Reilly2040's Blog

So, with our second full week of new #1s under our belt, its interesting to see how things are shaping up. To be honest, I probably felt last week’s books were stronger over all (thanks to the killer combo of Action Comics and Batgirl), but I still mostly enjoyed this week’s offerings that I picked up.

Batman and Robin relaunched this week with a team I’ve been curious to see for a while.  Part of the fun of the previous series, was the role reversal by having a lighter hearted Batman, and the grim Damian Robin.   So for the first time we have Bruce and Damian operating as Batman and Robin.  I’ve always felt this was a teaming DC had skipped past for the sake of their larger story, and given its interesting father and son dynamic, its something I’ve been curious to see approached for a while now.

First off, I’ve read some complaints online about the characterisation, and I must admit I can see what they were talking about. Peter Tomasi’s Damian definitely felt a bit off. More in line with the character’s early appearances, almost ignoring the maturing we saw during his partnership with Dick. That said, I did like how Tomasi is trying to move Bruce on as a character, and play up the fact that this is a father and son team (Bruce trying to lay down the law to Damian in a way that’s clearly going to encourage rebellion struck me very much as a parenting trap).  The idea that Bruce is trying to move beyond the death of his parents, tying in nicely with him now focusing on his own son, so I really liked what Peter Tomasi was doing there.

One book that was probably the first of my nice surprises this week was Paul Cornell’s Demon Knights.  Despite finding myself a bit lukewarm to last week’s Stormwatch, I really enjoyed this much more fantasy based series.  While featuring some familiar DC characters (notably for me Jason Blood and Etrigan), the setup is for a straight sword and sorcery tale rather than any superheroics.  The way all the Arthurian stuff worked into the story appealed to the side of me that’s long been a fan of that legend, so this was a real win for me as something a bit different in my comics pile.  Definitely onboard for the next issue.

The other surprise this week was the Mr Terrific book.  Having liked the character in the JSA I thought I’d give this a try, and it’s really intrigued me with a bit of mystery surrounding the appearance of his unborn son, and the fantastical nature to Holt’s accomplishments (his lab stored in a pocket dimension, that kind of thing). The thing most likely to generate discussion though, was the appearance of Karen Starr of Starrware. No sign that she’s actually Power Girl (although the dress she wears to a reception seems like a clear nod to the character), but I wonder if they’ll keep it quiet, and then reveal her as being from Earth-2 or something later on, once JSA is established.  All in all, for a book I hadn’t been sure about, I liked the take on the character, and the fact it wasn’t afraid to be a bit outlandish with some of his inventions, almost setting him up as a DCU equivalent to Reed Richards in some ways.

Superboy I found myself a little torn on. On one hand, I found it enjoyable and got into the story it was telling. That said, the character is a complete reboot, with little to tie him to the Conner/Kon-El I was a fan of before, which makes it a little trickier to get into for me.  The fact his origin is kept familiar (minus its Death of Superman trappings), along with the Kryptonian/Human hybrid angle was reassuring though, despite the changes to the voice of the character who comes across much more alien.  I was really happy to see his telekinesis used in the book (and I suspect he’s also telepathic, something new to his powerset).  Conner’s tactile telekinesis was often ignored by later writers, so its nice to see it a key part of Superboy’s powers once again.

I did like the cute knowing wink when they were talking about his human donor.  Assuming of course, Lex Luthor isn’t going to be a red herring with this version of the character (although the clone of Superman and Lex Luthor angle is probably too strong a concept to drop).

I’m definitely intrigued to stick with this for a bit and see where its going.

The one thing though, that’s beginning to irk me about this reboot more generally though, is that I wish DC hadn’t introduced this mysterious woman who’s appearing in all the issues either.  While its a fun thing to have her popping up in all the books, and makes for a game, trying to find her, I wish this was more of a clean slate.  It automatically ties events back to Flashpoint, and is clearly laying the seeds for the next big uber-crossover.  DC has done nothing but Crisis after Crisis for years now.  And after having finally pulled the trigger on the reboot, I’d really have hoped they’d have had the confidence to let all the books bed in without preparing another big crossover already.  As I say, I’d have rather things were left as a clean slate, without risking event fatigue in the middle of possible the biggest thing DC have done since the original Crisis.

So, with week 2 of the reboot/relaunch, I have to admit, as someone who was quite sceptical about the whole thing, there’s a lot to recommend it here.

Its really no surprise that Action Comics was excellent. A Superman whose powers aren’t quite up there yet, and a nice reference to Smallville early on (at least, I have to assume it was intentional ). Its interesting to see Clark pushed more into a Green Arrow esque role here, but it works, especially with the idea that this is Superman starting out. He’s not at the level of cosmic threats yet (although Luthor’s dialogue hints towards something coming). Morrison’s on good form here, and Rags Morale’s artwork is great. I do wish artists would stop overusing the Superman with glowing red eyes thing, but that’s just a personal peeve.  To be honest, given that this is the premier Superman title, and is probably the earliest set of the superhero books in the new 52, I think they could’ve easily used this as the launch title instead of Justice League.  Really strong first issue that shows Clark as much more of a Superboy than a Superman, and also a nice showcase of Luthor.  Very interested to see how this book develops.

Batgirl, also lived up to the hype.  Its no secret I had  a lot of misgivings about the book.  Barbara’s role as Oracle had been a big part of the DCU for years, and the character of Batgirl had gone on to enjoy success first with Cassie, and then more recently with Steph.  To be honest, pre-reboot the Steph Batgirl series by Bryan Millar was one of the best books DC was putting out, so I really disliked the way it had the rug pulled out from under it.  However, then DC put Gail Simone on the book, who was possibly the only writer that could’ve convinced me to pick it up.  And Gail came through brilliantly.

Instead of being ignored or rebooted, the story nicely uses Barbara’s disability throughout the book. I did have a nagging wish for more of a bridge between this and the previous series, which is a peril of not rebooting as cleanly as Superman has – but I do find myself itching to know what happened with Steph and why Barabara’s walking – only one of those questions is likely to be answered in the near future though.

The way Gail used the fact that Barbara was new to being back out as Batgirl worked brilliantly, and her characterisation using The Killing Joke is built up to the point where Barbara freezes when a gun is pointed at her, causing her rescue of someone to go badly wrong.  Its powerful stuff, and despite really being against Barbara’s reinstatement as Batgirl, I now can’t recommend it enough.  Between this and Action Comics, DC couldn’t have asked for a better couple of books for this first proper week of the reboot.

JLI was fun, but entirely setup. Dan Jurgens definitely convinced me he can pull off this team book though after writing Booster Gold’s solo adventures for so many years, but I was quite surprised just how quickly Guy exited the title. Frankly putting him on the cover was a bit cheeky (makes me wonder if he was sticking around longer in the initial plans?). For me, it seemed to carry on the tone of the recent Generation Lost series I enjoyed, so I’m happy.   It was nice to see Booster brought in from the beginning as the team leader, and it feels like the dialogue between the team is just right to capture that lighter hearted JLI feeling.  I’m also a big fan of the friendly relationship between Booster and Batman, something that in this rebooted universe is pretty unexpected. I assume there’s a story there that’s going to be revealed at somepoint (I’m not going to be surprised if this is the original timeline Booster who went to the DCNu’s Bruce for help after finding himself stuck here – we know Bruce found out about the timeline changes from Barry).

Animal Man was a nice surprise too. Really well written and intriguing. I had been going to skip it, but I was glad I didn’t. There’s some nice balancing of the superheroics, Buddie’s domestic life, and the horror elements.

The two books that didn’t blow me away were Detective Comics (enjoyable, but didn’t feel as fresh as the other books to me – I have to wonder if not rebooting Batman and Green Lantern in a similar way is going to make them stick out in all this), and Stormwatch, which I’d expected really good things from but didn’t really grab me (And good lord, Midnighter’s new costume is bloody awful – although that’s not a complaint restricted to him in this new DCU). I have to wonder if Stormwatch was just juggling too many characters in its first issue. And the fact that part of the setup seems to hang off of a Superman issue that’s not out for a couple of weeks seems a weird decision.

So overall, as someone who wasn’t entirely convinced of the reboot, this first proper week of books did a lot to convince me.  Action Comics, Batgirl, JLI and Animal Man are all books I’m definitely going to keep picking up.

Well, there’s really one big news story dominating comics at the moment.  At somepoint I’ll come back to talk about Flashpoint, but it has long been overshadowed by the reboot that’s finally arrived after several months of hype.  And relaunching the DC Universe falls to the obvious title, with the new volume of Justice League introducing the new timeline, and more suspicious DCU.

The premise is pretty straight-forward.  For the first few story lines, Justice League is set some 5 years behind the rest of the new books (barring Action Comics, which is set earlier than Justice League), and will chart the emergence of the superheroes from myth into public life.  Focusing on Green Lantern and Batman for this first issue, we see how the authorities are suspicious, if not outright hostile, in a manner all too familiar to fans of Batman.  However, this time rather than just Batman, its all superheroes that they’re gunning for.  However, over the course of the next few story arcs, as Justice League catches up to the present day, we’ll see the League forming, and the public acceptance to superheroes growing, until we reach a more familiar DCU.  Presumably.

Choosing to focus this initial issue on Green Lantern and Batman made a lot of sense to me, and while its a decision that, along with the slow burn approach, has garnered some complaints online, for me it worked.  Green Lantern and Batman are two of DC’s hottest properties at the moment (at least within comics) however, ironically it means the two heroes ushering in this new universe are the two whose continuity seems to be most intact from what we can tell.  But while the slow burn approach may be getting criticised, its one that’s proven effective in the past where you’re reintroducing characters readers will already have some degree of familiarity with (most notably in Ultimate Spider-Man).

Geoff Johns also has a lot of fun here, playing off these two characters, building on the idea of Hal being the light to Batman’s darkness that he introduced back as far as Rebirth.  Here its magnified though, along with the difference in the two personalities.  Where Bruce is shown as driven and controlled, Hal’s cockiness is played up to the Nth degree.  Hal’s got the most powerful weapon in the universe on his finger, and he’s not been afraid to let that power go to his head.  Seeing himself as that powerful, he’s arrogant in the extreme, and I found it a fun take on the character, especially with the way it played up the ring’s strength in a way that we’ve not seen in the main Green Lantern title for a while now.  I suspect Geoff’s also planning for the way he’s going to take the character in the ongoing title, having now been stripped of the ring.  We see here a Hal that’s pretty much defining himself by his power, and even pre-reboot there was a character point about how long he’d had the ring on and had cut himself off from Earth.  This characterisation just seems to reinforce the idea that Hal’s going to struggle to reinvent himself stripped of his powers.

About the only thing that didn’t really work for me, was the introduction of Vic Stone, the soon-to-be Cyborg.  His scenes stuck out an awful lot amongst all the super heroics, and while established readers have the benefit of knowing what’s going to happen to him, I still found they slowed things down a bit too much.  However, that said, I’m also still unconvinced by the big push Cyborg is getting both here and in Flashpoint.  He’s very much a B-list character, and tying him into the formation of the Justice League in this way to me stinks of something similar to how Black Canary replaced Wonder Woman in an earlier iteration of the League’s foundation.  Its  a change that stuck out and niggled fans for years, and I can’t see Cyborg being crowbarred in fairing an awful lot better.  That said, he’s not replacing any of the A-listers like Dinah did.

So all in all, I have to say I found this a strong first issue.  While not flawless, the Batman and Green Lantern pairing was a strong one to launch things with, and I enjoyed Jim Lee’s art (apart from the weird redesign of Hal’s shoulders, which changed from panel-to-panel – but then I could rant about the over-designed new costumes quite a lot more, and some weird story-telling issues with a Parademon where some panels didn’t quite work).  The promise of Superman versus Batman does leave me, as an established reader, a bit cold for next issue, as its a conflict that’s pretty much cliché, however from the perspective of enticing new readers, I think its a strong cliffhanger to leave the book on.

Been a while since I blogged about any techie stuff, but with Google+ now making big waves in the social media scene, I thought I’d put up a quick post about it. I’ve been a big twitter user for a while now, and like most people these days, I’ve used Facebook for years.  So when I got an invite to Google+ from a friend I was keen to check it out, especially after hearing some positive things about it online.  It sounded like Google had learned from the painful mistakes made with Buzz. I’ve been falling out of love with Facebook for some time.  I went through a while where I got into all the casual games, but I eventually fell out of them, and more and more I found myself more interested in just things like status updates and photo sharing.

I’m not going to go into the various privacy worries Facebook has caused over the last few years, but functionally speaking, there was a lot going on in Facebook that just wasn’t interesting me any more.  Especially with my feed being cluttered up with updates from various games and apps. In steps Google+ with its circles for organising people you’re following (to borrow the Twitter term).  This means by default you can easily filter what you’re looking at in your timeline, just picking a certain circle to view.   Not currently possible, although something I’d like to see added, would be the ability to define views that combine circles, and I’m sure that’s something that will come in time.

The thing I really love about Google+ is how it uses these circles to make it easy to define who sees whatever you post.  Whenever you share some text, a video or pictures, you have to define who you’re sharing it with. By default it remembers the last circle (or combination of circles and individuals) you used so a lot of the time its not an issue, but when you do want to restrict or open up a post, it means you’ve got a degree of freedom that neither Facebook or Twitter gives you. I’ve long felt the times on twitter where I’d want to rant about something, but felt it may not be appropriate on a public forum that prospective employers may check. Now (as long as I’m not applying to Google ) I can rant with my friends in freedom.

Another feature that’s really grabbed me is the image sharing (which was one of my main uses of Facebook).   Google have tied it into Picasa, so if you’ve got that installed on your desktop, its a cinch to upload photos to web albums and then tag them as shared in Google+.   Something I’ve found even more useful though has been the mobile client.  It adds an instant upload functionality to your mobile phone (which has options to customise whether its just photos or videos as well, and whether to upload over the mobile network, or wait for wifi), so every photo you take is automatically uploaded to a private Picasa folder.  You can then go into the app and you’ll have a notification about the newly uploaded photos, from where you can then share them on Google+.  I’ve found it really nice when taking photos of the recent film shoot and wanting to share them with my friends.  As long as you’ve got a decent 3G signal for the uploads, its a really easy system.

The group chat functions on offer are nice as well.  The huddle functionality brings a nice easy group text chat to mobile phones, although I’d like to see this linked into the web version as well.  The web version does however offer Hangouts, an easy to use group video chat system, that lets you and your friends video chat, but also share Youtube videos.  I really like the idea of being able to put on a new movie trailer and disect it over the chat at the same time.

So far, I’ve been massively impressed by Google+.  And its interesting to see aspects like the finer grain control of who sees individual posts appearing in Facebook.  But I’m definitely a convert to Google+.  The implementation of the circles, and the photo sharing has really grabbed me as exactly what I’m looking for in a social network.  Twitter will remain big with me for its immediacy and simplicity with its 140 characters, but Google+ is great for those more detailed conversations.

As has been its way this year, the BBC has released a little prequel scene for the upcoming return of Doctor Who.  Its a cracking scene, that doesn’t spoil anything, but does start to get me excited for the show coming back (not that it takes much).

Best part is the Doctor’s answering machine message

*sigh* I’ve gotten so bad at keeping up with my blogging.  Anyway, War of the Green Lanterns is over, and Tony Bedard has been firmly handed the keys to the car while Geoff’s away plotting the reboot.  While Peter Tomasi’s Emerald Warriors has shifted to one-and-done issues featuring Guy, Green Lantern Corps picks up the pieces of War of the Green Lanterns, along with the dedicated 2-part series, Aftermath.

Overall, I have to say, I’ve been really pleased with the aftermath.  The only rough spot possibly being the split between Soranik and Kyle, however that was made worse, by the issue of GLC it happened in coming out before Aftermath #2, which played a big part in their relationship breaking down, as Kyle stepped in to stop Soranik killing Sinestro.  That said, I did really enjoy that issue for the way it tied up old plot threads relating to them, and the reappearance of Miri.  I also really enjoyed seeing her being apparently overwhelmed by the power of her Sapphire ring.  Its something we haven’t really seen before and yet we should have, since its on the far end of the spectrum, like the red rings.

Kyle’s attempt to stop the Lanterns killing Sinestro perhaps continues the trend of ignoring the history between Kyle and Sinestro (knowing that he’s the guy that engineering his mother’s death, would Kyle *really* be that eager to defend Sinestro?).  I liked how Kyle was fighting to stop the other Lanterns stooping to Sinestro’s level though, especially Soranik, and his smack down on Vath was a great moment (seriously, did these guys forget they were facing down an Honour Guard Lantern?  Kyle should be able to hold his own against the group).

John faired well in the aftermath as well.  His destruction of Mogo playing a big part of things, as he finds himself a target for his fellow Lanterns.  Kyle’s attempt to reach out to him was nice to see, and I liked the way John shot him down.  Its clear to me that John’s dealing with the guilt for what he did in his own way, and seeing this more introspective John really reminded me of the character I enjoyed reading about in the past, versus his more recent “I was a marine!” appearances.  The single issue that saw him teaming up with one of the Lanterns recruited while Krona was controlling the Corps was possibly one of my favourite issues of GLC in a while.  I suspect not having to share the issue with Kyle allowed Bedard to write a more balanced John Stewart, and its perhaps a shame we’re only getting to see this, as Bedard is finishing up his run.

The scenes with Ganthet weren’t a big part of the story, but still very nice to see.  Again, it was nice to see Bedard picking up on dangling plot threads, with Sayd’s absence being brought up which has been badly needed for a while now.  We may not know what’s happened to her, but at least she’s not been totally forgotten about.  The final cliffhanger was quite chilling, so it’ll be interesting to see what’s happened to Ganthet.  After the scenes in Aftermath 1 and 2, I can’t help but wonder if the Guardians are going to have forcibly removed his emotions.

Between the cliffhanger with Ganthet, and the short scenes with Sinestro (which confirm that the GL ring is somehow unable to be removed from his finger) there was a bit of setup for the next storyline, but thankfully it was kept at a minimum to allow Bedard to really look at the reactions of the Green Lanterns to recent events.  Something that was especially welcome given the tendancy of big events to focus more on setting up the next big thing over the last few years.

Better late than never, I thought I’d better maintain the tradition, and talk about the big season update that came out for Star Trek Online a month or so back: Crossfire.  Unlike a lot of other MMOs, this doesn’t include new mission content, since Star Trek Online has its Featured Episodes to cover that.  Instead their current direction is for seasons to bring in changes to the technology of the game, that the content will then build on.

So what did they change for season 4?  well, there’s a lot going on behind the scenes.  New texture compression technology has increased the detail in the game for no extra hardware requirements, while micro-patching cuts down on the need to download massive game updates.  Instead the game will only patch files as they’re needed.

All of which may not sound as immediately exciting as a swanky new plot arc, but the quality of life it brings to the game is immediately noticeable.

However, the season is called Crossfire, and that’s because of its main event: a complete revamp to the ground combat system in the game.  Values have been tweaked to make the combat faster paced, control responsiveness has been improved and weapons have been redesigned.

And then there’s the new shooter mode.  The traditional ground combat has been retained, and now dubbed the RPG mode, however the devs have implemented a whole alternative combat mode, which gives an FPS style to the game.   Switching to shooter mode allows you to select targets via a targetting cursor on the fly, rather than locking onto a target as is normal in RPG mode.  This allows you to spread out your fire across multiple targets, throw grenades into an area (rather than to a specific target) and brings a more intense experience to the combat.

Ground combat has long been taken as one of the weaker aspects of the game, so to see it receive such a massive overhaul has been a big thing for the game.  It really can’t be understated just how much faster and more immediate ground combat feels, whether you’re playing in shooter mode or not.

It doesn’t end there however.  At the same time as ground combat has been upgraded, so have the Borg.  In preparation for a Borg event, due to start later in the month, the Borg have been brought more in line with the capabilities of their onscreen incarnation.  No longer can you continue to fire at them blindly, as the Borg will now adapt to your weapon after a few shots.  They also now have had their assimilation ability boosted.  Whereas before this simply worked as a hold and slow debuff, now players can be properly assimilated.  If the Borg get their nanoprobes on you, then if you’re not cured quickly by a healer on your away team, then you’ll find yourself assimilated, turning into a drone and attacking your teammates for a short while before being allowed to respawn.

All these changes have made the Borg a much bigger threat than before.  From your ship, you can (and must if you want to survive) replicate a remodulator device that you can use to reset your weapons to make them usable against the Borg once again, and by equipping a second, different weapon type in your second weapon slot, you do give yourself a few more shots before remodulation becomes a must, but if you’re remodulating, that means your weapons won’t work for about 10 seconds (not that they were getting past those Borg shields anyway).  The end result is that the Borg are not only closer to their onscreen abilities, but they’re also a heck of a lot tougher and scarier to face.  Very appropriate for the baddies that take centre stage for the end game content.

The last major change worth talking about, is the Klingon homeworld.  Following the updating of Earth Space Dock back with season 3, Quo’noS has long been in the frame for a similar revamp, and to be honest, it needed it much more than the Starfleet home base.  The previous council chambers frequently felt like wide open rooms, and finding your way around was frequently a pain until you learned where everything was.  For me, the worst part was the high council chamber.  A necessary stop for each major rank, it was a cavernous hall with just a few Klingons standing around.  And that was only after you realised you had to go upstairs to find it.

With season 4, that’s all gone, to be replaced by the First City.  Gone are the empty chambers, and instead there’s now a bustling city for the Klingons to base themselves out of.

Here, the revamped texture compression really shines.  The city is incredibly detailed, and the devs have done a great job making it feel alive.  It perhaps still retains the old issues, of it being a bit tricky to find your way around, however there’s a quest to introduce you to the map, and if you run through that, it shows you where everything is, and since doing it, I’ve found I’ve not struggled nearly as much as I did in the old Qo’noS when it comes to finding stuff.

Its all about the nice little touches in the new map.  I love the street signs, which are in Klingon, but flick to English as you approach them.  A nice combination of usability, while still making it all feel Klingon.  The bank, is a building being run by Ferengi, which I loved, and when you go in, you can look down onto the massive warehouse floor where presumably everyone’s stuff is actually being kept.  The High Council’s chamber finally seems a lot more appropriate too, with its reduced scale and moody lighting.

To be honest, while the Klingon players were jealous of the Earth Spacedock revamp, I now think the Federation player have something to be jealous about.  The developers are just improving things all the time, and while Earth Spacedock is a brilliant base map, the new First City just shows how much the devs keep improving with the tools behind this game.

But, they weren’t just finished with the first city.  Of course, the crowning jewel of Earth Spacedock was its revamped ship requisitions area, and now the Klingons have one of their own.   If you return to the transporter room in the city, you also get an option to beam to the orbital shipyards.

Once there, you see the devs took a leaf out of Earth Spacedock, to give the Klingons their own equivalent.  While it might be a bit of a pain that you need to beam up to it, rather than it being housed in the same area, there’s no doubt that visually, its worth it.  Once you arrive in the shipyard, all the usual NPCs are available for you to buy, equip and customise your ships, however its all about the view.  If you head over to the windows, you get a brilliant view of some Birds of Prey currently docked at the shipyards.   Like the view of the Galaxy Class in Earth Spacedock, its brilliant to see these ships from this perspective, and its really something you need to check out for yourself to see just how good those ships look.

As a final nice touch, as the shipyards are orbital, once you zone into Qo’noS space in your ship, you can ignore the planet, and just fly straight to the ship yards.   A really nice touch.

Of course, all this is just the start of season 4, with lots still to come.  The revamped Borg will be getting highlighted in the upcoming Borg invasion event, as well as the remastered STFs.  And then we’ve got not only the return of the Featured Episodes, but the introduction of the new Duty Officer System, which promises to be a game within itself, and something I’m really looking forward to.  As always, the game is coming forward in leaps and bounds.

And so, despite the delays, the finale of War of the Green Lanterns finally arrives with some big shocks in store as Geoff Johns plants the seeds for the next storylines as Krona is being defeated.

But did anyone else think it all felt a bit rushed?

Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed the issue, however certain aspects of it seemed to come out of nowhere and could’ve been better laid out, and perhaps its just because of the delays I’m seeing things that aren’t really there, but in places Doug Mahnke’s art (which really shone in the splash pages) did leave me wondering how much time he’d been left to do the book in.  That said, the man is a master of producing great stuff at short notice, as proven by the way he bailed out Final Crisis a few years ago, and I’ll take his rushed art over some of the other work out there any day, but that being said, when he’s had time to properly work on a book, it shows.

As I say, I enjoyed this issue.  It picks up right where things left off, with the freshly-restored GLC about to face down Krona and the entity-possessed Guardians.  But Geoff Johns does some interesting things in this finale which while I don’t dislike them, I perhaps disliked their execution, and again it all adds to that rushed feeling.

Firstly, there’s Krona’s eventual defeat.  Early in the issue, Hal makes an off-the-cuff remark that their rings can’t kill Guardians.  Guess someone should’ve mentioned that to Scar back in Blackest Night.  Sadly, this line is pivotal for what happens next, and its a plot point that is totally brought out of nowhere when it could’ve easily been introduced sooner and made more significant.  As Hal faces off against Krona, he ultimately ends up shooting and killing him with a blast from his ring.  Its incredibly sudden and results in the then-freed Guardians immediately discharging Hal from the Corps for killing a Guardian and hanging around with the other Corps.

The Guardians being idiots is nothing new for this run.  In fact, its a hallmark of Green Lantern at the moment that no matter how many giant, epic events seem tailored to show the Guardians the error of their ways, they still display no character development and carry on being complete idiots, no matter how many times the Corps is nearly destroyed through their idiocy, only to be saved by Hal Jordan.  I’d say its getting frustrating, but to be honest, its past that now.  The Guardians are just an obstacle to be ignored or overcome in Green Lantern now.  Again though, its the rushed nature of things that doesn’t quite sit well.  Hal’s shooting Krona comes out of nowhere, with little indication that this is going to be something big.  It needed more foreshadowing, like I said with this new inability of the rings to kill Guardians.  You can’t just introduce a plot element like that in the final issue and expect the audience to care about it.  Likewise, Hal’s dismissal from the Corps is done far too quickly.   With two aftermath issues still to come before the reboot I can’t help but think those would’ve been the better place for Hal’s punishment to have happened in.  Then it could’ve been made into a bigger deal, and again built up to.  Either that, or this final issue needed to be a longer book.  Not necessarily a big double sized finale, but a few more pages to allow these pretty big developments some room to breathe.

The other thing that didn’t really work for me, was Sinestro’s reintroduction into the Green Lantern Corps.  Granted, there’s an important line where Kyle wonders if this is a direct result of the ring AI no longer having Mogo’s influence, however overall the sequence doesn’t really work for me, with Sinestro, freshly freed from the Book of the Black, listening to Hal confronting Krona, and apparently having an epiphany from listening to Hal’s impassioned speech about how he stands up for the values of the Corps, and couldn’t really give a stuff about the Guardians.

It just didn’t feel in character for Sinestro at all.  Sinestro’s always been about control, and making the Green Lantern Corps the bearers of that control.  The entire Sinestro Corps War was something he instigated just to get the Guardians to enable lethal force and make the GLC more formidable.  Sinestro has consistently shown a loyalty to the Green Lantern Corps through his motivations in this run, even if it is a twisted one.  The idea that he’d need some kind of epiphany from Hal in order to do the right thing and defeat Krona is beyond me.  Especially since I’d assume Krona’s intention to replace the Guardians would actually probably mesh up with Sinestro’s own aims.

While I like the idea of Sinestro ending up a GL again, and the storylines that’ll surround it, I wasn’t at all convinced by how it happened.  Sinestro getting a ring because of Mogo’s death absolutely makes sense, but how his character was portrayed just didn’t sit right for me.  Rather than confusion over being a GL again, I’d expect him to be triumphant.  Again, I have to wonder what difference an extra page or two would’ve made to this sequence.   That said, I did like the way Hal ignored the issue of Sinestro being a GL, and just got him to help.  That’s been very consistent for Hal in this run, with the way he remains focused on the main problem, and will deal with others later once the main threat is passed.

Overall, I did enjoy this storyline.  I’ve made no secret for my dislike of a lot of what was happening in the Green Lantern books before this storyline, and while it perhaps didn’t hit the highs of the Sinestro Corps War, it was a return to the more action packed stories we got at that time, and rattled through its 10 issues at a fair old pace.  This final issue might’ve felt a bit like Geoff Johns was just working off of a checklist of things that had to happen, but by the end of it, I was still happy that this storyline had had a decent conclusion, with some interesting storybeats set up for the next ark that will hopefully mean Geoff is going to spend some time investing in Hal’s character again, something that’s been badly neglected since the start of the War of Light.

War of the Green Lanterns is over.  Err, well.  Sort of.  In the pages of Emerald Warriors at least.

This month’s issue is a bit of an odd beast.  The solicits for Emerald Warriors had clearly marked its last two issues as being to do with the aftermath of War of the Green Lanterns.   Instead that’s not what we’ve got, and I have to wonder if those plans changed in light of the reboot announcement and the imminent end of this book (and Guy moving back to GLC).

So its now post-War of the GLs in Emerald Warriors, but this issue’s story doesn’t spoil things at all, instead giving us a simple one-shot tale, as Guy’s time off is interrupted by what should be a quick save of an ambassador’s ship.  Of course, nothing’s ever easy, especially when the ambassador turns out to be a particularly attractive woman and catches Guy’s eye.

Its hard to understate how much I enjoyed this storyline.  The entire Green Lantern franchise has been in event mode ever since the Sinestro Corps War, either building up Blackest Night, or War of the Green Lanterns.   To finally have an issue that shunned larger event-driven antics just to give us 20 pages of Guy doing what he does best was a heck of a lot of fun.  It was a remarkably simple story that turned its nose up at all the recent events to just let Guy really shine.  Utterly brilliant, and a great tonic after all the build up and padding of the last few years.  More like this please DC.

Although, there is still a weirdness to this issue.  Taken on its own its great fun, however when you stop to look at the solicits, its obvious that the delays to Green Lantern are only part of the story.   The original solicitations for the post-War of the GLs issues of Emerald Warriors seemed to make it clear they’d be dealing with the aftermath.  Instead we’ve now got this (admittedly great fun) one-shot story, and it sounds like there’s going to be another next month (which will wrap up this series as its being replaced by The New Guardians in DCNu).  It does make me wonder just how last minute a lot of changes are as a result of this reboot.  It certainly manages to give the impression of being less than well planned out in advance (especially with the various costume tweaks etc we’re still seeing in the reboot solicitations versus preview materials).

That being said, I enjoyed this issue so much, I’m actually pretty happy circumstances obviously changed, and I can’t wait for next month’s issue.  Its just a pity we’re only getting these kinds of stories because everything is wrapping up for the reboot.

One aspect of the game which I finally completed the other week, and is also due for a revamp in the near future, are the three Borg STFs (Special Task Forces).  These form a large portion of the endgame content for players who make it to Rear and Vice Admiral, presenting a harder challenge than the normal gameplay.  These are missions targeting the organised players and require a full team of five to complete, with all five people needing to have some idea of what they’re doing, and the ability to listen to orders from those in the team who know their way around the missions.  Having decent high-end gear is also pretty much a requirement, especially once you get past the initial STF, Infected.   But, as these missions will shortly be getting a make over, I thought it’d be interesting to take a look at them as they stand.  What I liked, and what I disliked.  And then compare this review with the new versions once they come out.

I’ll start with the first of the STFs, Infected.

To be honest, my first few attempts at Infected weren’t overly favourable.  I found it took too long to get through, and the final boss room, which requires platform game style jumping in order to access various force field controls (miss and you fall into instant-death plasma and you’ll have to restart the entire room if the team can’t rez you), just caused a lot of frustration.

That said when broken into parts and done over a couple of nights I found it was much better, and it comes back to what I said about needing to know what you’re doing. Once my fleet had a few successful runs under their belts, strategies were figured out and now we can run Infected at around an hour and its a lot of fun. I think Infected is probably a great introduction to the STFs in that regard. It’s by far the shortest and also has much simpler puzzles. It gets players used to working together in an organised fashion, and gets you used to the idea that these missions are going to require more patience and thought (and failed runs to figure things out).  The mission splits nicely into different parts, with a fun, but not overly difficult space battle to start things out, before beaming down to a Starfleet base under siege by the Borg.  You then have to work your way down into the bowels of the station, fighting through assimilated bosses, before coming face to face with the Borg’s new Locutus-style spokesperson.   When nicely dealt with in stages, this mission becomes a lot of fun, as an expanded version of the kinds of missions you’ve been used to dealing with solo in the game already.

The second STF however, The Cure, remains one of my least favourite missions in the game. I really hate running this STF.

Unlike Infected it doesn’t break down as well into sections and for the most part is one giant ground map with no breaks. I just find it overly long and repetitive with no real fun to be had. Sadly however you need to complete it if you want to play Khitomer Accord.

Most of the action takes place around a series of gates that are controlled by various generators, which must be powered up in sequence, with each generator requiring about 30 seconds to power up, before the next can be triggered.  In the meantime Borg spawns will appear who will attempt to deactivate the generators, and bring with them various tougher Tactical drones who, if they spot you, will cause you no end of grief as you try and stop the worker drones switching off your precious generators.

While I definitely appreciated the attempt to bring a puzzle with a high level of strategy into the game, it just becomes annoying.  The number of failed attempts I ran through in order to try and get past the first few gates really got tiring after a while, and with the length of the whole mission, you need to ensure you’ve put aside about 3 hours to do this all in.  The constant grind of managing to get a couple of the generators activated, only to draw agro from the tactical drones, or fail to kill the workers fast enough can easily become wearing.

The mission also seems to lack the polish of the other STFs, specifically in terms of nice touches like voice overs (which in fairness were rare in the game when these were developed, but did add to the feeling you were running special high-end missions).  In Infected for example you get Manus of Borg taunting you as you work your way through the levels of the station, or there are various computer announcements that tie into the puzzles in Khitomer Accord.  The Cure comes across much less involving in comparison.

Out of all the Borg STFs this is the one most clearly needing the upcoming revamp, and I can’t wait to see what Gozer (the developer in charge of the STFs) has done to it.  I have no real problem with these endgame missions being longer, or trickier, but when they just get repetitive and frustrating I lose interest, and only the promise of the Khitomer Accord, and all the good things I’d heard about it, along with the support of my fleet who managed to get a few successful runs done, kept me going with this mission other than just giving up on it entirely.

The final STF, Khitomer Accord, is without a doubt the most complex.  Again, its a very long mission, requiring several hours to complete, and contains several tricky puzzles that require you to have an organised team and good equipment.  However, unlike The Cure, I found all this fun rather than dull and frustrating.  Like Infected, Khitomer Accord has a much better split between space and ground combat with neither element outstaying its welcome.  And like Infected, if things are dragging on, there’s a few good points where you can all agree to stop, and resume the mission the next evening.

This STF probably also benefits from having the strongest story.  While a danger of any team mission is that dialogues get quickly skipped to keep things moving (a reason I tend to prefer to solo the featured episodes first), I still managed to pick up the gist of what was going on, with you intercepting another Borg attempt to alter the past, which leads to the discovery of a massive deactivated Borg base that the present-day Borg attempt to bring back online.  This also gives you the fun of having the two different types of Borg in the mission, the current Cryptic-design Borg, and the more familiar TV/Movie era design.  The time-travel shenanigans in the mission also relate directly to the events in the tutorial, which found you facing off against these old Borg, who were all underpowered, with no proper link to the Collective, and many of their ships disabled.  After the events of the Khitomer Accord, you get no prizes for guessing who it turns out was responsible for the Borg’s poor state of repair in the tutorial

Variety and a strong storyline are without a doubt the key to Khitomer Accord’s success.  While some of the puzzles are tricky (specifically a puzzle which involves one of your team dropping forcefields surrounding various generators to give you only the briefest of windows in which to destroy them), there’s a clear feeling of progression.  You may get stuck on one of the generators, but once its destroyed, its done.  No need to reset the room and do it all again because you got stuck.  None of the elements in the mission outstay their welcome, instead just moving you along to the next confrontation.

While there’s no doubt in my mind that the Cure isn’t a great mission, if you can get a good team together to get you through it, its worth it to play the Khitomer Accord.  And of course, as you complete each of the Borg STFs, you get a new piece of the Borg equipment for your ship, which gives your ship a great distinctive look, as well as supplying various bonuses which are well worth the work.

That’s just a quick glimpse at some of my thoughts on the STFs as they stand.  Obviously its going to be very interesting to see how they develop over the next couple of months.  The revamped ground combat, and Borg adapting will have had an immediate impact on how easy these are to run, but shortly we should start seeing Gozer’s redesigned versions of these missions appearing.  Some of the teases he’s posted on Twitter look very interesting, with him obviously paying a lot of attention to the areas of the missions that have drawn the most criticism or feedback generally (such as Infected’s platform jumping), and the way he’s also making use of the difficulty levels (which weren’t present when these were first designed) to change things at higher difficulty looks very interesting.   I can’t wait to see what they’re like