Joel from Hijinks Ensue - which we love more than is legal - has done a guest comic for Unshelved.
'Tis funny and no mistake - how do you start up a book anyway?
Postings from the nicer side of the Internet...
Joel from Hijinks Ensue - which we love more than is legal - has done a guest comic for Unshelved.
'Tis funny and no mistake - how do you start up a book anyway?
Genius! Out on October 14th, per the IMDB listing...
The more things change...
(Via AV Forums and Home Cinema Choice)
Posted the link to this over at my Facebook page, but the embedding works better here - so press play to enjoy a story from Game Videos (Via Kotaku) on one of the things that I feel has the potential to make "Little Big Planet" fantastic, namely the ability to custom-create levels and post them up for fellow PS3 owners to play.
I await the "Castlevania" and "Gears..." levels with ill-disguised glee...
Via the always splendid Cinematical, behold the joy of Darth and Yoda slippers...
On the shelves in your local games retailer tomorrow...
"Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway" - Xbox 360 (WWII-set FPS action from Gearbox)
"WipeOut HD" - PS3 (The PS' futuristic racer goes next gen for the first time - for download via the Playstation store)
"NHL 09" -PS3 (Another year, another annual EA sports update - this one getting great reviews...)
"Baja - Edge of Control" - 360 (An off-road racer from the dev team who brought you "MX Vs ATV")
"Battle Fantasia" - 360 (Pretty looking, predictably insane 2D fighting game from Japan)
"Vampire Rain - Altered Species" - PS3 (The original stealth-em-up got bad reviews on the 360 last year - this hasn't done any better)
"Pure" - 360/PS3/PC (My pick of the week - insane off-road ATV racing game from Black Rock and Disney Interactive - so much fun, gorgeous visuals, pumping tunes, great controls - you need this game in your life if you've ever had time for "Burnout" or the much-missed "SSX" games)
Gasp as mad buggers take on Alex Van Halen's double-bass drum apocalypse twist, "Hot For Teacher" in the new "Guitar Hero" game.
(Via your friends and mine at IGN)
Yep, I like to think that I'm generally a man who can admit when he's wrong. That whole "Michael Bay is the next James Cameron" kick that I was on the other year? Yeah, that was wrong. Fun movies but the guy clearly has a micropercentage of Cameron's chops. Short of a blow to the noggin which has the cumulative effect of removing Bay's personality wholesale - see the Lukas Haas plotline in Woody Allen's "Everyone Says I Love You" for how that might play out.
When it comes to the PS3, I'm equally all at sea.
I felt that I had the machine pegged - a metric f-bomb of (potential) power sadly hamstrung by the not-inconsiderable issue of no amazing games to harness it with. The usual Sony battlecry of "It's too early in the life-cycle of the machine! Buy it now and some good games will be along once we've fished 'em out from the back of the sofa - promise!" was beginning to ring truly hollow and wouldn't be enough to bail out the Big S this time.
Having had the chance - props to Evo Jon and Elle Driver - to spend an extended period evaluating the PS3, mine's a big old slice of Humble Pie to go. With extra humble.
Whilst my better half remains unconvinced - Boo Snook is all about the 360 - I have to say that I find this latest iteration of the Playstation brand to be an increasingly convincing option.
The XMB (or 'cross-media bar') interface is slick and intuitive - the video previews of game demos are neat, the information held is conveyed swiftly and it's a damn sight nicer than the endless sub-menus of the current Xbox Live media blades (though this may change when the Autumn 'New Xbox Experience' arrives imminently).
Video is slick and Blu-Ray - on the evidence of the "Casino Royale" transfer I saw - is a worthy HD format, albeit one with needless BS like region coding to make buying a PS3 something of a crap shoot for the enthusiast crowd. Still, there are ways around that particular restriction -we're already seeing multi-region stand-alone Blu-Ray players being sold by third-party modders and I feel certain that the 'homebrew' community will deliver a solution sooner rather than later.
Games are fun - which is key, I guess. I didn't get a chance to play "Metal Gear Solid 4", but the PS3 version of "Call of Duty 4 - Modern Warfare" is a percussive, eyeball-meltingly intense shooter, which employs every visual and auditory trick in the book to draw you into the game's blisteringly ferocious firefights.
"Motor Storm" is a great looking racer, with a fun physics engine which combines with a very user-friendly control system to deliver a game which rivals "PGR 4" in the high-speed stakes.
"Virtua Tennis 3" is far prettier than the 360 version - why, Maria Sharapova's digital avatar looks almost human in the PS3 iteration of the game. Scarily human-looking, even.
If you like shooters, you're probably better off plumping for a 360, but you knew that. If you want a less hardcore option but can't get around the Wii's critical lack of grunt and seeming disinterest in serving the core Nintendo audience, a PS3 seems like a wholly logical choice for a space in your living room. And then there's the likes of "Little Big Planet" to consider, which just looks ace...
Having said that, the new 360 price cut just made your choice a hell of a lot more difficult...
Via the splendid peeps at Craftzine.
Don't you just want one? Imagine the havoc one could wreak in an unsuspecting post room with one of these little darlings to hand...
An interview with director D.J. Caruso, on the subject of his next project, Brian K Vaughan and Pia Guerra's wonderful graphic novel series, "Y - The Last Man", via our friends at Cinematical.
As ever these days, they're talking about condensing the ten-volume series into a trilogy of films and as much as it would be fun to see Yorick, 355, Ampersand and Dr Mann on the big screen, it's a tough sell as a project (the story focuses on the last man alive after an initially inexplicable global event which sees every other male entity on the planet, human and animal alike, suddenly drop dead).
This is a particularly adult and strange journey into a wholly different world and it's difficult to imagine any studio wanting to release this story in it's pure and uncut form.
I don't necessarily see Shia LaBeouf as Yorick but he's personable enough, which is key, and I'm sure he could do justice to the extremes of the Last Man's journey.
One to watch...with some large sense of trepidation.
Empire has the answer.
I'm not entirely sure that 'Sizzle' reels really do the business that their creators would hope them to - 60 seconds of quick-fire clips ,devoid of context, surely only blitz an audience into submission and rarely, if ever, register as anything more than another barrage of blipverts.
And the audience at the cinemas that I go to are usually busier texting these days than watching anything that's up on screen.
In short? Fail...
Yep - It's another Flashback Friday...
Remember The Rembrandts? Theme tune to "Friends"? This is arguably a much better song and a prime slice of early 90's guitar pop. A classic, if you will.
And this is a Semisonic tune which is more than a match for their biggest hit, "Secret Smile".
Whilst we're on the subject of fantastic bands who were on the "10 Things I Hate About You" soundtrack, here's some vintage Letters to Cleo.
Heading back to the UK, the much-missed Sundays - Live, even!
Finally - more from TheAudience (or what Sophie Ellis Bextor was doing when most of us had after-school jobs).
None of which will many anything to you if you don't play, spectate or endure a partner's obsession with Harmonix's "Guitar Hero 3".
Chris held the world record on "GH3"s insane, finger-busting, fret work-out on metal mavens DragonForce's "Through The Fire and Flames".
Now, after some serious woodshedding, he owns the n00bs who would try to test him.
Sweet...
(via Kotaku, and Game Videos)
CNBC business anchor Jane Wells on her son's next gen console flip-flopping.
Say what you want about the 360 - reliability issues, rabid nutjobs all over Live, the whole 'more FPS than anyone really needs' malarkey - it does have the games that PS3 currently lacks in abundance.
Why, only today I visited my local game store in Fluffrickville and heard a pearler of a comment from some hapless fanboy trying to gain some traction in a discussion with an equally diehard 360-ite - "Yeah, PS3 games are not as compelling as their Xbox equivalents because Devs are only wrestling with 40 per cent of the Sony boxes' performance".
You can't tell from where you're reading this post, but I'm genuinely rolling my eyeballs in disbelief.
James Cameron, accosted by man with Elf ears, lays down the law about the increasingly abysmal state of the "Alien" franchise...
A possible future feature for the weekends on Rolling Eyeballs? Egad - it's as though we're putting some thought into this enterprise...
This would be an unsung late-80's/Early 90's classic from Aztec Camera, presented for your viewing pleasure this weekend.
Aztec Camera - "Deep and Wide and Tall" (via the You Tubes)
Or for a shaky (but wholly watchable) recording of the video...
And feel the genius of Canada's thinking-person's alt-rock/hard rock/geek rock onslaught, The Pursuit of Happiness, with their Beavis and Butthead-unapproved "Cigarette Dangles".
More up to date - and my favourite song of the last ten years or so - Weezer's "My Name is Jonas" (Live in Japan, no less).
And, finally, Liz Phair - before she became almost too embarassing to listen to (she never was a great live singer - forewarned is forearmed!)
To keep you up to speed, Joel and the Hijinks Ensue community are still doing their best to make Hijinks an ongoing concern - your support is still needed and welcome.
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