I like videogames. Not to say I'm obsessed with them though. That would be my brother. Collectively, my brothers and I have owned the Intellivision, The Atari 2600, The Sega Master System, The original Nintendo, The Sega Genesis, The Turbograffix 16, The Atari Jaguar, the 3DO, the Nintendo 64, The Gamecube, The Playstation, The Playstation 2, Xbox, Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and all of the portables. But I'm not obsessed. I only recently started playing games again when my brother bought me an Xbox for Christmas a few years ago and then gave me his
Xbox 360. I'm currently hooked on Fight Night Round 3. My point is I don't know a whole lot about games at the moment. And their is a whole subculture that I'm not aware of. On to the review.
Plus One Comics, created by Lance Icarus, features characters such as Dizzy, Lo, Chip, Ayame, and I do believe Lance himself playing lots of videogames and using lots of gamespeak. The comic updates Mondays.
I have to be honest here and say the art is at the bottom rung of the ladder of comics I've reviewed thus far. Fairly generic black and white art attempting an anime look with no real discernible style of its own. And Backgrounds? We don't need no steenking backgrounds! The characters obviously live in an empty void. Maybe Lance should stick to the writing and feel around for an artist to help out. To be fair a
couple of comics did have some promise that show he could do better if he would only take his time and practice, but a LOT of work is needed to bring this up to even an average level.
Okay, this is where the beginning of the review comes into play. I've played my share of games, but the constant Halo techspeak and references to all of these newfangled games is lost on this old codger. Reading Plus One had me wishing for Star Trek technojargon, it was that bad. Quite a few times, with the mix of the art and writing, I had no idea what was going on in the panels. A better panel breakdown and a clearer idea of what's being talked about is in need here. Something else I found
annoying was the plague of webcomics, the "Sorry, played Halo too much and couldn't update this week" or "Schoolwork overwhelmed me" syndrome, used a few times where there should be comics. If you can't find the time to keep up a decent schedule, just don't put anything up at all. I don't need excuses.
Plus One Comics is clearly for hardcore gamers only. And I mean hardcore as in don't mind mediocre art and confusing writing. The good thing is that with it being in this stage, there is TONS of room for improvement, which I'm sure will happen eventually. Most comics start off a bit shaky and get better with time. I noticed that people leave a lot of positive comments on the tagboard, so Lance must be doing something right. I can't recommend it, but if you want to see for yourself, go for it. Halo fans looking for a fix probably aren't that picky.
I give Plus One Comics...
(for needing an extreme makeover, Halo Edition)
No comments:
Post a Comment