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Ten years ago, I used to buy pretty much all my games in Game, mostly in the budget range - I was perfectly happy in those days to wait a couple of years to play the big games like Baldur's Gate - but at some point their focus seemed to switch away from PC games and more to consoles and consequently - since I don't (or rather didn't) own a console - I found less and less reason to go in. These days I buy my PC games online (via Amazon) in any case. It's kind of sad but it's also emblematic of what's happening to the High Street in general. Bricks and mortar shops are just so 20th Century.

I've thought long and hard about this since it was confirmed/announced last week and the more I've thought about it and discussed it online the more firmly entrenched I've become in my resolve not to touch this fetid project with a 10' barge pole. I wish DC hadn't commissioned it; I wish the book teams (I can't bring myself to call them 'creators', 'necrophiliac grave-robbers' is nearer the mark) had had the integrity to tell DC to get stuffed; I wish the fanboys gleefully rubbing themselves into a masturbatory frenzy over the fact they can now buy a Rorschach comic ('though it looks like some of them might just be doing the same thing over a copy of Dr Manhattan as well!) had the self-respect to realise just how cynical this project is. But wishes ain't fishes... so I'm just going to tell my comics dealer when he (inevitably) asks me which titles I want "Thanks but no thanks", which is a bummer because I'm sure he could use the revenue these titles will undoubtedly generate but I'm damned if I'm going to give DC one penny of my hard-earned cash towards this incredibly cynical exercise.

...they all sold out very quickly (so save yours, they may be collector's items one day)...

I carefully detached the VVW pages (and cover) from both issues and threw the rest in the recycle since I'm sorry to day VVW was the only thing worth reading/keeping in the magazine.

Which is another way of saying you may put me down for a copy of any eventual print collection of VWW as and when it comes out as well. 

You're right to like the epilogue more than I did. What happened to Mina was too much of a downer for me, and also I didn't enjoy Zuki and the Tawdries' performance much, probably because I have always been such a fan of Siouxsie and the Banshees. The LoEG analogue for the group doesn't sound like it's up to much, but, to be be fair, Siouxsie and the Banshees didn't have very good material themselves in 1977. Perhaps if I were familiar with the Threepenny Opera source material I'd have liked the punk version more (or at all).

You know, when I first read the epilogue I was half-convinced that Zuki was actually Mina, post-mental breakdown, probably suffering from amnesia due to all the drugs and ECT therapy she (presumably) received in whatever loony bin she was dumped in, singing in front of Allen and Orlando who are too wrapped up in their own problems to recognise her. That would have been a darkly ironic ending but it looks like Moore & O'Neil didn't go there. Pshaw! 

(I disliked the epilogue, but nothing else).

I thought the epilogue worked really well as the big come-down after the euphoric high of the '60s. Lots of casualties of the Summer of Love

I agree 1969 seemed to work better than 1910, which perhaps was mostly setting the pieces up on the board, whereas ending Act 2 on a cliff-hanger is a smart move imo. I enjoy spotting the various literary & cultural references that Moore & O'Neil throw into the mix but it's important they don't get in the way of the story, which I don't think they did. It's a volume that pays re-reading however and Jess Nevins' annotation are a godsend for giving answers to the references I don't get (like the guy Mina encounters at the Hyde Park concert - I've never read those books so totally didn't get who he was).

Cover - Sorry, not a big fan of the cover artwork this week; in fact, the word 'ugly' sprung to mind when I first saw it. Still, the tagline's pretty witty though.

Dredd - Pretty good. Lee Carter's greywash art on Necrophim was a bit murky in places but here, with a full colour pallet to exploit, it's a big improvement. [spoiler]And Brainblooms! I remember those! What a blast from the past![/spoiler]

Terror Tales - And speaking of blasts from the pasts, Redondo's back! Woo! Admittedly the art's not quite as polished as it was on Mind Wars, Return to Armageddon or Nemesis Bk 2 but it's still recognisably Redondo. And Redondo's chicks are as sexy as ever. More of this please. Oh, and David Baillie's script was also good as well.

Anderson - Not a lot to say about this; it's Ezquerra doing what he does best though the upskirt panel rather threatens to overwhelm the rest of the episode. Plotwise Grant moves the story on slightly but I sense there's still more revelations to come before the wrap-up. (Mind you, my psi abilities never were up to much really.)

Red Seas - It's a good episode but I still struggle with Yeowell's minimalist art; would it kill him to put some backgrounds and detail into his panels? I suspect that I would find Red Seas easier to read if it was coloured, which makes it one of the few B&W strips I'd say that about.

Absalom - Ouch, nasty. Still, Rennie's script is a cracker and Tiernan Trevallion's artwork does all that things that Yeowell's doesn't for me.

Star Scan - Hmm, Langley's Dredd clearly been over-indulging on the steroids by the looks of it (bad Judge Dredd!) but if you can't go OTT in a Star Scan where can you?

Overall: 4.5/5

The FCBD 2000AD was a tasty sampler though I did think the line 'Follow the adventures of Slaine/Kingdom/Shakara in 2000AD every Wednesday' after the respective strips was a little misleading for (potential) new readers since the Langley droid is off 'Slaine', 'Shakara' has come to an (apparent) end, and 'Kingdom' is currently on hiatus. As an existing subscriber though I think the best part of the FCBD prog was the 'Damage Report', for which 10/10 to whoever wrote it. 

Its £15.99 at Amazon.

£13.96 now (and just ordered with delivery for tomorrow  ).

Coincidentally I retrieved my Yearbooks from the garage the other weekend but one look at the content - in the worst cases by a bunch of non-name art-droids who must have been sent to Mek-Quake after handing in their submissions (because they were never heard of again) - reminded me why they'd been relegated to the garage in the first place. And to think Tharg actually charged money for them. There is the occasional gem among the grot but the Hit-to-Miss ratio in the Yearbooks is, generally, pretty poor.

Actually I checked my Gameplay settings last night and discovered that my daughter had turned the difficulty settings down to Casual for her Hawke and, of course, 'Difficulty' is a global setting not a character-specific one so my fights had seemed easy because they were! Anyway I changed the setting back to Normal and then found myself dealing with the Mature Dragon at the end of the Bone Pit quest. That wasn't so easy. I had to consume two health/stamina potions and have Anders cast heal on my Hawke, I lost my entire party (Anders/Aveline/Fenris) to the Dragon, I was *this* close to 0 HP and it was only my Dog that bought me enough time to be able to wait on the sidelines until the Stamina potion cooldown expired so I could boost my Stamina enough to deliver a Backstab and Twin Fangs combo attack and take the Dragon down. *Phew*

Oh, and I underestimated how long I'd been playing for as well; it was closer to the ~25 hour mark also. I've finished off the Year One quests and am just about to head off on Bartrand's Deep Roads expedition.

There's no getting away from the fact Bioware definitely cut corners on DA2; which doesn't mean they've produced a bad game per se, but compared to DAO (particularly on the PC) there's a hell of a lot missing.

For instance they've removed the micro-management elements of the Inventory, which possibly might not have worked so well on the console versions (don't know though having never played them); thrown Fatigue and Persuasion out the window, which may be a plus or minus depending on your POV; and removed a lot of the interaction opportunities between the main character and the rest of the party, which again players into role-playing may have liked and players into combat might not. Oh, and the PC version of DA2 doesn't have a detachable camera anymore, meaning you can't 'fly around' the screen/field of combat like you could in DAO (although apparently you can on the 360/PS3 (Go figure)) which is a bummer.

On the other hand, combat is smoother, the Talent/Spell trees are more streamlined (though no more 'Mana Clash' spell afaics ) and the graphics, even on low, are superb. I guess I'm about 14 hours into my first game playing a DW Rogue and enjoying Hawke's story but I had my first duplicate cave map last night and I can understand players' complaints because it does take the shine off the experience somewhat. The whole game does feel more console-ized compared to Origins and I'm not sure how much re-playability DA2 will have compared to the first. The other thing is I'm playing the game on Normal and I've only had to quaff two Health potions, cast two or three Heal spells and had one character (Bethany) reduced to 0 HP (excluding the Dog) so far, whereas in DAO I couldn't make it past the Ogre at the top of the Tower of Ishal until I turned the game down to Easy. I suppose that means I should try the Hard setting but that scares me. 

Played the PC demo over the weekend. Pretty good. My main gripe was it took me six attempts before I managed to complete it, without getting logged out of my Bioware account during the demo, to get the freebie DLC sword (Haydon's Razor) but at least it gave me the chance of trying out all six character types. As I say, it looks good and though I pre-ordered the PC signature edition last year I wasn't super-hyped about DA2 until now. Having seen the demo - and found out I can still play it with the same graphics card I bought for DAO (can't play ME2 on it though) - my interest levels have risen significantly. For the time being however I've still got the Golems DLC to finish on DAO and then Witch Hunt to buy before I get to grips with DA2.

No prog in the post this morning; but if it's arriving elsewhere then hopefully I might have it tomorrow or Friday. I think this probably the longest I've been progless since I started subscribing (bar the normal Christmas break). Bah!


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If your an actress in this film you'd sincerly hope that it's all CGI. Running around in a mini metal bikini doesn't sound like fun to me!

Metal bikini? I would prefer a more authentic approach to her costume to be taken where Dejah Thoris is concerned:

She was as destitute of clothes as the green Martians who accompanied her; indeed, save for her highly wrought ornaments she was entirely naked, nor could any apparel have enhanced the beauty of her perfect and symmetrical figure.

I voted for Starlord mainly because things like 'Planet of the Damned' gave me heebie-geebies like 2000AD never did (yet Tooth was the comic my mum threw out and banned me from reading for being too violent!), plus it had sexy 'naked' chicks in it (cf. 'Mind Wars' by Redondo), which when you're 10 or 11 is going to have a big impact on you.

Of course, in the '70s I was mostly into Marvel UK comics like Star Wars Weekly and Doctor Who Weekly but no chance to vote for them. I missed most of the '60s comics by being born towards the end of the decade, and while I bought Look-In for a couple of years in the mid-'70s (circa. Star Wars iirc) I never kept any of them so I'd say their impact was somewhat minimal. Also missing are humour titles like Krazy, Whizzer & Chips and Buster. (Although you do seem to have Hotspur down twice.)