Morning Ramble: Shoot the Thing

Morning Ramble for January 25th, 2017 in which I take a look at the second issue of Letter 44 and try to guess who’s baby it is and I make a wrong turn in Destiny and find…something I might not like.

Destiny Journal Entry #4: Careful Which Way You Turn

Today in Destiny I ran into some new bad guys and a few that were obviously way over my head in difficulty on my way to tackle the Warmind mission.

Before I ran into any of the new baddies, I got my ride – the Sparrow. This little guy is like a hover cycle and it allows you to zip around the map pretty easily and quickly. Sadly, the most damage you can do with it is to honk at the bad guys to upset them. Further, I failed to get a decent screenshot of it today…tomorrow I’ll get one.

Now that I had my ride, I quickly ran through the first part of my next mission in the Forgotten Shore. This required dealing with a couple of tramission antennas that were surrounded by Fallen.

There were a few Captains about, but they were no match for my updated weapons and skills.

I picked up a PSI Umbra II-A Pulse Rifle that gave me a 22 attack rating with a mag of 24, so slowly, I am getting better and better weapons. This fired in bursts so while not fully automatic, it was much better than the single shot. Actually during the fights today I think I grabbed something better but I didn’t check it out yet…tomorrow.

I’ll also show off my cloak that I picked up yesterday.

The Stealth Vandals have an interesting mechanism that allows them to be virtually invisible – you can still see a distortion – so they are hard to attack from a distance. They go down pretty easily to melee attacks though as long as you remember what the correct button is for melee – took me a few tries.

After taking these guys out, I made what turned out to be a wrong turn and ran into a bunch of Hallowed Acolytes…nasty guy for me at level 5…I ran away as fast as I could.

Fortunately I didn’t have to face them at this point. Instead, I headed to the Terreestrial Complex where I needed to hold off an onslaught while my ghost interfaced with some machine.

This was a pretty long fight with all kinds of baddies showing up…Captains, Vandals, Dregs, and then the Servitors showed up.

These guys healed the other bad guys while shooting me and they had a bunch of HP, but if I hit them in the eye, they went down eventually.

After what seemed like a fight that took forever, my Ghost told me to shoot the device he had scanned and we finished the mission…ding level 6!

This was a fun mission and I was happy to see others running around Old Russia. There were even some lower level characters out and about rather than just the level 40s I’ve seen the past few days.

Letter 44 #2

Written By: Charles Soule
Art By: Alberto Jimenez Alburquerque
Colored By: Guy Major
Lettered By: Shawn DePasquale
Published By: Oni Press 2013

At the end of the last issue, the Clarke finally broke through the barrier shielding the alien object and discovered the Chandelier.

This issue opens with scientists on Earth going over what they know about the aliens with the new President – which isn’t much other than that they want something.

And they don’t know what.

Up on the Clarke, there’s a power outage and they must preform an EVA to get things straightened out so Manesh and Willett head out into the coldness of space. Where Willett sees something and shoots at it.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, the President takes a tour of the neato weapons that have been designed to take on the aliens if they ever attack and he wonders why we aren’t using them in the wars we’re fighting…good question. Better weapons = war over sooner.

Back on the Clarke, we learn that Willett has been taking meds to destress and they may be losing their effectiveness. Oh, and also, they don’t know who the father of the baby is. But with the power situation resolved, they’re able to finally send their data back to Earth where the President is just figuring out that the mission is one-way (que dramatic music).

So we bounce back and forth quite a bit in this issue but we learn a bunch. The characters on the ship and on Earth are getting fleshed out and we can see the beginnings of conflict emerge. What’s gonna happen with Willett and his jittery nerves on a small ship in the middle of space? Is the new President gonna be able to get his agenda moving while dealing with the alien issue? On the whole, a fun issue.

The art is of the same quality as issue one and I love the cover. I’ve grown accustomed to the distinct character style of Alburquerque and am enjoying some of the larger scenes. The depiction of the Clarke in this issue is particularly well done.

One thing I will note is my feeling when seeing the ship’s crew sitting around a table – I get the weireded out feeling like some baby Alien is gonna spring from someone’s chest.

I’ll rate this issue B+