Comic Panel of the Week: Dark Phoenix Cyclops

If you still had any doubt about Cyclops being evil, here's some proof.

Double Dragon Neon Review

---Note: If your just here for the review you might want to skip to the second paragraph---

I know, I know. I'm taking another week to review a video game when I should be reviewing a comic. Well there are a couple of reasons why I'm not reviewing a comic this week. The biggest reason is that I started a new job recently, and I haven't had time to prepare for my regular comic review. The second reason is that I've lost a lot of interest in mainstream comics recently. Due to the business practices of both Marvel and DC I don't get a lot of there comics anymore. Now I only read Archie's Sonic and Megaman comics as well as catching up on some old Trades. Since I read only one book monthly I have a lot of money left over which I spend on other media such as Video Games and Movies. Which brings us here.

I'm not the biggest fan of side-scrolling beat'um ups. The only ones I've played are the heavily censored SNES version of Final Fight, Knights of the Round, and The King of Dragons. The only exposure I've had with the Double Dragon Series is playing Double Dragon 3 on my Brother's Girlfriend's NES. The game barely worked, and when it did it was almost unplayable. So going into this I didn't know what to expect.

The story isn't that deep or meaningful. You play as Billy Lee and his brother Jimmy who must save Billy's Girlfriend Marian from the evil Skullmageddon (Who totally isn't Skeletor's Japanese Cousin). They must fight there way threw hordes of Punks and Girls in Dominatrix gear in order to save Marian, and beat Skullmageddon.

The Gameplay is pretty straight forward, and it's good to see a Beat'em up that uses all it's buttons unlike Final Fight which uses two. You can do a standard attack, pick-up weapons, and you can even use the Right Bumper to do a special attack. The Graphics are pretty good, and the environments look nice. Defeating enemy's is pretty easy if you know what to do, but it can be really slow especially since they don't have a health bar. One problem with the enemy's is that some of the turn invincible before doing an attack. This can cause a problem since if you attack them while there invincible it's pretty much impossible to avoid there attack.

If you asked me to describe this game in two words I would say "The 80's." This game is so 80's from the characters saying 80's catchphrases to the very rocking soundtrack. Like I said Skullmageddon is essentially Skeletor, You revive your partner by rewinding a mix tape, every special move has it's own cheesy 80's song, and every time you finish a level the characters air guitar like their Bill and Ted. I can imagine this game being nostalgic for a person who lived in the 80's, even I find it awesome and I was born in '93. Of course not everybody's going to appreciate the cheesyness but if you were buying this game and expecting a deep and profound gaming experience you seriously need to choose your games more wisely.

Overall this is a great game, with great music, and awesome 80's action. You can get it on the Xbox Live Marketplace for 800 Microsoft Points and if you have a PlayStation Plus Membership you can get the game for free. But like I said this game is not for everyone so before you buy it and start b*tching about it on Youtube go download the Demo first. This isn't the Wii. You can see if you like the game before you spend your hard earned money on it. Not that the Wii is bad but it's seriously lacking in the Demo department.

Rating: 4/5

*By the way this game has the best ending credits ever* 

My Opinion on no more Nostalgia Critic

The big news on the internet this week is that Doug Walker Aka the Nostalgia Critic has announced that there will be no more Nostalgia Critic Episodes. His Fourth Year Anniversary movie "To Boldy Flee" is the conclusion to the character. While I don't think this was the best of the Anniversary's, as a send off to the character I think it was good.

I decided to talk about this because the Nostalgia Critic was one of the inspirations that made me decide to become a reviewer. I mean with out him I wouldn't of found out about other great reviewers like the Spoony One, Linkara, Phelous, and Suede. Just to name a few. While I'm saddened by this news I understand that Doug wants to move on and all I can do is wish him good luck in the future.

Comic Panel of the Week: Living in the Past

Green Lantern Annual #1 Review

---SPOILER WARNING---

Let's say there were all powerful beings. Imagine that they constantly made mistakes and tried to hide them all even when they were coming back to bite them. A group that was, for the most part, as much to blame for all the evil in the universe as the evil itself. That is what the Guardians of Universe are. As long as I've read comics I've always hated the Guardians of the Universe, they constantly abuse there power, and never learn from there mistakes. Sure they have done some good, but most of the time the Green Lantern's have to fix problems related to mistake they made in the past. So of course it shocks no one when they turn evil. So without further delay, let's take a look at Green Lantern Annual #1 and see the Guardians' decent into madness.

The story is about the Guardians trying to create a Third Army in order to remove all chaos from the universe. There definition of Chaos is Free Will. In order to create this army they need someone known only by the First Lantern. They fight against some of the old Oans that were guarding the First Lantern. The Leader of the Oans is killed, and the Guardians take The First Lantern. Meanwhile on Earth, Hal Jordan and Sinestro were buried alive by Black Hand. Hal manages to dig himself out, and tries to dig out Sinestro but is stopped by Black Hand who tells him if he lets Sinestro die he will let Hal speak to his father. Hal doesn't agree, and fights Black Hand.

 Lies! That's not Alan Scott.*sarcasm*

Hal is over powered without his ring, and is about to be killed but is saved at the last second by Sinestro. Sinestro uses some of the energy he used to create Hal's ring in order to summon his Lantern so they could both power up there rings. They start to fight against Black Hand, and the Guardians notice what was going on. They teleport to Earth, and power up Black Hand who seemingly kills both Sinestro and Hal. However the ring goes off to find a new Green Lantern, and to tell them what the Guardians are planing. The comic ends with the Guardians using the power of the First Lantern to create the first of the Third Army. A being with no will of it's own, and who can assimilate any other living being.

This comic is actually pretty good. The art is not bad but not the best. We get some good character moments from Hal and Sinestro, and the story's really interesting. Like I said in the beginning It was no shock to me that the Guardians turned evil, I mean they pretty much were always evil but now they actually are the villains of the whole Universe. Overall it's a pretty good comic, and I recommend it to Green Lantern fans. But I recommend that you read the rest of Geoff Johns run first.

Rating: 4/5

Comic Panel of the Week: Not Sure What to Call This?

Final Fantasy IV: The After Years Review

---SPOILER WARNING--- 

So I'm going to take a break from the weekly comic review, and instead take a look at a video game I just "finished." If you remember back in my Advent Children review I said Final Fantasy IV was my favorite Final Fantasy game. As such you'd think I would of played this sooner, but there where other games I wanted to get on WiiWare and the Virtual Console first. Like Final Fantasy 6. Anyway let's check it out.

Final Fantasy IV: The After Years is a sequel to Final Fantasy IV that takes place 17 years after the end of the original game. You control Ceodore, the son of Cecil and Rosa from the first game. The game begins with Ceodore away from the castle in order to take the test to become a Knight. However after passing the test the Red Wings' Airship is attacked, and it crashes. Ceodore is the only survivor, and he sets out in order to find his way home. Meanwhile Baron is also attacked, and Cecil try's to hold them off but a Mysterious Woman appears. She summons Bahamut, and defeats Cecil. We then cut back to Ceodore who is being attacked by monsters, he is almost defeated when a mysterious Hooded Man appears, and saves him. The Hooded Man agrees to help Ceodore since he was going to find a certain Dragoon, and so they head off to Baron.

The Gameplay is pretty straight forward. It's your standard Post-Final Fantasy 3 style Gameplay. However what make's this unique is the Moon System. You see in this game the way you and the monsters attack is changed by what the phase of the moon is. For example if it's a Full Moon Physical Attack's will be weakened but Black Magic will be stronger. This adds a bit of planning to your battle's, and I actually really liked it.

The Environment isn't anything too great. It mostly reuses towns and dungeons from Final Fantasy 4 with some new stuff here and there. However since this is a game that is mostly for Nostalgia, I'll let it slide. Especially since I liked revisiting towns, and people from the last game. It brought back a lot of memorys. The music is the same way. Most of it is from the last game, however I like certain places they used it. My favorite is the song that is playing while Cecil fights Bahamut.

This game is 800 Wii Point on WiiWare, which is essentially $8.00. That is really cheap for a WiiWare game, and there's a reason for that. You see this is half the game. You can download other story's which explain what the characters are doing during this as well as the ending. Yeah this game technically ends on a cliffhanger. So if your just playing it on it's  own it's really not worth it. Some of you may cry foul but the truth is Square-enix sold half a game. I'm not sure why they decided to do this instead of having the rest of the game, and have it be 1500 Wii Point like a lot of the other games on WiiWare. I mean they could of still had the DLC with the other characters in it but they decided to split the game in half instead.

Other then that I don't really have a big problem with the game. It's fun, and nostalgic. It is a bit easy from what I played, especially after you get the Sleep Blade. I recommend it but only if you by all the DLC or just get the PSP version since I'm pretty sure it comes with all the DLC. Otherwise you get only half the game. The game itself is 800 Wii Points, the extra story's (six in total) are 300 points each, and the other half of the game is another 800 points. You could just get the Second Half but you might not know what's going on so you pretty much have to buy all of it which will cost you 3500 Wii points or $35.00 which means you'll have to buy Two WII Points cards.

Rating:
2/5(The Game Alone)
4/5(With All DLC)

Note: Has anyone else noticed that I've been reviewing a lot of Video Game stuff lately.