Hark! a vagrant: History without the dust

Now I’m sure there were a lot of history buffs who read my XKCD review and said “Physics and math and linguistics are all well and good but what about history?” Good news! There’s this super lady in Canada. She draws a history comic called Hark! A Vagrant.

Of course being a comic, it’s not your dry 1789 this and Magna Carta that. There’s a lot of liberty taken with the characters that make up the history of the world. Like XKCD there are many instances I find my self curled up reading Kate Beaton’s comics with a copy of Wikipedia close at hand. A dying fire keeping me company and revealing the mysteries of the text.

Red Dead Redemption: City slickers need not apply

Actually, this game is great for city slickers and range riders alike. But still! The co-op missions come out tomorrow, so I thought it high time I weigh in on the game that made rdr cougar an internet meme.

I feel that I am more qualified than my counterparts Elrood and Tophat to discuss this game because I actually played Gun three years ago. Nobody else knows what that game was, but believe me when I say it shared a lot of similarities with RDR. I’m a big fan of sandbox games and running around on a horse brandishing a six-shooter is ridiculously appealing to me. That being said, buying RDR had not occurred to me until the Monday before launch. Elrood, Tophat and I were playing a little MW2 or Borderlands that night, I forget which, when a mutual friend joined our party exploding with excitement about the midnight release of RDR. The buzzword for the evening quickly became posse and in no time I was making plans to drive to Best Buy the next day. As I went to bed with thoughts of train robberies duels with my friends galloping through my head, the planets were aligning to ensure my disappointment.

Post-Nuke: Proof that radiation poisioning is a slow killer

One of the first webcomics with a storyline that I began reading with any kind of consistency was a little comic called Post-Nuke. As the title implies its one of the many post-apocalyptic stories about a man and his dog fighting a losing battle against the final destruction of civilization. It’s a very grim comic  done in pencil and pen.  The storyline is presented in issues like a traditional paperback, and author and artist Andreas Duller did originally plan to publish each issue individually. Now the plan is to publish the first 10 issues in a single book.

Duller has said that the online edition of Post-Nuke is more of a first draft for this final book than an actual publication, and it shows. Duller is not a native English speaker, which honestly doesn’t affect the comic a whole lot, but it’s something to keep in mind when the dialogue begins to degrade. And believe me, it will degrade. The fact is the whole comic begins a vicious tale spin in issue 7, but we’ll come to that later.

Mass Effect: a novel idea

So, I made a mistake. I’ll be the first to admit it.
I completely forgot to check out the second Mass Effect novel before I played the second game. I have a feeling it seriously hampered my ability to enjoy it.
Ascension is sort of an odd book. It doesn’t really pick up the main Mass Effect storyline where Revelation left off, but then again, that’s what the game was for. But it also doesn’t pick up where the first game left off.

Axe Cop: Chopping off heads and winning our hearts

What do you get when put a six-year-old in charge of writing a comic? You get the Desperado of police thrillers. Axe Cop isn’t over just any top. This unibaby has shot right over Mt. Everest. Drawn by Ethan Nicolle and written by his five-year old brother Malachai, Axe Cop is the perfect blend of fun ink and pen and sheer insanity.

Most five-year old boys, and a lot of girls, I know tell amazing stories about superheroes doing strange things in the name of justice, but few are able to maintain the storyline for five months and keep any sort of continuity. Whether it is through coaxing from his older brother or not, the continuity and pseudo-logic the storyline follows is impressive. Readers ride along with Axe Cop as he drives a bus with no steering on rollercoaster tracks of insanity. It’s  impossible to predict and the results are sheer awesome.

XKCD: Abandon all hope ye who enter

I’m going to let you in on a little secret.

Well I’m not going to shout it across the room, come here. Little closer. Closer. Too close……closer. Ok, here it goes. I’m a nerd. There I said it. I posted it on the internet so you know it’s true.

Now that that’s off my chest I have some fabulous news for all of my fellow nerds. There is a comic wholeheartedly dedicated to our plight. XKCD is a physicist’s, mathematician’s, linguist’s, and a systems analyst’s comic all rick rolled into one. I will be the first to admit that I by no means get every reference in the comic, but reading through the archives with a Wikipedia tab close at hand is one of the single greatest pleasures I have had in the past year.

Bioshock 2: You’re not my real dad!

I heard the announcement that there was going to be a Bioshock 2 with a wince and a fair amount of anxiety, dreading the return to Rapture just as much as I would dread seeing one of those awful Disney made-for-DVD sequels of their classic movies.  Uh, not that I have a soft spot for Disney movies or anything, shut up.  You don’t know me.

It really didn’t add up.  Bioshock ended tied up in a nice little ribbon on top of it, and I don’t know about you, but I got the feeling Rapture wouldn’t last much longer regardless of which ending you saw.  The dream was dead, all that was left was for the rest of the underwater city to realize it.  Plus, Bioshock was the first FPS game I played that really went above and beyond its genre, story wise, gameplay wise, and philosophically.

Godfather II: Just another sandbox game

For anyone who has read the book or seen Godfather II, and let’s be honest, if you haven’t you’re not playing this game, you may be in a for a few surprises. Whatever you do, don’t read the book or watch the movie within six months before playing this game. Don’t do it. As a matter of fact, don’t play any game based on a movie shortly before or after seeing said movie. Consuming the same storyline across mediums without providing ample time for digestion between will always lead to despair and indigestion.

First and foremost is the complete and utter lack of trips to Las Vegas. I say trips because there is a lot of flying between cities as you struggle to maintain a grip on your fledgling empire. It is casually mentioned that Don Corleone does live and work in Vegas but he spends most of his time in New York at the Federal Building in the court hearing. Also, I should mention the good Don is neither voiced by Al Pacinio or Michael Imperioli and while Carlso Ferro does a convincing job of playing an Italian American with enough power to know he doesn’t have to flash it, he by no means brings the character to the forefront. In Assassin’s Creed II on the other hand he is fantastic. Speaking of fantastic, John Mariano was spot on as Fredo. RIP John Cazale.

General Mish-Mash: Podcasting with poorly drawn Potatoes

General Mishmash is a REAL man's potato.

Stuff. You talk about it. Sometimes you wish other people talked about it too. Well, we are other people. Presenting the first Faceplant podcast, General Mish-Mash episode 1! We hit some of the hottest topics in the universe today, such as why hammocks are awesome. Seriously. But we also talk about how 3d games will be invading our lives and making them more….expensive? Speaking of expensive, Tophat freaks out and explains why Modern Warfare 2′s DLC is the devil and we’re all idiots. We also hit on some other big games such as Borderlands and Left 4 Dead 2, but really sink our teeth into what makes Mass Effect 2 great. And terrible. And also, kinda ehhh. With quick hits on game remakes, developers mailing it in, and many reasons why Enosh sucks, you can’t afford not to listen. Enjoy!  (The voice we referred to as “Peck” is actually “Tophat”.  Don’t ask.)