• Tag Archives Science Fiction

  • Batman & Lucifer

    Posted on by Offkorn Comment

    The Batman prequel Gotham starts off remarkably good, basically a crime drama with some action elements and a moderate streak of eccentricity, but as it progresses events become increasingly unhinged. So while there are a few good bits in the second season (the third is garbage), ultimately I can’t recommend watching beyond the first.

    I specifically avoided watching The Dark Knight Rises when it was released mainly due to a review that said it was more a Bruce Wayne movie than a Batman movie. That review ended up being spot on. More problematic though is Bane; why does he sound like an English aristocrat? His voice is beyond disconcerting. Overall I’d say Batman vs. Superman tells this sort of ‘aging Batman’ story far more competently, with a far more believable villain, and a much bigger payoff.

    Lucifer meanwhile turned out to be a hybrid of buddy cop police procedural and urban fantasy familial drama. In quite a few ways it’s reminiscent of Castle, and so far it’s the only DC TV series I’ve seen that manages to avoid deteriorating over time: What you get in the first episode is what you get in the 40th.

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  • ARROW – Seasons 4-8

    Posted on by Offkorn Comment

    Let’s just get the remaining Arrow seasons out of the way all at once:

      Season 4 – Fantasy elements take center stage this season. Both the present and past main villains are sorcerers, there’s a couple Constantine cameos, a bit more Lazarus Pool fuckery, and a crossover special heavy with Egyptian mythology. It’s not very good… and whomever thought that airing halves of a plot-driven crossover event in different series was a good idea should’ve been fired. Also: Netspeak should never, ever be spoken aloud.

      Season 5 – This season introduces a (mostly) new team, trades the boardroom for the mayor’s office, and retreads some of the same ground the first season covered adversary-wise. The fantasy elements are gone, which is a positive, but the new team is worse than the old and once again we have orphaned cross-over episodes (two this time, one featuring a brief creepily perky Supergirl appearance).

      Season 6 – Hey, remember that annoying secret identity drama from the first season? Guess what? That just so happens to be the central focus here. The series really should’ve just ended after the first season.

      Season 7 – Events here don’t start off very Arrow-like at all. Lot of focus on the police, FBI, and prison side of things… not so much the vigilante side. If this is what you wanted to do, why not just go work on one of the quadrillion existing police procedurals floating around instead? While it does gets more Arrow-y toward the halfway point, it does so in the bad arbitrary way that’s been par for the course in recent seasons and doesn’t drop the police-side perspective until the last quarter or so.

      Season 8 – This is more like a miniseries than a proper season. With less than half the length it mainly focuses on a single extremely comicbook plotline (alongside continued flash-forwards and an episode to wrap up the Guild of Assassins subplot). It’s amazing how they could so thoroughly squander the opportunity to finally tell a concise, focused story.

    Well, that was an impressive waste of time. On the positive side of things, at least the crossover episodes cured me of any desire to check out Supergirl or Batwoman (never had any plans of watching Flash).

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  • ARROW – Season 3

    Posted on by Offkorn Comment

    Arrow’s third season starts off decent enough. Rather than unfocused it instead comes across as… unhurried? It knows what it wants to do and does it without any particular fanfare or expository explanations.

    While preferable to the ‘pick ideas out of a hat’ methodology the second season had going on, I can’t say the end result is particularly engaging since ‘what it wants to do’ is explicitly contradict its own core premise. Not only is Oliver now ‘poor’ (though functionally there’s no difference) but he was no longer trapped on a island for 5 years; the survivalism flashbacks get replaced by secret agent flashbacks. What’s even the point of this retcon? What does it add besides extreme incredulity? Then there’s the last quarter.

    The League of Assassins plotline is dumb. Real dumb. So of course the show has to focus on it 100% for the climax while tossing in some fantasy elements (which appear to become more pronounced in later seasons) and bizarre character behavior. Just because a work is inspired by a comic doesn’t mean it’s required to feature the same sort of nonsense plot developments and schizophrenic characterizations endemic to the medium.

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  • ARROW – Season 2

    Posted on by Offkorn Comment

    This season picks up from where the first left off following a short time skip.

    It’s nowhere near as focused and mostly just comes across as a random assortment of ideas thrown at a wall: Arbitrary resurrections, sudden sci-fi elements (though some might consider those a positive considering the series didn’t start off very superhero-like), some questionable costume choices, and the appearance of a ninja army (not quite as bad as Daredevil‘s, but still pretty bad).

    I’m generally not one to mourn a loss of realism, but here that was in a sense the show’s defining trait. The corporate elements don’t work well either. As for positives… well, I guess Laurel’s arc is solid enough and I’m certainly not sad to see the (apparent) end of Thea’s questionable romance.

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  • THE BOYS, WATCHMEN

    Posted on by Offkorn Comment

    The Boys is an adaptation of an ~adult~ comic of the same name, which is to say it features graphic violence, sex, cursing, and dark themes. It’s not a 1:1 adaptation though, making a number of changes which (after having read the original’s synopsis) I think end up significant improvements. Homelander and Butcher are fantastic, the majority of the other characters are solid, and only Hughie seems miscast. His acting is perfectly on point, it’s just that its highly visually discordant to see him grouped with everyone else.

    Considering how the first season ended, with a massive departure from the source material, I’m not sure how things can be believably resolved considering that Homelander is not altruistic in the slightest. At the very least I hope they have a different ending in mind for Butcher, since the way the original story plays out is incredibly dumb.

    The Watchmen TV series is also related to a comic, though in this case it’s a sequel rather than an adaptation. With the earlier Watchmen movie being my only previous experience with this franchise I didn’t really have any expectations going in, yet considering the bizarre combination of rural anachronisms and dystopian cosplay on display it doesn’t seem familiarity would’ve helped. It’s strange. Very strange, skipping between being a period piece, a murder mystery, a police procedural, a psychological thriller, and a romantic drama. Heavy on violence, both physical and otherwise, with little counterbalance.

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  • Assorted, Mostly DC, Movies

    Posted on by Offkorn

    Went on a brief movie kick recently in a fit of boredom (though I watched the first two on the list below at the time they were released):

    • Detective Pikachu: Reynolds and the pokémon are good; the humans are all extremely cringe.
    • Avengers: Endgame: Does a fantastic job wrapping up all the disparate plotlines featured across the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Surprisingly, a good chunk of it leans strongly toward comedy.
    • Mad Max: Fury Road: Most of it is quite strong… if a little odd in places. The third act however (revisiting the citadel) is a disaster.
    • Suicide Squad: The prologue bits (before they’re captured) are pretty good and the visuals are stellar throughout, but the rest is pretty meh and I wasn’t feeling the ‘forced to fight for the government’ angle.
    • Wonder Woman: Eh. The first two Captain America movies do something similar far more competently.
    • Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice: This is a very strange movie which plays out like a TV miniseries for the first two-thirds, featuring more thriller elements than action. But then Doomsday appears and holy shit. It’s like night and day; an insanely strong finish worth the price of entry alone (and Wonder Woman is better here than she is in her own movie).
    • Justice League: Not sure what this was supposed to be. An imitation Infinity War? It doesn’t succeed. It’s closer to the first Avengers movie… which is not a good thing.

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  • THE SURGE 2

    Posted on by Offkorn Comment

    Ended up grabbing this game during the initial GOG sale on a whim, having neither played the prequel nor been aware of the developer connection with Lords of the Fallen.

    Gameplay and character progression is very similar to LotF, as can be expected from a Soulsborne game, but the environment is quite different in both appearance (sci-fi to its fantasy) and layout (far closer to the hub experience of Dark Souls). The weight and attribute systems meanwhile have been simplified into a single ‘core power’ rating which increases automatically as you level and a basic Health/Stamina/Energy split which can be customized and respecced as necessary.

    There’s nothing much to note about the combat beyond a frequently hostile camera (make sure to raise the FoV to at least 60) and the addition of a ‘directional block’ system, which despite having just beat the game I still don’t understand properly. At first I thought you just had to pull off the block just before the incoming attack hit you (which is how it works in most games), but then while fighting Celeste blocking only seemed to work against her charging attack if done the moment the indicator appeared on the screen… which was at the very beginning of the charge. I never managed to parry it in the 10 or so times I faced her (no trouble parrying her counterattack though). Probably best to just stick to dodging in most cases.

    The most interesting aspect of the game though is one it apparently shares with its predecessor, which came as welcome relief after the frustration of Labyrinth of Lost Souls‘ anemic drop rate. I’m of course talking about the loot system. Want a new weapon, piece of armor, or upgrade component? Target the relevant part of an enemy and cut it off; guaranteed drop. Incredibly refreshing. Less refreshing is the change that occurs after the Metal Armor boss fight. There are just too many enemies clustered together far too often and they all seem to do far more damage than they should. Killing a PC in one solid combo even when they’re 1-2 tech levels lower in equipment quality seems very wrong, particularly when it requires 3 combos to take them out.

    Ultimately, it’s an initially fun game that unfortunately wears out its welcome partway through.

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  • Assassin’S CREED: ODYSSEY

    Posted on by Offkorn Comment

    This… somethingth… entry in the Assassin’s Creed franchise incorporates quite a number of elements from Witcher 3: The choices (though less significant here than there), the scattered and numerous love interests (again, not as significant here), the occasional ‘investigation’ mechanics, and the open world you can explore as you wish.

    There’s also bit of Dragon Age: Inquisition there in the form of repeatable/infinite bounty board tasks, which can thankfully be completely ignored.

    While the main questlines aren’t all that exceptionally long, there are a number of optional character-building sidequest chains available and exploring/clearing the whole map will take quite a bit of time (and require playing the game as a schizophrenic asshole). In the neighborhood of 100+ hours. And is it worth it? Well that depends on your playstyle. If you go into it like the aforementioned Witcher 3 then it’s probably going to end up a disappointing, repetitive slog. Go all-in on assassination and/or hunter damage though and you can end up literally running through 4+ enemies at a time (Rush Assassination is a godly ability) while Ghost Arrow lets you pick off individual targets in complete safety.

    Fun for those who like playing characters that feel like gods. Not so much for serious roleplayers or completionists. Prudes may also wish to stay away, as ~40% of the statuary is nude and this is a game focused on climbing things in a location where pants don’t exist; expect to be flashed. Often.

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  • THE: TECHNOMANCER

    Posted on by Offkorn Comment

    The followup to Mars: War Logs (chronologically they take place concurrently and there’s a few retcons, so you don’t need to play that first) manages to improve upon almost every single aspect and adopts more of a Deus Ex feel.

    The previous technical issues (keybinding, refresh rate, FOV) have been addressed, environments are much larger and varied visually, combat’s far more fluid, companion commentary has been greatly expanded, many quests now have multiple ways to resolve them, and the dialog and voice acting are both much better. So what hasn’t improved? The backtracking. There’s still a ton of it (particularly if you want to do the side quests) and there’s no fast travel system to speak of.

    The combat difficulty has also been increased a bit. The name of the game now is disruption… also avoidance. You do not want to get hit under any circumstance because it will hurt. Badly. So you’re basically left with two paths to choose from: A strength build that switches between Warrior (multiple enemies) and Guardian (1-on-1) or an Agility build that specializes in Rogue. Rogue is insanely good since it has a ranged attack and you no longer take damage while dodging… but it lacks an AOE attack and has comparatively limited disrupting abilities until/unless you unlock the relevant passive handgun skills.

    As far as Talents go you’ll want at least one point in Lockpicking, Crafting, & Science (whether you need a second point depends on your companion bonuses; the third can be gained by specific armor). Max Charisma if you want to resolve quests that way, and put at least two points in Stealth if you’re playing on any difficulty higher than Normal (using headgear to get the third). The one point in Exploration you can get from either headgear or a companion is plenty. Attributes are straight-forward with Warriors & Guardians focusing on Strength/Constitution (or Strength/Power) and Rogues on Agility/Power while Skill choices depend on what stances you prefer to use. Expect to reach level 34-36 before heading off to the last area.

    All in all I’d say the game is definitely worth picking up on sale sometime if you’re a fan Deus Ex-y RPGs.

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  • MARS: WAR Logs

    Posted on by Offkorn Comment

    Mars: War Logs brings to mind three particular games; Gothic, Deus Ex: Invisible War, and Dishonored. Mostly Gothic though.

    The very first thing you need to do is check out the PCGaming Wiki entry on the game in order to address a few technical issues. Keybindings can only be changed by modifying the relevant configuration file, and the same is true for the refresh rate (which defaults to 100 for some bizarre reason) and field of view (the starting value allows you to see basically nothing).

    The game itself resembles the Gothic/Risen games in combat style, leveling system, dialog, and plot developments while being structured a bit more like Invisible War. The Dishonored similarity is minor, with just the morality system bringing it to mind. It’s an… interesting combination that’s playable enough despite some exceptionally cringe-worthy aspects (such as the potential romance with a childlike and somewhat deranged half-naked abuse survivor), and though relatively short and heavy with backtracking ends up decent enough to justify buying on sale.

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