Zombies Calling (2007)

I’m not a big fan of zombies. Neither in movies, books or comics. Can’t say why, but seeing hordes of formers humans stumble around shouting BRAINS doesn’t really entice me. Still, that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy a zombie-infused story from time to time. Erin Faith Hicks Zombies Calling is one of those, a zombie-story I thoroughly enjoyed. A school campus gets invaded by zombies and two girls and a boy have to find a way to survive. Accidentally, one of the girls is also a zombie-nut and follows rules laid down by all zombie-stories to survive, only to learn at the end that it’s not a story and that some things once broken can’t be mended again.

Like with her other comic I recently read, what makes Erin Faith Hicks creation work are the characters and their banter, which is just fun to follow. Not exactly the height of realism, but how we would like to believe we and our friends talk with each other, full of smart wit and fun and if required by the story the occasional deep insight. And she makes it looking easy to create genuine fun and enjoyable normal characters who aren’t all that special and yet are easy to remember. That’s no mean feat.

Same Difference (2003)

Same Difference is accomplished in both art and subject matter (young adults growing up and learning to cope with the world and their own faults) and yet I didn’t like it much. We often try to find a rational reason why we dislike something, or at least not like it as much as we think we should, but I think often enough it comes down to emotional reactions about which we have less control than we think we do. I disliked the main character’s weakness as a youth and I disliked what his present day girlfriend did to a complete stranger. I know that the comic is about characters who learn to forgive themselves and try to become better human beings, and yet I couldn’t do the same, at least not on the level where it counted. My initial reaction to the characters damned the entire story for me.

Doctor Who S2 (2006)

Let’s talk about the second season of the 2005 revival of Doctor Who. Why? Because I’m going through the lovely DVDbox (beautiful design by the way) of the first four seasons and just love to talk about it. Just like the first season there’s no real overarching plot, just single episodes the lead into an explosive finale that again has the Daleks as the big bad, though together with the Daleks the Cybermen also play an important role. The last two episodes – Army of Ghosts and Doomsday – answer just who would win in a match between Cybermen and Daleks (the answer should be obvious to any long-time Doctor Who fan, but its fun to watch nonetheless).

Season two is also the first season of David Tennant as the tenth Doctor and Billie Piper’s last season as Who’s companion Rose Tylor. I’m sort of sad to see Rose/Billie go, because she really managed to hold her own against the Doctor and at the same time managed to pull it of convincingly to fall in love with him (and he with her). If you have even a shred of romance in you, the last episode will make you pull out your handkerchief package (I sadly have none, so I could only observe it, but still felt Rose’s farewell was pulled off marvelously).

Like always, when watching Doctor Who I wonder why I do it. It’s horribly in its depiction of technology/science, but I really like the attitude of the Doctor. We all have moments when we watch into the mirror and feel like our life is entirely worthless, just a blip on the radar of eternity. And then appears the Doctor who manages to celebrate the everyday common man and women. Who is entirely unable to live our domestic, boring lives, even if he wanted to, but still cheers us on to be curious and live a good life. Basically he’s the guy who manages to makes us strive to be better human beings just by being around.

Season two (or 28th if you really want to count) has some pretty cool episodes: Queen Victoria and an alien werewolf as well as the foundation of the Torchwood Institute (Tooth and Claw), Anthony Head (Rupert Giles from Buffy) as the leader of vampire lookalike aliens who have taken over a school (School Reunion), the return of the Cybermen (Rise of the Cybermen and The Age of Steel) and what basically amounts to Doctor Who versus the Devil (The Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit).

Doctor Who is unique in how easy it changes track from the past to the present and the far future, incorporating elements of science fiction, horror and history into one big melange that is rarely if ever realistic, but alway compelling to follow.

Justice League: Doom (2012)

Justice League Doom is by no means a bad movie. But it does exemplifies what went wrong with the animated DC movies after the end of Justice League Unlimited. Which is, that none of the subsequent animated DC movie offerings were part of the animated DC universe. Long-time comic readers often groan at the amount of continuity their favorite universe has accumulated over time, while forgetting that one of the biggest draws of the universes is the continuity itself. Good stories I can easily get, but good stories in an on-going universe with a decades long history, there aren’t too many of them around.

So what’s the problem with Justice League Doom? Well, the original story by Mark Waid was a sort of culmination of years of continuity build-up, something that succeeded not because it was entirely stand alone, but because it tied into the Justice League history from the (third) inception in Waid’s own A Midsummer’s Nightmare right through the entirety of Morrison’s run on the title and then to Waid’s run again. Sure, it can be read without having read the years of build-up, but if you have it packs a much bigger punch.

And that was my feeling when watching Justice League Doom, that I had missed the years of build-up to transform the movie experience from merely from watchable to good or even great. I had similar reactions to Crisis on Two Earths and the animated Superman movies (Doomsday, Public Enemies, Apocalypse and All-Star). If they had tied them into the animated DC universe, tweaked them to fit the continuity that came before, all these movies could have had a much bigger impact and still functioned as self contained stories.

Vampire Hunter D (1985)

Most people think of the 2000 movie when Vampire Hunter D is mentioned, not the original 1985 one. There is ample reason for that: the animation of the sequel was nothing but breathtaking, the pacing a perfectly high-tension ride from start to finish and the story – while pretty simple – managed to squeeze out just the right amount of plot twists and emotion to make the movie a remarkable experience.

That said, while the original is considerably weaker, it’s not as bad as I was expecting. Actually, it only looks bad in comparison to the sequel, judged on its own it’s quite okay. The animation is top notch for its time, the tone is most of the time just as serious as the sequel and the story, while simple, is interesting enough to keep you watching. The only jarring thing about the movie is the romance between D and Doris Lang which goes from zero to hundred without moving through any of the intermediate states.

I have no problem with romances, but they should at least be believable. Even if it’s love on first sight, the viewer should realize that by the character interaction, not by being told by them. Really, the romance comes out of the left field and seems completely tacked on. Considering that in a movie about a vampire-controlled post-apocalyptic world where monsters, magic and advanced technology are everyday occurrences the romance part is the one that breaks my suspension of disbelief, should tell you how bad it was done.

Afro Samurai: Resurrection (2009)

The sequel to the first Afro Samurai manages to be just as stupid and inane as the first part. The story is about the never before mentioned sister of one of the more important players in the first part. She’s out for revenge, so she resurrects Afro Samurai’s father and after various violent and mostly pointless encounters to stretch out the running time, Afro goes head to head with his gen-cloned (or whatever technology is used) father.

I would like to say that the sequel has improved upon the original in some ways, but alas it’s exactly the same. If you like heavily stylized Anime violence with only a tenuous grip on plot, story or characterization, then go for it. Otherwise it’s pretty much a waste of time and money (again).

Doctor Who S1 (2005)

When I started watching the first season of the new Doctor Who show all I knew where a few black and white pictures I’d seen before and a few tidbits of information that gave the impression of a show that, by any description, couldn’t be called serious science fiction and that used cheap looking special effects more than it should. And to some degree all my preconceptions were proven true. Compared to most American science fiction the show is even less interested in a credible and believable setting than those are. Everything seems possible, even the most bizarre and nonsensical things. It’s not about technology that looks like magic, Doctor Who is mostly about magic that gets explained away as science based technology.

On the one hand, this is a maddening approach to someone who really likes hard SF. Most plots of Doctor Who really don’t work if you use more than a few braincells to take them apart. It’s not just the science and technology, it’s the lack of convincing futures. A future in the Doctor Who universe is the 21st century with a few gadgets throw in (often a spaceship as well) or some bizarre technology nobody would think up. The aliens who come to invade Earth regularly never have a convincing reason for doing so (the economics never makes sense, but others reasons are just as stupid), apart from the genocidal ones like the Daleks. And the schemes of the Doctor’s enemies are often contrived to the point of being borderline stupid, as they could have gotten the same result with something much more simple.

Doctor Who looks like a science fiction show by a complete autodidact who has never participated in the genre discussion, doesn’t know the terminology, doesn’t know what others have done before and what looks quaint these days. As if someone is developing his own concept of what science fiction should be, but instead of choosing well trodden paths goes onto weird side roads. It’s a show where time has stopped somewhere in the past, where the idea of Matrioshka brains or even a simple Dyson shell turning up seems utterly incomprehensible, apart as a warning for technology gone wrong. And yet, despite inane plots, wonky futurism and a make it up as you go along approach, it somehow manages to be more compelling than it should be.

Underneath the cheap surface and the absurdity is the story of an all-powerful but isolated being who seeks companions to share with them the wonders of the universe and in the process gets a little bit of the old friendship and family feeling he’s missing. Even 900 hundred years old time travelers are apparently social animals who need others to keep them sane and grounded. None of us knows what it means to be the first, but needing other people to share with them the world is easy to get behind.

But, and that is particularly the strength of the new series, things are shown to be even less black and white than in the old days. Dalek shows that the Doctor can be just as driven and relentless as the things he is often fighting, Rose and The Unquiet Dead are all about unintended consequences from the Doctor’s actions. As well-meaning as he often is, the Doctor’s track record is far from being impeccable.

Wizorb (2011)

There are games you never knew you wanted until you played them. Wizorb is basically an Breakout/Arkanoid variant that on first sight looks like an action-adventure from the 8-bit/16-bit era of console gaming (an 8-bit color palette with an 16-bit level of graphical polish). There’s even a section where you can enter a town and talk to people like in an action-adventure or similarly styled jRPGs, but apart from a few bits of interaction it’s not really all that relevant.

Gameplay follows in the steps of the predecessors: you have a paddle, a ball and have to destroy all blocks in each level (5 worlds with 12 levels and 5 bosses will keep you occupied for some time). There are a few new gameplay elements I haven’t seen before in a game like this, common (moving) enemies (which you have to destroy like the blocks), treasure chests, secrets rooms and the boss battles, which are all great additions. But the biggest thing that kept me playing was the feeling of an overall story. In most puzzle or arcade games I get bored after I grok the basic gameplay, but the promise of an overarching narrative was what kept playing on in the more frustrating moments.

And make no mistake, if you don’t have any twitch skills, you won’t advance far in the game. As much as I loved the game, it definitely has its throw the gamepad at the wall moments. For each world you only have a limited number of lives and continues until you have to start over again, and losing all in level ten makes you groan in frustration easily. So, prepare to train hard to beat the game. But if you proceed you get one of the most polished looking Breakout-clones you’ll ever encounter. If that’s something that might tickle your fancy, try it out.

Legend of Grimrock (2012)

Like most people who love the Dungeon Master/Eye of the Beholder mold of gameplay, I lapped up Legend of Grimrock like someone who has gone far too long without water in the desert. But just beyond bringing back a long since believed dead RPG subgenre, Almost Human managed to modernize it and give it the slick presentation to make it feel just as vital for gaming these days as those games did in the past, without compromising any of the gameplay.

Mind you, the game isn’t perfect. If you plan to enter the Grimrock, you’ll should expect countless plate and button puzzles to sate you for a lifetime. Really, if there was one thing I hated about Eye of the Beholder, it was the sometimes inane and cryptic puzzle design. And Grimrock goes far beyond the call of even those games and cranks the puzzling up to eleven. Sure, some people say this is actually a core element of those types of games, but I disagree. A few puzzles are nice, but if I wanted to play adventure games, I would do so.

That said, after a few tries you’ll probably be able to solve most of them, as you learn what type of puzzles the game throws at you. But honestly, after some time solving just another of those becomes a chore. I think at level 9 puzzle fatigue began to set in for me and I started looking up a FAQ, as I couldn’t be arsed to decipher the more inane ones or just lost my appetite for them. Also, there was one later puzzle that annoyed me to no end, as you had to put four pretty common items into the right slots. Apart from the annoyingly cryptic hints, that far into the game I’ve learned to unload useless stuff like skulls and stones somewhere on the ground whenever I felt like it. And since I freely moved between different levels, I now had to backtrack nearly three levels to find three of the four items.

So, no, the game isn’t perfect, especially if you prefer your RPGs with a little less puzzling. But then there’s good stuff too. I love fighting in Grimrock. In most RPGs, when you reach the endgame, there are few monsters that can seriously harm you. Not so in Grimrock, even weaker enemies can kill you rather fast when you let your concentration wander. The heavier ones though, can kill you in mere seconds. From the first moment you enter Grimrock, till the end, you’re endlessly on the lookout for monsters coming around a corner. Soon each new room looks like a deathtrap and often that fear is justified. I haven’t played a game in a long time that kept me at the edge of my seat for it’s entire playtime like Grimrock did.

Not that the battle system is perfect either. Magic is nearly useless. I initially started with a party with two mages, but after seeing how cumbersome the interface for spells is, decided to start anew with no mages. And never looked back. But yeah, fighting is a high tension affair that never got boring in the game. There’s just enough variety to the enemies to not get bored with seeing the same type of monster again and again, but not too much to make most of them forgettable.

The skill system is no revelation in terms of breadth, but since all you do is exploring, puzzling and fighting, there’s not much use for an extensive system anyway. So, it’s a barebones action RPG in terms of complexity, which fits right in with the games it’s trying to emulate.

But where Grimrock is unbeatable is atmosphere. Like some of the best CRPGs, Grimrock tells its story in pieces: here a few rotten parchments from a traveler who wandered these mazes long before you, there an inscription on the wall that inferences deeper mysteries hiding deeper down. Even the puzzles and the level structure itself reveals a rich backstory. Sure, not an especially original one (long forgotten evil sealed in a dungeon is pretty common in fantasy), but the delivery of the story is what counts and Grimrock manages it pitch perfect. I’m sure even after you’ve beaten the game the mere memory of exploring Grimrock, the sights of the levels and the intensity of the fights will stay with you.

Legend of Grimrock manages to transcendent all its shortcoming and provides a truly magnificent experience. Who would have thought that after Anvil of Dawn there would ever be another game of its kind, one that rivals even the classics.

House of the Sun (1995)

To some novels you come back years later only to discover, that what once was an utterly enthralling read turned out to be a pile of garbage with a bit more experience under the belt. Sometimes, though, you discover something that is even better than the first time. I must admit when I first read Findley’s last novel and the sequel to 2XS, I was a bit disappointed. The ending turned out to be an utter Pyrrhic victory, and while I loved seeing Derek Montgomery again, I had a hard time accepting that the last thing we would hear from him was this personal wreckage.

House of the Sun can be succinctly described as the Shadows of Hawaii Sourcebook mixed with the continuing adventures of Shadowrun’s most famous self-styled detective Derek Montgomery. When we had last seen Derek, he had survived an attack on a wasp spirit hideout, saving his sister in the process but also lost a couple of friends. Not only that, his self-perception has cracked (and not just a little bit).

So, a few years later Derek is basically hiding from the world, playing things save, with the only thing he has done of worth is saving his sister. And then his old “pal” Jacques Barnard calls in a favor, that turns from a simply delivery job into an absolute nightmare involving local terrorists trying to free the Kingdom of Hawaii from the influences of the corporations and other outsiders.

House of the Sun feels like the middle part of a trilogy. While Derek wins the day, so to speak, at the end of the book he has reached a new low. There’s a certain beauty in the way how Findley orchestrates how everything goes “kaput” for Derek. Throughout the book Derek slowly tries to get out of his shell, aware that this opens him up for further hurt, but still hopeful. There’s nothing like the ending, when his worst fears get confirmed.

Everybody lies is the watchword of the second Derek Montgomery novel and sadly the last word on his life, as there’ll never be a third one. I expect that Findley would have written a third one where Derek learned to mature beyond the simple equations of trust and betrayal and learned to enjoy life as it comes. Because, after all, despite his emo-mopiness, Derek’s a survivor. And you can’t keep a good man down for long.