Doctor Who - New series, new species part 20

Wow! I've done twenty of these things now, whod've thought it eh? I'll also give a word out to Kelly, who'se now a follower on Blogger - thanks for reading Kelly!

With the next special still a bit of a way off we return again to the land of spin-offs, and the return of Torchwood to the small screen for a special mini-series detailing one event and shown (in the UK at least) every night for five succesive days. The nature of the show means I've only one beastie to talk about...but crikey, it's a good one!

From the snippets I saw from Comic-Con I'm assuming that this has already aired and that this post does not constitute spoilers for US fans, correct me if I'm wrong.

The 456













Wow! I'm not the biggest fan of Torchwood but they certainly delivered on this one - even the podcast boys agree! The show was excellent, delving into the depths the human race would go to if faced with ultimate crisis. Not only that but they introduced one of the best Doctor Who villains in the new generation, something original and truly terrifying and something the Who world has needed for a while. As referred to in an earlier post the main show in particular relies on recurring classic monsters for it's big moments and have failed to create original monster that have the same level of menace, or if they do they kill them off within an episode or two. This was something different, this was intriguing, terrifying, and it lasted more than two episodes. The ides of shrouding it in smoke most of the time and not even revealing it's true name was sheer genius, making it scary when the beast seemed to randomly puke up for no reason and made it's eerie demands - good on you Who team, now let's have one for the main show eh?

Actually, this monster wouldn't work on the main show because the doctor would just find his sonic screwdriver and find a non-lethal way to dispatch it, being just human the Torchwood team had to go through real sacrifice to take down this monster, which made thrilling viewing.

The 456 is a code name given to a species that had contatc with Earth on at least two occasions. The name was given based on a carrier frequency they used to communicate and the species adopted this as their name when they visited, choosing to keep their real identity secret. They were large and green in colour with three 'heads' that looked like scorpion tails and they lived in an atmosphere of deadly gases. In 1965 they communicated with the British government to offer the cure to a potential pandemic at the price of 12 children, Torchwood were ordered to comply and Jack Harkness made the trade. Decades later they returned, demanding 10% of all Earth's children and threatening to destroy the planet if the Government didn't comply, their technology allowed them to speak by controlling children, which frightened the governments of the world into submission. Despite being sealed in a tank containing their atmosphere they were able to counterattack and defend themselves against Torchwood and those who tried to stop them. It was revealed that they wanted the children because of certain chemicals they gave off and were essentially addicted to them. They nearly completed their scheme until Torchwood found how to reverse a deadly frequency through children to hurt the species - they quickly retreated and haven't been seen since.

Well with the events that went on who knows if we'll be seeing any more of the Torchwood team and the monsters they battle with, but with another special and more Sarah Jane Adventures upcoming it won't be long before I'm bringing you some fresh new aliens right here on Blogga

Game Review: Too Human

I've got a few posts that need catching up on, Sam's helped me with our Power Trip posts and a new one of those will be on the way shortly, but for now I'm going to tell you about one of the video games I've been playing. I can't say recently as it's been a while since I completed this and I've gone through a few others since, but I'll get this one out of the way before getting on to more recent titles. I bought this game as a way to force myself to branch off from only buying franchise games such as Halo and Star Wars games and get into something original, and it's kinda worked, with a few more SF titles in my collection.

Rough Plot

So this game is an interpretation of Norse mythology, following the story of Baldur, the central character. An army of evil machines has been attacking the human settlements and it is up to the Gods to defend them. Baldur tracks one machine, Grendel, to a nightclub and battles it as it feasts on human flesh, eventually driving it away by severing it's arm. This leads to a wider conspiracy as Baldur leads his men deep into enemy territory, battling machine goblins and dark elves and even rogue Gods. Baldur must also journey into cyberspace to speak to the NORNS and solve puzzles to unlock doors and pathways in the real world. Most of this plot is being orchestrated by Loki, who has allied himself with his machines and plans to bring destruction to Asgard.

Gameplay

The game uses the controls in a different way than expected, which takes a bit of getting used to. The game plays as more of a 'dungeon crawler' than traditional fighting game, more akin to games like Diablo than your average RPG or shooter. You have a distant over the shoulder camera to give you a clear aerial view of your character as you battle hordes of monsters. The most unusual thing is using the stick for combat, an appendage normally resevred solely for movement or camera control, now you use one stick to move and the other to attack, which is confusing, but gives you the advantage of being able to precisely place your sword blows. There are plenty of tricks to learn by making wide sweeps, or 'juggling' - knocking an enemy into the air then keeping them suspended by shooting them with your guns.
However, while there is a variety of attacks, there are only so many ways you can use them and the levels are very long and linear, which can make for tedious gameplay. There is enough veriety in enemies, but the levels are so long you end up fighting the same type of baddie a lot towards the end. The scenery is immense and each level has a distinct syle, but again the sheer length of the levels makes it tedious towards the end. Death sparks off a cinematic of a Valkyire carrying you off into Valhalla, but then it drops you back into the action, meaning death has no consequences besides a short delay, which meant there was no incentive to stay alive so I'd just charge recklessly into a fight, use all my special attacks, take out as many enemies as possible, die, then come back and finish them off.

Sci-Fi stuff

Trolls and Goblins













Too Human's clever gimmick is reinterpreting the whole of Norse mythology as a Sci-Fi adventure. The Gods are cybernetically enhanced soldiers, Asgrad is a literally digital fortress and the goblins and trolls you meet are robotic enemies. The Goblins of the game are clever as they are truly goblin-like in form, skulking around and striking from the shadows, trolls are giant mechanoids swinging crushing hammers and dark elves are four legged monstrosities that are still strangely elegant and even have bows as their primary weapon.
I found this to work very well and created an exciting world and a great way to explore Norse mythology.

Cyberspace















Another cool element in Too Human is that you visit Cyberspace, another SF interpretation of the Norse myths. The famous 'world tree' is now a giant server of sorts, with roots and branches comprised of immense data cables. Within this other realm lie the NORNS, artificial intelligences that store ancient data and can also provide access to the machinery and technology you encounter through remote interfaces known as wells. You are transported from an ice palace or tech noir citadel to green fields and rivers and consult the cyber witches for advice or solve puzzles to open doorways. In cyberspace you can move object with your mind, lifting them, pushing them and. later in the game, setting fire to them which makes for interesting gameplay and a break from the army of goblins that are sure to be around the corner.

Worth Playing?

Yes and no. I enjoyed this game and I'm glad I bought it. You can probably pick it up quite cheaply now and at resell price it probably is worth a punt, but I wouldn't pay full price for it.
The story and setting are excellent, with great cinematics and a very novel idea for the game. The gameplay is intriguing, but gets very tedious and you get quite detatched from the action as if you're fighting your way to the next cinematic, which then reminds you what the story's about and gets you excited for a while until the next long, combat-laden road. The cinematics are epic and well worth seeing, but the gameplay in between them is a little too long in my opinion and finally getting the movie is a great reward, but it sometimes comes too late - unlike say Halo Wars which has brilliant cinematics and well paced varied levels so you're not waiting too long for the next movie.
So if you dig cool technology, norse gods and interesting gameplay pick it up, at a reasonable price of course!

Sam's Power Trip Follow Up - Empathy, Power Acquisition

Firstly, I apologize for the delay in writing this post.
Aside from Rogue, there are a multitude of comic heroes with this power. I'll leave her out as she seems to be fairly well known. Instead i'll go through the history of a lesser known charater, who is quite familiar to me as the first X-Men comics I read were collections of the original series.
Mimic






















As you can probably tell from the image and his name, Mimic mimics his fellow heroes' powers. He was the first X-Man to be added to the original line up, however he didn't stay long. After being expelled after a fight with Cyclops he still managed to save the team from death in a battle against some roboty plot device character that robbed him of his powers.
However, his powers returned, but began draining the life force out of those he mimics, thus putting a hold on his hero activities for a while.
He had his chance again in a fight with the Hulk, but as the Hulk is a source of limitless energy it overloaded him and put him into a coma which lasted for years. This ended when Wolverine walked past him and gave him his regenerative powers. He is now a member of Norman Osborns' Dark X-Men.
His powers are limited to range, unlike most. However this means he can absorb and use a huge amount of powers if his opponents are within around a mile radius. He also absorbs their knowledge of their powers, meaning he can use their powers with the same level of skill instantaneously. Wouldn't that be fun to see in Heroes? Proximity to powered heroes for long periods of time results in him absorbing their powers permanently, thus he has the powers of the original X-Men and it could be argued Wolverine's. The New Dark X-Men contain some very powerful mutants, including Namor, Daken (Son of Wolverine), and Emma Frost.
Interestingly, Weapon Omega is also on the team, who also has power mimicry (I smell a Sitcom!) which should give us an interesting fight when Mimic realises he's not on the good team, and that "Professor X" is actually Mystique.
There's a multitude of other heroes with Power Acquisition etc. such as Meggan (Captain Britain's wife), Awesome Andy, the Impossible Man and an anti-hero called Terror, who absorbs powers and talents through his victims' dismembered limbs. I won't go through them all, but you get the idea. I like how most of the writers (and most of them are Marvel, there's not as many in the DC universe) make good use of these characters, there's a high chance of their appeal going stale, but using them sparingly is working so far. And the use of Weapon Omega as the Collective after Decimation made a pretty good read.
Well, sorry for holding up all the follow up posts Aled, 'till next time.

The Matrix: Retirement

Tyndall wants you to join the fight!

Or rather she did. As of Today, The Matrix Online is now closed and players from around the world can no longer log on and jack in to fight for the Machines, the Merovingian, New Zion, The Cypherites or E Pluribus Neo. It's been a great, four year journey, but due to internal difficulties and lack of revenue (I presume) the game has had to close.

It never was the dream it should have been, for whatever reason uptake was not as high as initially planned for, this meant cutbacks and reductions in the amount of mission and epic events that were planned.

But the reduced team persevered, restructuring the way the program went so that we got regular mission updates and a rolling programme of "Live Events" featuring key characters from the Matrix and involving anything from large scale battles to diplomacy. The dedication of the team was evident, when after funding ran out for cinematics, the lead developer drew and animated new ones himself for two chapters.

There were moments of great excitement - a rogue Sentinel army led by a program known as the General kidnapped Sati, and her absence of weather control turned the sky red permanently. The machines eventually defeated him by attacking his base 'Stalingrad' with a huge army of Sentinels and Sati was recovered.

Seraph was infected with a code and began attacking redpills, it was eventually revealed that these people had been 'overwritten' by machine programs, used to spy on Zion and other organizations.

The Machines discovered the hidden human city of New Zion and declared war on humanity once again. They attacked Zion, but the new city is much better defended and far harder to penetrate.

A group of humans, calling themselves the Oligrachs, arrived on the scene, possessing the power to override and control the Machines and seeming to have some kind of agreement with them as equal powers. Unfortunately we never got to find out what happened next and so the story came to an abrupt close.

A key developer had to leave, and this stalled all stoyline progression - the main element of the game, interest declined, no new progress was made and eventually the decision was made to call it a day.

There was some fun to be had on the way out - they turned on the normally seasonal Halloween and Christmas events allowing us to participate in zombie hunts, sinowball fights and obtain cool costumes. They bumped every player to level 99 (the normal max is 50) allowing easy access to a number of missions and quests. And set off a number of event related items such as code bombs, which was cool for me as I'd never seen them before. I stuck around to the end, partying on top of one of the monuments in the city and then, with a final server crash, it was over.

Thanks for the memories MxO!!

Star Wars Legacy: Fight Another Day

Legacy #32-33

Some minor changes to how I'm going to be running these articles. First of all I'm taking away the "Updates and Review" from the title, as that is fairly self-explanatory, and instead I'm adding the story arc title. I'll cover the issues arc by arc, grouping two and four parters together and treating one-shots separately and give you the titles of the issues.

I'll start with some updates.

Sith Updates

Vul Isen

Species: Givin
Sex: Male
Homeworld: Korriban
Position: Scientist
First Appearance: Legacy #32 (Fight Another Day, part 1)






Vul Isen is a fully fledged force-using member of the One Sith order under Darth Krayt. His talents, however, are not in combat or powerful force use, but in Science. He combined his knowledge of science with his use of the force to create new techniques and tools to serve the order. He had good relations with Darth Wyyrlok, and under his guidance created a water variation of a Sith Leviathan to destroy the Mon Calamari. He also had experimented with toxins and bio-weapons, but none were suitable for the task. Interestingly his field meant that he did not earn a "Darth" title and instead of the usual black gear he wore a standard Imperial military uniform in his work.

Plot

This issue returns to the planet Dac, where the Mon Calamari race have been enslaved and are being exterminated by the Sith forces on the planet. An Imperial underwater assault team find a colony of hiding Mon Calamri and begin to hunt them. But the Imperials are counter-attacked by the Mon Calamari ranger, a secret fighting force using their own weapons and ships. They drive off the Imperials with the aid of Treis Sinde, the Imperial Knight, who stayed behind to help the resistance.

Darth Azard meets up with Vul Isen and together they summon and command the Sea Leviathan and test it's power on a group of Mon Calamari captives. They then send it off in hunt of the resistance. A scout group encounters the monster and reports back to Treis and they formulate a plan.

The Leviathan tracks the rangers and a group of refugees to a crevasse and begins to attack them. But Treis uses the force to summon a number of Devilsquid, a monstrous native Mon Calamari beast, to attack the Leviathan and drag it down into the depths. They disable the Sith's underwater craft and escape to fight another day.

Another great story from the Legacy team, I want to do a few more posts covering the characters and setting of Legacy, but I've a few other things I want to catch up on too. Hope you enjoyed this.

SF Masterworks # 20 - A Scanner Darkly

I'm trying to catch up on some lost blogging, following up on posts I haven't done for a while in case they get lost, so I'll start off with a book review from the masterworks series, of which I have read a scant few, mostly by Philip K Dick - here is another.

















One of the most bewildering of PKD's already bewildering collection of novels, and yet one of the most powerful. This one doesn't reach as far into the future as most of his novels, there are none of the usual precogs, martian colonies and androids that are the author's hallmarks. Rather we only jump a few fictional years ahead to a future where Substance D, a narcotic in a league above all current ones available.

As last time - I'll post up a more concise summary than I'm able to conjure from a summary of the series at SFSite.com

"It follows the story of Officer Fred, an undercover narcotics agent who is so deeply undercover that even his superiors don't know his street identity, Bob Arctor. Consequently, Fred is given the task of monitoring Bob.

The problem is, Fred/Bob isn't sure which side he is on anymore, since he more than half believes in the drug culture lifestyle he has been living. Furthermore, he is so messed up on a dangerous psychotropic hallucinogen called Substance D, that he is losing touch with... well, everything. The literal scanner of the title (seeing "through a scanner darkly") is a holographic scanner set up in Bob's house. When Fred watches the replay of the scanner tapes, he is soon unable to figure out what Bob is up to, having forgotten he is monitoring himself."

This book has the most impact as it relates most closely to the author's life and the impact of drug abuse on him and his friends. It ends with a moving piece from the author detailing how they were like kids playing in the road, and no one told them about the danger, following this is a list of many of his friends from that time who are sick, in institutions or lost along the way.

Not always the most exciting read, but certainly one of the most moving.

SF at the Movies - May/June/July 09 + Word out to my people

Well it's been a long time since I've posted here and an apology again to all r4eaders who expect to actually see something here on a regular basis. Things are starting to return to normal and with the holiday season approaching I anticipate more time to dedicate to the blog. You'll know about these already, but I like to keep up traditions and so here are the contents of my latest 'at the movies' post.

Star Trek

Released 08/05/09












A movie taking us back to the lives of Kirk, Spock and the original cast brought back to life by a new cast and a new director. J.J. Abrams seems to want to put his stamp on everything and Star Trek is the latest brand to succumb. The movie was bold and daring and made good use of the character's quirks without pandering to the typical self-referential dialogue these types of films go for. The plot was exciting and dramatic, and the enemy was intense. The whole 'enemy from the future' angle was very fitting to the genre, but I did find the whole alternate timeline it throws up a little bewildering from a fan perspective - still very enjoyable though.

Terminator Salvation

Released 21/5/09












The latest addition to the famous franchise took us right into the scenario only glimpsed in the previous movies - the war between humans and Skynet. The setting and the casting were very well done, you got a real sense of the impact of the war on the survivors and a glimpse into more groups than just the resistance. John Connor was well placed as an enigmatic soldier, but not yet the leader figure he would become. The inclusion of Marcus Wright, a terminator who thinks he's human, and the reintroduction of Arnie via CG made this film a non-stop action thriller well worth seeing, and a worthy follower of the Terminator saga.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Released 24/06/09












Not necessarily the best of the movies out, but certainly one of the most enjoyable. The movie starts with a force of Autobots, allied with the U.S. Military taking out Decepticons hidden on Earth. We see Sam, the hero of the first movie, heading to Uni, but as he goes he finds a piece of the allspark, which burns information into his mind and attracts the attention of a powerful figure - The Fallen who sets a plan and raises a Decepticon army and resurrects Megatron to fight the Autobots to get his hands on a power source that will make him invincible...and destroy humanity. Very, very entertaining.

OK - enough of that, I've a feeling I missed something, let me know if that's the case. Lastly I'd like to put the word out for some of my readers who are following the blog on Facebook and on here. Most are personal friends of mine but it's been good to know that other people read this blog so I'd like to thank:

Cleo and Clayton - who have been following the blog for a while now

Chrissy for commenting and for reading - you can read her excellent blog, chronicling her TV-watching adventures HERE

Jayson for being my first follower on Blogger - read the best and latest Sci-Fi news at Nerdvana

And...erm...Hockey HotChicks, I'd like to thank er...them too!