Biggest educational time-waster ever

TV Tropes.  You get linked there to learn about a literary trope in television, movies, comic books, etc.  For instance, I’m writing about a female barbarian character, and in researching costuming I ended up reading about Chain Mail Bikinis.  This leads to what the Most Common Superpower is, and how this often involves a Victoria’s Secret Compartment hidden in a Cleavage Window, leading to Power Girl’s catchphrase, “My Eyes Are Up Here“.  And then you just start reading about super-heroines with Boobs of Steel.  And on every page, there are dozens of examples.  And… oh my gosh, it’s 4:00 AM and I haven’t written anything!

Apparently, I’m not the only person who finds TVTropes more addicting than… well, I guess “crack” but I wouldn’t be able to say from experience. I can say it’s AS addicting as Cracked.

P.S.  While composing this article, I ended up surfing the site for three hours before remembering to hit “Publish”.

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Awesome preview movie for DCU MMORPG

Oh yeah. I’m posting it. I can be a lemming if I try.

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Scenes from the lost Babylon 5 Combat Simulator

Check out these videos of a Babylon 5 space combat simulator video game that, sadly, was canceled only a month or two before it was set to be released in 1999/2000. The special effects still look great.

Rats.

Since no official video game has ever been made, you can make do with an unofficial free game, “I’ve Found Her.”  There’s also a full mod of “Star Trek: Armada 2″ which converts it all to the Babylon 5 universe.

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My toys! MINE!

This week, a three-year-old named Grayson stopped by our house. He came into our home office and spotted all my comic book merchandise from DC Direct and others atop the book shelves.

He said, “Can I play with those?” and pointed to all of my MIB stuff (Mr. Miracle and Big Barda, three different Elongated Men, the Metal Men figures, Sam the Eagle, Ernie Pyle’s G.I. Joe figure, a Talking Presidents Donald Rumsfeld, etc.).

And I felt really sad to be a forty year old man with a bunch of toys I won’t let out of their boxes.

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Champions Online Review, part 3

This installment, I will cover combat and tutorial zones

Once you create your character, you’re ready for combat. What better way to introduce you to the mechanics of the game than to land you smack dab in the middle of an alien invasion! Fortunately, you have the best superteam, the Champions, assisting you.
During this tutorial, you are introduced to the game mechanics such as attacking, draining power for energy, and blocking for defense. On the way you are given various mini missions, such as rescuing civilians, assisting emergency teams, gathering info on the invaders, and of course blasting aliens back to their home planet.
After you successfully finish the training mission and are rewarded for your efforts, you then have a choice of participating in two more instances (or crises) in the southwest desert, or northern Canada. In both, you will be introduced to arms, science, or mystic crafting, where you collect the necessary components to craft items for offence, defense, general utility, weapon/power enhancement, or various instant powers (summoning robots, healing, shields etc.)
After the crisis is resolved (for now) you can finally play the game proper. You can start by purchasing new powers gained by leveling through training, and crafting new items. You can also continue searching for missions through contacts in the desert or Canadian zones. If you feel you leveled enough, you can return to Millennium City, and start missions there.
The game zones themselves are worth mentioning. The second introductory zones, as mentioned are a desert, and arctic zone. The desert zone contains a ghost town (complete with ghosts) a radioactive wasteland, supervillain prison, and a wild west theme park, all with unique adventure possibilities. The Canadian zone includes patriot/terrorists, supernatural threats, and clone armies. All designed to be a formidable threat to your character.

In the next installment, I will cover Millennium City, some of the later zones, major villain groups, supergroups and teaming, powersets, and missions unique to this MMO.
In the meantime, here is a MashOn comic of my character Psyche. Enjoy!

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Champions Online review, part 2

Character creation is basically the same with both Champions Online and City of X, with some exceptions. Most notably, are the number of Characters you can create per server. In COH, I believe you can create 10 heroes or villains on each server (please correct me if I’m wrong) In Champions, for now you are limited to 8.
In the actual character creation, Champions allows for 5 major frameworks (Psionic, Magic, Mechanical, Martial arts, or general powers) divided further into 3 minor frameworks which can be used individually, combined with others within the major, or other minor powers outside the major. For instance, A player may choose to use electrical powers under force. He might then decide to augment his powers further by adding an electrical generated shield (still within the framework). He THEN might decide to use mechanical based shielding for protection, thus, choosing a power outside of force.
After setting up powers and the costume, the last thing is naming. In most MMOs that I’ve played, all the popular names have been taken. For instance, in COH, I wanted to name a character Scattershot, but the name was already taken. In my case, I came up with Scatterstrike, which solved my problem. However, in most cases, I’ve seen characters named ‘Devildood’, ‘Mightyguy123’, etc which to me, spoils the work and imagination that you put into character creation (it reminds me of trying to create an anonymous yet cool sounding user ID on a message board, only to find that 100 other users had the same idea). Champions solved this problem, by connecting the names to the User ID of the character. IE, I have a character named Psyche, which I created from the pen and paper days. I created a character based on her, and successfully named her, despite the fact there were at least 50 other characters named Psyche. Below is my character, then and now.

Next up, gameplay

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Some Screenshots from Champions Online

I meant to post these the other day, but for some reason, these pictures would not scale down. Thankfully, Mike fixed this problem.

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Champions Online review, part 1

I have received this MMO as a gift last week, and find it a significant improvement over Acclaim’s City of Heroes/Villains, but not without flaws.

First, a bit of history…

Champions began as a pen and paper RPG back in the early 80s. It would spawn the HERO system, which could be used for a variety of different genres (fantasy, space, secret agents, etc.). Plans were made for a computer game based on the series, but was eventually scrapped. After a brief revival in the RPG field, the game has finally entered cyberspace.

The theme of the game is simple. You start out as an up and coming hero who can choose from a wide selection of powers, ranging from strength, speed, magic, etc, to help protect Millennium City. During gameplay, you will encounter a wide range of foes, almost all stemming from the RPG. These include the muscled monster Grond(basically a four armed Hulk) the furious and fun loving Foxbat (sort of like Die Fleidermaus from The Tick, except worse) and the ultimate arch fiend, Dr. Destroyer. Villain groups include my personal favorite VIPER(like COBRA, except with brains) PSI (an organization where all members have some sort of Psionic powers) and possibly others.

Next installment, I will cover game mechanics, and comparisons between the other Superhero MMO, City of Heroes.

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The 15 Worst Comics of the Decade

The 15 Worst Comics of the Decade – ComicsAlliance.com.

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the Darker Seid of Life

By all means we at Monitor Duty should have written dozens of histories and recaps and essays about DC Comics’ vile Kirby demon, the evil New God Darkseid.  By now there should be hundreds of references and odes of love.  If kicked we might see it happen in the future, but I do not care to do that now.

Recently when I should have been working I googled for Grant Morrison interviews about Darkseid.  To tell you the truth I do not think that Mr. Morrison has anything profound  or unusual to say about the character but I like the way he puts together words and descriptions.   He puts together ideas that are not necessarily new or great in ways that are interesting and entertaining.  Honestly that is a good thing.  It does not matter whether the ideas are his or not.  His 52 co-writers claim that his virtue is not his creativity but his fearlessness.  He will go where his fellows will not and that seems like a strength to me (and a burden to editors and marketing staff).

Grant Morrison successfully delivers upon the marketing and communication of old ideas mixed together in way that editors would not let less experienced writers attempt.  That is the only reason I bother looking for his interviews.  I like his words; Ienjoy good poetry.  I do not care to give him credit for new meanings or new ideas.

Here is a quick Darkseid link dump.  It might be nice if, in the future, Monitor Duty has the greatest and most authoritative Darkseid link directory.  Let us leave that for the future.

• Marc Singer, who is not the Beastmaster, writes a defense of Darkseid against the Howling Curmudgeon, in that he declares why the character is a good one, but insists the biggest injury upon the character is its overuse.  They agree on the character’s three best stories but alos there are moe good stories with the character.  The most profound note is that the character is used best in stories where he seems to die a permanent death.  I think that the character is not made better by having no inner conflict, but to have the character have an inner conflict is to write him out of character.  Most good characters have inner struggles; to an extent it easier to see the super-villain in this case as a plot device.  In this light most villains are plot devices more than characters.  I can think of exceptions like Lex Luthor (depending on the writer, of course) and Doctor Doom, both of whom are self-realized as Darkseid is.  Yet Luthor (again depending on the writer) has a character arc involving his own jealousy, need for attention, his place in the world, and possibly friendship with Superman.  Doom struggles with vanity above all.  Darkseid has not issues.  He merely is.  He will never grow and he will never learn.  He will simply act, conquer, enslave, and at the end of the story arc in question he will die.  Occasionally he gets trapped in the Source Wall or something.
• A lot of this comes from a September calling for Darkseid essays.  Who has the time?  The point is that Darkseid “is a person” and I cannot say it is wrong because I sadly have read less Kirby New Gods material than I should, due to cost constraints.  As it is, what I declared in the point above is that recently Darkseid is a more a plot device, an abstract menace (as Galactus has almost always been) because while he may have been a person with a personality most writers simply treat him as an abstract personification of a dark ethos.
• The best response is this: by Keith Giffen in his Ambush Bug mini-series.
• Andrew Hickey insists that Darkseid’s desire to seize control of all life, the universe, and the entirety of creation and existence is borne out of fear of death.  Mr. Miracle is the logical counterpoint and the arch-enemy of Darkseid because as an escapological archetype he is positioned outside of the constraints of control.  Yet Scott Free himself is still not a direct and successful contrast because Darkseid name him and set his purpose.  That is Mr. Hickey’s point anyway and I am not certain I buy into it.  This plays all into ideas of “degrees of freedom” but as a Liberal Democrat (in the UK political sense) Mr Hickey’s views about what is acceptable as a definition or execution, application of freedom is suspect.
• The first Darkseid story I ever read was not the entire story but the final chapter of a JLA/JSA team-up story.  As was the the fashion at the time the occasional/formal meeting between the League and the Society finds it self linked to a third super-team, in this instance the New Gods.  I remember Justice League of American #184 (and here is the cover) because the New Gods were not only definitely super-heroes in this incarnation (and there is nothing wrong with that) but Darkseid has a personality, he is a villain with motivations and relationships.  In point of fact the bulk of the story is about relationships as well as a rise to power.  Upon his return from his most recent death in the New Gods strip from Adventure Comics, Darkseid punishes the Injustice Society for accosting his son Orion, clearly with a view of propreitry and seeing Orion as a creature, a prince, someone whose fate is more tied to Darkseid’s whim than mere encounters with bad guys.  Orion’s group consists of a Leaguer and a Society member.  All the split-groups  (I love how they follow the Gardner Fox tradition) consist of such a configuration.  For isntance Batman’s group has Mr. Miracle and the Huntress because both are versions of him in the different worlds of the different teams.  At this point each team resides in a different dimension of the DC Comics storytelling.   Because Darkseid has his relationship with the New Gods he seeks to teleport Apokolips to the spot where Earth-2 resides, destroying Earth-2 and thus landing his domain inside a universe where there would be no heroes, and no heroic New Gods.
• OAFE assesses/contrasts two Darkseid action figures making his size and sculpt major emphasis.  The Mattel version, which is the one really looked at, comes with a Mother Box as his accessory, and despite being smaller than the DC Direct Darkseid figure, is apparently just better.  Of course there is a brief history asserting that Darkseid only recently became a Superman villain despite that his first appearance was in a Superman comic.  He also discusses Grant Morrison’s formulation of the Anti-Life Equation.

I think there is something to be said that properly written the villain is a character but this applies to every character.  It is also important to note that the ending of the story as well as how often the character appears has serious impact for story quality.

(1 votes, average: 1.00 out of 5)

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Superhero Facebook

Too funny.

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Free Destructoid stuff during Twitter Party on Friday!

I’m passing this along from my friend at Rocket XL:

We just set up a Twitter party with Destructoid … We’ll be giving away a PS3 Slim and limited edition Eddie Riggs (Jack Black) statues to lucky followers who tweet using the hashtag #brutallegend during the party. Below is some info about the Destructoid/Brutal Legend Twitter Party you can share:

• Party Date: 8/21/09 (Tomorrow!)
• Start Time: 3PM Central
• End Time: 5PM Central
• Prizing:
· 1 – PS3 Slim
· 5 – Eddie Riggs Statues
· 25 – Fan Packs (stickers, zipper pulls & patches)

• Join the party with the hashtag #brutallegend

• Follow @dinomas and answer his questions to have a chance to win the Slim PS3 and other prizing

• Use a Twitter tracking service like www.tweetgrid.com, with the #brutallegend tag, which will help you follow the party in real time

• Destructoid posting – http://www.destructoid.com/we-host-a-brutal-legend-twitter-party-you-win-a-ps3-slim–144995.phtml

We’ll be working with other Brutal Legend initiatives as well and let me know if you want to be kept up to date. Also, if you have any questions pls feel free to ask and definitely let your readers know ASAP, as the party takes place tomorrow at 3pm Central.

Brutal Legend Doth Cometh!

• All things Brutal Legend – www.brutallegend.com

• Join in the discussion – www.twitter.com/brutallegend

• Breaking Brutal Legend news – www.facebook.com/brutallegend

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6 Islands of Horror — No, Real Islands!

I hate Cracked.com. Mostly because it’s an addictive site that can eat up productivity like no one’s business. Just one list after another. They have some very witty writers, although their unedited nature with swear words in every article, sub-heading and very often even page titles makes it a bit hard for me to take. I just don’t like patronizing sites that I cannot link people to without including, in good conscience, warnings to the audience.

So here’s your warning: Swear words everywhere. Also, this story is not for the faint of heart. Warning over.

Now, read about 6 Real Islands Way More Terrifying Than The One On ‘Lost’, including one that sounds like the Well of Souls if it were an island, a haunted island, a cannibal island of terror… and an island that subjected Japanese soldiers to their own alligator version of Quint’s U.S.S. Indianapolis monologue.

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Winner of funniest name for a web site award

John Cleese’s Nigerian Lottery

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Hey, It’s My Film on DVD

One of the last things I posted before my long sabbatical from Monitor Duty was a trailer for a film my wife and I have made. In the interim, we’ve made another feature and we’ve begun writing yet another still.

For reasons explained in this interview, we’re self-distributing our films on DVD via Amazon.com and CreateSpace, with V.O.D. looming in the near future, starting with that afore-trailered film, The Man Who Loved.

Read the rest of this entry »

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My local Star Trek Museum!

I live over on the east side of Rochester, Minnesota. One fine day I was out walking when I noticed an odd blue sign in the distance. It was fuzzy and I could barely make it out…

The heck?  I’ve never noticed that sign before.  Now, it’s probably been there all along, and I’ve been passing it for years.  But how could I not have noticed that that’s the USS Enterprise on the sign!

I was still several blocks away from the sign.  It was a sunny day and I was squinting in the brightness.  I quickened my pace to get to this sign and find out what it was.  I mean, how could there be something Star Trek-related in my own neighborhood all this time and I haven’t known about it!?

My mind was racing. Could Rochester be the birthplace of Gene Roddenberry, maybe?  Couldn’t be anything to do with Shatner or Doohan, they’re Canadians.  Takei was from California or thereabouts, since he was in an internment camp during WWII.  That leaves a number of major castmembers.

Maybe Enterprise designer Matt Jefferies was born here!  That would explain why they have this schematic-looking overhead view of the Enterprise on the sign.

I was getting closer.  Now it was just across the street.

Perhaps, instead of a Trek birthplace, there was a little Star Trek museum?  This is a residential area, so maybe some Trek collector let his collecting get out of control and take over his house.  He collected action figures, bought authentic props, built dozens of models, changed all his decor to be Trek-related, and he turned his entire basement into a replica of the set, and it finally reached a point where it was either put it all into storage or turn his house into the Star Trek Museum of Rochester.  That would be pretty cool.

I crossed the street.  Now I could definitely see the details of the sign.  That most certainly is the Enterprise against the blue background!

Oh, wait.

It’s Jesus.

Well…Star Trek is practically a religion, so I wasn’t too far off.

(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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Human video games

I love those pixel people.

Tetris:

Space Invaders:

This one’s called “Pole Position” but it’s not. It’s one of the more primitive driving games.

Of course, it’s probably not that hard (just time-consuming” when doing this stop-motion. Try doing it in time to music like the South Koreans do!

(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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Abe Vigoda 1921-2009, R.I.P.

Abe Vigoda was once declared dead by People Magazine, which he took in good humor by photographing himself reading the issue in a coffin. Unfortunately, his days of cheating the reaper have caught up to him.

Last night, Abe Vigoda expired peacefully in a fiery car crash after a high speed chase with 30 police vehicles. A premortem found high levels of barbituates, PCP and a fish tranquilizer in his system. The five FHM models in the car with him were thrown clear and were cushioned by various implants.

R.I.P. Abe Vigoda, you crazy bastard.

(1 votes, average: 1.00 out of 5)

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The Birthday haul (a/k/a “Game reviews to come”)

I had a lovely little birthday party with my wife, Melinda, and niece, Jenny.  They bought a glittery banner and I realized I’ve never had a banner for my birthday party before.  They also restarted a long-abandoned tradition of lighting a candle on the cake for every year I’ve been alive, and there’s a reason why we abandoned it: the lighting took forever and the cake is now covered in wax, and now the top of the cake looks like a squirrel couldn’t find his nut and dug everywhere for it.

Here are my presents, presented not to gloat over the big haul (it’s not) but to show what a wonderful wife I have:

This was from my wife. Fun for the entire family. Review to come.

This was from my niece Jenny.  Allegedly.  Next time, Melinda, tell Jenny what “she’s getting me” so that she doesn’t take it from my hand and say, “What is it?”  It kinda spoils the subterfuge.  Anyway, it’s a Wii version of a game I’ve found addictive on the computer.  Will that translate to Wii play?  We shall see.

This was “from Melinda”, inasmuch as when we were at Sam’s Club buying my cake and steaks earlier on Sunday I threw it in the cart and we counted it as one of my presents.  It’s a bargain game.

And then here is a present from my cats Nina, Doris and Natasha.  (I named “Doris” so that she could be criminal partners with Natasha.  Would have been Boris but who names a female kitten Boris?)  The cats have good taste.  These are the original Peanuts cartoons from back when the Peanuts gang was first being conceived.  It’s rather dark stuff for the time, which seems odd considering that Charlie Brown and Snoopy came to symbolize the tired, trite and boring of the comics page.  Charlie Brown, the boy who never wins anything, who loses every kite he’s ever tried to fly, who is ridiculed by his friends and is tricked repeatedly by a girl who offers to set up a football for him just to mock him when he falls on his back.  Charlie Brown, whose baseball team is a bunch of losers who would rather hold rubber cats, fluff their naturally curly hair, hang on to their precious blankets or debate philosophy than play ball, and whose meanest pitches get batted back at him so hard he winds up lying in his underwear on his pitcher’s mound.  In a world of Blondie, Family Circus, Alley Oop and Prince Valiant, that’s actually pretty edgy.  I think my favorite moment is when Charlie Brown actually wins something, and it’s a coupon for a free haircut.  He points out that his dad is a barber and gives him haircuts.  And he doesn’t really have a lot of hair.  (Maybe I just like that because it’s meta-referential; the strip rarely commented on itself.)  I’m anxious to dig into this volume.

Surprise!  I got one more present on Monday.  My buddy Robert Bavington (who has done many of the costumed Fuzzballs for this site and Fanzing) sent me the season 3 box set.  I’m over the moon.  Thanks, buddy!

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Hey, look! It’s J’onn J’onzz waving to us!

Google Mars now lets you look at the Red Planet.  This sounds awesome.

I’ll give it a try as soon as I up my new Qwest DSL to a tolerable speed.  (I’ve apparently been enrolled at the “beats (barely) dial-up” level.

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