The Bro Chat

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First off sorry that we’ve been lacking in recent updates, but with the holiday season coming upon us as well as the end of school we’ve been a little busy.  When we haven’t been working, studying, or sleeping we’ve been enjoying the plethora of great games that have been released this fall/winter the most popular being Halo 4 and as our gift to you here are some tips and tricks to help you get that UNSC Loadout Mastery as well be on your way to get mastery in a few other things as well.

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You guys ever think that professional players of any sport get payed way to much and waste it on stupid things.  Well not all of them are selfish bastards, some have hearts of gold.  Wide Receiver Andre Johnson of the Houston Texans recently participated in one of his annual good guy programs.  Andre with the help of Houston Child Protection Services selected twelve kids ages ranging from eight to sixteen where selected to have an eighty second shopping spree in Toys R’ Us.  In that minute and twenty seconds the twelve kids racked up a bill of over $19,000 on stuff not just for themselves, but for siblings and family members as well (props to the kids on that).  Andre Johnson does this every year trying to spread the love and knowing what it’s like to grow up in tough conditions giving back.  For this Andre Johnson, you are our Bro of the Month and get one major fist bump of awesome.

Today is the birthday of the great one, Bruce Lee.  If he were still alive today he’d be celebrating his 72nd birthday.  For those of you have just crawled out from under rocks, Bruce Lee made kung fu films what they are today.  His influence can be felt in every movie that involves hand to hand fighting in some way, be it moves or how they’re shot, everyone takes pages from his book.  He defied the Chinese elders and council and taught westerners the ways of martial arts and angered them even further by breaking away from tradition and creating his own martial art without stances taking influences from all styles.  He called it Jeet Kun Do, or ‘style without style’ or ‘fighting without fighting’, revolutionizing training techniques and ideas the world over.

He passed away due to a cerebral edema suddenly at the age of 32.  Mystery revolves around his death and the circumstances that caused it.  Some believe he was poisoned by the Chinese council (made even more powerful a theory after the mysterious death of his son on set of The Crow), while others think it was just a genetic problem.  Whatever you believe  we all can agree that it is a tragic loss that everyone wishes never occurred.  We raise our fists in salute to you Bruce Lee, and hope you have found your peace.

It’s that time once again to set your DVRs or go searching through Netflix.  This week it’s some of the most classic of horror films.  If you haven’t seen them you then you should.

The Exorcist

This classic from 1978 put the fear of demonic possession into many people young and old alike.  Not to mention the sudden decrease in the dining of pea soup.  This film, when it came out, had some of the craziest and best special effects the industry had to offer.  The Exorcist should be on everyone’s list of films to watch every year, not just because of how good it is but also for the sheer pop culture impact it has had.

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It’s time for another set of Halloween movies that you should see this season.  This week there are a few films that don’t follow the normal rules, they are the exceptions to them.  By no means does this make them bad, but in fact makes them that much more enjoyable.

Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas

This film has become a classic for both Halloween and Christmas seasons, and one of the major exceptions to the rules.  This enchanting film takes place in a world where classic Halloween creatures and ideas live and prepare each year for Halloween.  That is until Jack Skeleton discovers other holiday worlds that inspire him to try his hand at doing.  One of the few films that can be watched and enjoyed by anyone and everyone of any age.  This really isn’t that scary of a film, but it does remind us of the things that spooked us during our time running around collecting as much candy as our little arms could carry.

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With the Halloween season upon us every channel that shows movies, is putting every horror film in their libraries on television.  Unfortunately not all movies are created equal, and that goes double for horror films.  Many follow the same mold, group of teens get stoned/drunk and gradually get picked off one by one until either they’re all dead or someone some how kills the killer, and they suck something awful.  Others horror films do it right, but how?  What makes a good horror movie so good?  The answer is simple really, they make us afraid of mundane everyday things. They make us second guess ourselves, they makes us scared to be alone, they make it so we can’t sleep, and in some cases give permanent phobias to people that can be debilitating.  This is why we love horror films and here at the bro chat we’ve come up with some of the best films, generas, and franchises you should watch this Halloween movie season.

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Today is the twenty-fifth anniversary of one of the greatest movies of all time.  The Princess Bride was a film directed by Rob Reiner during the eighties.  The cast includes Billy Crystal, Cary Elwes, Robin Wright, Chris Sarandon, Mandy Patinkin, and Andre the Giant just to name a few.  This movie has something for the whole family of all ages; action, adventure, love, great storyline, one liners, memorable characters, quite literally everything that makes a movie great.  If you haven’t seen it yet, then go out now, get the 25th anniversary edition, make some popcorn, sit down and enjoy the next hour and a half of your life.  I promise you won’t be sorry.

-Rob

Over the weekend (for Americans at least) the mid season finale of Doctor Who aired and another set of companions have fallen.  After two and half season the characters of Amy Pond and Rory Williams have been killed.  Amy has been part of Doctor Who as long as Matt Smith has been the eleventh Doctor.  We saw her as a little girl, a young adult, and a mature(ish) mother.  Rory has been there just a few episodes less than them.  Amy was one of the only, if not the only, female companion of the Doctor to truly fall in love with someone that was not the Doctor.  Amy and Rory have both been instrumental in the success of many of the Doctors adventures as well as his survival.  They were (SPOILER) the parents of River Song aka Melody Pond, who is both the equal of the Doctor and his wife.  Thanks to them the Doctor has become a better man and has one more piece of head accessory, brainy specs.  Whovians both here and across the sea will miss the girl who waited and the Centurion, but are excited to see who the new companion will be and the adventures she’ll have with him.  Goodbye Ponds we will not forget you.

I’m a big Resident Evil fanboy, having played most every game, read a few of the novels, watched the digitally animated films, even a few of the crap feature length films; so, I am obviously excited about RE6 coming out in just over a week.  The new story line contains some of our favorite heroes such as Chris Redfield, Leon Kennedy, and Ada Wong.  A couple of newbies join our little band of misfit heroes, the son of Albert Wesker named Jake Muller, Helena Harper (safe guess shes S.S. and teamed with Leon), Piers Nivans (B.S.A.A. member that is with Chris).  As well as a surprising returner Sherry Birkin (last seen as a little girl in RE2 teamed with Jake).  Each duo has a separate yet interlocking story lines that will, hopefully, tell a full and kick ass story.  Once again the main enemy is the beloved moaning, groaning, and mostly shuffling zombies with a new more intelligent J’avo (similar to the las Plagas and Uroboros infected from RE4 and RE5) to go along with the oddly mutated bosses that will surely be seen throughout the game.  With the return of the third person over the shoulder firing system used since 4, the characters will now be able to run and gun along with more fluid motion in close quarters combat.  After going back and looking at or playing some of the previous installments there is one thing that is gnawing at me.  Where is everyone else?

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I don’t know about you guys, but when I saw the teaser trailer for Wreck-It Ralph, I jumped out of my chair. Why is this? Because it’s a Disney movie and it has Bowser from the Mario franchise, Dr. Robotnik from Sonic, AND Zangief from Street Fighter in it.

Are you kidding me?

I think the last time I saw Bowser in a feature-length film was when the god-awful Super Mario Bros film saw the light of day, and, needless to say, that was thoroughly disappointing… Now here he is sitting beside two other famous video-game villians in a DISNEY movie.

The movie is called Wreck-It Ralph and it’s about an arcade villian named… well… Wreck-It Ralph… who decides it’s high-time to hang up the bad-guy coat and start doing some good. He is voiced by John C. Reilly and finds a way to escape the game he has been tied to his whole life and jump into other ones.

The movie looks entertaining enough, but the real reason I want to see it is for all of the cameos from other existing video game characters. First of all, just the realization that Disney actually found a way to get the rights for all of these characters to appear in a movie together is fascinating enough to me, and second, I get the feeling it’s going to be pretty funny. This is, of course, coming from a gamer; I mean, I would imagine the movie is going to be fun for all ages whether or not you are familiar with the cameos, but for those of us who have actually played games like Paperboy, Pac-Man, and Q*Bert (all games that have promised cameos), it will be that much more exciting. Those of us will be the ones silently searching the backgrounds to see how many characters we can recognize. I was already pausing the video on YouTube a thousand times just to see who I could pick out in every scene.

I can’t really tell the whole underlying plot, but the main storyline revolves around Wreck-It Ralph. The scene that the picture up there was from involves a bunch of villians sitting together in a support-group type setting talking about what it’s like to be the bad guy. It goes without saying that we’ll get to see the point of view from all the baddies as opposed to the heroes of the video games we know and love, which will be a nice change of pace. I mean, Wreck-It Ralph winds up becoming a good guy from what it looks like, but just to see a story told from a bad guy’s perspective is always a nice change of pace; Disney movie or not.

My hopes for this movie: the guy voicing Bowser has a really deep raspy voice and has funny dialogue. Think Super Paper Mario-type dialogue. I also want to see a crazy amount of recognizable faces for my own amusement. Either way, I will be seeing this movie when it comes out, and I think other gamers will have fun experiencing it.

-Lexi

Over the weekend one of the best shows of all time returned to the American airwaves with new episodes.  That’s right believers, Dr. Who is back with Matt Smith as the Doctor who is once again joined by Amy Pond and Rory Williams.  Before I get to the readers digest version of the first episode let me just say what a way to come back.  Action, adventure, drama, and more that you would expect from Dr. Who are here, with one of the greatest and most genius twists to come out of a premier episode in a long time.  If you haven’t seen it yet, netflix it or something, don’t even read the rest of this do it now.

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I was surfing deviant art and stumbled across this.  I’m not going to taint this too much, but this man symbolizes all that we as bro’s and nerds aspire to.  Here is how his untimely death and super heroism was told by his friend:

On July 16th around 10pm my sister Gemily West and her boyfriend/my good friend and fellow costumer Harison Randall were walking home with my sister’s 4 dogs (which were all killed that night)

They were in the cross walk less than a 100 feet from our home when a drunk driver going 80mph down a 35mph residential road, failed to make a turn and plowed through the stop sign on the far side of the intersection… he struck the group and just kept on going, never slowed or stopped.

My sister was in the car’s direct path, rather than step back and avoid the car Hari stepped forward and shoved my sister out of the way and shielded her, allowing her to escape with a compound fracture of her leg, ankle damage and flesh wounds… but as a result he took the full force of the blow, loosing his leg, breaking his pelvis and causing severe internal injury… 13 days later Hari lost his life.

Hari never left the ICU after the hit and run incident. He was due to stay there for weeks, we had been warned he was not out of the woods yet, but he was making progress, he was improving, it had been almost 2 weeks since he was hit… we felt like he was in the clear, and then so very suddenly, he was gone.

Hari was a kind, gentle, jolly person who just naturally knew how to make people happy. He completed my sister’s life and brightened mine. The three of us got along so well it felt as if he was family, I expected for him to one day become my brother in law.

Hari was a person loved by many and he will be dearly missed.


Rest in Peace Hari, you will never be forgotten.

To show your respect and support please go here, and leave a comment and a fav if you can.  I think my compatriots would agree with me and give Harison a Fist Bump Award because of sure greatness.

-Rob

Today we lost one of the great teachers and innovators of our time.  Joe Kubert passed away today at the age of 85.  He is responsible for the creation of characters such as Hawkman and Sgt. Rock, and was the director of DC comics from 1967 to 1976.  He later went on to found The Kubert School, where aspiring comic book artists could go and learn the trade from one of the greatest graphic story tellers of all time.  Joe Kubert has been inducted to the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame and the Will Eisner Comic Hall of Fame among many other awards and recognitions.  His sons Andy and Adam Kubert both of whom are illustrious and masterful artist in their own rights, carry on their father’s legacy.  For those of us who the love art and the story telling, we will miss you and your influence.  May your name be counted among the greats like Kirby, Turner, Romita, and others.  Thank you and farewell.

-Rob

Here’s my take on The Dark Knight Rises and why it worked, why it might be the best Batman movie ever made and why I am sad to see Nolan go, but understand he needs to.

Six Things that I never thought I would see occur or work in a Batman film.

1.       Bane’s voice.

The man just sounded so funny and amazing and gritty and scary and then high pitched and laughable. For those not in the know, Bane’s voice was originally so gravelly and muffled (think Darth Vader with a wet rag over his mask) that those who saw a sneak-peak preview of the film some several months ago complained he was incomprehensible. 

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Am I an avid Sims player? Yes. I love spending hours on end creating characters from scratch; picking out everything from the color of their eyes to their favorite color and determining the kind of life they will live. I will admit that I also love placing Sims in a room and removing all the doors. But who doesn’t, right?

Now, while I do own every expansion pack for the Sims 3 as of late and I thoroughly enjoy every feature they all have to offer, I will admit that I have a few complaints. Let me explain myself…

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I bought another Doctor Who novel for one thing and one thing alone; okay, that’s a lie, it’s Doctor Who for Pete’s sake.  The reason being was who the villain for the book is the Nestene Consciousness.  For those of you who have watched Doctor Who you may recognize, it’s the very first baddie from the relaunch with Christopher Eccelston’s  brilliant debut as the ninth doctor.  This one episode and villain set me down the road of fascination and obsession with all things connected to Doctor Who, but I’m getting ahead of myself here.

This novel is titled Doctor Who: Autonomy and written by Daniel Blythe.  The Doctor is initially flying solo in this book, that means no companion…at first.  The story takes place on Earth just a few years in the future in England (Surprise! Not.).  In the mall of the future, a mall so big it’s like Mall of America on steroids filled with all manor of stores, theaters, casinos, hotels, and amusement parks.  The Doctor shows up because he was curious, and possibly due to the TARDIS’s knowing the Doctor was needed.  At the same time a young professional named Kate Maguire is competing to be the mall’s right hand, but is secretly a journalist trying to get a huge scoop on the inner workings of the mall.  And still in other places people are dying mysteriously and management is trying to cover it up quietly and quickly.

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Here’s a game you probably didn’t play as a kid and will have a difficult time finding a legitimate copy of: it involves a cat with giant ears dubbed the Dream Traveler.

Klonoa: Door to Phantomile

IGN’s Rating: 8/10

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One of my favorite ancient warrior classes in fiction are Vikings, who come in a close third to ninjas and samurai. Sadly, most movies i have seen that focus on them were sad excuses for film. The Thirteenth Warrior is an exception to this despite the fact it stars an actor normally not associated with Vikings. Antonio Banderas plays the leading role in this film. This film is a little on the mature side and didn’t really get too much attention when it was new and as a result, it has fallen to cult status.

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Whether you live in the city and feel like getting away from it all or you live in the country but can’t afford to run a real farm, this game can fulfill all of your needs.

Harvest Moon: Back to Nature

IGN’s Rating: 7.5/10

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The above title suggests (in case you’re a complete dits) Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is Seth Grahame-Smith, the same guy who wrote Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter.  The book is based off the classic novel by Jane Austin.  So how was it?  

First off a confession, I love the original Pride and Prejudice story.  I love the six part A&E series starring Colin Firth as well as the more recent film starring Keira Knightley.  I was rather familiar with the original story before I read the book, and was excited to see how the story varied with the addition of zombies.  I am happy to say wasn’t disapointed.  Graham-Smith seamlessly spins and mixes the story that Austin wrote originally with the ever present threat of zombies munching on your brains!  He does a great job in making certain major story points mesh well with the zombie ridden world that is the stories back drop.

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Dragons, stardust, and winglies, oh my!

Legend of Dragoon

IGN’s Rating: 7 out of 10

June 11th of this year marked the 12-year anniversary of Legend of Dragoon’s release date. This was a game where the outcome of every battle depended on how accurately you could press a button and where plot twists were hidden beneath every rock; an RPG that had a little something for everyone.

The hero of this story is named Dart. As with almost every revenge-seeking protagonist, Dart’s past is choc-full of depressing matters: his parents were killed, his hometown destroyed, and the enemy who caused all of this (the Black Monster) is nowhere to be found. As if that wasn’t enough, the poor kid loses his childhood friend Shana, must go rescue her right at the start of the game, is unintentionally given the responsibility of possessing the spirit of the Red-Eyed Dragoon, and ultimately entrusted with the common task of saving the world.

Every recruitable character gains the abilities of a different Dragoon and can then use those abilities to transform into a much more powerful version of themselves. They gain fancy armor, wings, and elemental abilities akin to the type of Dragoon they receive. When you transform into a Dragoon during battle, you are given only a few options of what to do. You can attack like normal, use up some MP to unleash an elemental magic attack, or, if everyone in your battle party has enough SP saved up, you can all use a special at the same time and absolutely dominate the enemy. Without even playing the game, it isn’t hard to tell that Dragoon-mode is badass, but keep in mind that when you transform into a Dragoon, you will revert back to your human state after only a few turns, so don’t expect to make it through a whole boss fight in Dragoon-mode. 

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Growing up in the nineties was a pretty great time to acquire a love for superheroes. Between the Spider-man, X-men, the Justice league, Batman Beyond and the Best cartoon ever Batman the Animated Series, it was hard not fall in love with these heroes. however in the years that followed there was a lack of quality superhero animated shows with the exception being  Spectacular Spider-Man, but sadly this too was cancelled, however it did leave producer Greg Weisman free to move on to something better than I could have imagined….Enter Young Justice. 

Despite having Weisman and Under the Red Hood director Brandon Vietti as producers I was not overly optimistic in having a show featuring young versions of Wally West and  Dick Grayson, while also trying to what I thought was shoehorn in new versions of characters like Aqualad and Superboy, and finally finally featuring characters I was not knowledgeable on such as Artemis and and Miss Martian.

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I love cult movies, you know, those movies that don’t get a lot of mainstream media love, but still have their devoted die hard fans. I recently watched Attack the Block, a movie destined to be a cult classic. The movie is produced by the same guys who produced Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. It was also directed and written by a long time friend of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, both of whom are stars of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.

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“For those who have embraced the arms of death! Now, get ready for a true fight!” -Lenneth Valkyrie

Valkyrie Profile

IGN’s Rating: 9.1/10

In this game, everybody dies… but don’t worry, that’s kind of the point. In Valkyrie Profile, you play as Lenneth, a valkyrie instructed to gather the souls of warriors (otherwise known as Einherjar) and bring them back to Odin so they may assist him in fighting a war against the Vanir (yes, this game is heavily influenced by Norse mythology). To put it simply, you get to see the backstory behind various worthy warriors and then wait for them to die so you may send them to Valhalla to fight your war. 

IGN wasn’t kidding when they rated this a 9.1 out of 10. This game is phenomenal. There are 24 playable characters (some of which you can’t attain unless you’re in hard mode) and once you have their souls in your possession, you are given the option to either send them to Valhalla to fight while you continue to search for more, or keep them in your party to fight alongsideyou. Here’s a little piece of advice: make sure the character is a decent level before sending them up to your boss, because at the end of every section, you are given a progress report on the warrior you sent up. If they are too under-leveled when you send them, they might get slain in battle; and then you’re in trouble. The progress report not only informs you how the character is doing, but how the war in general is going. The amount of properly-trained warriors you give to Odin greatly affects the outcome of the war, which in turn will affect how your game might end, so make your decisions wisely.

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Everybody loves a good alien movie, but what about an alien series? If you were unaware of its existance last year, you have another chance to check out Falling Skies, the series produced by Steven Spielberg returning to television screens everywhere in June.

Falling Skies

Falling Skies had only ten episodes in its first season, but it captured the hearts of millions; winning the Critic’s Choice Television Award for Most Exciting New Series in 2011. It follows the lives of those affected by an alien takeover run by creatures nicknamed “skitters”. Noah Wyle leads the cast by playing Tom Mason, a university history teacher and a father of three who is helping a pack of survivors fight back.

The skitters have killed over 90% of the world’s population and are recruiting children between the ages of 8 and 16 to join their army and obey their every command by attaching harnesses to their spinal cords. One of Tom’s sons, Ben, has been captured by the skitters in the first season, and Tom spends most of it trying to rescue him. When he finally takes Ben away from the alien skitters, he is faced with the problem of trying to remove the harness, for up until this point, no one has been able to successfully remove a harness without inevitably killing the child under its control. Ben gets freed and survives, but is left with barbs along his spine as an unpleasant reminder of what he escaped from.

As the series continues, we are introduced to “mechs”, large robotic drones the skitters use to cause destruction, as well as another resistance group led by a felon we know as Pope. He unwillingly joins Tom’s survivors and contributes to the group by cooking for them, rallying them together when they doubt their abilities, and reluctantly sharing his knowledge of how to kill the skitters. He has also invented ammunition powerful enough to kill the mechs and proves to be a formidable ally when he wants to be.

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I was unable to get new comic books for the last two weeks, which has led me to combine my favorite books from these weeks into a larger than usual edition for my picks of the week.

My favorite book of the past few weeks is definitely Batman Incorporated! Chris Burnham who puts an amazing amount of detail into his layout and draws characters in motion beautifully, many are considering him to be the  new Frank Quitely for which there are few compliments that can be more gratifying to an artist in the comic book industry. It is also refreshing to see a Batman story that does not involve owls as well as Grant Morrison’s return to the Bat Franchise concluding his multi-year epic which includes what is possibly the greatest moment in Robin history.

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So as the residential speed reader I finished a indie manga called Gold Digger.  It is written and drawn by Fred Perry, the same guy who did Robotech

The story follows Gina Digger, a super genius archeologist, and her companion Cheetah, a super strong were-cheetah, in their pursuit of their next big archeological score.  Like any good archeological adventure they are pursued by insidious foes and meet new ones along the way.  That’s the story line in a nut shell.

So let’s gritty.

Lets look at the art first, ‘cause I’m an art guy.  Perry has a style akin to the old school manga, i.e. Lupin the Third and others of that generation.  The art feels solid, with a good understanding of anatomy (except that every female has mammary glands so large that they should hinder balance) and action but then you look a little more and things distract your eye.  Though his human anatomy is good, his ability to do furries isn’t quite convincing, which is a major flaw considering that one of the major characters is a were-cheetah.  The fur is well done, but the overall pelt patterns are iffy.  The faces also seem to miss their mark and overall don’t seem to look as polished as the rest of the book, and often the art seems to be little more than a sketch and smudged.  Though to be fair it is still just the first chapter so there is room for improvement.

Gold Digger is populated by your stereotypical characters with Gina Digger as your extremely intelligent yet somehow idiotic main chacter, and Cheetah the strong yet hopeless romantic always looking for love.  The supporting cast are just as stereotypical with a noble yet oblivious nobleman werewolf furrie, a nemesis bent on out finding Gold Digger and making her look like the fool she is, and the mysterious bad guy who’s unknown intents threaten the world. 

The story line itself is strait forward; go to middle of jungle, find artifact, get chased by bad guys, find guide with sad story to lead to artifact, find worse bad guy, save a local people,  keep following worse bad guy.  Not much else, although magic and technology exist in this universe, which could prove interesting later on in the series.

To be brutaly honest I wasn’t blown away by Gold Digger.  It wasn’t absolutely horrible, but there is plenty of room for improvement on all fronts.  This isn’t for the casual reader, but more for those who like mangas immensely and enjoy the old school manga style.

If you would like to check out Gold Digger for yourself you can acquire it Here!

-Rob

As many of you know, a little film called The Avengers came out past a few weeks ago and happened to make a bit of money. Exactly how much is a bit? As of the time I write this a bit is 800 million dollars. There is also an event know to many comic book fans that happened around the same time known as Free Comic Book Day(fbcd); during fbcd a great deal of publishers will release a free book that is geared toward bringing in new or lapsed readers. Whether or not this helps sales in the long run is difficult to determine but it is clear that this event brings people into comic book stores. My issue comes from what Marvel chose to release as their free book which is a reprint of Avengers 12.1 from last year which not only features an different team than the current Avengers team in the books but it is also very unrelated to the film’s team of Avengers. I believe a much better choice would have been Brian Michael bendis’s and Mark Bagley’s Avengers Assemble (See Below) which launched recently and featured the team from the film as well as being a much more accessible miniseries which would be an easier read to newcomer especially those wanting to see the team from the film.

-Ryan

Are you a fan of multiple endings? Do you enjoy having the ability to pick and choose what characters join your party? Ever find yourself wishing you could see the plotline from a second perspective?

Then this is the game for you!

Star Ocean: The Second Story

IGN’s Rating: 8.8 out of 10

Let’s start with the perks to playing this game: there are 80 different endings (or, rather, character epilogues), 11 main characters to mix and match when it comes to recruiting your party, and when you start the game you have the choice between playing as Claude or Rena — whichever one you select determines what pieces of the storyline you get to see. This means if you want the whole story, you’ll have to play through this game twice so you can see both Claude and Rena’s perspectives.

I am crazy for this game; I find the replay value absolutely fantastic. The first time I picked up the controller for this little beauty, I chose to play as Rena: the alien girl living on the planet Expel. Her personal story was astounding and involved a quest of discovering who she truly was. After I finished the game, I reset and chose Claude: the Earthen boy who has just been promoted to be an Ensign in the Earth Federation, and as I played through it the second time, things I didn’t understand in the beginning suddenly made sense. Plotholes were filled. 

No matter who you start out with, they inevitably run into the other and become your first party member. The neat thing is this: let’s say you pick Claude. You start off on Earth, accidentally wind up on the planet Expel, and then see Rena being chased by a monster. You have no idea where you are or what she is doing. If you pick Rena, you begin the game in Expel and actually see what drove the monster to attack her. The entire game is like this. If you’re playing as one character, you don’t get to see the other when they run off alone, nor do you get to hear their thoughts about a situation. This is why I say you must play it at least twice so you can get the full story and see what happens to both characters.

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This was a refreshing week for comic books which were coming off the heels of the Avengers film as well as Free Comic Book Day. While there were many great books this week, One book stood out and above the rest for me.

Fury Max # 1

A few years ago, Marvel released an extremely violent, sexual, and foul mouthed book by Garth Ennis starring Nick Fury. The rumor around the time was that George Clooney was in talks to portray Nick Fury until he caught wind of this book which offended him to the point where he backed out of talks with Marvel which resulted in a Corporate shakeup in the Marvel offices. If this story is in fact true, Garth Ennis deserves a massive handshake from me as I cannot stand anything Clooney touches after his “bang up” job on Batman and Robin, but enough about Crazy Ryan’s ramblings and more on the newest volume of Fury Max.

“My name is Nick fury. I’ve had a bullet in my head since nineteen forty-four. I fight and fuck like a goddamn demon. I lick up war like it was Sugar. These are the things I’ve Done for my country.” This is the opening text bubble from the first page of this book and it sets the tone perfectly for this book. Ennis clearly loves the burnt out as Veteran Approach to Fury and makes it work extremely well as nothing seems to phase him throughout the course of the book. Goran Parlov’s cartoonish style also works extremely well to portray the ridiculousness of this man’s life with his expressions working beautifully with the  eccentric cast surrounding Fury. While this book is slow on action it does show a great deal of promise and I look forward to seeing where it goes

It’s the ongoing debate: which show is better? Family Guy or South Park? Both are long-running television shows that have been criticized for their offensive natures as well as praised for their outstanding ratings, and both have released forgettable video games on previous consoles. Now, it has been announced that both South Park and Family Guy are releasing new games this year — reportedly at about the same time — and we find ourselves questioning again which franchise reigns supreme.

A little while back, there was a buzz regarding Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s upcoming video game revolving around their infamous creation, South Park; the raunchy television show with 16 seasons under its belt that centers around four fourth-graders and their various hijinks in the town of South Park, Colorado. It has recently been announced that Parker and Stone’s RPG now has an official title and that we can expect its release later in the year.

South Park: The Stick of Truth

When asked about the game itself, Parker and Stone answered in the January issue of Game Informer this year that “it will be a brilliant cross between Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and FIFA. You gotta go kill a bunch of monsters, but you can only use your feet”. This is, of course, not the case; The Stick of Truth is an RPG, but you can do far more than just kick around your enemies.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ke_1yd1nAE

To say I’m excited for this would be a grievous understatement.

-Rob