The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Awhile back, using free Microsoft points I got from a cheap Live Gold card, I bought Rock of Ages, because it looked silly.

It was silly.

Rock of Ages is an amazing game, but it is also a very flawed game. The campaign is not very fun. The AI is either steamrolled or does the steamrolling, and it rarely felt, to me, like there was anything in between. I didn’t get very far in the campaign because of this.

However, Essner and I played splitscreen versus for a whole afternoon once, and that was a blast. This was not just because I won most of the games, because I did have an advantage for a lot of it, seeing as I understood how the game worked. This was because the game is exciting and tense against human opponents. You can actually trick them, or trip them up with your builds. A human player can’t just decide to be able to make pixel-perfect turns whenever they need to. It’s pretty great.

Rock of Ages is basically a really, really weird tower defenseish game. You start by building defenses on a path to where your leader is housed. These are things like catapults, that deal damage, towers, which are barricades that have to be destroyed if someone wants through, or cows, which work to push things out of the way. You build until your boulder is ready, and then you roll the boulder down the track your opponent just filled with traps to try to hit their gate at a high speed and, eventually, kill them. This system is a bit flawed: It’s hard not to break the gate after three hits, even if you do terrible. It more comes down to slowing the opponent down so you get that third hit in before they do.

Again, these traps and the strategy they make are just stupid against an AI opponent, but when you can really mix up your strategy, and switch in the middle of the match to totally throw your human opponent, who is incapable of robotic maneuvering off? Or when you somehow slip past a horrible gauntlet of seemingly inescapable traps without a scratch? It’s totally fun. It helps that the game is kind of this super silly mashup of internet memes, history, and Monty Python animations as well. It looks fun, and it is fun again your friends. I got my money’s worth on that afternoon of versus play, personally. I may never play it again, or may only play more versus, but I had a really good time.

A long time ago, I played, and apparently did not write about, an iPad game called Dungeon Defenders: First Wave. It was an alright game: Tower Defense with a little action twist. (This was far before games like Trenched, of course.) It was fun enough, but holy shit, the controls on the game were AWFUL. This was clearly not a game created with the iPad in mind, and yet here was the version of the game on the iPad. I wanted a controller badly. The virtual controls were just complete ass. What more, the game was clearly designed for multiplayer, which just wasn’t going to happen on the iPad.

Fast forward to now. Aesa, being the person that Aesa is, bought me a copy of Dungeon Defenders on the PC so we could all play together. Finally, a chance to play the game with a controller! I plugged in my Xbox controller and prepared to defend a dungeon.

OH WAIT THERE’S A BUG THAT MAKES GAMEPAD CONTROL NOT WORK. Fantastic.

So after being INSANELY ANGRY about that for quite some time, as I am likely to do about the stupidest issues in PC games, we finally got down to it and played. And then wiped like twice on the second map. And then quit for the night.
Basically, we’re awesome.

I tried the Huntress, who really needs to pull up her pants very badly. (Seriously, once I noticed this, I got really annoyed that she was my character. She’s super-deformed stylized cute. Why the fuck can I see her ass crack? What the hell.) She specializes in towers that are really kind of limited use items, like land mines and gas traps. You have to keep feeding them repair money to keep them going, but they’re quite powerful when they go off. Also, her weaponry seems really damn good for being at a distance. Much more powerful than the Wizard’s stuff, even if she has to reload from time to time. She was pretty fun, though she would be complete and utter garbage if you were playing by yourself. She works well in a group, though, because everyone else has basic towers covered.

Even though we were REALLY TERRIBLE (seriously, the difficulty much ramp up hugely, or the game must have been much, much easier on iPad, because I had no trouble with this level alone) it was still a pretty fun game. I don’t know if I would have paid what they’re asking for it, though. Seems more like a sale sort of game, though I’m glad I get to play with everyone now. Apparently they’re having special events and ranked challenges and I don’t know what? None of that really interests me. Just playing with my friends. This game lets you do that. Thus, it succeeds on that level.

I have done many things. However, one of the things I have done is beat the story mode of Anomaly: Warzone Earth HD on my iTronic Pad. Another thing I will have done in just a few moments is write a blog post about that experience.

Anomaly basically takes the idea of “WHAT IF YOU WERE THE ENEMIES IN A TOWER DEFENSE GAME?!” and attempts to make a whole game out of it. This is an interesting premise that hasn’t been done before! The result is fun but, unfortunately, not really a long-lasting fun like Tower Defense proper. At least in my opinion.

Basically, you have a little squad of six slots. You can place various units in them. APCs fire quickly and are general all-around units. Tanks fire slowly, but have heavy armor. Crawlers fire slowly, but fire very damaging rockets. Shield units put a recharging Halo-like shield on the units in front and behind it. Supply units spawn power ups when you get kills. Dragon tanks are super expensive, but can attack two towers at once and I think have a minimal DoT effect. You buy and arrange these units in these setups, then you move them about the map. You don’t have direct control, but you can basically plan where they will turn on the roads in the blasted cities you fight in, and can change that plan on the fly. For most missions, you are either trying to simply get through an area alive, or take out specific targets along your route.
This would be kind of boring, but the game gives you a bunch of powerups to play with. You can heal your units, or set up a smoke screen to make enemy fire less accurate, or set up a false unit for enemies to fire at. The real strategy of the game is deploying these correctly, because they are a limited resource, and are basically the only way of assuring you aren’t constantly losing units and not having enough money to replace them.

The interface in this game is just PERFECT for the iPad. I’m sure it’s a fun game on PC too, but I hear you have to move a little guy around to pick up powerups, which seems much less fun. Seriously, though, the interface is responsive and you understand it immediately. The game looks fantastic and doesn’t lag or have any issues like that whatsoever.

However, you really just kind of figure out what to do, and then the fun is gone. The campaign is 15 missions, and by the end of it, it really felt like they had used up all their variety ideas. Of course, they did a good job keeping it varied until then, but there wasn’t much left to do after that. So it was good it ended there. The game keeps an overall campaign score to compete with your friends, and has difficulty levels, of course, so if you want to eke out all the fun you can, that stuff is there. There’s also some sort of “Squad mode” which I assume is some sort of endless thing I don’t really want to play, so I haven’t. But, you know, they tried to make it worth your money.

I had a lot of fun with the game, but I also paid a dollar for it. It’s normally sold at a premium, and as much as I had fun, I dunno if it’s got enough staying power to be worth more than a buck or two. I probably wouldn’t have been happy to buy it on Steam for the 10 dollars it originally was. Then again, maybe I would be. I like game experiences that are fun, but don’t overstay their welcome, and this was that, to be sure. In any case, if the idea sounds appealing, it’s done really well, and you should try to play it sometime. It is fun. Just don’t expect it to last you a real long time.

Let me tell you a story. It is a story of deceit, deception, and death. It is a story of broken bonds, and broken promises. It is a story of one town’s struggle to survive against insurmountable odds. It is a story of ponies.

Mafia Little Pony: The Avatars of Discord

It all starts with a scream, a loud scream, from the library. It’s an inappropriate wake-up call for the town of Ponyville, but most go about their daily lives, only momentarily wondering what happened. They do not take the scream as the omen it is. Five friends, however, do heed the call. They rush to the library, panting for breath, looking to one another before shoving the door open.
The scene before them was not a pleasant one. To one side of the scene, a crying unicorn, her purple hair mussed from just getting out of bed. This pony’s name was Twilight Sparkle, and this was the worst moment of her life thus far. Before her was a young dragon. His eyes looked shocked. His expression was mostly vacant now. He wasn’t moving. Dragon’s blood oozed slowly from his neck, dripping onto the stack of books he must have been gathering for his morning’s work.
Spike was dead.
The five gathered friends gasped. They expected some sort of problem, but not this. The ponies stood there dumbfounded, unsure what to do. Fluttershy started crying, at the back of the pack. There was silence but for the sounds of sobbing.
Rarity finally broke the silence. “This is terrible.”
“Who would have done something like this?” Rainbow Dash asked, anger simmering in vocal undertones.
“It couldn’t have been anyone around here. Nopony in Ponyville would do… would do that,” Applejack said.
“I…” Everyone turned. Twilight was getting back on her hooves. “I will figure out who did this. I will bring whoever did this to justice.”
“And we’ll be right here to help you,” Applejack said.
“All of us,” added Rarity.
“Look, in his mouth!” Pinkie Pie declared.
Everyone turned. There seemed to be a piece of paper stuck in the poor dragon’s mouth. Twilight picked it up and read it aloud.
“My Faithful Student, I’m afraid send you terrible news. After your battle with Discord, I thought peace had been returned to Equestria. But I was wrong. Discord had a backup plan. He summoned six spirits, avatars of horrible things, into the world to destroy the Elements of Harmony if they were to be used to stop him again. Unfortunately, that means they are coming after you and your friends, bearers of the Elements. My magic has tracked them to Ponyville, and I have erected a barrier around the town to seal them away. Unfortunately, that also seals in you and the citizens of the town. You must find these avatars and destroy them. It will not be easy. They are using a powerful enchantment to make them look like any other pony. They could be anyone in town, even someone you know. They will attack you if they find you. Enclosed is a spell to hide your identities. Use it to move around the town in safety, find these threats, and stop them. I apologize for putting you in such danger once again, but I know that you, and your friends, can stop this if you all work together. Sincerely, Princess Celestia.”
The six ponies looked at each other. Then Twilight spoke again. “Spike was killed to keep us from getting this message. They didn’t want the Princess to warn us.”
“Poor Spike… even in his last breath, helping out…” Fluttershy said, sniffling.
“Girls, we have to stop these avatars. Let me prepare the spell. Rarity, could you give me a hoof?”
“Of course, darling, though you’re a much better magician than me.”
“We’ll… take care of Spike,” Applejack said.
“Yeah, he deserves better than to be sprawled on the floor like that,” Pinkie Pie added.
“Thank you…” said Twilight, taking a breath before turning to her magic.
It didn’t take long until Twilight had all of them enchanted. They looked at each other in wonder.
“This is amazing!” said Pinkie Pie. “I can’t even tell who you all are! Who am I, huh? Do you know?”
“Yes, Pinkie, we know it’s you,” Twilight said, “but once we leave each other’s presence, it’s going to be near impossible to tell.”
“I don’t like all this hiding. Let’s just go out there and blast them,” Rainbow Dash said.
“But we could hurt someone else!” said Fluttershy.
“Right,” said Twilight, “so we’ll have to be sneaky for now. Let’s split up, and gather information. We can figure out who these avatars are in no time if we all work together.”
They all nodded, and headed out the door, only to stop immediately. There was a gathering at the town square.
“…need to be stopped.” said Mayor Mare. “We’re all trapped here, and I have been told we will not be freed until this crisis is taken care of.”
The crowd was complaining loudly.
“We must take this into our own hooves. We must save ourselves.”
There was a rumble of agreement.
“So I am enacting a rare clause of our town charter. Every day we will vote on who we think is one of these creatures infesting our town. Voting is mandatory for everypony. Whoever wins will be dealt with quickly. Soon, with all your help, we’ll have solved the problem. I’m sure of it.”
There was another rumble of agreement. Twilight shuddered. She had read the town charter, and she assumed nobody else knew how serious those rules were. “Well… we’ll, just have to find them faster, before anyone else gets killed…” she told herself. “I hope…”

—

Players will either be citizens of Ponyville, one of the Mane 6, or an Avatar of Discord. Normal citizens of Ponyville have no powers, but have been empowered to vote and lynch, as per usual. The Mane 6 are the powered citizens, and can also vote and such, of course. The Avatars of Discord are the Mafia. They get a night chat, as per usual, and a night kill. They are also empowered.
The avatars win if they kill all of the Mane 6, or establish a voting majority. The town wins if all the avatars are destroyed.

Days are the standard 72 hours. Nights are the standard 48. Ties in voting are broken first by who has the most members of the Mane 6 voting for them, and if there is still a tie, then by dice roll.

The Mane 6
Twilight Sparkle: Representing the Element of Magic, Twilight is a master spellcaster. Once per night, she may cast a scrying spell and inspect a player, finding out their affiliation as either citizen, avatar, or member of the Mane 6.

Applejack: Representing the Element of Honesty, Applejack is a hard working, athletic pony with significant skills with a lasso. Once per night, Applejack may lasso and tie up a player, keeping them from using any powers they may or may not have that night.

Rainbow Dash: Representing the Element of Loyalty, Rainbow Dash’s speed is unmatched. Rainbow Dash may choose to perform a Sonic Rainboom during the night. This will be announced publicly, though who used the ability will not be revealed. That day, her vote will count for double, though again, this won’t be revealed publicly unless it breaks a tie or something of that nature. However, the act of doing such a complicated trick will tire her out, and she won’t be able to use the ability the next night.

Fluttershy: Representing the Element of Kindness, Fluttershy has learned many ways to be nice. Once per night, Fluttershy can pick a player. If that player were to die from a nightkill, Fluttershy’s care will save them instead, leaving them alive. If she saves someone, though, she’ll be exhausted, and won’t be able to pick another player to save for two nights of rest.

Pinkie Pie: Representing the Element of Laughter, Pinkie Pie knows how to throw a party. Once per day, Pinkie Pie can send a message to the GM requesting an invitation to a private party be sent to a player. She can then night chat with that player the following night, though the identities of either side of the conversation will not be revealed by the GM.

Rarity: Representing the Element of Generosity, Rarity knows that good fashion can be helpful in even the most dire of times. During the night Rarity can elect to create a stunning outfit for a player, and send it to them as a gift. That player will wear the outfit the next day, and be looking so overwhelmingly fabulous that nobody will be able to vote for them. That a person is wearing such an outfit will be public knowledge. However, once Rarity has given such a gift, she won’t be able to give one the next night, as it takes time to create a new outfit.

The Avatars of Discord
Avatar of Evil: This spirit has been blessed with the ability to look into the darkness of one’s soul, and find out what’s truly there. Once per night, the spirit can inspect a player, and learn if that player is a normal citizen or member of the Mane 6. That information won’t be available until the next day starts, however.

Avatar of Lies: This spirit is made of pure disinformation. Once per night, the spirit can pick a player to forge the identity of for any inspections that night and any lynches the next day. The avatar may pick whatever they’d like to come up as their false report.

Avatar of Mutiny: This spirit is built to hinder co-operation. Once per game, this spirit may, before a day moves into its final 24 hours, put a fog of mutiny over the town of Ponyville. All players must switch their votes, and may not vote for who they currently have a vote on that day. Anyone who does not change their vote is considered to have not voted.

Avatar of Darkness: This spirit dislikes the light, in all its forms. Once per game, the spirit may, during the night, elect to make the next day shorter by 24 hours.

Avatar of Madness: This spirit enjoys playing tricks, and breaking down the walls of sanity. Once per day, this spirit can send a message to the GM requesting that an invitation to a private party be sent to a player. The spirit can then night chat with that player the following night, though the identities of either side of the conversation will not be revealed by the GM.

Avatar of Silence: This spirit is jealous of the voices of ponies, and steals them away. During the night, this spirit may elect one player to silence during the next game day. That player can only vote, but not otherwise communicate. No shenanigans with voting to get around the spirit of the power, please.

I know you all were scared, but you didn’t have to worry. I remembered what I wanted to talk about. The Roku!

I bought my parents a Roku a long time ago because I thought it would be a simple thing they could use to stream Netflix, and that my mom might like that. She used it a bit, certainly, and watched some TV shows. It was nice. Fast forward to the Netflix price hike, though, and my parents just totally killed their Netflix all together. Thus, the Roku was unused. So I basically stole it. Then I hooked it up in my room just because.

Roku is awesome.

It took me like 2 minutes to download the Giant Bomb channel and start streaming Whiskey Media stuff onto my TV. Somehow this damn thing streams better than my iPad does when I hook up a direct feed. It’s awesome. It’s magical. It’s exactly what I’d rather be watching in bed anyway!

In a few more minutes of fiddling, I had Tested on there, and Crunchyroll if I am desperate for an anime, and what’s best, Amazon Prime Video Streaming. I knew I had Prime Video Streaming, since I have and love Prime, but I never used it. However, damn, Roku makes it easy and a fun idea. I watched some Next Gen with little effort. Huzzah!

The only thing that’s been a complete disappointment so far is blip.tv. They say they have a Roku channel, and frankly, that would be great. How awesome would it be to be able to easily stream, I dunno, the latest Chip and Ironicus Let’s Play? Super awesome. That’s how awesome. But instead all you can watch is their “official” shows. I watch a TON of shit on Blip.tv, but nothing I watch is one of their “official” titles, so I can’t stream it. Obscenely stupid.

Really, the entire experience is just polished. It could be better with a keyboard, or a search in the channel store, or a slightly faster processor and/or RAM to get in and out of menus quickly. It also could really use a way for me to stream stuff from my PC: if I can get a 3 dollar app that does that to my iPad flawlessly, there has to be a way for me to do it on a Roku that isn’t a pain. That’s just about it, though. It’s just a damn good little device. It was totally worth what I paid for it. I now wonder if I’m going to have to buy a SECOND one for my house, so I can have one in the living room and one in the bedroom. I suppose we’ll see how much I use it. But I am enjoying it for now! Buy a fucking Roku and stream some shit too, hm?

I swear I had something to write about today, but fuck if I can remember what it was! So, you know, let’s just talk about Star Dunk Gold.

This was another game I downloaded for free after Tiny Tower asked me too, but unlike Hospital Story, which was pretty shitty if inoffensive due to the lack of cost, Star Dunk is actually kind of cool, if simple.

Basically, the idea is that you are shooting some mad hoops in space. You don’t actually dunk at all. The ball is placed at various places on the screen, and you move your finger to aim the little arc coming from the ball. Then you release, and if you aimed right, you make it in the basket. There is also a backboard, broken in the four sections. You can bounce the ball off of it to sink shots, of course, but each time you hit a section, it lights up, and when you’ve lit all four, you get a powerup. Some of them are useless (I have literally no idea what the fireball powerup does besides make you look cool.) and some of them are really useful, like the one that throws three balls for every one you throw, letting you sink three times the baskets if you’re good. You shoot for two minutes, and you try for a high score.

It’s simple, but the game has a really strong online feature. By switching the game to “online mode,” you will randomly be pulled into high score contests with other players playing the game. The game is constantly updating your position on the leaderboard as you’re desperately trying to sink dunks, and there always seems to be a fairly good number of people playing any time I’ve been on the game. It’s fun and simple competition with little overhead, because after two minutes, you’re done, and can just quit. I like that.

I guess Star Dunk Gold is some paid version that was free temporarily, and there’s a free version with ads? I dunno. I don’t know if I would pay money for this game. But it’s good, quick fun, which seems like the perfect sort of game to carry around on your phone while waiting in line. I approve of this game. I’m not going to spend any money on it’s microtransactions or anything, but I’ve had fun distracting myself with it.

We bought my mother a Blu-Ray player for her birthday, so she could play a Blu-ray or two. We thought we’d give it a test drive! So a movie was rented. It was called Limitless.

It was pretty alright.

The whole movie is based on what seems to be a plot hole. Mr. Main Character, Eddie, ends up with all these pills. They are magic brain-improving pills. They come from a shady drug dealer man.
But really, though, there were a lot of those pills. Part of the plot seems to revolve around many successful people taking these pills. There had to be some huge something behind the making of these things: hell, at the end of the movie, it basically says as such. I just have trouble believing that nobody from that organization would step in the moment Eddie starts becoming a crazy overnight success. They would have tried to get him under their control, and they don’t. They apparently don’t give a shit what happens to their very precious resource after it falls out of their hands. That just seems weird to me, especially since they could be taking it, and thus have intense plans and whatnot.

If you let that sort of thing out of your mind and just enjoy it, though, it’s a pretty fun film! Seeing the kind of power the pill gives makes you want that sort of power, and seeing what kind of trouble it can get you into makes you not want that kind of power. Eddie is not unlikable, but he’s not really a complete hero either. It’s interesting in that regard. He doesn’t deserve to die, perse, but you don’t necessarily want him to succeed in what he’s doing because in a way, he hasn’t earned it. He’s abusing it to manipulate sex out of women, and so many other things that seem not okay. Yet, somehow, the movie works. I’m not sure how the writing pulled that off. Maybe it’s because the movie sets up, from the beginning, that he is going to get his comeuppance for what he’s doing. The ending removes that, though, so I dunno.

I really feel like the trailer misrepresented this film, though. It made it seem like it would be little guy vs Robert DeNiro, from what I recall. That was really not the case at all, though DeNiro did a fine job. I also expected a bit more action. There were a few chase and fight sequences, but it was mostly a lot of talking and inner monologue. It’s mostly a talking movie, with a few action-y bits. But not in the way that, I dunno, Inglourious Basterds is a talky movie?

It’s a strange film. If the premise is interesting to you, you will probably enjoy it. I did enjoy it, but looking back, it’s just such a weird mish-mash of stuff that I’m not sure how it worked as a full movie film. I’d probably have to watch it again to figure it out, and it wasn’t THAT good. But eh, it was an interesting distraction. The parents didn’t seem to hate it. That’s about all I asked from the movie.

Okay, let’s… well, let’s write about something less stupid than yesterday, hm?

Those hip cats over at the Video Games Hot Dog were talking about Trainyard. As you know, if anyone talks about any iPhone game and it is a dollar or less, than I will purchase it. This occurred, and I played it. Well, some of it. There’s a lot of it! And user created levels! But it is certainly a game.

Trainyard is a very abstract puzzle game that really has very little to do with trains. The idea is that there are train depots, who want certain trains of certain colors in a certain order and quantity. There are train stations that release trains of a certain color and number. You basically just draw tracks between them to make the trains go where they are needed.

However, the game is really weird. Trains can be smooshed together if two tracks combine at the point where two trains would meet. If two trains drive through each color, their colors mix, letting you make different colored trains. (So if you drive a red train and a yellow train past each other, you get an orange train.) What the game does is it will often give you way, way more trains than you need to deliver. You can’t deliver extra trains, so you have to figure out how to combine them. That’s the difficult part. You have to figure out timing and how to draw track so the trains meet at the right time. The main tool you have in doing this is switching tracks. This happens automatically, when a train drives over a track, so you have to set it up to cascade in a bit of a machine to get trains going where you need them to go.

There’s no timer, and no real motivation to push on via, I don’t know, a story or a scoring system or whatever. You can share your solutions with the world, if you want, and finishing puzzles unlocks more puzzles, but that’s really it. It’s just pure puzzles, and if that is your thing, there are a ton of them to work on here. I got a decent way in before I kind of burned out, and wanted to take a break. Then I wrote this. But it’s clear why the VGHD people liked it, and they are crazy “pure” puzzle people. If you are too, it’s totally worth a dollar.

The #souppro hashtag will catch on, I swear!
Anyway, inside jokes you probably don’t get aside, I got to see a performance of Into the Woods on Saturday.

Mom had mentioned that her and Dad and Jonathan and Shauna all had tickets, and I had learned I was off, so I figured, why not? I grabbed a ticket, and we all went to the show. I have always been a big fan of Into the Woods, but this was going to be the first time I was going to see a live performance. I wasn’t sure how professional it would be, being put on by the collage and all, but I was willing to give it a go.

Besides one thing, it was a really good performance.

First off, I was just really impressed with the set. I mean, I know we’re talking about skilled people here who want to do this kind of thing for a living, and I shouldn’t underestimate them, but goodness, I did, and I was blown away. It was a complicated and really nice looking forest. Trees moved around on set. The mossy steps of the background looked really nice. The limbs in the trees shook and shed leaves when the giant was walking around. A top quality act.

Similarly, I thought the actors all did a great job. Some of them seemed to be doing their best to replicate the style of the original actors from that original version I watched on DVD all those years ago, such as the Witch, but she did a good job at it. Others had their own takes, like the Narrator, and did a really solid job at that, too. They even had a slight technical hitch, where Milky White’s legs went out a bit before the cue for that, and they ad libbed to cover for it extremely well, to the point where I’m sure anyone in the audience who didn’t know the show probably didn’t know their was a problem. Quality stuff.

Now the sound…
The sound crew was just not doing a good job at all. Granted, anyone who knows the show knows it wouldn’t be an easy one to mike and run: people are moving in and out of song all the time. There’s lots going on. But goodness, it really takes you out of the show when, say, the final “I Wish!” in the finale isn’t miked and so you can’t hear it because someone forgot to turn it on. Or where you can’t hear parts of lines because their mike is only one for the end bit. Or when someone forgets to turn down someone’s mike a bit before a scream or screech. It really hurt what was otherwise a really great performance, and that’s really a bummer.

Still, it was a really great night. We went out and ate a bunch of appetizers at Applebee’s after and had a very nice time. I’d do it again, most definitely. Then again, who knows when they’ll put on a show like Into the Woods I actually care about again. Heh.

Matthew Essner often will tell me that I should read or watch certain things, and often I don’t, even when he forces stuff on me! But in his latest push, to read Cowboy Ninja Viking, I decided I was actually going to try, by taking the books to work and reading them during break. Slowly, I read both trades, and I have to say, it’s a damn good comic.

Here’s the thing. You read the title, Cowboy Ninja Viking, and you think “This is a comic that’s silly and meme-driven. It might be entertaining, but it’s probably a very surface entertainment you’ll just throw away when you’re done.” Not so. While there are some silly, humorous things about the very concept, the comic plays it very seriously, and shockingly enough, it works.

The idea is that there was a secret government project to create “triplets.” These people with three multiple personalities, through various therapies, would be trained so that their alternate personas actually had all the skills of those personas, which the main personality could tap into at any time. Duncan, the main character, got pretty lucky with the personalities he got: a Cowboy, a Ninja, and a Viking. Needless to say, this makes him a pretty damn effective assassin. Of course, he still has to deal with the fact that he has multiple personalities who all have their own motivations and such as well.

Each of Duncan’s other personalities is a personality, and the book does interesting stuff with word balloons to make it clear who is talking. So if the Ninja is talking, the outline of the word balloon has a katana in it, and so on. They also sometimes talk in Duncan’s head via running commentary beneath what’s going on. It’s just really effective. The personalities aren’t stereotypes too. They are a cowboy, a ninja, and a viking, but they make the sort of pop culture references that Duncan would know, and are knowledgeable about how the world today works, which really makes it feel less gimmicky, if that makes sense.

There are, of course, a whole world of other triplets out there for Duncan to fight, or be friends with, or whatever, such as his ex-girlfriend, a martial artist sniper chef, and other people like an army officer, demolitions expert, and Amish man. There tend to be a bit more jokes with these characters, but never in an unbelievable way, given the world. They just tend to be combinations that have an odd man out and clash a lot more than the three combat-focused personalities Duncan has.

The book is actually really wordy, in a good way. I actually got kind of lost in the second trade, but that was mostly because I was reading for only 15 minutes a day over a period of like 2 weeks. It’s got character drama, but it doesn’t let that get in the way of the fun of the concept either. It’s just really well-balanced, and I really think anyone who likes comics should give it a try. I don’t even read comics, really, and I really enjoyed it.