Tony Hawks is back. Game review

Since Tony Hawks 1&2 is replicating the neck breaking, face planting experience of skateboarding. It should come as no surprise that the game is built around what people are capable of doing on a wheeled plank of wood. But the fun comes from the acceptable breaks from reality. Such as essentially driving up a hill and curving with the pool while in the air, and the over the top ability to grind without wearing out the board.

Tony Hawk has had a lot of ups and downs after they made more than two games. Let's face the music through, the first and the second game in the franchise is by far the best ones. This remaster includes all the original levels and they have all been spruced up. Essentially everything has had an graphical overhaul to bring it in line with modern games, while retaining the original layout. They also removed the pesky floating money, which I freaking love that they did.

Since it is now a modern game I can adjust settings, such as the camera proximity and field of view. Yes I can finally see more, but I can say that 90 Fov is a bit overkill in this case. A couple of slice of life improvements has been added to the option menu as well. Originally codes had to be manually inputted to cheat. Now they are a couple of clicks away, however they did not include the jetpack mode. So the infinite balance, manual and no bail, does not help me completing all the stage goals. After all I still have to reach the out of place V symbols that has been added to the levels and the secret tapes.

On that note, it seem that I no longer has to complete the game 100% with each skater to unlock all the characters. I truly thank the developers for that, but they did include a couple of secret unlocks that requires a fair bit of combing to squash out. Naturally this means a couple of the original inclusions where cut, such as all the various licenced skaters such as Gene Simmens and Private Carrera. All the movies the secret tapes contained are gone as well, so I can no longer watch actual skateboard videos in game. Luckily I have YouTube for that. Officer Dick is still here though, but he could be mistaken for Jack Black, or is he actually Jack Black?

The most disappointing feature is most likely the custom character editor, sure its novel to make woman with a beard, but the selection of faces and body types are non existent. Not quite, just very, very limited. So I wonder why I cant craft  myself a morbidly obese skater, or a muscular one. After all there was a cheat code for making skaters bloat up until the polygons burst from inputting it too many times. Face sliders is non existent and all additional outfits has to be bought from the in-game store.

The level editor allows me to build a magnificent skate park from the ground up and share it with the world for better or worse. But there is just one problem with the setup, first of all it comes with a complexity limit, even on pc. This is just irritating and stupid, I'm not playing Tony Hawks on the original
PlayStation after all. Then there is the fact that the spike pit is nowhere to be seen, yes they removed obstacles that can reset the player when they fall into it. Removed features also includes the runny blood soaked letters when face planting hard. A real shame really, once the bail animation is done, the skater just glitches back onto the board.

All the awesome and not so awesome soundtracks are back and they are fantastic, especially from a pesky nostalgia perspective.
It all I wanted from a remaster of a game I grew up on.

https://youtu.be/jxzbGk8bujc

Zaceron signing out

Jawbreakers the worst grift ever

Lo and behold the biggest grift in the face of the internet, well it is a grift Accoarding to industry professionals and twitter twerps.  Introducing  one of the most successful crowdfunded independent comics this decade, despite marvel and DC dying a slow and agonizing death along with the direct market. A  business model that has been dying since year 2000, despite people protesting otherwise. I have seen it myelf. Once upon a time there were a plethora of unique comics produced, translated, and published here in Norway. Now, well, now there is a handful of newspaper strips and some independent stuff that tries to market itself. Yes the direct market where a company hires people, sends the product to a press, then have it published and sold at a store. Oh right I was supposed to talk about Jawbreakers. A fairly okay comic about an expendable team of specialist dealing with a giant gorilla and some sort of nearly omnipotent being.

Yes this comic I can hold in my hands and store on my shelf is apparently a grift. Now let's take a look at wha the dictionary has to say about this very bad and bland insult.

noun

(sometimes used with a plural verb) a group of methods for obtaining money falsely through the use of swindles, frauds, dishonest gambling, etc.

Money obtained from such practices.

verb (used without object)

to profit by the use of grift:
Ethan Vansciver, a man known to have grifted for many years.

verb (used with object)

To obtain (money or other profit) by grift.

It is essential an untrue statement full of bile and venom, which is about as impactful as the term soiboy. For some insane reason people believe that soy makes men more feminine. A unfounded claim so far. Now back to the very real comic book I got for money  I spent on a crowdfunding campaign.

As I mentioned earlier before going of on a tangent. Jawbreakers is a team of mercenaries with various powers and guns. Which is hired by a scantily clad tribal woman with a spear. She needs them to take care of a humongous gorilla that is stimoing through the lands. The Jawbreakers does do just that. The comic comes in full colour, with great artwork that look like is has been taken straight out of the nineties. Both the good and the bad. The story has a sense of scale and an some actual healthful moments. The last of the three stories ends on a cliffhanger though, for better or worse.

Theere are however a couple of problems I have with the Jawbreakers. Sometimes the transitions are non existent or very poorly defined. Sure the cast is varied and have various powers they use in creative ways during combat. The design is annoying bland and non descriptive. Essentially it can be very hard to tell them apart, let alone get invested in the cast. Ironically the cast is very diverse and a lot more representative than anything the progressive crowd on social media is capable of comming up with.
One of them is prettymuch blind. One is black. Then there is the man without arms and I kinda forgot about the rest. They use various super powers to bypass these limitations though.
The overall presentation is fantastic, I just cant bring myself to get Gøkning to see how the Jawbreakers end up. It has th4 same issue I have with most superhero comics I've picked up over the years. I can't really get hooked on the story at all. But do not let that stop you from embracing the future of western comics. Direct to consumer, no middle man needed.

Zaceron Signing out

Why so serious? It is just a Joker

 

We all have a character or two from popular media we just simply loathe, dislike, hate or what not. Essentially one we have gotten tired of. In my case I simply can't stand the Joker from Batman, this pesky clownprince of crime shows up all over the media landscape. There is not a movies or a series within the fanshise this pasty faced lunatic doesn't show up in. For all intentive purposes he is a generic human male, which can be easily brought down by bullets, or one of Batman's patented and proven coma punches. Yes as far as I know the crazy clown does not even wear kevlar in a town overrun with Tommy guns and gangsters. All it would take is a stray bullet and he would be dead or severely injured, something that rarely if ever happens. The handful of times he does get seriously injured he often walks it off like a champ, or it gets conveniently retconned in the next story. For marketing purposes and due to popularity the joker will aways be there, or his abused henchman sidekick Harley Quinn. That does not make them any more interesting or tolerable to me. Keep in mind though, this is my personal opinion, feel free to disagree.

Batman has a lot of great villains. Hell, DC in general has more crooks than I can recollect. However a lot of these never shows up in live action at all.

To mention a couple I can recall from the movies, we have had Two-face, the Penguin, Freeze, Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn, Joker, Rasha Ghoul, Bane, Scarecrow, Riddler and a few more I've most likely forgot.

Back to my questionably constricted point though. The villains I have just mentioned does have some screen time and presence. Compared to a mentally deranged man with a big smile, they might as well ntl exist at all. It feels to me that no matter whom the main villai is, the clown keeps stealing the show. Sometimes I think the better solution would be to just focus one villain and make the movie into a detective drama, where the Bat has to actually play the part of being the worlds best detective. Having him play a cat and mouse game with Gorilla Grod could be a highly entertaining romp to watch. Now whether or not Hollywood is capable of writing and producing such a story is an entirely different story. To top it all of I might as well mention Batman's boring back story yet again. Or not, because that seem to be the important thing every time a new Batman story comes out.

Cheers

Zaceron