Seeds of Heresy: A Review of Horus Rising

Visiting a oft-mentioned but never described thoroughly time period in a series if always a risky maneuver. Perhaps the most notable example would be the Clone Wars in Star Wars; a series of battles that seems to be on everyone's minds and seems to have had extreme consequences, but for the longest time Star Wars fans could only guess as to what exactly happened. Eventually though, as we all know, Episode 2 and associated content came out and described the setting in detail, and naturally many people were disappointed. As is often the case, leaving something amazing to a viewer's/reader's imagination is often better than anything that could actually be made.

With this in mind, after hearing about the Horus Heresy series being produced by the Black Library, despite popular praise I was somewhat wary of starting it. I didn't want to get my hopes up in case it turned out badly, but nonetheless I ordered the first trilogy and started on Horus Rising by Dan Abnett.

Puzzles and a Spot of Tea: A Review of Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box

I ended up buying the first Professor Layton game about the time the first one came out, and staying true to form, ending up playing the second one, the Diabolical Box, just as the Unwound Future was released. This wasn't by any particular design, although it did make my wallet happy.

Armed with the experience of having finished every puzzle in the Curious Village, I was quite happy to return to the world of Layton and Luke. My only reservation was that, having had so many puzzles in the first game, there would be some inevitable overlap; after all, you can only come up with so many puzzles in a base sense, much like there are only so many plots for books. However, I was to be proven wrong, and the sequel to the premiere adventure-puzzle series lives up to the first.

A Surprising Lack of Unbaptized Babies: A Review of Limbo

I remember trying out the demo for Limbo back when it was getting rave reviews, and being fairly impressed with the demo itself, but all of the reviews were saying that while it was a great game, the price point was a bit steep for the limited amount of content you got. I therefore decided to wait until the hopeful day that the game dropped for a more reasonable price point. However, I was saved from this by the Spirit of Christmas!... or more particularly, Matt's gift of the game to me. I sat down in the lull before finals to play it, and roughly 5-6 hours later, came to pretty much the same conclusion as most of the other reviewers.

The Batreview: A Review of Batman Arkham Asylum

I've never been that into DC comics, and thus have never been that immersed in the lore of the Batman. The most contact I've had with the franchise are a few of the movies, particularly the most recent two, and occasionally watching the animated show as a child. I never read any of the comics, though, so when Arkham Asylum was released to high praise, I wasn't particularly interested and didn't pursue it past the demo (which while enjoyable was far from amazing).

Eventually though Matt ended up buying it for cheap, and as has been happening recently, I borrowed it and blasted through the game. While I ended up enjoying it far more than I would have thought given the demo, it still had a lot of flaws that prevented it from being a truly great game.

So Say We All: A Review of Battlestar Galactica

Being a large sci-fi fan, as readers of this blog are undoubtably aware, it probably comes to no surprise that hearing about Battlestar Galactica (the reboot, obviously) left me mightily intrigued. So back whenever season 3 was just beginning, I utilized my Netflix account and began watching the first season. The key mistake I made then was watching it with my brother; while I enjoy doing a lot of things with him, he was just at the stage where he was beginning to be gone a lot, out doing other things, and it became hard to pin down time to watch it with him, and since we had started together, I didn't want to abandon him and continue on my own.

I made it through about the end of season 2 before the steam died to the point where it just stopped. I always intended to one day go back and finish it, but other things popped up, and I continued on, carefully avoiding spoilers and things of the nature, even as the series came to a close.

However, a few months ago I learned the entire series was now on Netflix Instant, and it seemed the time had finally come to finish what I had started. Since it had been so long in the past, I started again from the beginning, and set out to watch BSG in its entirety. [Spoilers follow after the jump]

Inquisitors Galore: A Review of the Eisenhorn and Ravenor Trilogies

My introduction to the body of Warhammer 40k literature was the Ciaphas Cain books, which is a bit odd in retrospect; while a great series of novels, they are hardly representative of the body as a whole. Nonetheless, I quickly read all six books thanks to generous loaning from Max, and after finishing craved more 40k fiction goodness. After doing some research, it seemed that Dan Abnett was considered the premier 40k author, and that many people recommended the Gaunt's Ghosts series as an excellent starting place.

The series itself is fantastic--I tore through all 13 of the novels in short order, leaving it not only my favorite 40k series, but one of my favorite novel series overall, right up there with Discworld and the X-Wing series. Perhaps even someday I'll get around to writing a review of them.

Anyway, after exhausting that trove, I once again felt the craving for more, and taking advantage of a gift card sitting long un-used, purchased more of Dan Abnett's 40k books, most notably the two Inquisitorial

Tales from the Imperium: The Tale of the Three Inquisitors

[Editor's Note: This is the second in what will hopefully be a long series of fables, classical stories, and legends (in both unabridged and summarized form) from the Warhammer 40,000 universe, collaboratively written by myself and Stormshrug. We hope you find them enjoyable, and encourage you to contribute yourself to the collection if you feel so inclined.]


Long, long ago, the almighty Emperor in his infinite wisdom created the Inquisition, His Holy right hand to preserve the peace and sanctity of His mighty Imperium. However, as it began, it was but a single institution filled with a multitude of Inquisitors, all seeking to do His Holy work as best as he was able.


During this time there was a band of three Inquisitors who often worked together, although each had a very different approach as how to best serve Him. While traveling to a distant star to do His work, their ship suffered a horrible Warp accident, and were it not for the Emperor's watchful eye upon His most trusted servant all 3 would have perished. They were returned to real-space when suddenly the 4 Chaos Gods appeared before them. And they spoke to them.

Once More Into the Breach: A Review of Call of Duty: Black Ops

I've had a good history with the Call of Duty franchise. It started, as it did for many, with 4, which blew me away with the campaign and hooked me with the multiplayer, which I ended up putting an excess of 100 hours into and Pristaging twice. Naturally I picked up World At War, and while it was solid all around, it was nowhere near as fantastic as 4. The biggest let-down was multiplayer--although I enjoyed being able to effectively wield a semi-auto rifle while everyone else struggled to shoot long-rang targets with short range SMGs, the multiplayer lacked the polish and enjoyment of 4. I had a lot of expectations for Modern Warfare 2, which was met with the campaign--again fantastic--but the multiplayer was a huge let-down, and while I held out for around 40 levels, I gave up in disgust at the sorry state of affairs.

With that in mind, I was hesitant about Black Ops--Infinity Ward had failed the last time, and Treyarch's last outing had been mediocre. I decided to not bother pre-ordering, and only pick it up if the day-of reviews were good. When they rolled in and were positive (even more so than I expected) I picked up my copy and sat down later that day to play it.

Priori Incantatum: A Review of Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows Part 1

I've seen every Harry Potter movie, and I remember pretty much exactly nothing from any of them. Sure, I can summon the likenesses of Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, and others when necessary (although my mental representations of the characters are still stronger) but there was never a single scene that was so well presented that it overtook the one I saw when reading the novels. This is a bit surprising, since exactly that happened when I saw the Lord of the Rings movies, amongst others.

Although I don't think it will happen with the most recent attempt at screenplay magic, it's the closest yet, and I think it's a movie where I'll actually be able to recall some of the scenes. I went into the movie with low expectations, and was rewarded with the best Potter film to date, and probably the first one where I exited talked about its strengths rather than its manifold failures. Considering Book 7 is my favorite in the series (with 5 almost but not quite a tie), it was a welcome relief, and makes part 2 sound all the more appealing.

Splinters of War: A Review of Splinter Cell: Conviction

About a week ago Matt and I decided to pick up a copy of the newest Splinter Cell (we're still not quite sure which one of us paid for it, it was quite confusing) since we needed a new co-op game to run through.   I wouldn't say that SC is one of my favorite series, per se, but the two games I have played I enjoyed quite a bit, and for whatever reason it's one of the few stealth series I enjoy (in comparison to, say, Metal Gear Solid). This being the 5th game, I have now played every other SC game: 1, Chaos Theory, and Conviction. If I had heard much about the game, I didn't really remember anything about it, other than it was supposed to be better than the 4th iteration was, and that Matt told me they had "streamlined" things. What that meant I was about to find out.

Tech Trumps All: A Comparison of Eldar and Tau

Somehow, our group had ignored the Eldar for a long time; I was naturally a little familiar with the lore and idea beyond the Space-Elves, and I had glanced through their codex, but been put off with their standard troop choice wielding S4 AP5 18" weapons (coming as a Tau player, this seems inexcusably bad for a shooty army).

However, it had been quite a while since I had tried out a new army, and a discussion with Max reminded me how they were supposed to be a shooty army, and thus I decided to give the Elfdar another chance and give the codex a full and close reading. As you can suspect from me writing an entire blog post on this, I was happily surprised.

Our Angst Is Entertaining: A Review of Clone High

Quite unexpectedly one night a few weeks ago, when contemplating what leisurable activity to pursue next, Max decided quite spontaneously that we should view the first episode of the one-season series Clone High. The premise sounded interesting and Max in general gives very good recommendations, so we watched the show via Youtube.

The first show honestly wasn't a huge hit; I was entertained, but not blown away (as other series have done with their first episode). However, a couple of days later I had a strange urge to watch more, so I went on a whim and found the rest of the episodes and continued on. A few days later I had finished the last of the twelve episodes, and now I am here to give a review.

Tales from the Imperium: The Inquisitor and the Three Xenos

[Editor's Note: This is the first in what will hopefully be a long series of fables, classical stories, and legends (in both unabridged and summarized form) from the Warhammer 40,000 universe, collaboratively written by myself and Stormshrug. We hope you find them enjoyable, and encourage you to contribute yourself to the collection if you feel so inclined.]


Once, long long ago, an Inquisitor served the Emperor of Mankind faithfully and strongly. Although his name is now lost to the sands of history, he is remembered for his long, golden hair and his sterling record of service to the Imperium. He fought tirelessly against the xenos, the witch, and the heretic for many centuries, and slowly but surely the years began to weigh upon him. He found himself questioning his faith, being tempted by the radical, and in short suffering doubt, an inquisitorial sin.

What About My Star: A Review of Macross Frontier: The False Songstress

As mentioned in the last post, today I was finally able to sit down and watch Macross Frontier: The False Songstress, the first MF movie. It was billed as a synopsis of the show with a significant amount of new animation, with a second film coming next year and serving as a sequel to the show. With these expectations in mind, and a positive review from Rome (who had watched it a few days prior) Max and I set out to see what if it was all it was cracked up to be.

[Many spoilers for the original series after the jump]

It's Long, Long Goodbye: A Review of (Rewatching) Macross Frontier

Although I only watched Macross Frontier for the first time last November, the fact that it almost instantly became one of my favorite series got me to convince Emma that she wanted to watch it this summer, so I find myself about 3/4 year later having finished watching the show for the second time, and figured I should post my impressions of the show again.

In short, the show lost none of its brilliance in a rewatching. The art is still fantastic, the characters deep, the music mesmerizing, and the story compelling. The only complaint I could possibly think of on the first watching was that the show takes about 10 episodes to really get going (but once it does it never stops, in a good way) and while that remains, it's a small price to pay for an outstanding series, and it remains the only flaw.

Things not Keikakudori: A Review of Death Note

When a couple of my friends enthusiastically recommended Death Note to me as a show, I saw no reason to not watch it. It was a relatively short series with a definitive end that was popular (although I knew very little about it) and my friends liked it. With that in mind, I set out to watch through the show.

First the positives. I like the main question posited by the show, namely the morality of using murder to achieve a peaceful society. The characters were interesting and relatively realistic, the art quality was pretty high, the voice acting good. The first few episodes were good enough to draw me in and not cause me to drop out right away, and since I got more than 10 episodes in, I was intent on finishing the show all the way through.

A Slight Difference of Opinion: Roleplaying, or Lack Thereof

A follow-up to Stormshrug's recent fascination of these kind of things, I present the last two characters I made for a D&D and Orpheus campaign, respectively.

Shaima, son of Thaima (fall 2009 Dahmprealm campaign)

(Middle picture credit to Stormshrug)

Dahn Gottesson (Summer 2010 Orpheus campaign)

(DM Rome states that the middle picture should be the same as the last. Oops)

-HTMC

Bonus! Since Stormshrug didn't post it (he made all of it though), here's Jesse's character from the same campaign Shaima appeared in.

Bertram (the Murder Bear)

New Veras Vengeance 3: What, No Goatee?

For reasons that should be apparent to anyone who looks at the opposite page, I'm writing this entry myself instead of letting Ahriman do it. The worst part is he seems to have taken a liking to be my scribe, and is now sulking that I won't let him do it. Perhaps if he improves his attitude I'll reconsider, but as it stands I like knowing what I'm writing won't suddenly be filled with expletives and suggestive comments about my mother.

To return to the subject at hand, however, I must record the last mission the Veil has so kindly given us. It seems we had finally decided to launch a full offensive on a terrorists group to the North, and we were about to be sent along (accompanied by Kaidar, who had returned from... something? He never quite told us) when we were waylaid and told we were being sent on a "special" assignment, namely a noble who had recently received a death threat. We were all a bit perplexed by this, since noble's usually have their own (often highly skilled) bodyguards, but as we were briefed it turned out this particular noble was the local Governor and he had kindly lent his forces to the current Veil operation. Also it seemed he was an old friend of Kaidar, so he in particular felt obliged to help him.

What made it more serious was that the death notice was from the Midnight Sun, a notorious assassin who had never failed to kill a target she had earmarked as deserving justice--in the form of death.

New Veras Vengeance 2: And On My Day Off, Too

Man, Drachon is going to regret having bought this permanent ink... hope he didn't like this poem too much, hehe. Not enough blood mentioned, anyway.

Also, you ђค๔Ŧ คєŦlןเ, I'm sitting on your chest right now writing in your precious notebook because you can't handle the heat. That's right! If you just unbound me I could be helping you out... but since I can't tell you that in person, I, Ahriman, shall detail exactly every fault you made along this road to show you why you are such a tเคl๔ภ๔ןєคl and why you deserve to be unconscious right now, if not worse.

New Veras Vengeance 1: Fire Cleanses All

That's Drachon, if I ever get these sigils of bounding off. Thrice-damned mortal thinks he can control me? I'll prove him wrong, the [weird sigils].

What? Yes, yes I'm writing down what you're saying. Just because you're too lazy to write yourself while walking you think you can-!

What was that? Ya, your mother!!

Just because I have wings doesn't mean it's easier!!

....

....

Just because you can order me doesn't mean I'll like it.

Well yes. 

Fine.

New Veras Vengeance: The Prologue

[Note: The New Veras Vengeance series will be the title and tag for the chronicles associated with the current D&D4e campaign being run, and as such will be the in-character writings of my character. Hopefully they'll be entertaining even if you're not a part of the campaign, but they are mainly meant for those who are a part of it (and the DM's who are now desperate for someone to record the happenings :-P)]

I sometimes wonder why I bother to commit my thoughts to paper, as I now do. I would normally associate diary writing and the sort with people who either lack self-confidence or are too full of it; but seeing as I know my strengths and limits, and I don't believe this will become some prized piece of literature in the future (although one can only hope) obviously this isn't the case.

I think the main point is this scribbling allows me to better consider the events that have taken place, especially during such a turning point as I am experiencing now. Veil employment is far far different than the last few years of my life, to be sure, and that's just from the standpoint of being in training. However, it seems we have finally proven our worth, and today we had our final test of sorts before setting out into the field. I think it's only fitting I recount the occasion.

We're Gonna Need A Lot of Wine Barrels: The Problem of Cheese

Ah, cheese. It can mean a great many things, depending on the context, ranging from a popular overpowered choice in a game, a risky early game choice, or just using something that's incredibly annoying. In any game that involves strategy & choices, whether's it's Warhammer 40k or SC2, accusations of cheese and cheese use are abound. It's always a question; if it works, why not use it? Does it cheapen the win to know you're using something "overpowered," or is it simply stupid not to use what the game gives you (although this idea treads dangerously to the Dark Side of glitch abuse).

It's an interesting question, and I'm afraid I can't give you any answers, but I can provide some (hopefully ) hilarious examples. You see, I've always been mostly against cheese, except in specific situations. For instance, 2 common "cheeses" of the Protoss army in SC2 are the cannon rush and Void Rays. The former is the kind of "risky early game strategy" kind of cheese, while the "Cheese Rays" are more the type of thing often considering overpowered (OP). I'd never been a fan of the cannon rush, the only time I've employed it was to annoy Aaron (and it only worked once out of the two times I've used it). On the other hand, I like Void Rays, but recently I've been trying to avoid them in order to a) not be so predictable and b) improve the number of options I can bring to the table in a game.

However, this was all to change.

Less Canon, More Cannon: A Review of Halo Reach

I had actually been planning to wait to write this review. The point being, I don't actually own Halo Reach; my friend bought it, and I played through the campaign co-op with him as well as borrowing it on a few occasions. I figured I should give it a more thorough playthrough, get to really know it, before I wrote a review.

This was before I've had it sitting in my room for the last 3 days, where when faced with free time I played Gears of War 2,  L4D2, and SC2 unless specifically asked by someone else to play Reach. So before I get into details on the game, a tl;dr would be that Halo Reach is merely ok. It works as a social game, but it'll never be something that's my go-to game, nor will I ever buy it unless it gets down to the $20 price point.

Sweet Victory and Sour Loss: The Nature of Competitive Games

First of all, credit where credit is due. Thanks twicefold to Rome, once for helping me brainstorm a new, more descriptive (Ed: Debatable) title for this Blog, and second for writing the post that inspired this one. If you click the linky link, you'll find some thoughts on his relationship with competitive gaming, so I thought I'd follow up with mine.

I've also had a gradual growth to competitive gaming. First of all, the majority of my gaming career has been spent offline-- the first real online game I played wasn't till something like Battlefield 2142, which was all of 4 years ago. Likewise it wasn't till I got my 360 that I had a dedicated online gaming platform that I played with consistency.

Blame & Stolen Praise: The Nature of Team-Based Games

My two current games of choice of late have been the online components of Starcraft 2 & Gears of War 2, both of which I enjoy very much. SC2 tends to be when I have friends on, while GoW2 tends to consume my private time. Interestingly enough, neither of these are single-player, and both are team-based multiplayer. The two are pretty different though.

I read an interesting post on the SC2 forums about why people tend to shy away from 1v1 in SC2. It basically boiled down to risk/reward. He hypothesizes that like in a team FPS, with 3v3 and 4v4 SC2 matches you can always take the credit for a win, and blame the others for a loss. 1v1 means you have to face the fact that you have no one to blame but yourself for the loss, which most people can't handle.

I actually think the poster's probably right for the majority of gamers; I've definitely seen a lot of "if my teammates hadn't sucked I would have totally owned you" type comments after my team winning a 3v3. However, I like to think I don't fall under this category. I usually acknowledge my strengths and weaknesses, or comment when I didn't really help in a match, etc. I think it's actually my awareness of my strengths and weaknesses that drives me towards SC2 multiplayer.

I know I'm not great at early game, especially scouting & early harass. I could devote more time to improving these, but since as I stated I tend to play SC2 with friends, it's easier to just play on a team with someone like Aaron who complements my weaknesses with his strengths and come out all the better for it. Naturally I'll want to improve eventually, but it's easier to focus on improvement when you have a reliable ally to fall back on.

Which leads me to my next point: SC2 is actually far, far harder to tell who's pulling the team, anyway. Numbers often will show overall who was "doing" the most, but let me present a game from today.
Rome, Aaron and I played a ranked 3v3, and decided before the match started to do a (late) early T1 rush. We were going along, and suddenly Aaron got attacked. We managed to fight it off, but Aaron lost the majority of his base. However, we counterattacked (since Aaron had taken down a good chunk of the forces) and Rome and my combined force managed to take out the 3 enemy bases, one by one*, while Aaron rebuilt his base and lent a bit of support towards the end.

Looking at the numbers and graphs afterwards, it would seem Rome and I carried the game and Aaron didn't help. What that ignores is the fact that if Aaron hadn't defended the rush well enough, had he just been steamrolled, Rome and I couldn't have gone on the offensive like we did. While the game gives us credit numbers-wise, without Aaron being the excellent player he is, we probably would have lost. And that's why SC2 is hard to boil down in terms of team gameplay; it's often a combination of, say, Aaron's expansion harassment, Rome's raiding, and my heavy support that will win a game, and even if I destroy the most buildings or whatnot, our success is very interlinked, and we are all pretty dependent on one another (assuming the other players aren't completely incompetent)

I want to contrast this with Gears. It's also a very team-driven game; for instance, whenever a player drops and it turns into 4v5 instead of 5v5, the team with 5 has always won in my experience. There are rare exceptions will I will see the last player on a team beat the other 3 players, but those are just that: rare exceptions. This is a game, however, where it's very obvious who's helping the team, and numbers are quite relevant. I often seen organized teams (i.e. people obviously talking to one another) annihilate the opposing team, as often if not more often than one player carrying everyone else.

This is why it bugs me when so often good players will split off and do their own thing, and then be faced 4v1 because the other team is working together, and then complain that the other players aren't helping out. Sure, they usually kill 1 or 2 of the other opponents, but they get upset that apparently they're the only "good player." The simple fact is if they stuck with other teammates and used their skills instead of essentially hiding, we'd probably BE winning. In fact, if my team is losing, I usually end up following someone else, and more often than not it means we end up winning the round. It's a team tactical game, yet some people still think it's Halo or MW2. Master Chiefing it may earn you the kills and the points associated with it, but it won't always win you the round. In fact, my most memorable win recently was me killing the entire 5 members of the opposing team in one round, and that was only possible because they weren't watching their back because the rest of my team was firing on them.

What's my point with all this? Good question. I guess I'm lucky to have such a good group of gamer friends, ones who I can play a game of SC2 with and not be blamed for being the sole reason our team loses, or never get credit for us winning. One aspect of gaming I absolutely hate is the amount of idiots on multiplayer games, and I suspect that if I had been playing SC2 online alone I would have ceased playing it weeks ago. While it's nice to be the top player in a winning team of Gears, it's far more satisfying to congratulate known teammates after a SC2 win, or even to analyze a loss to improve next time. I think this sense of camaraderie is the real reason I haven't played much 1v1 in SC2; I get that experience from Gears, and I get my "real" team based game with friends on SC2.

-HTMC

*Funny story from that, regarding stupid end game complaints. As we were killing the last base, the guy complained that "no one builds base defenses." Rome and I asked if he meant his teammates, since we had just blown up their bases, and they had defenses. Enemy guy responds "no you guys," meaning Aaron had no defenses. I respond "...but it didn't matter," since we had obviously just won. He keeps repeating that no one builds defenses, which would make sense if Aaron not building defenses had meant we had lost the game... but we hadn't. We're still not sure why he brought it up, but I guess it supports the point that most people will blame anyone else but themselves for winning or losing a team game... even if that other person is on the other team :-P

There's No Good Title for This: Star Wars Vs. 40k

So to finish off this trifecta of Star Wars related post, I'm going to increase my nerd factor by a significant factor and do a comparison that's been brewing in my mind for quite some time. Note this comparison will be more in a spiritual form than completely grounded in fact: unlike some people who analyze the impact of the Death Star's destruction on Endor, or argue over what would happen if the same fired on the Enterprise, I feel like with both the 40k and the SW universe it's important to focus more on the fiction than the science. I'll attempt to break this down into several subsections, going from most general to most specific, and deciding who has an edge.

Assumptions
The first big assumption would be location. The first problem is that the 40k universe is far larger than the SW one. 40k's Imperium of Man numbers around a million planets at a given time, while SW's listed planets number less than a hundred, and in total can't be more than in the hundreds. Therefore to get even  a balanced fight you'd have to assume the Imperium is launching an rather sizable expeditionary force against the SW's universe; so a new extragalactic invasion, but a different force. Timewise, we'll assume directly after NJO SW and "modern" 40k.

Structure & Organization
In general, 40k has the big advantage in that all the human planets are pretty much under one government, with one religion, one tongue, etc. Obviously it's not completely uniform, and many changes exist, but it's fundamentally far more unified than the SW universe is. Even the simple fact that the Galactic Alliance is still an alliance with a senate puts it at a disadvantage; there were beings arguing for peace with the Yuuzhan Vong even after the conquest of Coruscant. In comparison, while sometimes faulty, the Imperium benefits from a clear, unquestionable command structure and a fervent ideological belief, so is rather comparable to the Yuuzhan Vong in this respect, and would cause similar problems, and be similarly useless to negotiate with. On the flip side, individual commanders in the SW universe are given far more freedom and initiative, giving the GA far more flexibility and ease of response. This can obviously still work against them, since the GA is a bit more weak to infighting and clash of opinion than the Imperium, but it still is a nice benefit on a micro side of things. Despite this, though, the Imperium wins pretty easily in this category.
Imperium: 1
Alliance: 0

Technology
This section is where SW has a pretty big advantage. While the Imperium has some pretty awesome technology, and a lot of cool things, there aren't a ton of things that the Imperium has that the Alliance doesn't have something comparable. The other big advantage is the stagnation the the Imperium. Whatever they bring to the battle is often all they'll ever have, and often thing they lose are irreplaceable. The Alliance however is easily adjustable and is always evolving, and this gives a huge advantage. If they can get around YV black holes, I'm sure they can adjust to void shields, and if they can deal with amphistaffs I doubt chainswords will be problematic for long. Another nice touch is the Alliance's ability to use droids, especially things like the YV Hunter droids Lando develops, which would help balance out the sheer numbers of the Imperium and things like Sentinels and Dreadnaughts. Both the Tau and the Tyranids have used adaptability to overcome the Imperium, and I suspect the SW universe would also benefit from this. Technology can often vary widely through Imperial Worlds, to the point where you can sometimes (rarely) get IG regiments who use stubbers because they don't have lasgun technology. SW planets are pretty well distributed technology wise, with the exceptions of real backwaters, which is rarer than in the Imperium.
Imperium: 1
Alliance: 1


Standard Infantry
The standard lasgun and the standard blaster seem pretty similar in function and effectiveness, and the same for standard armor (I feel like Stormtrooper armor [in lore if not in the movies] is about the same as Carapace armor). Numbers-wise the Imperial Guard probably has an advantage, since the Alliance doesn't seem super hot on infantry combat, although 1v1 a Guardsman and an Alliance trooper are probably about evenly matched, again trading pure doctrinarian and standards for a bit more freedom and flexibility. Assuming even numbers, it'd be an even battle, but assuming respective norms the Imperium would probably have an advantage.
Imperium: 1.5
Alliance: 2

Ground Vehicles
While the movies showcase a lot of ground vehicles, in the EU and especially NJO they tend to have a very minor role, making them a bit harder to judge. SW is usually all about air and space superiority, and ground troops if you /have/ to take on ground targets. That being said, even assuming the technological adjustment I mentioned above, changing the whole way of making war would be time consuming and a bit difficult, so the Imperium would likely have a large advantage in mechanized combat and would enjoy it. (Not to even mention titans).
Imperium: 2.5
Alliance: 2

Starfighters
As far as I'm given to understand, Lightnings and Marauders and the like are simply more modern versions of our current fighter jets, in that they're simply armor and ballistics. SW has the advantage of true advanced fighters, with shields, lasers, missiles, etc. Fighters in the Imperium seem there mostly to engage other starfighters and harry smaller ships, whereas a concentrated starfighter strike will often take down capital ships given the right circumstances in SW. 40k fighters seem best suited to air support on planets, where SW ones have a complete superiority role often unless they're super specialized like B-wings. All in all, SW fighters would almost certainly outclass Imperial ships, giving the Alliance a huge advantage in space combat.
Imperium: 2.5
Alliance: 3

Capital Ships
The Imperium has an advantage in having bigger capital ships, while the Alliance has an advantage in them being much more numerous and much more easily produced. This is where things get a little tricky, given relative differences in fire power and weaponry, but it seems like the Alliance would have the pure advantage in terms of small and medium ships (both in terms of them being more common and usually packing more firepower and defenses). In terms of actual capital class ships, Imperial ones probably would easily come off the better in 1v1, but this is one case where SW has a big advantage, since the average fleet contains a number of Star Destroyers, Mon Calamari Cruisers, etc while it's a giant Imperial fleet that contains an equal number of large ships. They also seem far superior in terms of maneuverability and bringing fire to bear; Imperial ships seem like giant sea ships in terms of using broadsides, whereas SW ships are more like "true" space ships, giving them another advantage. The short story is that the SW universe is centered around space combat for the most part, whereas 40k is often more focused on ground combat. Nevertheless, it would still be a definite fight, even if SW has an advantage.
Imperium: 2.5
Alliance: 3.5

Elites
What you've all been waiting for this entire time, I'm sure: the question of Jedi vs. Space Marines. In a 1v1 setting, I'm going to say that an average Jedi will beat an average Space Marine every time. Jedi are notoriously hard to kill in ranged combat, and will close to CC range. The average Space Marine does not have a power weapon, whereas every Jedi does: this means that with anything up to and sometimes including a Sergeant the Jedi will win through pure weapon advantage (even a well-trained swordsman with a power sword in 40k lore will always beat a normal Space Marine, so I don't think this is at all a reach). When you throw power weapons into the mix, it gets a little closer. The Space Marine will have a lot of experience (oftentimes in the scale of hundreds of years) and the power weapon would theoretically the same as a lightsaber in terms of blocking and hitting, but the Jedi's Force ability usually means battle senses: no matter how much experience, the ability to foresee an opponent's move will usually be the deciding factor. Jedi are also faster and stronger than normal humans, albeit not as much as Space Marines, which is why I'll say that Jedi will probably often, if not always, beat a power-equipped SM. When you get to Librarians or Chapter Masters it gets interesting, since the Warp is way different than the Force. I suspect that one of the above versus a highly experienced Jedi Knight or Jedi Master would be a very close thing. If we get to named characters it's anyone's guess.
However, the key point is that Space Marines rarely work along, and are usually in squads of at least 5. Jedi often work in teams of 2 or 1, and it's a special occasion when you get more than that. So really the question comes down to statistically likely what size group would be fighting what other size. I was forced to do something I've prior to this been trying to avoid, that of looking up statistics.
In the SW univese, there's at the end of NJO around 200 Jedi left. According to Wookiepedia, there's about about 20 million planets with sentient life; a rather unhelpful figure, to be honest. The Galactic Alliance page puts the planets at about 1.2 million.
The galaxy pages states that the total population of the galaxy is 100 quadrillion lifeforms over 20 million planets, meaning an average of 5 billion per planet. I think these numbers are fishy, but let's run with it. That means that the Jedi:People ratio is about 1:3.6^13.
The averages for the Imperium are much much harder to come by, since they can vary from billions and billions on a hive world to mere hundreds on a frontier colony. However, the planets is an easy one million. To make thngs easy, let's also assume 5 billion per planet, giving the population roughly equal to the Alliances. Instead of 200 Jedi, though, you have roughly 1,000 chapters of 1,000, or a million marines, giving a much favorable ratio.
Even assuming the SW numbers of stupidly inflated (which it probably is, I don't think most SW writers would agree that the average planet has 5 billion lifeforms, or that the Alliance is composed of 1.2 million planets) 200 Jedi is still a tiny, tiny number, so the Space Marines would likely steamroll A LOT. I'm sure they could be taken down, but like everything else they fight, it would cost a lot.
Imperium: 3.5
Alliance: 3.5

Conclusion
I actually didn't have numbers or anything planned out while writing this, it all came kind of naturally, so I'm actually surprised the score came out even. Regardless, it seems the general gist is that SW holds the natural front on space combat, whereas the Imperium would dominate on the ground (although the space combat advantage would also likely turn into air superiority on the ground, which might change things; I doubt even hydras would do much vs. strafing X-Wings). It would probably be simply a race to make sure the Imperium never won a space battle to the point they could launch a ground invasion: in some ways, it would be very similar to the Yuuzhan Vong war in that respect, meaning the Alliance has some good experience fighting them off.
Again, I think the key point would be the technological one mentioned above. Much as the Yuuzhan Vong were a mostly static race, the Imperium would probably win a number of smashing victories out the gate, but as the Alliance adjusted that momentum would quickly peter out, and eventually the Alliance would have the upper hand. How much loss would occur before that is up for debate, but I feel an invasion of the SW universe by the Imperium would eventually end badly.
Of course, the big question is again the numbers. I assumed that 40k had a huge advantage, given the lore I've read in both, but apparently the technical facts on Wookipedia speak differently (I'm compelled to call bulls***, but who knows). Assuming the current wars-on-all-fronts of the Imperium, they wouldn't be able to devote as much resources as necessary; if they had somehow secured their galaxy, then they'd also be at an advantage. That would also mean you'd assume the SW galaxy was equally peaceful, but even at their worst they're never as war-torn as the 40k universe is.

Anyway, I've very curious to hear what you all think; what points you think I missed, what points you think I got wrong, etc. If I get enough interesting comments I might write a follow-up, since as I said this wasn't /that/ planned out. Other than that though, this'll probably be the last SW post for a while, so expect other things next time.

-HTMC

So Bad It's Bad: Grimdark & Star Wars

Since I ended up writing that post on the canonicity of videogames, and Star Wars in particular, I figure now is as good of time as any to write that pair of Star Wars posts I've been meaning to write, and make it into a trilogy (My enthusiasm for which has already been seen). Thus I again present you with two things I "like" and why they do not at all go together: The idea of "grimdark" and, again, Star Wars.

My interest in the grimdark has been more recent, stemming from things like Gears of Wars, various zombie things, war movies, and most particularly all the 40k stuff. Obviously there's a limit, and it has to be handled well, but a certain level of this works extraordinarily well in certain circumstances. Lots of examples exist, and while I don't think the majority of the media I consume could be labeled "grimdark," I definitely enjoy the genre (style?).

I've been a fan of the universe for as long as I can remember, although my actual count of watching the movies is relatively low; I've always been much more focused on the Expanded Universe, particularly the novels and short stories, and to a lesser extent things like video games, comics, the original Clone Wars shorts, etc. I devoured things like the X-Wing series and everything Timothy Zahn wrote, and supplemented it with anything I could find. If my memory serves me correctly, releases were fairly small while I was growing up, and there weren't so many spin-offs as there are now. I could be wrong.

However, all this changed with New Jedi Order. Although the writing team didn't use the word "grimdark," they specifically stated the goal was to make the Star Wars universe darker/grittier, which is why the series opens with the still controversial death of Chewbacca.

My opinion of the series is actually on the whole positive. Some of the stories are better than others. Some moments are treated amazingly, like Anakin's martyrdom, while others don't get nearly what they deserver, like the death of Tsavong Lah. Some of the stories, particularly the early ones, are forgettable to a large extent, while others (such as Traitor and the two by Aaron Allstone) are still worth rereading even out of order.

So yes, I think they achieved what they wanted. They wanted to get away from the predictable, the "Han/Leia/Luke get in trouble but everyone knows they'll barely make it out because we can't kill off those characters." I can understand some frustration from a writer's standpoint, wanting to do something different in a universe so many people love. And as I said, I think they handled it extremely well, for the most part. It was a good series, I don't regret reading it, and it definitely made for a different feel than the other works.

What I object strongly to is that now, since the NJO series sold so well, the writers seem to think that the rest of the books need to be grimdark in order to sell well. I read the Dark Nest Trilogy, which is the immediate sequel to the NJO series, and it basically said "let's take everything they resolved, destroy it, and have 3 of the strongest people in the entire SW universe fall victim to bugs... after defeating Force-blank extradimensional aliens."

Ya. That makes a lot of sense.

I honestly can barely remember anything from the series, because it was so bad both in terms of content, character believability, and actual writing style. I only finished the trilogy because I have some Completionist in me. I almost started reading the Legacy of the Force, only to read some of the plot summaries online, and then declare the entire series Excommunicatus Hereticus and thus non-canon (I would have burned all copies too, if I had the resources).

To give a summary of why I hate this book so much, I refer back to a book I referenced earlier, namely Traitor. It may be, in my mind, the best book of the series. It focuses on Jacen on occupied Coruscant, and his journey to come to terms with the Yuuzhan Vong, their alienness, and their lack of the Force. His descent into madness, confusion, and eventual reemergence as perhaps the wisest of the Jedi is one of the best stories I've read, period. It's philosophy and introspection through a Star Wars lens, and confronts the grimdarkness of the Yuuzhan Vong and takes from it something positive. Alien, but positive.

Jacen's key discovery is that the idea of the Light and Dark side of the Force is a farce. The Force is living energy; energy cannot be good or bad. What the Jedi refer to the Dark side is merely the evil within Force users themselves. Not only is such labeling detrimental, but by doing so the Jedi have blinded themselves to the full spectrum of the Force and cannot reach their whole potential.
Jacen solves the problem of the Vong Force-nakedness. He uses a Vong symbiot to fix his lightsaber, and becomes deeply in tune with it as as a result (as well as a symbiote implanted within him). He then becomes able to dimly, but still somewhat, sense the Vong in the Force. It's a huge breakthrough, and Jacen spends the rest of the series (although this book is 20/26, so towards the end) contemplating the Force and trying to learn as many of the non-Jedi Force-user cults as he can (such as the Dathomir witches).

Cool idea, right? Like I said, it's really well executed, an amazing character development and motivation for Jacen (who'd prior to that been Animal Boy, i.e. Pretty Boring). So what did Legacy of the Force do?

"Olololol I troll you! He's gonna become a Sith because he needs to learn ALL kinds of Force!"

"But wait, didn't he learn that the Dark side of the Force didn't really exist? What kind of motivation could he possibly have for this?!" you say in confusion and betrayal.

"I TROLL YOU" shouts Karen Traviss and Troy Denning.

So yes, Legacy of the Force (and everything else post NJO) is stupid. Stupid stupid stupid. You'd think that the fact that pretty much every SW novel, no matter how grimdark or whatever, is a bestseller would clue the writers off that it doesn't NEED to be grimdark. In fact, while NJO was a nice change, I prefer the traditional type. Star Wars was ABOUT the heroic, the traditional happy ending story; Han may be frozen in carbonite, all may seem lost, but they'll come through eventually. It's a good feeling to know that. And if you really want to kill people? Be like Aaron Allstone or Michael Stackpole, or Timothy Zahn, and make some compelling characters that sometimes become more popular than the movie characters (I'm looking at you, Mara Jade and Corran Horn) and then you can kill them off.

Also, in that vein, Karen Traviss, you f***ing leave Timothy Zahn's characters alone. He writes infinitely better and more interesting stories than you do.

Anyway, sorry for the long and rambling post, but I've been bottling this up for a long time. Grimdarkness is good, and it has its place, but that place is not Star Wars. I'll get that fix elsewhere, and meanwhile I can go to Star Wars getting what I'm expecting. I mean, I'd be upset if I read a 40k novel where every character lived; likewise I'd be upset if I read a SW novel where EVERYONE DIED. So get back to your roots. Side stories featuring none of the movie characters can be awesome (again, see the Rogue Squadron series). Write more of those or something. If nothing else, it's getting silly that Han and Luke are the only two people in the entire galaxy who can handle some things (didn't Luke make that Jedi Academy for this reason?)

I welcome your thoughts, and thanks for bearing with me through all this.

-HTMC

Video Games And Canon, or, The Lack Thereof

I'm supposed to be writing a short piece on Plato, but instead I'm going to talk about two subjects I enjoy far more, namely Stars Wars and videogames.

I actually have a couple SW related posts bouncing lazily around my skull, but this one is short and relevant to what I'm currently doing.

Anyway, Star Wars. I like Star Wars. I like the stories, I know the canon well, I have enjoyed and continued to enjoy the universe in its entirety, despite various ups and downs (and forcibly ignoring the travesty that is Karin Travess, may a Sarlacc consume her). I like videogames a lot too, as the number of posts on this site will attest. I don't think they work well together as a general rule, though, specifically when it involves story-telling.

For instance, KotOR. I'll admit I've never played through either game completely, but what I did play didn't impress me very much. For starts, the time period is kind of boring to me in terms of the SW continuity, and in addition they had to make things 2000 or whatever BANH (before A New Hope) but still maintain the Star Wars feel, which ends up being ANH with different names and none of the same characters. It would have been interesting if they had seriously messed with the look or feel of the universe... but they didn't, so I for one just was wondering where everything I know was. I understand why they did it, since it gives them far freer rein in what stories to tell and what to do with the characters, but I kind of ignore it for the same reason that I ignore the series set hundreds of years after the Yuuzhan Vong war.

Another example are the two Battlefront games. While being excellent games, they didn't make a strong attempt to be canon, and I think they gained from it. While I'll always be annoyed at things like using thermal detonators as grenades, it tried to be a good, solid shooter, and succeeded. Things like Battlefield 1942 didn't need much of a story, just a good background to set the war in, and this succeeded.

Another example is Super Bombad Racing. I'm not really gonna touch that.

Anyway, this brings me to the latest point, where I started today playing the Force Unleashed. This is where canonicity really rears its head. For starters, the first level is on Kashyyyk. On the ground.

Admittedly, a couple other games and the movie itself also featured ground on Kashyyyk. But in canon, you don't go to ground level. If you're there, you're dead and being eaten by giant predators. But to serve   a videogame setting, it's on the ground. Likewise you get Wookies dying in droves, despite how long lived and relatively rare offspring are. The game moves on to things like taking multiple lightsaber slashes to kill a single human, Force powers always having a physical appearance, and a Jedi Master sacrificing his entire battalion to draw out a Force user.

I get it, videogames need certain liberties in order to function. If you could always one-hit kill with a lightsaber, it would get somewhat old quickly. But then I hear things about the canon of these kind of games being contested, and I just want to say: No. They're no canon. They're games. In the same way that I view the Blood Angels as a fun fan Chapter that Relic made up, or even how a football team winning in Madden 200x doesn't represent real life, any videogame drawn from an outside canon is probably not actually going to follow the canon well, and I will likely not buy into it.

Videogames need certain parameters to work, and often this conflicts with the universe lore. While this isn't a problem in and of itself, when you try to force a videogame that simple conflicts into canon, then you have problems. I think the solution is to (again only for series not originating in videogames) simply leave the games as a fun side note, and leave the canon to books, movies, and other mediums.

-HTMC

Going Beyond the Impossible And Making the Believable: A Review of Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World

Scott Pilgrim actually succeeded in passing completely under my radar; I had never heard of the comic, I don't think I ever saw trailers (and if I did I obviously forgot it), and the first time I remember hearing about it was during my weekly Rotten Tomatoes check where I saw it was garnering mostly positive reviews. When a friend invited me to accompany him to watch the film, I accepted purely on those grounds.

Therefore I walked out of the theater having been very pleasantly surprised, since Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World is likely one of the best movies I've seen this year (although to be fair I haven't been super happy with the offerings). It's always a nice surprise when a movie comes out of the blue like that.

I think there are two main points as to why I enjoyed the film so much. The first has to do with the scope, for lack of a better word. It seems the directors/producers/etc had a specific vision in mind, and they seemed to have pulled it off without any part failing. The acting is good, effects excellent, soundtrack good, editing, wardrobe, etc etc. No part was lacking and everything came together really well. I think all the actors were well cast, and he-whose-name-I-always-forget (Michael Cera, and I just had to look that up) mad a surprisingly good "action" hero, despite his inherent painful awkwardness. They also managed the feat for making the female "punk" outfit actually work, from my perspective. Surprise minor roles from people like Anna Kendrick and Mae Whitman were also cool.

The second point has to do with the title; although the film made no attempt to be completely ridiculous (what with people exploding into coins and Scott drawing a sword from his chest) for all it's over-the-topness, it managed to be somehow more authentic when it came to the love story. Although I'm not expert in "chick flicks," I've obviously seen a lot of movies that revolved around a love story, ranging from Twilight to the Notebook to Titanic and whatnot. However, Scott Pilgrim seemed to really hit home and actually resonate with me in terms of what relationships are like. I can't really pinpoint what facets make it the case, and it's not like any of the relationships actually correlate to experience I've had, but the way the characters behave and the way the actors perform their roles just felt unforced, realistic, and completely not-Hollywood. Obviously this is only my feeling and I don't know if others feel the same, but it was definitely one of the strongest points of the movie.

Beyond those things, the action scenes were cool, the characters pretty interesting (although, as always, Michael Cera was Michael Cera + Superpowers) and it felt culturally relevant to me. One thing I will warn was that, when I saw the reviews, I saw a lot of them mentioned the "lots of videogame references." This put me on guard, since I assume movie reviewers and video game enthusiasts don't overlap very much. I think I was proven correct, since the movie deals with a substantial number of video game tropes (particularly fighting games) it never gets referential in way a show like The Big Bang Theory gets, where a majority of the viewers may not get a joke. The closest thing was the FF2 and Zelda themes playing, but I never felt like there was a joke I got that people with even a passing familiarity of gaming wouldn't. However, this is far from being a flaw, and rather just an observation.

Anyway, the movie has been out for a while now, and I can happily recommend it to all my friends, since it is quite enjoyable and worth seeing. If you do miss it in theaters, it's not spectacular enough to regret not seeing it on a big screen, so do yourself a favor and find it next time you're wondering what movie to watch.

-HTMC

10 Years Later and No Steps Forward: A Review of the SC2 Campaign

So while I wasn't (this has now changed) a bit fan of RTSs online, I was a big fan of RTSs. This means I've played a lot of RTS campaign, and so when I started reading online and hearing from Aaron that the campaign for SC2 was really good, I in turn got quite excited. The following is both a review of the campaign in gameplay terms and the story, the spoilers coming in the second section, so feel free to read up to the spoiler warning if you haven't completed the campaign.

In terms of overall mechanics, I was actually fairly disappointed with the SC2 campaign. I kept hearing about branching paths and upgradeable mechanics, but I feel that other games I've played have had much bigger impacts, namely the Dawn of War series. For instance, the Dark Crusade expansion technically had an entire world to conquer in what manner and whatever race you so chose, which made it a much more tactical experience in the "branching" idea. Some places you would never even end up fighting, due to the other races killing each other off in that location. While the SC2 campaign does "branch," it's usually just a question of doing one mission before another with the only real difference being maybe unlocking one unit before another. This approach also causes huge problems with the story side, but that's for below. In terms of upgrades, some of them were really useful and  I enjoyed, and they made a difference (the science vessel comes to mind) but on the other hand many of them were pretty boring. For instance, the first protoss tech unlock was insipid, many of the purchasable unlocks were I thought useless for my play-style, and a lot of them seemed to make no noticeable difference in-game. On the other hand, Dawn of War 2's upgrade and equipment system probably did have the same amount of effect as the SC2 ones, but because sometimes they had a much more dramatic effect (like replacing a heavy bolter with a missile launcher) the upgrades felt a lot different, and like I was having an effect.

The campaign did do a good job of mission variety, I suppose, but a lot of times it boiled down to a) turtle and survive or b) build up big force and kill things/capture points. I realize all RTS games do this, and SC2 tried to be different with things like lava and walls of fire, but oftentimes for me they ended up feeling more annoying than challenging. Tactics rarely seemed to matter, and for the last few missions I could just mass an air fleet of science vessels, vikings, banshees, and battlecruisers and run through without difficulty. On the other hand, Company of Heroes had less "mission variety" in that almost all of them were "kill the enemy," but the set pieces were far more interesting, and the missions far more memorable (like a Panzer tank hunt or the raid through night airdrop). Tactics seemed to actually matter there, since you couldn't just mass tanks and storm through the enemy (they'd be busy building anti-tank cannons).

The achievement system I have previously mentioned, and will not be spoken of again.

I did appreciate things like mercenaries and all the clickables in between missions, but overall as a campaign I feel it fell far short of what other moderns RTSs have accomplished since SC1.

And now, spoiler alert!

Spoiler alert!

Spoiler alert!

In terms of the campaign story, I was also very disappointed. As others have brought up, the first problem is that although the campaign was "branching," the story and characterizations also branched, being Jim would go from being overjoyed one mission at the progress versus the Dominion and a depressed drunkard the next. It made Jim in my eyes rather unrealistic and thus unsympathetic as a main protagonist. In fact, none of the characters were personally that engaging. Hansen was annoying and I was happy when Jim killed her, other science guy was basically not there, Mr. Techdwarf was boring, and while both Tychus and Tosh had interesting lines, I honestly think they were rather forgettable for secondary characters (people like Augustus Cole or Gaz being far more interesting, personally speaking). Tychus' betrayal was foreshadowed to the point of being foreshining, and the disappointment that is "mission choices" is, well, disappointing. I never felt invested nor was I all that interested, and I only really kept playing just because a) I had bought the game b) friends had said it was good so I was encouraged to finish it and c) I had already put time in so I wasn't going to quit. But I thought the Zerg "twist" was silly, the Protoss portrayal boring (oh right, we had colossal *ahem* fighting machine great at killing swarms of units hiding in Aiur, but no, getting invaded by the Zerg wasn't cause enough to activate it) and then of course patently stupid moments like our hero's Battlecruiser hooking up to an enemy warship and being stored by two, count, 2, marines.

Wait, did they just jump over something in the boarding action? Oh right, it was a shark.

I thought the whole bring Kerrigan back from the Zerg was a boring but necessary turn, the introduction of Prince Junior rather forced and uninspiring (what a textbook royal son) and General Warfield was so so boring considering he's listed in the achievements as a "main character." Perhaps this is partly a reaction to finishing reading all the published Gaunt's Ghosts novel, where all of the character (all in war, obviously) are about a 1,000 times more interesting than anyone in this game. Comparing a game to a book series is obviously unfair, but to bring up a previously mentioned character, I was sad and in disbelief when Gaz was shot in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Jim Raynor could have been hacked to death by Dark Templar and I probably would have yawned.

Lots of other things probably bothered me over the campaign, but they are all pretty minor, but the point is that in combination with the above made it so I found the campaign rather inadequate in terms of the story.



Overall, as you can tell, while I technically enjoyed the campaign, the problems were a bit too abundant for me to be comfortable recommending it. Were I still in the state where I only really played campaigns, I would be rather irate at the moment, but luckily the multiplayer component makes up for the $60 price point. I look forward to seeing whether they change or improve things in the expansions for their campaigns, since while my review is less than stellar, there's definitely still potential there, and after all I enjoyed the original SC and WC3 campaigns when I played them. I think the problem is that SC2 is SC1 in many ways, including the datedness of the campaign. The RTS world has progressed far from 1998, and while an old-style multiplayer is still fun, an old-styled RTS campaign is just boring.

-HTMC

Edit: Thought I'd share this because, well, I enjoyed writing it.

How to Really Annoy Your Customers

Notice the top two possible achievements. Note that the objectives for the mission were destroy the artifact housing and a secondary achievement of rescue the 4 sets of Dark Templar prisoners.

Notice that I did all of these things, and even destroyed all 8 of the Rift fields. And yet I Blizzard somehow thinks I didn't do any of these things, despite the stats directly to the right stating the contrary.

I would almost be ok with this if it was an isolated thing, but I did a run through of the last 5-6 missions today, and I figured that although things weren't showing up they'd pop up later. Right?

Wrong. Apparently Battlenet has to be "on" for achievements to actually work. So despite me having a solid internet connection the entire time I was playing, because Blizzard can't maintain a decent server (I only found out it was acting up for everyone after finishing the campaign and browsing the forums, discovering hundreds of angry threads) I not only have not completed the campaign, but I haven't even gotten basic achievements for things like "finish the mission." But if you look at any of the logs, it shows me as having finished the campaign, except achievements wise. So my profile states I have not finished the campaign, but if I load the campaign I go straight to the mission select screen. Even something like "buy all the mercenaries," which I've done, apparently "hasn't happened."

This is incredibly incredibly dumb design, and I don't know what the hell Blizzard was thinking. Requiring internet to log in I can /almost/ understand, but making achievements only active when Battlenet is running? So so stupid. At least Xbox Live allows you to earn achievements while COMPLETELY offline, and then updates it next time you connect.

tl;dr, I am so frustrated.

-HTMC

Sinister Sacrilege: The End

(What, a post not about Starcraft? Heres-*BLAM*)

Last night was (sadly) the final session of the Dark Hereblam campaign, and so now that the plot is over I'm finally at liberty to discuss some overarching things I'd been trying the campaign. First though, a short synopsis.

• #4, played by Kory: A young, talented and most importantly brainwashed and intellectualy stunted assassin
• The Linear, played by Rome: A quiet, trigger-happy man from an out-of-touch space wreck where he was the law
• "Cantor" Remski, played by Jesse: A priest who spread his word through heavy raaawk and flames, and his passion through... flames.
• Callidon, played by Aaron: An optimistic psyker who didn't explode into Daemons, much to everyone's disappointment (especially my own)
• Daret, played by Max: A pragmatic techpriest hankerin' to be a cowboy nerfherder groxherder.

The story began on a Black Ship on its way to Terra (unbeknownst to the above) that suddenly suffered a massive failure, due to the 13th Black Crusade breaking out (again without the PCs knowing). In their investigation they eventually discovered that parts of the Guard unit stationed on board were in fact Genestealer cultists, and eliminated them and the Genestealers with extreme prejudice. After landing they were tasked with following up another section of the same tainted regiment that had landed days earlier, and eventually tracked down the group and avoided a large shoot-out in a saloon, but let the cultists escaped. They pursued, and found the cultists in a firefight with another group of cultists. The 'Stealer cult was finally killed off, and the PCs turned on the other cultists and killed many of them, but not before they finished summoning a Daemon. They managed through extreme cleverness to kill it off, and were sent home, but sent back the next day to continuing hunting down the heretic leaders, since reports of other daemon-summonings were occurring all across Terra. Despite failing abjectedly at investigative skills, they eventually determined found a safehouse of the heretics, which happened to be the main base at the moment. Despite an early attempt at subterfuge the infiltration again quickly turned into a run and gun fight, eventually culminating in an epic confrontation involving a number of heretics, 4 psykers, 4 arco-flagellents, and a heretic leader clad in power armor, as two warp circles seemed to be being summoned. Through a heroic sacrifice by #4 (and much to by chagrin), they managed to stop one of warp circles and kill all the heretics, preventing a flood of daemons from entering the Eternity Gate (the idea was that a single powerful summoning would be quickly noticed by the forces of Terra, but if dozens were occurring all over the planet they could only respond so quickly, so opening two in one location: one to the Warp, and the other (ideallly to the Golden Throne but Warp-magic is rarely so precise) to the Eternity Gate would cause massive massive problems). Fortunately for the Imperium "the Good Guys" managed to prevent this, and also dove heroically through the warp-portal after their fallen comrade, only to find him barely alive in front of the Eternity Gate, being stared at in shock by a number of Custodes and two Imperial Titans. Luckily they managed to avoid getting shot by a narrow margin, and forces arrived to apprehend them and take them away, and thus this chapter of their story ended.

I mean, in all likelihood they were all executed for extreme exposure to the Warp and Chaos, but hey, you never know. They were designed to be somewhere in between regular acolytes and a full inquisitor, and while the former would be executed, the latter definitely wouldn't. You decide ;-)

Anyway, the biggest thing I tried this time around was planning. For the "Inquisitor" campaign, I did a lot of pre-planning, had a cool story and arc planned out, etc. For this campaign, while researching Dark Heresy things online, I found a guide suggesting to not plan and just be spontaneous. I decided I would try it, for better or for worse.

Of course, it wasn't completely without planning. I had to have a little bit of an idea before each session, if only to make maps. But I was never planning ahead more than the immediate session. As stated, this session started aboard a ship. I like ships, because there is only a finite number of places to go and things to do, and I like genestealers, so that's what it was. It was a great way to get used to the system and try out the whole "be spontaneous" thing, so I let my PCs do whatever they wanted, and I think it was a success. We then got to Terra, and although I gave them a bit of direction, once they got to the first location they were all on their own, ending up with things like The Linear pointing a gun at an innocent guard's head to wake him up or the group deciding to rappel up a building to avoid spiders and try to snipe the driver of a tank. I think overall the last few sessions went the smoothest, since I had figured out what exactly did need to be planned and what didn't, and also was familiar with the system and what I needed to do/not do (like not show models on the board before they explored a room). I think we had some great moments that would not have occurred had I not planned ahead, and although I was slightly panicky at times wondering what I  was going to do this session, I always figured out something, and despite the complete lack of fore-planning I think the overarching story is remarkably coherent. This style meant I was able to deal with PC spontaneity well, since I was being spontaneous too.

Another facet of this style was hopefully unexpected by my players, and that had to do with a questionnaire I had them innoncently fill out early on. I held off using it for the first few sessions, but the entire time I had a list like this:

Ways to mess with PCs

-Make a saloon for Daret

Make Grox for him to catch

-Bring #4’s master back

-Bring Boris and Slant in for Callidon

Bring out Catachan Mega-Bees for Callidon

-Arcoflagellents for Remski

Noise Marines for Remski

Transport back to Bio Anthem for Linear

-For fun bring back Brutus, Slant, and/or Grant

The ones marked with a hyphen I actually accomplished, and had the session gone one further I had been contemplating something like the Warp Gate contaminating them but sending them to the Bio Anthem, where they'd have to search for a cure on the Linear's old home while fighting off things like (you guessed it) Catachan Mega-Bees. I think the coolest example of how this worked out well (well, a number of them were cool, but this was was also rail-breaking) was having #4's master reappear an Arco-flagellent. I felt given his master's crimes, such a punishment would have made sense, and since it's hard to perform I figured the likelihood of being sent to Mars to have it done was pretty high, and then to be shipped to Terra (and then stolen) not unfeasible. Remski also being terrified of them helped a lot. When I introduced the fact that one of the "scary guys" in the back was also #4's master, I didn't prompt Kory to do anything about it, I just let him know. He responded with an excellent piece of role-playing where he froze for a number of rounds (prompting much concern from his teammates) and apparently he ended up flipping a coin as to what #4 would do, and got the better result, that of charging his master (and ALL of the remaining combatants) and setting off 3 frag grenades on his person, killing everyone within an 8 meter radius (i.e. ALL of my enemy NPCs). He also disrupted both warp circles, but a well-played Drama Card meant he instead got flung through the portal to the Eternity Gate, which had coincidentally just finished being made. 

The irony was that besides the leader and the arcos (the former having been laughing the entire time) there was just one apiece of the heretics and psykers, and the next turn I actually would have unleashed the arcos, and the turn after that was when the Gates would have finished manifesting, and the Leader would have led a swarm of daemons into the Imperial Palace where an epic showdown between the Custodes, Titans, and swarms of Daemons would have taken place, with the PCs stuck in the middle of it all. But an excellent piece of role-playing prompted by my dickery stopped all that. I'm actually incredibly pleased with it, since despite losing a cool set-piece idea it was a really cool martyr moment that stopped a horrible horrible sacrilege from occurring. And I think now that my players read this they will also be happy they managed to stop that :-P

Finally, on the subject of drama cards, they were much more appreciated than I expected. At the end of one session I offered either one player a fate point (which are far more versatile and, I thought, more useful) or two players a drama card (which can be sometimes bad and always situational). I thought it would be a tough choice, but there was hardly any debate and they went straight for the two drama cards. I'm curious whether had I offered two of either which way they would have chosen. This may however just my players sharing my enjoyment of the drama cards'...well, drama.

Anyway, I know I have more to say about this campaign, but I've already written a lot, so I shall save the rest for another day. I enjoyed DMing the campaign a whole lot, and my players state they did as well, so I hope someday in the future we may once again embark on a quest to rid the world of evil and redeem all the bad guys ;-)

-HTMC

How to Stay Positive: Thoughts on Winning

To continue my undoubtably annoying trend of posting only on SC2 stuff (I'm sure it'll end sometimes...?) more thoughts on the game!

As I suspected, that bad night was simply that-- a bad night. I've played since then and although I can't say we've had a winning streak, we've been doing well (we is vague since it usually includes some combination of Rome, Aaron, and others). It's still definitely a learning process, but it's going well.

In particular I've been falling more and more in love with Dark Templars. I've pretty much nailed down an opening build that I've been using to great success for the last couple days, which basically gets me very quickly with full resources, an observer, 4 Gateways, 4 Zealots, a Warp Prism, and the ability to teleport 4 DTs instantly into the back of a base (after having the observer check it out). It's a great build because if they don't have any detectors (which happens often) it's devestating, and it also flows well into a mid-game/late-game strategy (since you have 4 Gateways and a Robo bay, and the ability to continue either with Robos or go Starport). For instance, one particularly good game happened tonight, which has my super amusing army value graph:

As you can see, for most of the game I had the 4 zealots and varying numbers of DTs. I successfully hit one base completely (with Rome's help) and proceeded to keep running around destroying things, with the Warp Prism following around to give reinforcements as needed. What causes the odd spike was because the DTs were working so well I didn't really need anything else, but I eventually realized just how many resources were piling up, and made 6 starports and began mass producing Void Rays and Carriers since I didn't need to counter anything in particular. Alas, although I had built up a fleet of about 100 supply, due to continued harassment from me, Rome and Aaron (including me destroying about 8 supply depots because everything else was guarded) they quit before the fleet was able to be used.

I am disappoint.

The Dark Templar strategy doesn't extend only to team games, too. I've been using it quite well in 1v1 matches. I keep setting up expecting an early rush to be countered with a DT hit, but the early rush keeps not coming, I keep getting the DTs in and winning the game, about 8-10 minutes in.

Surprisingly, this took a while. The first 1v1 game I played I got soundly beaten, and didn't play any for a long time. I finally got my nerve up and tried it, and since then I've won the last 4 1v1 games I've played (with the DT strat.) I suppose this is one of those lessons to not give up after an initial failure and blah blah blah. I'm am glad I've done it though, since I'm sure it's helping my skill set a lot (especially since I keep prepping for things that don't happen, like an early rush or the need to expand after the DT hit fails). It's also in a lot of ways easier than team games, since you can focus on a lot less (no coordination, no watching mulitiple bases early on, etc.). I'm almost looking forward to a game where I don't win handily so early on, although the wins are nice.

To keep up with my usual end of the post question, what builds do you all seem to be favoring/liking? I know I "see" most of them, but in general I don't know as well as I probably should. As I was half-joking with Rome earlier, despite playing so often with Aaron, I usually have no idea what he's up to, only that he's being inevitably effective.

To close, a non sequitar image. Basically while attacking my entire base got hit, and my entire base of production gets wiped, but I still had a lot of resources and income; but no buildings to produce units with. This is desperation.

-HTMC

I've Got a Good Feeling About This One: Thoughts on Losing

Although I am not the most competitive gamer you will ever meet (or competitive person in general, I guess) it would be very false to state I am not competitive at all. Especially if I'm playing against strangers, it's pretty much impossible for me to me to play for anything other than to win. This tends to manifest especially in video games, and as much as my battle reports recently might lead you to believe otherwise, I have on a few occasions lost.

Losing in itself is not usually a bad thing, since it encourages us to improve and play better next time. Especially in the games I tend to play, the turnaround time to the next game is quick, and even the ability to improve midgame is possible.

This, however, is not the case for RTSs, as I'm discovering. For instance, in an average game of an FPS you can be having a bad streak, and then make an excellent comeback. Likewise, one bad game might be followed by another great one. Finally, none of these games are likely to last long (especially something like Gears of War). With games such as SC2 though, games are likely to last at least 10 minutes (if not stretching to an hour, like one game Aaron and Rome had) and one mistake can mean the end of things.

These things can be made even worse in team games, which in my experience can last a lot longer on average. In addition, having one player drop can be devastating, as can likewise 1 really good player on an opposing team with two relatively ok or even bad players. For instance, in a game last night, here were the standings.

We actually lost this game, mostly because Rome dropped very early on (He had a barracks and a starport and that was about it due to Reaper raiding before he dropped). As you can see, I technically did best overall, but it still made no difference because we couldn't match their forces. I wiped out a base and a half towards the end of the game, but because I didn't have support it wasn't enough (likewise Aaron was still playing well, but taking the brunt of the attacks after Rome dropped, which is understandable). Unlike a game like an FPS where me playing like that might have won the game, in a team-based thing like SC2 the loss of Rome kind of killed most of our chances. I also think in 3v3 or 4v4 the drop is more problematic, since it becomes questionable who will take over. In 2v2 where I've lost Rome, I obviously knew I needed to take over both bases and did so, but because Rome dropped in this game and it was both Aaron and I (and we were unable to voice chat) we both, I think, figured the other would take care of Rome's stuff, so nothing ever happened there (it wasn't until the last few minutes where I realized Aaron could be making Vikings at Rome's Starport).

Anyway, that was one lost out of 5 for that night. Yes, we lost every game we played. It was rather demoralizing and painful (also reinforced how custom games kind of suck since you could be playing people of any skill level). Again, unlike other multiplayer games where many more game could have been played, those 5 games took a long time and oftentime it was just one single mistake that led to our downfalls, which can be very irritating. This obviously isn't going to stop me from playing SC2, but it's making me readjust my perspective on winning RTSs (especially since SC2 matchmaking is designed to give you a 50/50 win/loss ratio). In addition, I have to keep reminding myself that this is only my first week playing the game, I never even played SC1 online and I could be playing against people who have put many many more hours into both SC1 and SC2 than me (not to mention other online RTSs). But, last night was last night, and Aaron and I have a good feeling about this one.

In terms of other things I've noticed about SC2, here are some complaints that may or may not be echoed on the forums.

1. Surrender button. I was playing a game and the server lagged (?) right as I was hitting enter to type something to Rome, and it apparently it took the enter to mean I wanted to surrender (since the message goes something like "Server is lagging. Surrender?". A simple "are you sure" would have been incredibly appreciated.
2. The frickin' custom game set-up. As it stands, if you hit "Join game," it shows a bunch of maps listed by popularity. Note I didn't say "games," but rather maps. That's right, it'll show maps even though nobody's in a lobby for that. So you'll join an option and find yourself sitting in an empty lobby you just created, even though you clearly didn't want to create a game since yo hit join game. Incredibly frustrating, and it also means that nobody plans one or two maps (for instance, only Arkhan Asylum and the Bio Lab for 3v3). Very very very stupid.
3. The Zerg. They're pretty much universally acknowledged to have problems but haven't been fixed yet. This only bugs me because the player I almost always plays with (Aaron) plays Zerg. Sigh...
4. Terran detectors. Zerg have only 1 (maybe 2) and Protoss only have one, yet Terran have turrets, ravens, and the ability to scan an area whenever they want. That makes one of my favorite units, DTs, almost useless unless I get them early out AND the terran player has built neither a single missile turret or his advanced command center yet. Meanwhile Zerg are happy if they finally get detectors half way through the midgame... And while the Protoss Observer is awesome, it's also relatively late, and it's be nice if something else had the ability.
5. Similarly, either fix the Phoenixes or give us a unit that is actually made for anti-air. And give the Zerg one too. (now that I've been on the receiving end of Void Ray/Carrier spams...)
6. Finally, to end with, the whole cliff thing is weird. Protoss can't walk cliffs till T3 (or if you blink Stalkers which is still far from early game) and Zerg get it... never? Whereas Terrans have Reapers as T1 units. Which leads me to my next point...
7. "Practice" league games are interesting in theory, but the balancing of rocks means a) you can't scout, so you only choose a strategy and hope for the best until you get a flying unit up to scout, by which point it can be too late unless b) you're Terran, and you just make one reaper and you can suddenly do in the first few minutes what Zerg and Protoss can't, as well as harass very well while the other two races have to wait to have enough forces to break through two rock piles (one usually defended) or do mass air drops, which is impractical. Plus the lack of scouting makes things very unlike what normal games are like. If they had done anything, they should have just slowed down the game speed (not getting used to avoiding early-game rushes is also not a good habit to get into).

Again, I'm still having a lot of fun, but thought those things should be aired. Do you guys agree, disagree, or got something else that's bugging you?

-HTMC

Gaming and Metagaming: Thoughts on RTSs and SC2

As is apparent from the recent string of blog posts, I have recently been playing Starcraft 2 a lot, namely pretty much every night for the past week.

As stated in an earlier blog post, I'm fairly new to the competitive online RTS scene, and my strategy as such used to be non-existent. However, playing every night, and without other games to distract, means that I feel like I've been making huge leaps as an RTS player. I'm both microing and macroing decently well, I have an excellent grasp of Protoss units and am beginning to use them effectively (and get an idea of Zerg and Terran through playing against them, my APM is rising slowly and overall I'm more efficient. A huge part of this has been playing with good people I actually know (such as Aaron, Brandon, Rome), allowing me to learn without getting instantly crushed.

The most interesting thing, though was my style of play shifting. At first it was pretty amorphous, then I learned a good strategy that while a bit dairy-intensive worked wonders against the opponents we played (Void Rays + Carriers). This carried me through a couple days of gaming, and then two things happened. One, Aaron and I played a ranked 2v2 against another pair of Zerg/Protoss, and they literally did exactly what we did (Observer + Nydus worm to destroy the Protoss base) and it ended up being an incredibly close game. The second was playing against, rather than with, the previously mentioned friends (along with Jesse and Jasper).

Obviously they all know my general strategies very well, so I had to change lest I be hard countered. Thus, all those strategies I had read about and educated myself with but never used were finally put into play. I ended up doing things like fast teching to Dark Templars for an early hard harass, actually doing mass, unending Zealot/Stalker rushes, and even doing things like this:

The immature Colossi are guarded by their parents until they reach full size and trade their versatility for insane anti-ground lasers. 

This has turned out to be incredibly good for my gameplay, because before general strategies included:
-Void Rays and Carriers
-Void Rays
-Void Rays with more Carriers

And while effective, I knew it wouldn't last long. At this point, a week later, my repertoire now consists of:
- Early Zealot/Stalker rush
- Early DTs
- Stalker/Colossi (Robotech)
- Early Stalkers
- 4-Gate Teleport
- Early Zealot rush
- 4-gate with transports
- Turtle 4-gate
- And of course Void Rays/Carriers

What this means is now I have a lot more flexibility in game, combined with things that I'm learning how to early scout means I'm actually able to adjust on the fly rather than pick a strategy beforehand and hope it works. See a lot of spawning pools/barracks? Go robotech. See a lot of ground-only? Go air. See early invisible? Get an Observer ASAP.

Other skills I'm picking it is adding in appropriate units, like the occasional sentry against mass marines, observers with everything, transports on certain occasions, dark templars when no detectors, etc. And most importantly, hotkeys. Wow those are a lifesaver.

Anyway, I guess the moral of the story is playing against people who know you is incredibly different than playing against random opponents, and can super rewarding. I know Aaron was also changing up his tactics in response to playing with me, which makes me change more, etc. and etc. It's like a vicious cycle except it makes everyone involved a better player, and then when we play real random opponents we can crush them all the easier :-P

I welcome your thoughts on the matter! I think everyone who reads this is either currently playing or will soon be playing :-P

-HTMC