Transhuman is a story about genetic engineering in humans told in the style of a mockumentary. Think This Is Spinal Tap, but not hilarious. Although a certain dark humor is apparent throughout, Transhuman takes a more serious tone as narrator Heinrich Dowidat guides readers through the story of two corporations racing to upgrade Humans to Posthumans. Along the way Heinrich gets first-hand accounts from the scientists, the suits, and test subjects that were involved in the genetic enhancement projects. Ultimately, Transhuman is a story about people, their ambitions, their hidden agendas, their politics, their spite, and their greed. It’s about capitalism.

Transhuman, just as Jonathan Hickman’s other works, blew my mind. Though beautifully illustrated by J.M. Ringuet, the book also features several of the signature layouts that Hickman’s books are famous for. Just as is the case with The Nightly News and the unfortunately scheduled A Red Mass For Mars, I can’t recommend Transhuman highly enough.

Games

I’ve managed to finish some more games. My Xbox 360 and Playstation 2 have occupied most of my gaming time on the singleplayer front. After finishing Final Fantaxy XII I attempted to do things nice and backwards and move on to Final Fantasy IX. Using an LCD HDTV, however, PSOne games don’t look too hot. FFIX, as well as several other PSOne games I tested, were all plagued by gigantic dots which I think must be blown-up pixels. Pushing that aside until I could acquire an old SDTV, I moved on to Rogue Galaxy for the PS2.

Rogue Galaxy (Playstation 2)

Rogue Galaxy was a mixed bag. I loved the cell-shaded art style, the music and the voice acting. The story was interesting at first, but i felt myself getting fatigued about half way through. Long dungeons with minimal assets and very few story elements sprinkled throughout didn’t do much to keep me invested past Chapter 3 or so.

The inventory management, item/weapon crafting and upgrading systems in Rogue Galaxy are somewhat groundbreaking for a JRPG, though the skills system is ripped straight from Final Fantasy X. I don’t think there was enough emphasis on utilizing the crafting feature, though. I was able to get by without it for the most part. As it was a time consuming, albeit rewarding process, I decided that I just wanted to finish the game if I could.

While the real-time combat is implemented well and makes for fun and interesting battles, I found that the pace of battles was often times bogged down by the frequency and way which items had to be used. With using items being the only way to heal your party during battles, I found myself with battles paused more often than not while trying to keep myself and my party alive. Because of this I ran away from the majority of encounters in the final dungeon, which is obscenely long. My trek took about 45 minutes through a series of copy-and-pasted ramps, tunnels and cliffs. It’s fortunate that the game’s ending sequences were very cool and interesting.

Because of some pretty revolutionary mechanics and spectacular ending events, I didn’t walk away with a completely bad taste in my mouth after 74 hours of Rogue Galaxy. I wouldn’t be opposed to playing a sequel.

Bully: Scholarship Edition (Xbox 360)

Next up I played Bully: Scholarship Edition on the Xbox 360. I bought it before the PC version came out, but honestly, I don’t think I’d have played it on PC anyway. Even though it was developed by the same team that did the 360 version, which received several post-release patches for game-breaking issues, the PC version doesn’t seem to be receiving the same support. They just don’t seem to care. Anyway, I think this game is a known quantity at this point. It’s a T-rated Grand Theft Auto on a much smaller scale, and it does what it sets out to do very well. The Xbox 360 version performs and plays fine once patched. I have only one real complaint: MUSIC CLASS. It requires you to play the beat to simple songs on a drum by pressing LT or RT at specific moments, but they’re completely unresponsive. Single notes work fine as long as you don’t have to push them in quick succession, but the times when you have to hit two notes at once are ridiculous; even if you’re spot-on, it’ll usually register as a miss. LB and RB would have been better choices than analog triggers; the mini-game really needs digital input. It’s because of this I gave up on trying to get 100% completion and stopped at 84% once I finished all of the main missions. As long as you’re cool with possibly being too frustrated to get 100% completion, Bully’s worth playing.

Dark Sector (Xbox 360)

Finally, just last night, I finished Dark Sector. I picked this up for $10 during a sale a couple of months ago. Though I wouldn’t recommend purchasing it for much more than that, I am happy that I played it. Obviously taking some cues from Gears of War, Dark Sector was released in March of ’08 during a more dormant release season. It received fairly good scores of around 73 – 77 from the bigger review sites, but I think a person would be surprised to hear that based on the reputation the game seems to have. Complaints I’ve read seem to boil down to the fact that it incorporated elements of Gears of War, but it isn’t Gears of War. I’m okay with that, and Dark Sector did some things differently anyway.

Early on, during the game’s tutorial, you’re infected by some virus that begins to take over your body and you’re eventually able to manifest a glaive (which isn’t a glaive at all!) that will be your main weapon throughout the game. At first you can just hack at people and throw it at them, but later on you can manipulate its flight, light it on fire, freeze it, or electrify it and pass the effects on to your enemies. Achievements are attached to each of these uses to encourage you to use them, and they’re actually quite attainable. Despite the glaive being really cool, guns still manage to stay useful and interesting. Guns that enemies will drop are usually military-issue and, as such, are programmed to self-destruct after a short amount of time if an infected person is hold them. They’re good for a clip or two and then you discard them. There exists however a black market where you can purchase guns of your own as well as upgrade them with attachments you find along the way. A pistol will be available in your offhand when using the glaive while you carry a rifle on your back.

Unlike the combat, the story in Dark Sector is pretty uninteresting. I felt like they could have fleshed it out a bit more had they not spent time on the multiplayer, which nobody plays, but it’s a fine game regardless. I think it was reviewed and scored fairly, but perhaps not talked about fairly. It’s worth a play through if you can pick it up on-the-cheap.

Comics

This week I also spent some time catching up on comics as I am a few weeks behind. Two mini-series’ by Jonathan Hickman that I’ve mentioned before came to completion just before the year ran out: Transhuman and Pax Romana. Though I haven’t written proper recommendations for these two books yet, you should go back and read some the issues and/or look for trade paperbacks to be coming out early next year. Both Transhuman and Pax Romana deal with some mind-blowing concepts, feature fantastic art by J.M. Ringuet and Hickman, respectively, and are simply testaments to storytelling in comics. A five-page preview of Transhuman #1 as well as the entire first issue of Pax Romana can be found at Jonathan Hickman’s website.

Finally, issue #5 of Air, last week’s comic recommendation, came out this week. You really should be reading that. Just wanted to give it another mention!

Aside from SD gaming on an HDTV (on to FFXII!), I have been doing a little campaigning for Top Cow’s Pilot Season event this year. For those that do not know, for the past several years Top Cow has been running an event called Pilot Season where they bring out a half dozen or so #1 issues of different comics from different creative teams. Once they’re all out, voting is opened for one month and the top two most popular books get turned into a regular series the following year. This year, two of my favorite writers – Jay Faerber and Jonathan Hickman – both have creations in the running. My adoration for Hickman’s work runs deeper, however, so I have been voting every day for his entry, The Core. It’s a Science Fiction comic written by Jonathan Hickman and illustrated by Kenneth Rocafort, though it is clear throughout most of the book that Hickman has had quite a bit of influence over the layouts and that he has even done the art for a few pages himself. We are even blessed with one of Hickman’s patented “dialogue spreads” (“story spreads”? help me decide) that packs half a comic’s worth of conversation and storytelling imagery into two pages without boring or confusing the reader.

I would urge you guys to participate in Pilot Season. It’s a very fun and unique event to have in comics. Buy all the books. At least, buy The Core. Though, if you don’t want to participate by buying the books and simply want to help a brother out by voting for The Core every day, I won’t hold it against you. You can get a list and full synopsis of each book as well as vote for your favorite at the Pilot Season MySpace page. It’s the most fun you’ll have voting this year (oh yeah, I went there).

Jonathan Hickman has completed one mini series so far, however, called The Nightly News. The original 6 issues first shipped between November of 2006 and July of 2007. Unfortunately, I was late to the party and didn’t find out about the book until I visited Hickman’s website, but I immediately put in an order for the trade paperback. It arrived this week.

The Nightly News is what I would describe as a thriller/conspiracy/mystery graphic novel about corporate media and one group’s desire to see it crumble by any means necessary. I have just finished reading for the second time since Wednesday, and The Nightly News is what I wish all comics could be. It’s daring, beautiful, artistically acute, intelligent, honest, and it defies convention. Every page is memorable. There is no filler. I apologize for gushing, but I really couldn’t get through this post without it and to expand on the plot would be to do a disservice to your experience with it.

I cannot recommend The Nightly News enough if you are somebody looking for a breath of fresh air from their comics. Or maybe you just enjoy a good conspiracy story; you won’t be disappointed. Really, it’s worth buying for the artwork alone. Be aware that it is intended for mature readers, however. You can probably find it at your local comic shop. Failing that, it’s currently available from SciFi Genre.

A Red Mass For Mars, specifically, is to be a 4 issue mini series about the end of human civilization. Humanity, to this point, has persevered through global warming, super-viruses, nuclear winter, and being ‘cleansed’ by nanobots. However, Earth now faces an external threat, and only external forces can help to save them. I came across a CBR interview with Hickman that took place in September of last year, and even though I personally went into this book blindly, I think it’s probably worth reading his description of the book:

“[CBR:] I don’t want to keep you from your relaxation any more than is necessary, so let’s get right into it. Introduce “A Red Mass for Mars.”

[Hickman:] Well, the story takes place in one of those post-apocalyptic, “Blade Runner” kind of futures that we all as comic book fans are familiar with. Things are bad and now they’re going to get even worse. I set up all of that so that I can play against type and what normal expectations of a story like this usually are. My other new book, “Pax Romana,” and “Red Mass for Mars” are both books about society. One is a historical science fiction story and the other one is a super hero kind of story, but they’re both about society; one taking a look at it macroscopically and the other microscopically and “Red Mass” is the latter. Ultimately, it’s about if one man could actually affect the future of society, what would that mean and what if he chose not to do it? What if he had demands? What if he just wasn’t in the mood? It kind of spirals out of control from there.”

Since I am recommending this so long after the book has been on shelves – almost a full two weeks – I am afraid that you may not be able to find a copy at your local comic shop. Should that be the case, you may be able to find it at some online comic retailers such as Sci-Fi Genre (where I get my comics!), MyComicShop.com or even eBay. Check out issues #1 and #2 of Transhuman while you’re at it; you won’t regret either purchase.