Showing newest entries, #1 to #5 of 48.
Lineart Post
Haven't made an art post... or really any blog post in a while, so here's some examples of my linework. Lining is my favorite part of the illustration process. I always say I'd love to be able to just do lines, so working as a line artist is a good idea, right? And I think over the years my lines have gotten pretty good.
So onto some examples! You can click any image to see the full-size, though these were all scaled to be posted online in the first place, so they're not that high-res anyway. Like I said, I'm just a hobbyist and never intended to make any kind of portfolio so for now this is the best I got.
Here's some lines I did for the game Mustache Ride, which is now free on itch.io, so go try it out~ Anyway, these two characters were really fun to draw. Douglass the owl dude and Alex the ant, two of the three stars of the game.
Here's some lines for a little comic I tried to make. I'm not good with the actual sketching/pencilling, so the art is a bit wonky (and dat background tho) but I think the lines came out well.
I think the thing I'm good with the most is detailing in things like facial structure and muscles and stuff. These are just some line sketches of Grant from Spectrobes, to whom I added a mustache because mustache makes everything better.
I don't do a lot of backgrounds and props because I mostly just casually draw for myself which is mostly just faces and sometimes bodies, but here's almost a full picture I did before. There was still some detailing left to be done on the background, and of course I had to crop the bottom of the image to hide some... less tasteful features.
And speaking of less tasteful features, here's a full-body character. With the middle cut out. But the point of this one is to show what my lines look like when they're colored:
The coloring was done by me, but I'm not that great with colors. So imagine what it would look like with someone good at coloring!
And for another example...
Genesect from Pokemon :)
That's probably my best stuff. As a hobbyist, most of my time goes to getting frustrated with sketching/penciling. Also lastly here's something I never finished just because I like it:
I like doing the 'dramatic' shadowing like that~
And here's something where the lines were colored and faded and stuff to make something a bit more paint-y:
Hope you enjoyed :) Also don't forget to check out all the new changes to The Strelitzia Inn. We got a Scarlet Grace section now!
Rival Stars Horse Racing review
Being the masochist that I am, I'm trying out even more freemium mobile games. I am a sucker for these things because, well, I can't afford normal games that often and these give me that sense of 'new' and like a Skinner box, they make me happy with numbers that go up and up.
A big shift from Blades, this time we're playing Rival Stars Horse Racing. I love animal husbandry and breeding games, so when I saw this with its nice-looking graphics in the pre-register section of the Play Store, I clicked it.
The game is a mobile version of a PS4 game called Phar Lap, or from what it seems, Phar Lap is a console version of this game.
Anyway, let's just get into the game.
The first thing I want to point out is that the graphics are really nice for a mobile game. Everything is really pretty, and even on my old Galaxy S7, it runs great with the highest graphical settings turned on.
This game focuses largely on the racing -- everything else is just timers and RNG -- which is pretty simplistic. Your horse will have a preferred place in the pack, and if you stay in that place, you'll charge up your sprint meter, which you'll need for the final stretch. At any time, you can swipe left or right to move your horse that way on the track, slow down a bit, or sprint to speed up. In longer races, you'll have to manage slowing and speeding up to get your horse's sprint meter full without falling too far behind.
It's simple but it's pretty fun, especially for a casual mobile experience.
Outside of racing, you'll be tapping on little icons to train and breed your horses and upgrade stuff. Breeding is probably the next most interesting aspect of the game, though it's more frustrating than fun. Basically you tap on the two horses you want to breed (if you don't have a suitable stud, you can choose from some outside stallions but it will cost you in-game currency) and then a baby appears and you have to wait for a timer for the baby to be born.
Even though the parents have preferences on distance and track surface and position, the resulting baby horse seems to just have completely random preferences, as far as I can tell. But that's not that bad since you start with just one horse so you'll want different stats than just those same ones over and over.
The frustrating part is in how random your offspring will be. I'm sure later when you're wanting a very specific set of preferences, you'll be crying as you spend weeks or months waiting for the right baby to pop out. Early on, though, this frustration manifests in getting horses of higher star ratings.
For example, when breeding two 2-star horses, I had a 45% chance of getting a 3-star horse, or a 55% chance to get another 2-star horse. It took me four tries to get a 3-star horse. Because higher star ranking horses can be trained to higher levels, this is the only way to progress in the game. And then once you start reaching higher star ratings, each breeding session will make you wait like 7 hours and stuff like that, so you'll be sitting around forever just to learn you failed and have to wait all over again.
Your horses will gain experience points as they race, which allows them to level up. The higher their level, the more they can be trained. Training is simply pushing a button and waiting for a timer, which results in the horse's actual stats raising. You'll be going back and forth between racing to level up and training to get higher stats.
You'll also be managing resources as training costs money and items, and racing costs stamina and money.
It's pretty much what you would expect from this kind of game.
One thing I really appreciate about the game is the amount of flavor text and stuff that has been added. When you finish a race, you can watch a video to earn more money. Most games would just say "Watch an ad to get more money!" but this game says that you're appealing to a sponsor who saw you in your last race. And by watching that sponsor's ad, you get some bonus cash. It's still the same old watch-ads-to-do-stuff or pay-money-to-do-stuff, but it's given little explanations that make it just a tad more interesting, which is a breath of fresh air in this game's market.
Another great thing about the game is the horse naming system, and the announcer voices. There's a huge list of words that the announcer can pronounce, and as long as you name your horse with two of those words, your horse's name will actually be said aloud during the races. The announcer voice actor even recorded multiple ways of saying each word so that it sounds proper at the beginning or end of a name, and even saying them that way in a more excited way for the end of the race. It's super cool and one of my favorite parts of the game.
Horses' names are generated randomly by choosing a first word and second word from the big list (you can keep re-rolling or type in your own name if you want for your own horses) so you get some really weird names like "Dead Donut" and "Ridiculous Spaghetti." My only "gripe" about this system is that we can't just choose from the list; if you want to name your horse a specific thing, you have to type it in and see if it's compliant, without knowing what all is actually acceptable or not. You can go by other names you've seen -- like if you see "Calico Caffeine" and "Wednesday Push" you know you can name your horse "Wednesday Caffeine" or "Calico Push." But I want to know all my options, and that's probably the saddest missing feature of the game so far.
There's also a bit of "story" to the game, with most of it being in the introduction to explain why you started your horse career in the first place. The character portraits are again really nice looking, like everything in this game. There's even a cute old guy who helps you out throughout the game.
Outside of what I mentioned, there's also time trial leaderboards that award you with roses which you can use to buy special horses and stuff, as well as see how your horse ranks alongside other players. You can customize your jockey by choosing one of four different skin tones and a gender, as well as choosing the color and design of their silks.
The worst part of the game is the freemium part. I mean, that's the worst part of any freemium game, but it's pretty bad in this one. Wait timers are long. For example, it takes 20 minutes to regain one stamina, and it can cost multiple stamina just to race one time. Breeding will take several hours, and probably days once you get to higher levels. Upgrading your facilities takes hours, too, and you get limited ads per day to lower the timers by a few minutes.
The cost of premium items and subscriptions are ridiculously high. You can pay like $20 to get enough gold to buy a horse that you'll be able to get through breeding in a day or two. You can also subscribe with a recurring membership that gives you basically nothing. You'd have to be stupid rich (and by that I mean 'very rich' and 'rich and stupid' at the same time) to actually spend money ont his game.
But then if you're not spending money, you're going to sitting around and waiting on long timers and RNG to progress in the game, which gets boring and frustrating fast. So you'll either have to be very patient or willing to drop hundreds of dollars to see a different colored horsey appear on a screen now and then.
I like supporting good freemium games by buying some kind of cheap $1-$5 pack (or, uh, like $200 worth of bs *cough*Star Trek: Timelines*cough*) to support the devs and support decent, well-designed freemium practices. But this game I actively discourage anyone from spending money on.
GOOD THINGS
- Stellar graphics for a mobile game
- Flavor text is nice and actually adds to the game
- Racing is fun enough
- Pretty horsies
- Cute characters
BAD THINGS
- Ridiculous wait times
- Freemium cost is stupid high
- No mustaches
The 'bad things' are pretty bad (especially no mustaches), so unless you're just wanting to pull up the game now and then casually to get in a few races and start a few timers just to come back much later, you'll probably want to stay away. But if you're just looking to play now and then like that, it's a pretty good experience for a freemium mobile game.
I'm hoping in the future we'll get a "team" (guild) system where we can link up with friends to do like team time trials and more for roses or other rewards. Plus in this kind of game, everyone wants to share their horsies with each other, so even just a friend system would be nice. But you know I love the guild junk.
I dropped Blades pretty much immediately after writing the review for it, though I do go back to it like once a week. Rival Stars has me checking in multiple times a day, and I even put off writing this review because I was playing more of it. Now that the timers are getting really bad, I don't know how long I'll last, but for now, I intend to keep playing the game in hopes of seeing new features added.
The Elder Scrolls: Blades Mini-Review
The Elder Scrolls: Blades popped up on my phone today as available to download (still in Early Access). I don't know how long it's been available, but at least now that I got the notification, I decided to try playing it. I knew almost nothing of it going in, other than the graphics looked Skyrim-ish. The preview images in the Play Store were just a few scenery shots and that was it.
So, I'm going to write a little summary of the game for people curious about trying it out (or wanting to know why they should stay away).
The story of the game seems to be that while you were out adventuring for some reason or another, your town got burned down perhaps by some crazy queen because your village didn't pay its taxes. You return to town to find it almost completely abandoned, and somehow it's now your duty to repopulate and rebuild the town.
The game jumps back and forth between the town, which serves as a central hub where you can do things like crafting and talking to unlock quests, and the quest areas where you fight monsters and bandits and stuff while gathering loot.
And gathering loot is pretty much the meat of the game.
The controls are pretty simple and actually pretty intuitive. You can slide your finger around to look around, and then tap anywhere on the ground to walk to that location. You can also use a more dual-stick-like approach by using one thumb to move and the other to turn.
Combat is pretty lackluster, as you'd expect from a mobile game. Basically, you just hold on the screen and a circle will grow. When it reaches its maximum size, your attack is prepared, so you can let go, and you will attack. As you level up, you'll gain skills and magic that you can access by tapping their icons on the screen.
There's quite a bit of customization in the game (though some of it is more just "feels customy" and not really that much of customization). As you gather materials and bring in lost townsfolk, you can build buildings in the town, as well as decorate it. Basically there's a bunch of empty lots and you choose which building goes where. Your character weilds whatever armor you equip, which is always fun. You also get to create your character at the beginning of the game. I can't remember what all races were available, but I think it's the same lot you could choose in Skyrim, maybe minus one or two. There's a variety of pre-made head shapes, nose shapes, etc. and you can change the style and color of your eyes and hair and stuff. The mustache selection is very light, so if you're a mustache fetishist like me, you will be a little disappointed. But like all of the NPCs seem to sport the mustache so that's good.
And then there's the... actual game. As you know, these freemium games always revolve around some kind of catch (or often, multiple catches) where the game will suddenly become unbearable or frustrating if you don't pay money.
Blades's catch is in its loot box system. As you go through quests, you find and earn Chests, which contain valuable crafting materials, consumable items, and even sometimes weapons and armor.
The problem with the chests is that they take real-life time to open, and you can only hold so many. So you'll either have to go questing and forfeit all of your new chests you may get, stop playing and wait a while for your chests to open to get space for new chests, or spend the premium currency to open the chests immediately and continue playing unhindered.
At least in the beginning of the game, you seem to get a lot of wooden chests which open in 5 minutes. But you'll also somewhat easily grab other chests that take an hour or more to open. After my first little bout with the game, I was filled up with three hour-long chests and six of the five-minute ones. I had already started opening one of the hour-long ones, so I got "stuck" and couldn't continue playing unless I wanted to forfeit all my upcoming chests.
I'm assuming if I were to play long enough, I'd just end up with like 8 of the hour-long chests and have to come back every hour opening them for a while until finally I could play the game again.
Like all of these kinds of games, you have daily missions and stuff that you can do, as well as a main campaign mode. I'm not sure how easily it will be to complete all of the daily objectives and quests without paying to open your chests. It doesn't seem like it should be too bad, but again, I've only played for maybe an hour and a half.
Surprisingly, for a Besthesda game in Early Access, I've come across a total of 0 bugs so far. I'm a bit bewildered!
Anyway, the dungeon exploring feels nice, even though the dungeons are largely linear (maybe they will be less so later?) and it's always exciting to find chests and other loot laying around. The combat already feels stale and doesn't feel like it will get any better by leveling up and getting new abilities; it basically will boil down to your character being strong enough to win or having to level up and get new equips to win. There's not really much in the way of strategy. But I mean Skyrim was like that, too, heh.
If you want to crawl around dungeons and pick up loot casually, it would be a pretty fun game. If you're wanting to get intense into upgrading your character and stuff, you're going to be really restricted unless you dish out tons of cash, obviously. If you don't mind lootboxes and you like TES, totally go for downloading it.
So far I'm enjoying just trodding around and nabbing items, though, but I like that kind of thing. I'll keep playing it for now. Hopefully the game evolves so that we can visit each others' towns, create guilds and add friends, etc. Of course, we're still in Early Access so the game will have to manage to keep my attention until they add stuff like that. When even the high-quality Dragalia Lost didn't manage to win me over for more than like a month, things aren't going to look so great for tap-and-hold-to-win Blades right now. But I do like the aesthetic and as long as the dungeon-crawling feels relaxing, I might keep going for a while.
Good Stuff
- You can play in portrait or landscape mode!
- Intuitive and easy controls.
- Graphics and sound are pretty nice; runs fine on my old Galaxy S7.
- Looting dungeons is soothing if you like dungeon-crawling.
- Decent amount of customization.
- Mustaches, albeit few.
Bad Stuff
- Combat gets stale after about 2 battles.
- Loot and mats will probably get stupid rare really fast, unless you buy more lootboxes.
- Lootboxes with random contents.
- Lootboxes with pay-to-finish timers.
- Lootboxes with carry limits.
- Lootboxes.
ROCKMANX3 Weapon Ranking
So, I've been playing a lot of ROCKMANX3 recently. I tried to do a ROCKMANX 25th Anniversary marathon playing all eight games in a row, but petered out in the middle of X5. A bit reason for this was because it took me five hours to complete X3. So I wanted to get my revenge on the game by playing it more thoroughly -- it's probably the RX game I've played the least of out of the entire series. Or, at least, it was. I've been playing a lot the past couple weeks, heh.
Anyway, I've been playing around with the special weapons, which are always one of my favorite parts of ROCKMAN games. So I want to do a little bit of analysis of the arsenal as a whole. I'll be splitting them into tiers that start with E tier being the worst -- weapons that are absolute garbage that the devs should be ashamed about -- through D-C-B-A and then finally S tier. The ranking will be mostly based on usefulness, with the most universally useful weapons going into A tier. S tier is reserved for weapons that are not only very powerful, but also perfectly balanced or incredibly fun to use in my opinion. Weapons that are simply overpoewred while being unbalanced are still getting lumped into A-tier.
Small adjustments to tiers will be made based on my own personal preference. Even if two weapons are equally powerful (or useless), if one of them really appeals to me for whatever reason, it may land itself in a higher tier.
So, let's just get right to it. I'm gonna go in the order that I acquired the weapons in my last playthrough.
Tornado Fang
Tornado Fang is an interesting weapon. It's the thing you use to bust down breakable walls, giving it at least that uniqueness. Otherwise, you fire a tiny flying drill that will get "stuck" in whatever it hits and slowly damage whatever it's stuck to. While that sounds great, the damage output is pretty minimal, and after doing enough damage, it will eventually pierce through and fly off the edge of the screen, so you'll probably have to fire another one to defeat anything other than the weakest of enemies.
For a while, I thought that was all it could do. Then after a playthrough or two, I accidentally fired it rapidly twice in a row. If you do this, you get a spreadshot of three drills, rather than the normal one, and all three of them can get stuck and cause damage in unison. The biggest problem with this is that the spread doesn't tend to work very well; with smaller enemies, only one drill will get stuck anyway, and with larger ones, you're lucky to have two of them get stuck. The damage is still small enough that it takes a while to defeat the enemy, so there's no real advantage to using it over your standard buster shots, especially since it's deflected by the same things those are.
The charged version seems powerful, but it's nearly impossible to use. Once you charge it up, X's arm turns into a drill that you can use to damage enemies. It's much more powerful than the little drills, but it has two huge weaknesses. The lesser of these two is that the weapon energy drains fast. Normally, I'm all for that kind of thing, since it's well-balanced if the weapon is pretty powerful. But this is like SUPER fast. And it starts draining as soon as the charge finishes and keeps draining as long as you're holding the drill, whether or not you're actually damaging any enemies or anything.
The second flaw, the major one, of the charged version of Tornado Fang is that it breaks when it touches anything that would deflect a normal buster shot. Which means trying to get close to most enemies to even use it is ridiculously difficult, since you'll probably lose the drill and have to charge all the way back up again just to use it again. And during that fruitless endeavor, you probably lost like 8 weapon energy or something, too. There are plenty of other weapons that can dish out similar damage from afar, so it's really hard to find a good use for it.
If you don't have any decent weapons but you do have the arm upgrade for some reason, I guess this could be situationally useful. Plus you do need to use it to break down walls. In all, it was a decent idea but the execution was quite lacking.
TORNADO FANG RANK: D
Frost Shield
This was one that took me a while to warm up to. Which is funny because it's cold. (Get it?)
Using it, you fire a weird ice dagger thing that moves very slowly across the screen, though it does accelerate a little as it goes. When it collides with something, it does massive damage to the target. And what's even more interesting is that if it defeats the enemy it hits or if it collides with a wall instead of an enemy, it will attach to the wall or floor and create a fan of ice spears that will cause the same massive damage to the next thing to touch it. Of course, it shatters after being touched, so it's not like some infinite trap you can place. But it's still quite powerful and interesting.
This can take out a lot of different enemies in a single hit, and even destroys bulkier enemies in a few hits. It can take out the centipede miniboss in only five attacks! The biggest problem is that there are always lots of projectiles and stuff flying around, and enemies are largely stationary. So you have to get right up on top of an enemy and fire the thing in their face to ensure you hit them, as it's unlikely to reach it from afar with its slow speed, and very few enemies will actually move around enough to hit the fallen ice fan.
The charged version is weird, as it causes X to get a mass of ice spikes on his arm. I guess this is where the "shield" name comes from. It's basically the same idea as the charged Tornado Fang, except this time, it doesn't constantly drain energy while it's being held (making the charged Tornado Fang even more useless by comparison). Instead, you have a limited number of times it can damage enemies before shattering. But there's one fatal flaw: like the Tornado Fang, it completely shatters upon hitting anything that can deflect a normal buster shot. Add to that the fact that almost all enemies in this game fire projectiles at you, causing the charged Frost Shield to waste several of its attack counts on those projectiles, it's nearly impossible to use this effectively.
It's sheer force alone makes up somewhat for its poor speed, and unlike the Tornado Fang, the blade of ice is fairly large so you don't have to worry about completely missing. But there's one huge boon that really ranks up Frost Shield: when it defeats most enemies, it guarantees the enemy will drop an energy capsule. So not only is it powerful, but it basically works as a healing mechanism. Since it's so strong, you can easily make use of it throughout the game, filling up your subtanks effortlessly as you go. This one attribute locks in the Frost Shield at a high ranking, and also makes it one of the more unique weapons in the series. If it wasn't for the charged version breaking constantly and the design revolving around moving enemies in a game where almost all enemies stay still, I would have landed the Frost Shield in Rank S.
FROST SHIELD RANK: A
Parasitic Bomb
I was originally quite disappointed with this weapon, as it comes from the sexiest boss in the game, and I didn't understand what the hell it was supposed to do. When used, it fires some weird-looking cross-shaped thing that hits enemies and does some damage to them. And it costs a lot of weapon energy. I later noticed that when it hit certain enemies (like the ones that have around 5 to 6 HP) it would instead latch onto them, and then just kind of... get stuck there. You can only have one on the screen at a time, so all you would do is incapacitate an enemy and then have to go on without being able to use your weapons. It reminded me of the Spark Shock from Mega Man 3, which is one of the worst weapons in the entire franchise. At least with this, though, you could move through the 'captured' enemy without taking damage.
For some reason, I never used the Parasitic Bomb on a weakling enemy until way later. And this is where it really shines. When it latches onto a smaller enemy, it not only immobilizes them, but it starts carrying them around. If there's another enemy nearby, it will smash the smaller enemy into the larger enemy, dealing massive damage. It's often enough to take out the larger enemy, too. And since there are lots of little enemies placed everywhere, this is extremely useful throughout the game.
Latching onto the medium-level enemies without carrying them ends up being quite useful in a lot of places, too. There are several places where you just need to get past that one enemy which is guarding some energy capsules or other items, and you can just toss a Parasitic Bomb onto them and safely grab the items. Doing this in some elevator shaft sections, I realized that after a while of being paralyzed, the enemy will eventually explode, allowing you to shoot another Bomb (which is nice as you continue up the elevator shaft, but hardly useful anywhere else).
So not only is this thing incredibly useful, its method of attack is super unique and fun. Capturing one enemy to watch it ram into another enemy, destroying both, is extremely satisfying.
The charged shot pales in comparison, but it's hard to top such an interesting design. When charged up, four homing cursors appear around X, and if there are enemies on the screen, they'll quickly target them and then send out tiny hornet bots to attack them. They seek pretty quickly despite their minimal damage, and work pretty well when there are lots of enemies on the screen as long as you're able to stand in a safe place and give the hornets time to destroy them. It's very cute and fun, and you know I love the bug theme.
After discovering its true usefulness, the Parasitic Bomb ended up becoming one of my favorite weapons of the entire ROCKMANX series.
PARASITIC BOMB RANK: S
Ray Splasher
When I did my marathon run of this game, I went in not remembering much about the game and being pretty ignorant about how most of the weapons worked. I actually thought the Ray Splasher was the only useful thing in the entire arsenal. Amusingly enough, it's now one of my least-used weapons.
Ray Splasher is kind of cool in concept. It fires a rapid spray of little energy pellet things, but they don't go straight. They go like 30 degrees up and down from where your bullets would normally go. This sounds like it could be really useful, but most enemies in this game are stationary and on the same vertical plane as you so there's often no benefit to this at all. They are pretty strong, so if you stand right in front of an enemy to where the trajectory makes no difference, you can usually take out medium and smaller enemies pretty quickly. But you can also use something like Frost Shield and get free health pickups, or send a much-safer Parasitic Bomb from afar and take out multiple enemies at once.
The entire game isn't just one big straight line, so there are a few places that the Ray Splasher comes in useful, and it's the weakness to a few bosses where its trajectory actually does help quite a bit. So, I guess, at least it has that going for it.
The charged version of the Ray Splasher puts a ball at the top of the screen that sprays out random Ray Splasher shots around the screen. Chances are none of these are going to hit the enemies you want them to, and you could much more easily hit them with another weapon that you can actually aim, instead of taking up all the time to charge this one with the hopes that it might actually hit something a couple times.
It's strong and has an interesting trajectory, but there's just not much way to make good use of it in the game, and almost anywhere where it's helpful, there's something else that's even more helpful. Decent design, but the rest of the game's design just doesn't allow for it to be particularly useful.
RAY SPLASHER RANK: C
Bug Hole
The most amusingly-named weapon in the game, the BUG HOLE! This was changed to "Gravity Well" in the English version of the game. I guess they thought "B.Hole" sounded pretty weird to English-speakers, hehehe.
Anyway, you get this weapon from a bug, it has bug in its name... it has to be super cool, right?
Wow, is this a let-down! It took me forever to figure out what the hell this thing even did, and when I did figure it out, it was... really underwhelming.
The Bug Hole fires a little mechanism that opens up into what I assume is supposed to be some kind of black-hole-like thing. It sits on the screen and makes a little animation, and then it goes away. Most of the time, that is all it does.
If the enemy is weak enough -- and by this I mean like, maybe two or three enemies in the entire game are even weak enough to be susceptible -- then it will wait a while, immobilize the enemy for a bit, and then destroy it. But it takes a while for it to "get going," so even though this works on some (some meaning not all, or not even most) projectiles, it takes way too long to 'charge up' to actually be of any use.
The charged version of the Bug Hole is even more of a disappointment. X throws some kind of gravity black hole ball thing into the air, and all these lines move across the screen as if the entire game is being engulfed into the abyss. Looks like it might be a fun screen-cleaner like the Gravity Hold from ROCKMAN5. But guess what? It still only affects the same two or three weak enemies that are even susceptible to it. Anything else, and it does absolutely nothing.
I can't think of a time at which you would want to wait a long time and perform risky maneuvers just to take out some minor enemies that could easily be taken out in a more efficient way by any other weapon in the game, including the standard buster. I tried to find places where this could be useful -- maybe there's an enemy somewhere that's very hard to reach, and since the Bug Hole reaches the entire screen at once, this would be really useful! Well, I couldn't find any places like that, or if I could, the Bug Hole wasn't capable of damaging that enemy.
The only time the Bug Hole ever is useful in any way is in Electro Namazuros's stage where it's required to charge up the Bug Hole to power a lift that takes you to an upgrade capsule. That's it. And they easily could have just made any other weapon do that, so that's not particularly redeeming.
BUG HOLE RANK: E
Triad Thunder
This is the first one on the list that I think I'm really going to struggle coming up with a fitting rating.
The Triad Thunder is a pretty cool concept. When used, X shoots out three orb thingies: one above him, and two below him to the left and right. The orbs send bolts of electricity between each other, forming a protective barrier in a triangle around X. Now, if you know me, you know I love triangles. So that part of the concept is already pretty cool. And I love barrier and shield weapons, too.
There's a bit of delay from firing it, so you can't use it as a reaction to projectiles or something and expect to be saved. And then it dissipates after a little bit, shooting thunder beams in three directions (perhaps a nod to the Thunder Beam from the original ROCKMAN?) This makes it kind of hard to use as a shield, so you're mainly going to be using it to, well, destroy enemies.
It's pretty powerful, but like the Ray Splasher, you have to stand right up on top of an enemy to use it. And because of the triangle shape, you have to be even more dangerously close, or the enemy has to be at your feet. And it doesn't dispel all types of projectiles, just the kinds that can be destroyed, so you have to be careful about that kind of thing, too. It's great if you've memorized the stages and know exactly where you want to use it, but otherwise, you're probably better off using another weapon.
I guess if you got the Triad Thunder early enough in the game, it would be your only decent-damaging weapon, but Namazuros is a difficult boss, and if you're trying to be efficient, you'll want to have at least the arm upgrade and the Bug Hole by the time you go there, meaning you'll already have the Frost Shield. Either way, it's still good for creeping up on certain projectile-shooting enemies. But if you're like me, you'd rather dash up to them quickly and blast them in the fast with Frost Shield or capture them with Parasitic Bomb or something.
A few bosses and minibosses let the weapon shine, though, which is nice.
The charged Triad Thunder is another story, though. X punches the ground and sends two massive electricity balls across the screen. I don't think the balls actually do anything but add to the effect, because as soon as he punches the ground, everything gets destroyed. And I mean everything. I've yet to find something that doesn't instantly die after using a charged Triad Thunder (well, at least normal enemies; I'm sure the bosses don't die instantly lol). It's a little annoying because you basically have to sit and wait out the animation, but that's not too big of a deal considering you have an all-powerful weapon capable of destroying anything in your path. You also are required to use it to open a few hidden passageways to collect all the items in the game.
I initially wanted to give Triad Thunder a B because I feel like it's overshadowed by other weapons that I like better, but I feel like the ranking should be more based on how well the weapon can hold on its own. And it's pretty good on its own. The powerful charged version definitely increases its ranking, too, so I think it should get a solid A rank. I guess it not being in my favor as well as some other weapons will just bar it from getting that elusive S rank.
TRIAD THUNDER RANK: A
Spinning Blade
Here's another great one. I'm actually assigning these ranks as I type up these little analyses, so I don't actually know what exactly the rank will be until I'm done, because I might change my mind by the end. I usually have a pretty good idea, though, and I think this might be the second S rank for this game.
When the Spinning Blade is used, X fires two blade disc things in front of him. They move forward for a bit, but then swoop back around like boomerangs, one heading upward and the other downward. It's a really unique trajectory I don't think I've seen anywhere else in the series. It can be a little counter-intuitive at first when you're wanting to utilize this trajectory to hit something in front of you that's a little out of reach, as you actually have to turn backward. But in a way, I think that makes it more fun.
These little blade boomerangs are quite powerful, too. And if you stand up close to an enemy and hit them with both as they first disperse, you'll do damage with both, which is super strong. And you can spam this, too, to dish out tons of damage at once. Even large enemies don't stand too much of a chance against these things. Though with the bigger guys, you do take a little bit of risk since you'll have to stand there for a bit during the spam and they might attack you.
The biggest flaw in the Spinning Blade is that the blades immediately despawn when they're off the edge of the screen. This is great for when they're already moving backward, as you're "done" using them then and want them to be gone so you can fire more. But this is terrible when you're standing near the edge of the screen and need to hit something behind you, because they're just going to disappear as soon as you fire them. And there are several places in the game where you would definitely want to use them this way, which makes it quite frustrating.
That fatal flaw alone makes me want to knock the rank down an entire letter. But...
That's made up for by how amazing the charged version is! When charged, X fires out a HUGE spinning blade attached to some kind of cord like a yo-yo. And this thing is big, I tell you! It's also ridiculously powerful and doesn't break upon hitting things like almost everything else in this game. What's even better about it is once the thing is spinning in front of you, you can rotate the directional pad to rotate the blade in a large radius around X! You can hit almost anything with this, and with the massive damage you can deal, it will destroy pretty much anything. It's a ton of fun, and useful pretty much anywhere since it has amazing range and power.
Even if the uncharged version of this was as worthless as the Bug Hole, I think the charged version may be enough to give this thing a B or A rank on its own! But the uncharged version is quite good, too, so that's why I'm going to elevate the Spinning Blade to the top rank.
SPINNING BLADE RANK: S
Acid Rush
Ah, the tragedy that is the Acid Rush. This weapon has a really great concept that I like a lot. I tried really, really hard to make good use of it.
The Acid Rush fires a little blob of acid that moves upward for a little bit, then plops onto the ground in front of X. When it hits the surface, it splashes into four little beads of acid, all of which can cause individual damage to enemies. And it doesn't have to splash on the ground -- if you jump and shoot it into the ceiling, it will rain down its splash. Of course, you can shoot it into a wall, too, to splash it off of there. It should have been called the Acid Splash.
Now, this concept is my kind of weapon in design. But there's a huge problem... It's weak as hell! You can hit enemies with the initial blob, and it seems to do around 3 damage, which is... not much at all. You can take out the weakest of enemies with this, but it's very slow, and you're better off using anything else. And other enemies require multiple shots, which is not helpful at all, as you can't spam this weapon. So maybe you're supposed to hit with the splashes, right? Do more damage by hitting more times? Wrong! The splashes are even weaker that the main blob! I think they could have saved this weapon by allowing it to hit an enemy and then disperse into splashes, allowing the splashes to rain down and cause additional damage. Maybe that was the original intent but it wasn't programmed properly? I don't know.
The charged version fires out multiple larger blobs that kinda bounce around... but again, they're stupid weak. It's a huge shame. There's not really any reason to charge this up unless you really don't have anything else to use.
I guess if you went to Seaforce's stage first and this was all you had, it wouldn't be terrible. And there's a few places where you can utilize its upward trajectory. But outside of that, this is a weapon with great concept but greatly flawed execution.
ACID RUSH RANK: C
Overall
And that's all of 'em. In the end, we had Sx2, Ax2, Cx2, D, and E. Seems like the distribution actually favors the upper tiers! Which is somewhat surprising to me, considering how adverse I've always felt about this game. I'm really starting to like it more and more. If I were to assign point values to each tier rank and average them out, the ranking of the entire arsenal overall would be something like a B-.
I'm really surprised how much fun there is to be had with a lot of these weapons. It's a shame that the game's overall design is a bit lackluster and the enemy variety is so small. If this game had the design and variety of the first X game, I think these weapons could have gotten even higher rankings, as part of what hurts them is the lack of ability to be used very creatively thanks to the lack of creativity in the stage designs.
I had a lot of fun writing this even though it took several days (I blame being sick) so I want to write them for the other two SFC games, maybe even for the whole series. It'll be interesting to average out the scores for all of them and see which games overall get the highest average arsenal scores.
Tales of Suspense #48: The Mysterious Mr. Doll!
See the NEW Iron Man! This one you dare not miss! Featuring: A truly different super-villain! None can challenge the great MISTER DOLL!
Welcome to December of 1963! We're finishing of the year with a big doozy! This one promises to be a classic in the years to come, even with a bulleted list of why it's so great! It has EVERYTHING!
- A powerful, seemingly unbeatable villain!
- A super-hero who reaches new heights of greatness, as you shall see!
- Produced by a combo of comicdom's brightest stars!
And by these brightest stars, we mean that Stan Lee actually wrote the script this time, and the art is credited to "Steve Ditko and Dick Ayers." I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. I'm assuming that Ditko did the main artwork and Ayers did the inking, or maybe they like... took turns? I don't know. The inking has this style of really think outlining that we haven't seen so far. Looks kinda cool.
And we're going to get to see the NEW Iron Man! He's finally starting to look like the "normal" Iron Man look, complete with Iron Underwear that he wears on the outside of his suit. And no, that's not Guts Man. Nor Quail Man. Just Iron Man.
We start off this month with Pepper receiving a call from Charleton Carter, a steel tycoon and apparently Tony's supplier, telling Stark's office that he's calling off their trade deal. Tony, of course, is shocked and worried, as Carter's never done such a thing before, and, well, he needs that steel.
As happened last episode, he goes off to visit Carter to see what's up with the suspicious behavior, telling Happy he doesn't need a ride after all, but not explaining why. Of course, we know why -- he's going to turn into Iron Man and like... fly there or whatever. Actually he just drives his own car. In the Iron Man suit. I don't know why...
When Iron Man arrives at Carter's cliffside manor, he seems some creep wandering around the grounds in a strange costume, immediately identifying him as a super-villain. You know, villains could probably get away with a lot more schemes if they just wore normal clothes, I'd bet. Well, it didn't really help The Actor, I guess. He got vine-bonded into a car pretty easily.
Anyway, the creeper goes back into the house, and Iron Man hears a cry for help from a tower window. He leaps up and enters through the window, which is conveniently open so he can hear things inside and enter without having to bust it down. If I was a villain hurting someone who was screaming out, I'd probably close the window. But that's just me. Maybe it was stuffy in there?
Upon arrival, Iron Man finds Carter being tortured by the guy in the crazy getup, who happens to have a pretty fantastic-looking low-handing handlebar mustache. The guy is carrying some weird little clay doll thing with Charleton's face on it, but upon seeing Iron Man, he quickly fashions it to look like him instead. Tony starts freaking out that his bones are pulsating or something like that. Now, if the doll controls or hurts someone based on the face it's wearing, why is it affecting Tony? Because he's wearing the Iron Man suit? So does the doll also haave to wear hats and masks and stuff to affect someone? If Tony took his helmet off, would the doll suddenly stop working? Could he like draw a mustache on Iron Man's mask and make it stop working until Mister Doll drew a mustache on his doll? It just... doesn't make sense to me... And I have a feeling it's not going to be explained any further. We'll see, I guess.
Oh, and Mister Doll was talking in third-person and half explaining his ploy aloud to Carter, so that's how we (and Iron Man) learned his name and about his doll. Though I have to say Mister Doll is... not exactly the most intimidating name for a villain.
Encumbered by the power of the doll, Iron Man ends up falling off the balcony and into the water below, sinking fast, unable to control his own body. With Iron Man out of the way, Mister Doll changes his doll's face back to Charleton's to continue threatening him, but that gives Iron Man just enough time to swim to the surface and survive.
But now there's a big problem -- all of that exertion has drained Tony's batteries dry, and he's starting to pass out. He races home in his car and just barely makes it to the outlet to plug himself in back at his lab. I wonder how far away it was? Was there not somewhere else he could have charged up that was closer? I mean, he put on a jacket and scarf which concealed that he was wearing his Iron Man suit to everyone at his lab and office, so he could have done something similar elsewhere.
Anyway, he tumbles to the floor and the narration wonders if maybe he plugged in just a bit too late. Yup. That's it. Series is over, and this episode was only a couple pages long. Bye! It was fun doing the Iron Man readthrough with you all. Sorry it didn't last longer. Guess I'll move on to Avengers or something?
Of course not. We haven't even seen the new Iron Man we were promised on the cover!
Not having heard from Stark, Pepper and Happy are worried when he doesn't show up in the morning. A disturbingly-deformed Pepper calls the lab and Stark barely wakes up in time to answer the call, telling her that he fell asleep in the lab from working too hard and not to let him have any disturbances whatsoever for a few hours. He realizes that his battery is a huge weakness (only just now?!) and worries about how it's seeming to have to be recharged more and more frequently anymore. I wonder if it's a lithium ion battery. Anyway, he decides to make some major changes to his armor to compensate for this weakness.
And he makes a lot of changes. In fact, he pretty much just scraps the whole thing and makes a new suit. The only thing remaining from the old one is the chestplate that he can't get rid of anyway because it keeps him alive, and his little golden underwear part that exists solely because they didn't want to draw him in regular underwear or show him naked.
Both of those parts get covered up anyway by a new red part. The new chestplate opens up in the front and has transistor batteries (??) inside some panels that he can reach easily. I guess these are new batteries to replace the old one? I don't really know. It doesn't explain it. But the next part is pretty cool -- he has arm and leg cuffs that act as backup generators! If the main battery is to die, the backups can kick in and help him stay alive for longer. And I'm assuming they'll alert him that the battery is low, giving him time to escape to an outlet while he's still conscious and in good condition, instead of just suddenly being on the verge of collapse every time the battery starts to run out.
The cuffs also contain the golden sleeves and pant legs of the armor. After he clasps the cuffs on, magnets in the shoulders of the chestplate and in the red undies part suck up the rest of the armor without him having to put it on himself.
Wait.
Crotchplate. I'm going to call it a crotchplate.
Similarly, he also has new shoes that are kinda like little slippers, He just steps into them and clicks his heels together and magnets suit up the rest of his boot. They also have jets in them that are "less than an inch thick" but that seems like they would burn his feet when he powered them on. But probably some transistors keep his feet cool or something lol.
He also has a new ultra-thin hood with a hinged mask that he can flip up and down. Seems kinda like a bad idea -- an enemy could just flip the mask up and see his secret identity? Maybe it sticks on with magnets or transistors though. He also says that the mask allows people to see his expression, which can give him a psychological advantage against his enemies. Now, I don't understand how that part is any different than his old mask. It just has holes for the eyes and mouth. Just like the old one... Except this one has thin slots for the mouth, while the old one was just a big hole that let you see the entire mouth, so this would seems like it would be less expressive...??? No questions, no questions...
And with that, the NEW IRON MAN is born! I love the concept for the new suit. Not only does it look super cool, but the concepts are pretty neat. Especially I love the backup generators in the cuffs, and the way the magnets zip the suit on after he places the cuffs. I wish I could see it animated! With music and flashy backgrounds so it looks like a magical girl transformation sequence! Complete with cute pose at the end!
The new facemask with the v-shape is pretty cool, too. I don't know how soon that is going to go away, but it doesn't last terribly long, which is a shame.
Another important feature of this armor is that it's lightweight. Before, the power of transistors helped Tony manipulate the suit despite it being heavy. But now if you get tossed into the ocean off a balcony from a rich mustached tycoon's house because a doll is making your bones throb, you'll be able to swim to the surface without draining your entire battery fighting against the weight of your own suit. Fantastic!
The police have been questioning why all the richest dudes in the city are signing over all their money to a "Mister Doll." It's pretty hilarious because that would mean Mister Doll is his legal name and he's actually acquiring wealth under that name. So he probably has a Mister Doll bank account. But shouldn't that mean he also has a Mister Doll ID and social security number and stuff? They should be able to find him easily with that identification information...
But uh, no questions. Well the police have questions. But everyone who signs over their assets to Doll seem to be so mortified that the police can figure out nothing from them. After realizing that Charleton Carter was the third richest guy around, the police suspect that Mister Doll's next victim is going to be the weapons dealer Anthony Stark!
The police schedule a meeting with him, warning him of the danger, and offer to stay guard with him. He declines the offer, saying that he has enough of his own private guard. The police leave, and Tony realizes now that his guard is on high alert (he only has one guard lol), he has to figure out a way to ditch him.
He tells the guard that he's been wanting to ask Pepper on a date and would like some alone time with her. They go to a secluded room with only one entrance and exit, so that the guard can stand out front for protection without having to worry that Stark is missing. Pepper is overjoyed that her crush wants to date her and leaps into his arms. Tony thanks her for going along with his scheme and runs off into a secret exit, telling Pepper to continue talking to herself to keep the guard tricked. Of course, this leaves Pepper bewildered, sobbing to herself as he disappears.
Tony runs off to change into Iron Man, and at least the very first thing he thinks as he changes into his suit is that he regrets having to treat Pepper that way. I'm glad he's remorseful, but it was still a super shitty thing to do, and I'm sure he could have come up with some better plan. But if Tony perhaps did realize that Pepper wasn't acting to go along with his plan (which would explain why he felt so bad about it), then now Tony realizes that Pepper has feelings for him, at least. Though considering it's Tony, we're probably just supposed to assume that all women have feelings for him so this isn't even a reveal to him.
He should have just said he wanted to date happy instead and confused everyone for a while.
Iron Man appears in front of the guard watching over the room that Tony and Pepper are supposedly in and tells him that he's arrived to take over the guard duty. What's super weird is that everyone knows that despite his radically new appearance, everyone knows it's Iron Man because they can recognize his voice. His voice! It's Tony's voice! If they can recognize it, why can't they tell it's Tony?! No questions, no questions... ugh... Though I guess that Tony could have installed some kind of transistor-based voice-altering mechanism in his suit... Though this was never addressed...
Not long after Iron Man takes over, Mister Doll appears to target Stark. Iron Man rushes to face him, but the new look isn't too worrying for Doll. He just changes the face on his doll to reflect the new look, soon paralyzing Iron Man by twisting his arm with the power of the doll.
And now I see what Tony meant about the mask showing his expression -- the holes on the mask actually change shape to match Tony's expression! Well, that's not going to work to intimidate Mister Doll now... in fact, he's going to see just how much pain Tony is in by the writhing expression on Iron Man's mask!
So I guess his expression plan backfired. And even more with Doll's next move -- he changes his doll's face to look like Stark, to manipulate him into crawling to him to sign over all his stuff. Little does he know Tony is standing right there next to him. Iron Man turns away from Doll, afraid to show his face, because he can't let Doll see how much he's suffering, or he might realize that Tony Stark is the one under the costume.
For some reason, this annoys Doll and he commands Iron Man to get out of his sight -- just want Iron Man wanted! Thanks to the new lightweight suit, Iron Man is able to fight through the pain enough to get out of the room without raising suspicion. Doll just thinks he's already terrified of him and cowering away. Escaping to his lab, Tony comes up with a very risky plan. He has an idea for a device he can create to defeat Mister Doll, but he's in too much pain from fighting the control of the doll to work on it.
He detaches his chestplate device that keeps his heart beating despite the shrapnel lodged inside. As his heart slows down, it will deaden his nerves, making him unable to feel the pain, so he can work on the new device. But he'll only be able to stay alive for a few short moments before having to plug himself back in. Now, I don't really understand how he's going to sit and build this entire device without his nervous system functioning, but... you know, no questions.
The plan seems to work out with Tony plugging in at the last minute for the second time this issue. After powering up a bit, he rushes off to face Mister Doll. He doesn't seem to be in pain now, despite having plugged himself back in and reactivating his chestplate. Though I guess Doll is using the doll to force Tony to come to him, so complying with the order shouldn't pain him. I guess that makes sense. Of course, Tony busts into the room as Iron Man, which makes Mister Doll think Iron Man has come back to try to fight him again.
He changes the doll's face to resemble Iron Man's again. This time, he threatens to drop the doll onto the floor, which apparently will be devastating. He makes it sound like it would kill him. But before he can drop it, Iron Man quickly spins toward the doll and fires his new device -- a tiny "transistor-powered force beam," which changes the doll's face to Mister Doll's own shape! NO QUESTIONS! But at that exact moment, Doll had already dropped the doll, and he falls to the ground with it, unable to get back up. So I guess he didn't die?
Iron Man alerts Happy and the guard (or maybe the police, idk) that Mister Doll is incapacitated. He returns as Tony and Happy asks him where Pepper is. I guess he just completely forgot about her being locked in that room! Teehee!
They go and find her, and she's super mad. She storms off, and Happy talks about how he doesn't understand women. Tony says he understands women, but not Pepper!
Like... Seriously??? Are you kidding me? You can't understand why she is upset? You misled her into thinking you returned her feelings, made her cry, then told her you were going to make a call and come back, but you never came back, you just completely forgot about locking her in a room by herself to cry, and now much later you let her out and wonder why she is upset?! Like, as readers, we're supposed to relate to Tony and Happy being confused about this like women are some kind of weird, funny, enigmatic alien species that are impossible to understand. But, like, having even a modicum of compassion for fellow human beings would allow you to understand what is wrong here. Are men just supposed to be that fucking dense, or are we supposed to assume women are so inhuman they're incapable of normal feelings and should be happy to be subserviently locked in a room for hours after being lied to just because it was a man that did it...? Like... what??? I can't relate to this at all, and it's unsettling that the writers would assume anyone could relate to this ending... Well, I mean, other than people who relate to Pepper, I guess.
I can't even just write this off with "no questions" because this is just so stupidly dense.
Let's not dwell on it, though... We'll just move on to Handsome Tonys. Chauvinist that he may be, he's still flippin' hot with his sexy little mustache. And with this episode being heavily focused on Tony, we got a lot of 'em:
Mr. Ditko seems a little inconsistent in his style for now, especially with characters other than Tony (that one Pepper... *shudders*), or maybe they really did have him and Ayers taking turns drawing panels or something...? Seems kinda unrealistic, but IDK.
But overall we got a lot of nice Tonys. The eyes are much brighter and more detailed than Kirby or Heck, with focus on different features getting more attention to detail. In particular, the noses are well-detailed, which is a delight for me. The mustache doesn't randomly disappear when Tony is further away from the point of view of the panel, either, and it's not randomly changing thickness as much as the other artists' 'staches.
And the inconsistency isn't any worse than Kirby's, and not nearly as wild as Lieber's, so I'd say this is a great style for Iron Man, and it would be nice to see more of Ditko's style going forward.
Oh, and speaking of Lieber, our side story was another comic by him called "Kraddak." Can you guess that the villain looked like? Though this may be the hottest one yet; though I did really like the guy who got sucked into space. Two different types of tastes, I guess... which one is better depends on the mood. We also had some prose called "The Pact."
With our characters getting more development and Iron Man getting his new look, it seems like going forward should be pretty promising. Until next time, keep on stachin'~
