Doom Patrol: Season One (BluRay)



Doom Patrol combines the madcap absurdity and pant-shitting nightmare fuel of the Morrison run with the metanarrative and emotional gutpunches of the Gerard Way run. One minute somebody's yelling "the butts are loose!" through a walky-talky, the next minute the baddies are being taken out by a stampede of disembodied, carnivorous butts, and then the show completely destroys you.

Many of the scenarios are based on storylines from the Morrison run but they almost always play out different. Kipling consults a horse with a nail in its head for advice against the Decreator, but he identifies the person with the doorway to Nurnheim in his hand by swallowing a piece of gum instead of soaking a phone book in holy Sprite. Mr. Nobody sends a city into an alternate reality inside of something else, but instead of sending Paris into a painting containing the Fifth Horsman of the Apocalypse, it's a small town in Ohio sent up a donkey's behind (oh ho, I see what you did there!). The Doom Patrol infiltrate the Ant Farm, but it's not under the Pentagon and doesn't contain a wire-covered telephone god that randomly talks in snippets from other conversations. But hey, it's interesting to see alternate solutions to the same problems and I guess if the Doom Patrol beat the Decreator the same way here as in the comic, there wouldn't be much reason to watch this.

One thing I vastly preferred in the comic was Cliff and Jane's relationship. In the comic Jane's an adult woman and she and Cliff are lovers, but here they made Jane younger so she and Cliff have a father/daughter relationship instead. In itself this would just be another different flavor between the two versions of the story, but Jane is constantly on angry teenage "everything is shit" mode and hurling abuse at others as Hammerhead, then having a meltdown when the others (usually Cliff) start clapping back, making her far more obnoxious than in the comic.

There is one scene in the second half of the show - and if you've seen this you know exactly what I'm talking about - that nearly made me throw up. Then they keep using that clip in "Previously on Doom Patrol" recaps, and every time it replayed I thought "Oh my god, stop showing me that!"

Also, just once I'd like to see somebody respond to the "lol I'm smarter than you because I know Frankenstein was the doctor, not the monster" gotcha with "the whole point of the book was that the monster was the doctor's dark reflection, so it's fine to call the monster 'Frankenstein' too."

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Star Parodier (PC Engine CD via PC Engine Mini)



Because I am a thicky boo-boo head, while I knew this game was a spoof of Hudson's Star Soldier series, I always thought the name was pronounced "Star Pah-roe-dee-ur." Imagine how dumb I felt when the in-game voices pronounced it "Pah-roe-jhur." You like, like "Soldier."

It's a cute little shooter with colorful graphics, and I guess they were aiming for a younger audience because it's pretty easy - I beat it on my second attempt and I suck at shooters. Or maybe it's just that one of Bomberman's weapons completely breaks the game over its knee. At its highest level, it sends out a spread of bombs that cover the entire top half of the screen which not only create large explosions that do shitloads of damage on contact, but send out shockwaves that cause further damage. Yeah, if you lose your powerups you're basically fucked, but as long as you recognize which icons downgrade your weapons it's smooth sailing, save that high-speed maze in the final level.

Yeah, the final boss is a bit of an asshole, but I had amassed so many lives I was able to beat it through brute force and attrition.

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Mega Man Battle Network 3: Blue Version (GBA, E10+)



I guess Battle Network 3's biggest innovation to the series is kicking off the dual-release model the series uses from here on. From what I can gather the only differences between Blue and White are what chips are available and how you acquire others, which boss you fight at the end of the Undernet tournament to learn about Serenade, and whether one garbage can is shaped like a kangaroo or a frog.

The next is the removal of Buster upgrades in favor of a customization tool that allows you to alter Mega Man's abilities by placing colored blocks in a grid and following a few rules, and this was honestly kind of annoying. Not the block puzzle in itself, but some of the programs are required to progress in-game, namely the compression program that allows Mega Man to walk on small pathways. But when you don't need them they're just taking up space that could go to powerups, and of course there are other programs required for different situations. Obviously there isn't enough space for everything so you're constantly having to go in there and move blocks around. Being able to save a few layouts would have gone a long way.

The game itself, yeah, it's Battle Network. Traverse dungeons, fight random encounters, improve your deck as you progress. Admittedly the plot feels like a retelling of Battle Network 1, with Dr. Wily trying to collect four programs that give him access to a forbidden monstrosity he will then use to destroy the Internet, because fuck you. The bird puzzle in the Undernet tournament is a total dick move (were they expecting you to examine and memorize every random background object in the game?). And is there's some law that requires the water scenario to be the shittiest part of every Battle Network game? Because fuck the Bubbleman scenario and all its backtracking and padding.

And holy crap, how do you beat the final boss without the chip that turns the field to metal?

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