Thank a Vet today

I would like to thank all of those out there that have served our country and defended the rights and freedoms of all of us.  I am proud to number among my friends and family several of these great americans.

I Guess I’m an Old Fogy

Listening to the radio at work we heard someone call in about standing in line on Black Friday to buy his 11 year old a laptop. I commented afterwards that the only thing I got out of that story was "Why does an 11 year old need a laptop?" My coworker then piped up that her niece's daughters, 7 and 9 mind you, each have their own laptop & televisions, and the 9 year old is getting a cell phone this year. Why? Why can't these kids use the family computer or television? Why does a 9 year old need a cell phone? (Her answer to that last one was that the mother forgot to pick her up after track practice one day so the father needed to be called. Ugh.)

OK, I'm 35, which I don't think is old, but I just don't get it. <grumpy old man moment>When I was a kid, I didn't have my own TV until I finished 6^th grade and I didn't have my own computer until college. Yeah, I had a phone, but it was in my room and I didn't get it until High School! In other words, until I was no longer able to use the family computer, or until I proved that I was responsible enough for my own TV/Phone, I used the family's.</grumpy old man moment>

I know that things are different today, but that doesn't mean its better. People have to have parental controls because they don't watch TV with their kids, or let the kids use the computer out of site of the parents. Do you think I watch My Little Pony and Strawberry Shortcake because I like them? Not a chance! I watch them because I have a 3 year old and I want to see what it is she's watching. If she's watching TV alone it's because I know what it is she's watching and I need to run upstairs for a minute to get something. The TV is not a babysitter!

"But they need to do reports for school," my coworker said. So? I needed to do reports for school, too, and I was perfectly able to do them on a computer that wasn't mine. Is it really that hard to make kids use something that belongs to the family rather than the child? Oh, I'm sorry but I'm too busy being her parent to be her buddy.

Rant over. We now return you to your regularly scheduled geekiness.

My Case for Kid Devil

The Aquaman Shrine recently asked for submissions for who we would like to see as a new addition to the team on Young Justice.  For those of you unfamiliar with the series, it runs on Friday nights on Cartoon Network.  It consists of Robin, Superboy, Kid Flash, Miss Martian, and Artemis, led by Aqualad.  They are a covert team that Batman uses to gain information or run ops against supervillians.  Quite the enjoyable show.

Having read the most recent run on Teen Titans, with many of the same characters, I thought that Kid Devil (the demonic sidekick to the JL member Blue Devil) would be a nice addition to the team.  So, I sent an e-mail and made it to the second round.  I won’t rehash my ideas about the character here, since I’m not sure if the others have blogs to use as a pulpit, so please click on the link below to see my reasoning.

http://www.aquamanshrine.com/2011/11/young-justice-dvd-contest-round-two.html

I would encourage you to vote for my choice (obviously) but please make sure you read all of the options and vote whichever way you feel you should.  (BTW, this goes for the elections being held today, too.)

DC Universe Online Review

Here it is, the long awaited (by who I don't know) review of DC Universe Online. First of all, let me say that I am a casual gamer. I play on the weekends, having to hold down a job and take care of my family, and even then I only play for a few hours at a time, so please take what is below with a grain of salt if you are a hard-core, play every day type. Also, which I have been in instances/raids/etc, I general do not prefer that type of play. If possible, I will solo and maybe help out other players on missions. With that boilerplate out of the way, let's get on with it.

 
Character Creation

Creating your character is quite easy, but also in depth. You are able to pick from Male/Female and from 3 Body Types in 3 Sizes each (none of which has any bearing on the character other than looks). From there you can pick a Hero/Villain to be inspired by, which will give you a character with random powers and a costume based on that person, or you can go the custom route. I prefer the custom way, but then I was trying to create a specific character when I first played the game. You have a wide variety of powers, fighting styles and origins, so that you are able to get a very custom character. The same can be said of the costume choices. I had a costume in mind for Lupine (who has since been renamed to Lupine Prime when the servers merged), to match the one I own in real life, and I was able to get close enough that the differences don't really matter. You will also have a choice of which Mentor you want to follow. They are Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman on the Hero side & Lex Luthor, The Joker and Circe on the Villain side. Regardless of which mentor you choose, you will still have access to all the missions on that side, which is a little rough on replayability.

One thing I would like to see them add would be secret identities. While it's great to be super all the time, I would like to be able to duck into a phone booth (yeah, I still remember those) and change into a civilian. Maybe have some missions where that is necessary, or just remove your character's information from the map. There might even be a way that heroes/villains that know your SID could see that information but no one else can. For example, if Clark Kent were walking around the street and both Lex Luthor and Batman say him, Lex would see him as an NPC and Batman would see the same info as if he were in his Superman costume. Just something that popped into my head when I was doing the character creation for the first time.


 
Early Missions

I really like how they scale missions to match where you're supposed to be, level-wise. You also have options as to what you want to do when, so it is definitely non-linear after the first couple of missions. There is a decent amount of variety to them and it shows you how to do everything you'll need to in the game. The issue here is that you can do missions from every mentor, which means that all characters end up with the exact same experience. I would much rather triple the missions for each mentor and only allow a character to do the missions associated with their mentor, except for a few crossovers that would make sense or if another character shares the mission with you. That would give people more incentive to play different characters just to get the full number of missions.


 
Graphics

The graphics are definitely up to snuff, especially if you look at it compared to World or Warcraft or Star Trek Online, both of which I have played. What makes this even more impressive is that it was designed to run on a console rather than a PC. The character models, both NPC's and Players, look clean and not very blocky. The emotes are nice, if limited, and do add to the game. One of the problems with the characters, though, is that if you interact with someone, they turn to face you but keep doing what they are doing. The Flash, for example, is busy typing something when you speak to him in Metropolis, but he keeps on typing when he turns to you. Just a little odd.


The backgrounds are exquisite, with lots of nice little touches that comic geeks will get a kick out of. They really planned out the cities of Metropolis and Gotham well, and that makes me sort of regret what I'm going to say next. I wish there were more cities out there to explore. Don't get me wrong, I love what they've done, but there's only so much of these two areas that I can take. I know, there are alerts, etc, but those aren't really meant for exploration (and I have other problems with them that I'll get into later on). I would REALLY like to see Star City, Coast City, Keystone/Central Cities, or just somewhere else.

One other issue that I have, and it's not like it detracts from anything, is that I have to play in 720p rather than full 1080p. It's probably due to internet connectivity and other technical issues, but I've got the TV that can handle it and I really would like the higher resolution. But that's just me.

  
Sound

I had a number of issues with the sound for the game, but that was a few months ago. It would cut out at times, so I could see Wonder Woman's lips moving but not hear anything. This seems to have been fixed and the sound is quite good. Both the music and the sound effects add to the game and give it some added flavor. It is a bit odd to hear conversations of people with microphones (I don't have one) when going past them, but it is part of the experience I suppose.


 
Universe

 They did their research, I'll give them that. The universe in this game has a whole lot of depth. There are characters all over the place, some of which you really have to search to find. Again, though, I would like to have a Secret ID available so I could go into a place like the Ace of Clubs, or the Lexcorp building and not attract attention (or, heck, just go into them period). The number of heroes and villains they crammed in here are great, but I would like to see more of the background players, like Bibbo, Jimmy Olsen, Harvey Bullock, etc.


The layouts of the cities, as I mentioned above, are great with lots of little achievements for finding certain iconic locales. The first time I found the Bat Signal in Gotham I definitely geeked out, and that just shows how much thought they put into the game and what's the players want. Although, I would like to see more things available, but that will probably be after the whole "Brainiac is attacking" thing runs its course, since the Daily Planet Building is currently bubbled and you can't get to it.


 
Later Missions

Being a casual player without a huge amount of time to play, I don't have much success with the end game missions. They are made to be done by groups, and I tend to solo everything. Even the PUG's I'm in for the alerts seem to be made up of people that take the game MUCH more seriously than I do, so there's not much here that I've enjoyed. I guess I won't be doing much of this stuff anytime soon, since I don't relish the idea of getting killed over and over, but I'll give it a shot now and then. It would be nice if these missions were scalable so that you don't need three or four people to get through it.

The major problem is that the missions I listed above are really the only ones out there. Sure, I could go and do the instances that I did before, only tougher, again but I really didn't get that huge a thrill out of it the first time. And, once those are done, then what? Oh, I can create another character and do all the same stuff over again. Thrilling.


 
Bottom Line

OK, here's the total of what I was saying above, and I'm not going to just give one rating, since the game's too complex for that. Just remember, this is only my experience so you might have a completely different take on it.


Initial Play = 4 out of 5
Replayability = 3 out of 5
End Game for Casual Players = 2 out of 5
End Game for Hard Core Players = ??? (I'm not one, so I don't know)

Happy Halloween

Halloween is probably my favorite holiday. You can dress as whatever character, etc you want; people give you candy just for knocking on their door, and there are some really good specials on TV. But beyond all that, it is a holiday about having fun! It's fun to do all these things. It's fun to get scared or to scare people. It's fun to go to or throw costume parties. It's one of the few times where an adult can act like a kid and not get slammed for it. So, in honor of all that, I present what I consider to be the end-all, be-all of Halloween Visual and Audio:
 
 

Also, for my wife, we have to include Witch Hazel:

 

That's kind of both ends of the spectrum there. Happy Halloween everyone!

To Miniature or Not To Miniature, That is the Question

Well … not really. You see, I'm one of those people that has never had a problem with picturing what's going on during an RPG session. It could be my over active imagination, or just that I grew up playing games that required you to see what was going on in your head. I mean, the most we ever did, and the most I still do, is to draw a quick sketch if it's obvious that the point is not coming across. That is not to say that I look down on those that use miniature to enhance their gaming experience; it's just that I never saw the need for it.

Something that I DO have a problem with is game producers trying to convince players that they NEED to use the miniatures in order to play the game. That is not only greedy, but insulting to the players. They're basically saying, "Hey, dummy. We know that you're not bright enough to use our products without some type of visual aid, so here is our line of reasonably priced <snicker> products to make sure that you don't have to use any brain power." That might be a little over the top, but that's the impression I get when seeing this kind of thing.

Which is your favorite Batman?

Not an easy question to answer, really. There are so many to choose from, much more than Superman, if truth be told, but here is a list of the ones that pop into my head when I think of the character:

1. Original Bat-Man, by Bob Kane and Bill Finger, et al. This Bat-Man smoked a pipe and only went out when there was a crime broadcast on the radio, or his fiancé was in danger. Even after the introduction of Robin a year later, this character remained virtually unchanged for decades. This version of the character was more lighthearted than what people think. In fact, way back in the beginning of the Golden Age of comics, Superman and Batman we very different from the way they are today. It was almost as if they swapped personalities somewhere in the 70's. This is also the version of Batman that I link to Adam West, Super Friends and the Brave & the Bold cartoon. Kind of campy at times & definitely not the brooding avenger he became. 
2. 1970's Batman, the Dark Knight. The 1970's is when Batman started to brood more and the stories got grittier. I hesitate to use the term "more realistic" since it's comic books, but this was when Rupert Thorn, a Gotham Crime Boss that didn't put on tights, was introduced. Batman was also more involved in the down-to-earth storylines rather than the Save the Planet from the Menace of the Week kinds of JLA/Superman/Green Lantern stories. I would argue that this Batman, in general, is what we still had in comics up until the past few years. 
3. Azrael Batman, pretender to the throne. Following the success of the Death of Superman, DC decided to knock off Batman by having Bane break his spine and paralyze him. Rather than having Dick Grayson aka Robin I aka Nightwing takeover (because it might just last and they wouldn't be able to get Bruce Wayne back), Bruce decided to pick the psycho, brainwashed assassin from the holier than thou Order of St. Dumas. Obviously, he went way around the bend and forced the miraculously recovered Bruce to come out of retirement and reclaim the job. Not my favorite storyline, as you might suspect. I liked the Death, Funeral, and Return stories over in the Superman titles, even though I knew it was a gimmick, but this just struck me as way too forced a set of circumstances in Batman. But, as I have stated before, I LIKE the idea of an original hero retiring/dying and having a replacement take over permanently. This could have been a great time to have Dick become Batman with Bruce as an advisor, but it didn't happen. 
4. Dick Grayson, Son of the Bat. When Batman got on the wrong end of Darkseid's Omega Beams, several people tried to fill the role. The one that came out on top was, of course, Batman's original partner. Dick changed the costume slightly and moved out of the Cave to downtown Gotham (as Bruce did briefly in the '70's). After fighting to have people accept him as Batman, which didn't take long, Dick became an integral part of both Gotham crime fighting and the Justice League, which seemed to feature many possible successors such as Donna Troy, Supergirl and Jessie Quick. Of course, this couldn't last and Bruce was returned to the land of the living and immediately formed Batman, Inc. (so as to allow Dick to remain as Batman). Obviously, with the New 52, this is now a defunct history, but it was nice to see the Squire become the Knight. (As an aside, some people knew that this was someone different inside the costume from 2 clues. First, this Batman did a lot more acrobatics, a tribute to the circus in Dick's blood. Secondly, this Batman smiled.) 
5. Animated Batman, Icon of the Small Screen. Batman: The Animated Series is the be all and end all of cartoon treatments of Batman. Not only is Bruce Wayne shown as merely a role that Batman plays (with different voices even), but is introduced us to a very successful revamping of many of the characters. While Batman was the main character, it was presented as more of an ensemble show. Alfred was integral to many of the plots, sometimes even verbally smacking Bruce upside the head when he needed it. Commissioner Gordon's Police, with Detective Bullock and Patrolwoman Montoya, were presented as being much more effective than you might come away with in, say, the Adam West show. Not to mention that the voice actors are now THE people that are associated with the characters, so much so that they were tapped for the Arkham Asylum and Arkham City video games. It's just not Batman if Kevin Conroy isn't doing the voice, IMHO. As you can probably tell, this is my favorite version of the character, since it's all encompassing without getting depressing, not to mention that I can watch it with my daughter and we both enjoy it. I would also include the Justice League and Justice League: Unlimited shows in with this as well.
   1. Batman Beyond. Although a distinct person, I have to include Terry McGinnis as part of the TAS universe and, thus, as a sub-entry. This is what I was talking about above, with Bruce becoming the mentor and having another Batman out throwing the punches. It was quite well done, with Mr. Conroy returning as Bruce, and the writing really held up. It's a shame that most animated series don't last very long, because I would really have liked to see more of this one. But, if you've got to go, you can't go out better than bringing back the original Joker and then killing him off.
6. Live Action Batmen, most of them anyway. There have been many men who have put on the tights of Batman, and only some that got it right. I will be skipping the movie serials, which I do have on DVD, due to most people being unfamiliar with them.
    
   
   
   1. Adam West – Probably the best known Batman, and certainly the one who held the title the longest, is also the one most people despise. I don't, and it's probably because of 2 reasons. First, when the show was made, Batman had been written pretty much this way for about a decade, so it's not like this was any great departure. Secondly, this is the Batman that I was introduced to as a kid, so I guess it will always hold a special place for me. In fact, West has become so inseparable from Batman that he went on to voice the character in later Super Friends episodes and has even done a cameo on "Batman: The Animated Series" as The Grey Ghost, a TV character that Bruce Wayne watched as a boy. Even so, "Bat Shark Repellent"? Who thought THAT was a good idea? Even as a kid I didn't buy it.
   2. Michael Keaton – I actually liked Keaton's Wayne better than his Batman, not that his Batman was bad, just he was a little too … off. In any case, this is the only Batman that dealt with the Joker in the appropriate manner. Did he kill him? Not directly, but he didn't save his life either. I'm sorry, I love the character of the Joker, but there are just so many bodies that a hero should allow. Why the duel identity had to be revealed to Vale or Kyle is still a mystery to me.  
   3. Val Kilmer – This situation is the reverse of Keaton, since I like Kilmer's Batman better than his Bruce Wayne. Yet again we see the "secret" getting out to everyone and their sister, which does nothing to add to the story at all, IMHO. Still, Kilmer makes Batman as believable as possible in this movie, and I have to give him credit for that, since there wasn't much to work with there.
   4. George Clooney – Really? The less said about this debacle the better. 
   5. Christian Bale – The most recent actor to wear the cowl is probably my favorite of the five. He definitely got the "grim avenger" thing down and is easily the most violent batman on screen. I really liked how they had Alfred and Luscious Fox helping Wayne, and how they were both able to stand up to him. Again, I'm not thrilled that he had to let his girlfriend in on the secret and what the heck is with that voice? He couldn't do anything else to make Batman and Bruce Wayne sound different? He probably couldn't keep that up for more than a few minutes before needing a Bat-lozenge.  Oh, and one more thing.  Ra's, as in Ra's Al Ghul is pronounced "Ray-Sh" NOT "Raz".  They did that bit in Batman Beyond.  Sorry, but that irks the hell out of me every time I hear it.

That's my list. I'm sure I have forgotten some, not being the Bat-Expert that others are, but I think it's pretty comprehensive. Just remember to "Tune in next week. Same Bat-Time. Same Bat-Channel."