#we do know that Buck is a super unreliable narrator though so if he is thinking it’s all his fault etc chances are it isn’t

[stagefoureddiediaz]

Still over here spiralling about that tiny bit of script. Why if it’s not Chris. What if it’s Bobby that Buck hs injured???

Because that tiny bit of letter after basketball court could be a B - for Bobby and not an E for Eddie!!! And Bobby getting injured would totally make Buck spiral!!!

[catsvrsdogscatswin]

Higurashi Gou Liveblog: Episode 4

And we open with more excellently-done scenes of terror. Loving this vibe. Keiichi seems a lot less manic than he did the first go around though? Like its actually been a bit since I’ve rewatched the first season, but I’m pretty sure by the fourth episode he was feral and ready to cut a bitch and here he’s just super on edge.

KEIICHI HAS A JAWLINE.

Oh what have we here. The clinic’s undergoing some kind of remodeling? Twenty bucks says that has something to do with Tomitake and Takano’s new form of disappearance.

“You’ll need to head to another clinic” this guy says like they aren’t six hours deep into rural mountains.

And Keiichi no longer has his jawline.

“Why are you acting like I’m dying or something?” BOY YOU GONNA.

Mion continuing to wingman like a good friend.

I also feel like Mion and Satoko are the only ones not reading the tense lines of suspicion in this room. Rika knows that shit’s up, Keiichi is being textbook Hinamizawa Syndrome in its early stages, and Rena is possibly breaking through the fourth wall of her own memories.

Oh shit is Rika going to try and therapize him?

Rika is a good time-traveler who remembers her mistakes and her lessons. Look at her putting them to good use in nudging Keiichi out of Hinamizawa Syndrome.

AW ITS WORKING.

“You’re an unreliable narrator Keiichi we learned this like eight arcs ago. Do not trust your gut instinct.”

This is so wholesome, how soon until it all goes wrong.

YES KEIICHI REALIZE YOUR FAILURES AS A PERSPECTIVE-HOLDER!

Wait a sec we saw imagines of Rena getting her fingers crushed in the door during a teaser.

“Don’t worry I won’t die on you” KEIICHI NO DON’T JINX YOUSELF LIKE THAT.

Ah here we go. That’s a creepy-ass smile.

Keiichi fight your feelings of paranoia. I know its not gonna work ‘cause we see him smash her fingers, but c’mon man, try a little here.

Oh this is fun. Look at him flashing back and remembering what he did.

AND HE OPENS THE DOOR FOR HER YES.

Aw and he gives her a hug. I’m loving this. How soon until it goes wrong.

Oh its going wrong already. Shadowed eyes and being alone in the kitchen, that’s going to be fun.

WAS THAT A FUCKING HACKSAW.

She literally brought tools to murder him what the fuck. Rena what the fuck.

How is it that they had even worse animation some decades later. The way she scratched at her neck was so bad, the first series at least made their scratches look realistic.

Okay I understand the logic but what does that have to do with her dad- oh she thinks they need to appease the curse, I get it.

Take the knife away Keiichi. You knocked her out now take the knife away. Take the knife away you dumb fuck –and of course he gets stabbed.

You cannot kill someone like that with a plastic clock.

Why are you censoring this guys. And with a lazy black splotch as well.

Okay who’s gonna kill who first.

That is a shitton of blood holy fuck. Are they both dead?

Okay I appreciate this but how the heck is Keiichi still alive. Rena should’ve perforated every damn organ in his body by that point. There was too much damn blood for anyone to have survived that.

OISHI NO DON’T WALK AWAY FROM THE SURVIVOR IN THE HOSPITAL THEY ALWAYS DIE AFTER YOU LEAVE!

Okay he’s fine, apparently. That’s weird.

OHO. Rika and Satoko died? Oh this is very interesting –and killed with a knife in the throat? Like what happened with Shion in Eye-Opening? Hmm-hmm-hmm…

That nurse is gonna kill him, ain’t she.

OH FUCK A NEEDLE. And the questions, this is Takano in disguise isn’t it?!

[team-skull-admin]

My favorite 40 games of all-time

Made an arbitrary list of my favorite games of all-time cause I wanted to figure out where Breath of the Wild is on it. It’s, uh, pretty high. Assload of text below the break.

40: Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow I'm not the world's biggest Symphony of the Night fan (outside of the incredible soundtrack) and I think this is where Iga's seamless platformers found their footing.

39: Call of Juarez: Gunslinger I love goofy, experimental games like this and Far Cry: Blood Dragon, but I think the schtick in this (an unreliable narrator bragging about their heroic exploits) works better than Blood Dragon's dorky 80s nostalgia.

38: Rayman Origins A beautiful platformer with incredible level design. The music for the diabolical secret level is seared into my memory.

37: Cibele A short, story-centric indie game that captures the essence of playing MMOs in the mid-2000s and long-distance relationships. The awkward conversations in this game made me think about my WoW years for an entire weekend.

36: Mario Kart Wii It's not technically the "best" Mario Kart, but I actually enjoyed the motorcycles and I have fond memories of crushing my brother while we downed beers and talked shit.

35: Guild of Dungeoneering I'm usually not super into "We made X game, but added CARDS!" even though I love card games, but they nailed the loop here. I vaguely remember one of the decks being super busted, though.

34: Tropico 4 Adding a political slant to Sim City by making you the leader of a banana republic was just the slant to that formula I was looking for, and I lost a weekend circa New Year's '13 just delving into this hard.

33: Gran Turismo 2 My brother bought a PS1 off a friend when they upgraded to a PS2, and I grabbed a copy of this cheaply at the local EB Games. Once I wrapped my mind around the simulation, upgrading cars and havin fun with them here might have more to do with me being somewhat of a car person than anything else.

32: Metal Gear Solid 4 I should really put the whole series on here, but MGS4 deserves special note for making the core stealth actually fun and somehow tying all the loose ends of the insane plot together while dialing up the insanity even further.

31: Sim City 2000 I figured out how to make a 50,000 person city when I was like, 8. I still have no fucking idea how I did this. It took me till my 20s to crack 100k.

30: Pokemon Black/White People are torn on this game, but the contentious design decision to hide the old Pokemon in the postgame made every new encounter incredibly exciting in a way the series hadn't been since the orignals. The writing also shows signs of the maturity that Sun/Moon would follow through with.

29: Dragon Warrior Monsters 2 I think most would deride this series as a soulless Pokemon cash-grab on the surface, but they're actually roguelikes with a crazy monster breeding system and the most rote of stories to get you into the core loop of exploring new keys to breed ever crazier monsters.

28: Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls Diablo 3 vanilla's reliance on the auction house created design issues that were hard to look past, but Blizzard abandoning it for the expansion made the game into an incredible dungeon crawler. I never laddered, but had fun for hundreds of hours chasing loot with friends.

27: Fallout 3 I'll never forget the feeling of walking out of the vault for the first time, and feeling like I could go anywhere. I also think this is the only Bethesda game that regularly pays off when exploring - weird shit like the Republic of Dave or the man stuck in the tree are fantastic rewards for poking at the less inhabited edges of the map.

26: Bassin's Black Bass featuring Hank Parker I'm honestly wondering if the rest of the world has picked up on this game's low-key genius since I saw it for 15 bucks at a retro game store recently, but this game's arcadey fishing is incredibly satisfying and snappy. It has some major, obvious, irritating mechanical issues, but the core gameplay loop is so good I don't care.

25: Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor I still remember my nemesis. This motherfucker was right at the beginning of the game, inside the first quest area, and was like level 5 or 6, but had a defensive ability that made it harder for me to gank him easily. So he killed me. Twice. And leveled up each time, becoming a level 12 badass who could literally sniff me out when I hid. But he was weak to fire, and I lured him to a campfire and set him ablaze, getting my revenge.

24: Super Metroid I feel like most people would have this game higher on the list, but I think the controls are floaty and Meridia is overly confusing. The rest of the game is incredible and I can't believe they pulled it off on a Super Nintendo.

23: Pokemon Sun/Moon After XY and ORAS were disapointments I was cool on Pokemon, but Sun/Moon challenged a ton of series conventions and got a lot right in the process. I can't believe how deftly this game handles dysfunctional families.

22: A Link Between Worlds This was Nintendo's hit at what was to come with Zelda - a smart, experimental take on the franchise that's easily its best 2d outing.

21: Muramasa: The Demon Blade Vanillaware's magnum opus, a gorgeous Metroidvania where everything is hand-painted. The combat's loop of mixing launchers with sword management is also incredibly fun, if not particularly deep. But fuck I loved looking at it so much and it felt good.

20: The Walking Dead Only time a video game made me cry.

19: Banjo-Kazooie The only 3d collect-a-thon platformer from that era that still holds up, it combines cheeky humor and an incredible soundtrack to craft a world that's always surprising.

18: Borderlands 2 is better crafted, but I enjoyed the dry wit and more grounded guns of the first. I've replayed this like 4 times and I'm not entirely sure why, but I have a blast each time.

17: Doom (2016) Apparently the secret to making this license work in a modern context is to give Halo combat arenas a healthy dose of cocaine and play Meshuggah riffs over it. It so fucking works.

16: Saints Row: The Third I think the writing in GTA is usually sophomoric at best and its attempts at commentary are eye-roll worthy, but having a game say "FUCK IT" and just Mel Brooks that experience is such a wonderful idea. It's also hard to pull off, and SR3 totally sticks the landing (unlike the sequel).

15: Super Mario World The best traditional Mario game. I replayed it recently, and it struck me how much secret exits add to the level design versus 3, and how freed Koji Kondo is by the new hardware. The castle music's classical overture sticks out.

14: Monster Hunter 4 I liked Monster Hunter 3's various iterations but I hated swimming. Taking out swimming and replacing it  with mounting was enough for me to sink hundreds of hours. I actively avoided getting Generations because I knew it would interfere with school.

13: Mario Golf (GBC) The perfect portable game. Golf works well on the platform, and adding basic RPG hooks was enough to make a rote story totally engaging.

12: Super Mario Maker I think the real triumph of Mario Maker isn't the levels (which are usually terrible), it's how Nintendo imparted the feeling of being creative in such an easily digestible and satisfying way. It's an achievement that ascends past Mario design (which still works here) into something greater and more profound.

11: Hearthstone I fucking hate this game and I keep playing it because the Arena is like literal fucking crack and every time I have an opponent at 1 life and they beat me they can eat fucking dicks.

10: Super Mario RPG Clever writing and a strange world grabbed me way harder than Intelligent System's later Paper Mario games. It's too easy and doesn't look as slick now, but the writing still holds up.

09: Mass Effect Trilogy You can't really separate these, as the experience that makes Mass Effect great was carrying your Shepard and their decisions from one game to the next. Everyone will remember Garrus, Wrex, and co. Shame about the ending.

08: Tetris I am weirdly good at Tetris. I know what a T-Spin is. I sank hundreds of hours into it on Facebook. I don't regret it.

07: Persona 4 Describe a game to me as a mix of a J-RPG and a slice-of-life anime and I'll run to the hills, so the fact this game's sharp, mature writing and "just one more day" calendar mechanic combined into one of my favorite games of all-time is a shock. They also put in Pokemon with fucking demons, how cool is that shit?

06: Ocarina of Time I can't believe this game came out in 1998. The world is still fun to traverse, and the dungeon design (especially as an adult) still holds up at the top of action-adventure puzzle design.

05: Magic: the Gathering I wish it was less expensive otherwise it'd be higher.

04: Breath of the Wild I can't believe Nintendo reinvented the wheel so well that I'm putting the game so high on the list. Every design decision in this game is carefully considered to make exploring this iteration of Hyrule that much more satisfying. And its incredibly clever chemistry engine, where every object in the game has chemical properties that can be manipulated as well as physics, creates a ton of emergent gameplay scenarios where you're constantly asking "Can I do that?" and the game almost never lets you down.

03: World of Warcraft Sometimes I regret the 4000 hours I spent in Azeroth, but I'd have a hard time giving up the friends I made there. I could probably shred and like, speak another language though.

02: Pokemon Red I was the perfect age for Pokemon mania, and the fact that the core game was literally designed to appeal to me didn't help. I still love collecting the things and min/maxing ways to beat the Elite 4 with minimal grinding.

01: Mega Man X I think this is literally the perfect platformer. Moving X feels incredible. There's nothing in any of the levels I think is out of place. The soundtrack is a masterpiece. And the game's hidden secret is so insane you'd probably call bullshit on any kid who told it to you at recess. I'm really glad the rest of the world picked up on it after Arin Hanson did a Sequelitis about it, because I've been beating this drum for decades.

[dorkforty]

So last week was, as so many of them are, a damn fine week for funnybooks. But this was a particularly good week, one that saw the release of what might just be my four favorite current comics. And while none of them quite managed to earn that elusive five-star rating… If that’s not a hook for this week’s column, I don’t know what is…

Kill or be Killed 20 by Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips, and Elizabeth Breitweiser

The latest Brubaker/Phillips joint draws to a close this issue with an ending that’s not entirely satisfying, but rather brilliantly executed nonetheless. Things pick up right where they left off last time, with Dylan (Our Vigilante Hero) bleeding out in the snow after taking a bullet for Detective Sharpe. Everything fades to black on page three, but considering that he’s also Our Narrator, I wasn’t entirely surprised when I turned the page, and…

The story moves on from there, with Dylan slowly recovering and Sharpe covering for him out of gratitude. I wasn’t sure I completely bought that motivation for her, but there’s also a sting on the Russian mobsters who tried to kill them, and some other business involving a crooked cop, so I wrote it off as Brubaker twisting the knife on vigilante morality one more time. It’s also a nice play on the “Spider-Man No More” story Sean Phillips referenced with this issue’s cover.

In that story, Peter Parker gives up being Spider-Man, fed up with all the trouble it causes him, only to return to his double life after being reminded of why he started fighting crime in the first place. Here, Dylan gives up vigilantism after nearly dying, only to be brought back in when Sharpe tells him that the cop who set them up is being released into witness protection because of a plea bargain. From there, Dylan rededicates himself to the cause and moves forward, getting better at what he does and even changing up his look to something a bit more comic booky.

I mean, it’s hardly a spandex super-suit, but it’s decidedly more… design-conscious? …than the book’s been up to this point. The cool factor of that outfit was almost funny to me, to be honest, and I wondered if the book wasn’t heading toward some dark, terrible irony. An ending that made you feel good about Dylan’s vigilantism while simultaneously demonstrating that you very much shouldn’t. But something didn’t feel right about that. Though I could certainly see the book going there, it’s also the kind of bitter dark comedy Brubaker usually leaves to guys like Garth Ennis. It would be more like Brubaker to make his point more directly, by pulling a fast one with an unreliable narrator or something. In fact… Wait a minute…

Hasn’t he established that Dylan’s lied to us before?

Oh.

Oh.

OH.

So, yeah. That’s EXACTLY what Brubaker’s doing. And he pulls it off so well that I fell for it, about 96 percent. But something was nagging me about it, and in looking back over those pages, I can see why. Phillips and Breitweiser leave us plenty of visual clues that we may not be looking at reality. There’s that slick new vigilante costume, for one thing, but there’s also a change in how the fantasy pages are colored. The palette’s just as rich as the rest of the series, but Breitweiser’s laying in a lot more textures in that sequence. You can see it above, on the hospital blanket in that wake-up page I posted earlier. But anywhere she can, she uses textures instead of just colors. There are weird circular patterns in the trees in a couple of places, and then this page right here…

Holy crap. The background in that panel where Sharpe’s getting the commendation looks like an old four-color funnybook Ben-Day dot pattern. And that big panel at the bottom, with the wallpaper and the carpet and Kira’s shirt… It looks like it was draped in zip-a-tone.

That’s a nice touch. The textures in general give those pages an air of heightened reality, but the zip and Ben-Day effects plant things solidly in the realm of funnybooks, just as Dylan turns into a funnybook hero. It’s a great visual clue that we’ve entered fantasy land, subtle enough that it doesn’t give the twist away, but obvious enough that you know something’s wrong. Even if you only know it subliminally.

So, yes. It’s a brilliantly executed ending, one that upsets expectations and forces you to confront the book’s themes one last time. I can’t complain about it one iota.

Except…

Taken as a whole, Kill or be Killed feels like it had more to say. At one point earlier in the run, Brubaker said that this book would be the longest of his and Phillips’ career. And it’s had a certain thematic and narrative momentum that felt like they were planning to sustain it for a good while to come. Dylan has made vague reference to things that happen later, discussing his vigilante career in longer terms than what we’ve gotten. I’ve felt for a long time that Brubaker’s had longer-range plans for Kira, as well, and (in spite of a closing stinger that I won’t spoil here) her story now feels somewhat incomplete. The story as a whole feels incomplete. Truncated. Cut off. And he pays lip service to that sensation, talking about how life’s just like that sometimes. He even has Dylan apologize to anyone who feels like they’ve been mislead. So he obviously gets it. He knows this ending, good as it is, isn’t as satisfying as promised. But he opted to end the story here, anyway.

Why? Hell, I dunno. Maybe he got bored. Maybe he thought he was starting to repeat himself. Or maybe he just became uncomfortable with exploring vigilante justice as entertainment in the current social climate. I might argue that “crazy white dudes with guns” has become an even more vital subject in the last two years, but I can see how it might make someone eager to move on.

So I get it, too. I do. And Brubaker has done maybe the best possible job of wrapping up Kill or be Killed without the deeper examination promised along the way. So I’m not really complaining. I’m just… feeling wistful, for the story I had been anticipating.

Stray Bullets: Sunshine and Roses 36 by David Lapham

Exactly halfway through this issue, Sunshine and Roses passed the 10000-page mark. That’s impressive. The original Stray Bullets made it just shy of 1200 pages, spread across 41 issues, but Sunshine and Roses has been far more of an epic, focused intensely on one story that takes place in-between two other stories from that original series. It’s still sprawling, don’t get me wrong, with a huge cast and lots of character depths to plumb. But the action’s still rolling out directly from the events of the earliest issues. It’s… well, like I said… It’s impressive.

It’s especially impressive that Lapham can still expand the web of this thing to ensnare brand new characters worth remembering. But that’s exactly what we get this issue in the form of Love Yourself, a bad ass rasta gangster who saw the error of his ways and switched from selling hard drugs to psychedelics. Love’s a hippy samurai philosopher now, still a criminal, but one who looks out for his neighbors and tries to do the right thing when he can.

In a series filled to bursting with colorful characters, Love really stands out. I liked him almost immediately, and cringed when I realized that he was getting mixed up with the collection of lunatics and bad news assholes who make up the cast of this book. But there he is, caught through no fault of his own in-between Kretchmeyer’s Sunshine gang and Harry’s syndicate. And, oh my, it just ain’t pretty.

But it is awfully damned entertaining, yet another in Lapham’s long line of Tarantinoesque crime shorts, and a really nice place for the modern version of the series to pass a milestone.

Sex Criminals 25 by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky

So I paid five bucks for a comic about people who have super-orgasms, and I didn’t even blink. I mean, it was 30 pages of story and art, plus five pages of the best letter column in funnybooks. And it’s about a lot more than super-orgasms. It’s some of the best, and most honest, relationship writing I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading. The things this book says about love, sex, and trauma are simultaneously funny, moving, and true. So, yeah. Five bucks really doesn’t seem entirely out of line to me.

But, still. As long-time readers know, I am normally not very eager to pay even FOUR bucks for a comic about anything. But I paid five for this without a second thought, and that’s before I realized how long it was.

So let that be a lesson to you, funnybook business: quality is worth paying for.

The Wicked + The Divine 37 by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie

  This issue features ten pages of empty black panels, counting down the years between the Pantheons of 3127 and 3037 BC.

Yes, you read that right.

Ten.

Pages.

Of empty black panels.

The BALLS on these guys!

Granted, there’s still 23 more pages of story here, and the issue only cost as much as a normal-sized comic.

So it’s not like they shorted us on content in the name of formal storytelling excess.

And, holy crap, was that formal storytelling excess ever effective.

I mean, I kind of rolled my eyes at it a bit at first. Because, you know, it just kept going.

But then I saw that each panel counted down a year…

…in much the same way that last issue’s formal storytelling excess counted down the centuries of every Pantheon in human history…

…and, like I said, it just KEPT GOING.

So by the time we see Minerva reborn after what appeared to be a terrible mishap in the ceremony to fend off the Great Darkness…

…we can share in the obvious horror she’s experiencing.

Because that’s a long time to get left alone in the dark.

And… Plenty of actual stuff happens this issue, too, but honestly…

That’s too good a line not to finish with.

A Lesson in Quality: FUNNYBOOKSINREVIEWAREGO!! So last week was, as so many of them are, a damn fine week for funnybooks. But this was a particularly good week, one that saw the release of what might just be my four favorite current comics.