Loading ...
Archive for the ‘Comics’ Category
Being a massive fan of the AvP universe, and having read all the novels in the series, I know I was waiting for this one. I wanted to play the story. I desperately wanted to see Machiko Noguchi kick ass, especially after seeing the first AvP movie make it so close to that story. I wanted to see Yautja battle with honor and the Xenomorphs tear through flesh and bone.
The AvP game of 1999 (which I consider the scariest game of all time), followed a standard movie based plot, while the follow up by Sierra wasn’t very memorable either. I was REALLY hoping that someone would finally go back to the novels and comics and do something different. However, this doesn’t really happen in AvP 2010. The story pretty much follows the AvP movie, throws in the predictable Weyland-Yutani capitalist-bastard angle and doesn’t leave much to remember.
11 years after AvP, Rebellion has reloaded the franchise with all new DirectX 11 based graphics that promises to scare the bejeesus out of you while your jaw drops in awe of the stunning visuals. So does AvP 2010 live up to the hype? Or is it one of those big-title releases that can’t put its money where its mouth is? Read on and decide for yourself.
Bobby’s been at it again, but this time he’s got an entire page devoted to his crazy-crafting antics. The place could use some sprucing up, but all in good time. Has that ever stopped the Durkaman before? Satan only wishes!
Afterall, who knew that the Master Chief was such an expressive individual, the birds in GTA can’t be seen together less their primary role decreases by ten-folda, and that trading your maa for a gaming collection is a smidge of bloody nonsense (but just a smidge). Krishnan has some of his GMod strips up as well, but they’re mostly farty old. Much like he is. Oh yes.
With more and more unique IPs like Dead Space, FaceBreaker, Mirror’s Edge, SPORE and Crysis: Warhead to show off, we’re still wondering why EA is playing the same old tunes every time we run into them. While we wait for our Red Alert 3 keys and a big, huge project coming your way real soon from EA India (Shh!), we’ve got our hands on the scans of the latest Mirror’s Edge comic from Comic-Con, thanks to Siliconera who were kind enough to upload them for the entire world to enjoy.
Sure, the ultra-mini-comic doesn’t really explain any part of the backstory or anything beyond what Faith and her fellow Runners do, running the Mirror’s Edge on rooftops hundreds of feet above the ground, but this is just a small teaser of what’s to come from Wildstone and Mirror’s Edge writer Rhianna Pratchett, daughter of the legendary Discworld series’ Terry Pratchett, who’s worked on games such as Heavenly Sword and Overlord.
The remaining six parts of the Mirror’s Edge comic will be released before the game ships sometime in Winter 2008.
[via Siliconera]
MIRROR’S EDGE COMIC TEASER
Maybe, just maybe, we made a huge mistake by going in for the Iron Man on the PSP right after having finished playing the excellent God Of War: Chains Of Olympus (GoW:CoO). While GoW:CoO embodies everything that a perfect game on the PSP should be, Iron Man sadly, turns out to be the exact opposite. The game seems to be a dismal failure right from the word go. A2M, the developers of the game seem to have got everything wrong as far as Iron Man for the PSP is concerned. So much so that it becomes quite clear right from the moment you pop in the disk that this is one game you won’t be playing for long, unless you happen to be an unfortunate reviewer like us who have to clench their teeth and bear through the 13 odd missions that the game throws at you.
No. It’s not any state or college elections I’m talking about here.
I’m talking about The Darkness by the publishing wizards 2K and the development warlocks at Starbreeze. The Darkness is a game that will make you beg for more. It will eviscerate all you had come to expect from shooters. It will rip to shreds the horrible; “comic-book-hero-meets-video-game-and-dies” legacy that a certain developer has been fucking up EVERY time with my favourite arachnid hero. It will make you believe in a real world. It will make you believe in an alternate world. It will make it worth the investment.
Fancy, no?
After Halo’s turn with the Halo Graphic Novel and Halo: Uprising, it looks it is now the turn of Pandemic Studios’ Mercenaries to make the jump to paper. Since we don’t get the bloody comics here anyways, Kotaku pointed us out to the fact that Diamond Entertainment has picked up the rights to the comics, with the story being penned by Mercenaries writer Brian Reed (Ms. Marvel, Red Sonja) and pencilled by Edgar Salazar, with two connecting pieces of cover art being brought to life by Michael Turner. Expect to find the comic in stores sometime in October.
To those that haven’t read Krishnan’s blog post next (or below) this one yet: what the hell are you standing around here for? Go read that first! For those of you that did, you already heard of the WiC Beta closure. It may have been a fun time for some, a frustrating time for others, but to me it was but the realization of a hidden Nuklear ambition. Having finished at a decent position overall (and at my peak touching 359 on the ladder board) towards the end, I can’t help but think that this’ll be an utterly great game to play and get hooked on almost immediately – but only in single player.
The negative reaction to the multiplayer aspects stems too much from it’s similarity to Battlefield 2 and 2142. Finding a good game that lasts more than 5-10 minutes thanks to horrible balance in terms of both Rank and Numbers is somewhat rare. Grinding against the same problems repetitively on only two maps made it even worst of a hassle, and eventually, after a full day of 6-10 minute games where our team couldn’t get it’s act together in time for being swamped by the other, stacked team of high-ranking players I quit for a few days out of sheer frustration. However, don’t let this little tale ruin the experience for you – while it can be hassle to generally play online on your own, if you can find and convince a few good friends to play with you online and in the same clan (and on Clan matches no less) then the Multiplayer aspect is an utter, utter blast. After all, its always more fun to play together with friends than random strangers (not to mention a whole lot more co-ordinated). Plus consider that this case was probably isolated, and if you DO get a good team and fairly even skill levels on both sides, like BF2 it can be a blast
That said, its probably best to stop beating a dead horse. Hopefully, the developers will get something planned by the time the game ships.
Now, to move onto more…darker things. For long-time System Shock fans, there’s a somewhat long (yet interesting) article on what is the Gaming History’s most unique villains: SHODAN. You can find it here, and is aptly titled “The Girl Who Wanted to be God”. Even if your not a System Shock fan, its really recommended reading the article anyway, as it describes a breed – nay, a species of awesome villains that’ll probably never be seen again in the future of gaming.
To finish off this less-than-spectacular blog post is a bit of news regarding Firaxis’ new expansion pack to Civilization IV, titled “Beyond the Sword“. The recently released expansion pack gives a vast number of units, civilizations, leaders and other upgrades to the Civ IV games. More awesome than that though, is the way their getting publicity for it: through web comics. Firaxis apparently invited many major web comics to make fan strips for the release in a special event known as “Civilization Daydreams”. Artists from popular web comics such as Player vs Player Online, Ctrl Alt Delete, 8-Bit Theater and quite a few others have given strips for the release. These special strips can be found here: http://www.civilization.com/daydreams/
Enjoy reading them. Until next time something interesting happens (and someone else doesn’t beat me to posting it here *glares at some people*) – this is Singh, signing off.
Bobby Sandhu is sure one fine dude. Not only did he provide the layout designs for both our forums and the yet-to-go-public website, he posts on the blog whenever he gets a chance. He even designed our awe-inspiring logo! Yeah, the logo that doesn’t ever seem to get featured here. It’s just that awesome. That, or one of us is hella-lazy.
Well, he’s got another site-related project he’s been working on that’s of the funny bone brand: a series of Gears of War spoof comics. Dubbed “The Chainsaw Chronicles” – he’s done one strip so far but has a parody cover with a back-side version on the way. Be alarmed, kiddies! There’s nothing stopping the human monstrosity collectively known as the Durkaman. Don’t stop the fight!
01 – I came, I sawed, I screwed up!
Gay-ers of War Cover (links to his DeviantArt page as well)
So you’ve grappled with the installation problems in Halo 2 Vista and got your ass handed over to you in the Halo 3 beta, and you start to wonder how much more Halo you can get in your life. Well, if you are anything like us (by which I mean me), then you start pulling a Lester Burnham and see Halo-related stuff fall slowly from the sky, as the American Beauty theme tinkles away in the sad recesses of your brain.
First off, if you have the dough and fancy yourself a true Halo-geek, you can ditch that iPod you’re all carrying for the Halo 3 Special Edition Zune. It’s the regular Zune, with the all-you-can-eat music store, the wonderfully envisioned yet woefully executed music sharing options, 3″ of sexy screen-space and oh yeah, did I mention the complete Halo and Halo 2 OSTs, trailers of Halo 2 and Halo 3, “Making of” documentary videos, the first 6 episodes of Red vs. Blue Season 1, tons of Halo-related images and a special, Halo: Zune edition of Red vs. Blue! All this, in a sleek Halo-themed shell, can be yours for a measly $249! Get yours today!
More on the Special Edition Halo Zune
And if that didn’t fix you, there’s even more information straight from Bungie and IGN on the upcoming Halo: Uprising, a four-part mini-series by Marvel and Halo: Contact Harvest, the next Halo novel, which is being penned by Bungie man/Grunt voice Joseph Staten and will chronicle hard-ass UNSC Sergeant Avery J.Johnson’s first contact with the Covenant forces.
Its been almost an year since Virgin Comics launched three all original comic series in the international market. Since then they have launched almost 50 issues under various series and certain independent graphic novels. Virgin has already made a stamp in the International arena with its magnificent art work. Now that their leading comic series: Devi, The Sadhu and The Snakewoman are about to get a new story arc, they have launched yet another series. This time around they are coming out with India Authentic series and the character is none other than Lord Ganesha.
The comic totally focuses on the Indian Mythology unlike the Ramayana reborn, which was a retelling of the original myth with new story elements and twists. Ganesha features the lineart from the hands of Satish Tayade and the myth has been scripted by Saurav Mahapatra. This is what the officials say about the series:
For generations, all enterprises in India have been launched with an invocation of His name. He is called the Vinayak – God of Endeavors, Vighneshwar – the Remover of Obstacles. Perhaps the most adored of all in the Indian Pantheon, Ganesha is the God that best represents India – benevolent, wise and noble.
Come with us on a journey to witness the origins of a God, a timeless tale of an inanimate golem crafted from primordial clay by Uma, the all-mother. His innocent bravado in defying Shiva, the mightiest of the Gods and even giving up his life to uphold a simple promise he made to his mother, the twist of fate that intertwines his destiny with another and the “rebirth” of the two as they become one.
I have already gone through the comic and I must say that this time around they are lacking in the artwork. If one compares it to their earlier issues, one can easily spot the weariness and the hurried frenzy at the hands of the coloring artists (three of them in this one, namely M. Vishwanathan, S.M. Bhaskar and R.C. Prakash). Most of the panels have flaws in them and certain characters lack the emotive feel completely. For instance at the bottom of page 9, the character of boy Ganesha is the worst portrayal I have ever seen. The face is nothing but a couple of random lines… this is definitely not expected of artists working at Virgin. Perhaps the best portrayal in the whole comic is that of Lord Shiva and the fight that commences between Lord Shiva and the Child avatar of Lord Ganesha. The ambiance of the landscape has surely been done well, but its no compensation for an average art concerning characters.
The story, as I said earlier is totally based on the Indian Mythology, but the comic’s pace is very, very fast. In the very first issue they have already covered the initial phase of the protagonist. Mostly we see comparisons being made to western philosophies and ideologies which totally confuse the rhythm of the story. A lot is being said, and at the same time a lot is being left untold… it really leaves the reader asking.. hey wait.. what about that?… and what about what you said on the last page… !!
As usual, the comic is very high on metaphors and similes, which are told with style as usual, but this time they went ahead and used the story of the elephant mother and her son as a visual metaphor in the storyline. This story which moves sideways with the main storyline serves as a metaphor initially and totally makes a bolting impact later, when we see its relation to the main plot. A really good device to narrate a story this vast.
Still the credit goes to the Virgin Comics for sticking to the Indian roots and not moving to the glorious superheroes to lure more readers. This indeed is a noble effort and moreover the stories do keep in touch with the real myth. So, lets hope the artists get back to their magnificent artworks back again and the scripter’s pen slows down the story a little bit in the coming issues, till then enjoy yet another effort from Virgin Comics.