Twelve of Fifty-Two

Games

Batman Arkham Series

The very best super hero game series of all time.
Ever.
Batman Arkham Assylum and Arkham City perfectly blends stealth gameplay with action. Blends kicking ass with detective work. It even appeases the lore fanboys while making it easy for the new player to know what's going on.
Sure some of the more intimate stuff like 'Batman slept with Ra's al ghul's daughter' and 'who is Mr. zsasz' will go over the head of someone who has never read batman but it won't ruin the game and they'll still have a hugely enjoyable experience. They just wont enjoy it as much as the super nerds.

Unlike the new movies they got all of the characters right. Alfred is a kensington sounding butler, not a cockney secret agent. Batman sounds intelligent and scary at the same time, not like he's gargling with nuts and bolts. Zsasz is a freaking crazy serial killer, not a mobster. Bane is a mexican wrestly with a drugs addiction not sean connery with a mask and muscles. Robin's Dick Greyson or Tim Drake, not random police guy no. 5 named Robin.

The gameplay is fun, interesting and, while easy to understand and intuitive it's also exciting. Easy to learn hard to master is the phrase I believe.
The game has stealth missions where the player has to go around and take out all of the enemies withotu being seen. It has fight missions where you get to kick a lot of ass (1 vs lots and lots including some enemies that were boss battles a couple hours ago). It even has some detective missions and riddles that you have to figure out in order to go forward with the game.

It's a remarkable feat of gaming that everyone, comic fan or not, should play. The story is awesome, though I did kind of guess the end halfway though. when I said it I was joking but the more I played the more likely it seemed. Still awesome.

And that's not even to mention the arena style battles you can do out of the main story.

Go. Play it. Now.

Twilight rifftrax makes me lol
-James

Seven of Fifty-Two

So I've been rather sparse lately as regard to posting, huh? well as of today I am going to try and do daily posts again- ok, yeah, tomorrow i'm not doing it cos it's sunday, but- shut up.
OK? ok. Good.
Next week will be the week of two 'of fifty-two's, and as a fun little preview it's going to be the character Captain Jack Harkness and then the book Darth Bane: Path of Destruction.

Anyway, this week;

TV Series / Graphic Novel
Death Note

I honestly don't remember which - Anime or Manga - was my original experience with Deathnote, the two are so similar that they are practically interchangable. the Manga was made first and then when they made the anime they didn't change a thing.
Yes, ok, the anime had colour, sound and moving images, but you know what I mean.
The thing was so identicle that I really really can't suggest which to watch over another - though I will say that if you want an easy introduction to the world of Deathnote, the three movies are most certainly NOT the way to go. The movies were awful. I own the full set of Manga and I watched the anime totally legitimately online back when I was in university.

Most manga and Anime is watched because it's and regarded as violent and bloody with undertones of sexy girls - like Battle Royale and Gundam Seed - or cutesy and romantic - like Chobbits, which incidentally was awesome, call me a girl if you must, but it rocked.
Deathnote is neither.
Deathnote follows the story of Light Yagami, a brilliantly intelligent highschool student who discovers a note book - dropped by the shinnigami (japanese god of death) named Ryuk - that holds power over life and death. If you write a person's name in it and picture their face then they will die, you can give precise instructions of how they die, but the bottom line is that when a person's name goes in their life snuffs out.
Instead of being terrified and revolted by this incredible power, like you'd expect, Light uses it. He sees a world of darkness and suffering and endeavours to make it better, by killing people.
As you can imagine the police do not look favourably upon his choice. They don't knwo how he's doing it since all the deaths are happening differently, sometimes in places where the killer - who they name Kira - could not have been.
Kira gains the attention of the notoriously brilliant super detective 'L' - think Sherlock Holmes, if Holmes was obviously autistic, never wore shoes, ate LOTS of candy and was only about seventeen. Kira joins the police force's investigation and tries to put a stop to Kira's plans.
This is one that I wont reveal the end, because it is brilliant. The number of twists and turns they go through, the false endings and intelligently designed escapes... It's an amazing journey that forces you into the point of view of both L and Kira. right up until the end I didn't know who I wanted to come out on top.
I found this manga/anime a refreshing change of pace to the other mangas I read at the time. I was a fan of Ruroni Kenshin, Shaman King, D.N.Angel and Battle Royale, where the main character was a good guy, trying to help people through good means. Kenshin wouldn't kill people, Yoh wanted everyone to hug and be friends, Daisuke wanted nothign but to live his life adn love with his girlfriend and right up till late in the story Shuya wanted to survive with Noriko without killing any of the people trying to kill him.
Then Deathnote came along. It wasn't as simple as good and bad, you weren't sure who was in the right, hell you cared about a mass murderer. Was a bad guy, with a good motive using dark means? Was he an inherantly good guy who was using whatever means necesary to do what he thought right? Was he mentally deranged? Sometimes it felt like the latter, but it could have been any of them.

Genuinely think you should read/watch it and as such I will say only this; it's sad, it's funny, it's intelligent, it makes you think and it is just plain entertaining. It is very possibly my favorite Manga/Anime of all time, and if not it's in the top five.

Vidya
- James

P.S. Don't watch the live action movies. they are awful... yes I own them... I don't see your point.

Fifty Shades of Twilight

'He's naked, except for those soft ripped jeans, top button casually undone.' I am fairly certain that means he's not naked. Sure if he was only wearing socks you could argue that he's naked except, etc.... But trousers? Really? That means he's at least half covered, a significant hindrance to being naked.

That was a single sentence I read of the fastest selling paperback book of all time, Fifty Shades of Grey, over the shoulder of someone on the train this morning. Fifty Shades of Grey, or Fifty Shades as its colloquially known, is one of those books that I have never shown an interest in, will never show an interest in, and (redundantly) have no interest in.

However I do know, roughly, what it is, which is why I find it so disturbing to be sat on a train- especially the underground which is almost a perfect metaphor for the primary contents of this book -while every woman sat around me is reading it like its normal.

For anyone who is not aware; Fifty Shades of Grey isn't, as some people have described it to me, a 'romance novel' it's... well- well it's porn. Its written porn; erotic fiction, 'Erotica'. I'm sure there's romance in there somewhere, buried deep- there’s certainly a lot of dirty puns I could have used here but I'm going to be the bigger man and let it slide -beneath all of the porn, but it really is just porn.

Am I the only one here who finds it uncomfortable to sit next to someone when they're enjoying porn? I mean you wouldn't like it if I just sat there next to you with naked women on my iPhone, would you? But you think its ok to- I have a pretty good imagination, I don’t need a picture for it to be just as graphic.

Ugh, it's weird, right?

I almost want to ask people about it. It would be kind of fun to lean over to someone who's idly reading it and ask; 'Hey, Fifty Shades of Grey? I've heard a lot of people are reading that. It beat out harry potter as the fastest selling paper back of all time, didn't it? What's it about?' It would be especially fun to do while there were school kids within ear shot, but I'd have to wait till the end of summer for them to reappear after their summer holidays.

But that brings me nicely to another thought I wanted to put out there to the people reading Fifty Shades in public; you're not in a little bubble of solitude. Just because the tube is one of those places that if you make eye contact with me or try to make conversation I'll pretend I didn't notice-or walk to the other end of the carriage as if you're a bad smell in extreme cases -doesn't mean that nobody can comprehend the existence of you or your book. People can read over your shoulder, and not all of you are tall enough to be sure that the people reading with you are all old enough- those kids giggling behind you probably aren't telling jokes, they probably just read some ludicrously hard-core line over your shoulder. Though whether it's because of the erotic meaning behind the words or they understand how poorly written it really is; I guess we'll never know, but you get my point.

Also; I don't know if you're aware but Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James was originally a twilight fan fiction named Snow Queen Ice Dragon, she just changed the character names, it even subtly says so in the legal section of the book, hence the post's title.

But in all seriousness; stop reading porn while sat next to me on the tube, have a little self-restraint, or at least shame.
YoUtUbE vIdEo
- James