Chaotek Thoughts

I’ve never been a DC comics fan, and have primarily been drawn towards the traditional Marvel Knights. Last year I read the Batman War Games trade paperbacks and became interested in the Batman family. This was good timing, as the death of Batman gave me an opportunity to start fresh with the Batman Reborn line of comics. Since I have very little exposure to Batman’s universe, this gave me an opportunity to start reading the comics without the overhead of decades of lore.

The two Batman titled comics I am reading are Batman and Batman & Robin. The main stories in both leave something to be desired, especially in Batman & Robin. While I don’t really like the plot in the comics, it’s the side-plots that I really like. The  relationships between the Batman family are what attracts me, as you now have a happier Batman and a dark Robin. Damien is hilarious, even though that is not the character’s intent. I especially loved the crossover of Robin in the Batgirl comic.

By far, my favorite comic in the line (and perhaps favorite comic overall right now) is Batgirl. I liked Stephanie Brown as Robin, and it was a shame that her stint as Robin was just used as a premise to kick off the War Games story. So it’s good to see her in a new comic as Batgirl. The comic is still dark, but at the same time is very witty and fun. In many ways, she reminds me of Spiderman, where nothing seems to go her way but she is able to push through anyways. Especially good is the relationship between Batgirl, Oracle, Batman and Robin; where she is very much treated the outcast but she manages to keep mostly upbeat about it.

I hope that when Bruce Wayne shows back up to be Batman once again, Stephanie doesn’t get sidelined again.

I have cancelled my subscription to Champions Online. I liked the game, but I haven’t been playing it in the last month or two. The problem that I have with the game is that character changing decisions are too permanent. Unlike WoW, where you can relatively easily change your character build (talents), it is much more difficult to do so in Champions Online. Basically, you have to deeply pre-plan your character to be successful. Sure, you could do this in WoW as well, but I don’t think that you would be punished quite as much for a poor decision like Champions does. What broke my motivation to play was that I had leveled up a character quite a ways, and I decided to change the character to try a new build. I’d tried a lower level version of the build, which seemed quite fun to play. In order to rebuild my character, I was forced to sell everything I owned in game in order to afford the massively expensive rebuild. But when I got done, the character was impossible to play, having changed from a combat monster into a glass cannon. I now couldn’t afford to return back to my original build, thereby trashing my main character.

Sure, WoW doesn’t currently offer the ability to change your character so extremely. You can’t change character class, though there are rumors that might be coming. However the option was given to me to be able to do so and it bit my hand. While I wasn’t high enough level to recreate my original character build with a new character, it sure did crush my motivation to play.

Secondly, the graphics in the game are disappointing. While I can understand that they are trying to replicate the feel of a comic book drawing, which I can appreciate, you are setup from the beginning for a massive let-down. What I mean is that you start off in perhaps the most powerful character builder I’ve seen to date, able to customize everything to the smallest detail. The graphics in the character builder are quality 3-D modeling, so you are given the impression that this is what the game looks like. Then the game starts, and the comic graphics replace the 3-D modeled character you just got done building…

My final issue with the game is the lack of an open world feel. The game is setup with regions which are not attached to one another. One thing that I like about WoW is that you feel like you are in a “real” world (vaguely but you do) where you can wander around. However the zones were like maps in a console game, where you move from one box-canyon to the next box-canyon. The idea of using instances for the entire game, where a limited number of people could be in a given zone at a time, seems like a good idea for performance reasons (especially compared to racial cities in WoW). However in practice it doesn’t encourage the feeling of a real world environment. You almost never run into the same people twice, which doesn’t encourage groups to form or even casual friendships because its unlikely you’ll ever see a person again.

It’s not all bad though, as there are aspects of Champions which I feel are superior to other MMOs that I have played (namely WoW). Built into the game is a mission assistance mechanism similar to how the QuestHelper addon in WoW works. It’s easy to use, and helps new users get right into the action without just wandering around not knowing what to do.

I think that if the game is still going strong in a year or so, which is debatable giving the publisher’s spotty history in MMOs, I might pick it up again. Despite my above complaints, I really enjoyed playing the game when I did. Hopefully by then, I will be able to play without feeling penalized or feel like there is a real community of players around me. I’ll stick with X-Box for now, but I already miss playing an MMO…

Rating:

I’ve recently been reading quite a few trade paperbacks. Most recently I’ve read the Watchmen, Batman: The Killing Joke, Batman: War Games, and Batman RIP. Considering that I’m mostly a Marvel fan, its been an interesting experience reading so many DC comics. I’ve found that there are things in these books that I like and hate about trade paperbacks in general.

The first two, Watchmen and Killing Joke, were self contained story lines. This was nice because you can just pick it up off the shelf and enjoy a good story. War Games, with the prequel War Drums, was also a mostly self-contained story. Sure, it took 4 books to tell the story, but it’s all there. War Drums was especially important because it helped catch me up on what was going on before the War Games story starts. It even went as far as to introduce individual characters.

Batman RIP is perhaps the example I have for a bad trade paperback. The entire story made you feel lost, not because it was a complex plot, but because I just no idea who people were and what was going on. Many story points seemed like Deus Ex Machina or just random dribble.

Coming from Marvel books, I was also impressed by War Games by how the stories were integrated into a single whole. Comics from multiple lines, from multiple Batman comics, Robin, and Catwoman, were all intermingled into a single chronological story. Even when the featured character jumped from Batman to Catwoman then to Robin, I never felt like it didn’t make sense. I got the whole story in one pass, which I thought was terrific. Marvel trades, unlike War Games, would have had the core story in one book, and each side-story in its own trade. Some might see this as being nice to the consumer because you can get the basic story at a cheaper cost, but if you were planning on reading all of the stories there was a massive lack of continuity as you read each of the trade paperbacks in order. For example with Civil War or House of M, reading the secondary trades after reading the main story book was difficult because it wasn’t always easy to figure out when this occurred in the main story, or it is irritating because the contents of the side story help the main story and would have made it better if they had been inserted into the main storyline.

DC also produced War Games in a cheaper format. Instead of being a glossy, heavy paper like you typically find in many comics and trade paperbacks, War Games was printed on paper that was very much like newspaper. While cheaper to produce, I don’t feel like the quality was diminished and I got a better product at the end of the day because I could read the entire story, with all side stories, in chronological order for a much cheaper cost than it would be to read a similar Marvel based trade where I would have felt disconnected by the side stories.

I started used the comic collection database on ComicBookDB.com.

I’m really looking forward to seeing The Dark Knight, the new Batman movie out this summer. Why you may ask, because of Heath Ledger. According to sources, Ledger portrayed the Joker as a truly insane, depraved villain. Perhaps even the most twisted villain in cinema history. To get into the role, Ledger took a trip to the dark side–delving into the mind of a madman. He got so involved in the character that he commented to friends that sometimes the character didn’t go away after the cameras stopped rolling. For months after the film was done shooting, Ledger still couldn’t let go. According to news reports, Ledger suffered from insomnia as well other less defined conditions as a result of the character. So much so that he accidentally overdosed on pain medication and sleeping pills. Sounds like it’s going to be an AWESOME movie!

Stories like this get me thinking. Method acting, or The Method, is a style of acting where the actor tries to really get into the role. Sometimes this means hanging out with handicapped kids, prisoners, and rock stars. Heath Ledger went insane for his character. It makes you think about how he prepared for Brokeback Mountain…

On a more positive note, perhaps we can find some other depraved roles for some of Hollywood’s other method actors. Maybe that would get the Oscars down to a tolerable 90 minutes, like most of the crap Hollywood churns out these days, if we got other actors too involved in some twisted roles. Maybe put someone in the lead role for the story of Kurt Cobain, the Life and Times of Caligula or Dinner with Jeffrey Dommer?