Orcs and Elves

Picked up a used DS title from EBGames this week. I seem to remember reading a good review of it sometime ago. And it was on for about $2.65 so what the hell..

It turns out the game has iD and EA attached to it. And started out as a cell phone game several years ago. It's based on something called the Doom RPG engine, which I had never heard of.

The game as it stands seems to be (In my memory)a throwback to the old SSI Eye of the Beholder games I played back in the early 90s. A corridor dungeon crawler. You move from space to space, and fight monsters with a variety of items and magic.

The game is quite fun, and I wish there had been a handful of sequels. Apparently there was at least one, but never made it over to the DS. You don't get to pick or choose anything about yourself. So much more could have been done with a few classes, and races tossed in. And expanded random dungeons and loot.

When I first played it, it reminded me very much of Major Mudd. Back in the day I played a lot of that game, with a graphical UI over top of it. Not too mention even further back with Bards Tale on the C64. Combat is turn based which is great, all the real time twitch based stuff that is so prevalent these days isn't all it's cracked up to be.

I've been looking to see if there are any more 'Retro' fantasy, dungeon crawlers. But I haven't had a whole lot of luck. So, I have been playing O&E a little slower now so I don't finish too quickly.

4 out of 5 Stars
of Retro fun

Green Lantern The Series

I also watched the first episode of the new Green Lantern series. It was pretty good. It's too bad that with the budget they had for the live action movie they couldn't so so well. Or maybe the animation dept. should have got the live action budget and we could have had possibly 15 seasons or something of the animated series.

It looks to be all CG, which when I saw previews I was kinda worried about. But in motion it looks great. Voices were well done, and they seem to have something interesting going on.

I am pretty much in no way familiar with Green Lantern lore let alone I was Marvel and Image growing up. So the whole thing with the different Lanterns is all new to me. I only heard about that vaguely from other people when I saw the live action movie. So having Red Lanterns wasn't a surprise, but I don't know much about them or the other colors.

But after seeing this 45 min episode I can't wait to see more. Very much looking forward to it.

Thundercats 2011

Been watching the new series based on the old 80s cartoon, Thundercats. I can say that I don't recall much of the original. And I've only seen a handful of them in recent months on Teletoon Retro. And I'm not too impressed with it at all.

But the new series is pretty good. The animation is fantastic, voice acting is good. And story wise it's ok. About what you would expect for this type of show for the audience their aiming for. I find that Star Wars The Clone Wars has better stories. But that could be just that the Science Fiction / Fantasy of Star Wars appeals to me more.

So far the new series is up to 11 episodes and hopefully get's picked up for a new season. I know I liked GI Joe Renegades and it has apparently been cancelled.

So don't let any possible negative thoughts of the original stop you from checking out the new series.