Alan Wake
The gameplay was solid, with the dodge mechanic working surprisingly well and the light & gun combination providing a refreshing change to normal combat. I never really had any control problems, and everything went very smoothly. The narrative was actually interesting, and the choice to structure it like a television show worked extremely well. The game was also packed full of content; I spent far more time than I probably should have just exploring, and even "linear" sections didn't feel that rail-road like. Even the shows-within-a-show were great, and I actually watched all of them. The accompanying music selections were great, and even though there was some complaint about the product-placement, I thought it was very tastefully done and actually added to the realism rather than seeming gratuitous. In addition, the choice to offer the first DLC for free was icing on the cake, so to speak.
Overall it was a great package with no large failures, managing to be exciting, humorous, and oftentimes more unnerving than supposed horror games like Resident Evil. I'm quite excited for the "not a sequel" they announced, and will be definitely be paying attention to it when it comes out.
Shadow Complex
This game was picked up on the recommendation of Jesse, as well as still being one of the best-ranked Xbox Live Arcade titles. I'm a super big fan of the traditional, 2D Metroid games, a fan of Orson Scott Card, and a fan of Epic Games, so a combination of all three sounded naturally appealing.
Everything essentially boils down to everything being done right. It kept everything that was great about the Metroid games while still giving a bunch of nice new modern additions. I was initially skeptical of the 3D shooting in conjunction with 2D movement, but it works out well. The ability to do New Game + was also a big draw, and in conjunction with permanent rewards for hitting certain levels actually made me play the game for a second time immediately after finishing it.
The only real complaint I had was that there was one section I got stuck on for an incredibly long time simply for missing one minor detail, and another point on the first playthrough where the guidance messed up and had me running around to no purpose for a while. The second runthrough was much smoother, although I was obviously more familiar with the game so that could potentially be the cause. Nonetheless, if you're at all a fan of exploration 2D action games, Shadow Complex is an excellent purchase with plenty of content for the price.
Horus Heresy Books 2 & 3
I wrote about the first book in this series a while ago, and I finally got around to finishing up the initial trilogy. The trilogy essentially is the entire build-up to the official start of the Heresy, but like some other ambitious, multi-volume projects, many authors are contributing to the Horus Heresy books.
This meant book #2, False Gods, takes the set-up and characters that Abnett wrote for Horus Rising. Unfortunately in this case, for whatever reason, it just didn't work for me. The characters, most importantly, felt stale and lifeless in McNeill's hands, and although the plot progressed it felt very mechanical and somewhat forced compared to the degree of realism and depth of character Abnett achieved in the first installment. Perhaps on its own it would have been a decent novel, but as a sequel it was unfortunately disappointing.
Luckily book #3, Galaxy in Flames, managed to revert back to the higher quality of the first novel. Counter still took his own spin on the series, but it managed to make the characters burst out of the pages again and the true horror of this rebellion come to life. I suppose if any book of the three had to be bad, the middle one is the appropriate one, and overall the trilogy is still definitely worth reading.
Despite the range of quality, these three books manage to bring to life a tale always in the background of "modern" 40k novels, and bring a certain level of sense and realism to what at that point is a legendary event. A lot of what I have to say about it would be retreading the previous post, though. I wish I could say False Gods was skippable, but it's not if you don't want to be utterly lost in Galaxy of Flames, so I will close by saying that the strengths of the opening and closing volumes more than make up for the lackluster middle.
Vision of Escaflowne
This anime came on Max's recommendation, as he had a DVD box set, and it is a show I took quite some time getting through. I actually sped through the first half or so relatively quickly, but didn't finish the series until quite a while later. And there lies the main problem I had with the series: its lags a decent amount. Although it's a pretty interesting story, with good characters and a well-unified plot, most of the episodes felt longer than 20 minutes, and not necessarily in a good way. I appreciated what the show was trying to do, and overall the show was still good, but for whatever reason it didn't ever quite click in the way to make it great. Hitomi's social interactions also left quite a bit to desire often, since many of them were very cookie-cutter-ish (Person says something semi-dramatic, Hitomi gasps and says person's name multiple times before saying something foolish and running off in tears awkwardly). It's worth a watch if you get the chance, but is not a show I recommend just anybody pick up or go out of your way to find.
Badass: The Book
This was a gift from Jesse. I had read a decent amount of the website Badass of the Week, and quite enjoyed it. The main problem is what I have with a lot of writing on the internet, and it's simply that sitting at my computer staring at a screen is not my ideal way of reading. Naturally, a book form of a kind of "best of" of the website is an ideal answer. It's essentially a reformatting of many of the entries from the site with the added content of some illustrations and some sidebars, but that's all it really needed. If you like the website at all, it's definitely a fun read, although if you're exhaustively read the website it might not be a worthwhile purchase (unless you want to support the writer). It's a great combination of actual history, funny writing, fun facts and future conversation starters (well, maybe on the last one).
Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi
I watched the first episode of this show almost 7 years ago, but only now got around to actually seeing the rest of it. It's a wacky , short show of only 13 episodes, but works perfectly in this short format. It involves the two main protagonists jumping from one weird alternate universe to another, all of them paraodies of certain genres. I must say two of my favorite were the Dating Sim and Hollywood universes, the latter because I was familiar with almost every movie they referenced. While the first half is purely goofy, the show takes a surprising twist in the middle and becomes quite a bit more serious, with one episode lacking almost any humor. The remaining half is the two children heroes wrestling with the serious themes while still in these crazy world, and where the show in my opinion hit a slight problem. I felt the early episodes were almost a bit pointless, since they were really just almost pure silly, whereas the later episodes had a little difficulty in finding the right balance between drama and comedy. Despite this, it was still a fun little series that does a pretty great job overall. Oh, and the fan service.
So much fan service.
I mean seriously, this show made me re-evaluate the bar I have set for the stuff. I mean, if nothing else is telling, one of the recurring characters is called "Mune-mune" which I'm told (by Wikipedia) translates to "Chest-chest," and the main male character often finds his head buried in Mune-mune's mune. This alongside episodes like the Giant Robot/Sci-fi episode, where the majority of the time was spent trying to get back the female protagonist's panties made the show a bit extreme in that respect, but oh well.
Overall it's still a good show, and especially worth watching since it's short and thus easy to knock out in an evening or two, especially if you can stomach the constant sexual references.
Great Teacher Onizuka (Manga)
Readers of the blog might recall this manga scoring spot #5 of the list I wrote not too long ago. It was actually writing said list that prompted me to seek out a copy of the sadly out-of-print series, but I did mange to procure a copy. I realized that it's actually been almost 8 years since I first read the series, and given that the other series I revisited (Ororon, also on that list) had lost some of its luster, I was a bit apprehensive.
Thankfully, my fears were proven unfounded. GTO tells the story of an ex-biker, 5th-rate college graduate, horny loser who decides almost out of the blue to become the best teacher in all of Japan. He somehow miraculously finds a temporary position at a private academy, and is put in a problem class that caused three previous teachers to attempt suicide. Onizuka quickly discovers that the majority of the students are deeply troubled in one way or the other, and the faculty hides its own set of problems.
Over the course of 26 volumes Onizuka sets out to solve these problems in his own, unique way. On this reading, I actually noticed a fair amount of similairties to Kamina from TengenToppa Gurren-Lagann; both have a "nothing is impossible" attitude, are total badasses, and have a very unique problem-solving approach. I suspect the two would get along quite well if they were ever paired together. Regardless, the series is fantastic, with a great mix of intrigue, action, humor, drama, and serious messages. Although I didn't go to a school with anything like the problems GTO portrays, I know a lot of schools do, and the messages the series sends are nonetheless pretty deep and surprisingly meaningful. The series also spawned both an anime and live-action series (the latter of which's finale is apparently holds the record for largest number of viewers), neither of which I have yet to watch, but I intend to over the summer at some point. Given the manga's scarcity, and that the reviews I've read of the anime are quite good and state it's very faithful to the manga, I will likely recommend the anime to anyone intrigued; it really is a greta series, even 8 years later.
Hetalia: Axis Powers
This was originally something I picked up from Max, since his manga class read the first volume of the webcomic known as Hetalia. I did enjoy it to a certain extent, but not terribly so, but ended up trying out the anime since it was on Netflix instant. This turned out to be similar to Azumanga Daioh, where I wasn't a fan of the American-style comic strips, but quite enjoyed the anime.
Hetalia's first two seasons, under the subtitle of Axis Powers, tells the tale, theoretically, of WWII if the major powers were all cute young people. It sounds ridiculous, and I went in somewhat doubtful, but I ended up highly enjoying the show despite myself. The show is actually surprisingly knowledgeable about history, despite not showing it often, and although the characters are all explicitly based on internet stereotypes of countries, it somehow works. It was frequently hilarious and often cute, and although there was a fair smattering of "did they really just say that!?" moments, it's a great show. It's helped by having 5 minute episodes, which is why I was able to blast through 2 seasons of 26 episodes in such a short period; it's a great show to pick up, watch a couple episodes, and then do something else. It honestly lacks any kind of overarching plot, with the closest thing being the occasional pair or triplet of episodes continuing one short arc, and it doesn't even confine itself to WW2, instead ranging all over the place from the Holy Roman Empire all the way to the modern day with Sealand. I think, if nothing else, it gets away with the stereotypes because it's a kind of "equal opportunity racism," where no country is spared from the pokes and prods of humor. I'm also all about character humor, and this very much is "character" based humor. Beyond that, it's somewhat hard to encapsulate the series, but if nothing else, it really is short. I'd recommend watching an episode or two; at worst, you lose 10 minutes, and at best you find a really great show. Although apparently the fan-base is kind of scary, so I'd avoid that... >_> If anything else, apparently there's a second series under the subtitle "World Series" and a movie that is being slowly ported over to the US, so I'm looking forward to that.
Generation Kill
Generation Kill is a 7 part, 70 minute episodes HBO series based off the book of the same name. It's one of only two modern works I've seen that have dealt with the most recent Iraqi war, and compared to the other, The Hurt Locker, Generation Kill far exceeds it in every way. Based off the writings of a Rolling Stones journalist embedded with the 1st Recon Marines during the very initial invasion of the country, the show gives a very realistic, no-holds barred telling of life as a Marine. If it had been shot differently, the show probably could have passed as a documentary, and I actually went in thinking that it was. It provides an unflinching look at today's military, both the good and the awful, as well a giving a very unsettling view of the effects of the war.
Overall I'm a big fan of war shows and movies, so I'm a bit biased in that regard, but the show is one of the best I've ever seen. The key word really was realistic. Obviously I can't know what the situation was actually like, but compared to every other modern showing of war, this one just felt 'correct' for whatever reason. It really did feel like peering into events and a lifestyle totally foreign to me, and made me reevaluate some beliefs about the US military and our wars. If you're at all interested in this kind of thing, I highly recommend it.
The End...?
Well, that's quite a bit of my backlog eradicated. However, more looms on the horizon: A Song of Ice and Fire, both the book and television series, Ouran High School Host Club, Extras, and many other things will be completed for me soon, so expect more reviews as the summer progresses. Until then,
-HTMC
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