I was looking through my old documents bin and found a story I wrote ages ago. I’m not going to comment too much about it here except to say that it’s based on Love Hina and even after all this time I don’t find it too embarrassing. You can navigate to it using the menu at the top of the page or just follow this link.
Review: Forever Lost
Forever Lost is a triumph on multiple levels. The artwork and music combine to give the player an oppressive, atmosphere experience. The game hints at a well-developed backstory which is intriguing enough to make me want to know more. And most importantly, it has some of the most complex yet thoughtfully designed puzzles I’ve seen in a modern adventure game. There are two episodes currently out with a third promised by the end of this year. I can’t wait to buy and play it.
The game is played in first person, and you navigate the world through a series of still scenes much like Myst way back in the day. This also has the effect of putting you into the mindset of your character. The game begins as your character wakes up and blinks open his eyes. As his vision comes into focus, you see an empty room with a bed on the floor and a cryptic message scrawled on the wall. How did you get here? What is your name? Why are the room’s doors locked? Your character is as clueless and bewildered as you, and thus the quest begins to escape from the room and find out what happened.
The Flash S01.E02 — Fastest Man Alive
After the exposition dump that was the pilot episode, it’s hard to see how follow-up episodes could possibly keep up. Yet somehow there’s no sophomore slump for this show. There was plenty of character development, action, and intrigue to go around. And the villain of the week was just as compelling as in the pilot. The Duplicating Man’s power worked as an excellent foil to Barry’s power, giving him too many targets to deal with despite his super speed. And judging by the previews, the villain next week will be an equal match for the Flash in a completely different way. The writers are clearly having fun playing with the Flash’s power and how creative he has to be to use it against his enemies. My only concern is that two villains so far have been killed off and it’s hard to see how the writers can keep coming up with new ones at this rate. Hopefully they will follow Arrow’s example and keep a few of the really powerful ones around to come back time and again.
Barry and Detective West have real changes happen in their relationship. Joe’s change from discouraging parent to supportive backup was a little too fast and pat, but I do want to see what comes of his decision to work together with Barry to investigate the death of Barry’s mother. Hopefully flashbacks will not be as prevalent on this show as in Arrow. Oliver Queen is constantly haunted by what happened to him on the island, but Barry is not defined by his tragedy.
Meanwhile, Dr. Harrison Wells turns out to have even darker sides than suggested in the pilot. We knew that he could actually walk and that he was probably from the future, but who suspected that he was capable of murder? This seems to form the other overarching plot of the series, and it’s even more intriguing than the mystery of Nora Allen’s murder (especially since comic book fans will already have some idea of who did it).
The fakeout with the Duplicating Man’s clone showing up at S.T.A.R. labs was lame, though. The writers should be better than that.
There were hints that Barry is capable of getting under Caitlin Snow’s skin which could be read as a tease for a future relationship. I am personally fine with their relationship where it is now, but I hope it never develops into anything romantic. For one thing, it’s cliché, and she has plenty of character on her own without being Barry’s leading lady. Secondly, Iris seems much more clearly established as the romantic interest, and Candice Patton has more than enough chemistry with Grant Gustin to carry the role (despite the slight ickiness of the two characters being adopted siblings).
Questions
What exactly happens to all the clones after Duplicating Man is defeated? They apparently just lie there. Are they actually organic material generated from his body? Does someone have to clean them all up?
And whatever happened to the suit being necessary to Barry’s power since it is heat and friction resistant? Can he actually run just as fast in regular clothing?
Agents of SHIELD S02.E04 — I Will Face My Enemy
Actually a pretty strong episode today.
The Good
Skye is surprisingly plausible as a secret agent as long as she doesn’t have to get into fights. This show has gotten much better ever since they stopped trying to portray her as a super special snowflake for whom it’s worth moving heaven and earth to save. The plot about Coulson’s illness is much more intriguing.
Watching Agent May pretend to be jokey and capable of laughter was hilarious.
Coulson preparing to hop through the laser grid and May simply stepping through because they don’t have time to waste.
I don’t know how much of the fighting was actually performed by Ming-Na Wen and how much was her stuntwoman, but the fight scenes were top notch.
No storylines around Ward, his dark past, and possible redemption.
The Meh
Raina is a nice character and all, but where is her story going to go? After all this time we still don’t know what her motivation is.
The Bad
May’s shoes mysteriously change into wedge heels during action scenes. I know there’s only so much pain we can expect Ming-Na Wen to put up with for her art, but it didn’t have to be so obvious.
The Dumb
It’s become clear that the writers and Marvel at large have no intention of explaining what HYDRA stands for. They were originally introduced in Captain America as an organization that was too extreme even for the Nazis. Fast forward to today and they appear to be basically an ordinary terrorist organization trying to take over the world without much of a fascist ideology. It further reinforces the unfortunate trend of Marvel comics having absolutely nothing to say about the real world.
While we’re at it, how exactly does HYDRA get funding and keep operating with so many people given that the full might of the US military is presumably on them?
Gotham S01.E04 — Arkham
This was a rather slow moving episode mostly concerned with setup. The biggest change was that Barbara told Jim about her relationship with Renee Montoya. It’s not clear where their story goes from here. In comics canon, Jim cheated on Barbara with Sarah Essen and eventually divorced Barbara to marry Sarah. However, the character with that name in Gotham is Lieutenant Sarah Essen who is not only Jim’s superior officer but also pretty openly corrupt. An affair between the two of them seems unlikely. If I had to guess, I would predict that Jim will eventually tell Barbara everything, but it’s not clear when that will happen or what Barbara will decide to do in the meantime. It’s that unpredictability that makes Jim and Barbara’s story the most interesting to me.
Everybody else is proceeding along expected paths. Oswald Cobblepot is moving up in the ranks at the Maroni restaurant. Fish Mooney continues to hatch plots to unseat Falcone. Bruce sees further corruption in Gotham and is told that it’s worth trying to save it. Some of the details may surprise (I’m guessing Fish Mooney intends to use her new singer to seduce someone, possibly Falcone), but there are no unexpected swerves in this episode.
Other elements of the typical Gotham formula were a little weak this time around. The villain’s gimmick was an easily identifiable spike weapon, and other criminals apparently knew where he worked. These seem like major weaknesses for a hitman, and he also did not have the flair and theatricality of the Balloonman. The political corruption story was also a bit silly. Killing City Council members is a terrible way to swing votes. And the involvement of the Wayne family was a bit forced. Why exactly did they have a plan to rehabilitate the Arkham district? Thomas Wayne was a doctor and wealthy businessman, not a realtor.
Last note: Between Selina’s attack on a gangster in the previous episode, the assassin in this episode, and the Joker’s magic trick in The Dark Knight, the Batman universe is apparently a terrible place for eyes.
Review: Lost Echo
I usually wait until the end of a review to mention the price of a game, but in this case it’s useful to set expectations for Lost Echo. At $2.99, Lost Echo costs considerably less than Broken Sword or The Journey Down or even Gemini Rue. Developer Kickback Studios is apparently made up of a two-person team who worked on the game for two years. That they were able to put together a game this complete and polished is a testament to their dedication and the power of modern independent gaming.
Agents of SHIELD S02:E03 — Really, Where to Begin?
I’m not sure why I still bother watching Agents of SHIELD. Multiple places online have declared that the show became good after the Captain America crossover when HYDRA revealed itself and SHIELD became a rogue organization. And while in some ways the show has become better, it’s still not really good.
Take this most recent episode, for example. It’s now been revealed that Simmons is working undercover, infiltrating HYDRA. This is silly for all kinds of reasons. First of all, as multiple characters point out, she’s a terrible liar. Just because the show lampshades that fact doesn’t make it any better. Secondly, this plotline makes HYDRA look like imbeciles. They actually knew of her previous affiliation with SHIELD. Why would they ever take her on? And thirdly, why did Coulson keep it a secret from everyone else? He seems to have taken on SHIELD’s bad habit of keeping secrets just for the sake of keeping them. It’s not as if he has a large organization full of potential leaks now.
And let’s not even get started on Skye’s heart rate monitor. To call it a clunky narrative device would be an insult to clunky objects. The first rule of storytelling is to show, not tell. Chloe Bennett actually did a pretty good job conveying her character’s calm or internal turmoil as the plot demanded. There was no need to have her constantly checking her monitor to show us that her heart rate had spiked.
Agents of SHIELD had the seeds of a good idea, but its execution has been almost consistently terrible. And unfortunately, interviews with the writers and producers indicate that they don’t understand what has gone wrong.
The Flash Pilot — City of Heroes
In the DC comics pantheon, the Flash is somewhat analogous to Iron Man in terms of popularity. Before his cinema debut, Iron Man was a popular character but not quite on the level of mega-stardom achieved by Spider-Man or the X-Men. Iron Man is now a big star, but that has less to do with anything inherent to the character and more with a tour de force performance by Robert Downey, Jr. In a similar way, the Flash is a character whom comics fans are generally aware of, but he does not have nearly the name recognition of Superman or Batman. Grant Gustin is no Robert Downey, Jr., but he is likable and charismatic enough to carry a series. The Flash has the potential to raise its hero’s profile in much the same way Arrow did.
The pilot episode plays like an exercise in avoiding expected pitfalls. For one thing, despite Barry Allen’s predictably tragic background (it seems that superheroes aren’t allowed to have both surviving parents), he’s quite well-adjusted and doesn’t allow his past to define who he is today. The episode fills in all the essential details so that we can understand the setting but does not attempt to cram too much exposition in at once. We get hints that Dr. Harrison Wells is not all he seems to be and that there is potential territory to be mined in Dr. Caitlin Snow’s past. But the show writers are confident that there will be time to flesh out those stories later. Meanwhile, Detective West finds out about Barry’s powers by the end of the episode instead of spending the whole season in the dark. And while it’s clear that Barry understands the responsibility conferred by his powers, he doesn’t view them as a burden. Rather, he sees them as a gift. And why not? Being able to run several hundred miles per hour would be fun.
It helps that there doesn’t seem to be a weak link in the cast. Aside from Gustin, there is Candice Patton who is winsome and appealing, displaying genuine chemistry with her co-star and generally being the opposite of Katie Cassidy’s Laurel on Arrow. Tom Cavanaugh and Jesse L. Martin are screen veterans who have nothing to prove and inhabit their roles with comfortable assurance (it probably helps that Martin is playing yet another cop). And Danielle Panabaker and Carlos Valdes convey their personalities in the short screen time that they are allowed. It is interesting that Valdes’ Cisco Ramon is being portrayed as the geek of the group whereas Barry himself was brought in as the uber-nerd on Arrow last season.
The pilot did have its clunky moments. The dialogue hits too hard on Barry’s constant tardiness and his laments that he can’t run fast enough. Moreover, it’s not quite clear why the police treat him as a nuisance. He may often be late, but he is also an incredibly efficient CSI, able to analyze and identify a car just by looking at its tire tracks without the aid of instruments or a reference book (he even has floating text appear next to things he looks like much like Sherlock Holmes in the BBC series). And the flipside of not cramming in too much exposition is that the pace of the pilot can seem to breeze by rather quickly. Despite early scenes suggesting that Barry does not have complete control over when his powers activate, he masters them enough by the end of the episode to run around in circles and undo a cyclone.
There’s also the matter of how this is going to fit in with Arrow. That show took a Nolan-esque approach to the superhero genre, treating them as seriously and realistically and possible. The Flash is about superpowers and barely even acknowledges associated issues such as the friction generated when Barry runs. It will take some careful directing to reconcile the different tones of the two shows when they crossover. And for that matter, what use is Oliver Queen going to be when the villains can generate tornadoes and his ally runs faster than a flying arrow?
These are all questions for later. The purpose of a pilot episode is to demonstrate what the show is about and interest audiences enough to tune in to the next episode. And in those goals, The Flash succeeds completely.
Gotham S01:E03 — The Balloonman
The thing about Gotham is that it’s a TV show that necessarily plays with expectations and foreshadowing. We all know that this story ends with Batman donning the cowl and taking to the streets. The show is about filling in the details about how he got there.
Well, sort of. It turns out Gotham is also about the rise of supervillains. People like Carmine Falcone are intimidating but in the end only human. The Riddler, Penguin, Poison Ivy, and Joker will eventually make him look like a low level thug. And so in this episode we have Oswald Cobblepot stumbling occasionally but figuring out how to climb the ladder of organized crime until he shows up at Jim Gordon’s door, dressed up to the nines and announcing that a war is imminent.
Which is not to say that Bruce Wayne is a sideshow. I had hoped that he would mainly stay in the background since his origins as Batman are so well-known that it would be hard to put a fresh spin on them. So far, though, he isn’t overstaying his welcome. It was also nice to see Alfred trying to cheer up young Bruce by fencing with him. But because this is a show about foreshadowing and expectations, the audience must also watch that scene with a certain amount of concern. Alfred is teaching Bruce how to fight and therefore unintentionally creating Batman even though that must be the last thing he wants.
Meanwhile, the case of the week is the Balloonman. Because he takes on corrupt officials who would otherwise escape justice, he clearly serves as an inspiration to Bruce Wayne (who finally starts eating after he watches a news story about the Balloonman). At the same time, the Balloonman is a killer and his outlandish methods foreshadow the gimmicks that will become the modus operandi of future villains. It was a clever way to show how, as multiple characters have noted, the city is falling apart and starting to go a little crazy.
I don’t know if this was intentional, but Fish Mooney ended up giving an ironic echo to Jim Gordon. When asked by Selina Kyle why he wants to find the real Wayne killer, Gordon answers, “I want to see the person responsible brought to justice.” Selina snorts in response because she can’t believe he would actually mean that.
Meanwhile, when questioned by the Major Crimes Unit, Fish Mooney says, “I just want justice for little Oswald.” This time nobody laughs because nobody believes she really means it.
Speaking of which, it’s interesting to contrast how the Major Crimes Unit works compared to Jim Gordon and Harvey Bullock. Detectives Montoya and Allen are not corrupt, as far as we can tell, and play by the rules. But their investigation is getting them nowhere except for unsubstantiated rumors from questionable sources. Montoya may truly believe that Gordon killed Cobblepot, but she has no evidence. Meanwhile, Gordon is slightly compromised and Bullock is basically corrupt. But they get results and end up solving their case, albeit while violating some Constitutional rights in the process. Gotham is the kind of place where you have to bend or break the rules to get results. It’s the kind of place where a vigilante outside the law might thrive.
So what’s next? Two things immediately come to mind. First, Barbara Gordon is going to find out that her fiancé definitely didn’t kill Oswald Cobblepot. This could have some interesting implications and give her something to do besides flounce around her apartment without pants.
Secondly, Selina Kyle has played her part in helping to solve the Wayne murder. What happens with her story for the rest of the season?
Why DC Can’t Change the Race or Gender of Their Heroes Like Marvel
As of right now, Spider-Man of the Ultimate Universe is a black Hispanic, Captain America is going to be African-American, and Thor is a woman. One of these is a little silly, but more on that later. Right now, it’s worth noting that DC has no plans to change the race or gender of any of their Big 3 properties: Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman.
So what gives? Is DC stodgy and unable to change with the times? Could they even get away with the kinds of changes that Marvel has made?