715

Yori has reached faster-than sound effect attack speed! Oh, yeah, Genchu is on his way. Speculate away… or not. Good thing he has a series of sonic booms to point him in the right direction.

I really didn’t plan on buying Mario + Rabbids. The Rabbids franchise just never grabbed me and I had acres of Hyrule to search for Korok seeds. But Ubisoft found the right formula to tempt me away from Hero Mode – a 4-way crossover between Mario, Rabbids, Banjo-Kazooie (music by Grant Kirkhope), and Fire Emblem (okay, this one is a stretch, but to me all turn-based tactics games are Fire Emblem).

Ubisoft’s take on the Mario world is gorgeous. It’s really a shame that they don’t give you more camera control so you could look around.

The games few flaws are obvious pretty quickly: controlling Mario and the gang in the overworld is clumsy at best. This makes annoying block puzzles even worse. While you can warp to individual challenges later in the game, I found exploration tedious. This may be my own lack of direction sense speaking, but a map screen would be ideal, considering the backtracking you’ll do to find secrets.

The point of the game is the combat, and that’s nearly perfect. A few enemy animations are a overly long and the poor camera control spoils some of the fun, but that’s it. The strategy is deeper than I expected and relies largely on chaining your heroe’s various abilities to move quickly around the board.

The comedy is constant and very… Rabbid. I particularly enjoyed the more subtle character animations of your teammates, but by far my favorite part of the game has been the Mario opera (spoiler to follow).

Mario needs more opera.

Published on by | 35 Comments on 715

Remix 59

Alex is in the ocean right now.

To distract you from this terrifying fact, we take a break from our kung-fu fighting to see how Genchu and friends are doing. Who knew GrubHub existed back then?

Oh, hey! Alex and I were interviewed by AnimeBinge! Check it out to find out a few exclusive never-before-revealed secrets about the ORIGINAL NN4B story, Matrix and the origin of Yukizane.

 

Published on by | 28 Comments on Remix 59

678

Eijiro is a practical prince. The ends always justify the means!

Nataku chose an odd time to practice his doom glare in the background.

Published on by | 32 Comments on 678

RSS Feed

Do you want to add NN4B to your favorite RSS Feed aggregator? No problem! Here’s the link: http://nn4b.com/feed

Don’t know what RSS feeds are? Lear all about them here: What is RSS?

Published on by | Comments Off on RSS Feed

650

I know you all thought Matrix and Lex were time travelers… but you were wrong! Lord Hirotomo, with his magic castle (that’s bluer on the inside) is the only time traveler in NN4B. That’s right. He’s a Feudal Time Lord!

This weekend we’re going to SPACE! Oh, not the outer kind… the Columbus Ohio Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo. NN4B will be joined by some pretty awesome people. If you’re around, you should say hi! Here’s a map and stuff:

map

Published on by | 35 Comments on 650

Remix 56

It’s about time we had a Remix from a page that wasn’t from 5 years ago.

Masuhiro is having trouble coping with the world outside the cozy cave.

Alex, who has not been on dry land for 8 days, will return next week with new real update. One in which the characters are absurd in a way that is in character.

Until then, the latest regular page is here.

Published on by | 18 Comments on Remix 56

645

Let the record show that my script to Alex did not say “Then Ina glares at Yori with a face that will haunt me to the end of my days, and possibly longer”.

That, my friends, is the sort of collaborative creative freedom that goes on in our comic making process.

Sometimes it results in unexpectedly awesome lines (Ina’s adlib on this very page is one such example). Sometimes, it guarantees that I will never sleep again…

Enjoy!

Published on by | 43 Comments on 645

593

Having failed to get him drink, Matrix has simply decided to murder Ken with swords. Seems like an over reaction, but let’s see how that goes!

So my favorite show right now that isn’t a cartoon is Arrow, which is, I think, in large part because of that super rad driving soundtrack! I also love the whole Arrow universe that The CW’s been constructing. Sure, a lot of the writing is groan worthy, and there are so many painful cliches to eye roll at (I say that having constructed a perfectly eye-roll worthy trope-tastic webcomic), but GOSH DARN if Arrow and Flash aren’t fun as hell to watch!

I’m actually concerned about keeping up with all these spin off shows, because there’s going to be a team-up superhero show with The Atom, Black Canary, and Mr Flame (or something), and a 2D ANIMATED action cartoon that ALSO ties into the universe. I fear spinoff overload, but I can see it potentially working like a TV version of the Marvel Cinema universe. It’s just weird how we probably won’t get the big DC staple characters like Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman in these shows because DC probably wants to avoid too much branding confusion with its intended Justice League movie lineup. It’s frustrating because I despise Zack Snyder as a film maker and it’s sad to see the big DC names trapped in a monochrome, angst ridden film universe while all their lesser known cousins are having a blast on television. Still, they did tease Harley Quinn in that one episode, so maybe in time DC will lighten up on the restrictions! After all, we’ve got to assume Gotham exists in the Arrow-verse, right? Oh, I guess Gotham is its own show, but if Stephen Amell can’t guest star then WHO CARES.

Published on by | 1 Comment on 593

592

The page is up! A bit late because I’ve been moving and it’s been a tad hectic. Matrix is trying to sass Ken and he’s having none of it! What’s a mysterious benefactor to do?

I wanted to name drop Joshua Done, a webcomic writer who recently started two comics in his own scifi universe. I took a look at them and they’re definitely the kind of tropes I love! Wandering Realms has an intense space opera plotline with plenty of rad looking starships and immediate high stakes conflicts. The design of the scifi tech is definitely above average, props to the artist.

His other comic, Icarus Sons, is a straight up scifi western (let’s not get into the debate that all scifi stories are westerns!). There’s only a handful of pages so far, but if you like scifi bounty hunter stories, this is worth keeping an eye on!

Published on by | 8 Comments on 592

589

A moral conundrum difficult to concern even Cho! Good thing Matrix is around to provide righteous advice.

After months and hundreds of hours of work, NN4B Volume 2 has been sent to the printers! If you missed the Kickstarter campaign, we’ll have the books on hand for Emerald City Comicon! You should stop buy and give us money. Or just say “hi”. Or both.

Published on by | 62 Comments on 589