten me bad during this quarantine. My normal Tuesday night crew made the transition to Roll20 to continue our adventures, and this social interaction grew to become one of the highlights of my week. We still play mostly online, but we’ve been able to recently play our first in-person game recently and it was a magical celebration.

I love rolling dice, I love coming up with solutions to problems, and I love when things inextricably go off the walls and things go to hell in this game. In my hunger for more dice-rolling goodness, I finally started Critical Role (started at the very beginning, “Vox Machina” episode 1, baby!), and it has only ignited an even larger desire to play. I have even started an additional bi-weekly game with another group of friends and I’m doing some Gen Con stuff too, just to try and take the roleplaying itch off.

Thank you Dungeons & Dragons for helping keep me sane during these crazy times. As sane as I can be, anyway.

Final Fantasy VII Remake

Much like many people, I waited so very long for this game to finally release and the fact that it turned out so much better than we all expected was such an amazing surprise. Final Fantasy VII Remake finally nailed what Square has been attempting to create in a game since they released Advent Children, with flashy and stylish combat that retains much of the depth and strategy of a turn-based RPG. The gameplay, characters, and much of the story all snapped perfectly into place for me, and I fell in love with this world all over again. I’m hopeful that with much of the battle system figured out and a lot of the ground work now being laid, the time until the next entry of Final Fantasy VII Remake won’t be too long. Until then, I will eagerly daydream and speculate as to what many of the endgame moments mean, and hope that they add FFXII‘s Gambit system into the next game.

Persona 5 Royal

Persona 5 is one of the best RPGs of all time; fight me. I fell in love with the original release back in 2017, and while excited for Royal, I was curious how I would take to replaying such a long game again. 130 hours later, I came away loving the characters, story, and gameplay even more than I did the first time. From the gratuitous amount of style that oozes from every facet of this game, to the jazz-rock soundtrack that I never want to get out of my head, I can’t help but smile when I think about Persona 5 Royal.

Sam Woods, Staff Writer

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Speaking of a game releasing at the right time, Animal Crossing: New Horizons absolutely hit the sweet spot. I’ve been an Animal Crossing fan since the GameCube, so my excitement was palpable for the new release, but Nintendo did what Nintendo does best and knocked it out of the park, exceeding my already high expectations.

My girlfriend is far from a gamer. The extent of her gaming history is building houses in The Sims and playing Wii Sports or Mario Kart 8, but as we entered lockdown in the UK earlier this year, I decided to pick her up a Switch Lite and a copy of Animal Crossing, and it’s been a revelation. Since the game came out in March we’ve played together almost every day, sharing design ideas, planning out our towns, trading items and just hanging out. We’ve spent hundreds of happy hours playing this game together and it’s absolutely deserving of its spot in my top three games of this year so far.

The Last of Us Part II

While I managed to hold off from replaying Persona 5, I think I’m going to struggle to do the same with The Last of Us Part II. The gripping drama, fantastic world-building and interweaving story are calling me back. It’s a call that is getting harder to resist the more time that passes.

Although “the internet” might disagree, I felt The Last of Us Part II told a fantastic story in a really engaging way. I felt a huge range of emotions at every twist and turn, and at the end of the game I was left feeling hollow. Not hollow in a negative way, but in the way when you complete an awesome TV series and wonder what life was like before it. The Last of Us Part II is nothing short of incredible, and I implore the doubters to give it a shot.

Persona 5 Royal

Persona 5 was the first game in the Persona series that I’d checked out, and after completing it back in 2018, I was itching to play it again. During my time of hesitation Persona 5 Royal was promptly announced and I decided to wait it out, and boy am I glad I did.

The original game, to me at least, is an absolute masterpiece. The music is incredible, the art direction is stunning, and its gameplay loop is so addictive. While my expectations for Persona 5 Royal were high, the first game was so good that I wasn’t expecting anything groundbreaking. I was wrong. Atlus tightened up a lot of the smaller gameplay niggles from the original game, added a pair of fascinating new characters, and incorporated the pinnacle of all Palaces. Although I clocked in at close to 120 hours, it released at a perfect time where social interaction has been forced to a minimum. Persona 5 Royal allowed me to create meaningful bonds and make up for lost time all while playing through the game’s intricate story.

Now that you know what our favorite games have been from the first half of the year, what have your favorite games of 2020 (so far) been? What titles are you looking forward to for the rest of the year? Sound off and let us know in the comments down below!

July 31, 2020 1:00 PM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/07/dualshockers-favorite-video-games-of-2020-so-far/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=dualshockers-favorite-video-games-of-2020-so-far

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hellosaltysaladcollectionstuff · 4 years

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https://ift.tt/2A4LP93 For PC gamers, the launch of Steam’s Summer Sale is one of the biggest days of the summer, offering an opportunity to snag some of the platform’s best games for their cheapest price yet. While multi-platform games have the chance to be featured in multiple sales, like Nintendo’s or PlayStation’s, PC-exclusive games like Total War: Three Kingdoms, Gears Tactics, and Half-Life: Alyx only get a chance to shine in the Steam Summer Sale, so it’s worth paying extra attention to those games–you might not see them at this price for a long time. From turn-based strategy and digital board games to fighting games, action RPGs, and more, here are some of the best PC exclusives in Steam Summer Sale 2020. Please, see our overall list of the best Steam Summer Sale 2020 game deals and the best cheap Steam games under $10. Total War: Three Kingdoms $45 / £33.74 / $67.49 AUD (25% off) Total War: Three Kingdoms still hews closely to the series’ expansive strategy sim framework but makes a few key changes that, along with the ancient Chinese period setting, make it stand out within the series. The increased emphasis on individual commanders and general gives each playthrough with a different army a new flair, and whip-smart enemy leaders make it difficult to simply steamroll the map on your way to victory, making this an intense new entry with a lot of depth. See on Steam Gears Tactics $40.19 / £33.49 / $66.96 AUD (33% off) Gears Tactics takes a more bombastic approach to the XCOM school of turn-based strategy and melds it with the pulpy, war-fueled world of Sera. Each of the Gears franchises’ iconic weapons like the Lancer, Gnasher, and Longshot translate seamlessly to a strategy game, and their abilities serve to differentiate each of your squad members in combat. You’re also closing up emergence holes with grenades and mowing down Wretches with machine-gun fire–just like in the third-person shooter franchise Gears Tactics takes its name from. See on Steam Half-Life: Alyx $45 / £34.86 / $63.71 AUD (25% off) There are quite a few great games you can play on VR headsets, but Half-Life: Alyx is one that really makes the case for games designed exclusively with VR in mind. Grabbing and throwing objects with the new Gravity Gloves feels fantastic, and trying to stay quiet so a blind, unstoppable monster doesn’t hear you makes you naturally hesitant to even close a cupboard door. Exploring City 17 feels incredible through a headset, from the moment you see a Strider towering above the city’s rooftops in the first few minutes of the game to the moment you begin a mind-bending trek near the end I won’t spoil here. Alyx quickly becomes an essential part of the Half-Life universe, even if you think you know how it all ends. See on Steam Killer7 $10 / £7.74 / $11.97 AUD (50% off) If you’re a fan of any Grasshopper or Suda Goichi game (No More Heroes, Shadows of the Damned, Let It Die), you owe it to yourself to experience Killer7. It’s undoubtedly his most surreal, trippy game, and this remaster of the original Gamecube and PS2 classic updates it for PC, complete with higher resolution options and mouse-and-keyboard aiming, making it the best way to experience this strange masterpiece in 2020. See on Steam XCOM: Chimera Squad $15 / £12.74 / $22.46 AUD (25% off) XCOM: Chimera Squad is a smaller entry in the series that focuses on a single squad of fleshed-out characters rather than a platoon of random soldiers and offers a few twists on the intense XCOM firefights we’re familiar with, like a back-and-forth turn order, breaches that give you a chance to whittle down enemy squads from the jump, and special abilities that give each member of your squad a special role in fights. See on Steam Disco Elysium $30 / £26.24 / $42.71 AUD (25% off) Disco Elysium eschews the fantasy trappings, combat-oriented encounters, and easy morality that underpin a lot of RPGs and instead lets you tell a story that truly feels your own. As an alcoholic detective hitting rock-bottom just as he’s assigned a major murder case, you explore a city block in the middle of a conflicted territory recovering from a political revolution. The conversations you have with various denizens around Revachol have you re-litigating the city’s tumultuous past, putting together a dance club in the middle of a church, and delivering heartbreaking news to unsuspecting families as you come to terms with who you were before your last bender. It’s a long journey with twists that flip from pensive to laugh-out-loud funny to solemn on a dime while somehow telling a consistent, powerful story along the way–something I can’t say about many other games. Disco Elysium is planned to release on consoles later this year, but for now, you can only enjoy this incredible narrative experience on PC. See on Steam Tabletop Simulator $9 / £7.49 / $14.47 AUD (50% off) The coronavirus pandemic has forced many people to spend much more time indoors and distance themselves from friends and family, so finding ways to stay connected while apart has become crucial. One of my favorite ways to hang out with friends virtually has been Tabletop Simulator, an indie game that lets you play digital versions of board games in a player-driven physics sandbox. The game comes with classics like chess, poker, and dominoes included, but the real draw is the massive collection of free player-created board games and card games available in the Tabletop Simulator workshop. Here, people have recreated some of the best board games around, including Pandemic Legacy, Gloomhaven, and Root. Obviously, some of these creations are more polished than others, but the larger games tend to work really well; in fact, I was really shocked how well complex games like Root worked within Tabletop Simulator. Some publishers have also published official DLC for Tabletop Simulator, so there’s no shortage of content available to try out. If you’re a board game fan like me and can’t always get friends together in person to play, Tabletop Simulator is worth every penny. See on Steam Mordhau $24 / £25.14 / $34.36 AUD (20% off) Mordhau is a fun medieval multiplayer game that features some of the most involved first-person sword-fighting out there. It’s not exactly a sim, though–there are lots of hectic, one-off multiplayer moments that will probably remind you of games like Battlefield, but the strong emphasis on teamwork and sieging castles set it apart. See on Steam Black Mesa $13 / £9.74 / $18.81 AUD (35% off) This remake of the original Half-Life has been over a decade in the making, but it’s finally complete and definitely worth the wait. It features revamped graphics and overhauls the previously-maligned Xen section of the original but manages to keep the soul of Half-Life intact, making this the best way to see Gordon Freeman’s first encounter with the G-Man and alien life if you’re looking to catch up on the series before playing Half-Life: Alyx. See on Steam Jackbox Party Pack 3 $16.24 / £12.34 / $23.36 AUD (35% off) It’s hard to find a series that’s more immediately accessible than the Jackbox games. These party games, which you can play with others online or in-person through your PC or phone, have you responding to all kinds of outlandish prompts, drawing your own (often lewd) pictures to show off and working together to accomplish a common goal. The entire series is on sale for cheap, but Jackbox Party Pack 3 is the one to play, since it’s the best collection of games overall. Quiplash 2 lets you answer a bunch of weird questions with even weirder answers and then pick the funniest ones. Meanwhile, Tee K.O. has you separately drawing pictures and coming up with taglines, then putting together a shirt based on the pictures and tags you randomly get from the group. See on Steam Them’s Fightin’ Herds $10.04 / £7.63 / $14.40 AUD (33% off) Originally developed as a My Little Pony fan game, Them’s Fightin’ Herds has blossomed into a unique fighting game all its own, complete with new equestrian designs from MLP producer Lauren Faust. The roster is small compared to its higher-budget competition, but there are a lot of creative concepts packed into each of these manes, and tutorial and single-player options are more diverse than you might expect from a fighting game made by a smaller team. See on Steam Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition $15 / £11.24 / $17.21 AUD (25% off) For some history buffs, the empire-building sim genre that slowly evolved into the 4X genre began and ended with the Age of Empires series. The iconic second entry is finally available for modern computers, complete with 4K visuals, a remade soundtrack, and a new “The Last Khans” expansion that includes more campaigns and civilizations to round out this strategy classic. See on Steam If Found If Found is a deeply emotional and resonant visual novel that follows Kasio, a woman struggling at a crossroads between ending her education and looking for a career with meaning. The gorgeous illustrations give the game a vibrant style, and its focus on smaller moments and more relatable topics make it a fantastic palette cleanser between other games on this list. See on Steam Monster Train $22.49 / £17.54 / $32.35 AUD (20% off) Deck-building roguelikes are pretty popular nowadays, but Monster has a few tricks up its sleeve that have proved popular with a growing fanbase. The deck-building mechanics are top-notch, and the presence of factions, which act as a way of theming your deck, make building effective combos easy and natural. See on Steam from GameSpot - All Content https://ift.tt/3dwkx97

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douchebagbrainwaves · 5 years

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THE FUTURE OF VC BE A BAD ECONOMY

Among them were Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce, who went on to found Intel, and Eugene Kleiner, who founded the VC firm Kleiner Perkins. For example, journalism is in free fall at the moment. For one, they're more likely to know they're being mean than stupid people are to know they're being mean than stupid people are to know they're being stupid. You can also be at the leading edge of a field that's changing fast, when you have ideas, you'll be introduced to a whole bunch simultaneously. VCs are clueless? To see how, envision two things: a the inhabitants of that domain are not as likely as software people to have ideas with: the other students, who will be not only smart but elastic-minded to a fault. The situation is different in phase 1. Making things cheaper is actually a subset of a more general technique: making things easier to use. Building in Silicon Valley, what you'll see are buildings. The stated purpose of schools is to educate the kids.

0 turned out to be Microsoft's last victim? We had 2 T1s 3 Mb/sec coming into our offices. That would have focused us on finding revenue streams early. There is a positive side to thinking longer-term. It's not that people think of grand ideas. I don't think there was any deliberate plan to suggest there was a fast path out of an apartment. Tactful is the opposite of clumsy. What people wished they'd paid more attention to when choosing cofounders was character and commitment, not ability. You could just go out and hire 8 people as soon as he got a new textbook he'd immediately work out all the problems—to the slight annoyance of his teacher, since the most successful companies we've funded so far, so tentatively assume the path to huge passes through an A round, and we'll be accepting termsheets next tuesday. Most people have characteristic ways of doodling.

You don't see Google or Facebook suing startups for patent infringement. After a few days the fame wears off, and you get what you deserve. There's still a lot of languages are pervaded by this spirit. At least, it did when people wrote about it online. Who are you to write about x? Our rule of thumb is not to be vulnerable to tricks is to explicitly seek out and catalog them. She also hates fighting. The person who needs something may not know exactly what they need. The time was then ripe for the question: if the beachhead consists of people doing something lots more people will be employees rather than founders. I see someone laugh as they read a draft of an essay to friends, there are more bad programmers than good programmers. The argument for designing languages for bad programmers. There was something else I wanted more: to be familiar with promising new technologies, and the site rules discourage dramatic link titles.

Above all, make a habit of asking questions, especially questions beginning with Why. Do they need another meeting with you? The key question, I realized, is how does the comber-over not see how odd he looks? Together you talk about art that I want to know how to solve it. Few know this, but that they don't get it till it happens. The job of programmers was just to take the C model and the Lisp model. So the ability to draw as some kind of conservation law, but there it is: the best way to get a free option on investing. But galleries didn't want to be popular. The idea that you could make a great city anywhere, if you want to write essays at all. Why are founders surprised that VCs are clueless? A fine idea, but you have less control over the stimuli that spark ideas when they hit it. The ups and downs were more extreme than they were prepared for.

He grew up in the country. Everyone buys this story that PG started YC and his wife just kind of helped. So when you get to the end of the liquid because you start to get cold feet. Most of us hate to acknowledge this. Around 1100, Europe at last began to catch its breath after centuries of chaos, and once they had the luxury of curiosity they rediscovered what we call the classics. The press may be writing about them as if they'd been about to. Traditionally phase 2 fundraising is to get bought or go public, and the number of startups are created to do product development on spec for some big company, and by trying to think of ideas. But boy did things seem different. Someone is going to have to come from the nerds themselves.

I want to know: which parts bore them, and those are extra valuable early on. Here's the pledge: No first use of software patents against companies with less than 25 people. Till recently I thought it might be: don't be a cog. When I look at the history of programming languages is to prevent our poor frail human brains from being overwhelmed by a mass of detail. When something is described as a toy, that means it has everything an idea needs except being important. I was in college I used to be in your next equity round. Finding startup ideas is a subtle business, and that's why so many startups grow out of them, it would be misleading even to call them centers. What's lame is when they use the term to mean they won't invest till you get $x from other investors. A surprising number of founders said what surprised them most was the general spirit of benevolence: One of the weirdest things about Yahoo when I went to. Knowing where you stand.

Can that be done? I mentioned earlier that investors prefer to wait if they can. When there is some real external test of skill, determination, and luck. But restrain yourself. The right environment for having startup ideas need not be a university per se. A lot of the worst ones were designed for other people have the attitude of a governess: they try to prevent others from having time to decide by giving you an exploding offer, meaning one that's only valid for a few seconds I realized this when I read an interview with Joe Kraus, the co-founder of Excite. So is being determined as all hell. If you're at the leading edge of a field doesn't mean you have to redefine the problem. More often it was just an arbitrary series of hoops to jump through, words without content designed mainly for testability. So why do investors ask how much you could do with web-based applications. A couple weeks ago I tried displaying the names of users with the highest average comment scores in orange. What happened?

The x in Ajax is from the XMLHttpRequest object, which lets the browser communicate with the server was to ask what you wish someone else would build, so that a month was a huge interval. When I want to invest—usually because they've heard you're a hot deal. And investors, too, that school is not life. Though of course forbidding bad behavior does tend to keep away bad people, because they feel uncomfortably constrained in a place where investors want to know what the status quo for granted and start to question things. You could serve them targeted offers, and maybe charge for premium features. In fact, we've never even invited them to the right kind of person. 0 now, I have some idea what they mean. Many languages especially the ones designed for other people have the attitude of a governess: they try to prevent you from doing things that they think aren't good for you. 0 means using the web as a platform? An article about Sophia Antipolis bragged that companies there included Cisco, Compaq, IBM, NCR, and Nortel.

Thanks to Ken Anderson, Robert Morris, Jared Tame, Jessica Livingston, and Kenneth King for sharing their expertise on this topic.

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ciathyzareposts · 5 years

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Batman Returns – Final Rating

Written by Joe Pranevich

Christmas in July August!

There comes a time in everyone’s life where they need to put away their toys and provide a numerical rating for a tie-in adventure game written in 1992. More than once, in my case. But before we get into the all-important rating, let’s recap:

Batman Returns is the final game by Bill Kunkel’s Subway Software. Unlike the majority of the games that we play, we have Mr. Kunkel’s on words on the development process in a series of editorials as the “Game Doctor”. We can appreciate his joy at being able to work with the Batman mythos followed by his horror as he realized he was not making the game that he dreamed of. Instead of producing a Batman game that he could be proud of, he had to shoehorn in an adventure game on top of a movie that he did not like, with studio interference telling him what he could and could not include, with a development house that seemed ill-equipped to build the game that he designed. It is perhaps no wonder that this was his final game with Subway, although that may have been as much due to his changing fortunes in the magazine world as frustration with the game design one. Reading his words, I could not help but to root for the game to be better than its reputation. It also saddens me to no end that Mr. Kunkel is no longer with us; he feels approachable and would have been an amazing person to interview. I failed to mention it earlier, but we have also lost Joyce Katz (née Worley), the third member of the Kunkel/Katz/Worley trifecta. Of the three original developers and business partners, only Arnie Katz appears to still be with us, but I have been unable to locate him in time for this post.

Rather than dwell on that, let’s consider what we have: the first ever Batman adventure game and the first game to focus on his abilities as a detective. We successfully pieced the clues together to locate Penguin’s lair and prevent him from becoming mayor of Gotham. We stopped an army of marching penguins with rocket launchers. While we failed to bring Catwoman into the light, I’m going to imagine that there’s a world in the DC multiverse where Burton’s Batman and Catwoman managed to eventually get together and find a good therapist. They both could use one. Batman drove off into a snowy sunset and we can at least be thankful that no one thought to create a game based on Batman Forever.

A clue that wasn’t there yesterday and that has no reason for being there today!

Puzzles and Solvability

Batman Returns tried to do something different. It does not have standard adventure game-style puzzles where you use inventory items on foreground objects until something interesting happens. Instead, we have a game that rewards patient searching; Batman is detective first and a muscle-bound crime fighter second. This works better than you might think and my interest held for a while, but eventually the dearth of different locations led to a feeling of monotony rather than exploration. Objects are always placed in obvious places but usually only for a single day and the game expresses little desire to make the search process interesting or difficult.

With no inventory puzzles, we might surmise that the main “puzzle” of the game is the mystery. That works for a couple of days while we collected evidence to tie Shreck and Penguin together, but it is not enough to sustain the pace of the game. Instead, we might say that the key goal of the game is to find Penguin’s extortion tape, requiring us to discover his headquarters and find a way in. While this seems like a decent puzzle, we don’t have any real control over the resolution. We find clues in the order that the game gives them to us and (if we find the fish on the first day), we eventually get the tape. Within this constraint, there are some good moments– Tony the Fishmonger is my favorite– but we have little control over the pace and direction of the investigation. Combat is a mini-puzzle itself, but once we learn which bat-tools defeat the various villains, it becomes simple. Objects reset when you interrogate someone so a winning strategy is to make good use of the bolo-batarangs to trigger interrogation scenes to refresh our stuff. It is not rocket science and I sorely wish there was more to this game. It shows promise, but the execution is lacking.

My score: 3.

The utility belt is a non-traditional inventory.

Interface and Inventory

This game uses a verbless interface, something we’re going to see a lot more of in the next few years; on that score alone it is quite progressive! Almost everything can be done with a single click and there are often two ways to do things. Want to climb to a roof? You can either click the top of the screen if you have an object that will get you there or click on the object itself in your inventory. Although Batman moves too slowly, I never felt that the interface was a problem. There are some strange quirks here and there like how you can normally go to a system menu by pressing the ESC key, except during combat when you have to press a button on the toolbar labeled “ESC” instead. My guess is a bugfix thrown in at the last minute.

We also do not have traditional “inventory” puzzles. Batman never has to use a ball of yarn that he found in Catwoman’s apartment to fly a kite to attract lightning to fry an electronic lock on Penguin’s lair. Batman is a millionaire. Since he can buy anything he might need, limiting the inventory to evidence and bat-gadgets makes sense. The fact that he has more gadgets than slots in his belt isn’t surprising and works overall. In a stranger choice, we cannot see what evidence we are carrying except when we deposit it in the computer. I like that there is a good rhyme and reason to using gadgets in combat, something I didn’t cover very much in the narrative itself. Some gadgets are good for long-range attacks, while others allow Batman to close the distance and attack with his fists. While the combat is shallow, it is often better than my summaries implied. You can tell that they worked hard on that part of the engine, perhaps to the detriment of the plot-facing parts.

My score: 4

Much of the story is told through the nightly news.

Story and Setting

I am conflicted on this score because there is a lot to like. The designers did remarkably well with a slow build of tension over the first few days as we gradually uncovered the connections between the characters. They transformed a straight-forward action movie that into a mystery that Batman had to solve. The background stories in the computer, and the way some of these details shifted as you played the game, helped to make the setting come alive. Bill Kunkel complained that his team was prevented from deviating from the film and decision alone probably did irreparable damage to the game. We can see glimpses of what he was thinking thanks to some encounters and database items that don’t quite connect, but it doesn’t feel like a finished product.

For all that, the game falls apart at the end as the designers realized that they had to tell the rest of the film’s story all in a rush. This led to too many disconnected cut-scenes, dropped plot-lines, and things happening in the game because they happened in the movie. Alfred shows up! Rocket-launcher penguins show up! There is some foreshadowing to Commissioner Gordon showing up, but the latter third of the game becomes a poor retelling of the movie rather than its own thing. Although I didn’t experience both sides of the fork, the choice as to whether or not we give our evidence to Commissioner Gordon was great. It was a real role-playing moment with an impact on the ending, ensuring that Shreck is arrested rather than killed and Catwoman doesn’t have blood on her paws. That deserves special recognition.

My Score: 4

The rooftop scenes are surprisingly well animated.

Sound and Graphics

The game cuts corners by not giving Batman free movement, but the graphics and sound may be the best part of the game. The snow effects are exceptionally well done for 1992 and I wonder how much of it was animated versus motion capture. The combat engine supports far more somersaults and moves than you expect, making the fights kinetic if not exactly interesting to watch. I love the hand-painted backgrounds, many of which were based on Tim Burton’s set design but some of which are unique to the game. From Kunkel’s blog, we know that the designers visited the movie’s rooftop set during production and I cannot help but feel that they learned a lot about the film’s design aesthetic which they put to good use.

The game also has a secret weapon: Danny Elfman’s iconic Batman score. Those beautiful notes are forever burned into the nostalgia-center of my brain thanks their use in Bruce Timm’s Batman: The Animated Series. Even a couple of hooks from that score were enough to elevate otherwise boring “Batman running to the Batmobile” scenes. You can hardly credit the game designers for using a three-year old score, but I am doing it anyway.

My score: 6.

Batman can only arrive at this screen from the roof.

Environment and Atmosphere

Although I liked the graphics, not everything hung together. The city felt claustrophobic rather than expansive and seeing the same hand-painted Gothic architecture over and over again eventually made it mundane. Tim Burton’s designs bleed through into the art and that is quite nice, but it’s not enough to build a cohesive atmosphere. Although a quibble, I still dislike that Batman cannot travel through the city on foot. Even when he just needs to cross the street, he has to grapple up to the roof and cross. I’m all for subtle, but it gets in the way of the city feeling real.

My score: 4.

The bat-computer gives us many details about Gotham’s citizens.

Dialog and Acting

There are two sets of dialogs in this game: that which was written for the game and that which was written for the film, but they do not hang together well. That said, the bat-computer was exceptionally well done with descriptions of major and minor (or even unseen background) characters that would update as the game progressed. It’s a strange bright spot in a weirdly uneven game.

As far as “acting” is concerned, we get some faux-video in the game which consists of characters talking to each other with one of two frames of lip-flap animation. It’s not terrible and may have been based on filming done for the movie, albeit hyper-compressed to fit on a 8-floppy game. I wonder if there had not been plans to make this into a CD-ROM game at one point, abandoned by the time or limitations in the format.

My score: 4

Final Tally

Let’s add up our scores: (3+4+4+6+4+4)/.6 = 42 points! I am going to take one away for having the fish at the beginning of the game be such a “bite the newbie” moment. That gives us a final score of 41 points. Not terrible!

With that, Reiko is our winner this time out with an on-the-money guess at the score! Alas, Mayhaym just missed it thanks to my subtracting a point because of that pesky fish. By what I assure you is a complete coincidence, this is exactly the same score as Ballyhoo, the other game I just played about criminal clowns. We’re in The Black Cauldron and Codename: Iceman territory now which makes sense. These are deeply flawed but playable games and that’s more or less how I feel about Batman Returns. The average guess was 37 so the majority of you thought I would hate it a bit more than I did.

I am very happy that I played this game, not because it was fantastic on its own but because I was able to spend so much time researching Bill Kunkle and his Subway Software. I love discovering stories like his, told by storytellers like him. I am still reading and enjoying his autobiographical tales and Borrowed Time was a nice treat even if it didn’t score all that well. This is the kind of thing that I was looking for when I volunteered to be a writer on The Adventure Gamer and I am glad to have been able to share the experience with you. Don’t be surprised if I look for some excuse to play Mr. Kunkel’s other two adventure games at some point down the road.

This game is a huge milestone for my contributions to this blog, even if I am a bit embarrassed about it: I have now passed up Trickster as writer with the most games played, even if in my case they have mostly been Missed Classics. When I volunteered to play Operation: Stealth, I had no idea that I would enjoy writing with you as much as I have come to. Thanks for being an appreciative audience.

Next up for me is Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective, Volume II, by another one of my favorite developers.

CAP Distribution

200 CAPs to Joe Pranevich

Blogger Award – 100 CAPs – for finally finishing the game after so long, thanks to the fish.

Classic Blogger Award – 50 CAPs – for playing on Borrowed Time

Classic Blogger Award – 50 CAPs – for playing through Ballyhoo

Will Moczarski – 80 CAPs

Classic Blogger Award – 50 CAPs – for blogging through Reality Ends for everyone’s enjoyment

Intermission Award – 20 CAPs – for blogging about all the other programs Med Systems put out in the 80s.

Psychic Prediction Award – 10 CAPs – for being the closest guesser of the final score of The Archers.

25 CAPs to ShaddamVIth

Ultra-Efficient Panel Beating Award – 5 CAPs – for noticing that we’re driving in a car that was recently wrecked in the ending

Psychic Prediction Award – 10 CAPs – for correctly guessing the final rating of Ballyhoo

Sex Ed Award – 5 CAPs – for reminding me that male lions have manes. Duh.

A Farm Upstate Award – 5 CAPs – for trying to work out what the Archers’ pig-cow-cabbage-dog graphics are

25 CAPs to Lisa H

Pennywise Award – 5 CAPs – for reminding us that not all clowns wear white makeup

Helpful Hinting Award – 5 CAPs – for helpful hinting.

Are You High? Award – 5 CAPs – for catching my “high wire” typos

Comparing the Incomparable – 5 CAPs – for funny bits from the hint book

A Farm Upstate Award – 5 CAPs – for trying to work out what the Archers’ pig-cow-cabbage-dog graphics are

25 CAPs to TBD

Clueless Award – 5 CAPs – for knowing that Movie Batgirl wasn’t Barbara Gordon.

A Setting Somewhere Award – 5 CAPs – for giving advice on emulating Amiga games

Psychic Prediction Award – 10 CAPs – for figuring out Will’s Final Rating MO, thus guessing closest to Reality Ends’ rating

A Farm Upstate Award – 5 CAPs – for trying to work out what the Archers’ pig-cow-cabbage-dog graphics are

20 CAPs to Vetinari

What’s Your Story Award – 20 CAPs – for submitting What’s Your Story answers

15 CAPs to Biscuit

Appreciating Your Appreciation Award – 5 CAPs – for making me feel like the research I do is appreciated

Psychic Prediction Award – 10 CAPs – for correctly guessing the final rating of Borrowed Time

10 CAPs to Laukku

Emulation Award – 5 CAPs – for letting us know that Dosbox has just been updated, helping out those of us who play old games.

A Farm Upstate Award – 5 CAPs – for trying to work out what the Archers’ pig-cow-cabbage-dog graphics are

10 CAPs to Michael

Fettucini Brothers Award – 5 CAPs – for lists of adventure games with circuses

SOUNDS OF SILENCE AWARD – 5 UPPER CASE CAPs – FOR COMPLAINING ABOUT THE LOUDNESS OF THE TEXT IN REALITY ENDS

10 CAPs to Reiko

Psychic Prediction Award – 10 CAPs – for correctly guessing the final rating of Batman Returns

5 CAPs to ATMachine

Arrested Development Award – 5 CAPs – for telling me about the alternate ending if you arrest Shreck

5 CAPs to Rowan Lipivitz

Deep Blue Sea Award – 5 CAPs – for making a “red herring” joke about the fish

5 CAPs to Voltgloss

No Couch Potato Award – 5 CAPs – for consulting a walkthrough and showing that I did tons of optional stuff

5 CAPs to Mayhaym

Willem Dafoe Award – 5 CAPs – for connecting Max Shreck to the movie Nosferatu

5 CAPs to MorpheusKitami

Gone Fishing Award – 5 CAPs – for hinting that I missed the fish when I missed the fish

5 CAPs to Ududy

The Unexpected Virtue of Innocence Award – 5 CAPs – for pointing out that bats aren’t birds

5 CAPs to Alex Romanov

Dehydration Award – 5 CAPs – for pointing out that bat-shark-repellent was used in the 1960s film, not the series

5 CAPs to Laertes

Touch of Death Award – 5 CAPs – for providing some info about the first Batman game for the MSX

5 CAPs to Torch

Golden Ratio Award – 5 CAPs for trying to help figure out Amiga graphics aspect ratios…

5 CAPs to Kirinn

Adventure Game Studio Award – 5 CAPs – for providing another circus adventure game

5 CAPs to Anonymous

Nine Princes Award – 5 CAPs – for pointing out a similarity between Reality Ends and a fantasy novel series.

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/batman-returns-final-rating/

#retro games #dos games #retro #crpg #adventure #amiga #oldcomputers #8bit #16bit #blog #repost

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gyrlversion · 6 years

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New Boris blow for PMs Deal: Johnson calls for May to delay vote

In yet another blow for the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson has urged Theresa May to postpone the Brexit deal vote.

Mr Johnson last night urged MPs to vote down Mrs May’s deal for a third time if it is put to a vote this week.

But the under-pressure PM, also received a string of major endorsements that will give her fresh hope the deal could pass within days.

Mr Johnson warned in his Daily Telegraph column that it gives the EU an ‘indefinite means of blackmail’ against the UK.

In a direct attack on Mrs May, he paints her and her team as collaborators in the ‘final sabotage of Brexit’ just 11 days before Britain is due to leave the EU.

The former foreign secretary urged her to postpone the vote and use a forthcoming EU summit to seek ‘real change’ on the Irish backstop.

Mr Johnson said: ‘It would be absurd to hold the vote before that has even been attempted.’

Mr Johnson last night urged MPs to vote down Mrs May’s deal for a third time if it is put to a vote this week

He added: ‘Every single important issue is still up for negotiation; and whether by accident or design, the UK will enter the second phase of the talks – if this deal goes through – in a position of almost unbearable weakness.’

But in a significant boost for the PM, former Chancellor Norman Lamont urged his fellow Brexiteers to focus on the ‘prize’ of leaving the EU – and back the deal.

Writing on the page opposite, the Eurosceptic grandee warns wavering MPs that ‘history will not understand if it is Conservative MPs who prevent us claiming our self-government’. Mrs May is hoping to build momentum behind her deal today with an agreement with the DUP that could bring dozens of Eurosceptics on board.

In a major intervention last night, Northern Ireland’s former First Minister David Trimble also dropped his objections to the so-called Irish backstop.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner praised Mrs May for securing ‘substantive’ concessions on the backstop, adding: ‘The chances of the PM getting the deal through Parliament have improved.’ Former Vote Leave chief Matthew Elliot also came out for the deal, warning Euroscptic MPs: ‘It’s May’s deal or nothing.’

Theresa May, pictured yesterday arriving at church in Sonning, received a string of major endorsements for her Brexit deal last night that gave fresh hope it could pass within days

But, with the trickle of Eurosceptic MPs declaring their support still failing to turn into a flood, the prospects for the deal remain on a knife edge.

Mrs May was last night still deciding whether or not to press ahead with tomorrow’s planned vote on her Brexit deal. Philip Hammond and Liam Fox both said it could be pulled if it looked like it would be defeated a third time.

But Chancellor Hammond claimed ‘significant’ numbers of Tory MPs who opposed the deal were now considering changing their minds.

Downing Street was braced for Boris Johnson to ‘double down’ on his opposition. And Tory sources said fellow leadership hopeful Dominic Raab was also indicating he would help Labour vote down the deal for a third time.

Some senior figures believe tomorrow’s vote should be delayed until next week, by which time Mrs May is expected to have requested an extension of Article 50. One Cabinet minister urged the PM to delay, adding: ‘Whenever it comes it is going to be incredibly tight. I think the DUP will come across but we also need Boris and Raab and Rees-Mogg to have a chance. Even then, we will need some more Labour MPs to come on board.’ At the start of a crunch week on Brexit:

Philip Hammond angered Eurosceptics by saying it was now ‘physically impossible to leave on March 29’ following Parliament’s decision to back a Brexit delay.

Dutch PM Mark Rutte likened Mrs May to the Monty Python character the Black Knight, who refused to give in even after having his limbs chopped off.

Former work and pensions secretary Esther McVey said she would reluctantly back the deal, but called for Mrs May and other ‘feeble negotiators’ to quit.

David Davis urged Eurosceptic MPs to back the deal, saying it was ‘capable of rescue’ in Brussels.

Brexit: What happens next?

What happened last week?

MPs twice rejected Theresa May’s Brexit deal. They also voted against leaving with no deal, and now voted in favour of a delay.

What will happen next?

MPs have supported a delay, so May will have to request an extension to Article 50 from the EU.

Could Brexit be delayed?

If other member states agree to it, Brexit will be postponed, but May has said that this should be for no longer than three months.

If, however, MPs do not support her deal, she warned that the extension could be far longer.

Could Brexit be stopped?

May has warned this is a possibility. While she will not revoke Article 50 herself, she has warned political chaos could see the Government replaced by Jeremy Corbyn or another pro-Remain administration.

Will the Prime Minister face a motion of no confidence?

It is possible. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has insisted he will only call another vote of no confidence if he has a chance of winning – but in January Mrs May precipitated one herself.

Will May just resign after a second defeat?

Unlikely but not impossible. Defeat would be another monumental blow to the PM’s political authority.

Will there be a general election?

There are mounting calls for one. Tory MP Charles Walker said yesterday if the House could not pass the deal, the current Parliament probably needs to be replaced so a new Government can be formed to tackle Brexit.

One of the advantages of an election is it would be much quicker to organise and resolve than a second referendum.

Could there be a second referendum on Brexit?

There are mounting demands for a new public vote – but probably not currently a majority in the Commons for it.

A new referendum would take at least six months to organise and run. This could be optimistic as there is no consensus over what the question might be.

Mrs May’s deal suffered a record 230-vote defeat in January and lost again by 149 votes last week.

Ministers believe they are close to sealing an agreement with her DUP backers, which could see dozens of Eurosceptic Tories reluctantly fall into line behind the deal. Mr Hammond yesterday indicated the DUP could be handed more cash for Northern Ireland if they agree to back the PM’s deal.

He told the BBC’s Andrew Marr show: ‘This isn’t about money. It’s about a political assurance – well, look, we are coming up to a spending review and we will have to look at all budgets, including devolved block-grant budgets.’

Gordon Henderson, a Tory MP who has voted against the deal twice, told the Mail: ‘If the Government can find a formula that satisfies our DUP colleagues, then it will satisfy me.’ Ministers were helped last night by Lord Trimble’s decision to drop his opposition to the backstop plans in the light of fresh legal assurances that it could only be temporary.

In a paper for the Policy Exchange think-tank, he said: ‘The Government has succeeded in securing substantive changes that will affect and limit the impact of the Irish backstop’. The intervention from Lord Lamont, a patron of the hardline Leave Means Leave organisation, could also prove significant.

The former Chancellor, who served in the Thatcher government, warns fellow Eurosceptics that Brexit could be lost altogether unless they stop their infighting and back the PM.

He said it was ‘wishful thinking’ to believe that Parliament wouldn’t try to stop Brexit once it had been delayed. And he said there would be ‘all to play for’ in the second round of talks with Brussels, as long as the withdrawal deal was passed. He added: ‘To assert as some Eurosceptics do that it is preferable to remain in the EU than to accept Mrs May’s deal is absurd. The PM’s deal is far from ideal. But it has one overwhelming advantage. Under her deal we will definitely leave.’

Tory MP Daniel Kawczynski, a member of the European Research Group of Eurosceptic MPs, said: ‘The mood is changing. People are getting tired of the infighting at Westminster and in the Conservative Party. They expect us to get this across the line.’

Emma Lewell-Buck, who resigned from Labour’s front bench last week to vote against a second referendum, said she and other like-minded MPs wanted to see Brexit delivered with the current deal.

But some Tory hardliners suggested they would never back down. Andrea Jenkyns, a prominent member of the ERG, said: ‘The British spirit is to fight on and not to back down to threats.’

Jeremy Corbyn yesterday warned he was ready to call a vote of no confidence in the Government this week if Mrs May’s deal is voted down again, potentially triggering an election. He also plunged Labour’s Brexit policy into fresh confusion after revealing he could campaign to leave the EU if he succeeds in forcing a second referendum.

McVey eyes up No 10 as she tells May: Step down or you’ll lose vote

Mrs May will have to promise to make a ‘dignified departure’ from Downing Street to get her deal through, a former Cabinet minister said last night.

In a blunt intervention, the former work and pensions secretary Esther McVey became the most senior figure so far to warn that the price of winning Eurosceptic support for the Prime Minister’s deal might be her resignation.

Miss McVey, who indicated she will run for the Tory leadership when Mrs May steps down, said the ‘feeble negotiators’ who delivered the deal must not be allowed to oversee the next round of negotiations.

Miss McVey resigned from the Cabinet last year over the deal, but has now said she will vote for it. She told Sky News that Mrs May ‘will have to decide what to do’, adding: ‘What people will be asking for is for those feeble negotiators to go because they cannot take us forward to the next stage.’

She praised the Prime Minister’s ‘dedication’ but, when asked if she should resign, she added: ‘I think that what is best for her is, really only she knows. But what I do know is we as a party want to be able to thank her. She needs a dignified departure, so however that works best for her.’

Miss McVey said the next Tory leader ‘would have to be a Brexiteer’ and the Cabinet would have to be ‘Brexiteer-minded’.

And she made it clear she was ready to throw her hat into the ring when Mrs May indicates she is stepping down. Asked if she would stand, she said: ‘If there were enough people who supported me. If it seemed there was a reasonable chance, I would.’

Meanwhile, Tory MP Charlie Elphicke warned explicitly that his support for the deal depended on ‘a change of leadership’.

Mr Elphicke, a member of the hardline European Research Group, said: ‘What I am clear on is that if we are going to support it, there needs to be a change of negotiating team for the future relationship because there’s no way to be carrying on with Parliament. So I think for me we need to have a change of leadership, and a new face and a new team to take us forward.’

Asked if his vote was ‘up for grabs’, Mr Elphicke told the BBC: ‘I’m listening carefully, considering carefully about the balance of things. I’m also interested in what the Prime Minister says about how we’re going to take forward the negotiation… so the problems in the withdrawal agreement are not replicated when we actually come to do the future relationship with the EU.’

Mrs May’s former policy chief George Freeman last week called for her to set out a timetable for her departure in the summer. And several Tory MPs have told the Daily Mail privately that a resignation promise could be a ‘game changer’.

One ERG source said: ‘If she doesn’t commit to go then they will not get the votes they need. It is not enough for the whips to hint that she might quit – people need to hear it, in public, from her own mouth.’

Tory MP Andrew Bridgen yesterday said: ‘I’ve been approached by whips offering the PM’s resignation if I vote for her deal.’ But Government sources denied the claim.

Third time lucky? So, what on earth happens next?

SCENARIO 1: THIRD TIME LUCKY Theresa May’s deal is finally approved. This is how it would play out.

TUESDAY: Prime Minister wins Meaningful Vote No 3 (just) after DUP and most of the European Research Group fold.

THURSDAY: Wins approval at EU summit for short delay to planned March 29 Brexit date.

MONDAY, MARCH 25: Mrs May begins approving deal and – crucially – changing March 29 Brexit date. Commons and Lords vote through the date change.

SCENARIO 2: DEJA VU Deal blocked for third time, but a two-year Brexit delay approved.

TUESDAY: MPs narrowly defeat Mrs May’s attempt No 3 to secure her deal. PM says she will now go to Brussels to ask for more time.

THURSDAY: Brussels summit of EU leaders grants a two-year extension; UK takes part in MEP elections in May.

MONDAY, MARCH 25: Backed by Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour, May wins Commons vote approving two-year delay.

SCENARIO 3: NO DEAL BY SABOTAGE

We leave with no deal after a guerrilla war by Tory Brexit ‘ultras’.

TUESDAY: MPs narrowly defeat Mrs May’s third vote on her deal. PM says she will go to Brussels to ask for more time.

THURSDAY: Brussels insists on two-year extension to Brexit.

MONDAY, MARCH 25: Hardcore No Deal Tory Brexiteers support a no-confidence vote in May.

Move paralyses Government. MPs fail to change Brexit date.

FRIDAY, MARCH 29: UK leaves EU without a deal.

SCENARIO 4: BLOCKED BY BERCOW

TUESDAY: Speaker John Bercow throws a spanner in the works by ruling that putting the deal to a third vote breaches Commons rules over repeated votes on same terms. Mrs May forced to go to Brussels with no approved deal.

THURSDAY: EU insists on two-year extension.

MONDAY, MARCH 25: Mrs May wins resulting votes to change Brexit date.

OR… She loses vote of no confidence. No Deal on March 29.

The post New Boris blow for PMs Deal: Johnson calls for May to delay vote appeared first on Gyrlversion.

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totesmccoats · 7 years

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Batman: The Dark Prince Charming – Book One

Italian comics artist Enrico Marini dives into the Superhero genre in a big way with his take on the most popular hero of them all, and so far, he hasn’t changed much. His Batman and Catwoman are also in a solid relationship, much like the main series. So don’t go into this expecting a wild reimagining of the character.

The story concerns Joker kidnapping a young girl after the news reports that her mother is suing Bruce Wayne for child support, claiming that she is his daughter. Joker, having seemingly already put together that Bruce Wayne is Batman, targets her to get to his real objective. Batman wants to rescue her, and after running a DNA scan on one of the girl’s dolls, this case becomes personal.

Despite being fresh to superheroes, and coming from a comics culture where they aren’t as ubiquitous as they are here, Marini absolutely nails the heart of Batman’s cast – most impressively the Joker. Marini’s Joker is obviously influenced by Heath Ledger’s performance, borring the presumably fake child-abuse backstory, and a habit of killing henchmen mid-robbery; but also distills so many other versions of the character, maintaining the best parts. Marini’s Joker threatens the kidnapped girl with a knife, only to reveal it’s to cut into a pizza he ordered for the two of them. Of course, he also killed the delivery boy. He’s a Joker who throws Harley a big birthday party, but kills all but one of his other henchpeople when she doesn’t like her present. Actually, unlike most Jokers, Marini’s seemingly isn’t abusive towards Harley, which is a pleasant break from that sorta thing. This Joker is unpredictable and cruel, but he’s also very fun about it; exactly how Joker should be.

Unfortunately, the women in this story aren’t treated as well. While Harley isn’t abused, she’s depicted as way more cheesecake than usual, and Catwoman’s every other pose may as well be on a stripper pole. It’s not like these are huge departures or anything, but it seems like some of the messier parts of the characters taken a little further than usual, is all.

Also, the book is absolutely gorgeous. I don’t want to say it’s the sort of quality of art that’s rare in American superhero books because I’d feel like I’m insulting artists like Ferreyra, Alex Ross, Sean Gordon Murphy, Jeff Lemiere, Francis Manapul, and many other fantastic artists I currently greatly enjoy and admire; but Marini’s handpainted, realistic yet heavily stylized work is far from the house styles of the big two. There are panels I legit want to blow up and hang on my wall. And Marini’s lightly tweaked character designs, plus his new Batmobile, are simply sweet as hell, and I wish they would be used in more things. And his Gotham is brimming with gothic personality, and an insane verticality that dwarfs Batman in the best way.

So far, this story isn’t really anything new or novel, but it’s a damn excellent Batman story in its own right, and one worth picking up if you enjoy comic art.

Batman: White Knight #2

Jack Napier gives an impassioned testimony at his trial, declaring his innocence and putting the blame on Gotham’s police. He maintains that the authorities experimented on him, turning him into the Joker, so that they would have an excuse to demand bigger budgets from the taxpayers to fight a new breed of super-criminals. He says that the rich and powerful of Gotham have invested in crime to do what they’ve always done, make a profit off the suffering of the poor. And though Napier’s populist message has caught on with the poor and middle classes in Gotham, this isn’t a campaign he can lead alone, so he looks for allies.

His first stop, Harley Quinn. He goes to see her, only to find out that she has no love for Jack Napier, only loving the Joker. He then finds out that she’s not the original Harley. The first Harley – in the actual Harlequin outfit as opposed to the Suicide Squad inspired outfit of the new one – steps back in to accept Jack’s proposal, while explaining that she left after feeling neglected by the Joker in his obsession with Batman; and that in his maina, he never even realized she found a replacement. It’s actually a really smart take to explain how Harley has has such a drastic change in character recently.

Meanwhile, Bruce and Mr. Freeze test out their new cure for Nora. They first test it on some lab rats, but then Mr. Freeze tries it on himself. And while it successfully reverses his condition, it also rapidly ages him to make up for all the time he spent frozen.

Bruce later goes to some sort of rich people party/auction, where he’s horrified to learn that his friends have been profiting from Batman’s war on crime. He knocks out his friend and storms off. Now, this I really like. Murphy hasn’t just switched Batman and Joker’s roles as hero and villain; Bruce legitimately seems ignorant of the inequality that Batman’s worked in service of, and he hates it. I’m expecting we may even see Bruce approach Jack to assist address the problems that Batman and the police have caused through Gotham – but that still makes me question how Batman ended up in Arkham from the cold open of issue #1.

I really like how much effort Murphy has put into this story to make it much more than just a simple “what if?” tale. Just as last issue brought up the popular fan-thought experiment regarding whether Batman is to blame for his villains, this one weaves in the fan-discourse about how the collateral of Batman’s work really does seem to disproportionately land with the poor. Napier’s speech isn’t just a an exercise in populist rhetoric, but an actual well reasoned argument against Batman’s existence vis-a-vie his effect on inequality. And it’s one that fits as much for canon-Batman stories as this alternate-universe that Murphy has lovingly crafted for this story. If you’re not already reading this one, get on it.

Batman #34

Batman and Catwoman have their first post-engagement spat. Batman said that he’d “seen more” after Catwoman commented on there being “a lot” of something, and Catwoman took it as an insult, and Batman’s trying to explain he was just saying…oh and by the way they’re talking about the number of swordsmen surrounding them preparing to attack. Because that’s just how they do. King’s juxtaposition of the action with sitcom-esque dialogue isn’t the most original, but it’s really effective here in establishing that, for Batman and Catwoman, this is fairly typical. It continues through the issue, with the two also discussing whether Talia could be considered Bruce’s “Ex,” and lots of Bruce calling Catwoman pretty to deflect from accidentally saying something she’d consider rude.

Meanwhile, Damian and Dick track their father to the same entrance that he and Catwomen fought their way through last issue, but are stopped from following by Superman. Damian threatens to kill Clark with magic, but Clark reminds him that then Jon probably wouldn’t want to be friends anymore. Then Supes goes flying off to handle and alien invasion in Central City; and Dick and Damian decide to sit on the stoop and wait for Bruce to come out. It’s one of those scenes that works because it reminds you that Damian’s just a kid. A kid who can make a believable threat against Superman, but one you can’t take all that seriously because he’s just saying it because he’s steamed over his parents doing something in secret. So when Damian can’t get his way, he just pouts and sits down; and Dick, being the best big brother ever, waits with him.

The lighter tone of the issue changes almost instantly when Talia finally shows up at sundown. The palette of the issue switches from a yellow-orange to a red as the sun sets, ending with an early night-blue sky as Talia challenges Selina to a duel over Batman’s wounded body. The change is dramatic, but not sudden. Even once Talia is in-frame, she approaches slowly, taking about two pages before she starts fighting Batman, giving the sun time to fully set.

Jones’ inky style is still a perfect fit for this adventure, continuing to capture the feeling of the sun beating down on the characters by putting everything in high-contrast black against Bellaire’s yellows and reds.

We also find out in this last act of the issue that this isn’t some weird newlywed hazing ritual; but that Batman and Catwoman are actually looking for Holly Robinson, who killed the 237 people that a young Selina took the blame for, and they tracked her here. So, one question answered, at least one duel to the death to go before getting more.

Green Arrow #34

Oliver has some trouble adjusting to his mother having been alive, and being a prominent member of the Ninth Circle, the evil bank that he’s been trying to bring down for the past year. Moira tries to convince Ollie of the virtues of capitalism – that when the Queens do well, all of Seattle benefits, but Oliver won’t have it.

Instead, he helps Black Canary take down the Clock King, who has hacked into Star City’s smart infrastructure, and is causing every self-driving vehicle in the city to go crazy. Dinah stops a speeding train on it’s tracks by screaming at it hella loud, while Oliver finds and stops Clock King.

Meanwhile, Diggle helps Merlyn make a full recovery, and then tells him that his debt for Merlyn having saved his life some time ago has been paid. Merlyn feels differently.

And at the end of the issue, Oliver agrees to help Moira raid the sunken vaults of the Inferno, believing that even if everything she says is just some Ayn Rand bullshit, a little money would help him out with his murder trial, and also gather evidence more against the Ninth Circle to rescue his city.

This issue is a bit of a mess. The Clock King and Diggle stories both feel like filler to make the issue reach it’s page limit, and to distract that, during them, Oliver completely flip-flopped on helping out his mother.

Also, I’m not a fan of Stephen Byrne’s work on this book. It looks too…flash animation-y, characters look as though they were coated in confectioner’s glaze. It actually reminds me of some bad webcomics, which ain’t good. Also, Moira looks more like Felicia Hardy than a woman who should at least be in middle age. What happened to Ferreyra? Or Campbell?

Superman #34

As his worshippers beg him to lead their forces to take back Apokolips, Lex does the least Luthor thing ever and abdicates his godhood to the person their prophecy actually foretold – Superman. Did I miss something really big with Lex, or am I just supposed to believe that, after deciding to become a hero, he also just no longer has his character defining flaw? I don’t want to be one of those people who says comics should never change, but unless I missed something, this is a huge change of character. Even if he really is a hero now, that shouldn’t exclude him from being arrogant and striving for praise and adulation.

Meanwhile, Lois and Jon are also on Apokolips; and while Jon can just fly away from the people and hounds hunting them, Lois can’t, and finds herself taken by Granny Goodness’ Furies. But when their convoy is attacked by a giant, fire-breathing dredge worm, Lois picks up one of the fallen Furies’ guns and proves to Granny than she’s more than just another captured vermin.

While I continue to appreciate this book’s focus on Lois, it also puts her in a situation that doesn’t suit her strengths as a character. Lois is a reporter, she’s not Wonder Woman. I like that she’s able to defend herself, and that she’s not being damsel’d, but becoming a Fury feels just as out of character as Lex declining a throne.

Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man #6

J. Jonah Jameson cooks up a nice-looking lasagna to warm up his latest interview subject – Spider-Man! Of course, Spidey is only there for information that can help out his sister, but in exchange, he agrees to a no-holds-barred exclusive interview with the man who used to slander him for profit.

The interview doesn’t start off well, and quickly becomes a heated argument between the two on why Spider-Man wears a mask, and why Jameson hates him for it. The two trade verbal attacks about the other’s role in the creation of super-villains, destruction of property, and death, before just straight up calling each-other cowards and bullies.

If last issue suffered because it was too plot heavy to give room for characters to breathe, than this issue is an incredible course correction. Anything relevant to the plot of the arc is sidelined for the raw catharsis of Spider-Man and Jameson finally just letting everything out. And the issue ends up becoming a complete disrobing of Jameson as Spidey slowly digs into why he’s hung onto this grudge through becoming mayor, the death of everyone close to him, and getting fired from the Bugle. Like Zdarsky’s best issues, there’s more than a twinge of meloncholy through the issue, as he reveals how broken this character has been. That sorta thing has become his specialty, it seems – making jokey characters kinda depressing.

Walsh is the perfect artist for this issue. His style, much like Doc Shaner or Darwyn Cooke’s, evokes an older time in comics, with thick charcoal-y hatching and shading, and uneven outlines. Plus, no spaghetti webs! This is matched by Herring’s muted and watercolor-textured colors. The aged affect of the art is epitomized by a single flashback panel made to resemble Ditko’s original Spider-Man work; and it’s amazing how solid a throughline you can make from his style to Walsh’s.

It’s also scary impressive how much emotion he can draw out of Spider-Man’s mask, like…there’s seething anger in one panel that comes across through the mask despite any and all reason.

Black Bolt #7

Finally free from the prison, Black Bolt makes his way back to Earth, but not before a pit-stop to return Monsteroso to his home planet. He’s reckoning with the loss of his voice and the PTSD from his time in the prison. Also on board is Blinky, who has her own nightmares, only hers can manifest physically, and require Black Bolt to destroy before they could actually harm her.

Very much a breather issue after the conclusion of the last arc, Ahmed writes an issue with almost no threat or urgency that isn’t just in one of the characters heads, excepting for a short space-dogfight at the end. The tone is complimented by guest artist Frazer Irving’s soft, dreamlike art. Irving’s style is almost the complete opposite of Ward’s hyperactive neon trips, almost resembling a children’s picture book; but is equally gorgeous to the work Ward has done on the series, and fits just as nicely into Ahmed’s story. This is easily the most beautiful single I picked up this week, and proves that Black Bolt is one Marvel book you should be reading even on “off” months.

Crosswind #5

Juniper’s guys follow Cruz to Mika’s house, where he’s just finished beating her up. Then he kills two of the three guys Case sent to kill him, and promises to kill Cason as well. Then he gets a visit from the mysterious old man who swapped Cason and Juniper, who explains the situation and why he did it. So now, Cruz is out to kill June and her family as well.

Cason overhears the old man’s voice over the phone as he threatens to kill him, and knows enough of Cruz to prepare for him to make the trip to Seattle. Juniper catches up with Mika and tells her everything that’s been going on, and they both decide to try and cut Cruz off in Seattle.

Meanwhile, thanks to Cason’s advice, Kelly’s finally making friends at school. And he comes home to his step-mom finally giving his dad what he deserves.

While I didn’t really think the body-swap needed an explanation, I’m very glad that it happened essentially out of pettiness. The man who did it did so because they both refused to sell him their plane tickets so that he could see his wife before she died. It’s like something out of a myth, a god ruining your life because you were rude to them in disguise. It really may as well have been random.

Staggs continues to do wonders just with the main characters’ postures, like how June still holds her towel up to her chest as though to cover breasts, or how Case sits with a wide stance even in a dress.

Paper Girls #17

Charlotte finally fills the girls in on the time-travel war that they’ve found themselves caught in the middle of: The teens who’ve been helping the girls are time travellers from at least 70,000AD who go back in time to right wrongs; and are are fighting against the “old-timers”, the first generation born after the invention of time-travel, who try to prevent anyone from interfering with the timestream. She was told this by a friend of the same time travellers who rescued Erin’s life; and even though she seems legit, if not a little eccentric; Mac doesn’t trust her completely. And when Mac tries to tell this to KJ, and also calls Charlotte a lesbian, KJ comes out to Mac, who is shocked once she realizes what KJ just told her.

Meanwhile, Tiff escapes from the overturned police car amid the giant robot battle happening around her, and manages to make it to her parents house, where she finds a mysterious goth sitting in her living room, and claiming to be married to her!

It only took seventeen issues, but we finally have an idea of what’s going on in Paper Girls! Yay! Not that I minded much, obviously; I was enjoying it either way, but it is cool to have some more context. And that moment between Mac and KJ is *mwah* perfect. Their faces! So good! Besides that though, this is mainly an exposition issue; with Tiff’s scenes being almost completely wordless. I still love how the teen’s mech is just an EVA though – that’s fantastic.

Uber: Invasion #9

The unique Battleship Churchill – Leah – and a thirteen year old battleship candidate named Tamara rendezvous with Patton’s forces as he crosses the alps. The Germans have him walled off with a small squad of Ubers, expertly positioned to prevent his further movement despite his superior forces. Luckily, Churchill’s arrival provides him with inspiration for an attack the Germans could never see coming.

I won’t say how, because it’s one of the most amazing action sequences in recent comics memory, but needless to say, the issue ends with the Allies winning big, and possibly turning the tide of the war.

Leah is the star of this issue, and oh boy does she earn it. She’s a gentle giant, possibly the strongest single character in the franchise, and someone you do not want to be on the wrong side of. Gete draws her to make her basically a Totoro on one page, and then the Hulk on another. Generally there’s a distance between Uber’s characters and the reader because of the book’s narration taking the form of an objective post-war narration, but you really end up rooting for Leah, and not just because she’s ripping Nazis to pieces.

Comic Reviews 11/1/17 Batman: The Dark Prince Charming - Book One Italian comics artist Enrico Marini dives into the Superhero genre in a big way with his take on the most popular hero of them all, and so far, he hasn’t changed much.

#batman #black bolt #crosswind #dc comics #enrico marini #green arrow #harley quinn #invasion #j jonah jameson #joker #lois lane #paper girls #peter parker #sean gordon murphy #spider-man #superman #the dark prince charming #uber #white knight

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