Whispers #1
Joshua Luna (as in the Luna Brothers) is putting out a solo entry this Wednesday called Whispers #1, which I wholeheartedly recommend. My advance review is now online.
Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Review: London Horror Comic #4
London Horror Comic returns with a fourth issue that upholds the impressive quality of its predecessors. Anthologies can be risky business, especially when they involve horror and comedy. But creating a good presentation of story and artwork that plays on expectations and popular conventions is no great task for indie self-publisher John-Paul Kamath and his team of illustrators. From the UK comes another solid issue of London Horror Comic.
“V” is by far the shining gem of the five stories included in LHC #4. It’s a Superman and Lex Luthor spoof, where Superman once again outsmarts Lex “Loofer” and dooms him to work in a coffee shop as an alternative to jail time. It’s done so tastefully, authentically, and with such charm and style that you’d swear DC Comics could have thought it up themselves. This piece best demonstrates the talent and creativity of Kamath and his main artists, Lee Ferguson and Dean Kotz.
“Tough All Over” is another excellent short that’s relevant to the times, especially here in America. After a store manager kicks out a homeless shopper for causing trouble, he gets his own bitter taste of joblessness. The story sends a harsh message to those who take their jobs for granted and resonates well with the rising percentage of Americans who are unemployed or fresh out of college or graduate school with meager options.
“Drive Thru’” comes in third, appealing greatly to the Buffy crowd (particularly watchers of the Doublemeat Palace episodes). What makes this story interesting is the way it both breaks and adheres to conventions regarding blonde, female beauties in the horror genre.
While not nearly as stand-out as the previous three, “The Passenger” provides a good introduction to the style of London Horror Comic—and with a good sense of pace and anxiety, it can set the reader on edge. “Skyscrapped” is definitely the weakest of the five, but it’s an ongoing trademark of the London Horror Comic series: a brief, wordless story meant to unsettle the reader.
London Horror Comic #4 is a good investment, especially if you want to support indie creators and especially if you want more from this underused comics genre.
Rating: 4/5
Pull-O-Rama – January 2012
Happy New Year! Start 2012 off right with three must-read indie comics: The Strain #1, House of Night #2, and Dark Horse Presents #7.
Hellblazer Annual #1
This annual has been a long time coming. Check out my review of the new Hellblazer Annual.
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword review: A boy with his head in the clouds
Nintendo has sold nearly 90 million units of their hit Wii console, hardware designed with families and casual gamers in mind. But for Wii owners whose dream game isn’t Dance Central, few titles stand out in its library. Core games like Donkey Kong Country Returns, Mario Kart Wii, and Smash Bros. Brawl might warrant a buy, but otherwise the little motion gaming system that could is probably used to playing third wheel to the bigger and badder competition: the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is the last huzzah of a console soon to be replaced by the high-definition Wii U, but the game itself isn’t a hasty money grab or even a love letter to better days. Skyward Sword is more like end-of-the-night fireworks, the big bang finale that says, “This is what you’ve been waiting for all along.”
The fact is, you could draw a hundred comparisons to any Zelda game before it, but that still wouldn’t diminish the sheer might of Skyward Sword. I’ve even argued that the game is better than the hallowed Ocarina of Time, but don’t mistake that testimonial for flawlessness. I might like Fi more than Navi, who only adds to Link’s problems, but hey listen, they’re both 95% annoying.
The game lands its biggest achievements in three components: controls, sound, and story. Producer Eiji Aonuma has said in interviews that the development team viewed Skyward Sword as the first in the overall chronology, if you believe one exists, and I’m not sure I do. But officially naming Skyward Sword the first of the Zeldas actually makes sense: You begin your quest above the clouds and travel to uncharted regions below, and without spoiling what was for me a huge realization, you actually help to create something important—a key element of all other Zelda games.
After a sandstorm brews in the skies and Zelda is kidnapped by a metrosexually clothed antagonist (Ghirahim, rhymes with Agahnim) who likes to whisper dangerously up-close in Link’s ear, Link accepts his heroic destiny and, on the back of his Loftwing, plummets to the surface in search of his childhood friend. (To make matters more curious, Ghirahim looks a bit like the better dressed Minish Cap evildoer Vaati.) The story routes and reroutes Link to three expansive locations: Faron Woods, Eldin Volcano, and Lanayru Desert. Players also visit various places in the sky, but for the majority of the game you’ll be shuffled back and forth between these three points.
Granted, this trio of elemental-based areas contains some smaller settings that differ noticeably from one another, and sometimes whole landscapes receive dramatic makeovers, but the basic themes remain unchanged. You’ll still traverse large patches of sand in all corners of the desert, and you’ll find Bokoblins (Skyward Sword‘s answer to Moblins) on pretty much any map. And while fighting Bokoblins never bored me (they have cousins, and their cousins have cousins), I did wish for a new backdrop or two—for a chance to discover more to the surface world than trees, dunes, and lava. The endless loop of backtracking, even if it did always involve exploring new turf, only made the game’s fetish for fetch quests that much more ridiculous.
That’s not to say Skyward Sword isn’t a joy to play, because it is. But I think that joy lies more in the empowering act of unsheathing Link’s sword and slashing away at enemies than it does the repetitive, collect-a-thon nature of its gameplay. And for the enemy types it does offer, the strategies used to kill them never grow dull. Players can’t just blindly hack away at an electric Bokoblin after one successful encounter. They have to watch the enemy’s movements and strike when and how it’s appropriate, and that requires quick thinking, quick reflexes, and a little patience and perseverance.
Skyward Sword is also fun with items. On several occasions, I was amazed at how well seemingly useless items like the Gust Bellows and the Slingshot remained applicable throughout Link’s adventure. The Gust Bellows can be used to clear away large quantities of sand, leaving you to feel like you’ve been duped into janitorial work for the ancients, but it can also push around airborne pufferfish-type enemies (called Froak) that explode on contact, using them to blow up obstacles and other enemies. Surprisingly, the item also works in a main area besides the desert. As for the Slingshot, it simply came in handy when there weren’t any pots containing arrows nearby.
Items are just pleasantly easy to use. Bringing up the B menu (some confusion in the manual made this feature almost inaccessible to me at first) lets players quick select any major item, and aiming is a cinch. Bombs, which cutely resemble bulbous blueberries, can be harvested and stored within seconds. The Clawshot can mimic the stun effect of the bow and arrow, which can be substituted in a pinch with the aforementioned Slingshot. Maybe the developers could have programmed it so that opening the B menu temporarily froze the gameplay, but this really only posed a problem when dealing with those pesky laser-shooting towered robots (Beamos), when you need to rapidly withdraw the Gust Bellows and turn their head turbines in circles until they get dizzy.
And the upgrades. Skyward Sword heaps on the upgrades—for your shield, for your sword, for nearly all your possessions. Of course, you have to collect (sigh) a small sum of different bugs and objects like bird feathers to concoct the different upgrades, but for most of them you’ll have plentiful opportunities to snatch the required ingredients.
The more you play and face different enemies, the more you learn about how to defeat them—and how not to. Chuchus will actually seek out and swallow any launched bombs, hoping to deliver them back to you. Players can make short work of Skulltulas if they clip their web lines with the Beetle first, and large bird enemies can be splatter-brained by using the same item to transport a live bomb to the sides of their heads. Enemies actually have smart AI—the final boss even tries to fake you out—and the way you beat them one time may not be the tactic that works the second. Even better, you might learn backup strategies for taking them out. Enemy types might be glaringly limited in Skyward Sword, but the possibilities for defeating them are not.
Boss battles are even more richly rewarding, providing some of the most challenging ones in the series in years. In any game, boss fights aren’t just an excuse for developers to flaunt their engine’s graphical power and players to pump as many bullets as possible into their target. These fights are supposed to rally up everything players have learned up to that point and test them on it. Skyward Sword is one of the few games nowadays that puts that into play.
The game does feature some smaller segments that you’ll either love or hate. I didn’t care for Link’s excursions into the Silent Realm, alarmingly intense spiritual trials that have you running around collecting fifteen Sacred Tears while searching out Light Fruit to reveal their locations and while avoiding sentries called Watchers and hotspots known as Waking Water, both of which rouse Guardians and alert them to your location. If they attack you, you fail the trial and have to start over.
Another such segment involves using the Mogma Mitts to burrow underground, where Link has to clear a path to a hole where he can reemerge, on the way breaking rocks with bombs, activating door mechanisms, and fighting Moldorms in the confined space. At any rate, with these two action-breaking segments at least Nintendo is trying to spice up the scenery, even if it means going under it or entering another dimension of it.
If you feel like putting the sometimes tedious main quest on hold and delving into side quests and light exploration, either by helping your fellow characters or by hunting for Goddess Cubes, you can do so at any time. I love that Skyward Sword hardly ever pressures you to engage in any of its extra content, so you can finish the game without doing many at all.
So far I’ve discussed mostly the gameplay and the controls, which are not only fun, but work well. As it happens, sound is just as crucial to the enjoyment as anything else. Nintendo’s orchestral score makes the game sound beautiful, but it never stops impressing in the minor details. Different tones and themes and variations on them complement every sword swipe, character moment, and environment interaction, whether Link is window shopping in the Bazaar, sneaking up on bugs with the net, or entering and exiting time shifts in the desert (listen carefully for the subtle difference in musical pace and complexity). The sound adds invaluable creativity and personality to the game.
The stylistic graphics, while frequently washed out and even blotchy, are gorgeous and vibrantly colorful, especially in sections where you’re actually returning color to the land. It makes you wonder how amazing the game would look if it were actually rendered in HD.
Even if you’re bored of the view, tired of retreading familiar ground, or just good and sick of collecting and dowsing—and you may very well be—what really sets Skyward Sword apart from other video games on the market today is its story. Zelda takes more of an active role here than in any other Zelda to date. She actually embarks on her own quest alongside Link’s, and she has more character and more lines of dialogue than any Zelda performances before hers.
But the story itself is funny, and grave, and touching—especially near the end. Zelda and Link share an honestly heartwarming dynamic, and a few other important characters come through in unexpected ways. This is truly a game that should be played to completion, and thanks to the immense effort that went into it, allowing for smart design and polished controls, you’ll likely be compelled to. Would I play Skyward Sword again? Yes, in a heart beat. Even if it meant venturing into the insanely frustrating Lanayru Mining Facility over again.
Rating: 9.5/10
Pros: Groose; Kikwis; Link’s voice is turning Japanese, I really think so
Cons: Mining Facility music, watching Fi sing, watching Fi dance
