Jumping in Headfirst

I'm probably more hyped about Watch_Dogs 2 than any other non-Spider-Man game on this list.  As much flak as the first Watch_Dogs received, I always found it to be a solid title.   No, it was never without it's flaws: Aiden Pearce was a giant dickhole, the typical open-world fringe like clothing options and music was next to nil, and it almost always felt like you were driving on ice.  But it also had a ton of really great bits to it: the myriad of ways you could deal with encounters, the crapton of mini-games, and downgrade or no downgrade it was a pretty game.  After finishing the first game, I looked forward to a potential sequel because I knew a game where they acknowledged and worked to remedy those flaws could be something special. And so far, Watch_Dogs 2 looks well on its way to be just that.  Replacing talking baseball cap Aiden Peace with Marcus Holloway is half of the job, and judging by videos like the one above, it looks like they're more than aware of t

Apologies for taking a day off, but I'm back with the second part of what is most likely a four-part series.  This time we'll be setting a focus on games that come from Eastern developers, the J-RPGs.

While I normally devote the time following E3 to rating conferences, this year I've decided to switch things up.  For one thing, each conference was absolutely drowning in games so a proper rating would be some massive 5000 word piece that no one would actually read.   And for another, for once there's actually no shortage of titles I'm interested in.  So this time I'll be highlighting games I care about rather than running down lists of games only to say why I don't care.

I've got a different thing planned to finish talking about the rest of E3, but first...comics!

 So how'd my predictions stack up to the actual conference?

It's technically not "Day One" yet, but when EA and Bethesda both have their E3 conferences, you should probably take count it as such.

I'm a little late with this week's column and I apologize for that.   So as not to waste any time let's just jump right into it with a look first at this week's Marvel stuff.

Welcome back to the longest-running weekly column on JiH, Bottom of the Pile--where I talk about the most exciting comics for the week--and the ones I found "best".  This week we're looking at the first wave of DC's Rebirth one-shots as well as Civil War II and some of the comics surrounding it.   Civil War II Before I tear this comic a new one, some exposition is probably needed. Given Civil War's phenomenal success as both a film and a comic book, Marvel creating a sequel was really a matter of time.  This is the same company that's made no fewer than three "Secret" Wars after all. In the case of Civil War II, once again it's a "Captain" versus Tony Stark--this time Carol Danvers (a.k.a. Captain Marvel) rather than Steve.   The gist of it all is that a new mutant Inhuman is found to have the ability to see the future, and while Carol thinks he should be used to save lives in the future, Tony thinks there's every chance tha