Yukikaze (1984)

Fix-up novel (made up of short stories sorted in chronological order) about a pilot and his semi-sentient battle plane Yukikaze on the world of Faery, where they battle against enigmatic aliens that invaded Earth years earlier through a portal in Antarctica. Some of my favorite novels are fix-ups (Accelerando, Mindplayers) but this isn’t among them. It’s an interesting read, but also slightly frustrating. Everything feels fragmented, the glimpses we get about the true nature of the aliens, about the war that is going on and about the main character. I wanted the novel to explore at least one thing with more depth, be it the main character and his motivations, the aliens and their motivations or how the war played out. But at the end all I had were small fragments of a bigger picture, that while not completely elusive, was still pretty much sketchy.

It’s still an interesting read. All too often alien invaders force Earth’s nations unite, here the whole conflict becomes a forgotten war by people on Earth, who still bicker among themselves like they do in reality. This makes the book feel more grounded and real. And the tidbits about the true nature of the aliens show an interesting picture. The JAM seem completely technological, who can’t get their head around the true nature of the enemy they are fighting (fleshy things like us). Like a more enigmatic version of the Transformers. It’s a bit disappointing that we don’t learn more about them, but that obviously wasn’t the focus of the novel. Too much of the text is given over to (for me) uninteresting and pretentious wankery about how the inhuman nature of the aliens changed the humans involved in the war. I found most of the philosophical musings pretty much devoid of real substance.

Brave Story (2006)

This animated version of the novel by Miyuki Miyabe is IMHO far more enjoyable than its source. Right now I’m struggling to get through the book, but I had none of these problems with the movie. Sure, one could easily say that the movie is dumbed down compared to the novel, but I rather see it as taking out all the pretentious and unnecessary elements to make it actually enjoyable and not as boring and tedious as the book. The movie is more lightweight, cutting out some of the more ambiguous character traits and plot lines.

It ends up being a fun adventure that still manages to conserve most of the original plot of the book without weighting it down with all the agonizing and emo gloom of the characters. The story is pretty typical for a certain fantasy sub genre. A real world character goes to a fantasy world to solve his real world problems, but instead learns another lesson about life and stuff. The book rubs these lesson too much into your face (among other stuff), the movies manages to be more subtle with it. So, even if you didn’t enjoy the book, watch the movie.

Batman: Under the Red Hood (2010)

UtRH is fascinating for a number of reasons. The movie takes a story that I thought required too much knowledge of Batman continuity to really get for the casual viewer, yet the movie manages to make it accessible. It places center a development that is despised by many comic readers (the return of a long dead character). Sometimes the more hardcore comic readers hold that certain deaths of more or less beloved characters should be sacred and not reversed, but time has proven them always wrong (Bucky, Barry Allen and Jason Todd in this case). Not that Todd was beloved by anyone, but his death was one of the sacred ones.

There’s a good reason for that resentment, since most deaths of superhero characters are nothing more than a gimmick (Jason Todd’s demise was decided by reader vote). Their inevitable return just rubs it more in. But UtRH takes this cheap gimmick and then turn it into a good story, which is really astounding. The movie has excellent pacing, the characterization of each character is spot on and the action is magnificent. And it’s really accessible, you don’t need to know much about DC or special Bat-continuity to enjoy the movie. Together with Wonder Woman it’s one of the best movies from the DC Universe Animated Original Movies line.

Knights of the Chalice (2009)

My main reason for not playing some older games has nothing to do with graphics or lack of sound or old-school gameplay, but with horrible, horrible interfaces. Okay, not really horrible, but I’m just too lazy to memorize countless keyboard commands or face a similar interface abomination. I’m talking about computer games here, not video games, whose simple controls have the bonus of making them easily playable even today. That’s the first reason why I like Knights of the Chalice so much. I have no problem with the graphics or the perspective, but the best is the easy-to-use interface.

Playing Knights of the Chalice reminded me of playing Pools of Darkness, the last goldbox game from the Forgotten Realms series. The Moonsea aka the Crimson Coast, trouble with giants (the early dungeons of PoD), a similar approach to narration, with the fights being the main component. Knights of the Chalice is a glorious reminder of the RPGs of yore. While it looks like overly generic fantasy on the outside (the evil lich lair, the evil giant castles, evil dragons), the game manages to be tremendous and unpretentious fun. You won’t see any overly original monster types or innovative world-building, but when someone does manage to present these cliched elements in a way that they feel somewhat fresh and fun again, I can only applaud.

But the best thing about the game is the battle system. It’s an excellent implementation of the Open Game Licence 3.5, that closely resembles the D&D system. If you’ve played any kind of CRPG with (A)D&D rules, you pretty much grok the system. The battles can be on the frustrating side at times, but unlike other games it rewards rethinking your tactics and how you develop your characters. Point in case is grapple. Enemies always went for my wizard, until I saw the metamagic feat that allowed me to cast even under a grapple. Really, closely studying the feat list is a must. In general the enemy AI is one of the best I’Ve encountered in a CRPG.

E.g. one enemy casts a field of fire, another enemy pushes me onto the burning field and then makes a grapple. When I managed to break the grapple and leave the field of fire, the second enemy again pushed me onto it, grappled me and then went on to kill my character. I haven’t been this surprised by a game before. And something like this happens all the time in the game. Sure, often the excellent AI allowed the enemies to kill my characters. They don’t give any kind of pardon or make stupid moves like in other games. But when you’ll eventually win one of the harder fights, it especially satisfying.

Okay, sometimes the difficulty is a bit grating (if you decide not to use crafting and don’t have more than one wizard), like the fight after you beat the red dragon and get back to your headquarter or when you have to fight in the undead tower with no way to rest. But these are minor complaints in the end. The rest is superb.

DC/Wildstorm: Dreamwar (2008)

Some of my recent reviews of crossovers (Final Crisis and Annihilation) might suggest that I don’t like crossovers per se, but that’s not the case. I just like them contained to a limited run with not much overspill into countless other related series. When done right they can be highly effective. In a certain way most team books are crossovers themselves, pitting various heroes against various world threatening enemies. There are exceptions, like the JSA line, that consists mainly of heroes who don’t have their own book. But back to crossovers, I actually like some (Cosmic Odyssey or JLA/JSA: Virtue and Vice). DC/Wildstorm: Dreamwar joins the ranks of those. It’s about an intrusion of DC heroes into the Wildstorm universe. Like all so often the heroes fight before they team-up to battle against a common foe. But Giffen manages to include that old staple in an ingenious way.

Despite the high number of DC and Wildstorm heroes that turn up, the 6-issue mini manages to make them work in a way that you forget that this isn’t character-driven but plot-driven. Giffen really captures the voice of the characters, both the DC and the Wildstorm ones (actually, with the Wildstorm Earth just another world in the DC multiverse, they are also DC heroes, in a certain way). Some really memorable scenes here, for example when the old JSA heroes fight the Tranquility residents. Giffen tries to show the different approaches to superhero comics, depicting the DC characters as more idealistic and the Wildstorm characters as more pragmatic and a little more down-to-Earth. That aspect seemed a bit forced, but using characters from two different comic universe always leads to these sweeping generalizations.

That said, it’s really a neat mini-series that manages to offer a believable threat level, fun dialog and excellent action. If all team-books or crossovers were similar quality-wise, I would enjoy most of them far more.

Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti (1989)

This isn’t part of the official Splatterhouse series, it’s a parody of the first game for the NES. The biggest change is the transformation of all characters into super deformed characters, which is probably the first and most obvious clue that this isn’t entirely serious (hence it being called SD Splatterhouse by its fan-translators, since the game never saw a western release). Some of the monsters and whole scenes from the first Splatterhouse are in the game, albeit changed due to the different style. What you can expect in terms of style is a vampire who does the moonwalk, a cutesy variation of the alienburster and similar cutiefied horror cliches.

The gameplay is not the typical beat’n run gameplay from the original, but more in line with typical platformers of that time. You wield an axe to kill enemies, but avoiding them by jumping over them is also an option (something you couldn’t do in the original). It’s a long game, but since it’s more on the easy side, the length doesn’t pose much of a challenge. Despite it’s overly cute look, it’s really fun to play. There’s also a secret ending that implies that this is actually a prequel to the first Splatterhouse, but how canonical these events are is up to debate considering the nature of the game.

Sentinel (2003-2006)

Sentinel is a series aimed at kids, who still haven’t seen the story of the underdog who gets power, takes revenge on those who torment him at school, learns that this isn’t the right way and tries to atone by using his newfound powers for good. Not the most original take, but since the desired public for this wasn’t as jaded as the more older comic readers, it didn’t matter too much. The art direction was a fusion of western and Manga style. I can’t say I really liked it, not because I have something against either style, but because the art looked a bit supbar. It’s a nice read, with mostly convincing characters, even if a bit unoriginal. The whole series (volume 1 (12 issues) ran from 2003 to 2004 and volume 2 (5 issues) ran form 2005 to 2006) is collected in three digest TPBs. Apart from the Sentinel and the one mutant, it doesn’t really feel like a typical Marvel superhero comic, mostly because it’s not about heroes (in the superhero sense), but about growing up. Coming of age and all that, with the Marvel universe tacked on.

Annihilation (2005-2007)

A crossover event that started 2005 with the Drax the Destroyer mini and ended 2007 with the Annihilation: Heralds of Galactus 2-parter that showed what happened to some of the big fish who crossed Galactus path. The whole events, mostly orchestrated by Keith Giffen was intended as a showcase for some of the cosmic heroes of the Marvel universe. The big threat was the old F4 foe Annihilus, who sees his universe threatened by our own and begins to invade ours. Interestingly, despite not the focus of Marvel marketing, the whole series is well collected. All minis and essential issues have been collected in three volumes.

The first volume collects the Drax the Destroyer mini, the Annihilation: Prologue one-shot and the Annihilation: Nova mini. These are actually my favorite parts of the whole series, especially the Drax the Destroyer mini. Despite being somewhat negligible concerning the bigger plot, it has excellent art and an ingenious implementation of a pretty generic plot. A ship with alien prisoners crashes in a backyard town on earth and the aliens try to enslave the humans until their ship is repaired. Brilliant dialog, especially everything the Skrull says and does and the banter between Drax and Cammi. Like I said, it’s not important in the bigger scheme of things, but I enjoyed the hell out of it. The Nova mini by Abnett and Lanning is also pretty good, if a bit more conventional.

The second volume collects the Silver Surfer, the Super Skrull and the Ronan mini. Of these I liked the Silver Surfer mini the most, but the other two are okay too. It’s all cosmic adventure, but hampered by the fact that all lead into the Annihilation mini, which is collected in the third volume together with the Heralds of Galactus 2-parter. I say hampered, because I actually didn’t really enjoy the main Annihilation 6-part mini. While I like Giffen in general (see the Drax the Destroyer mini), the joining of all the minis into a big, coherent space opera epic never really worked for me. It felt too fragmented, the narrative too disjointed by trying to give each character some space. This sadly meant none of the characters had enough space, enough characterization like in each of the minis. Another problem was the nature of the threat. A big wave of interchangeable enemies meant that most fights were quite boring, as squashing bugs isn’t as much fun as battles between heroes and recognizable enemies. It’s still an okay read, but just not as enjoyable as I was expecting (and lead to believe by so many gushing reviews of the whole event). Basically, good start, but fizzles out toward the end. And some of the most interesting stuff either happened off-screen or in issues not collected (like Galactus and Silver Surfer’s imprisonment).

It also has hilarious bad science (apart from the obvious comic stuff). There’s no center of the universe where the big bang originated. That’s just wrong. No edge likewise.

Splatterhouse 3 (1993)

The third Splatterhouse overhauled the formula of the first two games a bit. You still enter a monster infested house, but instead of merely beating a linear succession of levels, each level is a whole floor of the house where you can move freely from room to room. Each room has some monsters you have to beat to open the doors. On each floor is a time limit. If you don’t manage to reach the end of each level in time, your wife and son are going to die. Actually, that’s pretty difficult and I never managed to save either of them. But since the bad ending reminded me of the Pyrrhic victory that was the end of the first game, I actually liked it. The gameplay is more like a beat’n run than a simple 2d-actioner (think Double Dragon, only with monsters). Controls and art direction were excellent. Of all three Splatterhouse games I liked this the most. Due to the more demanding fights and the bigger size the game just felt more substantial, without becoming too repetitive.

Martian Manhunter: The Others Among Us (2007)

This TPB collects the Martian Manhunter 8-issue mini that run from 2006 to 2007 and showed him as a looner after the events of the World War III mini from 2007. J’onn gets into contact with another green Martian who has been hold prisoner in a secret facility. Shortly before he dies he tells of others like him held prisoner there. J’onn frees them and tries to find out the whole why and how of it. I really dug the redesign of J’onn’s costume and the plot was interesting, even if the final outcome of the whole story was much more generic than I had hoped for. The best story element was the true nature of the freed Martian’s. Overall an okay read. The biggest weakness is that the characterization of most of the other heroes J’onn meets in the course of the story is completely off (e.g. Green Arrow acting as a dog for the government) and the whole story is a bit too thin for eight issues. Not really worth collecting, but good for one reading.