Ultimate Nerds Comics

Alright, thus ends the Conventional Wisdom story.

-Malec2b(Alec)

Alright, it’s the return of the Awesome Review, where I review something that I think of as awesome.  Think of it more like a recomendation than a regular review.  With that, let’s begin.

Apollo Justice:  Ace Attorney

I’ve been a big fan of the phoenix Wright games for a while.  In fact, had I started this website a year or two earlier, this review would probably be on Phoenix Wright.  Now, as many of you probably noticed, the most recent game in the series is not a Phoenix Wright game, but it in fact called “Apollo Justice:  Ace Attorney.”  Now, when one of the best things about a series is the lovable cast of characters, it seems like a strange move to replace the main characters with new people.  For this reason, I didn’t go into this game with very high hopes, and expected to really miss the old characters.  However, I was surprised to find that Apollo Justice is one of the best games in the series so far!

First of all, there’s the new main character, Apollo Justice.  At first I thought this would end up a pointless change and the new character would act about the same but just look different.  However, Apollo Justice is actually a very different character than Phoenix.  Whereas Phoenix is the type of character who is often on the ropes in the trials, but eventually manages to make his way through, usually with the help of his dead mentor.  Apollo, on the other hand, is more aggressive in court, and it’s a more even back and forth between him and the prosecutor.

This brings us to the prosecutor.  He is, in my opinion, more awesome than any of the prosecutors from the Phoenix Wright games other than Godot.  You see, not only is the prosecutor (Gavin) an awesome opponent, but he is also a rock star.  He will occasionally break out in air-guitar in the middle of a court case before he makes a point. 

The story of this game is also more in depth than in previous games.  The new character allows this as the story involves his backstory as well as Phoenix Wright’s own disbarment.

Gameplay-wise, it’s still the same Ace Attorney.  However, it is streamlined and the puzzles are a lot less frustrating and more intuitive most of the time.  The only major exception to this was the Focus ability, where you could focus and find out when a witness is lying because of a tell.  While an interesting concept, it was not done well as it mainly involved searching over every piece of every line of testimony and every part of the witnesses body to find some sign of movement which quickly became tedious and frustrating.  However, besides those few moments where that entered game play, this is probably the smoothest, least frustrating Ace Attorney game so far.

All in all, if you passed this game over because they changed the main character, I would suggest giving it a chance.  You might be pleasantly surprised to find it a strong continuation of the series.

I got the Spore Creature Creator today and it is Awesome! One thing fans of the comic (all 5 of you) might be interested in is the Spore version of Bay’En I made. which can be found here:  http://www.spore.com/sporepedia#qry=usr-malec2b%3Asast-500000927607

More of my creations can be found here:  http://www.spore.com/sporepedia#qry=usr-malec2b

The editor really is quite intuitive and easy to use.  Many of those creatures were made in 10-20 minutes.  It’s really fun to expiriment with what you can make.  I definatly suggest to get the Creature Creator, or if you don’t want to spend the 10 dollars before the game comes out, the Trial Version (although I would really recomend going for the full version, it gives you alot more options.)

-Malec2b(Alec)

Just so you know, both today’s comic and Mondays comic will be late.  Today’s since Aleks’ scanner was having some issues, so he won’t be sending the comic for a little while, and, because of the time differences here in Italy, I won’t be able to post the comic until late in the afternoon.  Monday I will be going home so I will not be able to post the comic until I am home, which is in the late afternoon.

(EDIT:  Monday’s comic will not in fact be late and has been posted)

Sorry for the inconvenience.

-Malec2b(Alec)

Alright.  I think there should be a few things I should mention.

First of all, I should probably mention Ben’s 14 page comic ”Our Famous Guest” over on his DeviantArt page.  You should check it out, it’s clever and the character design of the villain is particularly awesome.  You can find the first page in his gallery here: http://fliege.deviantart.com/art/Our-Famous-Guest-page-1-86274617

Speaking of which, Ben tells me that he will start trying to update Fisticuffs! again..

Finally, the people over at Penny Arcade, along with Scott Kurtz of PVP are doing a promotional podcast series for wizards of the coast where they play a game of the new 4th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons and record it as well as make some comics to go along side it.  I’ve listened to the first one and it’s quite entertaining.  You can find the first episode of that here:    http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drfe/20080530&authentic=true

This is indeed glorious news!

IGN has just posted this:

http://pc.ign.com/articles/877/877318p1.html

Beyond Good and Evil is one of my favorite games of all time, second only to some of the Legend of Zelda games in my book.  Beyond Good and Evil is one of those games that was highly enjoyed by most who played it, higly rated by the critics, but which sold poorly.   I’m truly glad that Ubisoft is giving the series another chance.  If you like Videogames and havn’t played Beyond Good and Evil, you owe it to yourself to find a copy of the game (although it is hard to find at this point) and play it.  And when BGE2 comes out, let’s not let this one slip through the cracks this time.

-Malec2b(Alec)