Category: Review

Review: The Soul Drinkers Omnibus

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The Soul Drinkers Omnibus

Since I’ve just gotten (and am enjoying) the new Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader game, I figured I’d review a book (series) from that setting. An old set of Space Marine novels, the Soul Drinkers Omnibus covers the titular chapter. Is it good? Uh… not really.

The biggest problem is the characterization. It’s not that they’re one-dimensional bolter shooters. No, it’s that they’re worse. Namely, that these ancient super-warriors come across as ridiculously dumb and naive for people in their position. The plot involving the Soul Drinkers and their fall from grace involves a lot of contrivances and bad judgement to the point where I frankly felt they deserved to get wiped out.

There’s better 40k books around, so I don’t recommend these.

A Thousand Words: Warriors of Fate

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Warriors of Fate

Capcom’s Warriors of Fate is a Final Fight-type beat em up set in ancient China. Err.. except the American translation set it in a fictional place that just happened to resemble ancient China. And the simple and easy Chinese names got turned into complex Mongolian-inspired names. Yeah, it was a little weird.

That being said, it’s a Final Fight successor that plays like a Final Fight successor and has the fun of a Final Fight successor. Unlike Captain Commando, mounts (horses in this case, not mechs) actually are useful and usable. It doesn’t quite reach the heights of Battle Circuit in terms of pure technical ability, but there is a lot more depth than many other games of its ilk and it makes up for it in terms of spectacle.

Not a bad slightly forgotten arcade game.

Review: Sukhoi Su-15

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Sukhoi Su-15: The Boeing Killer

A Yefim Gordon book on the titular interceptor, Sukhoi Su-15 is exactly what it says it is and exactly what you’d expect. Which is to say, a book on an obscure Soviet plane that has a lot of details, but is questionably laid out and where you really, really want to double-check everything. In this case, some of the details are interesting.

These include things like the overlooked for-but-almost-always-not-with ground attack armament it had, and of course model kit reviews. (I do like the look of the Flagon). The issues besides the ones inherent to any Yefim Gordon book are that the Su-15 really didn’t have many variants or career highlights beyond the KAL shootdown. But you could do worse if you like obscure planes.

Review: Fenimore Coopers Literary Offenses

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Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses

Fuldapocalypse now turns its attention to noted World War III author Mark Twain. I have to share Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses because as a child, it was the kind of thing that made me guffaw massively. And still does. Since I have not read any of Cooper’s actual novels, if I was to do so now it would probably be something like watching a Jean-Luc Goddard movie after the Monty Python “French Subtitled Film” sketch that parodied it massively.

Twain was proceeding Mystery Science Theater 3000 by a century and it was amazing. Whether or not he was accurate in his critique of Cooper, it was certainly fun to read. (Also fun fact: The home of the Baseball Hall of Fame, Cooperstown, was named after the author. Twain would have had a field day critiquing the ballots of writers who do things like vote for steroid-tarred Gary Sheffield but not Bonds or Clemens).

A Thousand Words: Air Crew

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Air Crew

1980’s Air Crew (sometimes translated as “Flight Crew” or “The Crew“) was the USSR’s attempt to copy the Airport-style disaster movie. The first half is an incredibly slow episode of Aeroflot: The Soap Opera and features such white-knuckle thrills as a child custody hearing (not kidding), but the second is pure 70s disaster cheesy fun.

The plane lands in the most treacherous fictional airport in the most treacherous fictional land, and its crew then confronts a simultaneous earthquake-flood-firestorm. Getting off the ground is just the start, leading to a ridiculous and ridiculously fun conclusion that involves members of the cockpit crew bundling up and going outside as if they were cosmonauts on a spacewalk and climaxes with geography ceasing to make sense.

As a time filler, you could do a lot worse than this movie.

Review: Tiger Tracks

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Tiger Tracks

The predecessor to infamous “memoir” The Last Panther by “Wolfgang Faust”, Tiger Tracks is another story of a kitty-tank in World War II. Reading its successor or the review thereof will give you what to expect. Which is to say ridiculous pulpy action, even more blatant Wehrabooism, mysteriously detailed descriptions of battles, and a total lack of historical accuracy.

On that last point, this is even worse than The Last Panther in that regard. At least that was describing a real battle (Berlin). This is just a vague “Eastern Front” location. With anachronistic IS-3 tanks on the Soviet side that didn’t enter service until after the war was over.

Because of this, it’s an even worse book than The Last Panther.

Review: N’Oubilons Jamais

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N’Oubilons Jamais and Other Great Wars

Sea Lion Press published an anthology featuring alternate World War Is called N’Oubilons Jamais. Full of short stories, there is one that makes the anthology worth it all by itself. That is “The Modern Knight” by Jeff Provine, and it is amazing. The divergence is that instead of tanks, they go for people in Ned Kelly style body armor. The result is something that looks like a World War I version of GTA V’s “The Paleto Score”

Anyway, the rest of the anthology doesn’t quite come up to that masterpiece, but it’s still well worth your while.

A Thousand Words: Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator 2

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Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator 2

Have you ever wished that you could just throw two armies against each other? Have your playthroughs of Command: Modern Operations or other wargames largely just consisted of setting up artificial jousts in the level editor? Don’t want any of that pesky “tactics” or “detail”? Then Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator 2 is the game for you!

There’s a campaign mode and the ability to play it as a makeshift real-time-strategy game, but the true meat of UEBS is to just line up a pair of armies on a map, like a literal million ancient soldiers against an artillery brigade with a contemporary infantry company screen, and watch as they charge at it. It’s not exactly deep but it is very fun.

In fact, it’s weirdly informative about actual battlefield dynamics, because taking away any kind of tactical management means you can see the other factors at play. I was pleasantly surprised to see a small number of melee units I put in making an outsize difference as they fixed the opposition and let the ranged units fire on them more freely. You can see terrain effects as your giant hordes struggle to make it through bottlenecks.

So there are a lot worse things to get than UEBS2, especially since mods mean you make even more fantastical clashes.

Review: American Military Helicopters

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American Military Helicopters

E.R. Johnson’s American Military Helicopters is one of those giant encyclopedias of aircraft that appeal only really to a certain group of people, but which appeals a LOT to said group. This is a huge catalog of everything that has either had a rotary wing or a vertical takeoff feature that either entered or was considered for American military service.

So you get stuff like the UH-1 and F-35B. But you also get obscure projects from the 1950s and 60s that ranged from gargantuan lifters that challenged the Soviet monsters in size to literal flying jeeps. The history nerd in me complains that it didn’t go as far into the VTOL weeds as it could have, but as an expanded “coffee table book”, it’s excellent for what it is.

Review: Falling

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Falling

TJ Newman’s Falling is a thriller about an airliner pilot faced with an ultimatum on a previously routine flight: Crash on purpose or your family gets killed. Reading it gave me a weird feeling. Not a bad feeling, but a weird one.

I’ve seen reviews that have said “this book was clearly trying to be a movie”. And this is a very, very blatant example of this. It’s not a bad example, and neither is it a bad book. I was reminded a lot of the movie Speed, which is not exactly a horrible thing for a thriller to remind you of. But at the same time, people remember Speed a lot more than they remember the novelization of Speed, because it’s the kind of thing that’s far better told in visual format.

Not surprisingly, this book is being made into a movie. I’ll have to see how that turns out, but I’ll just say that if being too much like an action movie is the worst thing in a thriller, it’s a good thriller. Especially if it’s written by a veteran flight attendant who thus knows a thing or two about airplanes.