Friday, July 6, 2007

The week in review

More week-late thoughts on a few comics, thanks to shipping times and living on the other side of the world from the publishers. Yikes, I actually bought more Marvel than DC this week. Plus, the new Transformers Movie game.

The Immortal Iron Fist #6
Yay, I've been wanting to try an issue, and my shop finally had a copy left over. Being the final part of a 6-parter it's probably not the best jumping on point, but it was fun. Really powerfully drawn fights, and some cool dialogue. Didn't understand the ending, but then I'm new to the character. Not 100% sold on it yet, but will definately pick up any other issues I can.

Silver Surfer - Requiem #2
I thought issue #1 was weak. This was much better. It summed up the Surfer's concern for humanity nicely. Spidey sending MJ into space was touching.

I'm not entirely sold on the Surfer being able to connect to every person on earth at the end, but whatever. The art seemed better overall too (except for MJ).

Ultimate Fantastic Four #43
This was ok, a touch drawn out with too much time spent on various SHIELD people telling Reid off, but atleast it answered the major question I had, namely how the Surfer(s) we saw in Ultimate Extinction were different from the Surfer in this story. There's some kid called Enid that was used for supposed comic effect, but it failed horribly.

The Thing was funny though.


Blue Beetle #16
Another solid and enjoyable issue in both the writing and art departments. I REALLY liked that the story had an explanation of Eclipso's origin, because I had never heard it before. All I knew was 'magic entity trapped in a crystal'. The interplay between Jaime and Tracey13 was great, hope she sticks around for a bit. No Brenda was a minor bummer, but hopefully she'll be back next issue.

After writing last week's thoughts on Moon Knight and Aquaman, I thought about it some more and ended up dropping both titles. My shop always has extra copies so I can still get them off the shelf if I feel the need, but I don't want to be tied to them anymore. I ordered all the Annihilation: Conquest related mini's instead.

Transformers The Game (PS2)
This game is a dog. OK, so it's my own fault for expecting a movie-based gamed to be any good, but with the excellent Transformers game that came out a couple of years ago, well, they pretty much had the template of how to make a cool game right there. But no.

So, we're stuck with a game that kinda follows the general plot of the movie, only ultra fleshed-out, but in a bad way. It's all disjointed thanks to the over-use of cut scenes which break up the flow. For instance, as Bumblebee you have to drive to the highschool to protect the two kids from Barricade. You drive there, cue cut scene. Back to the game, you have a brief fight with Barricade. Cut scene. Back to the game, you have to race Barricade to a different part of town, which takes about 60 seconds. Cut scene. Another short fight with Barricade. Cut scene. Then there's another race, another fight, and more cut scenes. The cuts are short, and basically Bumblebee and Barricade driving somewhere, transforming, and then squaring off, but they serve to break up the flow of the game, and each time you go back to actually play something, you essentially repeat what you just did, only in a different place.

There's also an over-abundance of decepticons that you can only hurt by punching, they have shields for your guns. Great. The most fun thing in the game so far has been searching the city for all the hidden items (there's over 100...), since the entire city can be trashed, you can climb buildings, get chased by police, and there are random decepticons to fight. The actual hidden items unlock a bunch of pictures you can view, not particularly exciting.

I don't like giving up on a game, but I'm pretty close to listing this for sale online, and it only came out 3 days ago.

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