Arrow Secrets: “Dark Waters”

Amazo

Ollie returned to the Amazo this week. We haven’t seen the ship on Arrow in a couple of seasons, so let’s cover its namesake’s background. Amazo is an evil android created to take down the Justice League by Anthony Ivo, who just happened to be the captain of the Amazo freighter when it was seaworthy. I wonder if the Amazo made its return this week because Red Tornado made an appearance on Supergirl last week: Red Tornado and Amazo are similar.

Mina Fayad

“Ms. Fayad” had her name dropped on “Dark Waters.” She was the one who put a hit out on Andy Diggle, and we saw Darhk kill her earlier this season for trying, and failing, to have Double Down kill Damien. From the sound of it, she may not be as dead as we had first thought.

The Force Choke

Even though Mark Hamill guest-starred, The Flash wasn’t the only DC Comics show to reference Star Wars this week. If the move Damien Darhk used on Malcolm Merlyn looked familiar, it should. Darhk was using one of Darth Vader’s signature moves, the force choke.

News 52

Arrow and Flash love them some News 52 (see the microphone above), which is a reference to DC’s New 52.

Just in case you missed our Arrow review, here’s a link. Thanks for reading.

Arrow Review: “Dark Waters”

Jim’s Thoughts

Well, Arrow is done until January 20th, so we’re officially at the mid season point. Damien Darhk has definitely been the strength of the season. This has been the closest the show has come to recapturing that slow burn we had watching Slade and Ollie’s relationship develop while waiting for the big confrontation we all knew was coming. It’s really as simple as having a single villain be built up as opposed to the baddie of the week formula.

Unfortunately, ever since last season, the Ollie/Felicity “Olicity” love angle has weighed the show down, and the midseason finale had that in spades. I found myself checking out during their scenes. I’ll go so far as to say I’ve begun to turn on Felicity as a character, and I think doing away with their romance would work wonders toward getting the show back to what made it most successful.

The angle with Diggle and his brother isn’t necessarily bad, but there’s still no payoff to it. We just got more angry exchanges between bars without telling us anything new or moving any plot forward. I like Diggle, and I like the idea of giving him a separate storyline, but it’s being buried under everything else happening on the show, and it’s beyond repetitive at this point.

The flashbacks this season have been another underwhelming element of the show. We’re meant to feel Ollie is in danger at this point. He’s been discovered, and that’s intended to leave us on a cliffhanger. The nature of flashbacks, though, is that we know Ollie survives the experience, so there’s no tension there. It’s not an effective cliffhanger, and the entire thing is just another waste of screen time.

If you haven’t seen the episode yet, I’ll tread lightly here and just say the show wants us to believe we know who is in the grave now, the grave Oliver was flash-forwarded to earlier this season, but I smell misdirection there. I think we’re being set up for a fakeout, and that made it an unsatisfying close to this leg of the season.

Kyle’s Take

But if the character Jim thinks is in the grave actually is in the grave, it would fix the show. I didn’t even preface that with a spoiler alert, so spoiler alert: the possible dead character is Felicity. If she was six feet under, we wouldn’t have the all-consuming Olicity melodrama. But I don’t think she’s dead either, and even if she or anyone else was, death ain’t nothing but a thang on Arrow. On a somewhat different note, I laughed when I saw Ollie climb through the car’s cabin and not get a scratch, while Felicity hunkered on the backseat and got hit. That type of logic may work on Earth-2, but it doesn’t work on this planet. Ollie was the bigger and easier target. When did HIVE sleepers become Stormtroopers?

Moving on, I’m liking the slow burn with Damien Darhk too. The scene we get of him hugging his wife and child contrasts Ollie’s personal life and colors Darhk as Ollie’s mirror opposite. The Darhk family revelation—possibly the only great revelation—also makes what Darhk does for HIVE all the more chilling because he knows how to be a caring human being. Does he kiss his daughter goodnight right before he kills hundreds of people? On one of our recent Arrow secrets pages, I joked that Darhk watched Brave because he called Thea, Merida, but the truth is that he probably did watch Brave with his daughter, and that’s down right creepy.

I buy into Jim’s premise that there must be a villain a comic book show builds up toward every season. The Batman TV series of the sixties used the villain of the week formula, but so did the Batman comic book at that time. Comics have changed and the shows that portray them should adjust to the source material, but I’m not sure a villain of the week formula can’t work on any show; it just doesn’t work for Arrow. But I like something else Arrow is doing for a recurring character: Malcolm/Ra’s al Ghul. He’s playing nice for now—he even dressed as Green Arrow in “Dark Waters”—but I see him throwing his hat back in the ring as a potential big Arrow villain in the not-so-distant future, and that’s a fun development.

As far as the rest of “Dark Waters” is concerned, I averted my eyes and ears whenever the Olicity storm rolled onto the screen. Did we really have a scene where Felicity and her mom shrieked like high school girls? I don’t know; I blacked out. Diggle-to-Diggle isn’t going anywhere. John yelling at himself in the mirror would be more productive than what he’s doing with his brother. And those flashbacks don’t work. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if Arrow wants to show us flashbacks, give us the time we missed between seasons.

I’m sure we’ll see what the grave scene is all about when Arrow returns. But even though Jim and I could do without it, Olicity is a popular item for many Arrow fans and whatever the fallout from “Dark Waters” is won’t be as profound as the show let on this week, and if nothing comes from what happened in the midseason finale, it would mar an otherwise good beginning to Arrow’s fourth season.

Want more Arrow? Check out our Arrow secrets page here. Thanks for reading.

The Flash Secrets: “Running to Stand Still”

Barry’s Always Late

Okay, Joe got his watch from his dad as a not-so-subtle reminder that he was always late, but Barry was often late in his civilian life, despite being the fastest man alive. This isn’t the first time The Flash has made reference to this but I like that Joe may have had similar issues as Barry when he was younger and this was a more subtle mention of this Flash trope.

TheFlashTheTricksterStalkerWall

The Trickster’s Jail Wall

Did you notice those valentines on the Trickster’s jail wall? Yeah, he had similar letters in his jail cell during flashbacks in the first Trickster episode. Man that guy’s creepy.

HiroOkamuraToyman

Okamura Toys

In the comics, Hiro Okamura was an heir to a toy empire and a tech genius. He even fought crime for a brief time as Toyman prior to the Flashpoint reboot. No, he’s not that other Toyman, one of Superman’s oldest enemies whose son appears on Supergirl, but he does use the same high-tech toy gimmick. I wonder if he has explosive dreidels. Perhaps.

JerrySiegelShoeShopRobbery

Shoe Shop Robbery

Patty said her father died in a robbery gone bad at their family’s shoe store, and that bears a resemblance to Mitchell Siegel. Siegel was reportedly shot and killed during a robbery at his family-owned, secondhand clothing store, but several reports called it a shoe store.

Soon after, Siegel’s son Jerry was inspired by his father’s murder to create a bulletproof man who could leap tall buildings in a single bound, and the world’s first superhero, Superman, was born. Or so the story goes.

There’s another version of Siegel’s death where the coroner cited a heart attack as the cause of death. Who knows what to believe as New York City coroners weren’t the most trustworthy during the time of Mitchell Siegel’s death. Brad Meltzer, who also penned Green Arrow for a time, wrote about this conspiracy in his Book of Lies.

TheFlashTheBootJoeWest

The Boot

We’ve seen the device Patty used to stop Barry earlier this year. Joe used the boot to slow down Atom-Smasher.

WallyWest

Wally West

We knew it was coming but we saw Wally West this week. In the comics, Wally isn’t Iris’s brother; he’s her nephew. He gained his powers in an accident similar to Barry’s and spent some years as Kid Flash. When Barry died during the Crisis on Infinite Earths, Wally took over the role of The Flash for twenty years until Barry Allen returned at the beginning of Final Crisis.

Wally more or less retired after Barry’s return. He settled down with his wife Linda Park and their kids, but Wally showed up again post-Flashpoint when Barry fought an evil version of himself from the future. Eventually, Wally gained his own speed powers.

TheFlashBestOfBothWorlds

Miscellaneous

Jay says, “Every Earth has The Godfather,” and that’s a good thing.

Cisco used the CW’s tagline “best of both worlds,” pictured above. The network used this tagline when it announced that Jay Garrick, The Flash of Earth-2, would join The Flash this season.

Cisco makes a Breaking Bad reference: “Magnets, Bitch.”

Cisco also yelled “Yahtzee!” I could see him playing the game, but this could be in reference to Harley Quinn (the hench-wench and girl toy of Mark Hamill’s Joker). Harley would yell Yahtzee whenever she did something well.

When Barry handed Weather Wizard the wand, Hamill looks at it and says, “That looks familiar.” Of course Hamill is referring to Luke Skywalker’s blue lightsaber.

Barry using his arms like whirlwinds in order to fly him and Patty out of the warehouse is how Johnny Quick, Jessie Quick’s father, flew in the DC comic book universe.

That’s it for this year of The Flash. If you missed our Flash review, here’s a link. Thanks for reading and happy holidays.

The Flash Review: “Running to Stand Still”

Jim’s Thoughts

Well, the midseason finale had some fireworks for us and it managed to entertain me throughout. That’s about all I can ask of an episode of the show, but I couldn’t help but feel a little underwhelmed at this being the midseason finale.

The big villain teamup ended up being something of a secondary focus, and team Flash disarming the bombs made for a simple solution befitting a messy buildup. Mark Hamill as The Trickster was the DC small screen universe’s Diet Joker as always. Hamill is terrific on screen, but the character is barely distinguishable from Joker as it is. Captain Cold continued to be over the top and difficult to take, and may have even distracted from Hamill to some degree.

Patty’s story played out interestingly enough, but it was far too sudden a reveal to the audience for there to be a real payoff, though there was a nice bit of tension in Barry talking her down in the end. On that note, I really expected Barry to let her in on his identity, and much like it was with Iris, the longer he waits to do it, the stranger it’s going to feel.

Given that we were already told about Francine having a son, the big Wally West reveal in the end (I don’t see how that qualifies as a spoiler, but I’m sorry if you disagree), wasn’t the big cliffhanger I think the show wanted it to be.

The first half of the season is in the books now. The show continues to grow, and it’s been baseline good, but it’s still showing some cracks in the façade that I really expected to be gone by now.

Kyle’s Take

Yeah, none of the cliffhangers in “Running to Stand Still” worked as cliffhangers. I assumed Harrison Wells had been trading Zoom favors for a while, in an effort to keep his daughter safe, and the midseason finale only confirmed those suspicions. We also learned why Zoom didn’t kill Barry when he had the chance, but that’s a small thing and yet not as small as the villain team-up Jim mentioned earlier.

Weather Wizard was only a plot device to break Captain Cold out of prison (Cold has to be free prior to Legends of Tomorrow), while The Trickster cashed in on a Mark Hamill guest appearance a week and half before Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ release. I see what you did there, Flash. Sure, Hamill was The Trickster in the nineties Flash TV show, but the voice he uses in the current Flash is the one he used for the Joker in Batman: the Animated Series, so this comes off as The Flash wanting to cash in on two other popular franchises, because I didn’t hear chants in the streets of we need more Trickster. It’s as if the CW doesn’t believe in the Flash so it has to resort to cheap tricks. News flash: they don’t.

Captain Cold didn’t bother me as much as he bothered Jim from the sound of it. Maybe I’ve developed a touch of frostbite toward his overacting and I’m numb. The Patty story was okay. I liked Barry talking her down at the end of the episode, but her big reveal wasn’t just sudden, it was an expositional dialogue vomit and that’s not effective storytelling. No one spews that much backstory unless they’re on a couch and someone else is getting paid to listen. I also question the wisdom of Barry keeping his identity secret from Patty but for a different reason: Linda Park. Barry knew Iris his entire life, so he had to tell her, but why did he tell Linda Park his identity earlier this year? (I think he was duped into doing so.) Regardless, if Barry’s ex-girlfriend Linda knows, then his current girlfriend Patty should know.

I know it sounds like I hated The Flash this week, but it was a fun episode: lots of action. I just think “Running to Stand Still” was too apt a name for the midseason finale. The Flash has been running to stand still for most of this young season. I hope the second half gets off the blocks.

Want more Flash? Check out our Flash secrets page. Thanks for reading.

iZombie Review: “Cape Town”

Kyle’s Review

iZombie’s mid-season finale had some fun. A zombie solving crimes is already a ridiculous premise, but “Cape Town” made plenty of tongue-in-cheek references to the CW’s other DC Comics TV shows when Liv dons a mask and spandex to fight crime. That’s right, iZombie presented Liv with the brains of a shop class, high school teacher by day, caped vigilante by night brain. The show could’ve gone the way of Liv building spice racks, but the obvious choice was Liv spouting justice one-liners and delivering monologues about Seattle’s dark underbelly. Seriously, I almost soiled myself with some of the one-liners. Per usual, the brains Liv is on for “Cape Town” worked, but I didn’t care for the expositional dialogue.

I’m not sure what iZombie’s viewership numbers look like, but the show must be getting a lot of newbies, since “Cape Town” hit pause two or three times to slather some backstory. Blaine introduced himself, which was odd, and then he spent five minutes recapping what happened to him in the first season. As if that wasn’t enough, Major did a similar thing with his would be zombie victim. He decides not to kill her and then vents his spleen for about five minutes, bemoaning his lousy year (everything that happened to him this season). What makes Major’s scene even more problematic is that he chose to spare a zombie call girl, who had no family and was willing to take her own unlife, rather than saving the horde of loving zombie dads with young children he offed earlier this season. For those not in the know, in iZombie’s world, zombies are humans who just happen to like the taste of human brains. Somehow Major not giving two shakes about fathers with children who will miss them made him more of a monster. Still, I’m writing off these two exposition hangovers as the show gaining new viewers and giving those viewers context, but there had to be a better way to do this.

Despite hitting rewind a few times, “Cape Town” made plenty of strides forward. I liked how Blaine is working behind the scenes in both the zombie world, which puts him at odds with Max Rager’s CEO, and that he has a man on the inside of Seattle’s largest organized crime syndicate, which gets his grubby fingers in Mr. Boss’s pie. I wasn’t sure how the show would stitch these characters together but I’m glad Blaine, a character who is trying to become a big bad, is the show’s touchstone between two current big bads. iZombie could have a large falling out at the end of this season and still have enough threads for next season, while developing a through line for the entire series. Even with all this going on in the background, we saw plenty of change with iZombie’s various interpersonal relationships.

I still don’t know if Major and Liv are supposed to end up together. Romance may be in iZombie’s air but the show does a decent job of not gagging its viewers with it. Major and Liv aren’t Ross and Rachel (Friends) or Penny and Leonard (Big Bang Theory). You didn’t see Major and Liv for the first time and know they were going to be together for a significant period of time. This separates iZombie from many other shows that hook up two of its main characters. Liv and Major keep things from one another, so their history of deception also leads to the conclusion they can’t end up together, but the best thing iZombie added was Liv questioning how much the brains she eats affect her personality. She knew Major was lying to her and the suspicious brains she ate last week gave her a push in not trusting him, and the only thing she likes about being a zombie is that she can help people and solve crimes, and this week’s vigilante brains had her taking a more active role in crime fighting.

I won’t say any more and risk giving away spoilers, but let’s just say iZombie continues to trend in the right direction, and the bombshells dropped at the end of “Cape Town” should keep interest high during the holidays.

Thanks for reading.

Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. review: “Maveth”

Kyle’s Review

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s mid-season finale “Maveth” had some good moments but fell flat. Even though I didn’t think the show could continue its lightning pace through the mid-season finale, I was hoping they would maintain some momentum and I guess Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. did, but several of the ongoing threads got tied up too neatly for my taste.

I’ll try to continue this review without giving away too many spoilers but consider this a warning: there may be a few. I was disappointed in how the Ward story was resolved: he won’t be around anymore in spirit and yet we haven’t seen the last of him. The Fitz-Simmons-Daniels love triangle was managed well this year but (spoiler) with Will Daniels dead, it frees up Fitz and Simmons to get together. I’m sure Simmons will struggle with Will’s death and I might have to cry foul if Coulson tells Simmons that Fitz killed Daniels; he wasn’t Daniels anymore. I don’t care if Fitz and Simmons end up together but Coulson breaking them up over a misunderstanding would be a little hard to take.

I didn’t care for the foreign planet’s name Maveth. It’s not a bad name; I just wanted to see Ego. But “It” is a bad name. You couldn’t come up with a better name than It, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.? Maybe the second half of this year’s super monsters will receive a more suitable name when Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. returns. Speaking of super monsters, Lash returned and that’s a good thing. Something tells me Agent May will be more than willing to pull the trigger on her ex-husband again. While that fits with her character, I’d like her to struggle with the decision more. I’m not sure if Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. will fit that into the narrative. Lash is an engaging character with ties to S.H.I.E.L.D. and he serves as a good counter-balance to It and Hydra.

The plottiness of “Maveth” prevented a lot of significant growth for many of the show’s characters—and much of the dialogue felt forced because the cast had to get through it and get on to the next scene—but Mack shined despite the writers squeezing as much as they could. Not only did he take charge, he had a subtle moment with Skye (Quake/Daisy) and this moment could bloom into a struggle among Skye, Mack, and Lincoln. I’m not saying this struggle will be a love triangle, nor am I advocating one, but so many arcs were lost in this episode (Coulson and Ward, no more Hydra power struggles, the Fitz-Simmons-Daniels love triangle, and we said goodbye to the planet Maveth) that we had to gain a couple in return. Many of the storylines that got wrapped up outlived their usefulness and I was glad to see them go, but there’s still another half to the season and that was a lot for one episode.

I enjoyed “Maveth,” in spite of its plottiness, and there are enough logs in the fireplace to keep Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. warm during its winter break.

Thanks for reading.

Grimm Review: “Rat King”

Kyle’s Review

“Rat King” picked up where “Maiden Quest” left off, but that meant that Grimm had to slog through a lot of plot and the titular Rat King didn’t get nearly as much air time as it needed. I mentioned Trubel walking into Nick’s fortress in my last review and the fact she’s there brings up one big question that doesn’t get answered. Nick’s home is supposed to be a secret, so how does Trubel (and the people she’s with) know where it is?

We spend most of “Rat King” exploring the intricate web Grimm is spinning between two factions (or among a half dozen wesen factions because we don’t know how many there are), but for every nugget they give us, the new information breeds five to ten more questions. At first it looked like the show had a plan for this season and we didn’t know what the plan was (I hope that’s still the case), but the more Grimm adds to this web, the more the web appears false. I like something happening in the background but I want an idea of what’s going on. Grimm is opaque for the purpose of being opaque.

I also tend to disregard the weekly wesen. Most of the time Grimm has decent small fires Nick and company have to put out, and these weekly wesen serve as a distraction to the longer story arcs, but we spent so much time on the ever growing, ongoing plots to the point that we didn’t see any progression in the Rat King story until two-thirds into the episode. That’s a shame because the little we saw of the “Rat King” was enough to leave me wanting more.

In fact, I wanted to physically see more of the Rat King. According to Grimm, the rat people merge into one big rat beast whenever they feel threatened, and that’s an interesting concept, since the rat people get harassed by another set of wesen early in the episode and turn the tables on their aggressors by the end of the episode, but while we saw a twenty foot rat beast, I was disappointed we didn’t see any of the merging sequence. I get that Grimm has a budget but even if the show didn’t have the money to show us the rat folk assembling Voltron, they could’ve handled the scene better. It doesn’t make sense for the rat people to run into their hovel and suddenly emerge as the fully formed Rat King. In what space did they transform? There isn’t a twenty-foot entrance to their hobbit hole and their hole didn’t explode. I know this is a small gripe, but there were moments where our point of view was obscured and the Rat King meld could’ve occurred outside the line of sight.

Still, I liked the Rat King story; I wanted more. This was a rare case of the ongoing plots getting in the way of the weekly story. Grimm usually does a good job of integrating the weekly wesen into the ongoing plots (“Lost Boys” is a good example from earlier this year) or they sprinkle in some plot within the self-contained story, but neither of those things happened in “Rat King” and both the weekly story and the ongoing plots suffered. I have hope Grimm will turn it around. Despite this minor setback, Grimm’s fifth season remains a strong one.

Top 5 Overused Themes in Tabletop Games

Oh no, not another one of these games.

There are certain themes that get used time and time again in tabletop games to the point we want to scream, enough already. Okay, some of these themes are pretty good, so just because they’re on this list doesn’t mean I hate them; this is a list of themes that saturate the tabletop game market.

You can’t swing a backpack in a hobby game store without knocking a game with one of these themes off the shelf. (Note: don’t swing a backpack in a hobby game store.) I’m going to start with a couple of honorable mentions for this list because there’s an intellectual property that gets overused—and it doesn’t quite fit with the other themes on this list—and European games have their own overused theme that you don’t see too much of in North American games.

With that out of the way, let’s get to it.

Most Overused Intellectual Property

Star Wars

Prequels notwithstanding, I love Star Wars. It only makes this short list because there’s a Star Wars everything, and it’s going to get worse over the next few years. Carcassonne: Star Wars Edition? Yeah, there was one released this year, and it’s a good game. Risk: Star Wars? Ditto, but it’s not Risk. Risk: Star Wars has to make my list of worst names for a tabletop game. Casual gamers will see Risk and get disappointed it’s not Risk, while hard-core tabletop gamers will avoid the title because it has Risk in the title, when it’s a game designed for them: you’re working as a team to blow up the second Death Star. Awesome. If you search Star Wars board game (card game or collectable game) in Google, you’ll find hundreds of thousands of results, so it belongs on this list.

Most Overused Theme in European Games (Eurogames)

Trains

I got back into tabletop gaming with Catan and Ticket to Ride. The latter is a train game, so I have a soft spot for a particular train game, but every time a new Eurogame comes out, there’s a fifty-fifty chance the theme will be trains. This time it’s different. This time you lay down plastic train tracks instead of train cars. In this other game, you push cubes, representing passengers, from one station to the next. This train game uses cards, while this other one uses dice so it’s completely different. North American game developers use familiar themes to rope in sales, but European game developers are just as guilty. Still, I like Ticket to Ride, Steam, and a handful of other tabletop games that focus on trains.

With those two themes out of the way let’s get to the game themes that did make the Top 5.

5) Infiltrators (Spies and Hackers)

This theme isn’t as ubiquitous as the others on this list—that’s why it’s number five—but any game that features the hidden information game mechanism usually uses a spy, hacker, or similar theme. Spy and hacker games are fun and so is hidden information as a game mechanism, but we see a lot of these types of games and the theme is branching out into other game types (ones that don’t focus on hidden information). There are some amazing games that use this theme—Twilight Struggle is a great Cold War simulation game—but this theme gets overused.

4) Superheroes

Say it ain’t so. Say it ain’t so. It’s so. I like superheroes and I like superhero games, but they’re everywhere. Are you making a collectible game of any persuasion (cards, dice, or miniatures)? You’ve got to have a superhero variant. Deck building games are popular, so we have multiple superhero versions of that game type. Even worker placement games, a game type used primarily by Eurogames, has a North American superhero version: Batman: the Strategy Game. Actually, Batman: the Strategy Game is a darn good worker placement game but it throws you off with its title: you’re playing as Batman’s rogues. There are a lot of good to great superhero games, but superhero games are Starbucks.

3) Cthulhu

This is hard to admit but I like this theme too and it gets overused. Eldrich Horror, Arkham Horror, Elder Sign, Call of Cthulhu, Munchkin Cthulhu, and Cthulhu Dice are all good games—in their own way—but the fact that I can rattle off six successful titles with this theme means Cthulhu is overdone, and this success causes more game designers to come out with a new Cthulhu flavor each month. It’s almost as if tabletop games want to recite the ancient rites until the Old Gods return to Earth.

2) High Fantasy

This theme almost doesn’t belong on this list, except that it does. I’ll try to make more sense. High fantasy shows up a lot in games (so it’s an overused theme), but it’s such a broad theme that it encompasses Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Dungeons and Dragons, the King Arthur mythos, and even Harry Potter. How many games have these themes? A lot. And there are more games that use a generic high fantasy theme in addition to these games. Remember that backpack you’re not supposed to swing in a hobby game store? Yeah, that backpack would knock over hundreds of high fantasy games. High fantasy, as a theme, physically shows up in tabletop games more often than any other theme, and yet it isn’t our number one.

1) Zombies

Zombies, ugh. Zombies—like Star Wars starting off this list—have a new horde of games every month. They haven’t overtaken high fantasy as the number one used theme in games, but the reason zombies are atop this list (of overused themes) is that I could pick up any 50 high fantasy games and find 25 to 40 playable games—not good or great games, playable—and then I could pick up any 50 zombie games and find only 8 or 9 playable games. Warning: if a tabletop game has Walking Dead in the title, you should use it for kindling. Walking Dead games epitomize most tabletop games that use the zombie theme: they suck, and the designers don’t care. But there are some exceptions to this rule.

I can’t recommend Dead of Winter enough—it’s the best zombie themed game by far and better captures the feel of The Walking Dead—and there are a handful of other zombie game standouts (Zombie Dice for a light press your luck game, Last Night on Earth for a cinematic game, and Run, Fight or Die for an adrenaline kick) but for the most part, zombie game designers believe their customers are as brain dead as their subject matter.

Arrow Review: “Legends of Yesterday”

Jim’s Thoughts

Well, part two of the big crossover event gave us the big kaboom at the end of the long fuse. My big complaint with part one, of course, was the slow setup, but I’d say the finale paid off in a way that was mostly worthwhile.

The flashbacks to ancient Egypt were more than a little hokey and stiff, but they weren’t allowed to dominate the episode, so they can be forgiven without too much effort.

The confrontation with Vandal Savage didn’t quite live up to what I’d hoped for. In the end, it really just felt like a pep talk and a few technical tweaks shouldn’t have made quite as much difference as they did. In short, it came off as oversimplified.

The development with Oliver and his son struck an effective emotional chord. Stephen Amell really flashed some acting chops in those scenes, and I think he’s shown some real development in his performance over the last few seasons.

On the Ollie and his son story, I have to say his decision to not tell Felicity seems odd, as is the insistence on the boy’s mother’s part that no one know. I get her not wanting her son involved with Oliver, but I feel the need for absolute strict secrecy needs to be better explained.

With that said, the show is running the risk of the audience turning on Oliver. He’s apparently regressing in his pledge to let people in, and that will frustrate some viewers. I’ll admit, if this ends his relationship with Felicity, I won’t be too upset by that myself.

All in all, this was a pretty strong crossover. The second part was stronger than the first, so I’d like to see pacing worked on for the next one, but it held my attention and made me glad to watch.

Kyle’s Take

I’m still not sure whether or not I ate the second half of a Kit-Kat. “Legends of Yesterday” had a lot of flair—as most superhero crossovers do—but I’m not sure we gained much for either series except at the very end. I won’t spoil the ending but what happens could have repercussions and there’s an opportunity for Arrow to develop next season. The Flash didn’t fare nearly as well. Velocity 6, the only thing truly gained for The Flash, developed outside the crossover.

I agree with Jim and liked Ollie’s father-son scenes (Amell was great), but Arrow set up Ollie visiting his son every time he’s in Central City, which will be every time his show crosses over with The Flash’s, so him not telling Felicity about William isn’t that odd because he’s not going to be a father for his son. Who cares if you share genetic material if you won’t be there for the child? Arrow put a fine point on it: he’s in Star City now. And you can’t be a father to a young child from thousands of miles away no matter how much Facebook, Twitter, and Skype would like to disagree.

I’m not quite sold on the explanation Arrow gave for William’s mother wanting to protect him from Ollie. I get why she wouldn’t want Ollie around, but the secrecy thing is odd when she gives him visitation rights. I guess she’s worried she’d lose control of the situation if the truth got out—that can be a huge motivation for a parent—but Arrow could’ve made that more explicit.

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t be hard on a crossover (see first paragraph: nothing gained for either established series), but this was the coming out party of two prominent heroes in DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, and Hawkman and Hawkgirl got the shaft as much as The Flash and Green Arrow. Really? You’re going to waste time in Arrow and The Flash with Legends of Tomorrow backstory only to short shrift the two biggest members of Legends who didn’t get a full season of prep time? Arrow could’ve had Hawkman searching for Hawkgirl in the show or shows preceding this one in a semi-nod to Ghostbusters. I am the keymaster. Are you the gatekeeper? But no, Hawkman literally fell from the sky during the first half of this crossover, and both Hawkman and Hawkgirl got the Cliff Notes version to their origin. The ending was too easy as well and showcased why time-travel can be overpowered and overused (see last year’s reviews: bringing people back from the dead). All of this led to storytelling as substantial as the air between Kit-Kat wafers, but man, it was a lot of fun.

I’ll return to the father-son storyline, which was the strongest part of either episode, and pose an idea as to why it was the most effective part of the story. People can’t comprehend the end of the world no matter how much we envision it. We can’t fathom the universe ceasing to exist. We can’t even wrap our small brains around a force that could destroy a city in an instant. But we know of fathers and sons.

I hope I’m wrong and we see more of William between crossovers.

Do you want more Arrow? Check out our Arrow secrets page here. Thanks for reading.

Arrow Secrets: “Legends of Yesterday”

Celestial Rocks

Okay, Arrow called them sky rocks, but this is a nod to the comics, and Vandal getting bathed in celestial rock radiation is similar to how he gained his powers 46,000 years ago, when a meteor’s radiation granted him powers and intelligence.

Kendra’s Past

Kendra being conflicted over her destiny and her resistance to having her life and love life planned out for her is in keeping with recent stories of the character. I liked that she said her relationship with Hawkman is “complicated,” because there are times she doesn’t like her relationship or him, but it’s what drives her.

Hath-Set and Vandal Savage

They aren’t the same person but both are folks you don’t want to run into in a dark alley. Interestingly, Hath-Set was one of Hawkman’s earliest villains and the first recurring villain to have ties to ancient Egypt.

He-man—I mean, Hawkman

It’s funny Cisco called Hawkman He-man, when DC owns the comic book rights to both.

What do we have left? Hope.

It’s not so strange Barry would answer this question with hope. He was part of the Blue Lantern Corp during the Brightest Day crossover and the Blue Lantern rings were powered by hope.

Destroying everyone in the city in an instant

During the first timeline, Vandal Savage kills everyone in Central City. This isn’t a direct reference but the scene mirrors what happens in the Flashpoint animated movie.

Superheroes in a farm house? I’ve seen that in a movie.

Thea said this in jest but this is an obvious reference to both the recent Age of Ultron and the original live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, when the Turtles, April, and Casey Jones went to a farm house so Raphael could recover and they could devise a plan to stop Shredder. Coincidentally, Stephen Amell played Casey Jones in the Ninja Turtles reboot.

Barry’s Late

Barry was the last one to show up for a meeting again. While he has a good excuse, Barry is often late to things: it’s one of his longest standing tropes. Despite being the fastest man alive, he’s got a lot going on and makes last-minute appearances.

If you missed our Arrow review for “Lost Souls,” here’s a link. Thanks for reading.

Geek Squad

It had to happen eventually but Oliver named Cisco and Felicity after Best Buy’s tech support team, which is funny because Felicity had that type of job at Queen Consolidated.

Fleet Feet

Did we get another store name drop with Fleet Feet? Okay, fleet feet is a common phrase but after hearing Geek Squad, you have to think Fleet Feet Sports. Right?

Time Travel and Barry Ghosting

This wasn’t Barry’s first time time-traveling, so we’ve seen him meet himself before. We knew what was coming as soon as Team Arrow got wiped out in a wave of energy: we were doing the time warp again.

Fight Club

When Cisco said, “the first rule of time travel is you don’t talk about time travel,” it reminded me of a book that got made into a movie. I’d mention it here but we’re not supposed to mention it.

Jurgens Industrial

Wow, how many writer-artist references have we gotten in Arrow and Flash? Jurgens Industrial is a reference to longtime Green Arrow artist Dan Jurgens, who drew the series in the Eighties and returned for the New 52 reboot. He also wrote and drew the 1994 crossover series Zero Hour, in which dozens of characters died when they encountered waves of entropy, so perhaps that’s the reference Arrow made when they had Team Arrow vanish in a blink of an eye.

St. Roch University

St. Roch University should be familiar to DC Universe fans. It’s where Hawkman and Hawkgirl were headquartered for a while and we’ve seen the Legends of Tomorrow journey to St. Roch University in the 1970s during some of the trailers. Hmm, this might not be the last time we’ll see St. Roch.

Samantha Clayton

Samantha Clayton doesn’t exist in the DC Comics Universe; she’s an invention for the TV series. Played by Anne Hopkins, the character made her first appearance during last year’s Flash/Arrow crossover. We’ll have to see what happens, now that Ollie knows he has a son.

Touch Melodies

Cisco mentioned two songs that included the word touch: “U Can’t Touch This” by MC Hammer in 1990 and “Invisible Touch” by Genesis in 1986. Somebody in the writers’ room likes that musical era.

Run, Barry, Run

Arrow writers couldn’t help themselves. They heard The Flash writers use the phrase “Run, Barry, run,” and had to fit it in.

Nth Metal

Nth metal is native to Thanagar, which is also the home of Katar Hol and Shayer Thal, the alien Hawkman and Hawkgirl. Did I mention the two Hawks have a heap of crazy origins? I did in The Flash secrets page, so here it is again. It’s weird.

Nth metal has the ability to negate gravity, and belt made out of this material is how the alien Hawkman and Hawkgirl can fly. The metal has other properties like protecting the wearer from the elements, super healing, increasing its wearer’s strength, and shielding them from extreme temperatures.

Miscellaneous

Cisco makes a Lord of the Rings reference: Anti-Gandalf magic stuff gloves.

“That’s pretty heavy” shows up a lot in Back to the Future, and that’s a good reference.

Sankara Stones are a good nod to Indiana Jones, and they mark the second such reference in as many weeks.

It’s no accident the meteor is held in The Keystone City Museum. That gives us an excuse to visit Wally West’s hometown before he shows up on the set.

Just in case you missed our Arrow review, here’s a link. Thanks for reading.