Let your old school gamer out of its cage...

With all the excitement surrounding Star Wars:  Battlefront, plus the recently announced mobile game Star Wars:  Uprising, I thought I'd take a step back into the early 2000s and talk about a game that was very near and dear to my heart for several years, Star Wars Galaxies. I wasn't really big into the MMORPG genre at the time, I'd played a little Ultima Online and very, very little Dark Ages of Camelot, but when I saw that Star Wars was throwing its hat into the ever-growing online gaming ring I knew I had to get in on that action...and man did I ever. I easily logged more hours playing "galaxies" (as all the cool kids would say) over the next 2-3 years than I did doing anything else, and I loved every minute of it. It was an incredibly huge, open-ended game with so many myriad possibilities that it was rare to stand beside someone in the cantina that was the same type of character you were, and the complex crafting system was unlike anything I've seen since. Honestly, I think they were a little ahead of their time and some people, including the developers based on the way they destroyed the good thing they had, didn't know how to handle it...which, as I alluded, lead to it being dumbed down and overhauled into something that barely resembled the great game it used to be, and, though it stayed operational for quite some time after those changes, that's when I parted ways with my ex-lover and moved my mmo allegiance to the Warcraft camp...but, enough about the past, let's talk about the present and how a flightless bird brought me back to the good old days...

The Siege of Lothal Or: It Takes Tua to Tango

Poor, poor Minister Tua...it's a bad time to be living on Lothal, regardless of whether you're a civilian citizen or a member of the mighty Empire (unless, of course, your name is Kallus, then somehow your failures don't get punished...). The citizenry are being run off their land so it can be used to fuel the machine only to have their replacement settlement burned to the ground, and even Imperials like Grint and Aresko are losing their jobs (along with their heads) for less than satisfactory performance. Minister Tua witnessed their execution first hand, so she knew when she was summoned before Tarkin that her fate would probably be no different...unfortunately, her reaction was transparent, and turned out to be a vital part of Vader's overall plan. In fact, he more or less told her exactly what he was going to do, he just left out the part about her being the pawn that would set everything in motion. Gotta love a good Sith scheme...they're almost akin to setting up dominoes with purposeful gaps, leaving it up to seemingly random chance that a wind gust or curious creature will happen by to start things falling again...except, when you have the Force, nothing is random...anyway, I'm gonna dive head first into this thing and see what interesting talking points I come up with, so strap yourselves in and hold on to something sturdy...

5 things I'd like to see in Rebels Season 2

With the season 2 premiere looming, I thought I'd take a minute to spout off about what I'd like to see happen in the series this season. No spoilers here, just a wishlist from my quirky head canon...lists are still trendy on the internet, right?

On Supreme Leader Snoke, more to say have you?

As it turns out, yes, yes I do. I was ruminating about Star Wars today, as I so very often do, and found that my mind kept circling back to wondering "just who is Supreme Leader Snoke"...and I don't mean trying to pinpoint who he is out of a set of known characters (OMG IT'S PLAGUEIS!) like some kind of far, far away police lineup, I'm thinking on a more philosophical level...what kind of person is he? What drives him; what does he really want? Is he a second iteration of Palpatine, just another Sith lusting after power? Is he an idealist, a sort of bizarro Palpatine that, instead of doing things for personal gain under the guise of working toward peace, actually believes he can usher in a new era of prosperity? Is he a ruthless dictator who takes matters into his own hands rather than working behind the scenes, pulling the strings and manipulating the galactic clay to create his masterpiece? Regardless of what other identity Snoke may have (Darth Maul maybe...?), I did a little more internet investigating to see if I could find some hypothetical answers to my hypothetical questions...

Where there's Snoke, there's ire...

Yeah, I know, I'm a little late to the party on this one, but this is my space to do with as I please and it doth pleaseth me to speak on this subject now...anyway, by now everyone and their brother knows that Andy Serkis is playing a mo-cap character named...*drum roll*...Supreme Leader Snoke in the next chapter of the Star Wars saga. And with this new-found information, people have begun rampant speculation about who his character really is...or have just started doing a weird, happy dance while screaming "OMG IT'S PLAGUEIS!" Before I talk about that, though, I want to talk about my initial reaction to the name, and do a little investigation into what it could mean.

Order #6 & #6

 Let me start off by saying that if you haven't been reading the comics up to the two #6s that released today, as well as the other two series, you're doing yourself a tremendous disservice as a Star Wars fan, and as a fan of cool art and storytelling as well. Now, I'll level with you that I wasn't as on-board with the comics upon first hearing about them as I was with other new canon options like the novels and Rebels, but I'd decided to really go all-in with the "new EU" this time around (I was more of a "take off my shoes and dangle my feet in the water" kind of guy with the previous EU) so I bought the first issues at my local comic shop and was more or less immediately captivated, especially with the Darth Vader series. That said, the Star Wars series has really picked up over the last two issues and taken over the top spot...but the synergism with these two #6s is really an impressive feat, and a real testament to the kind of continuity the story group is capable of. Alright, that's enough gushing about Marvel, et al., let's get into the stories. And, yeah, there are major spoilers ahead, so if you haven't been reading the comics then shame on you, go do that and come back...you slacker.