All Points Bulletin: Spider-Man and Empire

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If you have any suggestions for what to highlight on an APB drop us a line via email or Twitter.

Hisui’s picks:

Narutaki’s picks:

  • The Eye of Sauron Exists. In Space.
    In a galaxy far, far away (but still closer than any other that has an actively expanding black hole) the evil of the world is keeping tabs on you!
  • Spider-Man is the Best Superhero EVERS
    One of the best pieces of comic commentary I’ve read recently, well-written, thoughtful, and full of love; it says it all and reminds me why I love Spider-Man. And also Batman.
  • SimCity Steals My Life
    Or it will steal it when a new entry in the series comes out in 2013. I have been seriously addicted in the past so if this new installment is anywhere near as interesting as they are promising, I may be glued again.
  • Classics Go Comic
    New covers for some Penguin Classics will have art by great comic artist! Loving that Mike Mignola cover.
  • Reaction Links
    I totally enjoy Reaction Guys usage. This is pretty well done, though I would say you really only need the first three panels.
  • Idealized But Not Equal
    This excellent article breaks down the well-trod path of female superheroes VS. male superheroes and does so with clear and simple examination and example.

Go! Go! Lets Go March!

Ongoing Investigations: Case #160

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After writing about the Zelda franchise recently, I had to get playing the DS release Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks because, hello, you get to drive a train. In this adventure, you are trying to restore the train tracks that connect the realms as well as stop the resurrection of an evil lord who has stolen Zelda’s body. With sword, er stylus, in hand I set out on this small but mighty adventure. I was actually surprised by how long the game was and how much was packed into that little cartridge. Zelda’s ghost is your guide, but she is also your partner in fights for certain areas which is a nice addition to the gameplay. Your path is very straightforward since you can only travel by train so the map has but a few outposts to discover, sadly. Despite loving trains, at times traveling was tedious and long since the only way to open portals was, for the most part, done with side errands that I didn’t engage in. Still I had a blast with the train driving and the first part of the final battle in which you must take on a giant evil train was quite fun. There is a noticeably low count of enemies in this game, but bosses still gave me quite a challenge throughout. My favorite was in the fire temple, it was just enjoyable to play! But I cannot emphasize enough to Nintendo: please quit it with the stylus heavy games already or at least make it optional especially for things like walking. The accuracy is just not there and it takes some of the portability out. Also flute playing gave me nothing but frustration throughout the game because no one really teaches you how to do it correctly. One thing that stood out to me as the game went on was even though there was much hand-holding, you got so used to it that when it didn’t explain something it was damn hard to figure out. This happened multiple times to me, I’m okay with not haing hints but I’d like consistency about it otherwise it is just confusing. Overall, it was an enjoyable game experience, and I spent the better part of a weekend playing it nonstop, so it hooked me quite well. I love the Wind Waker-esque world so it is great to continue to see additions to it.

With my roommate playing so much Mass Effect 3 that he actually took a week off from work I too have been sucked into to the hype. And since I have a iOS device I decided to try out Mass Effect: Infiltrator. Having sampled a bunch of iOS games the first thing I noticed is that anything other than simple puzzle games and time wasters have an annoying learning curve where you spend time learning the touch screen control scheme and wrangling it into something you can play. As much as writers like to claim that phones will kill the portable gaming machine market the fact that any full portable console has intuitive control scheme make the far more suited for full-fledged games. Infiltrator is a side story about a Cerberus operative who goes rouge. The story is fairly minimal. If you are expecting the complex moral decisions from the main game you will be sadly disappointed. They give you paragon/renegade choices but they are super simple and seem to have little effect on the plot. The combat is a system where upgrades are essential to succed. You have to grind the low-level missions to get the upgrades you need to the later story. The first thing you should to is buy the sniper rifle and the beam rifle. Then upgrade all you weapons and the pull ability. Everything else is supplemental. You need the extra weapons for get the style bonuses from switching weapons to get real money. If you just rely on the assault rifle and the shotgun you will have a very hard time getting gold on any level past the first few.Once I got the hang of the game it was fun but it is really small especially for the price. I am looking froward to seeing how this compares to the Mass Effect 3: Datapad app considering that is free.

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What are the Ongoing Investigations?

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Of all the questions I get about the blog oddly enough one of the most common is what are the Ongoing Investigations about? Several people have asked what their purpose is and how are they supposed to fit into the rhythm of the blog. I figured it would be best for me to lay out their purpose on the blog as it in not intuitive.

The Ongoing Investigations are supposed to be little peeks into what we are watching and reading outside of our main posts on the blog. We each pick three things that we were interested in that week and talk a bit about them. There is often not much rhyme or reason to what we pick. They are just the most interesting things we saw since the last Ongoing Investigation.

1. They are quickly consumable.

Most of the blog can be a bit verbose especially to the rapidly expanding tl;dr Internet crowd. There are some things we would like to talk about that are worth mentioning about certain shows that we want to get off out chests but are not complex enough to turn into a whole article. These are just little tidbits about what we looked at in a given week.

2. We have different tastes.

While we have very similar tastes in anime Narutaki and I are hardly of one mind when it comes to what we watch. Shocking as it maybe Narutaki does not really have anything to do with Type-Moon fandom despite what the Internet might assume. I don’t read that much BL. I don’t think their either of us would be thrilled to read everything the other one is enjoying no matter how much we individually might enjoy it. The Ongoing Investigations are a way for us to talk about things the other person on the blog could care less about.

3. It is the closest we will come to being an episodic blog.

I don’t think either of us have the patience or desire to run an episodic blog. But at the same time I know that people are often curious what we are watching and what we think of it. The Ongoing Investigation are a good way to show people what we are keeping up with. People might be curious to what I think of the new Pretty Cure iteration but I would rather not make a whole post to just say, “It was pretty alright.”

4. They are an easy way to increase the post count.

We both just wanted an easy article to do once a week. People like to visit sites that regularly update. So we try to get out content as many times a week as possible. This is something both of us can work on and usually get out once a week no matter what is going on in our lives.