Title: Eternal Sonata
Company: Tri-Crescendo, Namco Bandai
Platform: Xbox 360, Playstation 3
Rating: T for Teen

Not a brand new game, Eternal Sonata was released a little over a year ago. A unique and original RPG game, it vaguely focuses on the life of the famous Polish composer and pianist, Frédéric Chopin. On his deathbed, Chopin escapes to a dream world–a world so real that the line between dream and reality often become blurred for the composer as he and his companions travel together.

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Well, as you might have seen yesterday, Dark Sakura is now posting to my lovely little blog here. I’ve known Dark Sakura for a while now–we’ve been friends for, oh, about 10 years or so? Give or take a few years–and she was looking to start blogging and writing reviews, etc. I invited her to come here and blog, and she’s graciously accepted my offer.

So, just a small warm welcome to the Avengers Tower, Dark Sakura! Enjoy your stay–and if you see Deadpool, just ignore him; we have no idea how he got in here.

I really try to keep up with the Ultimate Marvel universe, but lately, it’s been almost more disappointing than the 616 universe. I hoped maybe Ultimatum might be a breath of fresh air, but nope, I was disappointed.

I read the first book with little real expectation, actually. After the first few pages, things were interesting, so I kept up. By the end of the first issue, I thought perhaps there would be something more to it. Thinking that, I moved on to issue two.

Issue two is interesting in the way that a train wreck or multi-car accidents are. One can’t help but watch, and sometimes one wants to see who was injured. At the point one does see blood, however, one finds themselves wishing they hadn’t. That’s how this issue left me. There are some things I don’t want to see in a comic outside Marvel Zombies.

My overall impression is that Loeb had all of these fun ideas and shoved them into one story, much like the multiple plots of X-3. A good story doesn’t need to have fifty thousand elements in it to make it exciting, just a really good and well-developed plot. So far, this is completely lacking, and I’d have to be very bored to read any more of it.

I think I’ll be going back to 616-Marvel, where I have Mockingbird and Jessica Jones to keep me happy.

I’ve always been a fan of Marvel’s What If? comics–a series of stories that tell the tales of alternate universes or what might have happened if some small (or sometimes big) things were different. As the title suggests, these stories ask the question of, “What if…?” Some of the best of these stories include: What if Phoenix had not died?; What if Aunt May had died instead of Uncle Ben?; and my personal favorite, What if Tony Stark had become Sorcerer Supreme?.

Because of my love for the What If? stories, I was fairly excited as December rolled around. Not one, but four new What If? stories for my reading enjoyment! However, I found myself slightly disappointed; What If? House of M had a great story line with terrible art, and What If? Fallen Son had a lukewarm, mediocre story with rushed and over-inked art (Cory Ringdahl over at DestroyTheCyb wrote a review that pretty much sums up my feelings on this particular story). With two more stories to go this month, I became a bit nervous. Would the What If? story I’ve been most looking forward to let me down? I found myself asking my own “What if…?” question: What if all of these What If? stories turn out to be a huge disappointment?

Thankfully, with the release of What If? Newer Fantastic Four was not a letdown.

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I’m sure you’ll recall how, in October, I reviewed the first issue of Ghostbusters: The Other Side, a mini-series presented by IDW Publishing. I never got around to writing up a review for the second issue, as time didn’t permit me to do so, but I just finished reading the third issue and decided to spread the good word, as it were.

When last we left our ghost-busting heroes, they found themselves stuck in purgatory after an attack by mobsters from the afterlife. Read the rest of this entry