This Season in Comic based TV

I wanted to touch on this season of shows just briefly.

This just hasn't done a lot to grab me.  The first episode was a little overwhelming with how many concepts and characters they were trying to establish.  It was good though, despite that it was a relatively solid premiere.  Since then the series has totally dropped off my radar.  The baddie-of-the-week premise is kind of lame and the overall story arc isn't very interesting.  Some of the characters are good while others tip the scale towards the bad.  Penguin is interesting, as is Bullock, Nygma is intriguing but doesn't get enough screen time.  Young Bruce is on a slow boil and Catwoman is a highlight.  Meanwhile I HATE Fish Mooney, I don't care about Falcone or Maroni, Gordon is boring and Barbara has been given a bi-sexual past for no real reason I can see.  If it serves a purpose I can see doing it but it just seems meaningless and is rarely used for anything interesting.  I haven't made this a priority to watch so I'm a little behind, maybe when I get caught up something will change, right now I'm on the fence.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (Xbox 360, 2014) First Impressions

The Amazing Asshole

I just got Spider-Man 2 yesterday after work and total I've spent almost 3 hours, maybe, with it.  I just finished the second major mission and defeated The Shocker.  The Shocker, who by the way, looks totally badass.  But, I'm not here to talk about that, I'm here to vent some frustration.

  I will admit that I'm early enough into the game that this opinion may completely change by the time I finish it.  So far it hasn't been a great experience but I'm not quite at the point where I'm going to give up.

  First, the positive.  The Noir Costume looks great.  All the costumes look great and following the Spider-Man game page on Facebook has previewed a lot of great costumes.  I'm a mark for costumes and each costume offers a buff and I'm an even bigger mark for costumes that actually DO something.  Also the stealth system is greatly improved and much more like Shattered Dimensions rather than the first ASM game where it was just not very good, from what I remember you could do stealth attacks from the ceiling but now you can do them from seemingly anywhere as long as the enemy isn't aware of you.  There are lots of collectibles and a challenge mode.  Um... well... let's see... already there are a bunch of smart, little references to the greater Marvel Universe which I appreciate.

  Alright, now I get to vent.  The game doesn't look that great.  Yes it's in pretty high definition but the people look off and move unnaturally.  The controls are not intuitive in the slightest.  I was given the simple mission to stop a car and I failed it the first time because I had no idea what the fuck to do and when I tried stuff I just ended up getting shot off the fucking car.  I eventually got there through trial and error but why is it so difficult?  This is supposed to be the TUTORIAL part of the game.  Tutor me!

  The combat looks weird and is sort of herky jerky.  I don't have any sense of flow and you get one attack button and one dodge so it's pretty much "mash A to win" and if there is any strategy to be used I haven't experienced it yet.  I'm not really having a great time with the combat and I kind of liked the combat in the last game because, while it was much slower, it looked nicer.  Aaron Schoenke (writer of "Patient J", co-founder of Bat in the Sun Productions) did the mocap for the game and I got all the respect in the world for him but I don't think they did him justice in the animation of the combat.  It certainly doesn't look mocap'ed by an awesome athlete.  It looks like someone who didn't know how the human body moved.  The movement is just to fast and, again, doesn't flow.  It's just here's a move, here's another move, here's a flippy do, etc.  I don't think it's visually engaging and I'm bored by the combat.