WTF Did I Just Read? The Spectre #1

The Spectre #1 "The Sinister Lives of Cap'n Skull"
Written by Gardner Fox
Art by Murphy Anderson
Published by DC Comics
Released 1967

Comics sure have changed a lot over the years haven't they? Wow. I really cannot prepare you for the plot of this issue, so I'll just introduce the Spectre. Honestly I'm mostly familiar with the Post-Crisis DC universe, so going back into the Silver Age is definitely different. Needless to say in this version of reality the Spectre seems to be just a ghostly crime fighter who works alongside Jim Corrigan, a police officer. I'm used to him being the vengeance of god made flesh possessing old Jimmy, but the 60's were a simpler time. Mostly appearing in random one off appearances in anthology comics this was the Spectre's first solo series. While it only lasted ten issues, today we are going to talk about just the first.

Double Feature: Hotline Miami/2: Wrong Number

Hotline Miami/Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number
Top-down Murder Simulation
1 Player
System: PC
Developer: Dennaton Games
Year of Release: 2012/2015
Beaten: March 15th, 2015

I suppose this game warrants a bit of a warning. While this game speaks to me in ways others games can't, I'm sure the message it's screaming at others is quite the opposite. This is a brutally violent game, it has insane characters committing deranged acts and the entire point of the game is to rapidly and dementedly kill as many people as you can. Needless to say, Hotline Miami is a perfect game.

Oh, also the hover text has been replaced with links to some of my favorite songs from these games, so enjoy!

Five Nights of Tedium: Kicking it with Freddy

Five Nights at Freddy's
Stress Simulator
1 Player
System: PC
Developer: Scott Cawthon
Year of Release: 2014

I feel like I really don't even need to say anything about this game. For some god forsaken reason I felt compelled to play through this series, though I don't know why as I'm already caught up on both how the game works and the plot behind the games. Honestly that's the only real reason I was even interested in the game. The gameplay looked like (and plays like) shit to me, but the idea of a haunted children's party place is really interesting to me. Plus the fact the developer allegedly made this game out of spite for people who insulted how his characters looked too much like animatronics in his older games makes me respect him a bit more. While I understand why this game blew up in popularity via internet videos, I honestly don't think it's necessarily deserved.

Games You Should (Maybe) Play: State of Decay

State of Decay
Zombie Apocalypse Simulation
1 Player
System: Xbox Live Arcade
Developer: Undead Labs
Year of Release: 2013
Beaten: January 2nd, 2014

In a move risking the integrity of this series in just the second entry I present to you State of Decay, a game you MIGHT want to play. While originally I meant for this series to showcase only truly outstanding games, I'm making a special case for this one due in part because I beat it so long ago and writing it as a "Games I Beat" entry feels disingenuous, more importantly though since reviving this blog I've talked plenty about Nintendo games, and a decent amount of Sony with a smattering of PC gaming getting mentioned too. Aside from other legacy consoles Microsoft was the only one getting the shaft on the console side of things. I've been meaning to make up for that for a while now, I have an unpublished document on here called "xbox games", yeah not even capitalized or anything. The list is... pretty small actually. A lot of the games I truly loved on Xbox were multiplatform, and I didn't want to represent a console based on a game that you can get somewhere else (ironically most of my Sony games are also multiplatform, but I argue that I started off with exclusives!). So we come to the State of Decay, an interesting, though flawed, experience unlike most similar games.

Games I (Mostly) Beat: The Basement Collection

The Basement Collection
Flash Game Collection
1 Player
System: PC
Developer: Edmund McMillen and His Amazing Friends!
Year of Release: 2012 (2001-2009)
Beaten: March 5th, 2015

Edmund McMillen has made two of my favorite games of all time. Super Meat Boy is one of the best platformer games I've ever played, frantic yet precise, the game quickly devolves into chaos as obscenities are shouted at the screen and countless meat boys carelessly throw themselves to their death all in the name of true love. The Binding of Isaac is a love letter to the original Legend of Zelda with a rouge-like paint and some possibly heavy religious overtones, though a lot of typically dark subject matter is addressed in the game it manages to handle it well and keep a lighthearted tone and feeling for the most part. Before these games McMillen made a lot of games using Flash that were posted to Newgrounds. I haven't even thought about that site in a long time, I used to visit it all the time. A lot of these games have truly unique ideas (or at least rarely utilized ideas) and for that reason might hold merit, but for the most part I found this to be a really disappointing collection. Also, this is a collection of FREE games that will cost you four dollars. On the one hand, you do get a bunch of extra content, and McMillen is interesting enough to warrant looking into this (if you're a fan), but on the other these are still freely available online. Needless to say that's a little awkward.