No Lives Left

I always had a theory that the gaming industry grew up with kids of the 90's. Games have become more complicated, complex, and graphically overwhelming that I don't know if kids could get into these games. I've always felt like the kids who grew up on the Atari or the Nintendo Entertainment System were a unique generation. Video games come natural to us. I find it interesting how it takes my older siblings and younger kids to grasps certain video game controls and mechanics while it only takes my friends and I a few hours to really get the hang of it. The problem is that at some point, for 90's kids, we grew up. We graduated college and got jobs. Some of us are married and some of us have kids. We rarely have time to have long sessions of gaming that we used to have back in the days. Yet for some reason, games are getting more and more content and are getting longer and longer to complete. But I must commend Sony for implementing the one feature I love about it. Th...

Comic Grab Bag Part 6: What If...Daredevil Was The Disciple Of Doctor Strange? Issue #83 The "What If..." comics were a series of comics crossovers that took different superheroes and changed their scenarios and origins. . They were usually one shot comics that were all non-canon and just for fun. They had very interesting combinations like if Spider-man joined the Fantastic Four (or Fantastic Five  because of him) or if Wolverine was the Lord of the Vampires. From one shots, they gradually changed into  full fledged story arcs exploring alternative choices of main Marvel storyline events. An example being What If...Wolverine went back in time to kill Hank Pym which ultimately stopped Ultron from being created. That specific story lasted many issues focusing on several superheroes and new events. Also, fun fact: during the mid 90's DC and Comics set up a shared printing company called Amalgam Comics which took DC characters and Marvel characters and mashed them u...

Sorry for the delay,  Doom Patrol #6 (2010) Backstory: Originally created in 1963 by Arnold Drake and Bob Haney, the Doom Patrol is a group of superheroes who have banded together due to the fact that their powers have alienated them from the rest of society. Finding solace and leadership under Dr. Niles Caulder, the Doom Patrol were trained and lead to fight for the greater good. If you've already guessed, yes, the Doom Patrol closely resembles the X-Men though it came before its popular Marvel counterpart. They even have a leader who sits in a wheel chair. Yet reports have said there was no foul play between the two companies and the creation of each comic were independent of each other. I still think there was some sneaking around somewhere but nonetheless it's interesting to see how one rose to ultimate fame and popularity while the other feel by the wayside. The Doom Patrol do have important roles in the crossovers like the Infinite Crisis, but more people on th...

I recently just finished my play-through of Batman: Arkham Knight and, to be honest, I was fairly impressed by the game's story and how they handled the tentative end to the Rocksteady Arkham trilogy. It comes as a surprise because of the disaster that was the launch of the PC version. It was riddled with bugs and frame rate issues making it virtually unplayable unless you had a ridiculously overpowered computer. The game was then actually taken off the internet  from official sale. See a different development team worked on the PC port, not Rocksteady. There were so many issues with the game they couldn't properly fix in an reasonable time frame. After 3 months, an interim patch was quietly released to test out if the issues were fixed. When I found out, I swooped in to nab a cheap copy and got to playing. Thankfully, the patch eliminated most of the blatant problems with the game, and I was able to finish the game with very little complaints. Sadly, three months is a lo...

Blue Beetle Issue #8 (2006) Background: The Blue Beetle has an interesting history. Not only has the Blue Beetle mantle been passed around many times over the characters inception, it's also been licensed by different publishers. Charles Nicholas Wojtkoski was the original artist for the Blue Beetle in a comic series that was published by Fox Comics in 1939. After Fox Comics went out of business, Charlton Comics picked him up and release a few issues up until 1968 until they ceased to publish the series. Finally, The Blue Beetle found his home with DC Comics after their acquisition (or CC sold their characters to DC. I'm not sure) of Charlton Comics around 1983. The original Blue Beetle was Dan Garret. Dan Garrets father was a police officer who was killed by a criminal. Though being a patrol officer, Dan moonlighted as a vigilante before  getting his super powers. Blue Beetle's powers (just super strength and stamina) came from an ingestion of the chemi...

Soldier X #2 (2002) Background: Soldier X is moniker for one of the more powerful mutants from the X-men, Cable. Also known as Nathan Summers, Cable is the child of Scott Summers and Jean Grey. Oh wait, but there's still more. Jean Grey wasn't actually  Jean Grey. See, one of the main villains in the X-Men, Mr.Sinister, was at war with Apocalypse, another X-men villain, and need some weapon to stop him. He knew that the genetics of Scott and Jean would produce an offspring with tremendous power--Enough power to stop Apocalypse. But Jean Grey ended up being possessed by Phoenix Force around this time. The Phoenix Force is like a very dangerous trance Jean falls into due her "true power" manifesting. This gives her amazing powers at the loss of her ability to reason. The saga ends with Jean supposedly dying and leaving Scott in heartbreak. With all that happening, Mr. Sinister moves on to plan B and decides to clone Jean and create Madelyne Pryor. Madelyne h...

Batman #536 Background: This issue was written as a tie-in to the DC crossover series The Final Night.  During this storyline, an entity called the "Sun-Eater" comes to Earth's Solar System and absorbs all of the suns energy. Superman and the Justice League tried to stop the Sun-Eater from devouring the Earth's sun by first teleporting it to another dimension. But the Sun-Eater proved too powerful for the device used to teleport him.The second plan was to divert the Sun-Eater by creating an artificial second sun. This involved big names like the Green Lantern, Firestorm, Ultra Boy and even Superman. This failed as well. So with all the energy sucked out of the sun, the Earth went into perpetual night. The lack of the Suns warmth was slowly freezing the Earth over. Riots and crime spiked up due to global panic. Long-eared Batman everybody! Many crazy plans to stop the Sun-Eater came from super villains like Lex Luthor and even an emissary from DC's ve...

As a preface to this series, a friend of mine sent me 52 random DC and Marvel comics for my birthday. I thought it would be a fun writing exercise to read them and write about them. So I present to you the Comic Grab Bag! Enjoy! Nightwatch #7 (1994) " Through mysterious means, Doctor Kevin Trench acquired a sophisticated battle suit of immense power. Failing to use the power adeptly his first time out, he withdrew from the world. But now he has come to realize that all it takes for evil to triumph is for good to give up and do nothing. Thus, Trench has become a grim crusader, poised to battle high-tech terror wherever and whenever it rears its head! Stan Lee presents...Nightwatch!" Backstory: Nightwatch was introduced into the Marvel universe back in 1993 in issue #99 of  Web of Spider-Man.  He inherited the suit from watching a man die fighting terrorists. To his own surprise, that man was himself. Like the blurb says, Trench to...

So this just happened and the internet is mad. But before I address why this is such an outrage. I must tell a story. If you trace back to the beginning of the "Mighty No. 9" Kickstarter, you'll notice that it got funded like crazy. I don't remember if it broke records but it did end up making close to 4 million dollars when it was only asking for $900,000. Why such a crazy campaign for funding, you ask? Well, there's another story... Back during the old NES days, Capcom came out with an amazing platformer called Megaman. A tiny boy in blue who could shoot energy blasts from his arm won the hearts of millions of Nintendo fans. The proceeding years after begot sequel after sequel. Then Megaman X came out for the Super Nintendo and continued onto the the Playstation. Somewhere along the way, Megaman transferred to the 3d open world in an RPG called Megaman Legends  and even got a sequel! With so many games and sequels, you could only imagine the size ...

Once again a lot has happened since my last post. I guess I keep realizing that real life eats up most of my work ethic on this thing. Ah well, before I go into my next project, I'd like to just have a summary of a few events that have happened in the past few months.  First off, Ramadan came and went too fast. I was planning on having another post about some correlation between the virtues of Ramadan and some other video game, but I got lazy and decided to not do it. I might still write about this in the near future but it may be a ways out. I felt like I spent too much time playing video games during this month than actually experiencing the spirituality that it bestows. I basically ended up passing time instead of enjoying it. I could put the blame on the long days and the heat but in essence, it just was a reflection of who I really was. I definitely need to work on it.  Secondly, Comic-con was in town a few weeks ago. I had the chance of walking around (but sadly, ...

So I'm finally pulling this blog up from six feet under. Hopefully, with enough energy, I can keep this blog going.  I know this sounds obvious but it needs to be said: gameplay is the most important part of a game. If a game is not fun to play, then it's most likely not a good game. No matter how thought-out the story is or how many endings there are, a game will end. The only games that live on are multiplayer games, fighting/racing games, and games with addicting combat. I want to focus on talking about the last point because it is the difference between why I love Bloodborne so much and dislike  The Witcher 3 so much (I’m sure you’re surprised now, huh?) Just a note to start off, I’m going to completely focus on the combat aspect of both Bloodborne and Witcher 3. I know that there are many amazing qualities and also glaring flaws in each game, but I feel like those aspects don’t really affect my opinion of either game as much. So please bear with me. I’ve pl...