Super Mario Replay: Super Mario Land

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For a nearly 30 year old Gameboy game, Super Mario Land remains remarkably playable. It is a fine game made within the constraints of the time and situation of its creation. Judged solely on the merits of how fun it is to play in 2017, it is unfortunately lacking.

Super Mario Land is one of only two actually worthwhile Gameboy launch titles, along with Tetris. It hit shortly before Super Mario Bros 3 and played and looked mostly like the first Super Mario Bros. Much like the other game that looks and plays the most like Super Mario Bros, The Lost Levels, Super Mario Land is a distinct step back from that seminal game in just about every way.

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Being a step back in the graphics department is understandable; it is on less powerful hardware that comes with its own bad screen. Unfortunately, it is also a step back in the controls and length. Super Mario Land plays surprisingly sloppily. The edges of platforms are inconsistent, jumps are kind of twitchy and everything just feels a little off. It isn’t enough to really ruin the game, but it never feels quite right. It is still a good sight better than most GameBoy platform games, mostly because the stripped down graphics actually play to the systems strengths. It is easy to see where you are going, no blind jumps because the screen doesn’t cover enough real estate for you to see where you’re jumping.

The short length is probably the biggest problem with the game. SMB had 32 levels, SML has 12. And they are not particularly long or difficult levels. The game can be beaten start to finish in about 45 minutes. The game consists of four worlds of three stages each. Even with just 12 stages, 2 of them are not normal stages but scrolling shooter stages. Honestly, with the floaty controls and shooter levels, it is no surprise to learn that this game was not developed by Mario creator Miyamoto’s team but by the crew responsible for Metroid and Kid Icarus. It feels more like a Kid Icarus follow up than a Mario one.

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I would call out the world of Super Mario Land as being weird, but that is a moving goalpost with the Mario series, especially in the third entry America had seen, with each one being quite different than the last. Still, Mario 1 laid out the basics and Mario 2 added a ton of recurring enemies and characters as well as establishing character differences that have stuck since, very little of Mario Land has been follow up on. Princess Daisy is a mainstay of the various ancillary sports titles, but little else from this game’s Egypt and Ancient China episodes have been seen again. At this point, the setting feels very un-Mario-like. It doesn’t help that familiar elements are a little different as well. There is no fire flower in this game, instead of fire balls Mario tosses bouncing super balls. Instead of kicking turtle shells, they explode. They are traditional Mario elements that don’t work the same way they do in any other Mario game.

Super Mario Land is available on 3DS for less than $5 and that feels about right. It is still mostly enjoyable to play these days, but it is impossible to forget that this is a GameBoy game.

What I Watched in January 2017

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Movies

Ant-Man – I’ve seen and reviewed this before, but my brother hadn’t seen it. It holds up to repeat viewings. Most of the jokes still land and the action stuff is good enough. I really can’t wait for that sequel. ****

John Wick – I’d heard good things about this and the trailer for the sequel looked great, so I rented it from Amazon for a dollar and gave it a watch. It is a barebones, nearly perfectly executed action movie. It does a great job of building up John Wick before letting you see him in action, and then making that pay off. It also does a good job of hinting at this elaborate underworld that it only barely shows, making this seem like it comes from a world that exists outside of this movie. It is just really well done all around. ****

Duck Soup – This is maybe the best comedy ever made and even now, more than 80 years after its release, it remains relevant. When Rufus T Firefly (Groucho Marx) sings “The Laws of My Administration” it is hard not to see its similarities to problems in the current day. *****

Horse Feathers – I don’t like this one quite as well as Duck Soup, but it is similarly hilarious and relevant, though the problem of colleges making sports more important than education is much lighter than resurgent fascism. *****

Boogie Nights – Paul Thomas Anderson is a master. There is a lot going on in this movie, including a star making performance from Mark Wahlberg, but I don’t really have time to unpack it. It has a completely awesome soundtrack as well. *****

The Last King – This is a Norwegian historical action movie about the real rescue and a child that would eventually be king. It is basically Game of Thrones but with more skiing. It isn’t great, but it more than enjoyable. ***1/2

Ratchet & Clank – I had high hopes for this, but it didn’t play near me. It ended up being like most video game movies; not especially good. It feels a little like a Ratchet and Clank game with all the gameplay taken out. It needs just a little more. It isn’t bad, but it never really rises higher than mildly amusing. Still, it isn’t pure excrement like Angry Birds. ***

Alice Through the Looking Glass – I expected this to be a lot worse, but while it isn’t good was it an abomination either. It is just a mess of CGI and affected performances that occasionally manages to be interesting. **1/2

Live By Night – review here. ***

Cloud Atlas – I skipped this when it came out because the Wachiowskis tend to be more miss than hit with my, but I listened to a great podcast about it (fthismovie) that convinced me to give it a shot, and I’m glad I did. Cloud Atlas interweaves 6 stories in different time periods that all tell one giant story. It is kind of clunky at times and melodramatic, but it is so earnest that the whole thing ends up working. I loved it. *****

Trainspotting – I see why this movie is so well regarded, but I found it really hard to watch. It coats a frank look a drug addiction and hopelessness with a pop aesthetic to make it moderately palatable. It deserves its reputation, but I doubt I’ll watch it again. ****1/2

Fruitvale Station – This is an amazing and harrowing look a specific example of a real and extant problem in the country. This movie follows that last day of Oscar Grant, who was shot by BART police officers on New Year’s Day nearly a decade ago. It is just heart breaking to watch. *****

Small Soldiers – This is not my favorite Joe Dante movie, but there is still a lot to like here. It is a little pseudo-horror movie for kids; it mostly works. It’s central toys fighting toys conflict is only marginally interesting, but there are quite a few nice performances, including one by the late, great Phil Hartman. It is no Gremlins or The ‘Burbs, but isn’t bad. ***1/2

Flowers of War – This wants to be something important and profound, but it ends up feeling a little cheap and awkward. There are some really good scenes and shots, and this is a story that needs to be told, but this is not the best telling. The Asian side of WWII is not one that gets told a lot, especially not about Japan’s atrocities in China rather than US military exploits in the Pacific, but this just feels like it kind of got away from director Zhang Yimou.**1/2

Gone Girl – I am coming to terms with the fact that I am just a Ben Affleck fan. I like watching movies he stars in and I like it when he shows up in bit roles (see the next entry). This is a messed up movie and I’m not sure I like what it has to say and I know I don’t like seeing Rosamund Pike hit herself in the face with a ballpeen hammer, but it is a well-made film. ****

Shakespeare in Love – This was a lot of fun. It didn’t blow me away or anything, but this is pretty much the movie that The Knight’s Tale wants to be. It is a romantic comedy that just happens to star Shakespeare as he writes Romeo and Juliet. It takes some liberties with historical accuracy, mostly because that is far from the point. It is a fun movie with a lot of fun performances. ****

Scoop – I tend to prefer Woody Allen’s straight comedies, like this one. It’s got Scarlett Johansson playing a flighty would be reporter, Hugh Jackman being charming, Ian McShane being irascible and Allen himself playing an ineffectual stage magician. It is only rarely laugh out loud funny, but the whole thing is just kind of pleasant to watch. ****

xXx: The Return of Xander Cage – read review here. **1/2

The Three Musketeers (2011) – This movie has so many things that I like, such as fencing and airships, that I really wanted to like it. But it just isn’t any good. It isn’t horrible, but the sword fights are mediocre and it is stuffed with bad effects. **1/2

Iceman – I love Donnie Yen. He’s stolen two blockbusters in the last couple of months (Rogue One and XXX) and I’ve been binging on his films available on Netflix, like the Ip Man movies. This one is a giant mess. It relies on mediocre CGI over Yen’s considerable martial arts talents. Yen is great, but this movie is not. *1/2

La La Land – Review coming soon. *****

Dragon – Another Donnie Yen vehicle. This one starts out great. Donnie Yen as a small town laborer who takes out a couple of bandits in a butcher shop. A police investigator determines that he must be a master martial artists and they engage in a cat and mouse game as he tries to prove it. But the ending is kind of nonsense, bringing the whole experience down. ***1/2

TV

Always Sunny in Philadelphia Season 11 – It is amazing to see that this show remains so good after more than a decade. I don’t know that Season 11 is my favorite season of the show, but it has its share of excellent episodes. All of the stars continue to do excellent work exploring the unique ways that all of these characters are really just completely awful.

Turn Season 2 – An improvement over the tepid first season, but it still struggles with an unlikeable protagonist and way too much emphasis on stupid stuff rather than on actually spying. It isn’t Jamie Bell’s fault, but the central character is just completely unlikeable. He seems neither skilled nor principled; simply leaping from one blunder to the next. Even its villains, like the frequently despicable Captain Simcoe, get more of chance to seem sympathetic than the shows protagonist. While Abe Woodhull is a black hole at the center of the show, his allies Ben Tallmadge and especially Caleb Brewster are a lot of fun, but they get too little time.

Tarzan & Jane – It takes way too long to get up to speed and never stops looking ugly, but Netflix’s teenage take on Edgar Rice Burroughs famous jungle man isn’t terrible. In fact, the back half of the season gets quite good. Its mixed race, highly active Jane is a highlight. I can’t help but wish this show came in a better looking package, because I think it is up to the level of some other well liked action cartoons, at least over its first dozen episodes, but its blocky 3D look is simply unappealing.

Sherlock Series 4 – There is a real sense of diminishing returns with this show. It has almost always been better when the stakes were smaller, but now it doesn’t seem to know how to lessen the stakes, or how to tell a compelling mystery. That is offset by just how much fun it is to watch Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch. And Mark Gatiss, who has been equally good as Mycroft. There is still enjoyment to be had from this show, but two out of three of this series’ plots were duds.

Danger 5 Season 2 – I liked the first season of this show, but I found it best taken in small doses. Somehow they managed to amp up the craziness in season2, but while I found it easier to binge, it just wasn’t quite as satisfying. Some jokes were overused and while the switch from the 60’s to the 80’s was great, things ended up feeling kind of scattered. Still, there is nothing else like this.

The Man in the High Castle Season 1 – This show is not unlike Turn in that it has a great premise, but it doesn’t know how to build its characters. Does it want the viewer to root for the Nazi spy? That’s not a good direction to go. But it doesn’t succeed at making anyone else compelling. Their actions only vaguely make sense and any time they seem to be making progress they seem to spin off in a completely different direction. After 10 episodes I couldn’t tell you what any of the characters want. They have no goals; they merely exist in the nightmare alternate reality. Everything else is good enough that I am going to keep going, but this show better find some direction if it wants me to watch past season 2.

Voltron The Mighty Defender Season 2 – I thought the first season of this show was fine, but with all of the origin stuff from season 1 out of the way season 2 shines all the way through. It is the Voltron that exists in the memories of the show’s fans, a spell that would be broken by actually rewatching the original, a lesson I learned from going back to TMNT as an adult. It is just the sort of show I would have loved to be able to watch as a kid.

Taboo – This Tom Hardy vehicle as me enthralled, but it is all mysteries and no solutions so far. I’ll be back next month with my overall thoughts. Maybe it gets its own post.

Now Playing in January 2017

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Beaten

River City Tokyo Rumble – read about it here.

Monster Hunter Generations – read about it here.

Secret of Evermore – read about it here.

Super Mario Bros – read about it here.

Super Mario Bros The Lost Levels – post coming soon.

Runbow –nojan2

This game is an absolute delight. I didn’t manage to beat the Bowhemoth, but I did see the ending for the campaign. It is a series of bite sized challenge levels. Each level has its own little challenge, like scrolling backwards or rising lava, but every level has the gimmick of the background changing colors, which reveals or hides similarly colored platforms. It works perfectly. It can be really tough, but stages are tiny, rarely taking more than a minute to complete, and numerous so even if you get stuck there is also a different challenge you can face. It is also jam packed with charm. Aside from the characters made for this game and their numerous outfits, there are also more than a dozen stars of other indie darlings like Shovel Knight or Shantae to play as. Everyone plays the same, though I do think there are plenty of unique taunts, but it really lets the play customize their experience. It also features up to 9 player multiplayer. I’ve only had the chance to experience 2 player so far, but it is also a lot of fun. I can see myself returning to this game for a long time, to finish unbeaten stages and go for high scores. It is really just a wonderful experience.

Aeterno Blade – This is a kind of janky metroidvania game. I’d hesitate to just call it bad, but other than a pavlovian enjoyment of filling out the map there really wasn’t much here I liked. There are a lot of combos one can do with battle system, but in order to make them viable it turns a lot of the enemies into damage sponges. The game looks like a PS1 game, a style of low res polygonal graphics that I can’t imagine anyone was clamoring to see again. I bought it on a deep discount and didn’t hate it, but there are much better games in this style available no matter the system you buy it for.

Ongoing

Paper Mario Color Splash – I’ve barely had the time to start this, but I like it so far. The dialogue especially has been impressive. Even the supposedly disappointing Paper Mario Sticker Star was a joy in its story sequences, so there was no reason to expect this to be any difference, but I am happy to see that it is just as good as I expected. It remains to be seen if the gameplay is as good, but it is promising through the first hour or two.

Remember Me – The more I play this, the more it becomes clear that this is a better idea for a game than it is a finished product. It is close to a good game, or even a great game, in many ways, but by the time I end each play session it feels like a chore. Hopefully it comes together over the second half; though that is usually the opposite of how game experiences go.

Dragon Quest VIII –nojan1

I’ve barely started on this game, but so far it is just as good as I remember it. There is something about the job system Dragon Quests that never quite clicks for me. I enjoyed DQ 6, 7 and especially 9, but my favorites have not been the ones to use a job system, like 4, 5 and, assuming my recollection matches the other 50 or so hours of the game, 8. Dragon Quest 8 is the most simple and straightforward game in the series since at least DQ5, maybe even further back than that. It is just a handful of characters on a quest, with twists and turns that don’t change the central nature of the story. Still, it does what it does very well and those characters as a lot of fun.

Elliot Quest – This game is a whole lot bigger than it seems. I thought I was near the end, but it turns out I was closer to the midpoint than the finish line. This game does have some problems, like the occasionally unresponsive controls and some punishing death penalties, but it is mostly really enjoyable. So far I would call it Zelda 2 done right. It plays much the same way as that second tier NES classic, but even at its most punishing it is more forgiving and overall just feels fairer. It helps that the player’s primary weapon is ranged, emphasizing avoiding enemies rather than toe to toe combat. I expect to have this finished before too long and maybe have more to say about it.

Robotrek – Its going, its going.

Upcoming

Enslaved Journey to the West – I stared this game last year, but barely got started on it before I got distracted. I intend to go back and beat it as soon as I finish with Remember Me.

Inazuma Eleven – I’ve got about 4 or 5 unbeaten games I bought digitally on my 3DS, and my goal this year is to try to finish them. Both because I have enjoyed what I’ve played of most of them, I am halfway through this one, but also as an excuse to not spend money on new games. I really intend to cut down on how much I spend on games this year.

Terranigma, Lufia 2 – These, along with the already started Robotrek, are the last of the SNES games I meant to beat last year. I will keep plugging away at them and hopefully finish sooner rather than later.

Super Mario Bros 2, Super Mario Bros 3 – This year’s project is the entirety of the Super Mario series, and a good afternoon should get me through both of these games. After that things start to take a little longer, but if I can get at least these two done in February I’ll be in a good place.

Super Mario Replay: The Lost Levels

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When I made my list of Mario games to play/replay it never occurred to me to put The Lost Levels on the list. It was mostly just an oversight, but The Lost Levels is an entirely unnecessary addition to the series. I’ve dabbled with it in the past, but quickly came to the absolutely correct conclusion that the Super Mario Bros 2 we got in America was the better game and the more important addition to the series. Still, when I decided that I would freshen up my replays of the NES games by playing the Super Mario All-Stars version of the games, I realized that there was fourth game on that cart and needed to play The Lost Levels to really do this thing right.

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Everything good about the The Lost Levels can be found in the original Super Mario Bros. Almost everything new it adds is strictly worse than what came before it. Like the poison mushroom. It is the opposite of the power up mushroom, but the game is already full of ways to take that power up from the player, it didn’t need one more to just make things even more difficult. Difficult this game is; it is very much Super Mario Bros for super players, a category of people that I do not fall in. All of this is not to say that The Lost Levels is without its charms; it is more Super Mario Bros which is never a bad thing. It may be harder in some generally unfun ways, but the core game is still that same Mario goodness and no amount of poison mushrooms or invisible blocks can destroy that completely.

The good news is that Nintendo seems to have learned the right lessons from this game. None of the Mario games after this, even those that are definitely sequels, rely on bullshit difficulty like this game. It is a one off for the series, a dead end that is honestly better left forgotten or as just a footnote to the proper Super Mario Bros series.  This post comes off as an afterthought because it is.  I’m sorry for not engaging more fully with this game, but there is little here I enjoy; I’d rather just move on to good Mario games, like every other game in the series but this one.

Super Mario Replay: Super Mario Bros

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My big project here this year is going to be a replay of the Super Mario series, mainline games only. That means no spin-offs or sports titles. Like previous projects like 25 Years of NES, the Wheel of Time Reread, Second Quest and 25 Years of SNES, I expect this year long project to take me at least 15 months and become a hateful chore by the end of it. Right now though, I am hoping the ending of this will coincide with the release of Super Mario Odyssey and I can play that game with the character’s history in mind. No promises, though.

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So we start with Super Mario Bros. Not the 1985 NES game, though; this time I am playing the Super Mario All-Star version on the Wii through the 25th Anniversary Edition. I decided to play it, and the other NES games, in this format because it gives me something else to say about them. There really isn’t much left to say about Super Mario Bros. I’ve already written about it once.  The All-Stars version gives me at least two things to talk about. One is the newly added save system. I am in favor of saving my progress and not being forced to complete a game in one sitting. Super Mario Bros is not designed with this in mind. In fact, it is designed to facilitate playing through quickly. I am avoiding warping so I can see more of the game than I usually do, but all the different hidden Warp Zones that were built into this game are a thing of beauty. Assuming you know what you are doing you can get to just about any stage in a matter of minutes. Saving robs the game of most of its challenge. You still have to get through without dying, but you can take it one World at a time and methodically take this game apart even if you aren’t any good at it.

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The other thing is interesting thing about the All-Stars version are the new graphics. It makes the characters look like SMB3 characters, but with SMW detail and color depth and fancy backgrounds. The original version of Super Mario Bros looks good in a primitive, familiar way. You’ve seen this game and those sprites for 30 years; that is what they are supposed to look like, the lack of detail notwithstanding. The All-Star graphics take some getting used to, but they actually look really good. It does create some dissonance with a game that looks like a SNES game but definitely plays like an NES game.

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As for the game itself, I don’t know what to say about it. I don’t think a game exists that has been more thoroughly discussed and dissected that Super Mario Bros. I’ve already written about it once. It is the ur video game, its primordial essence is a building block for nearly every game that came after it. Honestly, even all these years later it is still a lot of fun to play. It is perfect in its simplicity. Everyone should play it.

25 Years 25 Games 22: Secret of Evermore

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Secret of Evermore is a Squaresoft SNES game that is largely forgotten when talking about the 16-bit RPG giant’s output. It’s not Final Fantasy or Chrono Trigger or even Secret of Mana. Though Secret of Mana is part of the reason the game is remembered by those who do remember it. Secret of Evermore is the first and only game developed by Squaresoft USA. It plays much like Secret of Mana and got a bad rep largely for supposedly preventing us in the USA from getting Secret of Mana’s real sequel. That loss appears to have more to do with Squaresoft’s falling out with Nintendo and the difficulties in compressing the dialogue to fit onto an American cartridge. Still, while the game is not actually connected to the Mana series, Evermore is built along the same lines.

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For better or worse, Secret of Evermore does feel “American.” It weird, but it is weird in a somewhat familiar way. The protagonist is an everyday kid that gets sucked into an alternate reality with his dog. The closest thing he has to a personality is that he loves what sound like terrible science fiction movies. His dog has more going on, if only because the dog changes form in each area of the game, going from a monstrous cave dog to a sleek greyhound to a fancy poodle to a jet power toaster. It is something at least.

The game starts with the main character getting sucked into a prehistoric world and movies through a few different realms before ending in a science fiction world. Each world is the creation of one of the people who were originally involved in an alternate reality experiment, and each one created a world to their liking. The game plays out a little like Chrono Trigger, moving from one setting to a completely different one every handful of hours. The game looks good, though not great. The music, though, is pretty great. It does play a lot like Secret of Mana. It has that same hit and wait battle system, with a meter at the bottom that must charge before you can effectively attack again. It has the ring menus for choosing spells and weapons. There are some changes to how spells work, but the game is definitely a sibling of Secret of Mana.

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There are two things that stop the game from being one of the SNES’s greats. The first is one of those changes from Secret of Mana, the differences in the magic system. Magic in Secret of Mana was already a low point, since you had to level it up by repeatedly casting spells. That seems to be somewhat alleviated by having only one character in Secret of Evermore, but something new added to what in Secret of Evermore is called Alchemy makes it even more tedious. In order to alchemy, you have to have the spell ingredients. That means you have to scour levels with dog to find invisible ingredients or spend all of your money stocking up on ingredients so you can cast the magic. Plus, you still have to level up each spell individually. So you cast the spell repeatedly to level up so it is strong enough to be useful, but then you run out of ingredients so you can’t actually cast it. It really makes you want to stick with some magic you learn early in the game, assuming you stocked up on enough spell ingredients to keep casting the high level versions of it. Without checking a guide there is no way of knowing which spells are actually worth using, other than leveling them up some and comparing, but that leads to even more ingredient hunting.

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The problem with alchemy is connected to the game’s other big problem: it is horribly balanced. One area will be super tough, but it will be followed by one that is super easy. One boss will be little more than a speed bump, but the next one might be a game ending obstacle. One spell you get fairly early (Crush) is super powerful, but the effectiveness of alchemy is all around a crap shoot. The whole game just feels super uneven.

That unevenness is not particularly surprising given that this was a rookie team making their first game. It feels like a rookie effort. There are quite a few good ideas here and a lot to like, but the game also feels kind haphazard. It is a good game, but there are a lot of good action-rpgs on the SNES. Games like Illusion of Gaia or A Link to the Past. Secret of Evermore doesn’t belong in the upper echelon of SNES games, but it is a worthy addition to the system’s library and still decently fun to play today.

xXx: The Return of Xander Cage

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xXx: The Return of Xander Cage is not a good movie. It might be the most preposterously stupid spy story ever committed to film. The acting ranges from passable to “supporting role given to a pro athlete.” The laws of physics and common sense aren’t ignored; they are pantsed and pushed into a mud puddle. Still xXx: The Return of Xander Cage is largely an enjoyable experience. It is purposefully crass, but also very inclusive, with just enough self-awareness to keep its stupidity fun instead of unbearable.

Vin Diesel stars as Xander Cage, a former secret agent who is pulled out of retirement after his mentor is killed. He is out for revenge, and to retrieve Pandora’s Box, a device which can make satellites drop out of sky on people’s heads. It has been stolen by Xiang and his team for unclear purposes. Cage recruits a new team, with skills such as marksmanship, DJing and crashing cars, to help him get it back. Once he tracks down Xiang, he learns that his foe is a former agent as well and the real bad guy is somebody different. Eventually they team up to thwart the real villain and save the day.

It is easy and almost inevitable to draw comparisons to Vin Diesel’s other big franchise, Fast & Furious. Like in that series, this motley gang of spies forms a makeshift family. This one is even more diverse than F&F’s already multi-racial crew. While they remain only vaguely fleshed out, there is a lot to like about this team. The marksman Adele is the highlight, aside from maybe Donnie Yen as Xiang. Like Rogue One, this movie will leave you wishing it had more Donnie Yen. They don’t have the deep connection to each other that F&F crew has, but as they form a formidable team over the back half this movie really takes off.

This would truly be a trash masterpiece if it weren’t for some shoddy special effects and a third act that can’t quite top the previous over the top action sequence didn’t stall it out. There are a ton of moments of unnecessary slow motion or jumbled actions scenes that keep this from being pure over the top nonsense. But still, it hits close enough to the mark to be satisfying. Plus, there is a last minute reveal that nearly brought cheers.

It can’t be overstated just how gleefully stupid this movie is. It introduces Xander Cage as he skis and skateboards down a tropical mountain to steal cable for a poor Brazilian neighborhood so they can watch a soccer match. At one point Diesel and Yen get into a dirt bike race that ends with them racing them on the ocean. One of Xander Cage’s recruits only skill is being a DJ. During a footrace, Diesel and Yen are hit by about 4 cars apiece. They keep running. I’ll not mention Cage’s Bondian sexual exploits but they are over the top, though still PG-13. From the device they are after to the plot they are unraveling, this entire movie is all nonsense.

xXx: The Return of Xander Cage is the action movie for people who find the Fast & Furious movies to be too high brow. It is James Bond for dirt bags. It is also nearly a fun as it is silly. This is not a movie for everyone. It is certainly not a good movie. But by certain measurements, it might just be the best movie.

**1/2

The Modern Stone Age Family

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When DC announced a revamped Hanna Barbera line, it was met with a lot of derision. They announced four titles, but the only one that didn’t meet with immediate hate was Future Quest by Jeff Parker and Doc Shaner. The weirdo sci-fi version of Scooby-Doo took the brunt of the mocking, but the post-apocalyptic Wacky Races didn’t escape unscathed. Neither did The Flintstones, which at the time only had a fairly normal rendition of cast done by the incomparable Amanda Conner. In the end, only Wacky Races turned out poorly. Scooby Apocalypse is fine and while Future Quest is good it hasn’t managed to maintain any momentum since Shaner has only been able to do about half of each issue. The Flintstones, though, has been amazing.

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The art is by Steve Pugh, who has previously worked on Animal Man, Hellblazer and 2000 AD, and it looks really good. His art is clear and friendly, capturing the sitcom-esque look of the Flintstones perfectly. The cartoon was a take on The Honeymooner’s set in Prehistoric times, a broad sitcom family with the usual sitcom problems that just happened to be cave men; hence “the modern Stone Age family.” Pugh’s art is perfect at grounding this series into something that looks friendly and inviting. Which is necessary, because The Flintstones is anything but friendly.

No, this Flintstones comic is pitch black satire that is equally razor sharp and hammer blunt. Mark Russell wrote last year’s under-read Prez, also from DC, about America’s first teenage president, which was a similar satire that introduced Carl the End of Life Bear, a marijuana dispensing nursing robot for terminal patients. The Flintstones is even more biting than that already caustic title. Russell does this without doing a lot of re-imagining of the title. The Flintstones here are in many ways the same characters they have always been. Fred and Barney are best friends, they work at Slate Rock & Gravel, are married to Wilma and Betty and have kids in Pebbles and Bam-Bam. But instead of the cartoon’s broad sitcom problems, the comic has satirical social commentary, existential dread and scathing looks at very modern problems. It is amazing.

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In the first six issues alone, The Flintstones has dealt with issues like consumer culture, marriage equality, religion, war, politics, and veteran care, among others. It has essentially touched on most of the issues we face in our lives today. The first issue has a Neandethal, when leaving Bedrock, describe civilization as “getting someone else to do your killing for you.” That references back to both his friend dying trying to kill a mammoth at Mr. Slate’s behest, and Fred’s experiences in a war that Mr. Slate gave Mr. Slate the chance to open his quarry. Not only that, it is also dripping with existential dread, with the confusion of life forcing characters to contemplate the meaning of their own existence and generally not liking what they find. When Fred is asked if he has any worries about the new fad called “marriage” he wonders if all his marriage is doing is keeping Wilma from finding something better. It is kind of heartbreaking.

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There is some lightness to all of this, the possibility of hope. Wilma only thought about why she married is that she loves Fred. The hope in this series almost always found in its two families, the Flintstones and the Rubbles. Wilma might have been embarrassed at her art show, but learning about her art helped bring her and Fred closer together. That marriage retreat ends in disaster, but Fred and Wilma come out of it stronger. Even the war flashback, which shows Fred and Barney joined the army and committed genocide on the false pretense of an impending attack – easily the darkest tale in these six issues – ends with an event that brings the Rubbles closer together, giving at least the glimmer hope to a bleak, bleak story. All through the satire is the undercurrent that individual people doing their best matters, even if society at large is fucked. This element of hope is perfectly expressed by the baby mastodon vacuum cleaner, talking to his friend the armadillo bowling ball about what gets him through his dread as he spends his days locked in the closet – I told you it was dark – is knowing his friend is on the other side of the door. “Maybe the only meaning to life is that which we get from each other.”

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DC had a rough couple of years after they carpet bombed their own line with the New 52 at the same time that their reliable arty Vertigo titles largely dried up. But after the last year or so, I would say they are back on track, having published some of the best comics of the decade. Both of their books written by Mark Russell are on that list. Prez is amazing, but was left unfinished. Hopefully that same fate doesn’t befall The Flintstones as well.

Superhero Movie Rankings Revision

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Last March I made of list of every superhero movie* ranked by goodness. Since no less than five new superhero movies have been released and instead of redoing the whole list, I’ve just made a few edits to the post and stuck the post to the top bar so it can be easily accessed. At some point I will go through and add links to my reviews of the films that I have reviewed on this site. So what changes were made? I added seven movies to the list and changed the ranking of one other.

To start with, I added Hellboy (at 25) and Hellboy 2: The Golden Army (at 5) to the list. I left them off last year because I didn’t really consider them superhero movies, plus I hadn’t seen the first one in years and had never seen the sequel. Late last year I got on a Guillermo Del Toro kick and watched all of his movies. It turns out that the Hellboy movies are very much superhero movies and also that Hellboy 2 is goddamn awesome. So I slotted Hellboy down around the not bad movies and put Hellboy 2 as high as I could justify, which is at the bottom of the movies I love.

As for last year’s movies, I moved Deadpool, which was already on the list, down a few notches to 33. I wasn’t crazy about it when it came out and I like it even less a year removed from it. I put X-Men Apocalypse, my least favorite superhero movie of last year, at 36. Then it was Suicide Squad at 28. Dr. Strange enters at 20 because it had to go below Ant-Man, which I liked more. Then it was Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice: The Ultimate Cut at 17, which is above Man of Steel and below Batman Begins, the two I was really comparing it to. And finally, entering the list at 12 is Captain America Civil War, which I put just ahead of the Avengers.

I will keep this list accessible and I intend to adjust it every year after seen that year’s superhero movies. And I will make any other changes that I feel necessary, whether that be reconsidering a movie or finally watching one I hadn’t seen that got left off. Next year will see some significant changes thanks to the plethora of superhero movies coming out over the next 12 months. We’ll see how LEGO Batman, Logan, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man Homecoming, Thor: Ragnarok and Justice League stack up.

25 Years 25 Games 21: Uncharted Waters: New Horizons

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This is going to be the second game I didn’t complete. With Lufia I just got bored and couldn’t force myself to keep with it at the time. I don’t feel the same way with Uncharted Waters: New Horizons; it may in fact be a masterpiece. With this game I am drowning. There is just too much. It is a detailed and complex game with little in the way of tutorial or explanations. It is just the sort of game I would have spent months when I was younger, now I just don’t have the time to devote what could be hundreds of hours to learning the ins and outs of this game.

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There is a lot to love about this game. The graphics are not the most impressive on the SNES, but while the characters are squat, they are sufficiently detailed to get things across. It actually looks a lot like Final Fantasy IV, a game that was released three years before Uncharted Waters: New Horizons was. Still, the look of the game is more simple than unappealing. It manages to convey a lot of information with a small number of sprites. The trading and exploration systems are fairly deep, especially for a 16-bit game.

Where the game trips me up is just how much there is to do in this game. There are eight protagonists to choose from, exploration, trading and combat to sort through as well as a metric ton of other factors to take into consideration. Each of the characters has their own storyline and their own focus. Otto and Catalina are focused more on combat, being a privateer and a pirate respectively. Then there is Ernst and Pietro, who have stories mostly about exploration. There is also Ali, who is a straight up merchant. And finally Joao, who does a bit of everything. I tried Catalina, Ernst and Joao and was able to make a little bit of progress as each of them. But the game is big, and I never really felt like I knew what I was doing or making any real progress.

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The game starts with a brief story segment outlining each character’s goals. Then you outfit a ship, guessing blindly at first at exactly how to make that happen, and set sail. You can fire on other ships, though there isn’t really any explanation on how combat works you’ll have to figure it out on your own, or stop at other towns to buy or sell goods. You do have to keep track of your supplies, like food and water as well. There are just so many things you could do, with little to no in game explanation on how or why you would do those things that the game makes me feel as though I am drowning. I am doing things, but I am not sure I am making progress or even treading water.

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I’ve tried to read FAQs and watch videos to get a better idea of how to play the game and what I’ve learned is that I need to play the game a lot more than I have time for. I have enjoyed what I’ve played so far, but this game is too much of an undertaking for me to really complete. Still, from the dozen or so hours I put into the game it is clear that there is something here. I just don’t have the time or inclination to plumb its depths and find its treasures.