RSC Let’s Play #1: Cards Against Humanity ULTIMATE GAME!!!

Our first ever Let’s Play! This week, the gang plays Cards Against Humanity. And this time, it counts! It’s despicably hilarious. Warning: These jokes are purposefully crude/racist/God knows what else. They do not represent anyone’s personal views and should be seen as comedy.

Thanks to Matthew for creating the music and images for the opening 😀

The players:
Chase Wassenar – MaristPlayBoy – http://www.twitter.com/RedShirtCrew
Matthew Bryant – Baker Street Holmes – http://www.twitter.com/BStreetHolmes
Jeni Hackett – Science Whyzard – http://www.twitter.com/allonsyjeni
M – Spoon – No twitter
Grey Carter – Writer of Critical Miss – http://www.twitter.com/GreyTheTick
Cory Rydell – Artist of Critical Miss – http://www.twitter.com/Cory_Rydell
Clayton Donaldson – HulkyMoon – http://www.twitter.com/HULKGAMECRIT
Brandon Carey – NewDarkCloud – http://www.twitter.com/NewDarkCloud
Brendan McDonald – Bigmacd101 – http://www.twitter.com/Bigmacd101

RSC Let’s Play #1: A Trial Game of Cards Against Humanity

Our first ever Let’s Play! This week, the gang plays Cards Against Humanity. It’s darkly hilarious. Warning: These jokes are purposefully crude/racist/God knows what else. They do not represent anyone’s personal views and should be seen as comedy. Thanks to Matthew for creating the music and images for the opening :D.

The players:

Chase Wassenar – MaristPlayBoy – http://www.twitter.com/RedShirtCrew

Matthew Bryant – Baker Street Holmes – http://www.twitter.com/BStreetHolmes

Jeni Hackett – Science Whyzard – http://www.twitter.com/allonsyjeni

M – Spoon – No twitter

Grey Carter – Writer of Critical Miss – http://www.twitter.com/GreyTheTick

Cory Rydell – Artist of Critical Miss – http://www.twitter.com/Cory_Rydell

Clayton Donaldson – HulkyMoon – http://www.twitter.com/HULKGAMECRIT

Brandon Carey – NewDarkCloud – http://www.twitter.com/NewDarkCloud

Brendan McDonald – Bigmacd101 – http://www.twitter.com/Bigmacd101

Review: The Art of BioShock Infinite

So, this is the point where I’m supposed to review The Art of BioShock Infinite, an art book for the game BioShock Infinite that compiles a lot of concept art for the game and some shiny new digital paintings as well as some actual images from the game itself.  But really, I have no idea where to start.  I find myself completely unable to do this art book justice with words; it’s simply amazing.  I could call it amazing, beautiful, incredible, fantastic…. but words just seem to fall short of truly describing what an experience this art book is.  

I’m accustomed to the usual Japanese anime/manga flair of art book, as I used to live in Japan and my taste tends towards Japanese games and comics.  So I’m used to the type of art book that has maybe 50 pages consisting entirely of pictures of the characters in Christmas outfits or swimsuits at the beach or the like.  This art book is NOTHING like those.  It’s like 185 pages of gorgeous detail, and the publishers really weren’t trying to milk the cash cow for this one as the amount of illustrations per page is quite high.  That doesn’t detract from the more elaborate pieces, however, as the more expansive paintings that really should be blown up are given a page or two each.  Nor does the concept art feel crowded, which can sometimes be a problem with art books.  Overall, the spacing of the images is done very well.     

The cover doesn’t even do it justice.

The depth of detail and accompanying notes really allows you to get into the imaginations of the creators, which is a wonderful experience.  I found myself staring at each individual page for several minutes, eagerly studying each new piece of design from the world of BioShock Infinite. 

I think the art book’s strongest point is how much it includes that isn’t actually in the game.  This book takes an enormous variety of material – from basic rough sketches that were never fleshed out to full on painted conceptual mood pieces to actual images from the game.  As I browsed through the images, I couldn’t help but compare my favorite designs to the designs that were actually chosen for the final product.  A few were the same, but many were different, and that’s actually one of the art book’s strengths.  It’s amazing how much phenomenal work was put into the backstory of the game that isn’t actually shown on the screen, and the way that the art book presents all this extra material gives it a kind of interactive feel; the author and artists are never trying to make you like one design over another and at times acknowledge that the only reason a certain design wasn’t chosen over another was because it would be too technically impractical.  

The art book also covers pretty much ever aspect of the game; there are sections focusing on the main characters Elizabeth and Booker DeWitt and sections devoted to elements such as enemies, ordinary citizens, weapons, vigors, the setting of the floating city of Columbia, and even more.  The artwork featured also covered a wide range from the simplest of sketches to elaborate paintings with an intense attention to detail.  The content of the book is well balanced, as is the quality.  I never felt like I was looking at too much of the same thing.  

This book is a must buy if you’re interested in learning more about the world of BioShock Infinite.  Heck, this book is a must buy if you like art at all.  It’s full of absolutely wonderful illustrations that really capture the macabre beauty that BioShock always strives to embrace.  This book is so much more than a collection of pretty images, though, it also provides you with a window into the mind of the game developers and into the world of Columbia as a whole.  The book is rich with themes of decadence, artificiality, and tragedy of this turn of the century steampunk adventure tale.  The book really draws you into the world on a level that I don’t believe can be achieved by playing the game alone, and the price tag of $39.99 is more than fair for the quality and quantity of the content.  In fact, I plan on picking up a copy of The Art of BioShock Infinite for my own personal collection, and it’ll be the first American art book I’ve ever bought.  I can’t help but wonder if BioShock Infinite will be able to live up to the high expectations raised from the content of this book.  

Spoon is a white kid from Kanagawa who never knew what he was missing by only collecting Japanese art books.  He has recently seen the error of his ways.  He’s a long time BioShock fan and is incredibly jealous of all you lucky duckies who have been able to get your hands on a copy of BioShock Infinite.  You can reach him via email at haidovamps@gmail.com. 

Review: Vampire Hunter D vol. 19

I really don’t know how to begin describing my review of this book.  As a long time fan of Vampire Hunter D, I jumped at the chance to review something related to the franchise.  But having not read or watched anything related to VHD for like six or seven years, picking this novel up was certainly an experience.  It was like an acid trip. And honestly, I’m not really sure whether it was awesome or awful yet.
   

Now, for those of you who don’t know anything about Vampire Hunter D, a bit of history might help.  This is volume 19 in the series of Japanese light novels, and only 14 of those have been published in English.  The first light novel came out in 1983, and there have been a few popular animated adaptations of the novels.  But these light novels are also designed to be able to attract new readers, so even if you’ve never read or watched anything related to the franchise before, you’d be just fine picking this novel up.  All the characters and concepts are introduced pretty thoroughly in the beginning; there are a few concepts you’d need a cursory knowledge of, such as dhampirs being vampire-human hybrids with special abilities and D’s possessing a sentient left hand, but you could probably pick up on those things as you read along.  So if you have no experience with the series, don’t let that intimidate you into not starting it now.   

Vampire Hunter D: Mercenary Road (vol. 19) was originally written in Japanese, and that fact is totally obvious when reading the novel in English.  It reads like a Japanese translation, which unfortunately means that it often sounds awkward in English.  I still have to give props to the translator, though, because Japanese is really difficult to translate to English as its grammar and word order is very different, making it tough to keep the same content while constructing a coherent translation.  Overall, the translation is passable, but  I didn’t like how jumpy the novel was.  I’m not sure if that’s the fault of the translator or of the author, but at times, it felt like I was reading Japanese postmodernism.  Yeah, it was that disjointed at times.   

Vampire Hunter D is an amalgam of a million different genres, so it definitely has something for everyone.  The setting takes place in a post apocalyptic world in the far future.  Nobles, or vampires, have advanced science and technology so far that humans perceive their abilities to be magic, yet they live in medieval style castles and ride horse-drawn carriages… for fashion’s sake, of course.  In concepts like these, we can clearly see the mixing of genres; we get elements of science fiction in the technology, supernatural and horror with the vampires and ghosts, and a fascination with the Rococo like image the vampires insist on maintaining through their decadent lifestyle.  The novel has a steampunk feel to it, as the bandits and small towns typical of the Western genre mix with the science fiction technology.  For example, D has a cyborg horse that he prefers to ride instead of using cars or flying ships or any other mode of transportation, all of which exist in this universe.  At times, this genre-mixing can get a little ridiculous, though.  I actually cringed when ghost soldiers came out wearing jetpacks, and when one character pulled out a can of bug spray that deflected bullets, I had to have a laugh.  And then I wondered why the other characters hadn’t been using that bug spray all along.  It seems like a good option if you’re being shot at.  The novel is also heavily action focused: most of the novel is devoted to describing the various fight scenes, which honestly start to blend together after a while.  These pick up towards the end, though, as our heroes find more difficult enemies to face and battles become more than just pwning lowly ghost minions.  There are also ham ships.  Confused yet?  If not, you will be.

D and his cyborg horse.  He’s mastered the smize. Illustration by Yoshitaka Amano.

And now we get to the characters.  D is, as always, the stoic, disgustingly hot, ridiculously powerful, secretly caring, Edward Cullen-like dhampir hero we all know is treading the fine line between becoming a Mary Sue and just being the quintessential shounen hero.  Seriously, I don’t think there’s ever been a female VHD character who didn’t instantly swoon to near fainting after seeing D for the first time.  Oh, and he also turns ALL the boys gay with his beauteous looks and “voice like moonlight.”  All of them.  Even the dead people.  And the people trying to kill him. The dude wins battles just by being super hot.  I don’t even know where to begin ranking that on the masculinity scale.

This, of course, is nothing new; it’s your same old typical D.  But at this point, I feel like we all get it.  This is the 14th volume of this series translated into English, and we already know that D is totally supar hot and that if I ever had the misfortune of meeting him in real life, the moment my eyes beheld his countenance I would instantly become gay despite not having ever had any kind of desire for sickly pale vampire dudes in my life.  We get it already.  And even if this was the first volume of VHD you picked up, you’d get it too within like the first 25 pages.  Seriously, if I had a dollar for every time D was described using terms like “gorgeous fatality”, I’d be a very, very rich person.  The author’s made it pretty clear that they know how ridiculous they’re being at this point, too.  I did really enjoy the dialogue between D and his left hand that seemed to be spoofing the series; for example, there are several times in the novel where D’s left hand won’t stop giving him grief for all the boners and lady-boners he can’t help but generate in the lesser folk (which is everyone).  And maybe I’m just a sucker for guys with parasitic arm weapons (D.Gray-man, anyone?), but their relationship has always really worked for me.                 

Most of the other characters are pretty unlikeable and irredeemable, in my opinion.  There’s one flamboyant punk named Strider who’s particularly awful.  I mean, the dude joked about a girl being raped, and he’s actually pretty darn whiny.  I think the author was going for the image of a fashionable yakuza-like character, like that time Gackt played a yakuza, with the clothes and the punky attitude Strider has. I don’t think the readers are supposed to like him, but other characters like Stanza and Zenon are much the same.  

I’m pretty well acquainted with the .Hack’s and the Chibi Vampires of Japanese light novels, but I can promise you that this novel isn’t like the usual fare.  Although this is a light novel, which most assume are children’s books because of their length, Vampire Hunter D is definitely not for kids.  The content includes some very heavy stuff like non-consensual situations, rape jokes, gratuitous amounts of beheading, multiple descriptions of boobs, killing children, and other series issues.  Also, compared to other light novels, this novel is much more sophisticated, in my opinion.  Although the Japanese translation makes the flow of events a bit difficult to understand at times, overall the content and nonchalant style the novel takes makes for a more interesting read than the over emotional light novels of typical fare.  

Overall, as a fan of the series, I enjoyed this novel. If you can get past some of the small problems like the difficult translation and jumpy continuity, it’s definitely worth a read for the $11.99 price tag.  It’s an easy read for both long time fans of the series and friendly to readers who’ve never picked up a book in this series before.  Don’t let the fact that it’s a light novel dissuade you from picking this book up, as it’s definitely NOT a children’s book.  If you enjoy steampunk, science fiction and high fantasy, this is definitely a series that you should get into.  And why not start with Vampire Hunter D: Mercenary Road? 

Spoon is a staff writer for the Red Shirt Crew.

Justice League: Doom Review

Hey everyone!  This is my first (hopefully of many) posts here, and of course, it’s a movie review.  First of all, I’d like to say that this review will contain mild spoilers.  I’ll mark then when they pop up, but if you feel strongly about watching movies before listening to people complain about them, you should probably just go pick up this movie now.  Seriously, it’s good.  

For those who don’t know, Justice League: Doom is the 13th installment of DC’s original animated movies, and it came out earlier this year, on February 28th.  If you enjoy DC comics, I’d highly recommend picking up this movie.   

Anyways, here’s my thoughts: 

 The Plot: Good, but could’ve been better. The beginning action scene where the Justice League fights off the Royal Flush Gang, which is just a bunch of mooks (you know, the kind that try to rob a bank and get their asses hauled off to jail after about five minutes) is a pretty typical superhero movie scene, but it still feels quite disjointed with the rest of the plot.  After that, the movie follows each member individually as SERIOUS SHIT GOES DOWN.  Each hero’s individual bit is pretty cool, apart from Green Lantern, who is just absolutely ridiculous pretty much throughout the entirety of the movie.  Overarching plot flaws aside, the fast-paced fighting is exciting enough and definitely keeps your attention until the plot comes together. The points that I found most disappointing (other than Green Lantern’s desperate need for counseling and about 50 gallons of chocolate ice cream) were definitely towards the end of the movie, as I couldn’t wrap my head around the main villain’s motivation at all (without giving away too many spoilers, think Watchmen).  

There were also quite a few derp moments that pop up, usually in serious and/or important scenes.  Naturally, these derp moments ended up being some of my favorite parts of the movie.   *spoiler* For example,  Bane, while walking through the jungle, is the victim of a random crocodile attack.  This huge ass crocodile literally leaps five feet out the water and jumps Bane, completely out of the blue.  And no, this event really doesn’t have anything to do with the plot, at all.  Didn’t see that one coming.  Martian Manhunter also makes sweet martian tentacle love to Superman at one point, if you look reaaaally closely.  This is, of course, after J’onn is given roofies by his evil twin brother, and as a result, spontaneously combusts.  I shit you not.*/end spoiler*

The Characters: Great. Loved them.  Our same old beloved Justice Leaguers, once again done so well in this movie.  Green Lantern fans might disagree, because he spends a good half of the movie moping about something or other while everyone else is in mortal danger, but hey, his powers are driven by willpower after all… 

The Animation: I’m no expert, but I thought it was excellent, which I must say I wasn’t really expecting. I don’t really have much to say about this though, because I didn’t catch a single animation derp moment… and believe me, I was waiting for one. 

Final Score: 7.5/10. Compared to the rest of the DCU original animated movies, I’d say 9/10. Comic fans will definitely love it and should give it a watch.  Green Lantern fans should probably break out the ice cream.