Jumping in Headfirst

Talk to any fan of J-RPGs, and they'll tell you they have a favorite series of games. Most of the n00bs will tell you Final Fantasy. The "hardcore" ones might tell you Fire Emblem. Others still might tell you the Tales series. (Particularly if they like anime.) Me? My favorite series has always been Suikoden. Y'know, I love Japanese RPGs. I really do. But one thing that's always gotten to me is that they seem to have something against continuity. I don't get it, really, but they do. For all the morons that whine about Final Fantasy ("How can it be "Final" when you're up to like, fifteen?"), each one of those games is a completely different world in a completely different universe. Its a bit disheartening. As I mentioned in my Lunar post , no good RPG ever relies solely on its story, seeing as how the story is probably going to have a few cliches in it. The key to a good RPG is in world building. You create a world in which...

Another new series of columns. JiH is really booming, huh? Voice in the background: But you haven't updated in weeks! ...Gotta do something about the more noisy people in my room. Maybe rope and a ball gag.... Anyway! This is the start of yet another new series on JiH. Depending on when you actually ask me, I'm a pretty hardcore gamer, and my favorite genre has always been RPGs--particularly of the Japanese variety. This is fairly logical, since: A.) Before I discovered RPGs (my first being Super Mario RPG, but we'll get into that a little later), I was at best a casual gamer, much preferring comics instead, and B.) Western RPGs tend to be a little too PWP (that's, Plot? What Plot?, for you people who've never read a fanfic, particularly of the pr0n variety) on consoles, and considering I'm primarily a console gamer, well... So this new series will be devoted to my favorite RPGs, and split into two versions: Favorite RPG Universes, and Favorite RPGs I wi...

So, several months ago I was on here complaining about Marvel. Another bitch fest, this time about how they'd pretty much ruined Iron Man . I was right, but a lot of things have changed since then. So in the interest of being positive, I figured I'd talk about the changes Marvel has made since then and how positive they've been for my favorite Marvel superhero. And here is the rest of it. Actually, right around the time of my writing that particular story, they had just released a new comic book series, called Invincible Iron Man, created with the intent to capitalize on the successful movie. The series (written by "rising star" Matt Fraction and drawn by Salvador Larocca) was initially crafted to be a "partner" book to the other Iron Man book, taken over by the Knaufs (the writers of HBO's Carnivale ). This was meant to be the high-octane, big action Iron Man title, in contrast to the main title at the time, which had metamorphosed over the co...

So I've been thinking about my latest posts, and I realize they're mostly negative lately. This is a problem, as its sort of the opposite of the mission statement I had for this thing, so we're going to shake it up this time and do something positive: Let's talk about something I actually LIKE. And here is the rest of it. Batman: Brave and the Bold. For those not in the know, this is Warner Bros. latest superhero animation effort. Admittedly, at first, I thought it would be the most awful DC-related cartoon ever, with no saving graces. At least Teen Titans eventually attempted more adult storytelling, after all. But, honestly if you look at this art.... ....Can you blame me? They picked the worst promo art ever, though I suppose they WERE trying to get the little kiddies interested, and not the 20+ crowd. I wasn't even going to watch this thing, convinced it would be the other abortion WB, like "Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes" was. Of c...