From Shadiversity’s YouTube description: With the recent Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker teaser trailer released at D23 we see an evil dark side Rey and a new folding double-bladed red lightsaber and I’m going to explain why it makes no sense at all from a practical perspective.
Taken from MauLer’s YouTube description: Well, it didn’t surprise any of us but we are still sad about being farted on I would say.
I did not expect to enjoy this game as much as I did. I mean, let’s be honest, most Atari 2600 games are pretty crappy by 2019 standards. Mainly because they are so primitive and simplistic that it isn’t immediately clear what you need to do in a game.
But for the era, this is pretty solid.
It’s also a bit advanced, as it has two stages to it.
The first stage sees you, in the Millennium Falcon, battle it out with TIE Fighters and Imperial Shuttles while waiting for a hole to appear in an energy shield.
The second stage sees you come face to face with the second Death Star, where you have to dodge the Death Star laser and other Imperial attacks while blasting your way through sections of the Death Star until you hit the reactor core.
Once you do these two things, you watch the second Death Star explode and have to dodge the debris.
After that, the game just cycles through, round after round with each a bit more difficult than the rest.
Like almost every classic Atari game, you work you way through a scenario and then it’s just wash, rinse, repeat. That’s not going to hold a modern gamer’s attention for very long but at least this game gives you a tiered scenario instead of just one repetitive thing.
In the end, I can’t knock the game and I had fun with it for twenty minutes or so.
Rating: 7.5/10
Pairs well with: other Atari shooters.
Published: November 18th, 2015
Written by: Greg Rucka, Greg Pak
Art by: Marco Checchetto, Chris Sprouse
Based on: Star Wars by George Lucas
Marvel Comics, 123 Pages
Review:
This came out just before the first Disney Star Wars movie, The Force Awakens. It was meant to bridge the gap between Return of the Jedi and the new sequel trilogy.
It’s a complete failure of storytelling though.
Does it bridge the gap? Sort of, I guess.
The story follows the events of the Battle of Endor but focuses on Poe Dameron’s mom, a character we’ve never heard of but is suddenly a hero known by everyone, even Luke Skywalker who basically bows before her presence, alerting us of a character propped up as an infallible Mary Sue. And I hate having to go there but Mama Dameron is the exact definition of a Mary Sue character.
Then she goes on an adventure with Leia to Naboo and they meet the current Queen of Naboo. Then there are only three starfighters, so these three women, two of which are fucking royalty, take off into space to fight a fleet of Imperial Star Destroyers all on their own.
This is heavy handed girl power nonsense and a blight on Star Wars, which is why I don’t consider this Disney bullshit to be canon. It’s not that having strong, heroic women is the problem, it’s that they’re thrown into situations that are nonsensical and pointless other than making some sort of social or political statement.
Frankly, Star Wars: Shattered Empire is a prime example of why modern Marvel has been so widely criticized. I like to give each comic a fair shot and look at them as individual bodies of work judged on their own merits but this comic makes it pretty damn clear why the mainstream comic book industry is shrinking and has nealt lost its entire audience.
This was absolute horseshit.
But the art was really good, to be fair.
Rating: 2.5/10
Pairs well with: I guess the other recent Marvel Star Wars comics and the Disney sequel films.
Taken from MauLer’s YouTube description: Literally what the title says, maybe this will become a series, I’m just a bit mad that’s all…
Published: May 29th, 2019
Written by: various
Art by: various
Based on: Star Wars by George Lucas
Marvel Comics, 48 Pages
Review:
I picked this up on a whim. The main reason was that I used to love reading the old Marvel Star Wars comics when I was a kid, even if they were a bit weird when compared to the rest of the canon Expanded Universe stuff that would come later. And frankly, the EU is still my canon regardless of what Disney says. But the old school pre-Dark Horse era of the comics were a very mixed and strange bag.
This comic really is no different, as far as being strange… as well as being a bit hokey and wonky.
It’s the 108th issue, as the original run ended at 107. But despite its efforts, it doesn’t quite feel the same. It’s kind of like when a modern filmmaker makes a slasher film that is an homage to the ’80s but no matter how hard they try, they just can’t get the tone or the vibe right.
At its best, this is an amusing homage but that’s all it is.
Not to say that this wasn’t a somewhat decent read for its 48 pages, all of which were put together by multiple creative teams. But this could have been a hell of a lot cooler if it didn’t read like a half assed anthology thrown together for a quick buck by artists and writers that had to find time to squeeze in their contributions between deadlines on their regular comic projects.
In the end, I just wish that Star Wars comics were in more capable hands than what Marvel is able to provide. To them, Star Wars seems like a guaranteed success that doesn’t require much effort on their part.
Rating: 5.5/10
Pairs well with: the old school, original Marvel run on Star Wars, which this is a continuation of.
Published: 1995
Written by: Tom Veitch
Art by: Jim Baikie, Dave Dorman (covers)
Based on: Star Wars by George Lucas
Dark Horse Books, 54 Pages
Review:
Well, this is the final part in the Dark Empire trilogy.
Sadly, this is also the weakest installment. I think that the reason why this doesn’t live up to the greatness of the two previous story arcs is because this one was limited to two issues, as opposed to six like Dark Empire I and II.
This does wrap the trilogy up, though. It gives a pretty definitive conclusion to the resurrected Emperor Palpatine story, even if his fate here is bizarre and underwhelming.
Tom Veitch did a good job with the trilogy as a whole but this final chapter kind of felt like it was just thrown together to end the whole thing. It also read like this script was written rather abruptly just to get the final chapter of this trilogy out of the way.
It lacks the personality and depth of the previous ones and it relies heavily on the reader to have read those. So if you picked this up and it was your first Dark Horse Star Wars comic, you probably would have been confused by it. Granted, a resurrected Emperor should inspire the reader to go back and get the previous story arcs.
The art this time was done by Jim Baikie but it matches the previous two Dark Empire books pretty well.
Rating: 6.25/10
Pairs well with: Other Dark Horse Star Wars comics from the same era: the two other Dark Empire Trilogy stories, as well as The Shadows of the Empire Trilogy, The Thrawn Trilogy and the Rogue Squadron series.
