Cannular Infection

Time to review the First season of Darker Than Black. Yes, there is a second going on right now, and I'll review that separately later

Darker than Black is an oddly titled little scifi show that delves into a very bizzarre world. A world where stuff has gone awry. Really, a good analog for how awry would be it's a Japanese take on Roadside Picnic/S.T.A.L.K.E.R Shadow of Chernobyl, sorta. There's differences, but the mechanics of it all are similar enough . It's a bizzarre,depressing world where two giant anomalies appear in the world, one in South America(Heaven's Gate), one in Tokyo(Hell's Gate). When these anomalies appeared, much like in Roadside picnic, Odd things started to happen. The sky changed forever, a bizarre radiation emitted from the center of these anomalies, and seemingly at random, people were given supernatural powers at the cost of their conscience and their sense of emotion. These people, known as contractors are rapidly snapped up by governments all over the world and.. ah hell I'm not going to write down the entire bloody preface. You've got enough of the background story there, and it gets delved into during the show.
Anyway, the show's plot follows on particular power-owner (called contractors in the canon), Hei, also known as BK-301. Following him, and his exploits, you begin to uncover the bigger picture about what's really going on in the world, and more importantly, what's going on inside him.

I must admit this show isn't a very uplifting show. If you're wanting something light, this isn't it. You'll get a lighthearted joke now and then, but that's it. It's both deep and philosophical, and could easily give Shirow Masamune a run for his money. That being said, it's also very action oriented and in this regard, it delivers in spades. I'm rather amazed at the depth and diversity thats portrayed in just 26 episodes of 21 minutes each, and how very little the story grates when it switches between tracks. The shows canon just flows, and it's a great ride to be on.

The artwork, all done by Bones, is pretty delicious. The backgrounds and settings are mostly hand painted and full of detail. The character designs are well planned and executed, a real grounding in reality is felt about them, and it's not at all inconsistant across the entirety of the art.Short story, the art is great.

Sound in the show is excellent, showing excellent Foley mixing all over the joint. Voice acting is well cast, and all the voice actors seem into their roles enough that the tone is believable(NB, can't speak for the English dub, haven't heard it yet). The music, particularly the OP and ED tunes are all excellently chosen and mastered in. Particularly good choice getting Abingdon Boys School to throw a tune in, it really helps add to the show overall.

If I were forced at gunpoint to choose a negative point, I'd probably make a comment about point a gun at me being extreme, and then I'd say probably some of the humorous bits felt a bit forced and jarring, completely at odds with the rest of the show, but that's Japanese humor for you.

Overall though, Great watch. I'd reccommend this to anyon e with a.. I'd recommend this to anyone. It's that good.

Interesting point - I largely missed this show when it was actively airing due to the massive amounts of coverage Gurren Lagann and Spice and Wolf ( the shows that were airing directly opposite it in timeslots) were getting. DtB sort of faded into the background and relinquished itself to being a sleeper hit.
I though this review'd be longer, apparently it's not. Note to self- re-acquaint myself with the oxford dictionary.
Toadie, out.

Serious Gaming, and the Box art that inspired

Gather round internetlings of the weird and wacky varieties, lemme tell you a story about how I became a hardcore Tactical Shooter fan.

It all began in the heady days of... the late 90s, back when DirectX versions could be counted on one hand, and I was a wee lad in the land of penniless dreams.

At one point in time there was a Computer store in my home suburb, a little place called Doors Multimedia (Did anyone see what they did there?) used to be THE place to hang out in my neighborhood or suburb, and were a nerd. Truly the dog's bollocks they were, at least for a few years (my formative computing years anyway). They stocked EVERYTHING, and they even had Playstation, N64 and Dreamcast demo booths. Keen-as. Amongst the stock though, was probably the most varied collection of PC games I've come across yet. They literally stocked everything. from stuff that ran on 486s to stuff that needed the then-top-of-the-line Pentium Processors and 3DFX technologies. All kinds of genres, all kinds of awesome.

I used to literally spend hours after school and late night shopping nights (the ones where we didn't go into Midland) hanging around that place, gawking and handling all the AWESOME boxes. Now there were some truly awesome looking boxes for PC games, I'm not kidding. Evocative, visceral, sometimes purely just shiny. It was like candy land for me, feasting my eyes over the fronts and backs over games I could never afford or play on my 286, but that was fine, because all I needed was the boxes to let me imagine the games when I left. Some of the most notable ones, the ones that I never forget, were the covers specifically of The Doom Collection (including Final Doom), The East-vs-West Pack (Duke3D and Shadow Warrior), The Duke Nukem Kill-a-ton collection (which was the AWESOME shiny bronze box that screamed BUY ME FOR LIFE AND PUT ME NEXT TO YOUR CRICKET TROPHY), And the Box for Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six.

Now the first 3 obviously I loved for they beautiful hand painted art, slick graphic design thrown in to boot, and iconic imagery. The last one baffled me for a long time though, I never understood at all why I liked it.

Linked Below is the box as I first saw it. Imagine it on a box of A4-ish size, a bit bigger.

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six

Now though i understand it. It was Striking, and needed very very little trickery to achieve that. Just a photo, cropped and tinted, and BOLD text. It certainly didn't stop and take it's breath after that either, the entire box was pure thrilling class act. A fold out front, with similar styled designs on the inside,complete with the game's distinct (at the time) photo-realistic imagery, by cripes it's a gripping thing to behold. This WAS the Techno-thriller novel amongst the teen drama novellas, in almost every sense. Even making Flight Sims like Apache vs Havoc or Falcon 4.0 (which actually came with a 800 page Cut down Falcon Operations Manual) ook like weedy boxes.

I never did pick up the game, and year after year I skirted past boxes with Tom Clancy, and vivid Tacsim and Milsim boxes of one variety or another. Another set of boxes that never failed to draw my eyes were the Delta force games by Novalogic. Using similar aesthetics, again, simple design that just wanted me to buy and play them.

It wasn't until I was was well into my teens, and consequently, WITH money, that I did start purchasing these games (by first going back and getting the ones I missed). By now, my taste in games had matured significant, and I was beginning to savor for something more than just running around corridors blasting crap. This was a time when I started to get REALLY into deeper shooters, so games like Rainbow Six were fine now (and perpetuating my long-begrudging deep-held fascination with the 20th century, and now it's military aspects, to my own detraction at school).

So, after picking up the Main games in the series-es I loved ( Rainbow Six 1/2/Raven Shield, etc ) I was piqued to learn that another Rainbow Six game was in the works, and by all early reports was going to be an even more intense and deeper game. HOORAH, I thought. Then Lockdown came out, and between and my old chum Jim Lad, we were quite... disappointed. Even the Cover art (liked below) was a let down. I mean sure it was still striking, but nowhere to the extent the early boxes, or even the Raven Shield art. dismal Gameplay aside, the game's promotional material and box-art was a complete mess. Linking it below for you all to behold.

You can see that someone along the line here was slowly trying to change art style not only of the promo and box stuff, but the way the art ingame was done, moving away from the pure photorealism standpoint and towards a "styled" look. And from there, you can actually WATCH the art and tactical elements of the game fall off as the series continues forward.

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six:Vegas

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six:Vegas 2

As I said, styled look. I'm not saying it's bad, but it certainly isn't the clearcut striking images I idolized before I had money to do anything about it. I guess it's a bit disappointing that Rainbow Six will likely be forgotten to the gaming world in it's original form, and remembered as the glitzy modern-day-styled Gears of War that Vegas 1 and 2 are.

Not to me though, these boxes evoked me to be come a real tac shooter nut, and there are hundreds around the world that likely had similar experiences. Tactical shooter fans are small in numbers, but high in their passion for their particular game style.

I think thats what ultimately made me want to do For Hire. I wanted to do a tactical shooter because I think sadly that the Tactical Shooter is about to go way of the tradition adventure game, but I wanted to give it a proper roaring swansong. Something to really stick up there on the wall and knock Vegas 1 and 2 off everyone's recollections.

Anyway, Here's to the boxart that dragged me covertly into the shadows and scintillated my imagination. You will be remembered.

PS:If you are like me, and have a link to the tacshooter genre as much as I do, and feel you could contribute something, anything to the FH project, feel free to drop me a line, because I really will take nearly all the help I can get at the moment(toadie2k AT gmail DOT com).

AS AN ADDED BONUS, I put up a small album of the art, just so you can have a peruse and see the transitions it went through, and which exact point the Main developers switched from Red Storm to Ubisoft Montreal.

Gallery is here

Enjoy

Toadie, out.

PS: apologies for the loooong silence, been writing this on and off for like 3 months. Usual Rantnoise resuming ASAP.