COMIC REVIEW – Robin #125 (Vol. 2)

You all know that Robin’s being replaced. That’s common knowledge. If you don’t, one only needs to go here and find out.

At the risk of “spoiling” everything, I’m going to tell you that no, Robin doesn’t die. He quits. There you go; no need to buy this comic…

In all seriousness, however, the means of forcing Tim Drake to retire the Robin mantle is rather interesting, but the fact that no one has made an effort to hide what is to come doesn’t help the stock of this issue. I’m guessing the “retirement” of Tim Drake was the big consequence of last issue’s “unveiling”… and even though I haven’t read that last issue, I did read this issue. It peaked my interest even though I knew what was going to happen in a sense, so it worked on that level. The cover is rather bland and doesn’t really relate much to what’s in the issue, but it’s a good thing. The art in this issue is okay, but it really doesn’t do much for me. It’s not that it’s bad, but on the other hand, it’s really uninteresting and it doesn’t try to suck me into the story. Then again, that’s just me.

On the up side however, we’re getting a new Robin… again. And it’s a girl… again. This is the history of the Robin persona, a position that had been filled in by a young kid raised in a circus who had the nasty tendency of saying “Holy-this” and “Holy-that”, a snot-nosed kid whose rebellious nature got him killed by readers, and a “bland, whitebread kid” (thanks, Brian)… Whoever this new kid is (I know who, but I’m not going to “spoil” it for you) has some pretty small shoes to fill, but she should glad that she isn’t going to be wearing those god-awful pixie boots from the early days of the Robin legacy.

Under a different time, the 125th issue of Robin would have been a good book because it has the title character, through circumstances out of his control, forcibly step down from his career as a superhero. That alone would have been an unexpected move. But today, with DC’s own website and Previews basically spoiling the surprise by posting images of future issue covers, this comes off as nothing more than an average book with nothing to sell it on. Whether it’s worth the asking price is up to the customer (as with… everything), but I’d skip this one and wait for the next issue… which has the girl Robin debuting.

GameFAQS Review – Star Wars: TIE Fighter (MS-DOS)

In 1993, LucasArts released an unassuming Star Wars flight sim called X-Wing for the PC and was instantly praised as one of the better Star Wars games, thanks to its immersive gameplay, detailed graphics, and involving storyline placing the player in control of a Rebel pilot who controlled a number of Rebel craft such as the maneuverable A-Wing, the heavy bomber Y-Wing, the assault fighter B-Wing, and of course, the familiar X-Wing, in a battle against the Empire.

And then came TIE Fighter, the sequel where you get to work for Darth Vader. Greatest game ever, end review.

Okay, just kidding. Let’s look at this thing in more detail, shall we?

Continue reading “GameFAQS Review – Star Wars: TIE Fighter (MS-DOS)”

COMIC REVIEW – Ultimate Spider-Man #55

In a couple months’ time, there’s a new Spider-Man movie. So naturally, Marvel produced several story-arcs and mini-series that features a newly redesigned Doctor Octopus, who just so happens to be the main villain in the flick. That’s just fine and dandy, but this is Ultimate Spider-Man, where Humberto Ramos’ new Doc Ock (which kicks @$$ by the way) doesn’t make an appearance here, but rather the regular Doc Ock that’s indigenous of the Ultimate line of books. In any case, it’s the same intent.

If the fact that the latest arc in the Ultimate Spider-Man series pits the wall-crawler against Doc Ock isn’t a dead give away that this is another one of those oppurtunities to cash in on the hype of the upcoming Spider-Man movie sequel, then the disappointing plot element of an unauthorized movie being made on Spider-Man will. So Spider-Man gets upset that a movie company is producing a movie about him without his consent or input. Doc Ock gets upset that Spider-Man is getting a movie made about him. Gwen Stacy, still distraught over the recent death of her father due to stupidities in super-heroics, is upset because Spider-Man’s getting a movie. I get upset because the entire storyline revolves around the production of a movie, which is something that should have been a one-shot deal, not necessarily an entire story-arc that could have been good for something else.

I don’t follow the Ultimate Spider-Man series, so I don’t know what has happened before this issue and thus, I can’t really comment on the serial aspect of it. Then again, I really don’t care for serialization to begin with, so that’s a non-factor. The art in this issue is pretty good. Everything is pretty much laid out nicely and everything has a clean look to it. On the other hand, it’s nothing special and certainly nothing that I haven’t seen before.

Of all the Doc Ock-centric stories that are being shot out recently, I’d have to say that this one is a little weak, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad story. If you really need to go out and get something with ol’ Otto, I’d suggest you pick up the Countdown arc in the Spectacular Spider-Man series (or wait for the trade – it’s almost the same thing). You should only pick this up if you’re into Ultimate Spider-Man or don’t mind the “movie” plot, but if you’re somewhat interested in what the arc has to offer, there’s nothing stopping you.

COMIC REVIEW – Teen Titans GO! #5

For the uninformed, the strange looking comic series is based on  the latest DC cartoon series. Unlike the previous cartoons that came before it, which had some slick animation and presented  pretty good storylines, Teen Titans had anime-style animation and storylines that seemed way too kiddy. Perhaps you’re not supposed  to take it seriously, since it’s a team of kids, but the bunch of  kids that the series is based on were a tad more serious than what we have here. But we’re not here to look at the cartoon, we’re here to look at the comic.

Of all the issues I could have picked to review, I had to review  the one where the main plotline revolves around Raven getting a pimple. No, you’ve read right. And no, the cover of the issue is real. The whole story revolves around a pimple. This little pimple is the main villain of this story. Granted, it’s an interesting idea that is rarely thought of or implemented, but… oh good god, what am I saying? It’s a zit. For the majority of the book, the other Titans make fun of poor Raven’s zit, which reduces the issue to a poor man’s guide to zit jokes that are not only unfunny, but they really distract from the flow of the book, or lack thereof. The book tries to be humorous, but it doesn’t really work for me.

On a more positive note, the art is actually pretty good and it replicates the anime-style of the cartoon. I was a little reserved  about the show’s choice to forego the regular graphics and go with that form of animation, but on the comic, it works fine. I find it suits the printed format as opposed to the small screen. I could say more, but… it’s a zit.

There isn’t much else I can say about the comic. If you’re a fan of the cartoon and haven’t tried the comic, it doesn’t hurt to  give it a try. If you don’t mind a comic book where half of it contains poorly-executed zit jokes, this is for you. As for the rest of us, I’d take a pass.

MOVIE REVIEW – Street Fighter (1994)

Street Fighter is a 1994 action-adventure feature-film loosely based on the 1991 hit arcade game, Street Fighter II. It has nothing to do with the Street Fighter series of films starring Sonny Chiba from the 1970s; this very important, very obvious fact is worth mentioning because despite the popularity of the Street Fighter franchise and the cult status of the Street Fighter film series, there are a small number of people who believe that there is a connection between the two… other than the fact that the two share the same name. I’m serious; those people exist.

In any case, whenever most people bring up Street Fighter to any Street Fighter aficionado, they tend to look down upon the movie because it isn’t entirely accurate to the original video games. Watching the movie, I sort of understand why. Whereas Street Fighter II The Game was about a number of fighters taking part in a global tournament, each with their own motivations and whatnots, the Street Fighter movie reconfigures the plot into a U.N.-esque military operation headed by the American Colonel Guile (played by Belgium Van-Damme) to rescue hostages from a terrorist group headed by General M. Bison (played by Raul Julia).

The end result of this shift in storyline is the reconfiguration of certain characters that is different from the source material. Rather than being friendly rivals, Ryu and Ken are now street hustlers and smugglers looking for a quick buck. Chun-Li is a news reporter with a camera crew of Balrog and Edmund Honda, rather than an Interpol agent, an agressive boxer banned from the sport (although that detail is brought up in a scene), and a champion sumo wrestler respectively, Dhalsim is apparently a scientist for some reason, T. Hawk is actually scrawnier in comparison to his roided-up video game original counterpart, and the Brazilian beast Blanka is actually a mutated version of Guile’s best friend, Charlie… who would eventually be introduced into the Street Fighter Alpha series of fighting games later on and be a derivative of Guile’s fighting style as opposed to having anything to do with Blanka… whose real name is actually Jimmy… which is the furthest thing from a Brazilian name there could be.

Yeah, it’s easy to see why the hardcore fans would hate on this movie.

If you were to put aside the numerous inaccuracies and liberties taken in porting the source material to the silver screen, you would find a film that has its shining moments among the layers of cheese and camp. Some of the set-pieces were rather nice and did a good job in depicting war-torn country and a makeshift command center. Some of the costume work was rather nice (Bison costume especially) and there was some attempt to make these actors look like their video game counterparts – with varying degrees of success. The action sequences were pretty cool with plenty of explosions, and the fights were somewhat serviceable, given the varied experience of the cast. And hey, they even managed to toss in a couple moves from the game – albeit in a limited or drastically altered state… but it’s the thought that matters. Funny how a much later live-action adaptation attempt missed this mark

Some people have issues with Guile being the focal point of the movie and thus the guy who defeats Bison. I would admit that Van-Damme as Guile… meh, not the best choice, but he does what he can with the material given… and that cheese has to come from somewhere. But setting aside the casting choice… in my mind, it made perfect sense for an American production studio to place the American soldier in the protagonist role of their Street Fighter motion picture. Surely, if Russians had conceived a Street Fighter film, it wouldn’t surprise me if they made Zangief the hero of the story. Street Fighter II, at least at the time and long before the convoluted storytelling attempts and retcons that made the whole series plotline much more ridiculous than any third-party medium ever did, always seemed like a pretty open-ended tournament that had eight (later twelve, later sixteen, later thirty-something… ARGH!) possible outcomes.

I rather liked Raul Julia’s portrayal of M. Bison in this movie; he manages to convey while bringing some class and dignity to the role… something I felt was lacking in later, more truer interpretations of the character. The rest of the acting is rather hit or miss. But any scene involving Zangief and his backwards way of thinking did earn me a chuckle, so there’s that.

Overall, Street Fighter is a pretty okay movie. For what it gets wrong in terms of adapting the source material, it also provides some good, dumb, cheesy fun. If you’re willing to forgo any nitpicking tendencies and just want a decent action flick, then Street Fighter is a worthwhile choice. There are certainly worse movies out there, but this isn’t one of them.

My Top 6 Star Wars Games Not Named X-Wing Or TIE Fighter

Here’s a list of my top 6 Star Wars games that doesn’t include the incredular X-Wing or TIE Fighter games, because those are beyond reproach… well, mostly TIE Fighter is beyond reproach; the X-Wing stuff, I can take or leave… but there’s plenty of other Star Wars games worth playing. Here’s six of them… because there’s six movies in this saga. Maybe if they make a sequel trilogy, we’ll adjust this to nine or something, I don’t know…

Listed in no particular order…

Game #1 – Dark Forces
Here’s a brilliant idea. Doom was a popular thing, so let’s make a Star Wars version. And it was awesome. Great weapons, great atmosphere. … And then they’d make the Jedi Knight games, which I heard were also good, but I haven’t played those yet. Hope to change that soon.

Game #2 – Empire Strikes Back (2600)
It’s simple stuff; you fly a snowspeeder, you pick off AT-ATs with your guns until they blow up, lather, rinse, repeat. It’s a daring campaign to pit one snowspeeder against an infinite fleet of walkers, but it’s easy to pick up and play. And there’s a whole bunch of variations for you to try out if you want to spice things up a bit.

Game #3 – Super Star Wars Trilogy
I’m cheating a bit here because I’m including three games under the list, but Factor 5’s Super Star Wars trilogy of SNES action games have always been top-tier stuff. Yes, it might rough and tough in some places and liberties are taken with the source material, but damn if they don’t make good action games. If I had to pick one, Super Jedi takes the cake; multiple characters with different playstyles, some solid action bits, and some of the vehicle bits aren’t too shabby, either. Play them all, though. They’re great.

Game #4 – Star Wars Trilogy Arcade (1998 Arcade Game)
A rail shooter that has you partaking in major battle sequences of each of the three Star Wars films (we only had three, boys and girls) and with bonus stages featuring duels against Boba Fett and Darth Vader. When the newest Capcom fighter was indisposed, this was usually the other go-to arcade game for my money. Incredibly fun yet challenging fare.

Game #5 – Star Wars Racer Arcade (2000 Arcade Game)
Not one to be left out of the whole Prequel hype, Sega followed up Trilogy Arcade with their own version of the Podracer game. Not sure if this is the same thing you play on the consoles, but I’d say this arcade game is tremendous; featuring a control layout similar to a podracer, bringing that extra bit of detail and authenticity. Whatever you want to say about The Phantom Menace, at the very least, its racing games are top notch.

Game #6 – Star Wars (NES)
Another Star Wars platformer on NES that takes liberties with the source material; hell, the first chunk of the game where you’re on Tatooine is practically non-linear stuff where you can theoretically leave the planet without recruiting any of the usual suspects, thus turning it into a true adventure of Luke Skywalker and no one else. Yes, it can be difficult as hell with falling damage and some spotty moments, but if you can put up with the rough spots, there’s a damned fine game to be found here. And how many NES games based on movies or TV shows can you count that aren’t total garbage?

Oh, and on a sidenote, there’s also a Famicom version from Namco that’s not the same game as this. I’ve not played that one, but I’ve seen some of that in action. The less said, the better.

And that’s it. That’s my list.

Classic Bite Commentary #48 – May 2nd, 2004

FUN FACT: Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson’s birthday is May 2nd, you stupid son of a bitch!

WARNING: Contains language and some material unsuitable for younger readers. Discretion is advised.

How long has it been since I wrote a commentary or even made an update? A month? Are you serious?

Nothing noteworthy to add in this commentary other than a few notes here and there.

Continue reading “Classic Bite Commentary #48 – May 2nd, 2004”

Classic Bite Commentary #47 – March 14th, 2004

For today, this is going to be restricted EXCLUSIVELY to wrestling, as we’re counting down the hours to what may be the biggest hyped wrestling show, Wrestlemania 20. So as a bonus, I’ll have match predictions AND for the first time, I’ll pull out some sheets for an old wrestling game, where I had to book the twentieth Wrestlemania.

But first, a couple of notes on WWE’s moves. Because I haven’t done a retrospect at WWE’s moves recently, so let’s get this on:

Continue reading “Classic Bite Commentary #47 – March 14th, 2004”

DVD Review – The Best Of Power Rangers: The Ultimate Rangers (2003 DVD Release)

So we’re looking at the 2003 DVD compilation called The Best Of Power Rangers: The Ultimate Rangers, which collects some of the series’ best episodes or at the very least, the highlights. If I’m not mistaken, this is the first time that the Power Rangers franchise has seen a DVD release; unless the movie 2-pack had already been released around this time. In any event, let’s see how this DVD release stacks up.

THE GOOD: The disc collects five Power Rangers television stories; the two-part MMPR episode “White Light”, the two-part Power Rangers In Space finale “Countdown to Destruction”, the Lost Galaxy/In Space team-up episode “To The Tenth Power”, the Lightspeed Rescue/Lost Galaxy team-up episode “Trakeena’s Revenge”, and finally, the Wild Force episode “Forever Red.” In terms of the three two-part episodes, they have been edited to form a single, longer episode rather than two parts. For what it’s worth, you have some of the better Power Rangers stories presented here and while one could argue of more episodes being included, what they have here is fine… somewhat.

THE BAD: Not much in terms of bonus features; just a couple promos for other products and that’s about it. The set includes only one episode of the In Space/Lost Galaxy team-up and not the second episode. Also, there isn’t any sort of chapter selection where you can skip to a particular scene; instead, you skip episodes, so you’ll need to fast forward to reach a particular scene of an episode. The episode selection, while solid, also seems a bit random, as “White Light” seems tacked on for the sake of having an MMPR episode on there while the rest of the package were team-up episodes (though Countdown isn’t technically a team-up per se, it does feature characters outside the usual PRiS sphere of influence). Video quality also isn’t fantastic, as some noticeable grain and noise effects can be seen during sequences that feature lots of dark colors.

OVERALL: For a cheap-o DVD release, the Ultimate Rangers isn’t the worst thing out there as it collects five of the better Power Rangers stories up to that point. Arguments could be made as to which episodes should or shouldn’t have made the cut, but as a nice primer of the franchise’s high points and a collection of its best stories, it’s more than adequate. Fairly cheap, not bad, it gets the job done well enough.

RATING: 7/10

MOVIE REVIEW – Gigli (2003)

“Ever wonder how Uwe Boll feels when people crap on his video game movies without ever having watched them? He should try and sit through the J’Lo/Affleck mess called Gigli.

“I rented this movie once, hearing all the bad rap. Then I popped it in. Five minutes into the movie, I rewind the tape and brought it back to the video store. Five minutes into a movie and I hated it… what does that tell you about the rest of the movie?

“As years went on and I grew more of a spine, I eventually decided to sit through the entire movie… and after that, arranged for an immediate lobotomy so that I can purge all memory of this drivel.”

That’s how I started my imdb review posting back in October 2003… the movie came out in August… how could I have rented the video? Through the magic of instant cassettes… or a bootleg copy that I saw at a friend’s house. And yes, after watching more of this garbage, I certainly FELT like I’ve aged years. However, the last paragraph in that review holds very true.

“Gigli is pure garbage. There is not ONE single, solitary positive aspect to be found anywhere within this picture. There is not ONE aspect that can deem Gigli one of those “so bad it’s good” films that I’ll find enjoyment out of. If there is any high point to be found, it was ultimately sucked into the black hole of ineptitude that is Gigli, a film with an unlikable cast of “characters” or lack thereof, a convoluted storyline, terrible pacing, and an utter lack of chemistry among any of the cast. It’s just a mess of a motion picture that somehow got approved and shipped out for public consumption, reaffirming my lack of faith in humanity.”

I know what you’re asking. “Ah, Dave. Aren’t you being overly dramatic? It’s just a rom-com.”

Oh, you poor bastards. I’m not being OVERLY dramatic… if anything, I’m being OVERLY nice.

Gigli plays out like a shitty parody of a mobster movie. Ben Affleck has been in better stuff, he has done better performances, and this is neither. The same can be said for Jennifer Lopez or anyone else in this film. Was this a vanity project for the Bennifer couple or just something everyone was doing for the money and they weren’t even going to try. You can try and convince me of one or the other, but there’s no reason to believe that BOTH can’t be true at once.

There is no reason to watch Gigli. If you’re one of the many who skipped on this movie when it came out, continue to do so. And if anyone suggests that you need to watch this movie as a rite of passage, disown them. They don’t deserve to be part of your life… or any realm of existence for that matter.

Fuck this movie.