Spider-Man PS4 first impressions

On September 15, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn GeekLeave a comment

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… because, sure, let’s mention Spider-Man in every single post this week. I’m not a geek or anything, no.

I’m … fifteen percent, I think, into the new Spider-Man game; enough to have a solid early idea of what the game’s about but not far enough that my opinions have to be taken all that seriously just yet. But what the hell; I don’t really wanna talk about my job or politics, I can’t talk about my current Sekret Projekt other than that I have one and I’m not gabbing about it, and nothing especially funny has happened yesterday so I may as well gabble about video games.

And here’s the thing, so far: this game right now seems to be at its strongest when it’s a webbing around New York simulator; moving anywhere is a simply ridiculous amount of fun, to the point where I’m frequently ignoring crimes and activities in favor of just seeing what the most ridiculous way I can get from point A to point B is. The combat is okay so far; the balletic, combo-heavy style that these guys pioneered with the wildly overrated Arkham Asylum series works a lot better with Spider-Man than it ever did with Batman, so combat looks really good and fits the character. That said, the first big boss fight with Kingpin is utterly ridiculous and basically involves endlessly beating on a damage sponge with no health bar over and over until the game decides to trigger a cutscene and move on to the next part where you endlessly do the same two moves on a damage sponge. I really hope all the boss fights aren’t like this; they’re gonna get tedious really fast, and also Kingpin just isn’t that strong. Kingpin is not a “throw you through three walls and bash you through the floor” character, guys. He fights Daredevil. This version of the character fights like he could go toe-to-toe with the Hulk or Thor, which is just stupid.

Also: I keep accidentally doing terrible, not-Spider-Man sorts of things to people. Spider-Man is one of those “doesn’t kill” good guys, right? Which is kind of a problem, because I have a bad habit of doing air combos on bad guys and punching them off the sides of buildings. Very tall buildings. Where I can only assume they fall to their deaths, because there’s no “web them and save them” animation happening after I do that.

I once accidentally threw a car door at a civilian, which was, if nothing else, kinda mean. I didn’t mean to! I swear!

This game also has a case of Call of Duty syndrome. And, okay, it’s a stupid thing to complain about, I know, because video game, but New York is not been and never has been quite this crime-ridden. I mean, holy crap guys, it’s a wonder anyone lives here.

(What’s Call of Duty syndrome? Play Call of Duty on the highest difficulty level. You will die. You will die over and over and over and over and over and over again and you will only eventually be successful by virtue of the fact that you can come back to life after you die. I am then forced to conclude that Call of Duty is harder to survive than actual war, because no one can survive Call of Duty on Legendary and lots of people survive wars. Members of my family have! I’m only alive because my grandfather survived World War II!)

But, again: webbing around is fun. And I’m gripey about some other aspects of the game but they keep adding new fun ways for me to beat people up and we’ll see how things go as the game continues. I also (and this may mitigate my annoyance with the Kingpin fight) am kind of enjoying some of their alterations to the “standard” Marvel canon– Peter is working with Otto Octavius, who isn’t Dr. Octopus yet, and Mary Jane Watson (who is adorable) works for the Daily Planet. J. Jonah Jameson appears to be some sort of right-wing podcaster or radio host now, which I can work with, I suppose.

The boy loves it, by the way. It’s the first PS4 game I’ve let him play, so he’s relying a bit too much on handing me the controller, but he’s having a blast with the web-slinging.

More to come later, assuming I don’t get distracted by Dark Souls II and play that instead.

Zzzzzzzzz

On September 14, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn ParentingLeave a comment

Had a very long (but pleasant) day at work and since I’ve been at home I’ve been teaching the boy how to play Spider-Man.

So, not a bad Friday.

But lots and lots of bed soon.

In which I need you to share my excitement

On September 13, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, idiocy2 Comments

Okay. I need y’all either to actually be comics fans or at least be willing to pretend to be on my behalf for this post. You can do that, right? Yes? Good.

Miles Morales, in the seven years since he was first introduced, has become one of my favorite comic book characters. He’s up there with Iron Man, the Hulk, and Superman at this point. And when Brian Michael Bendis left Marvel and Miles didn’t immediately have a new series on the docket, I was genuinely worried. There was talk that the character was going to be renamed or reimagined; there was an especially gross rumor going around, one that was so bad that I actually wasn’t able to just dismiss it out of hand, that the character would be joining SHIELD and would henceforth be known as “Spy-D,” which would have meant I needed to go out and set things on fire, and that no court would have convicted me, because setting things on fire is a reasonable reaction to Marvel deciding that Miles Morales isn’t Spider-Man anymore and he has to be “Spy-D” now.

Saladin Ahmed just announced on Twitter that he’s writing the new Miles Morales book. Which is called “Miles Morales: Spider-Man.”

One of my favorite fucking writers is writing an ongoing series about one of my favorite fucking characters.

It was already a good day, guys. I was gonna come home and write a post about how I spent all day today and most of yesterday interacting with nice kids and it was something I really needed and I was in general happy and in a good place. And that’s before I got this awesome fucking news.

In which apparently these assholes are real

On November 9, 2017November 9, 2017 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek1 Comment

tumblr_n9ezbnaoXx1rx5px6o7_1280 — These are not the assholes to which I am referring. I’m a big fan of one of them and I’m sure the other one is a perfectly nice person.

The news hit earlier this week: that Brian Michael Bendis had signed an exclusivity contract with DC Comics. This news probably means precisely nothing to you unless you’re a fairly hardcore comics person; if you aren’t such a person feel free to skip this post entirely as it will hold little relevance to you.

For me, it was really Goddamned bad news. Now, to be perfectly clear: I don’t begrudge Bendis a single dime of the no-doubt enormous check DC has written him for this; the man has the unquestioned right to do whatever he wants with his career. He doesn’t have to ask me shit, and he doesn’t owe me anything. But as Bendis has become, for me, the definitive Spider-Man writer over the seventeen years he’s been writing the character, and as he invented Miles Morales, who for me is now a better Spider-Man than Peter Parker ever was, and as he’s also currently writing both Jessica Jones, which I love, and Iron Man, who is my favorite comic book character of all time… well, the news that he wasn’t going to be writing any of those books anymore is insanely Goddamned depressing. I’ve been reading Iron Man since I was nine. He’s had a lot of writers during that time. Jessica Jones is great but I can live without it. But the idea that I won’t be able to read any more of Bendis writing Miles is deeply upsetting.

I mean, I’ll get over it. I’m sure whatever he ends up doing at DC is going to be pretty awesome. But… shit.

So anyway, I went to the comic shop on Wednesday, as I do. And I (no doubt as 90% of his customers for the day had done) asked the owner (who, by the way, is the cover artist for Skylights) what he thought of the news, and we got into a brief conversation about it. Now, Casey pulls my books for me every week, and it’s literally his job to know the tastes of the various people who frequent his store, so he knows good and well I’m a fan. And I’m reasonably sure he is as well.

This dude comes up behind me while we’re talking. This isn’t unusual, mind you; I’m at the counter, so “behind me” is the place where other people who want comics will naturally end up. And I hear him mumble under his breath:

“Yeah, maybe Marvel will finally start getting good again.”

I glance at him and don’t respond, opting to continue my conversation with Casey, who gets a very brief pained expression on his face and then also moves on. I’ve seen this guy in the store plenty of times before, and as much as my physical appearance screams Comic Book Guy to most normals this guy has me beat by at least a few levels. Anyway, we conclude– I’m not enough of a dick, and Casey is too much of a professional, for either of us to monopolize the counter when there are people waiting.

“See you next week,” I say, as I damn near always do, and I head for the door. And then this guy starts in on Casey.

“Yeah, he’ll probably end up getting Justice League, and then he’ll make Batman gay, and Superman black, and who knows what else he’s going to ruin…”

…and it hits me. Bendis is married to a black woman, right? His kids are biracial. He was pretty explicit that he created Miles Morales because he thinks (correctly) his kids need superheroes to look up to. And not for nothing, the person running around in red and gold armor in the Marvel universe right now is a black teenage girl named Riri Williams:

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Holy shit. This guy is one of those fuckers who thinks Marvel screwed up comic books by getting too much brown in them. One of those stupid, stupid bastards. Right here! Right in front of me! Trying to argue with me, in fact! Or at least inflict his stupid opinion on the guy who owns the comic shop, somebody who by definition really can’t argue back, after making at least a halfassed attempt to insert himself into our conversation and being rebuffed.

Most of this is unfolding in my head as I’m walking to my car. And I resist the urge to go back into the store and start some shit, because part of me thinks that this type of racist asshole needs to be made unwelcome everywhere he goes all the time forever and ever, but the rest of me really doesn’t want to start a row inside this guy’s comic shop.

That said? Next time I see Casey, I’m asking him for permission.

I see movies

On July 11, 2017July 11, 2017 By Luther M. SilerIn movies, Reviews1 Comment

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You like movies, right? Everybody likes movies. You may have noticed that they made another movie about that Spider-Man dude recently.

Quick! Guess if I saw it.

Of course I did. And I’m pleased to report that I liked it quite a damn lot; I continue to be amazed that Marvel has cranked out something like ten thousand of these movies and I haven’t seen one I disliked yet. It’s not the best superhero movie of the year– that title belongs to Wonder Woman still, but it’s a solid effort, especially when you consider that there have been like seventeen movies just about Spider-Man in the last fifteen years or so.

Highlights: Tom Holland, Tom Holland, Tom Holland, and Tom Holland. Also Michael Keaton. Actually, hell, let’s be honest here: I like the entire damn cast. There’s just enough Robert Downey Jr– I didn’t want this to have as much Iron Man in it as, say, Civil War did– and he’s got enough screen time that it’s more than a cameo but not a lot more than a cameo, if you know what I mean. Putting Peter Parker back in high school was the right move, and Tom Holland plays young more than well enough. Michael Keaton as the Vulture (who, note, is never actually referred to by that name) is the best villain Marvel’s put on-screen since Loki, and I actually really like how low-stakes the film is for most of its runtime; it fits Spider-Man’s role as a street-level hero. This movie gets the character’s soul completely right, and that’s really important.

One minor gripe: this guy?

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The character’s name is supposedly Ned? And maybe he’s supposed to be Ned Leeds, although they don’t ever use his last name, and shouldn’t Ned Leeds be a lot older than Peter anyway? And: nah. Fuck that. This isn’t Ned. This is Ganke, dammit, and I want Miles Morales in a Marvel movie. Donald Glover plays his uncle Aaron! He’s out there, dammit! Quit giving me his friends under weird pseudonyms and his relatives and give me Miles Morales!

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I also saw this, finally. You may remember my review of the book of The Girl With All the Gifts: I loved the hell out of it, and it ended up being my second favorite book of 2016. I actually first heard of the book when I saw the trailer for the movie and it blew me away, and then I waited a year and a goddamn half and the damn movie either never came out in the States at all (I’ve been unable to get a solid answer on this, and believe me, I’ve looked) or got such a limited release that I was never anywhere near a theater that showed it.

Well, good news: Apple to the rescue! I was able to rent the movie for 24 hours for just 99 cents, and if anything it’s even a bit creepier than the book was– and, remember, I loved the book. You won’t be able to find this in theaters anywhere, but it’s absolutely worth hunting down if you have any way to stream it. Read the book, too, while you’re at it.

On the Spider-Man costume

On March 10, 2016March 10, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, idiocy2 Comments

So the last Civil War trailer just dropped, and it was super awesome right up until the point where Spider-Man and his godawful costume showed up: Screen Shot 2016-03-10 at 2.45.16 PM.png That looks terrible, guys. Somebody on Twitter compared it to a parade float, and that’s not far off.

Here’s the still Marvel released:

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I don’t know what the deal is with the mechanical black part of his eyes (they whirr! And if you click for huge, which you can, you’ll see there’s actually telescoping parts in there!) but the rest of the suit looks infinitely better in this shot. So I’m gonna assume they just hadn’t quite finished the CG or something on the shot that’s in the trailer.

The end.

I want this perfectly clear

On June 23, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek1 Comment

I have stolen the following four images from a comment on io9 (I’d link to it directly if I could figure out how) and reproduced them in the same order as the original commenter:

I just… God, book by its cover and all that, and hopefully this kid’s charismatic as hell on screen, but holy god am I bored already. The casting call may as well have just said “dude.”

I mean…