It’s one thing to put your heart and soul into a comic. As a writer, when you interpret the hardships of your own life, it becomes a whole ‘other beast. Fly is a new drug that allows you to fly. A boy and a girl fall in love as teenagers, and later in life, she is haunting him and trying to kill him for more fixes of the drug. The comic is very linear, focusing on only a few characters, but that’s okay. The story is gripping, and the flashbacks and forwards are well-balanced, so it all comes together very nicely in the final issue.
I was surprised the story could build like it could in just five short issues. The story starts at the very beginning, when the two characters are kids, and at the very end, as adults. Each side works its way forward and backward until it meets in the middle of the final issue. The story is full of death, heroism, deceit, and heartbreak. You really get attached to these characters early on because they are very human and relatable. I felt I could personally connect with these characters, and it hit home a bit for me, and I’m sure for many other readers. A lot of comics can’t do that because they tell stories about the awesome and powerful that no human being can relate to. The story is really about drug addiction, but they add a sci-fi twist to the drug, making you fly. The actual story is about the writer and his wife’s meth addiction from when they were younger. The story is just gripping and very emotional. It just hits a note that a lot of comics can’t hit. Fly can do it on five issues when some can’t do it in volumes.
The art is fantastic. The colors are bright and vibrant, without any messy penciling. The writing is superb and will keep you hooked from the very first page. The story doesn’t mess around; it gets straight to business. The covers are a bit misleading, though, because they show a very sexy female (the female antagonist), except she never looks like that in the comic, which is kind of weird. I also would have liked to see this story fleshed out more rather than crammed into five issues. What’s here is fantastic, and any sci-fi fan or someone who wants to get away from the superhero stuff should take a look.
I love these sick and twisted horror comics, and Cancertown is some of the best I have read. You follow a man named Vince Morley who is diagnosed with a mental disorder where patients feel they are missing organs, are already dead, or are missing limbs. He has a terminal brain tumor (that he calls Baby Meatfist), and he ends up slipping into this world of Cancertown. It all started when he met a homeless and deformed girl on the street. He gave her a blanket because his doctor said he should do nice things before he died. Later, another bum steals her blanket, and he slips into Cancertown. The lore is pretty interesting, but the whole story feels convoluted and confusing until the end.
You are always left in the dark, but there are a lot of politics in Cancertown. Crosshair and Corpsegrinder are two sick players who both want Morley dead. Crosshair uses sentient eyeballs as weapons and pets. Corpsegrinder can grow bigger when people fear him. Later on, you mean the piecemaker and the papercut. Papercut ends up being Morley’s ally, but who she is and where she came from are later told in the second volume. All the characters’ names are very unique, and I love their personalities. You can slowly see Vince fall apart as he finds crossing points and slips back into the real world, usually waking up in places he can’t remember being. He wants to destroy Cancertown and everyone in it, but he wants to save this girl as well.
As you can see, the story is really complicated, and it is. The art is very dark and atmospheric, if a bit messy. There’s a lot of gore and violence in this series, as well as a lot of cursing. I was honestly more disturbed by Vince’s mental state than anything else. To see a terminally ill cancer patient fall apart at the seams is just horrifying. I just wish the story made a bit more sense because, even at the end, I was still a bit confused about what was going on, but you end up forgiving it for the entertaining journey that Vince goes through.
Cancertown is a rare mature comic; it delves into the psyche of the human mind rather than superpowers. I loved watching Vince fall apart, and I was horrified at the same time. The characters are fantastic and so original that you won’t put the comic down. If only the story wasn’t as mixed up and complicated or just told better, but that’s the only issue I can pull from this series.
Why? Let me ask that question right now. Why did they continue this series? Why did Malibu think that their god-awful Mortal Kombat comics could continue? Because the stupid idiots buying them are making it happen! I read the reader letters at the end of these comics, and I can’t believe they think this is an amazing series. It’s absolute crap! It’s like they just took their brainstorming notes and went straight to drawing! They didn’t even storyboard it or anything. Why did the MK team allow this garbage? There are lore inconsistencies, terrible art, horrific dialog, and most of all, it’s just crap!
What drives me absolutely nuts is that the series never goes anywhere. I mean, nowhere! It’s just the same MK characters introducing themselves in every single issue and fighting over nothing. They get the basic story right, but what about other realms besides Outworld? Not a single realm outside of Outworld and Earth is even mentioned! Why is everyone talking in the third person and narrating their own fight sequences?! Imagine this: Superman comes out to fight Lex Luthor, and he says, “Watch out, Lex! You can’t defeat Superman! He is made of steel!” What kind of crap would that be? Or every time Batman comes out to fight the Joker, he gets a 3-page introduction in the same issue twice in a row! We all know who these characters are, so stop repeating their names 500,000 times!
There are only two characters in the entire MK series that are allowed to talk in third person: Baraka and Ermac. That’s it! The dialog is just so dumb, with lame puns coming out of Jax and Johnny Cage’s mouths. Shang Tsung is trying to solve the seven riddles in the Tao Te Zhen book that will give him ultimate power. Sure, that’s fine and all, but it never goes anywhere! The entire series is just each character introducing themselves and babbling on about God knows what. Rayden keeps giving lame advice, and every character just threatens each other over and over again, then they punch each other in the face!
There’s also no gore! Why is this a kid-friendly comic? There’s hardly any blood at all. There are no fatalities, and the artwork stinks! The characters look deformed, and some shots have them looking like they are melting. They don’t look the same from one page to the next; I felt like I was being tortured with every page that turned. Just do yourself a favor and stay the hell away!
I honestly love the Cthulhu lore, despite how complex it is. H.P. Lovecraft has a very old writing style, and his stories can induce headaches when trying to follow them. This comic series does a decent job of summing up the mythology and bringing newcomers into this grand and dark lore. The world of Cthulhu is all about deep madness—so deep that our minds can’t even comprehend it. Lovecraft went beyond zombies and the boogie man. He dove into the human psyche, tore it to shreds, and tried gluing it back together. This three-part series sees some scientists from Miskatonic University trying to solve a mystery about an evil cult and mysterious beings snatching people.
First off, the atmosphere hits right on the head. Right from the start, you get an eerie feeling. The first issue is a back story that one of the characters tells. It’s about how he came across the cult for the first time. A man named Noyes is actually a puppet behind the strange monsters who have burrowed under old New England. The comics flow pretty well, but with only three issues, not much can come of it. There’s no strange plot twist, but at least there are some creepy scenes and a bit of gore. The art style does a good enough job; it’s all done with colored pencil, so it’s a bit strange coming from the marker and other mediums used in comics. The characters are forgettable due to the short length, but the ending is pretty creepy.
The story is a bit more on the realistic side than the pure fantasy that the series stuck to in the later comics (Fall of Cthulhu). I honestly wish they went the more fantastical way, but seeing this in a more realistic sense makes it a bit more believable. The monsters are drawn just as Lovecraft intended, and they look horrendous. This little mini-adventure is fun while it lasts, but forgettable in the end.
Blood Dragon is a beast all on its own. Forget everything you know about Far Cry. Blood Dragon uses Far Cry 3 as a base—a building block to lay something seriously badass down. You play as a cyborg named Rex who is trying to stop a man named Sloan from taking over the world. It sounds cheesy, and it is, and that’s the best part.
Right, when you launch the game, you will notice the awesome 80s vibe. The loading screen looks like a VCR with a tracking bar down at the bottom. Funny little hints flash across the screen, like “Sniper Rifles…close-range weapons when you select the wrong gun.” Once I saw stuff like this, I knew I was in for a badass ride. The game is short on content; let me just get that out right now. You can beat the story in about 4 hours, but there are bases to take over, like in Far Cry 3. You can use cyber hearts you rip from dead bodies to lure Blood Dragons into these bases, shoot the bad guys up yourself, or go all stealthy. It’s completely up to you. The dragons can hear you once you run or shoot, so stay low and use your hearts to lure them away. Other than that, there are two side missions you can partake in: hostage rescues and hunting. Not exactly different from Far Cry 3, but enough to justify the small price tag.
There are only a few weapons in the whole game, but they are really awesome. The shotgun has a cool reload animation similar to The Terminator 2, and Rex rests the gun on his wrist. He pops the shells in by letting them fall into the chamber. You get a sniper rifle, a mini-gun, and an assault rifle, as well as a pistol. There are various throwables, but they are all neat, and you will use them all often. One thing I particularly liked was the attention to detail in the animations. When you heal, you fix his cyborg arm by welding it, fixing cables, pulling bullets out with his finger, and a few others. When you run, he looks like the T-1000, with his hand completely straight and pumping his arms really fast. I just love the whole aesthetic of this game. The Tron-looking art direction has neon reds and blues as well as the enemy design. It’s a fun trip back to the past, when my parents showed me all the cool 80s action movies. In the first scene, you are in a helicopter mowing down enemies to Little Richards’s “Long Tall Sally,” like in Predator. The awesomeness just never ends.
I also can’t help but love the music. It’s stuff straight from the 80s and fits so well that I actually listen to the soundtrack outside of the game. You can tell the team was pressed for time (they only got 6 months) because a lot of the Far Cry 3 stuff is just reskinned, like the hang glider, the jeeps (the only vehicles in the game), the jet skis, and even the helicopters. There’s not really much to do in the game, and once the story mode and all the bases are taken over, there’s no reason to stay. You will see everything the game has to offer in about an hour, but the ending is just badass. You get to ride a dragon that curses and talks while shooting lasers from his eyes and mowing down everyone with a cannon. The story mode is highly entertaining, but I was disappointed with the low-quality storyboard-style cut scenes. They didn’t do the game justice.
In the end, Blood Dragon is one of the best downloadable games this year and a completely pleasant surprise. Even if you don’t like Far Cry, the 80’s vibe should bring many hardcore gamers along. It’s light on content, the characters are average (except Rex), and the animations and art style are one-of-a-kind; there’s no other game out there like it. I really hope there’s a fully-fledged sequel, even outside of the Far Cry 3 engine.
Mortal Kombat has suffered in many ways: in games, movies, comics, books, and music. I own a lot of the original Mortal Kombat comics but have never read them. I finally got around to it, and it is some of the worst comic material I have laid eyes on. The writing is atrocious, the artwork is sloppy and messy, there are gaps in the lore, and the entire series feels completely unnecessary. Nothing ever happens, and the story never goes anywhere. On each page, I felt like I suffered through torture; the writing never got better; and worst of all, where was the gore?!
Battle Wave is the first series from Malibu Comics and has many fighters from Mortal Kombat 1-3 battling for the sake of the tournament. That’s fine and all, but go somewhere with it! I couldn’t stand the writing one bit. Everyone talks in the third person: “You will now have to face the might of Johnny Cage!” Really? Every single time a new character starts their dialog, they introduce their damn name. We know! Introduce them to the first issue and be done with it. All the fight scenes look like a muddled mess of color and black ink. The entire art style is very distorted, and the character consistency is all over the map. Characters change wardrobes every 5 pages; in every issue, they look different, and sometimes their faces or bodies look completely distorted.
The final issue sees all the characters fighting it out in Shao Kahn’s tower in Outworld, but what about the other realms? Netherrealm? Edenia? Chaos Realm? Why just Outworld and Earth? There is no structure here, just a bunch of random fights with no gore, no fatalities, no babies, and no friendships. Nothing. It felt like a watered-down Mortal Kombat experience if the game was rated for teens. The only thing I give credit to is that the characters’ personalities are spot on. I just hate the dialog structure they used. The constant third-person talk was infuriating. These guys do not know how to write comics. The comics constantly talk about The Order of Light with Liu-Kang and Kung Lao, how Goro is the Prince of Pain, Johnny Cage’s Hollywood exploits, and Jax and Sonya being the U.S. Special Forces, so the backstories are told accurately, but they keep repeating them!
In the end, Battle Wave is an awful series for Mortal Kombat. There are a couple more series; let’s hope it gets better, but even hardcore MK fans like myself will balk and feel this comic series doesn’t do the game justice.
While the name doesn’t roll off the tongue, there’s something I particularly like about Courtney: she’s a typical child who has rich parents but wants to be normal. They move in with her creepy great, great, great uncle or something like that. The first issue seems pretty average, and you start thinking about putting it down until strange things start happening. She discovers a spellbook and things under her bed at night. A little gremlin creature steals the baby boy she is supposed to babysit. She gets sent off to another world, and her uncle saves her. It’s what she sees and how she deals with it all that make her such a unique character.
The art style is fantastic. I highly recommend the color versions because black and white don’t do it justice. The creatures are drawn very strangely, and they are like nothing else—not gory and horror-like, yet still childish in a way. The spidery art style is similar to maybe Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events, but with its own twist. Towards the end, Courtney sees what kind of powers she has and how dangerous they are. It’s nice to see her want to go back to being her normal self instead of being power-hungry, but you get to go deep into her head because the whole narrative is her thoughts. That’s something very different and unique about this comic compared to most.
The four-part series feels like a mini-adventure, and it will have you hooked and coming back for more. Courtney may be the only main character, but the writers made Uncle Aloysius so mysterious that you really want to know more about him. He seems like the cool and mysterious old uncle that everyone wants, but you’re not quite sure. The only issue with this series is that it seemed to hit a few dry spots here and there, but at least they didn’t last long. Night Things is an amazing comic for people who want something that’s not full of scantily clad women and superheroes.
Some video game comics are a bit iffy. The Fall is a whole new storyline set in Russia, and there’s no Desmond Miles this time around. Daniel Cross ends up losing his memory, but he can also see visions of his ancestors from the late 1800s. Nikolai Orelov is tasked with killing the Tsar of Russia and getting the Golden Staff. In the present, Daniel gets taken away to a secret Assassin camp and finds out his true identity.
Daniel himself is a raging drug addict and alcoholic. He has a court order to take psych meds but won’t do it. I loved how they introduced him, but he’s not a very memorable character. The comic series wasn’t long enough to allow this. During the first issue, you are just introduced to everyone and what their common goal is. During the second issue, Daniel finds out who he truly is and why he has these visions. It all comes to an end during the third issue when you find out the major plot twist and how shocking it is.
There is a special edition 4th issue that shows several years later where Daniel has cleaned up and finally meets the mentor that he has searched for for 2 years. There’s another shocking twist at the end, and without this final issue, the other three don’t seem so great. The art is really nice, and the series is pretty gory and bloody. There’s a decent amount of fight scenes, and the art holds true to the game. I just wish it were longer so we could get to know these characters more; there’s a lot that could have been done.
One thing that video game comics tend to have is a lack of intelligent dialogue. The Fall has great writing, and there’s actually reading to be done rather than a sentence or two on each page. Fans will enjoy The Fall, and the separate storyline is a welcome change. I just wish it were longer.
Before you continue reading, this review is coming from someone who has grown to hate JRPGs over the past ten years. I rarely play them, and if I do, I never finish them. The story ends up falling flat; there are too many random battles; the characters are boring; or it’s just too damn hard. Ni no Kuni caught my attention due to the fact that Studio Ghibli was involved, and Level 5 is a master at JRPGs. While I didn’t finish Dragon Quest VIII, I did enjoy its story and art immensely.
Ni no Kuni is all about magic. A boy named Oliver’s mother dies after saving him from drowning. A fairy named Mr. Drippy comes to visit him, and he’s off to another world. It turns out that an evil witch wants to destroy the world. It sounds pretty simple, but there are a lot of plot twists, and the ending will have you going, “No way!” during each cutscene. The game holds a lot of secrets, the characters are engaging, and you will get very attached. However, the story is only half of what makes a good JRPG.
The combat is in real-time, not turn-based. It’s all about reaction time and strategy. All three of your characters run around the battlefield. The enemy can strike at any time, but so can you. Each character can cast spells and send out one of three familiars to cast various other spells and do physical damage. There are dozens of them throughout the game that you can capture and train. Oliver is the most powerful mage, and by the end of the game, you will be casting room-clearing magic. The biggest issue with this is that the game is solely focused on magic. Physical damage, no matter how high of a level you are, never does the same amount of damage as magic. You will be guzzling MP potions like crazy; always make sure you have a ton stocked up. Enemies will sometimes cast spells themselves or charge physical attacks. You can order your team to defend or attack, and then you have to attack yourself. This requires quick thinking and timing, as well as actual gaming skills. It’s also important to exploit the elemental weakness of each enemy, if there is one. During the battle, enemies will drop HP and MP glims to help you out, and rarely the gold glim will supercharge you or you’re familiar with an ultra-powerful attack or defensive move.
Boss battles are the toughest in the game, and towards the end, they will come with 2 and 3 different phases. This game gets extremely tough after the first few chapters, so tough that it will require a lot of level grinding during the last half. I actually played the last half on easy and still died quite often. This game is extremely hard; be warned. There are other things you can do outside of battles, like side quests. Oliver can go around collecting pieces of heart from people and giving them to other people who need them. He can cast spells to help advance his way through the world, like making bridges, talking to ghosts and animals, rejuvenating broken objects, etc. There are 150 side quests, and you get gold and items for them as well as stamps. 10 stamps get you a card, and these cards can be redeemed for permanent effects like extra XP during battle, enemies dropping more loot, and even giving Oliver 100 extra max HP and MP. These side quests, including bounty hunts, can be fun and can add 15-20 hours of gameplay themselves.
After so long, you will be able to sail and fly around the entire world, allowing you to avoid overworld battles. The game has no random battles, but some enemies are so hard to avoid that they might as well be. If you get to a high enough level, enemies will run away, and you won’t have to deal with them. The game is also full of dangerous dungeons full of chests of loot. Now, what about these familiars? Think of them like Pokemon. You can feed them treats to advance various attributes, and then feed them gemstones to advance them to their third and most powerful stage. As they level up, they acquire new spells and techniques. You can swap out different familiars and hold up to 500 in your familiar retreat.
The game’s art is fantastic and gorgeous, along with the music. Studio Ghibli created the animated cutscenes, but there aren’t many of them. There are less than 10 minutes of animation throughout the whole game, and that’s very disappointing. I felt they shouldn’t have bothered at that point. There’s also a lot of unspoken dialogue, and it just seems random when it happens. Towards the end, there are hardly any cut scenes, and it drove me nuts. Why waste the great voice acting and animation only to spread it randomly and unevenly throughout the game? Other than that, colors pop on a 1080p HDTV with bright, vibrant colors thanks to Studio Ghibli’s art style, which everyone has grown to love and appreciate.
In the end, Ni no Kuni has a very engaging story that will keep you hooked for dozens of hours. The combat tries to change things from the typical JRPG format, but there are a few flaws in it. Your spells can be interrupted often, and when you defend, sometimes they won’t register or you don’t get enough time before the enemy attacks. You get about a second before the enemy attacks. During that time, you need to order your team to defend themselves. It can be tough during boss fights. I also hated the focus on magic, and the game was overly difficult during the last 3/4. Other than that, the combat was fine. The game suffers from tedium towards the end, and the side quests start feeling the same, and you just want the game to end. There is some post-end content, but most people might skip this. Ni no Kuni is a perfect game for JRPG fans, but non-fans won’t find enough here to change their minds.
Metro 2033 was one of the most atmospheric shooters in the past decade. It had an excellent story, great characters, and solid shooting action. It just wasn’t paced very well, and the stealth sections nearly ruined the game. That has all been fixed in Last Light; this is one of the best shooter and horror games to come out in a long time.
You play, once again, as Artyom. Set in the post-apocalyptic Russian underground metro system, the creatures, radiation, and violent storms have driven everyone underground. Life isn’t so simple. After Artyom launched the missiles on the Dark One’s nest, the war against the communists is getting more heated. The only way to stop this war is to find the last surviving Dark One and use it against President Moskvin to stop the war from destroying the last humans on Earth.
The game is more about Artyom’s journey than the overarching story. The game is broken up into underground sections, stealth, top-side sections, boss fights, on-rails stuff, and then safe cities. The atmosphere in this game is just phenomenal. Never in a shooter—in a long time anyway—have I felt actually afraid. When you’re underground in these dark, decrepit tunnels and you’re hearing strange sounds all around, you get really scared. These sections last for minutes rather than seconds, like most shooters. They let you marinate in this dark, frightening atmosphere. Sometimes your flashlight won’t work, and you just have to use your lighter to see. The monsters are terrifying because they look so close to what they once were—just mutated. This plays out through the entire game, and it’s very tense.
You can carry three weapons with you at all times. They are all great weapons to shoot because some of them are kind of slapped together with parts. The Bastard is an interesting side-loading machine gun; it gets jammed often, and you have to be careful. Ammo is scarce, and you must make sure you save your military-grade bullets to buy ammo and better weapons along with attachments. Once you get to a city, it’s like a breath of fresh air. After being in such a scary situation, you are so relieved to see civilization. There are some throwable objects at your disposal, like bombs, incendiary flares, knives for stealth, and then you have med syringes. You get night vision goggles later on, and you have to use your charger to keep your flashlight and goggles powered on. When you’re on the surface, you must wear a mask, and you need to find filters to continue breathing. Artyom can also wipe his mask when things get blurred out. This is a fantastic mechanic—a wipe mask button—and it just adds to the feeling of survival. If you get hit too much, your mask breaks and you can’t breathe.
While I stuck with mostly the same guns throughout the game, you always feel slightly underpowered. The monsters are vicious and dangerous, and you can’t take them all on at once. Sometimes stealth is the best option, and it’s so much better. AI doesn’t detect you a mile away, and you can stealth kill easily with your throwing knives or from behind. The levels are laid out much better, and you get a sense of accomplishment when you get through a level for the first time. The pacing is fantastic, and I just couldn’t put the controller down; it was that good.
The graphics are some of the best out there. On consoles, it actually ruins the atmosphere because a lot of stuff is taken out due to the underpowered hardware. On PC, the game jumps to life with mind-blowing lighting effects, super-high-resolution textures, and various other things that actually severely downgrade the experience on consoles. Last Light is one of those games where graphics are a huge part of the experience. The lighting, textures, depth of field, all that stuff makes the game just come to life. You have to play it to experience it. I honestly have to say that you won’t get the same experience on consoles as you will on PCs. If you buy the PC version, you also get the Metro 2033 eBook for free.
Overall, Last Light is one of the most intense and frightening shooters made in the past decade; nothing comes close. The sheer terror you feel when Artyom is breathing heavily in his mask, blood and mud are dripping down your mask, and your watch says you only have 90 seconds of filter life left. Mutants are after you, and if you panic and run to find filters, then you have to turn and face them. With the destroyed world around you, you are constantly reminded that this was once a habitable place. You walk through buses and planes with skeletons in the seats and apartment buildings with ghosts that haunt them. Anyone who wants to feel survival horror, don’t play Resident Evil or Silent Hill; Last Light is your one-way ticket.
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Try multiplayer. A lot of fun !