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[Hip Hop Family Tree 1]

Hip Hop Family Tree 1 is equally frustrating. There's a lot of history to get in here but if it was told in a less literal way there could be a cracking comics here. There were so many things reduced to either a page, or even a panel I'd have like to have seen given more space and time. Still its a fascinating read, if it could be so much more and so deserves more time.

Haven't read this myself yet but it was a series I wanted to get into, even though I know nothing about hip hop and have hardly listened to any, because of Piskor's brilliant artwork and the amazing style he presents the comic in. Well, first of all: yay, footnotes. Doubt it'll help me understand who everyone is that much but it adds a lot of context to the various scenes, which looks quite interesting (and by the way, although I get your complaint of the little time being spent in various places, it's worth keeping in mind that the series was released into at least one book first before Piskor started releasing short instalments of the strip on BoingBoing and as he's pointed out, there's so much to cover and he intends to take the series as far as he possibly can), and I can appreciate that. Secondly, yep, it looks seriously amazing. Not just because it draws influence for its look from comics Piskor read as a kid - he's just a great artist. I quite enjoy following him on Twitter because he's always posting sketches for pages he's working on, the pencilled work and finally the inked page.

Thirdly - and this was the first thing I noticed when I went to skim through my copy - I recall a specific feature video on the series where Piskor guided the cameraman through where he grew up, the places he hangs out as he's doing his work, etc. or another one like that. Anyway, at one point, talking briefly about the presentation of the book, how it's emulating comics from the time the series is set in, he jokes that the only thing the books are missing is the smell of old newsprint. So imagine my surprise when I get this comic in my hands and find that Fantagraphics are so nuts that that the comic - I presume the books don't - actually does smell! Hah! Gotta say, I loved that.

I took some pictures of it and talked a little about the great wee additions added to it here if anyone's sitting on the fence.

To answer your questions though:

1) It's not a sticker, thankfully - comes separate. Mine was sitting on top of the book when I opened it all up.

2) Like every other Artist Edition (or any book of a similar or greater size), it comes in its own box, so you keep it in that and put it somewhere. Mine stand upright together in a cupboard, although you could just as easily leave them standing next to a bookshelf or lying underneath your bed.

Someone will probably pop along and give you a proper answer but I'm sure I read somewhere that it has a slightly higher page count than the previous edition, which leads me to presume that it includes Judgement Call, which was newly included in the first volume of the Mega Collection to round off Beeny's story somewhat.

Wow... Fallout 4 will be 400 hours!

This is probably true of their other games though, surely? Or at least once all their expansions have been released on top of an already big base game. What I'll be more interested to hear about once it's been out for a while is just how good the content is overall because my experience with Bethesda's own games - Fallout 3 and some of the Elder Scrolls - is that they don't balance the size of their game worlds and the quality scattered throughout them very well at all. There's other problems I've had as well which has led to me losing interest every time but that, I think, is of most importance to get right, which I don't think they have done in the past. But they do keep a close eye on the modding community and, if they're sensible, then they probably know the things that Obsidian did far better in New Vegas than their own Fallout game, so I remain hopeful about this one, even if I won't be pre-ordering it or anything.

What I'll be far more interested in, especially now that they've similarly suggested that their game takes a huge amount of time to get through, is how gamers and journalists will react to the game in the wake of The Witcher 3, which has been praised endlessly for being as high quality a game as it is a stupidly big one, a sentiment I certainly side with from all I've played of it.

[The Island 1]

Will be foregoing the Mega Collection once I've cancelled my subscription this week, which means I can spend money on other comics again. Not sure what new comics I'll pick up yet but I made a start with the first issue of Island, which I see Colin also picked up:

First up The Island 1. [etc.]

Apart from the third story, Dagger-Proof Mummy, which we can agree was crap, I had the opposite reaction regarding the rest (including Kelly Sue DeConnick's essay on a close friend) and thought that this was a very strong first issue. Although I can see where he's coming from regarding storytelling of this length compared to 2000AD's five or six page strips, I think the comparison's unfair, even if you were to take a month's worth of 2000AD and compare it to what you have here in a single issue. You're looking at the size of each issue and there being "extra pages" wrong, I think, because the first two stories are actually very focused on their narrative, which surprised me in both cases by being more complex than they appeared to be at a glance through the issue.

It's hard to tell exactly how successful Multiple Warheads will turn out to be when it will be making such irregular appearances, particularly as I haven't read any of the series previously, but it progressed this issue in such a way that I was thoroughly enjoying it without complaint and loved the different ways Graham approached each scene, which he expands on later in the issue as being, amongst other things, something he really cares about in the medium, believing an artist's unique style to be extremely important. You can really see that, I think - just Googling a page of his without any context of the scene itself, you can tell what, to my eye, made reading his story in this first issue very enjoyable. It's funny because, skimming through this issue before sitting down to read it proper, I thought his work looked stupidly complicated to the point that it was probably going to be either confusing or a distraction. But that really wasn't the case, which is a good thing because, apart from poor writing, my one other greatest annoyance with comics is, of course, artists that tell a story so poorly that I have to work out what the hell's happening. That wasn't the case here and I actually think this episode of Multiple Warheads is one of those comics that you could hand to someone who's never read a comic before and they'd get it, so bravo.

(As a side note, Graham did, in a way, remind me of our very own Mark Harrison in that both - but Graham moreso with his greater freedom - fill their backgrounds with lots of different, unimportant characters and a bunch of small sound effects of these characters or the environment too. Made me think what Harrison's work would look like working by his own script and rules.)

As for I.D., well, I'm a bit biased about Emma Rios, as I thought her work on the first volume of Pretty Deadly (which I'm glad to see will be continuing later this year) was incredible. In particular I love her characters in any given scene, especially the way they express themselves, and I recall how she would, throughout Pretty Deadly, move in really close to them as they performed various actions (a sex scene in an early issue and Deathface Ginny's fight with Big Alice are two moments where I remember this worked to especially amazing effect). You get that here as early as the first couple of pages, where we get close ups of our three main characters fidgeting and avoiding conversation. Incidentally, I think the next couple of pages following that are a great example of how brilliant a storyteller she is, on the contrary to what Colin thought. We move from the page of close ups to the rainy outdoors just outside the coffee shop - which is important for several pages later and some time after that - to back indoors from a wider angle, where we see the owner who reacts to the news two panels later. This leads to everyone in the shop turning their heads and our three main characters to voice off on what happened, which leads two of them to try to use it as an excuse to leave. After they agree to stay, one goes for a smoke and in two panels we see protesters on the side of those from the news pass by the shop and we'll recognise them (from their distinctive elbow and knee pads) and realise what's going on when they turn up again later. There's more going on besides that but I was impressed by how well the first half of this story flowed (as a whole - not just this first chapter that I've outlined) and thought that Rios was very deliberate and careful in its telling, which is to say that I can see this wrapping up very well in its longer second half next issue.

By comparison to these two stories, Dagger-Proof Mummy had a very weak narrative and was driven by action and simply didn't work at all. It takes up the most amount of room this issue and it tells, the one feature that I would say absolutely did outstay its welcome. It opens with a generic fight scene, spends the middle part having a character do some skateboarding and move between places, has another fight scene and then ends with a flashback; but whereas I had things to chew on with the other two stories, here I was simply baffled as to why this was included alongside those, especially as its Ludroe's first comic (I seem to recall in an interview that he's only previously done covers) and felt like nothing more than an excuse to have some skateboarding going on, as per his introduction on the contents page. Whereas I knew exactly what was going on in Graham and Rios' strips (and I had never even read Multiple Warheads before this, mind), I had no idea what had happened here and doubt next issue will make me care. It's not really helped that I found Ludroe to be an uninteresting artist, not just compared to the other two, but in general. Nothing unique about what I saw here and, in fact, some of that confusion took place.

Despite this unwelcome third strip, it's definitely a comic I'll be keeping my eye on and give a chance for another two or three issues. It has great potential, depending on who else they get on board, which I'm to understand will be people from all over the place and hopefully with unique styles of their own like Graham and Rios.

Thought this would be the best place to post this until the book itself gets its own dedicated thread, but in their latest YouTube channel video, Molcher and Richardson present us with a good wee look at the Zenith: Apex Edition and it looks glorious.

[Dandridge]

Finished 2013's Progs after skipping a bunch of shit. That went from really great - that starting line-up to the year I mentioned in my last post - to a rather mixed bag and from that to the pretty terrible, really.

For a while there was Dandridge and Zombo to keep me going and throughout the year Dredd stories of infrequent quality (the brief follow-up to Trifecta and the Carroll droid kicking ass are the biggest stand-outs personally) to keep me from giving up in despair (would have liked to have added Sinister Dexter with John Burns to that short list but alas, though the art was gorgeous, the script was as repetitive as ever and oh look, Holy Moses is still around, kids, yaaaay) and I rather liked the 3thriller Gunheadz; but everything else would either be skipped or begrudgingly read for the sake of it being part of a series - see: Defoe, Stickleback and Age of the Wolf: Book 3 - or because I liked the art.

Things really went to hell for me when Judge Dredd: Bender, Defoe: The Damned, the last series of The Ten-Seconders and Age of the Wolf and Slaine: Book of Scars were running simultaneously. Of those Dredd was the least bad, although I really didn't think it was one of Wagner's best stories, and not being a fan of Willsher, his art did nothing but confuse me at times. The Mills stories I read simply because they're part of his longer series' - which have a habit of being really good or terrible or a combination of both - but neither were very good at all and for The Ten-Seconders and Age of the Wolf, well, I lost the plot completely for those and no longer cared what happened by the time I reached their conclusions.

A short series of Aquila rather made up for this, as did Damnation Station and its mostly great ending (it felt rushed in some respects, particularly concerning Joe Nowhere and The Enemy's back stories, but it was all rather satisfying in the end and the final episode suitably in line with previous story arcs). Really enjoyed the change of artists in both of those series', not that there was anything wrong with previous ones - Leigh Gallagher, Boo Cook and Simon Davis. Was already a fan of Patrick Goddard from Savage and I'd seen what his work looked like coloured by Chris Blythe but Gary Caldwell made Aquila look rather lovely for a strip so bloody. And Mark Harrison was bit of revelation, really. Think the last time I saw his art was back on the first series of The Ten-Seconders, which I did love too - but this was even better than that and somewhat reminded me of Jason Brubaker's style in how it used digital effects, such as depth of field and lens flare, effectively in a comic strip. Although I've hated what I've read of Grey Area so far and haven't enjoyed Karl Richardson or Lee Carter's art on that series, I'll be looking forward to seeing what he brings to that if he sticks to this style, though if the script is going to be as bad as ever then he should really be put to better use in my opinion.

Of course, with the good you have the terrible, which was most of the Dredd stories running at this time, what I think is the weakest of the three Brass Sun series' so far and Flesh. As far as Brass Sun's concerned, it's Culbard's art on that that I'm really fond of (though it appears to me to be much better when he's working on his own script, such as for Celeste, his Lovecraft adaptations and recent The King In Yellow adaptation), and the story just sorta makes me shrug. The concept's great though and I at least enjoyed the previous and third series quite a bit, so I'm hoping it'll be rather amazing overall. The latter-most of those three on the other hand was insufferable. Endured it I did for the sake of Mills to beat the series to death in the future but fucking hell, that was bad. Hard to believe that Book 8 of Savage was so great but Defoe sadly turned out to be the weakest in the series and then this just sort of happened or something. Terrible, terrible script and James McKay's art was really not that good compared to previous runs.

About the only positive thought I have at this point is that I have only the first quarter of 2014's Prog's to read - which at least has Rob Williams and Henry Flint on Dredd, Strontium Dogs and The A.B.C. Warriors - and then I can skip the stuff I didn't like throughout the year (even though I see that Outlier indeed get a sequel for some fucking reason there's no way I'm reading the first series again) to pick up where I began by rereading all these Prog's I bought in the first place, with the issue that had the change in logo late that year, and hopefully enjoy it after all that. If I had been a subscriber at the time, however, then 2013 would have totally put me off after what was initially such a strong line-up.

[The Vanishing of Ethan Carter]

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter - First person adventure/puzzle game with a mental Lovecraft vibe. It doesn't hold your hand and just plops you in the countryside and lets you discover whats going on. Lovely graphics.

Loved the method The Astronauts used to create the visuals of this game. As a long-time gamer and someone who studied games development, though entirely enjoyed design more than I ever did programming, I've always hated the idea of games someday being photo-realistic, a term thrown around mostly by the graphics-obsessed. But I have to admit that I was pretty blown away by the results here, which, on the one hand, is extremely realistic looking as far as the environment's concerned, but is intentionally toned down by the overall art style so that it doesn't distract the player or enter the uncanny valley (the way the lead developer explained it on his blog, it was a bit too weirdly real looking before). My understanding is that they'll be using the same method, called photogrammetry, which you can read more about here, for future games, and if those are as constantly surprising as this was (it really is a game best to go into blind) then that should be rather fantastic.

As far as the game itself goes, I loved it for that surprising element. No kidding they've called themselves The Astronauts because the game sure did make me smile several times with childlike wonder. The final twist was obvious from the start - [spoiler]especially if you turned back to the tunnel at the beginning[/spoiler] - and from other hard-to-miss hints but that didn't make it any less fun to piece together the various scenes which - like the story - were equally surprising in that they played to different genres and thus different styles of play. Anyone who refers to it as another walking simulator like Dear Esther is lying, that's for sure.

[Age of the Wolf]

Finally got back to making my way through the bulk of my 2000AD collection about a week and a half ago. Earlier this year I had started with Prog 2005 and, as I recall, got to the last quarter of 2011 before really taking a long break. Turns out I should probably have done so sooner because it's been months since I read all that and by the time I picked up where I left off I had forgotten some things, which perhaps coloured how I felt about some of the strips.

Spoilers from here on, though I presume everyone here's read all this anyway.

For example, I don't remember the first series of Age of the Wolf being silly at all and yet, despite how seriously dark the second series got, with the surprisingly nasty execution of two main characters midway through, it had a group of bad guys - who, I get it, are future chavs - talking in text speak too, which rather had me scratching my head, feeling completely out of tone with everything else. Otherwise, I have to admit, going through 2012 was a bit of a struggle at times, having found myself usually only consistently enjoying two strips at a time, one of which was always Dredd because of the Day of Chaos storyline (which I was reading for the first time so more on that in a bit) and Trifecta. It got so bad that I was skipping Future Shocks after seeing who had written them or entire 3hriller's if the first part didn't make a strong impression. Some of the series' that I did read but didn't completely enjoy, such as Grey Area, Cadet Anderson and Durham Red, I simply sped through as fast as possible when it came time to read 'em because previous instalments had been so terrible. Thankfully, the starting line up of 2013 was really quite great (which I will again talk about in a sec), so I don't see that particular problem I had repeating itself any time soon, especially as the following line up includes Stickleback, Zombo and Dandridge.

Anyway, enough negativity:

Beginning just where I needed to pick back up my journey through these Progs, in late 2011, Day of Chaos was great from beginning to end. At first I was struggling with the slow countdown and 24-like tracking of the important players involved in Eve of Destruction in 2012 but the pay-off was tremendous. Of course, I knew how bad things were to get in the end, having read stories set afterwards (I re-subscribed after the first line up of stories in 2014 had finished), but I never knew the specifics, so seeing things go from bad to worse and from worse to Dredd bleakly thinking how pointless it is to bother testing the 40,000 people trapped in a stadium where the bug's started spreading at all - well, that was just incredible. It's a shame that several of the shorter or one-off stories that followed this epic seemed to be written before it but it's hard to complain much when the year ends monumentally with Trifecta, which of course reads even better in the Prog. Quite the bloody year for Dredd (and Low Life had been as fun as ever earlier that year with The Deal).

Apart from that, the other obvious contender for best story of the year was Nikolai Dante reaching its climax. It was funny how I had the same thoughts as some of the letters published before it was finished. First, no, this can't be John Burns' final story; then, no, this can't be his final cover; and finally, no, this can't be the end! Thankfully, it all lived up to my expectations, expectations it had instilled in me because of the quality of recent storylines. It did not at all end how I suspected it might, did Sympathy for the Devil, but after reading it all again when I reached the final episode I saw just how amazing that ending truly was. Probably my favourite series in 2000AD that isn't called Judge Dredd or Indigo Prime, which is saying something considering that I've still to read the beginnings of the entire series.

It was good to see Indigo Prime but, knowing that it doesn't reappear until 2014, I can tell I may have to read it again to keep up, but thankfully I have the second trade for that. Sure is good though. Before I read Dead Eyes as part of this long trawl through piles of these things I read the collection of earlier storylines, which are interesting for not, apart from a one-off story, really exploring who Indigo Prime actually are and what it is the rest of them do. What's interesting by comparison to that is that this series almost feels like a reboot. Where pretty much every previous series focused on only one or two operatives at a time, this has a much larger cast of characters and spends a huge amount of time at HQ. Everyone acts as a team too and in a way that makes it feel like a sci-fi TV series, one where everyone has to work together to save the day, every day, against the clock and increasing drama.

The joke, in twisted John Smith fashion, is of course that the characters are morally bankrupt, not really heroes at all. There's a line in the second series that says it all, one of Mariah's when she's trying to locate Spacesick Steve. It's referring to the bug-ridden world he's on but it seems to me an intentional joke about the way Indigo Prime view the various worlds they look over too, especially with the foreknowledge that they destroy this very world as they make their escape. What she says at one point is "insects burning under magnifying glasses", referring to people suffering in this particular world. But consider what happens later - "Whoops, anthropocalypse!" indeed - and it takes on a greater meaning. Throw in the Overseers and it all feels like a dark parody of superheroes, the countless reboots of those characters and the bajillion cities and people killed that no one gives a fuck about in the name of these heroes saving the day (it's a nice coincidence that this was running at the same time as Day of Chaos, which concerns itself very greatly with an entire city being brought to its knees, destroying the lives of its remaining people). And then this story ends with them adopting a "Don't fuck with us" policy simply because the government on the insect-infested world tried to use their technology (worth pointing out that they were only trying to save themselves and don't succeed anyway, not that that stops Arcana from sending them to their deaths in a world where everyone nuclear war's about to take place) and main character since Dead Eyes, Danny Redman, finds himself face to face with the Nihilist in the mirror. A true hero indeed. Incidentally, I love the Nihilist as the name for a villain even more now and can't wait to to read the 2014 story again when I get round to it, where of course who I presumed to be John Smith himself even made an appearance, which seems doubly important after the second episode of the first series, Everything and More, opens with a guy yelling at you, the reader (and Winwood mentions that he believes they're all fictional creations).

TL;DR: John Smith's a genius. And since I've gone on long enough already - and this goes without saying anyway - the art of Edmund Bagwell is really, really, really great in these two stories and Lee Carter is a perfect fit too. Really hope it'll be back soon, it's the best.

And finally, as for what I've read of 2013, everything but Dredd of all things really stuck out, this being Savage: Book 8, Ampney Crucis: The Entropy Tango, Strontium Dogs: Mutant Spring and the final, rather overdue, series of The Red Seas. First, I must say that I love how Edinington is drawing his various series' together, as shown in Ampney Crucis, where Stickleback's son makes an appearance. At its first outing I didn't really care much for this series but I do like how it's got progressively more mad to the point where something else has seemingly taken over the protagonist's mind entirely as he's stranded in a parallel world to his own. Good stuff. Alas, although its final series was pretty good, especially with splash pages galore, I will be happy to see the back of The Red Seas, a series which I completely lost the plot of. Funny thing is, I appreciated how this finale didn't get caught up in all that, bowing out rather gracefully by simply being as fun it could possibly be, the ridiculous final twist and all. So although I thought that I was for sure not going to enjoy this one bit, it gets a thumbs up from me.

As for Savage and Strontium Dogs - I loved these both, especially in comparison to both series' last story arcs, which I didn't enjoy. Well, actually, to be more specific, whereas I probably still wouldn't enjoy book 7 of Savage that much upon rereading it, I have a better appreciation for the previous two Strontium Dog story's. It was never clear in the first series or the second but its obvious that Wagner was building up to this Second Mutant War all along and it certainly worked for me. Very excited to see where this is heading next. As for Savage, book 8 was Mills at his best as far as I'm concerned. It feels a bit overdue but it was a brilliant twist to see things from the Volgs' perspective and realise more than ever how far gone Savage himself is. It certainly makes me wonder more than ever how the series is going to end. As part of my subscription I've already seen the Quartz cover of him in his robotic body earlier this year but I do wonder where Savage will end up.

Long post, but I can't help myself when things are so great. Yes, I complained a little about 2012 there but the comic would always be worth it to me for the art and the thrills that are good, such as those mentioned above and others still that I didn't bother to talk about, like the second series of Ichabod Azrael, more goodness from Absalom (a new favourite) and new series, Aquila.

What character class you choose really isn't that important since you can respec your stats multiple times later on with great ease (albeit from the starting stats of whatever class you chose), completely changing your build should you wish to do so. But if it's melee you want to focus on then pick a Warrior or Knight for your first playthrough. The Warrior starts with the highest strength and a shield as I recall, but the Knight is a bit more balanced whilst still packing a punch and also starts with high Vigor (health). That's the one I'd pick, especially if you're finding defense an issue (with higher health you can tank more hits) early on. Since you won't immediately have a shield when starting with that class, just make sure you're using your sword with both hands and focus on getting behind enemies for backstabs or the higher damage.

Despite all that though, when it ended (on a very badass and enticing cutscene) I found myself installing The Witcher 2 without even questioning it. I've got hopes that it'll be the world and characters I enjoyed but with a decent combat system, because that would make for a very cool game indeed.

If I might suggest something: use a mod from the Nexus site for The Witcher 2 that allows you to get either 2 or 3 skill points per level instead of 1. The combat of the second game turns out to be really great once you've picked one or two of the main skill trees to focus on (if you were to use the mod that has 3 skill points though you can fill out all skill trees by the game's end) but it starts by making you put points into a training skill tree, which makes it incredibly frustrating for a while, especially since the roll Geralt has to dodge with starts off too short to really work properly and I think you can't immediately parry or use certain items in combat, such as daggers. It'd be fine if the combat were like the third game, which is more like the Souls series (you lock on to enemies in a better way than the second game and can both dodge and roll from the very start and there's just other, better functions added too), but you'll no doubt see for yourself that it's still a little weird, which is why I recommend using either of those mods. Sure, it's not how the developers intended you to play - but it is way more fun.

Even if you don't enjoy the combat, I'll be amazed if the world and characters don't surprise you this time around. Personally, I was rather blown away by the first game despite some of its flaws (mostly the setting, which is impressively detailed for the engine being used; and also, I love the entire swamp area in the second chapter), but the second game is truly way more ambitious. If you didn't know already, depending on a choice you make at the end of the first act / chapter, you play the remainder of the game from one of two entirely different perspectives, meeting different characters on one or the other and focusing on completely different goals by the end of the game.

I did play the first one and enjoyed it but never really liked the combat system, have they changed it in the subsequent games or is it still the same?

Yeah, although I enjoyed the first game's combat a great deal myself, in the second they went for greater focus on action, so you have free control of your movements during fights in that. It mostly works very well but early on the combat is frankly a pain in the arse, because you have to put several of your ability points into a training skill tree before you can upgrade your character properly and "fix" what sometimes feel like glitches (e.g. your rolling range is so short early on that enemies can still hit and kill you mid-roll). Once you can do the latter it's very fun, though I save myself the frustration early on and use a mod to get more points per level.

The combat in the third game's the best by far. The camera takes some getting used to but it's much more responsive this time around and there's none of that frustration from the start. It's not anywhere near as quick and snappy as the Souls series' melee combat if you've played that (most people seem to be comparing it to Assassin's Creed but it's nowhere near as mundane and easy as that), but it's what it reminds me closest of in that it's very fair, no matter the level of enemy you take on, so long as you know how to manage your abilities and can dodge well. It's better in other ways too, mostly through minor improvements. For example, the combat in the second game didn't really feel impactful outside of special mini-cutscenes for your finishing moves. They tried to put in dismemberment but it never felt right and the ragdoll physics often meant that most enemies would crumple the same way over and over. Needless to say, the melee combat and your magical skills feel really good this time. The latter abilities have a number of great alternative modes this time and the former feels Game of Thrones-esque, which is to say intense and brutal.

So yeah, big improvements all around. Following my last post, I've made it to the first properly big area of the game and I'm happy to confirm that it actually is as insanely detailed and filled with quests, not to mention non-quests like small random encounters, as I hoped it'd be. This is a really damn impressive game, one of few where I make surprising discoveries that I can't believe the developers put in or learn of them from other players (e.g. a friend pointed out that an upgraded Quen, your shield ability, can protect you from the rain, which is nuts!). Considering the ridiculously huge size too, I'm also astonished by what the game doesn't tell you. In the first area you can piece together a whole small story about a hunter who helps you and the fate of an abandoned settlement, but you have to be paying attention to the characters to notice it. Other times you'll come across things that don't activate a quest - and if they do, aren't spelled out to you - but are part of the world, and you can often figure out what happened through paying the environment attention, which is always good to see.

It really didn't disappoint and if MGSV: The Phantom Pain can do so too later this year, then I'm set for ages with them and don't really feel the need to buy much else.

No mention of The Witcher 3? What madness is this!? Yeah, if you're a fan of action RPG's, story-driven games or huge open worlds, then you might want to pick this up, regardless of whether or not you've played the previous two. As a big fan of the last two, which are a couple of my favourite games period, I've been amazed by how this one has far surpassed them in every respect. Still only in the first major area of the game (which feels really vast but, compared to the three main areas the game takes place in, is actually tiny, which is ridiculous) but if the rest are as incredibly detailed as this with amazing quests of their own then I can safely say that this is easily one of the greatest games ever made without a doubt.

I don't have that many books in my possession that had the artwork undergo some serious recolouring but my thinking is that, if you are going to do it, then it's best to be as respectful to the original as possible; and if you won't do that, just reprint it in black and white. Though I never owned the original comics, the best example of the former I've seen in comparison shots are Fantagraphic's approach to recolouring the likes of Hal Foster's Prince Valiant, Floyd Gottfredson's Mickey Mouse and Carl Bark's Duck comics. It helps that those books aren't printed with a horrid gloss finish either of course. Those are all cutting it pretty close to the originals (and they have the greater advantage) but I think they're very likeable, capturing the feel of the original look perfectly.

The other approach I'm quite fond of, albeit requiring some poor bastard to be dragged through hell trying to tidy up the quality, is facsimiles. No doubt not everyone likes them but the few I own again look really great, though that tidying up of the "blotchy" linework in particular is very important to make it work. It won't be perfect but I do think it can look pretty amazing this way.

Although everyone seems quite content with IDW's Apocalypse War recolouring, in retrospect I prefer the Eagle comics version and would love to see it get the Nemesis The Warlock: Deviant Edition treatment in the future (but not on gloss!), which I thought was an almost perfect reproduction of those newsprint comics.

Yeah, what sheridan said. It is a good story, a great one in fact (I feel less strongly about the sequel unfortunately), but out of all the darker Dredd tales I've read, I have to say that this one is thickest with a sense of hopelessness and nihilism. You'll no doubt see what I mean when you read it but I think that the reason it's so effective in this way compared to other darker series' I've read set in the universe is because, like America, Mandroid's focused on the lives of the citizens with one key difference being that Dredd is a more sympathetic figure at first towards the main character, which means even he is emotionally involved in his own way. That, and there's a greater sense of normality to Nate's family finding themselves in a poor block in the middle of the Big Meg, as well as what happens to them. i.e. This is the kind of thing we see all the time in Dredd but really up close and personal.