Hickman's Fantastic Four Part 2

Okay now where were we.  I believe when I last left you true believers, we were at Franklin Richards' birthday party.  Franklin from the future crashed the party and unlocked present day Franklin's powers to create entire universes.  Franklin's sister Val recognized future Franklin as he gave her a mysterious message.  Nobody else in the family could figure out who the strange man was and he left as quickly as he appeared.  Okay, has everybody got it who's gonna get it?

The next is a four issue story entitled Prime Elements.  I hesitate to call this a story arc because the only thing these four issues have in common are the titles.  These issues are all purely set-up for things to come.  The first issue is about the mole man asking the Fantastic Four for help.  It turns out the high evolutionary inadvertently created a machine that evolves the mole people to a super intelligent state which has been causing them to abandon the mole man's army.  So the mole man is losing his army of slaves and they are gaining intelligence; so what's the problem?  Well it turns out that these new intelligent mole people are so ashamed to look at their children that they abandon them in the sewers and have stopped reproducing altogether.  Needless to say the Fantastic Four swoop in just in time to save the remaining children right before the mole people raise the city to the surface for an unknown purpose.

Prime elements issue two takes place entirely in Antarctica.  Reed and Sue have been funding a research facility that, in 1973, discovered the largest suspended body of water beneath 13,000 feet of ice.  Anyway none of that's important.  What is important is that now they discovered some kind of enormous structure within the body of water.  The evil science organization A.I.M. also came upon this information so it's a race to the bottom of the sea.  Once they descend into the water they cannot communicate and they come upon some strange sea life that is not friendly.  This whole issue felt like the horror movie The Thing and this was a great, intense scene.  Eventually, a small spongy creature gets attached to all four of the main character's heads and they can then communicate telepathically.  They get overwhelmed by these shark people who lead them to a throne room.  There are three thrones and the green, fish, humanoid, thing that is seated on the middle throne introduces himself as Ul-Uhar and welcomes them to the kingdom of Atlantis.  Of course, they are all a bit surprised considering they actually know the king of Atlantis, Namor but they don't bring him up just yet.  Ul-Uhar asks for the one who represents man.  A representative of our species.  Reed tries to explain that that is not the way humanity works but before he can Susan speaks up and says that she will represent man and be the emissary for all humanity. 

Issue three brings us back into the cosmic area of the Fantastic Four.  Reed picks up a photo from a surveillance satellite of some sort of alien craft landing on the blue area of the moon.  Of course I'm sure I don't have to tell you that the blue area of the moon is the favorite hiding spot of our favorite freaks, the inhumans.  The Fantastic Four head up to the moon where they promptly meet an old man just chilling on the moon.  He invites them inside for the meeting.  On the way, the man tells them the story of the inhuman's origin.  They were early humans experimented on by the alien race the kree.  They received amazing powers when they were exposed to terrigen mists (alien thingies).  The twist is that there were other species of inhumans throughout the universe that gained different powers from different things and now they have found each other for the first time in history for one goal; to exterminate the kree.  Black Bolt seems to be the only male inhuman because there are now four different species of women throwing themselves at him.  there's the hairy lizard lady, the chick from avatar, the horse chick and the red lantern but their names aren't important.  What is important is that to wipe out the kree they're going to need a base of operations and they have their eyes set on Earth.  So we're fucked.

The final issue of the arc begins with Johnny at a bar picking up a chick.  I would just like to take a moment to say that this not your average bar.  There is a man with a forehead tattoo preaching about death on stage which makes sense later in the story but raises the question, WHY THE FUCK IS JOHNNY AT THIS BAR!?  But I digress; Johnny manages to pick up a girl and bring her back to the Baxter Building.  She then promptly turns into a bug and opens the portal to the negative zone.  Johnny chased her in but was only able to seal off the portal.  Cut to Susan with the kings of Atlantis.  Andromeda Attumasen has brought them a message from Namor telling them that they are not the kings of Atlatnis and if they want a meeting they have to come out of hiding.  And on the moon the strongest army of inhumans attack the negative zone and the war of four cities begins.

Well that just about wraps up Prime Elements.  I did leave some things out of these summaries but nothing too important like future Franklin telling Val about the war of four cities or Reed scolding Johnny for letting that bug chick into the Baxter Building.  I don't think I left out anything too important and if anything comes up again that I just forgot about I will explain it.  Okay well that's it for part two see you next time!

Hickman's Fantastic Four Part 1

Jonathan Hickman is a comic book writer who wrote the Fantastic Four from 2009 to 2012.  In 2011 He introduced a second book to the Fantastic Four family, FF.  At the time, I was reading this book as it was coming out; and it takes a lot out of a comic to get my money.  But due to monetary issues, as in I was fucking broke, I had to stop buying comics altogether.  I recently decided though, that the new story arc in Fantastic Four and FF sounds interesting enough for me to try out, but not until I finished learning what Hickman had to say about Marvel's first family.

Hickman's first story arc was actually a tie-in to a Marvel event called Dark Reign.  If you're not familiar with Dark Reign it's basically when Norman Osborn (the green goblin) gets control of a SHIELD-like agency and causes all kinds of whacky shenanigans.  It's also essentially just a lead in to another Marvel event called Siege.  I usually ignore tie-in story arcs because they usually suck cock but then I decided to write this blog so I went back and read Dark Reign: Fantastic Four.

I was very pleasantly surprised by the Dark Reign tie-in story arc.  I read it after I read all of Hickman's other Fantastic Four work so I knew I would like it but I still thought it would still be a tie-in.  It's not.  It is a Fantastic Four story that Norman Osborn happens to be in for about five minutes.  This is also an important story arc that introduces a lot of ideas that Hickman uses down the line.  This arc is called The Bridge, referring to a Stargate-like device that Reed Richards builds in order to allow him to see all other alternate universes in order to hopefully find a world of peace so that he can "solve everything."  At the end of the story, reed looks through the universes to find how many other 'bridges' have been built and when he finds out, he sees the silhouettes of people who want to help him.  The only other really noteworthy thing that came from this story arc is this one earth that Reed discovered while looking for his perfect Earth.  It was deemed unimportant in the context of the story, but on this Earth Reed Richards had killed all the members of the illuminati (a secret society of the most intelligent people in the world that make decisions for the rest of the world) because he knew that no good would come of it.  The reason I found this so interesting is because Jonathan Hickman is currently writing New Avengers and it's all about the illuminati making terribly difficult decisions that they believe are for the best of everyone.

Solve Everything is the story that spun out of The Bridge and it's also the first Fantastic Four story that I have ever read.  It opens up with a moving scene of Reed as a child on a high ledge above his father Nathaniel who is encouraging his son to jump.  Nathaniel is reassuring Reed that he will catch him but Reed is still scared until he says, "It's okay to be afraid.  It's okay to fail.  But to say you're not even willing to try... That's unacceptable." (*insert weeping noise hear* I'm sorry, gimme a minute) So we learn that the people on the other side of the bridge were other Reeds who had also built bridges and discovered each other and decided to work together for a better tomorrow.  Unfortunately, though their intentions are good, and they do accomplish incredible things, these Reeds also end up lobotomizing every Dr. Doom in the universe.  It also turns out that these Reeds throw themselves into their work so extremely that they have no more time for their friends or families.  Our Reed needs time to decide if he wants to join this 'Council' but the next time he visits the council, one of the Reeds has done something to offend the race of space gods known as the Celestials.  The Celestials want the power of the bridge and start unleashing Hell on the Reeds.  Our Reed escapes to his universe and returns with weapons but the others tell him to go home because of his family.  He barely makes it out alive, we get some more flashbacks of his father and learn that he abandoned Reed for the greater good when Reed was a teenager.  Reed realizes that he wants to be a better father than his own and destroys the bridge.

After Solve Everything, we got a couple of stand alone issues.  The first one involves Johnny and Ben on vacation in what was supposed to be a beautiful alternate dimension called Nu-World.  This issue picked up on a Fantastic Four story that had come up before Hickman's run.  As I had not read this issue or story arc I was a bit lost here, but I got the gist of it.  This rather odd cast of characters that reside on Nu-World are there because at some point, Reed and perhaps the rest of the Fantastic Four helped them murder a Galactus and use its energy to send them off Earth to Nu-World.  Apparently they did not want to be on Nu-World because they return later in Hickman's run but I'll get to that.  Anyway the next issue is about Franklin Richard's (Reed and Sue's son) birthday.  Reed and Sue invite Leech and some kid named Artie to stay with them.  I've read this entire run and I still have no idea who Artie is.  In the first issue of Solve Everything, Reed adopted a child clone of his villain The Wizard in hopes that he would have a better future.  So at this point you should realize that Reed Richards is gathering up more awkward, unhappy little boys then your average unhappy middle-aged man with a van.  Anyway, a strange man crashes the party and tells Franklin to, "remember who you are." He also talks to Franklin's sister Valeria who immediately recognizes him as Franklin from the future.  At the end of the issue we see Franklin playing under the covers, making a new universe.

Well that's it for part one.  I was going to do this all in one shot but this is already longer than any post I've done before and I'm not even half-way through this.  Hope you're intrigued enough to stick with me through the rest of it so stay tuned for part two some time next week!

Rob Plays A Game Part 2

Watch me play Disney universe and talk about my thoughts on PS4, Xbox One and E3 2013.

Rob Plays A Game

So I'm hoping that this will be a new ongoing thing that I will continue to post let me know what you guys think.  First I'm going to be playing Alan Wake and here is episode one.

Alan Wake

Alan Wake is an Xbox 360 survival horror game released in the long long ago time known as 2010.  It did not do very well when it was originally released but was a bit of a cult classic and went on to sell over 3 million copies.  Survival horror is a dying genre in video games and I heard that Alan Wake was not the worst game on the market and it is currently $4.99 on XBLA so I promptly bought it and began to play.

Let's begin with the story, oh and spoilers.  Alan Wake is a best selling author who is suffering from writer's block.  He and his wife Alice decide to go to the small town of Bright Springs for vacation.  They have to take a ferry ride over Cauldron Lake to Bright Springs and on the ferry they meet a local radio personality who admits to being a fan of Wake's.  Here we see Alan's famous bad attitude as he blows off the man saying that he just wants to be left alone.  Something this game does really well is that every character in the game feels like a real person.  Alan occasionally seems like a stuck up celebrity and will fight with his spouse at times, he is far from perfect but that kind of makes you root for him more.  Also while on the ferry, Alice mentions a creepy man watching them and Alan gets a call from his agent Barry.  All of these people become important characters later on in the game.  Later, when the Wakes get to the cabin, the power goes out and we learn of Alice's fear of the dark.  Alan goes and turns the generator on by way of a quicktime event that will be used many more times throughout the game. (Now let me just take a moment here and say that I know it seems that I am focusing a lot on the first hour or so of the game but that is just because they did a brilliant job of setting up future character interactions.) Alan makes his way back inside and finds out that Alice has set up a typewriter in the hopes of getting him writing again.  She has been speaking to a local doctor, Dr. Hartman who specializes in artists and wants to see him.  Alan is offended and storms out.  He then hears her scream and returns to the cabin to find it empty.  He makes it down to the lake and sees Alice sinking.  Alan jumps in after her and wakes up a week later in a car with no memory of what happened.

This is where the game really begins.  Alan begins finding pages to a manuscript that he has no memory of writing but it is titled Departure which is the same title that he was planning on using for his next book.  What's even stranger is that the pages seem to predict the future.  The police are after Wake and he begins seeing these shadows in the shape of people that are attacking him.  Wake is not even sure if he is sane anymore but the one thing that he does know is that Alice is still alive somewhere.  Alan begins to hear tales of another writer who went through something similar named Thomas Zane.

Alan discovers that there is a dark presence living in Cauldron Lake and it does something to the artists here.  It uses their work to become real and gain power.  It did this to Zane years ago and it took his wife in order to make him write and now the darkness was doing the same to Wake.  During the week that Wake could not remember, the darkness came to Wake and told him to write a story and that would bring back Alice; but in reality all it would do would make the darkness stronger.  Somehow Alan realized this and wrote Zane into his story.  Zane busted into the cabin in his awesome big daddy flashlight suit and freed Wake.  Wake crashes a car escaping from the cabin and that is the game's beginning.

Since Wake never finished his manuscript his and Alice's story doesn't have an ending.  Alan fights his way back to the cabin and sits at the typewriter.  He tells us that the reason Zane never got his wife back was because a sacrifice must be made.  Zane just tried to write a happy ending where he and his wife walked off into the sunset but it was never going to be that kind of story.  Wake realized this and wrote something that would bring his wife back.  We then see Alice swim to the surface of Cauldron Lake and climb onto a nearby dock.  She struggles for breath and asks for Alan.  The last scene of the game is Alan typing away at the typewriter surrounded by darkness.  He then seems to come out of a trance and say, "It's not a lake it's an ocean."

Wow this was a long one but thanks for staying with me those of you that did.  While playing this game, I knew that I was going to write this blog. And I thought after I summarized the story I would talk about what the game got right and then go through the long list of things they got wrong; but the longer I played that list of this they got wrong got shorter and shorter and the list of right got longer and longer.

So first off what did they get wrong.  This game is supposed to be a survival horror game where you play as a regular joe.  As I said before the story line does a really good job of making you feel like your just a regular guy; the gameplay, however does not.  At one point in the game Alan says he has never even carried a gun before a few days ago.  If that is true why is it that whatever he points his flashlight at he hits without issue.  Alan Wake is the greatest natural marksman in history which also takes out a lot of the horror.  The enemies or, the taken as they are referred to in the game, are decently scary looking but they are not threatening in the least since Alan never misses any of his shots.  And the last thing that I disliked about this game was the way the voices matched up with the facial animations.  The graphics still looked great today which is saying a lot since this is a 2010 game but when it came to editing in the audio, it's like they didn't even try.

Which brings me to the voice acting.  At first I hated it and rightfully so, it's awful but I think it's supposed to be terrible.  You need to remember, the entire game you are playing through a horror novel written by a man who has never written a horror novel and who hasn't written anything for a couple of years.  The dialogue is corny and it sounds like something you would hear in a bad movie or horror book.  A good example is the Night Springs television show that you can find on TV sets scattered throughout the world.  They are essentially homages to old Outer Limits episodes except they are laughably bad.  At one point when Alan puts on an episode of Night Springs Barry will say that Alan used to write for the show.  At another point in the game, Alan comes across a man who is dying. He tells Alan that it was his best friend who did it to him.  He then says something along the lines of, 'this is like a bad movie sequel, when they make the best friend the bad guy.  Who writes this crap anyway?'

Maybe I'm giving remedy studios too much credit but for $4.99 I had a lot of fun.  I know that this post wasn't very funny but there really wasn't that much for me to joke about.  The story is complicated as hell but  it still fit the tone of the game well.  I don't know what else to say.  The game is five bucks if you haven't already go and buy it... GO!

Fallout New Vegas

It took me three years but I finally beat Fallout New Vegas.  Notice how I said beat and not completed.  I took a long break somewhere in the 2012 era to explore other video game venues but I always came back to good old New Vegas.  In case you have not played the game I will fill you in on some of the broader details because this game has just so much in it that I could not possibly fill you in on all the hidden treasures in New Vegas.  Warning for a three year old game spoilers abound.

Every Fallout game takes place in a post-nuclear "fallout" world where the human race has survived by staying inside massive bunkers called vaults.  Inside the vaults you have no access to the outside world so the society does not know whether it is safe or not to exit the vault.  If you were not lucky enough to make it into a vault then you are either dead or mutated beyond recognition.  Despite the gruesome appearance of most mutations some of these mutants are perfectly well adjusted people.  So now that you have a decent handle on the Fallout universe, our story begins.

The game opens up with you being shot in the head; but don't worry you get better.  Apparently, although the Earth literally exploded we've made marvelous medical advances since the nuclear holocaust.  The doctor who heals you asks you some questions about yourself which is a clever way to implement the character customization screen.  I made my character look like Samuel L Jackson and I think I named him Coffin because that's what I normally do but for the life of me I can't remember.  The doctor mentions that that's a strange name and the rest of the game you're referred to as the courier.  Well why the fuck did you let me name my character in the first place?  Anyway, since your shooter thinks your dead you need to track him down, find out why he did it and see that justice is done.  As you may have already gleamed from the game's title you need to make your way to the big city New Vegas but it's never about the end point is it?  It's about the journey; and boy is this a journey!  Along the way you meet a colorful cast of companion characters who will assist you on your quest as long as you remember to never break the cardinal rule of only one humanoid companion and one "other."  Though I worked with as many of the companions I could find in order to gain experience the team I used the most was a woman named Veronica and a floating eye robot named Ed-e.  I liked Veronica because she worked for the Brotherhood of Steel, an organization that was set on collecting all dangerous technology in the world and making sure it didn't fall into the wrong hands.  I remembered the Brotherhood from previous games and always thought they were an interesting group.  Also Veronica had a great ass and I was hoping there would be a sex scene with her but alas my hopes were dashed.  The reason I picked Ed-e was because... Well he's a fucking flying robot that shoots lasers.  Later in the game I got a cyborg-dog named Rex that I used to replace Ed-e but I got him so late in the game that I may have well have just stuck with Ed-e and skipped Rex's quest entirely.  Aside from the Brotherhood of Steel you also come across two other factions, The New California Republic (NCR) and Caesar's Legion.  The NCR represents the good side of the game by representing the last hope of an army in the wasteland that has become America and most likely the rest of the world.  Caesar's Legion represents the evil side by literally crucifying people, keeping slaves and doing things like holding lotteries in random towns to see who gets to live.  This is one of my biggest problems with the game.  There is absolutely no gray area in New Vegas between good and evil.  You either join the army like you ma and pa or fuckin' crucify people.  What if I just kind of want to be a dick to people?  Or what if I want to be a conscientious objector (you know a coward)?  Well unfortunately I would die pretty quick if that were the case because you stumble upon either an NCR camp or a Caesar's Legion hideout pretty often and if you don't pick a side fast you're going to die fast.  So I chose NCR, I'll be evil next time I play in two years, but at the end of the game it doesn't even matter.  You essentially get to choose which groups of people you want to destroy and which groups you want to live but you can NOT choose the NCR!  They die no matter what.  I also noticed that I could NOT choose Caesar's Legion which means that my next play through will have only a slightly different ending.  But like I said before it's not about the ending it's about the journey.

It may not sound like it but whatever I had to complain about I had to really dig to find.  New Vegas is a great game.  It's published by Bethesda the same company that brought us Skyrim and in all honestly I liked it a bit more than Skyrim.  I do plan on playing through it again someday and seeing what other options open up to me depending on the different paths I take so stay tuned for that post some time in 2016.      

In Case You Missed It The First Time Around!

Not much to talk about today so here's the video of me doing stand up at the Stress Factory in NJ.  I'm sure at some point I will post more of these.  Enjoy!