The Mandalorian Question - Good, Bad, or Ugly?

     The Mandalorians are the Klingons of the Star Wars universe. This is a comparison bound to infuriate Fandalorians (their name for them) and Klingon lovers both. Still, it's an apt description in my opinion. The Mandalorians are the most warlike and honor-obsessed people in the Star Wars universe.

    The first mention of the Mandalorians was a reference to Boba Fett's armor on his action figure. His armor belonged to a race of warriors defeated by the Jedi during the Clone Wars. Later, the Mandalorians would be expanded on in Marvel comics.

    We wouldn't get a real look at what the Mandalorians were like, however, until Tales of the Jedi. There, we saw their king, Mandalore, teamed up with Dark Jedi to try and take down the Republic. The Mandalorians were mean, cool-looking, and dangerous. Sadly, they were also little more than elite cannon fodder for the Sith.

Why is it the bad guys always have the best costumes?

     Knights of the Old Republic 1 & 2 gave us a big view of their culture with the character of Canderous Ordo (later Mandalore). Canderous described a race which didn't believe in civilians and considered war to be the highest pursuit any race could seek.

Bioware deserves credit for the visual story-telling of making Mandalorians look like beer-swilling bikers who could actually throw down.

    For a brief time, Jango Fett was said to be the last Mandalorian with his death on Geonosis signalling the end of their culture.

I suppose this qualifies as defeated by the Jedi during the Clone Wars. I just didn't think it would be in the first ten minutes.

    It wasn't until Karen Traviss, though, we got works from the perspective of the Mandalorians. Karen Traviss created a language for the race, expanded on their values, and created our first fully detailed picture of the species. Karen Traviss made Mandalorians a race obsessed with family every bit as much as warfare.

    While I never interacted with her enough to be called her friend, I had more than a few conversations with Karen Traviss. She's a nice woman with a number of fascinating thoughts about religion and warfare. I was there when TheForce.net forums erupted into one of its most shameful flame wars over whether or not her figures given in the short-story, Odds, were accurate. When Karen Traviss stopped participating in online conversations, I considered it a loss to fandom.

    Still, it wasn't until The Clone Wars episode The Mandalore Plot,which introduced the Duchess Satine, that Karen Traviss left Star Wars. The Mandalore Plot is widely believed to be one of the biggest continuity snarls in the history of Star Wars, retconning whole swaths of expanded universe history. It also committed the ultimate sin according to Fandalorians. An act so terrible, so heinous, so vile, that it scarcely can be mentioned.

    It made the Mandalorians pacifists.

Not what fans were expecting when they were told they'd be visiting Mandalore.

    Fan reaction to the New Mandalorians, as they were called, was decidedly luke-warm. The kindest feeling towards them was that they were a short period of Mandalorian history which was followed by their resumption of their warlike ways. According to the Expanded Universe, Boba Fett (having escaped his grizzly fate in Return of the Jedi), eventually takes them over as Mandalore and gets a happily ever after. You know, despite the fact he's the guy who lead to Han being tortured and imprisoned in carbonite.

    The Clone Wars didn't stop there, though. The pacifist Mandalorians were contrasted against Death Watch, a brutal gang of killers which had appeared in Star Wars fiction before. Death Watch was a war-obsessed bunch of conquerors who thought the pacifist Mandalorians were a disgrace to their race. They were all about resuming the war against the Republic, wearing battle-armor, and the honor of being a killer. In short, they were everything that your typical fan thought a Mandalorian should be.

Real Mandalorians! They have armor...and kill people!

    Oh yes, there's also the fact Death Watch seems partially based on the Nazi party. Their haircuts, the fact they're all blond and blue-eyed Aryans, and their arguments being phrased in such a way as to make call-backs to Hitler's idealogy. It's quite possibly the greatest middle finger to a section of fandom since Alan Moore made his comments on Rorshach being a murderous lunatic.

    I am no great fan of Duchess Satine, who is little more than an adult Padme. Worse, I think the New Mandalorians come off as warmed-over Naboo who are, themselves, nothing more than warmed-over Alderaanians. It's one thing to have a planet of royalists who are Pro-Democracy and Peace. It's another thing entirely to have three of them as the only meaningful non-corrupt politicians in the Old Republic.

    Still, I've got to say that I actually think George Lucas may have been onto something in creating the New Mandalorians. Say what you will about George but he's always been consistent that admiring the bad guys is something he doesn't like, even when it's personally profitable to him. He canceled the sequel to TIE Fighter, went out of his way to hammer home Anakin Skywalker was a pathetic human being, and probably made Boba Fett die in the humiliating way he did in order to counteract his growing fandom.

    I have no doubt it was intentional for George Lucas to portray the Death Watch as the inheritors of the real Mandalorian legacy. While one might suggest it's hypocritical for George Lucas to be pro-peace in a franchise called Star Wars, there's something to be said for being one of the few voices in media to pretend war isn't a glamorous thing by itself. People die, good people, all the time in conflicts. Even the battle against the Nazis, Imperial Japanese, and Italian fascists resulted in countless innocent deaths at the Allies' hands.

    The Mandalorians, at heart, have always been about glorifying war. Jedi have always been their direct opposite, in that respect. Yoda commented that wars do not make one great and a major theme of the original trilogy was the war ultimately won by an act of love between a father and son. George Lucas also isn't the first person to highlight the flaws of the Mandalorian's belief system, either.

    "I'm not a warrior, I'm a soldier. There's a difference. Warriors attack and conquer, they prey on the weak. Soldiers defend and protect the innocent—usually from warriors."
    ―Carth Onasi to Canderous Ordo.

    Knights of the Old Republic contained a substantial subplot detailing Canderous Ordo being forced to confront the fact the Mandalorians weren't nearly as honorable or glorious as he thought. The moment the Mandalorians were defeated in so-called honorable combat by Revan, the majority of them turned to common banditry and murder. They were bullies, rather than heroes, and preferred to prey on the weak. Canderous wasn't alone in buying into the warrior's code of seeking glorious battle for its own sake but he was in the decided minority.

    This subplot is continued in Knights of the Old Republic 2 where we find out Canderous has assumed the position of Mandalore. Revan has charged Mandalore with the position of defending the galaxy, most specifically the Republic, from the Sith Empire. Sadly, by the time of The Old Republic, the Pro-Sith faction has defeated the Republic loyalists and we know the Sith and Mandalorians won't fight against one another until the New Sith Wars (stuff that is probably incomprehensible to you unless you're a die-hard Star Wars fanboy like me).

    It becomes an interesting narrative that the Mandalorians obsessed with war and conquest will invariably find themselves allying with the Dark Lords of the Sith. The Sith make no pretensions there's anything honorable about what they do but war is of the Dark Side, at least as George Lucas sees it. You can defend and protect as a Jedi Knight but seeking to kill is always something done as a last resort. The only way the Mandalorians managed to escape this, even for a time, is by becoming pacifists.

     While I have no doubt that any future installments of the Mandalorians will feature them in their armor, fighting Jedi and genuinely being a nuisance, I hope fans don't completely forget about Satine's Mandalorians. It's okay to like the bad guys. I'm a huge fan of the Sith and the Empire, but I think it's important for reminders that glorifying battle runs the risk of forgetting that every conflict should be fought for something and only after every other avenue has been tried. I'd also love to see a Satine-influenced Mandalorian who is willing to fight...for peace.

The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross review

    This is going to be an extremely biased review. Why? Because I actually wrote a spy-themed Cthulhu novel and am currently editing it. The fact this is something similar, though a completely different theme and style, makes me favorably disposed.

    The Atrocity Archives is set in a world superficially similar to H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos, only set in the present day and protected by a series of government conspiracies. These government conspiracies are not glamorous martini-drinking S.H.I.E.L.D analogues or even sinister X-files-esque conspiracies. No, instead, they're a bunch of bored civil servants smothered by bureaucracy.

    The protagonist, Bob Howard, is more or less the opposite of your typical spy novel hero. He's neither suave, debonaire, or particularly dangerous. He is, however, frighteningly good at mathmatics.

    Math is the basis of magic in the setting and the book is littered with complicated mathematical models which might or might not be accurate but blow my mind. Bob manages a comfortable everyman sort of hero and you believe in him as he struggles to be a field agent.

    Indeed, what I like about Bob most is his unflappability in the face of mind-numbing horrors but complete bewilderment by mundane problems. Dealing with Cthulhu and Yog-Sothoth is Bob's job but the accounting department is beyond him. There's something to be said for being able to adjust to anything but your fellow humans and their trivialities.

    Another thing I like is the book goes in unexpected directions. Without spoiling, the book touches on everything from Pulps to Norse mythology to what appears to sitcom romance without skipping a beat. There's few other places you can find Nazi plots, critiques on British CCTV spying, gorgons, and frost giants. The Atrocity Archives is divided into two novellas with separate stories and both are highly entertaining.

    My favorite character from the book other than Bob is probably Dominique "Mo" O'Brien who is, ostensibly, the protagonist's love interest. Truth be told, I'm not sure if they're together or not since Bob is a bit of a nerd but certainly more effective with the ladies than most. Also, compared to some of his coworkers, he's positively James Bond. Whatever the case, she transcends this role in several places and is arguably a more interesting character.

     I think the best element in the book, however, is not a character at all. The Laundry, the codename for the British department which deals with the supernatural, is an amazing creation. It manages to combine dull tedious bureaucracy, Lovecraft's abomination, magic, SIS, and pure insanity into one coherent whole. You could imagine working for the Laundry and it would either be deeply fulfilling or horrible beyond imagination.

    In conclusion, The Atrocity Archives amuses me to no end. I am definitely going to check out the rest of the series and I recommend other people do the same. Just note that, occasionally, the technobabble gets a bit insufferable (especially about mathematics).

8/10

Buy at Amazon.com

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic: War review

    Zayne Carrick is my second favorite Jedi Knight. If you haven't heard of him, he's not in the movies or even books. Instead, Zayne Carrick is the star of a comic book based of a video game he's not even the star of.

    Ouch.

    These extremely humble beginnings are appropriate for Zayne, however, because he's the antithesis of your usual Star Wars hero. Not because he's gritty, dark, or angsty. No, in fact, he is a return to the kind of goofy Farm Boy nobility that went out of style circa mid-90s. Zayne is a gentle, kind, and somewhat silly soul who is lacking the kind of earth-quaking force powers we've come to expect from our protagonists.

    Zayne Carrick doesn't need to be a redeemed Sith Lord, an edgy antihero, or even a Jedi Knight raised from birth. He's just a guy who wants to do good in the galaxy and flunked out of Force training (under extremely unpleasant circumstances). For fifty issues, fans followed the adventures of Zayne Carrick during the Pre-Knights of the Old Republic video game timeline and witnessed him trying to do good despite constant temptations to be the bad guy.

    The cancellation of Knights of the Old Republic is one of my least favorite moments in comics. So when I heard they were going to revive the series I was very excited, less so when I found out life would be taking me away from the comic book shop for almost a year. Oh well, I finally got my hands on the trade and just finished it moments ago. Knights of the Old Republic: War is a five-issue self-contained story containing the next chapter of Zayne Carrick's story.

    War is an interesting title for a Zayne Carrick story because the character is a pacifist. In fact, really, I'm not sure if he's ever deliberately killed anyone. Accidents have a way of disposing of Zayne's enemies and he's even further than Luke Skywalker along the peaceful spectrum. The comic book surprised me by showing this is the central conflict of Zayne Carrick. He hates war, has no interest in fighting war, but is drafted into the Republic's forces.

    The comic book series also introduces the Mandalorian Knights. This is a concept that's tailor made for abuse, combining two of the most beloved icons in Star Wars. John Jackson Miller nicely avoids this sort of fanboyism by showing how such a union turned out to be a giant cluster****. The Mandalorians don't trust Jedi sorcery and the converted Jedi Knights adopt viewpoints that don't really mesh with the culture. I love Mandalorians but consider their philosophy horrifying so watching this failure of an idea self-destruct is wonderfully entertaining.

    I also appreciated Zayne Carrick dealing with one of the unspoken elements of the Old Republic that is consistently portrayed but rarely commented on--the rampant nepotism. The Old Republic's senators pass down their seats and privileges to their children while the Navy has ruling families stretching back thousands of years.

    Here, Zayne is forced to deal with a military officer who has no credentials whatsoever but a prominent family willing to pull favors for him. Given his past history with Lucien Draay, the Jedi version, it's fascinating to watch Zayne deal with a man he genuinely dislikes.

    I question the continuity of one element; the statement the Old Republic didn't have an army but only made use of planetary militias. This is something that makes sense in the 1000 year period before The Phantom Menace but is strange to see in the Revan era. Given we see the Old Republic make use of armies in, well, Star Wars: The Old Republic, it seems a little strange. Oh well, it was just a little hiccup that didn't ruin my enjoyment of things.

    If there's one thing I didn't like about the book, it's the general lack of Zayne's supporting cast. Jarael and Griff are two characters every bit as important as Zayne in terms of making the Knights of the Old Republic comic formula work. Still, this is a very personal story about Zayne's morality and their absence doesn't hurt the book too much. I just hope we get to see more of them in the future.

    The ending of the book is something that I am curious about since the future of the Old Republic era is filled with darkness. Zayne Carrick is capable of finding humanity in the Mandalorians and others but the future of his adventures is the Sith. In the face of the Dark Side, pacifism isn't really going to do much good (though Darth Vader shows only the Emperor is beyond redemption). It might be an interesting story to see Zayne Carrick finally decide he has to kill someone to protect others.

    I'm looking forward to it.

9/10

Why Luke Skywalker is still relevant

    This is going to be an odd essay, mostly related to the fact I've been feeling particularly Star Wars-ish lately. It's also possibly an essay that's too late to much much difference in the grand scheme of things. Recently, Del Ray announced Star Wars: Crucible, which will be the last hurrah of the Big Three (Luke, Han, and Leia).

    This isn't something I necessarily oppose because I think Luke Skywalker deserves a chance at peace and happiness in his retirement. Also, I think any retirement is going to be about ten minutes as authors won't be able to resist using the Jedi Knights' Grandmaster.

    However, I feel the need to state something that's been bothering me for some time. Basically, it's the fact that Luke Skywalker has been increasingly marginalized as not only a figure within the Star Wars Expanded Universe but also as an inspiration for new characters. We've got countless knock-offs of Boba Fett, Han Solo, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Darth Vader but you rarely see characters inspired by Luke. I can only think of Jaden Korr, Corran Horn, and Zayne Carrick.

    I think part of this is the fact that idealism is a hard sell for many authors. Whenever someone wants to make Star Wars more relevant, they usually dip into the grim and gritty. The problem is that Warhammer 40K has already mastered darkness and Star Wars is never going to be as good at it.

    Troy Denning is a particular offender here, even though I love his work in the Forgotten Realms and have preferred him to several other Star Wars authors. If you would describe Luke Skywalker, would you use the words "ruthless chessmaster" and "brooding antihero who makes the hard decisions"? If you look at the text and wonder what the hell I'm talking about, you may feel like I did reading Troy's take on Luke.

    It's a bit like the black and white costume mullet-sporting Superman who appeared in The Death of Superman grand-finale (spoiler: he comes back).

Does Superman have rocket boots?

    There's just something wrong with this picture and you can't quite put it into words. Luke Skywalker has had a similar issue with recent covers, The Swarm War one emphasizing what's gone wrong with the character.

Because, yeah, when I think of Luke Skywalker I think of force-lightning and Sith robes.

    It's been awhile since The Swarm War and Luke's characterization has continued to remain somewhat off-kilter. I won't spoil them for people who haven't read Legacy of the Force or Fate of the Jedi but they mostly revolve around Luke's willingness to get his hands dirty to make sure events play out. I'm not saying those characters don't have a place in Star Wars but they don't really fit what I want from the Son of Skywalker.

    Fixing Luke Skywalker's characterization isn't really the point I'm trying to make, though. Star Wars has moved beyond the original trilogy and become something much bigger. There's the Knights of the Old Republic timeline, The Clone Wars timeline, and even stuff being done at the very beginning of the Jedi Knighthood. Instead, this is an essay to say that the kind of hero Luke represents still has a place in the Star Wars galaxy.

Sadly, he has a point. The Jedi get treated as plague-bearing rats in the Expanded Universe.

    The distillation of my problem with the current Star Wars Expanded Universe is exemplified by the character of Cade Skywalker, Luke Skywalker's great-grandson. Cade Skywalker is the Star Wars version of the nineties anti-hero which created the Dark Age of Comics (along with rampant comic book speculation).

    He's a drug-using, foul-mouthed, womanizing (which I don't object to save for the way he treats women), ultra-violent all-round scumbag. The premise of Star Wars: Legacy is that Cade Skywalker, due to his superior genes, is the only one who can defeat the Dark Lord of the Sith.

Cade used to be a guitarist for the Star Wars version of the Sex Pistols.

    It may surprise you that I actually liked Star Wars: Legacy. There was just the irony that I loved everything about it but the protagonist. It wasn't just that Luke Skywalker's only surviving descendants all chose to turn their back on the Jedi way, it's tragic but stuff happens, it was the fact the story insisted it all fell to Cade Skywalker. In real life, we turned against the idea that "special blood" was important awhile ago. Even in Star Wars where the Force has a genetic element, Obi-Wan and Han manage to prove you don't need to related to the Chosen One to show you're a hero.

    Legacy started me questioning whether creators thought fans only cared about lightsabers and telekinesis. I would rather have had someone unrelated to Luke Skywalker who shared his ideology a Jedi Knight should be compassionate, forgiving, and noble than someone who just happens to share his genetic code.

     Sadly, there are a staggering number of renegade Jedi Knight protagonists and only a few similar to Luke. When Jedi Knights do appear in comics, they're often based on the Prequel version - stuffy and kind of obnoxious. Cade's story was entertaining, in small doses, but his Linkin Park-listening Emo antics made me wish Luke would come back from the dead and show his descendant how it was done. Which is the point of Legacy, I should point out, that Cade is the wrong man for the wrong time.

    That doesn't change the fact I think we could use a bit more idealism in Star Wars. We live in a time where there's a lot of uncertainty (not that there's never been a time when there isn't) both economically and socially. With the Clone Wars starring Anakin Skywalker, a man destined to be destroyed by his own insane lusts, I wonder if the universe might benefit from a bit of wide-eyed optimism.

     Because that, my friends, is the essence of Luke Skywalker. He's the guy who believed the wider universe of a galaxy far far away was a place WORTH exploring. With the way dark science fiction portrays things, too often Owen Lars starts to look like the smart one in the family. Even during the darkest period of the Empire, there's all sorts of fabulous and wonderful things to see.

    Luke Skywalker is also the core of the Jedi Knight as it should be. Heroes do not have to be roguish anti-heroes who only derive their power to oppose evil from being a slightly less offensive form of scumbag. We don't need Riddick and Cade Skywalker to defeat the Empire, we need folk who are willing to stand up against evil. As Steve Rogers said in the Captain America movie, "I don't want to kill anyone, I just hate bullies."
  
     Luke Skywalker also highlights the fundamental mundanity of good. For all the fact he's from a Chosen bloodline, Luke grew up on a moisture farm in the backend of the universe. It was his humility and decency which saved the universe more than his force powers. Cade Skywalker can defeat Sith Lords because he's got a midiclorian count out the wazoo but Luke defeated Vader only once and it was irrelevant to how he "won" the battle. Luke won because he was simply a nicer person and awakened the good still inside the Dark Lord.

    Luke is willing to kill people, yes, but he's not happy about it. When he destroyed the Death Star, it killed over a million people but it was to prevent uncounted billions from dying. When he slays Stormtroopers it's in self-defense. I have no doubt in my mind that Luke would kill Darth Maul if he had to, but he'd give the guy a chance to recant. This is the kind of role-model we should have for kids and is the sort of man I want to read about.

    My .02.

Star Wars: X-Wing: Mercy Kill review

    Wraith Squadron.

    Let me put you in the mood for the books. Wraith Squadron Theme

    Aaron Allston's arguable greatest creation and certainly so in the Star Wars universe, Wraith Squadron is a rag-tag collection of misfits in the already rag-tag collection of misfits we call the Rebellion/New Republic/Galactic Alliance.

    Wraith Squadron and its sequels were a breath of fresh air in an Expanded Universe that took itself far too seriously. They were silly, irreverent, and occasionally poignant. Wraith Squadron managed to routinely move between gut-bustingly hilarious and tragic without missing a step.

    Part of what made the Wraith Squadron books so entertaining was the idea they were practical jokers in their off-time but facing deadly serious stakes. They were professionals who often took refuge in audacity under the pretense no one would be so crazy as to lie about the things they did. It worked, too, because Star Wars is filled with strange stuff.

    A typical example of the fun personified of Wraith Squadron was Lieutenant Kettch. He was a genetically modified Ewok starship pilot who flew with the aid of a harness. That's insane and stupid, which is why he was just made up to mess with General Wedge Antilles' head. It made the actual genetically enhanced pilot, Vroot the Gamorrean, much more plausible.

    Well the original Wraith Squadron books ended before the New Jedi Order, where Star Wars as a whole became Darker and Edgier. There was no place for the fun but serious Wraiths in a world where pain-worshiping aliens wielded lightsaber-resistant snake-staves. Yeah, I wish I was making that up.

    Mercy Kill takes the Wraiths a number of decades into the future where the Star Wars galaxy has once more softened to the point silliness can exist alongside seriousness. Some of the old cast is dead, some of them have chips on their shoulders, others are entirely new members with chips on their shoulders.

     Yeah, that is the big problem with Mercy Kill. As much as the original Wraiths were a collection of dysfunctional individuals, the current squadron is even more so. Vroot, the Gamorrean Mathematics Professor (yes, you read that right), has even developed an appalling case of racism. Even when he learns his expected lesson, Vroot makes no apologies for it despite the fact the person he's racist to was born to slaves of his derision's object. It makes it difficult to care what happens to the guy.

    I applaud Aaron Allston avoiding the usual pitfalls of renegade Imperials, Dark Jedi, and alien invaders but another flaw of the book is its villain. The Wraiths are going after a corrupt member of the Galactic Alliance's Joint Chiefs of Staff. This would be impressive if not for the fact the guy is solely interested in lining his pockets. I'm not saying it's not a refreshing change but it's not exactly Darth Vader-level excitement.

    Finally, I regret the change done to the character of Garrik "Face" Loran. This book goes out of its way to portray him as a Thrawn-level manipulator and it undermines the excitement a bit. I never believed a twist the book pulled regarding him and I think the story would have benefited from him making a few mistakes as the story went along.

    Still, I enjoyed the book a great deal. The fact the book didn't focus on Jedi or Sith was an excellent change and it's wrong for me to complain too much about villains with comprehensible motivations. I'm also a fan of spy fiction and seeing the various plots they hatch is entertaining beyond belief.

    I'm especially fond of the characters of Bhindi and Myri Antilles. Both are intelligent, interesting, capable female characters in a franchise that occasionally lacks for them. Star Wars gave us Princess Leia but most of the authors are male and the recent loss of Mara Jade is something that has severely hurt the franchise as a whole. Bhindi as leader of Wrath Squadron is my favorite part of the book and Myri's growth as a soldier never stopped entertaining.

    In conclusion, I love Aaron Allston's writing and am eagerly awaiting his next addition to the Star Wars EU. If this book is the start of a new Wraith Squadron series, I can only say I'll be third or fourth in line to pick it up.

8/10

Star Wars: The Jedi Path review

*Warning - long and personal introduction ahead*

    I am a Jedi.

    I mean this in the semi-literal sense. When I was a boy, religion was something distant and difficult for me to comprehend. Church didn't really provide me with the answers I wanted, mostly because while I believed in Christianity, everyone talking about it wasn't speaking about subjects my younger self had questions about about. What was good? What was evil? What does forgiving your enemy look like? How would God appear to science? What was God's opinion about multiple religions? You know, the usual.

    Along came the Stars Wars trilogy.

    Obi Wan Kenobi's explanation of the Force as an energy field created by all living things, surrounding and binding us was a way for my six-year-old self to understand God. Darth Vader, Stormtroopers, Jabba the Hutt, and Grand Moff Tarkin gave me a framework for understanding why bad people did the things they did. Obviously, it was because the bad guys got the best toys. My opinion has gotten slightly more nuanced since then but it was still important to me.

     Like a set of dominos, the Star Wars trilogy got me thinking about spiritual matters. As incredibly important as Star Wars was for virtually every boy on the planet my age, it was doubly important for me.

    Which is, admittedly, part of the reason why I hated the Prequels' handling of the Jedi. In addition to the movies' other flaws, George Lucas hurt the public perception of Jedi. Role-models are deeply important to children and just because they were from a movie for kids, doesn't make the Jedi any less important in that regard.

    Star Wars: The Jedi Path is an attempt by the Daniel Wallace to assemble all of the information about the Jedi Knights given over dozens of video games, tabletop RPGs, novels, and more into a single coherent narrative. This otherwise dry assembling of text, most of which I already have in their original forms, would be dreadfully boring if not for the way the author intersperses commentary from some of Star Wars universe's most famous Jedi.

    The book contains in-character thoughts and asides from Yoda, Count Dooku, Luke Skywalker, Darth Sidious, Qui Gon Jinn, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ahsoka Tano, and a couple of other Jedi. These comments range from insights into the Jedi's rule of attachment to jokes. This, by itself, is worth the price of admission.

    The book gives a short description of the history of the Jedi, their philosophy, lightsaber styles, and ranking systems. In short, everything you could possibly want to know about the Jedi but were afraid to ask. Some of the commentary highlights why Luke Skywalker went with certain beliefs over others while others talk about why so many people in the galaxy were willing to turn on the Jedi.

    If there's any flaws, it's in the inclusion of the Jedi Guardian, Consular, and Sentinel classes. Created for the Knights of the Old Republic video game to justify traditional RPG play-styles, they really don't have any place in the setting. It'd be like if someone started talking about cleric as a function separate from priest in your typical D&D setting.

    In conclusion, Star Wars: The Jedi Path is a worthy addition to any Star Wars fan's library. There's a much more elaborate version than the one I bought but, honestly, I don't see the documents as being worth it. It's entertaining and more than worth the eleven dollars I paid for it, but not enough to justify getting the novelty edition.

8/10

Star Wars: The Last Command review

    The Last Command is the end of the Thrawn Trilogy and the start of the new Expanded Universe. While there had been spin-offs from Star Wars before, The Last Command ushered in a new age of regular books released every year or so. From the time I was twelve years old to about a year ago, I bought damn near every single book released for the Expanded Universe.

    The Expanded Universe of Star Wars has been hit and miss in places, including bad books like The Crystal Star alongside great ones like Shatterpoint, but overall it's been an impressive collection of stories. How does Timothy Zahn, the father of the modern SWEU, finish off the first major story arc?

    Moderately well.

    Ultimately, the end of the Thrawn Trilogy ends with a whimper as opposed to a bang. Grand Admiral Thrawn has been set up as such a cunning mastermind that the switch to lunatic Dark Jedi Joruus C'Baoth as the primary villain comes as a disappointment. Furthermore, the Imperial advance comes ridiculously swiftly but ends almost as quick. It seems like Timothy Zahn could have done at least four more books in the series without exhausting all of the story's potential.

    In addition to the abruptness of wrapping up the story, there's also a bit of Favorite Character SyndromeTM. This is where an author becomes overly enamored of a character and writes the story around them. It's something that Timothy Zahn becomes especially guilty of in later volumes but only slightly does here with Mara Jade. Mara Jade is Luke Skywalker's love interest (and future wife).

    Mara Jade gets to show off her burgeoning force skills, spy abilities, and intelligence perhaps a little too much. One of the major confrontations of the book is Mara Jade versus Joruus C'baoth and I think that whenever there's a Dark Jedi as the villain, Luke should be the person who confronts him. Timothy Zahn even introduces a silly element into the book that Luke is worried that killing a brainwashed cloned force user might lead him to the Dark Side. That's just an excuse for Luke not doing it and it rings false.

    Despite these flaws, The Last Command is one of my favorite Star Wars books. The merely good as opposed to great finish of a series of great books is still high praise. Zahn nicely wraps up all of his stories so there's no dangling loose ends and that's an all too frequent problem in recent books. He also manages something clever, tying in the ysalamiri to the cloning process in a way that makes perfect sense in the Star Wars universe.

    Part of what makes the Thrawn Trilogy so entertaining is that Timothy Zahn is very good at avoiding a lot of Star Wars-isms. He rarely resorts to super weapons, Dark Siders, and last-minute victories. Instead, his enemies primarily rely on intelligence and the kind of weapons we already saw in the movies. Grand Admiral Thrawn doesn't even have a Super Star Destroyer but he's capable of terrifying our heroes with 'just' an Imperial Star Destroyer. Joruus C'baoth is the exception to the Dark Sider rule but even he has more menace in his own pinky than the majority of later SWEU Sith.

    I also like the use of cloning in as a technology capable of changing the balance of power in the galaxy. Long before Attack of the Clones when the Clone Wars were just a one sentence aside in A New Hope, Timothy Zahn made it a central premise of his novels. In its own way, an inexhaustible supply of soldiers was every bit as intimidating as the Death Star. There's some continuity errors now, such as the fact the clones are assumed to have been on the side of the enemy rather than the Republic but that's something everyone assumed.

     Aside from the exaggerated prominence of Mara Jade, Timothy Zahn strikes an excellent balance between his newly introduced characters of Talon Karrde, the villains, the Smuggler's Alliance, and others. I think more authors should follow this balance of new characters existing alongside old ones. Too often authors don't bother to introduce any new characters at all and the narrative suffers for it.

    In conclusion, I am pleased to recommend The Last Command to readers wanting to get started in the Star Wars universe. The Thrawn Trilogy started it all and there's a reason people rarely heap anything but praise on it.

8/10

Resident Evil 6 review

    This is going to be a relatively short review. What's my opinion of Resident Evil 6? This is not the game for me. It may be the game for you but you are not me. My desire to play this game was pretty strong at the beginning them vanished as I continued to play. It's not the graphics, they're gorgeous. It's not that I don't like the characters, I've loved Leon Kennedy since Resident Evil 2. It's not even that I've grown tired of zombies. I'm very glad to have them back in the franchise.

    No, it's just my impression of the game is that it resented for me for attempting to play it. I had this experience once before, playing Castlevania: Lord of Shadows. While playing alternate-universe Belmont, I was continually met with the feeling that the game would have preferred if I was  watching as opposed to actually playing. Resident Evil 6 is this x1000.

The game of quicktime events.

    I should warn you that I only got about four hours into the game before I made this assumption. I played some Leon Kennedy, got really confused, and concluded that I had better things to with my time. Some of you may consider this to be unfair but if a game doesn't hook me after four hours I'm pretty sure it's done something wrong. Dishonored was at least fun at times during the steep learning curve. Resident Evil 6 isn't fun in the slightest, at least from the early levels, it's just like watching a movie.

    Yes, which brings me to my major complaint about Resident 6: Quick Time Events. I never got on the God of War phase so I don't know why this became a thing but I *HATE* these things. I don't consider this actual gameplay, it's just like an intelligence puzzle that completely divorces you from the action on screen. The first part of Leon's journey through Zombieville during the start of the game was nothing but Quick Time Events.

I have no doubt this fight would consist of nothing but QTE.

    I knew I would not enjoy this game the moment Leon was faced with his first zombie and you have the option of shooting it before it attacks. Okay, that's a classic opening scene. I shot it a couple of times and it still ended up biting me and forcing to fight it off hand-to-hand. Okay, obviously it's because I didn't shoot it in the head. Well, I reloaded and shot it in the head. Nope, it turns out that shooting it in the head or the body or missing means nothing in the long run. Yes, your actions are completely meaningless.

    You could argue it was part of the tutorial and it was just trying to show how to grapple with zombies but my opinion is they shouldn't have allowed you to shoot it in the head then. The rest of the opening level consists of running past zombies, quick time event, running from explosion, quick time event, flying a helicopter, two quick-time events, and a decided lack of anything that couldn't be replicated by fiddling with the remote on a DVD player during an action movie.

    Harsh, I know.

There's monsters, at least.

     The premise of the game is Leon Kennedy, Chris Redfield, Sherry Birkin, and newcomer Jake Muller are all involved in a government conspiracy which involves covering up the events of Raccoon City. You'd think that would have been out in the open given the United States launched a nuclear weapon to blow it up. The plot is difficult to get info on as the game isn't really interested in sharing it. Instead, you have to gather information physically throughout the game or none of this is going to make a damn bit of sense.

Sherry Birkin having grown up this much makes me feel old.

    Bad storytelling and bad gameplay make this a difficult game to judge because I'm not sure where one begins as well as the other ends. I will say, though, it kind of suffers from a Michael Bay abundance of explosions and action scenes which don't actually feel all that action-y since you're not involved, Zombie stories tend to work best when there's a very simple plot: there's a creepy mansion you're trapped in (Resident Evil 1), get out of the city (Resident Evil 2/Nemesis), get off the island (Resident Evil: Code Veronica), and even rescue the President's daughter from the Spanish speaking Medieval village (Resident Evil 4). This seems caught up in a mythology the game doesn't even intend to expand on.

    You may argue I'm being too harsh on this game but I felt cheated and disappointed. The graphics are still good and the characters are ones I enjoyed. Still, I didn't get far enough in the story to judge whether it's any good.

3/10

Jade Empire review

    Wuxia is an underrepresented genre in Western medium, particularly fantasy. It’s huge in China but aside from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon you don’t see much in the West. I think part of this has to do with the fact that there’s a lot of genre assumptions you have to adopt in order to fully appreciate the medium. 

    It’s not just martial arts, it’s supernatural martial arts. Anime has plenty of representations of the Japan form of wuxia but America’s one real contribution to the field, Star Wars, is hard to do without being accused of a rip off. Bioware’s Jade Empire is an attempt to do a full-on wuxia story set in Ancient Magical China. Honestly, I think this might have been where a lot of gamers tuned out. Dragon Age: Origins was ridiculously popular for being a straight adaptation of Tolkien-esque fantasy with a sexy undercurrent. 

    So was Knights of the Old Republic for adapting Star Wars and Mass Effect for Star Trek hybridized with Babylon Five. Gamers, sadly, do not have the same love for wuxia as they do these three existing fanbases. Most a pity because this game is quite good. 

It even has John Cleese. Honest to God.

    The premise of the game is that you are the student of master Sun Li, the Obi-Wan Kenobi-esque ruler of a small fishing village with a curiously large martial arts school. Without going into much detail, your idyllic life of training and flirting with fellow students is about to come to an end. You’ll travel across, well, three locations, and participate in the usual Bioware side-quests. The plot of the game involves a conspiracy in the Empire amongst the Sith Lord-like Lotus Assassins, the fate of the Spirit Monks massacred decades ago, and the missing Water Dragon. 

    There’s a number of twists that most fans of Bioware probably know already due to cultural osmosis, given the game is almost ten years ago, but I would be remiss in pointing them out. Suffice to say, if you’re unspoiled, there’s one genuinely shocking moment and quite a number of smaller twists. Indeed, I’d argue that while it’s not the best written of Bioware’s games (that would Mass Effect 2 with Knights of the Old Republic following close behind) it’s certainly up there.

    The heart of any Bioware game is its characters and Jade Empire has an excellent cast of oddball screw-ups for you to assemble in order to save the world. I was particularly fond of Henpecked Hou, a formerly great martial arts master whose found himself in a horrific marriage, and Black Whirlwind, who is an affable psychopath. 

    The two major male (and partially female) love interests Dawn Star and Silk Fox are equally enjoyable for entirely different reasons. They form the Betty and Veronica of the romance set with Dawn Star being shy and gentle while Silk Fox is the wuxia version of Catwoman. The game adds an unusual surprise in the fact it's possible to romance both. Polygamy being slightly more acceptable in Medieval China than in the future or Feldaren, it seems.

    The combat system consists of you getting the opportunity to develop your own martial arts style. This can be sword, spear, fists, or any number of other variants with several additional styles learned along the way. I found it wasn't worth it to develop anything more than the initial fighting style and spear-fighting, though other gamers may disagree.

An example of the beautiful level design.

    Jade Empire has a morality system like Knights of the Old Republic, though it attempts to portray it as similar to the Paragon/Renegade system of Mass Effect. The Way of the Open Palm and the Way of the Closed Fist supposedly representing a person who seeks harmony with the world versus a person who seeks personal strength.
 

    This isn't how it comes off in the game as to be a practitioner of the Way of the Closed Fist requires you to be not just evil but ridiculously evil. For such a pretty and inoffensive-looking game, I can't recall any other title that allows you to mind-control someone into being your sex slave. You can do that as either a man or woman as I understand it. Eesh. As a result, I imagine most gamers who like portraying someone remotely redeemable will choose the Way of the Open Palm.
 

    The game isn't perfect, mostly because it feels surprisingly cramped. I'm fairly sure there was meant to be at least a quest hub for you to visit before the game ended. Also, your party is extremely large but you don't really ever get to develop many of them beyond the love-interests. There's no quests related to them like in Dragon Age and they're lacking compared to Carth or Bastila. Still, they’re up there and that’s more than most games by far. I heartily recommend everyone with Xbox Live pick this up, it’s only five dollars in points.

9/10

Streetfighter IV review

    The Streetfighter franchise should never die but, honestly, I'm not really sure what else can be done with it. Gone is the era of arcades when you would stick 40 quarters into the slot in the vain hope of beating the guy who actually knew how to play the game versus your button mashing. Hmm? Oh, just me? Sorry.

     Streetfighter IV offers the opportunity for capturing the essence of this through Multiplayer but I don't think it'll have quite the same magic. Victory is only sweet if you can see the hope dimming in your enemies eyes. Knowing that he's wasted his lunch oney attempting to destroy you only to find that all those months of getting your ass beat have paid off. Just me? Again? Damn.

    Ahem.

    As you may have guessed, I'm an aficionado of the franchise. I was never terribly good at the arcade games but I could massacre my opposition on the home console, particularly while spamming Hundred Hand Slap. I first became aware video game characters could be sexy with Cammy, though this is more a personal shame than pride. I also developed an unhealthy adoration for Chun-Li, writing fanfic about her. Pretend you didn't read those last two comments.

    The fact is, there's no way I could be biased about this game. I grew up with Streetfighter II on the Super NES and played it until high school. I read the entire Udon comics series and even bought all three of the abyssmal Malibu comics as they came out. I bought every single animated adaptation but the USA cartoon. I even went to see Streetfighter: The Legend of Chun-Li in theatres despite the fact I knew it would blow chunks.

     I love the Streetfighter franchise and wish it nothing but good things. Which means I'm going to give this game an unreasonably high rating despite its serious flaws. Keep this in mind when you are reading my comments.

The re-envisioning of classic stages like Chun-Li's Chinese market is like a wave of nostalgia hitting your face.

    The premise of Streetfighter IV is no different from any of the previous games. There's a tournament being hosted by S.I.N (never called "sin" only spelled out) which is a warmed over Shadoloo. The game's final boss, Seth, is cloning martial artists or attempting to copy their powers. It doesn't matter. The backstory is only there to get all of the World Warriors together so they can duke it out. You can't judge a fighting game on storyline depth.

    Except, you kind of can. At least here.

    The game makes the mistake of giving every single character an animated introduction to the game. This would normally be a good thing, establishing all the characters and giving us a feel for the cartoony martial arts rules the world operates by. Unfortunately, the animated sequences are not just badly written but damn well nonsensical.

     Some are okay like Dan Hibiki's perpetual loser status being shown in full but others are plain weird or confusing. New character Abel's animated sequence consists of him walking up to Chun-Li and asking, "Hey, I hear there's a fighting tournament. Can I join?" A skippable story mode would have made the game much more enjoyable.

    Streetfighter IV introduces a few new characters to the roster of World Warriors with mixed results. Crimson Viper is intriguing as is Juri but I could take or leave Abel and Rufus. El Fuerte is likely to be less popular with Mexicans than T. Hawk, which I didn't think was possible. They're Streetfighter characters, though, it's not like they're supposed to have have Citizen Kane-level backstories.

    One thing I enjoyed by the game is the establishment of rivalries. Basically, right before you face the final Boss, you get to fight a character who has some relationship to your character. The choice of rivals is occasionally a little spotty, though. For example, Fei Long and Abel have no prior relationship yet are apparently rivals. Apparently, Abel saw a movie of Fei Long's once and is really honored to fight him. Fei Long is like, cool, let's get it on. Surely, Chun-Li would have been a better choice as his rival or even Ken.

     One thing that did annoy me in the game is the fact you have to unlock certain characters by beating the game with other ones. You have to first beat the game with Ryu in order to unlock Sakura and then beat the game with Sakura so you can unlock Dan. This isn't a bad thing since it certainly adds to the replay value but I wanted to play Fei Long from the very beginning and it took looking it up on the internet to discover beating the game with Abel was necessary to unlock him.

    In conclusion, I really liked the game and think it's an excellent purchase for fans of the series. Don't expect much in the way of storyline and be prepared to play the game multiple times in order to get all the characters you want unlocked but, otherwise, it's a fun afternoon's pastime. The price is right too, having picked up my copy of the game for six dollars at my local Gamestop.

8/10