WTF is Destructoid? Read this first!
Got news? email us
Follow
RSS
Contact
About Me
Alex Carrillo
Age: 19
Location: Southern California
Ethnicity: Latin/Hispanic (I'm Mexican)
Religion: None
Banner by TrailerParkJesus
G-mail/G-talk - Alexandorator [at] gmail.com
. Daft Punk - Alive 2007
. The Mars Volta - The Bedlam in Goliath
. DangerDoom - The Mouse and the Mask
. The Inkspots - The Millennium Collection
. Andrew Jackson Jihad - People Who Can Eat People Are The Luckiest People In The World
These are subject to change.
Frank Miller's Robocop
Frank Millar - Steven Grant - Juan Jose Ryp
Avatar Press
The original Robocop was fantastic. It was funny, violent, and it had some things to say about society (though not intelligently). The movie bordered on a thin line of acceptable ridiculousness, and was rather enjoyable cyberpunk flick. Robocop 2 and 3 on the other hand, were awful pieces of shit.
Everyone seems to place the blame on poor old Frank Miller for the dreadful sequels, but he says otherwise. According to him, Hollywood took his screenplay and made drastic changes. Producers of the film claimed that most Miller’s vision was “unfilmable”. Nevertheless, it left a bad taste in his mouth. Miller wasn’t too happy with the way Hollywood worked.
From 2003 to 2006 Avatar Press published nine issues of Frank Miller’s Robocop, now deemed to be the real Robocop sequels by nerds across the globe. The book follows Miller’s original Robocop 2 script, and bit off of Robocop 3 as well. He didn’t write it though. The adaptation was written by Steven Grant, but was looked over by Frank Miller.
With all that said, I don’t know if what Miller had written in his original script was worth all of the drama. The outlining story is practically the same. Detroit is still shitty, OCP still replaces the cops with a private military of criminals, and there is still a “Robocop 2” that Robocop has to battle.
I won’t tell you what differences there are between the movie and comic specifically. What I will say is that they make very little difference towards the end quality. Lewis still has no character, as well as everyone else in the book. Nothing is explored -- a generic and tired formula that begs to be ignored.
Grant does inject a bit of that satire found in the original film, and while it isn’t as good, he still manages to land a few on the bullseye. What is landing one hundred percent is the violence. Some of you could have fun with watching a woman’s burning, melting corpse slam against a wall.
The art was a tad difficult for me to review. While I can’t say it’s necessarily bad, it sure is “busy” (for lack of a better term). Too busy. Many times I’ve had to take a while to figure out what I was looking at. The detail work was somewhat impressive. In a way, it sort of channels that sense of chaos that comes from this universe’s version of Detroit. You can take it either way.
I can’t recommend this to everyone. I can’t even recommend it to most Robocop fans. You gain nothing from reading it. If you’re looking for something violent, or just want to rinse out some of what you saw in Robocop 2 and 3, then this could be for you. Everyone else should just…
Got a comment for one my comic reviews? Think it sucked? Found some errors? Check these links for its community blog post.
Older reviews:
Shooting War
Coward - Criminal Vol 1.
Frank Miller's Robocop
Fell: Feral City - Vol 1.
Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse - Vol 1.
Batman Death Mask
Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life - Vol. 1
Coming Soon:
Halo Graphic Novel
Stephen King's The Dark Tower: Gunslinger Reborn
Preacher Vol. 1
___________________
Thanks, The_GHost!
Gamer Profile
3DS friend code:
Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/id/vex
Battle: vexed_@hotmail.com
PSN: Alexandorator
Mii:
Gamertag: Vexed Alex
Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/id/vex
Battle: vexed_@hotmail.com
PSN: Alexandorator
Mii:
Gamertag: Vexed Alex
Following (67)
|
|
|
 History I’m a youngster. I’m not a video game encyclopedia like most of you retro gamers who played everything on every system, but I’m willing to learn. I won’t bore you with too many unnecessary details of my life. I’ll just say that gaming was just a part of a lot of things I did as a kid whether I wanted it to be or not. I’m sure if I did have access to many games it would have been a larger part of my life sort of like it is now. Now that I’m older I can look back and play many games I missed out on, which brings me to the point of this blog. Listening to RetroforceGO’s last episode (ep. 73) gave me an idea - expanding my gaming experience. If that means going out of my comfort zone, then so be it. See, as many of you know, me and JRPGs aren’t really friends. In fact, I constantly poke fun of them. They’re video game clichés. They refuse to evolve, but I’m willing to dip my feet into the best of the genre just so I can educate myself. I may even enjoy what I play. I’ve had a few JRPGs surprise me in the past. There’s no reason a few of the older games can’t. Now, this is where the community comes in. I need you guys to help me narrow down 2 retro games for me to experience. I myself have compiled a list of 10 games so that I don’t get an exorbitant amount of answers all across the board. I’ll eventually play all of the games on this list, but I want to pick two that I’ll focus heavily on. I want to write a few blogs on my experience. It’ll probably be two per game - one for impressions and another for final opinions. 1. Chrono Trigger 2. Earthbound 3. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night 4. Super Mario RPG 5. Earthworm Jim 6. Silent Hill 7. Shinobi III 8. Final Fantasy III 9. Metal Gear Solid 10. The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask So there you have it. 10 games that I never played or never played past 10 or 15 minutes. I need you guys to help me pick my 2009 “retrolusion.” Your suggestions will be greatly appreciated. P.S. - I’m going to start doing monthly comic reviews on my sidebar over to your right. Check ‘em out whenever you get a chance. This month’s comic is Scott Pilgrim. Any feedback will be welcomed.
Attached photos: 
|
|
|
|
Post a comment! You can also post a photo below:
|
Comment with FacebookClick connect and comment instantly! |
Comment with Dtoid
New? SIGN UP - it takes 5 seconds |
Comments policy
Destructoid is an open discussion community. You don't need to "audition" to post a comment - just speak your mind. We respect differing opinions on the site, so have at it. Be smart, funny, insightful, clueless, or cute -- but back it up with substance. Keep your cool, keep it fun. We only ask that you act respectfully and above all: don't be a troll and ruin it for everyone else. Don't bring down gamers or we'll, you know, gently shoot you in the face and stuff you into a flaming mailbox. Each comment is your opportuntity to make this community awesomer. Is that even a word?
Avoiding the banhammer only requires common sense: spamming, trolling, racism, NSFW stuff, and other forms of sucking will not be tolerated. If anyone is griefing please report abuse. Be good. Don't suck!
All editorial content, including blogs, comments, and forums written by our community, are protected by a
Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing requiring attribution.
Destructoid aka ModernMethod is an independently-run company forged by our childhood love of video games and adulthood hatred mainstream video game press.
Living the dream since March 16, 2006
Living the dream since March 16, 2006
Super Mario RPG is another classic, and definitely a good place to start if you don't like JRPGs that much. It's got a lot of humor, and even though it's an RPG, it's got that familiar Mario feel. Also, Majora's Mask is a really good game that often gets overlooked.
Chrono Trigger and Mario RPG. So good.
Other than that, MGS and Symphony of the Night
I still think Chrono Trigger is over rated (But good. Just not the best ever). FF3 (DS Remake) is the worst RPG I've played to this day.
Earthworm Jim is a solid game but I can't really recommend it over any of the other games. Besides... Earthworm Jim kicked my ass as a kid. Just when you think "Thank god I cleared that" there's more.
Super Mario RPG is an interesting take on the genre, definitely worth a look. Meanwhile, FF3 and Chrono are 'the' retro jrpgs. They come from a time when you couldnt really do much with graphics, so a good design, good sound, and a strong story with good characters were paramount.
I havent played Chrono Trigger either, but it IS a classic and MUST be played by people. And as far as Earthworm Jim, I did play that as a kid and LOVED IT....it not a "better" game than the rest, but I'd love to hear your impressions of that game :D
If it's the former, I would suggest Final Fantasy III (assuming you mean the SNES version and not the DS version one of the above commenters assumed) as it has a PHENOMENAL story about multiple characters and tons of sidequests and items. And for the other, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, mainly due to the fact it's very underappreciated and misunderstood, and there's so much variation and little tricks and such you can do with the time limit.
If your play throughs are the latter, then I would suggest . . . Metal Gear Solid, for its freaking awesome story and quirky little gameplay mechanics that you can pay attention to without too many "sidequests" or get every item things. The other game, which it pains me to put it in this "category" as opposed to the other, would be Super Mario RPG, as it isn't an overly in-depth game, but is easily one of the all-time classics in terms of gameplay and pure fun.
Oh, and Earthworm Jim.
There is a chance you'll be able to get into Earthbound, but it's real hard. You will die...a lot. If you can deal with that, I think you'll find the game's dialog and story to be pretty great (especially since you like Scott Pilgrim).
Symphony of the Night is also a game that I think you may find too tedious to get into. Once you start getting some of the more cool weapons, the game gets really fun, but for the first few hours it's sort of slow.
Overall, you picked a lot of great games that have sort of been outdone by the games that have built on what they started. It's hard to tell you to go play Earthbound when you could be playing Mother 3 or Persona 4. It's even harder to tell you to play Metal Gear Solid when Metal Gear Solid 3 is a much better game in just about every way.
Of the top of my head, I can think of at least five retro games you'd probably be better off playing; Blaster Master or Bionic Commando on the NES, Strider on the Genesis, Bonk 1 on the TG-16, Super Metroid on the SNES, and Jumping Flash on the PS1.
And of course there's Mega Man 2, cause I know how much you love Mega Man :)
I'm willing to put time into these games. If SotN takes time to pick up, I'm willing to go through it.
The main focus is education. I want to able to say I played these games, and I'll going into them understanding that some of these are the first of their kind. If not the first then the early steps of a growing medium.
Also, I love 2D Metroid games and ma' platformers.
Sorry about that.
:)
metal gear, mario Rpg.
Although for a truly rpg experience, after finishing that list you might wanna try destiny of an emperor on NES, good game.
GET ON THAT SHIT NOW
And if at some point you want to get a feel for the roots of the "point and click" genre, let me know. I'll hook you up with Zack McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, Monkey Island 1 and 2, all that stuff.