Worms 2 (PC)

Um, there are worms… with little nub hands… and weapons. They fight each other and the last worm standing is victorious. With a wide arsenal ranging from bazookas, air strikes, dragon punches, and exploding sheep matches are a tactical chess-like battle of wits against the AI or a frenemy. These little pink bastards can dish out some serious carnage and mayhem at your behest.

History

Worms was the brainchild of Andy Davidson. Originally Worms was an entry in the Blitz BASIC programming competition it was picked up by Team 17. The original title was on the Commodore Amiga but was ported to other platforms. Before Worms 2 was released for computers everywhere Davidson created a Director’s Cut for the Amiga which he considers the pinnacle of the series. Worms: Director’s Cut was the final release for the life of the Amiga.

Why am I talking so much about Worms 1? Because there’s not much development information for Worms 2.

Worms 2 was released on February 11th, 1998. It’s competition was Tenchu: Stealth Assassins (PS1), Blasto (PS1), and Xenogears (PS1)

Experiences

Oh man, I used to play this game all the time when I was a kid! I used to make my own maps and make my own weapon layouts. Eventually though, every weapon pack was just everything pumped up as strong as it could be. Biggest explosions, biggest blasts, most absurd stats. Looking back on it, it might be pure carnage but it’s also really boring. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fun in its own way. But it’s just not really tactically satisfying. It’s basically a chess game where each side of the board is just filled with rooks.

Gameplay

Worms 2 is a strategy game where each player takes control of a team of worms who must use their weapons and tools in order to reduce their opponents HP to zero, knock them into the water below, or blast them off the map entirely. You do this by using weapons like mortars, homing missiles, sticks of dynamite, exploding sheep, shotguns, whatever’s handy. And you can change positions with ninja ropes, parachutes, and teleporters. If those fail then the game will enter sudden death mode and the water level will rise, spelling certain doom for unfloating earthworms.

Did someone order a giant Concrete Donkey? I’m pretty sure you did.

You can face your friends in multiplayer or the computer in skirmish matches or an incredibly difficult campaign. The PC release originally had internet multiplayer but it was such a byzantine mess I could never get it set up when I was younger. I doubt it’s gotten easier now.

The Gush

It’s easy to get lost in the cartoonish mayhem and carnage and just have some great fun. I still laugh when I hurl a super sheep and it takes to the air with its ‘totally not Superman’ cape.

Some of the intro cinematics are actually pretty entertaining. I would recommend that the slapstick inclined look them up on Youtube.

This game has got a pretty good map editor. It allows the player to set whether it’s a cavern, island, or totally boxed in area without water. The player can disable sudden death mode if they’re not a fan of it. They can even create custom weapons packages and alter the settings for each weapon. You can even make custom teams with custom names and custom voice clips. What I’m getting at is that this game is incredibly customizable and that’s awesome. Mods not required, this game has got everything ya’ll need.

Hot map editing action!

The Kvetch

Holy hell, the AI cheats. They have a way of using the wind hurl projectile weapons right into your worms with unerring accuracy. I routinely have to set them to lower settings because they’re just that tough. Unfortunately that’s not a possibility in the campaign and I just don’t care to git gud.

The gameplay gets a little dry after awhile. There are only so many ways something can get blown up. If you’re not playing with friends then this title might not last.

If you were one of those people always playing the 2-d tank battle games with all the weapons and you’re not burned out. This title might scratch the itch.

The Verdict

This game is like drinking a glass of warm milk on a humid and hot afternoon. A glass of warm milk before bed is great! A hot afternoon can be comfortable under the right conditions. Humidity always sucks. All of this stuff is put together into an experience I no longer enjoy. If you’re able to focus on any of it more than the rest then it can be quite enjoyable but it pales in comparison to modern titles in the series and GOG.com no longer supports its internet multiplayer but it still supports local multiplayer. For the low price of $5.99 it will definitely entertain a ten year old for a few months on the cheap.

Next Week: Papers, Please

Little Inferno (Wii U, PC, iOS, OS X, Linux, and Android)

A terrible blizzard has struck the city of Burnington — I can’t believe that’s the name. People huddle in their homes for warmth. The magnaminous Tomorrow Corporation sees opportunity. They design and dispense the Little Inferno Entertainment Fireplace! The perfect product to keeps kids occupied and  warm the homestead — While you’re at it, order some fine products from our Little Inferno burnables catalogs! You play as one of the children sitting at their fireplace, burning things, never looking away… just burning all the time.

History

Little Inferno was developed by the Tomorrow Corporation. An indie group composed of Kyle Gabler, Kyle Gray, and Allan Blomquist. They had previously worked on Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure — which actually looks pretty cool — and World of Goo — which is a much better known game that I’m sadly not fond of — and came together to form their own studio.

The development of Little Inferno was inspired by watching the Yule Log Program. You know, the one with the 14 second loop of a burning log in a fire place — yeah that one. They thought, “I wonder if we can start with an underwhelming premise, but then actually make the game really really surprisingly good.”

Little Inferno was released for Wii U and PC on November 18th 2012. It’s competition was ZombiU (WiiU), Thomas Was Alone (PC), and Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition (PC).

Experiences

Little Inferno gets me in an oddly contemplative mood. What begins with mindless pyromania eventually evolves into existential questions. Who am I? Why am I here? Why am I doing this? They begin grounded in the character and the setting but reach out to me soon enough. Why do I find it a suitable pass-time to burn things. The game does it best to keep things happy and upbeat until chapter 4 so I’m not sure if my reaction is intended or not.

Gameplay

Little Inferno is a… Simulation(?) game in which the player has catalogs of things to purchase and subsequently burn. Burning objects produces more coins than they cost and as such the player can purchase more expensive products from the catalog. While objects burn, the player can order more items and wait for them to be mailed.

Heart of darkness? Count me in!

Each item has its own attributes, abilities,  and delivery time. Deliveries can be expedited with stamps which can be acquired from burning things or performing combos. Combos are achieved by burning certain objects at the same time and are hinted at in the combo menu.

Occasionally the player will receive a letter from their next door neighbor; Sugar Plumps, The CEO of Tomorrow Corp; Miss Nancy, the mail man, or the weather man — reporting from the weather balloon, over the smokestacks, over the city, of course. These letters can be subsequently burned and serve to push forward the plot.

The Gush

What can I say, it’s a pleasure to burn. There is something satisfying about tending a campfire and that definitely translates to the Little Inferno Entertainment Fireplace. Sometimes I ignore the types of objects and just throw as many highly flammable things in at once.

Such a mighty blaze… I cannot help but watch.

Between the character dialogue, item descriptions, item animations, and item effects, this game is hilarious. Wooden spoons doing ballet, coffee cups shaking in caffeine frenzies, Sugar Plumps. I love it all.

Just… the word choice in this game is golden.

This game has an epilogue. It is a thing. It’s weird. I love it. It is major spoilers though so this is all I can say about it.

The Kvetch

I understand how the wait times insentivize spending stamps wisely but I think it would be cool if there was some sort of free-play or creative mode. Waiting 5 minutes for my tiny sun to ship is fun the first time — with the Christmas present-esque anticipation and all — but it loses its luster quickly.

The Verdict

I wuv this game to little burning bits — I’d go as far as to put the ashes on my mantle. It’s a little, short lived, compact experience that burns the candle at both ends. I’d say it’s worth the ten dollar price tag it has in most stores so if you like what you heard then check it out. And as the Kurgan says…

Next Week: Worms 2

Zoe’s (MMO)RPG Corner: World of Warcraft

Hi guys! After my unexpected hiatus, I am back to bitch about bad armor! And what a better place to start than here?

World of Warcraft is a pay-to-play third person fantasy MMORPG and is probably the most popular in a long line of Warcraft games about like, orcs and shit. And everyone has really strong feelings about this game so prepare to be deeply offended by me, I assume.

History and Development

World of Warcraft (WoW) is the really large and sceam-y baby of Blizzard Entertainment, which has also contributed basically every designer for every other MMO featured by me on this blog. It honestly seems like kind of a shit place to work because everyone leaves angry.

Blizzard created the first three games of the Warcraft series, all of which were real-time strategy (RTS) games. Basically there was a lot of plot in those games which I don’t 100% feel like going into but here are the basics as I managed to understand them:

• Orcs and Humans hate each other.
• If you’re an elf, you’re probably sort of an asshole.
• Honestly, they should all go to a non-governmental model because basically every monarch becomes evil or goes crazy or something.
• For some reason, trolls are Jamaican and I bet there’s some weird racism going on there.
• Serious damsel in distress syndrome despite having a “matriarchal race” that isn’t “evil”.

There, now we’re all caught up enough to move on to the rest of this review. Blizzard announced World of Warcraft in 2001 and it came out in 2004. Despite being heralded still as the be-all-end-all archetype for every MMO ever, it kind of was just a game (and also not the first MMO, so everyone calm down about that). The world was designed to be open so players could sort of wander off wherever they wanted to go instead of being stuck in a linear progression.

I never played WoW until last spring. I picked it up because here I am writing a blog about MMO’s and I’d never played what is admittedly the best selling MMORPG in the world. According to Wikipedia, WoW has 7.1 MILLION subscribers as of May of 2015, which is a massive number. Me not playing it was kind of becoming a problem, no matter how cool I looked when I said that I played Warcraft III instead.

So I picked it up. I mean, character creation, vaguely interesting designs, tons of options? Kind of seemed like something I would actually enjoy. And to be perfectly frank, I’d been looking for a reason to try it out. I mean, it’s the kind of game that people are going to judge you for playing AND for not playing so like, it’s hard to decide if you want to start playing just based on poling.

Character Creation

Let’s talk about sexual dimorphism!

This is a biological term that refers to males and females of the same species that look vastly different. IN  real life nature, there are a few of these, though often it’s based purely on coloration rather than body type. In humans and most members of the animal kingdom, this is completely untrue. Human bodies have some sex based differences, but not that much. And I don’t mean sexual organs here. I mean major physical traits like shoulder width.

You know who does have sexual dimorphism? Most of the races in World of Warcraft!

One of these is a troll. The other is a blue human lady with tusks.

I don’t really need to wax poetic about how messed up this is because other people have done it for me, but I do want to just point it out because it makes me super mad.

Moving swiftly forward, the character creator itself isn’t too bad. Races are faction locked and some classes are race locked (and honestly there are a lot of both so I don’t feel like listing all of them) but it’s not too bad. You get enough character slots that you can really kind of go for it in terms of playing different things. I like that.

The creator itself is basic, but that’s not a problem either. I play so many games that are like “Do you want to adjust the size of this character’s nose bridge?” and honestly I really don’t. I don’t really care about a lot of that, unless there are gonna be a ton of cutscenes. Even then, it’s kind of whatever.

But I did get to make myself a blue-skinned ginger troll lady and that was kind of bitchin’, I will not lie to you. Except I still really wish she got more tusks.

Story

I dunno.

If I had a dollar for every time I wrote “I don’t know what the story of this MMO is”, I would be filthy rich.

Now, it’s important to note I refused to pay for WoW and so played it only in the “free until level 20” way. But if one damn person says, “Well the game doesn’t really start until X level,” I will destroy you. If a game doesn’t start until you’re that far into it, or it doesn’t start until max level, or anything like that, it’s a badly designed game. Sticking to my guns on that one.

Here’s what I got for the story:

1. The Alliance and the Horde hate each other for reasons.

Yup. That’s it. There is no 2. That’s really the entire plot line by level 20. If this game starts at level 50, well…too bad.

Sidenote: Wikipedia tells me that the story of WoW is apparently about a disappearing king and some disguised dragon lady, but I have seen none of that. It looks convoluted anyway.

Gameplay

Point. Click. Murder.

Combat is basic. It’s actually hard to talk about the mechanics of this game seeing as it’s kind of the mechanics of A LOT OF GAMES. Here I am actually going to give WoW props for coming up with a lot of things that I look at in other games and go, “It’s stock.” WoW is certainly the Lord of the Rings of MMOs so I’m not going to be pissy bout the controls being boring.

That being said, the controls are boring.

Pretty much the best part of this game for me was being a druid and getting to turn into a cat. I’m pretty sure I was that more than I was anything even vaguely humanoid. That’s a solid mechanic.

I call it “Fluffy”.

The Good

WoW is a solid, basic MMO. It runs on most computers, unless you have something chiseled out of rock (this is huge; my computer is a hunk of overheating junk). They do what they do well, and you gotta give them props on that.

There’s a really solid amount of customization. I like having a lot of classes and races so it’s fun for me to try out new things, and boy oh boy does WoW have that. There’s something for all styles.

Wanna be a giant healing cow? Got you covered. 

The Bad

Now I understand that part of what was going on here was that they were trying to make an open world sandbox-y MMO where you could just go anywhere and do anything, but like, if all a game is is “kill ten wolves” and “get me a shiny stone” and there’s no storyline, I’m not going to be massively invested in it. Not that what they have isn’t good. I do like mindless MMO side quests sometimes, because I get to listen to radio and murder things, but if that’s all it is, I’m not going to be on board.

I just honestly wanted this to have more storyline than it did. If your story starts at max level, I’m not going to hang around for all the hours of grinding to get there.

The Ugly

Tits. On. Skeletons.

Mmm, yeah, lookit them undead boobies.

Also a shitty community, let’s be real. I muted them all on day one and was perfectly happy afterwards, but that sort of saddened me a little. I don’t wanna hide from other gamers.

From here…?

I can’t recommend this game. But I can’t recommend against this game. I’ll be keeping it on my computer (unlike Tera, which I deleted the day my review for it came out). I might even update it and play it sometimes. It’s fun. It’s just not interesting.

I think what I’d tell people to do would be to download the free trial and give it a shot. It deserves a shot at least. It’s not a bad game and I can see why so many people like it. Give it a try. Don’t let people decide for you.

Next Month: DC Universe Online. We’re gonna talk about SUPERHEROES! I LOVE SUPERHEROES!

Battletoads (NES, Amiga, Amiga CD32, Game Boy, Game Gear, and Sega Megadrive)

Somewhere in space a crack group of cosmic commandos, the Battletoads, are escorting Princess Angelica back to her home planet with Doctor T.Bird piloting their ship, The Vulture. One of the toads, Pimple, takes the princess on a little joyride in his flying car… for some reason. At this point The Dark Queen’s ship, The Gargantua, tractor beams the little car into her ship and whisks them away to Ragnarok’s Planet — I’m gonna assume it’s as tough and awesome as it sounds. When Dr. Bird realizes what’s happened he dispatches the remaining toads, Rash and Zitz, to the planet to execute a daring rescue.

History

Battletoads was developed by Rare and published by Tradewest. The basic idea was to do Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles the way Rare wants to — oh yeah and sell a helluva lotta merchandise. The game started out as a stock beat ’em up but Rare designers found that to be too generic and as such added more varied mechanics and level types.

Fun Fact: Before they settled on Battletoads, Amphibianz was seriously considered as the title of the game — I’m glad the unnecessary Z made it into Zitz’ name.

Battletoads was released in June of 1991. It’s competition was Sonic the Hedgehog (Sega Genesis), Super Mario World (SNES), and Final Fantasy IV (SNES)

Experiences

I can’t begin to express what I find so humorous about the Battletoads Game Store prank. I can’t even explain how it’s a prank. It simply entails someone calling up a Gamestop and ask if they have a copy of Battletoads for purchase — I’ve also heard of a variant for calling up a store and asking for a pre-order for Battletoads II. I just think the concept of calling up a modern game shop and requesting a copy of Battletoads is simply absurd and therefore funny. Something makes it even funnier when you know the employee taking the call — but the clerk my local 3-D Games store would know nothing about that.

Gameplay

For such an old title Battletoads is a shockingly diverse game. At first glance it may seem like a mere beat ’em up but like a magnolia of pain it blossoms into something so much greater and devastating. It’s almost in a league of its own, Battletoads is like Battletoads, it defies analogy — if you put a gun to my head and asked, ‘WHAT GAME IS LIKE THIS GAME’ I’d probably wet myself but after I was done crying I would grudgingly shrug out Earthworm Jim?

From beat up ups, to climbing levels, to racing levels, to dodging levels, this game has got nearly anything you can do on two legs and a jet bike. This being said it’s also so fucking-mothering hard that I only made it to level three. I made it to the infamous jet bike level and only because I warped there from level 1! I couldn’t even beat level 2 legit — I couldn’t penetrate the Wookie Hole if you will. Get your patience, save states, skills, or whatever you got ready because this is the game that defined the term Nintendo Hard.

Seriously, the level is called the Wookie Hole.

The Gush

The music in this game is a marvel of chip-tunes. It creates a rough-and-tumble otherworldly atmosphere that makes me thrilled to go smash some alien scum with my muscly toad body — and get annihilated.

This game might be hard as balls but it’s got some codes and warps to help you through. Nearly every even numbered level has a hidden level warp in it so look them up if a stage is giving you trouble. You can also get some extra lives at the beginning of the game or on Continue screens by hold A, B, down, and then pressing start.

For it’s time and even beyond this game looks fantastic. The colors pop, the shapes and images are recognizable — if a little goofy — and it’s easy on the eyes.

You know who else is easy on the eyes, if you know what I mean… She’s going to destroy me, isn’t she?

For a game in which dying is a fact of life I never blamed the controls for a single death. I blamed the design and my own lack of skill a lot but I never thought ‘Why didn’t that work?’ or ‘I was totally pressing down!’

The Kvetch

I’m not exactly certain why our dear toads even have six health points. It seems like almost every attack does either one damage, half, or all of it. I was legit shocked when the pterodactyls from the first level killed me in one hit. With a life lost I crushed the thing and pressed on to be taunted by some healing flies which were now useless.

I’ve got to say, considering you’ll see the game over screen a lot, they’re all pretty funny.

The game has a devilishly good difficulty curve with each level ramping up difficulty until a crescendo if incredibly difficult tasks. This creates a problem however when I die late in a level and have to start the whole thing over again. Playing through the sort of ‘training’ parts repeatedly are really boring, mainly because…

… this game relies a lot on rote memorization. Things will ambush you, the speeder bike levels eventually turn into ‘do you remember the pattern?’, and there’s no recourse but to die and try to remember it for next time. It’s about as fun as a game of Simon and just as rewarding.

The Verdict

I’ve got to say that in my estimation this game is tooooooo hard for me. Call me a filthy casual who needs to git gud if you must but I’m just not a huge fan. If you want to own a copy of hard videogame history then Battletoads is actually a shockingly painless purchase. It’s on Amazon new for a mere 31 dollars, which might be pricey for an NES game but considering the insane collectible value of games I’ve been reviewing lately it seems like a breath of fresh air. If the concept of playing or beating a game that made me turn back — and I’m a guy who beat Bubsy — then give it a whirl!

Next Week: Little Inferno

Nuclear Throne (PC, Mac, Linux, PS4, PS Vita, and XBox One)

Round the campfire the mutants and monsters eat, drink, sing, and prepare. All of them wondering how they became what they are, what to do next, and if they’re dreams and nightmares of the Nuclear Throne are real. The path may be clear but the course is dangerous. If they wish they could fight they’re way through the bandits, monsters, awakened constructs, and the Inter-Dimensional Police Department (I.D.P.D. for short) with their trusty revolver and any other weapon they can scavenge to reach the Nuclear Throne.

History

Nuclear Throne was created by Vlambeer, a Dutch independent game studio, and designed by Jan Willem Nijman and Rami Ismail. Vlambeer advertised and received critiques through streaming services like Twitch on a bi-weekly basis during development. It was originally released on Steam’s Early Access service releasing updates on a regular basis until they created a product they were satisfied with.

Nuclear Throne entered Steam’s Early Access in October of 2013 and was released on December 5th, 2015. It’s competition was Fallout 4 (PC, XBox One, and PS4), Star Wars Battlefront (PC, PS4, and XBox One), and Mordheim: City of the Damned.

Experiences

In a stroke of absolute brilliance when you select a random character, die, and restart the game you’ll restart as a random character again. As such, I generally tend to play this way, experiencing something totally new every run, for about 40 minutes. The weirdest part is that it feels like I’ve been playing for a giant, knock out, slobber-knocker of a session but an episode of Gotham hasn’t even passed by the time I’m ready to move onto something else. In short, this game packs a seriously fun and frantic punch.

Look at this motley crew. Gotta play them all, at least I do.

Gameplay

Nuclear Throne is a 2-D, isometric, top-down, shooter, Roguelike. You play as one of a myriad selection of mutants who each have a special passive and active ability — Fish for instance collects more ammunition from pickups and can execute a sweet dodge roll.

Each level contains chests filled with ammo or new weapons to outfit the character — or leave behind if they’re garbage. Oh yeah and enemies, levels contain enemies. Once you defeat them all — whether you’ve opened all the chests and gotten all the goodies or not — a portal will open up nearby and pull you in to take you to the next level. In short, you spend a lot of time trying not to die and killing enemies — and usually failing.

The player can also pick up little uranium rod looking things. Once a character gets enough they level up and can acquire a mutation. You pick it between levels but only get to choose one of four out of a pool of 29 total possible mutations. So it’s important to try to pick mutations that mesh with the character’s abilities — or at least pick the best of the worst… I’m looking at you Hammerhead.

Also, the Robot character updates instead of mutating which I find amusing.

The Gush

I’m amazed at how much flavor Vlambeer instilled in each character with their visual design, some mumbling gurgles, and dialogue in between stages. From Fish’s ‘gills on my neck’ quote to Eyes’ frenzied mumbles — he’s covered in eyes, not mouths — I created an idea of what they’re like on the battlefield or around the campfire. My personal favorite is the local gun god Young Venuz, a floating Illuminati eye who converses in beatbox noises and makes it rain around the campground.

I mean, who am I to disagree with the game.

Nuclear Throne does a great job of being intuitively designed and yet guiding the player into deeper mechanics of the game. From teaching the player about super chests with the loading screen tips or teaching the player how to activate the Nuclear Crown portals with its visual design.

The difficulty curve of this game is nearly perfect. Even as enemies and bosses get tougher I learn enough in the interim to be consistently challenged but never left in the dark.

Holy shit, this soundtrack. From rollicking adventurous feelings of the opening theme and wasteland theme to the eerie ‘I shouldn’t be here’ feelings of the Frozen City it’s all made with purpose and intent. I bought this soundtrack for a reason.

The Kvetch

This game is a Roguelike and as such it’s harder than Crystal’s Rhyno Skin hide. Not to say that I don’t like it, just to say that it might be a turn-off.

The game has a difficult time clarifying where wall borders are and sometimes enemies will effectively hide underneath or behind map terrain because of the games’ perspective. I can’t tell you how much ammunition I’ve wasted shooting walls that I thought the shot would clear.

You see that corpse to the lower right of the cursor, you might not when the pressure’s on.

There’s a screen shake function and I don’t know why. If you want to take a trip to Barfsville then you’re welcome to play with it on.

The Verdict

If any of this remotely interested you then I suggest picking this game up. Its full retail price is 12 dollars and that’s a steal for such a purely joyous game. It’s absolute gun-based chaos and I love it!

Next Week: Battletoads

The Dark Tower Series (For books and audio books across the multiverse everywhere)

‘The Man in Black fled across the desert and the Gunslinger followed.’ I’ve heard that it’s the greatest line Stephen King ever wrote and even if you disagree you’ve got to admit that it’s up there — and it makes a helluva opening line. It tells so much about the story without saying anything. It would usher an anthology of seven books pushing forward, a little rocky at times, until it reached its terminus — not unlike The Gunslinger’s journey toward The Dark Tower itself.

Hear the tale of the last Gunslinger, Roland, as he makes his ways to the locus of reality, The Dark Tower, to save it and us from grizzly destruction.

History

The Dark Tower is a series of books written by Stephen King with the first being published in 1982 and the last being published in 2004 — not including the spin-off book The Dark Tower: The Wind Through the Keyhole which was published in 2012. He originally saw the stories as being too niche for a widespread audience but later released them in mass-market formats. He would also return to revise The Gunslinger after having finished the final installment to tweak Roland’s dialogue to better match the voice King had for him by the end of the story.

The Dark Tower also has a series of — not required but appreciated — spin offs including comic books and even a text based game, Discordia, which can be played for free on King’s website.

The release dates of the Dark Tower Series books are as follows.

1. The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger (1982)
2. The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three (1987)
3. The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands (1991)
4. The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass (1997) 
5. The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla (2003)
6. The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah (2004)
7. The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower (2004)
8. The Dark Tower: The Wind Through the Keyhole (2012)

Experiences

As the years draw on I find it more and more difficult to relate to my older relatives. Between the relentless march of technology and the many ways our world moves on I find I share less and less with them. Culture is losing its touchstones — not everyone reads To Kill a Mockingbird anymore and so on. And so it becomes more and more important, in my mind, to seek additional and yet hold on to the ones I have. My Father and I read this series in Tandem starting when I was 16. He always one book ahead and me one behind. We will always have our conversations about the journey of Roland and his friends, we will always have this between us

Plot

The Map of Mid-World. It’s hard to see without knowing but Roland’s path is on it.

Alright, time for a super short, nearly spoiler free summary that tells ya’ll everything you need to know. Roland is a Gunslinger descended from a long line of pseudo-Arthurian knights — but with guns — who have kept the world safe for generations. In his quest for The tower he acquires companions by a myriad of mystical means who are Susannah, a legless black woman with a schizophrenia fueled temper, Eddie Dean, a silver-tongued lanky guy, Jake, a tweenish boy — who under rules of the Stephen King character game is legally obliged to have mild psychic abilities — and last but certainly not least, a dog/squirrel hybrid creature named Oy who can speak a broken kind of english. All of whom, save Oy, are from New York City but from different points in time.

They’ve all gotta gallivant to the Dark Tower and they’d best do it on the quick because an evil emperor calling himself the Crimson King means to destroy it and along with it shatter all of reality and all of the other realities that have, will, or are currently in existence. In short, shit be wack and these guys gotta fix it.

I mean, this thing just breaths importance.

Themes

Since humans have questioned the existence of a divine power I think they’ve questioned whether there is such a thing as fate. Mid-World is a place in which fate truly exists and its name is Ka. Scholars, in the story, have spent centuries learning about its rules and how to influence it and for the large part their methods seem more scientific than not. Yielding results from their lifetimes of experiences, passed on to Roland. It creates a story of stories in which coincidence and heroic achievement are sort of built in qualities to Mid-World.

The Dark Tower also is part of King’s expansive canon. All of his books contribute to this story in some small way — and a few very large ones — and as such our world is one that Roland and his friends occasionally visit. Mid-World is a mystical place but even so it occasionally must ask aid of its technological sister planet, Earth.

The Gush

Mid-World has a wonderful sort of slang language to it. With such terms as Ka-Mai — meaning Ka’s fool — or how they use Sai as a suffix of respect in the same way we might use sir or madam. It makes the world come alive with centuries of linguistic history.

There are so many mystical and I would dare say whimsical — though dark — moments in the story that have almost nothing to do with the quest for the Tower. The one that sticks out in my mind is a rippling of the worlds in which a series of mutants come from portals out of Mid-World into ours to die in a world that has not moved on. They all just sort of scamper off but King goes into great detail into the nature of their mutations and how Roland and Eddie respond to their incursion.

Some darker than others.

I love all of Roland’s companions, most more than I care for Roland himself — not gonna lie, Roland can be really stick in the mud boring (Eddie goes as far to refer to him as Tall, Grey, and Ugly when Eddie is upset with him) — but Roland never fails to surround himself with colorful characters, no matter the setting. My favorite of which being…

Two Words, Eddie Dean. My favorite of Roland’s colleague’s, without a doubt, is the fast-talking, wood carving, shaggy haired New Yorker by the name of Eddie Dean. He’s introduced to the Gunslinger as a slave to the demon Heroin. Described by his brother, the eminent junkie Henry Dean, as ‘being able to talk the devil into lighting himself on fire’. Despite being the slowest on the draw of Roland’s companions he’s the only one who has a confirmed kill with a dead baby joke.

The Kvetch

This series suffers from big dumb ending syndrome. Don’t get me wrong, I actually love it. But in my mind there’s a giant botch right before it where King breaks the 4th wall and pleads the reader to stop. To let the brutal weight of the true ending’s implications remain unknown. I’m not sure if it’s a genuine warning — in which case, don’t worry Mr. King, I’m a big boy, I can handle it — or if it’s some sort of jeering taunt like, ‘I could barely handle writing it, you probably can’t handle reading it.’ No matter what, it rubbed me the wrong way.

The Wizard and Glass is a book that, when rereading the series, I generally skip, preferring to read an abridged summary. I absolutely do not suggest dismissing it, there are parts of its story that are vital to understanding who Roland is. But I find it to be the definite weakest part of the series.

The Verdict

I’m a pretty big fan of this work and would definitely recommend reading it from beginning to end. If you’re not a big fan of King’s stuff I’ve known others who have similar tastes but find this series to be the exception. So, head on down to Amazon or your local book store and pick ’em up, they’re like 10 bucks apiece. Alternatively you can track down some hard cover versions with full illustrations and soil your choice of garment with glee at the quality of the art.

Next Week: Nuclear Throne