Bai-oh-ha-za-do fai-bo?

Having enjoyed Resident Evil 4 so much that I replayed it possibly seven or eight times, I was psyched to hear that a demo would be dropping on X-Box Live soon. Although it looks to be a graphical upgrade of Resident Evil 4 with a lot of the same gameplay mechanics, having a partner that kicks ass on her own will be nice instead of having to constantly protect someone.

Not only will I be downloading the demo, this will be a guaranteed purchase, gameplay videos are becoming the best way to promote a game. They can act as tutorials and also you will typically know straight-away if you're going to like the game. Check out the two videos up at Lens of Truth here.

Thank you very much YouTube for being so lax...

I can't deny that one of my favorite all time shows is Britain's Never Mind the Buzzcocks. I happened on this show while looking up clips of comedian Jim Jeffries on YouTube and found a clip of him acting as one of the "contestants" on this music based quiz show and soon found more of the recent seasons on YouTube. Its current host, Simon Amstel's quick wit and charm totally won me over and I have religiously sought out the show. Yesterday, I randomly tried to find the newest seasons (#22) on YouTube, what I found was a Jacob's Ladder like series of clips that eventually lead to what I wanted to find. Check out the first ten episodes of this season starting with this one.

Something that has also piqued my interest is Michael Avon Oeming is doing a one-shot to be released by Top Cow in the very near future with writer Phil Hester. As with the other Oeming stuff I have read, it looks to involve swords, Norse-like mythology, and a hero that develops from a not hero over the course of the story, even though he's working with a different writer than The Mice Templar. Newsarama has a fantastic preview of Darkness: Lodbrok's Hand here.

For those not familiar with the "This Book Will Change Your Life" series (apparently the UK's version is called This Diary Will Change Your Life) the latest iteration had a great piece of marketing up in London thanks to student David Lines. The book promotes ways to make your own life a little more exciting and break up the day to day boring-ness. Fantastic picture below, and link to article on Juxtapoz here.

Red beans are fucking awesome...

This looks like it's going to be epic.

Check out a preview of Shrapnel on CBR.

Art is being applied to video games?

An interesting point that had been brewing in my head for awhile, without the means to articulate it effectively, was essentially video games are starting to develop into an art form. One of the biggest obstacles that video games as a whole needed to overcome, however, are the ridiculous things that video games have come to embody in the past two decades.




First I'll mention Mirror's Edge, having only played the very short demo, I can't speak to the overall quality of the game. But someone got downright analytical about it, and what I thought was an interesting and fairly well executed idea, let alone how gorgeous and fluid it looked, turns out to be a great representation of an art form akin with martial arts. Some of the stuff went over my head so I read it twice.


Next is Quantic Dream's Heavy Rain, which was featured in an interview with it's creator on 1up.com yesterday, interview is here. David Cage more or less sums up what I think I've been trying to say is the biggest hindrance in video games being accepted as an art form:

We tend to believe in our industry that we need to tell simplistic or spectacular stories, where the hero saves the world, destroys evil, or has supernatural powers. This is because the videogame, as a medium, has been too immature to tell complex and subtle stories.

So as I wait for Indigo Prophecy to drop on XBox Live Arcade so I can finally try a game my friend upon its release said was worth picking up and now eat my words what like three or four years later? Sounds like the same thing that happened with Beyond Good & Evil, which is still the only game that makes me feel like I was ever at one point ahead of the curve.

Noir is a cool word...

First bit of news is that Eli Stone, Pushing Daisies, and Dirty Sexy Money have all been canceled. I've never actually watched a full episode of any of these, although Pushing Daisies was from the same guys that created Wonderfalls, which is now one of my favorite shows. I'll have to check out Pushing Daisies three years from now as I'll probably think it's brilliant. Link here.

I picked up a copy of Valve's Left 4 Dead last night, however, the new X-Box Experience kept me interested and loading movies into my Instant Netflix queue to watch this weekend. It's getting pretty good reviews all around (with the occasional "I don't see what the big deal is" review) though, and I must have played the two demo levels 10 times over and still had fun, despite repeatedly hearing "Oh shit!". Games that can provide that kind of longevity are definitely what I'm after, as god knows when I'll be able to buy another game, or if anything good will be coming out for the next five to six months.

Apparently President-Elect Barack Obama's appointed a gamer as co-chair of the FCC transition team, Kevin Werbach (who besides being a gamer is assistant professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics at Wharton). His profile on wowarmory.com is viewable here. I doubt that Werbach being a gamer had anything to him being appointed to his position, but I like the idea that someone who obviously enjoys their time spent playing games will be part of the decision making process for games to come.

Spider-man will be receiving a reskin for the pulp-era in the upcoming Marvel release of Spider Man Noir. Despite a few angry fan boys, I am more likely to read this than the current iteration of Spider-Man since it seems a bit more grounded in reality, more than likely due to its new setting, and Spider-Man's bad ass looking costume. A preview can be found here.

Possible future scapegoat, Joss Whedon's new to be cancelled show, and Audrey Kawasaki's curated show...

I have to find a better way to review games, because I would love to unleash how much I loved Fallout 3. Although, until I am in a position I can do it on a consistent basis and with games that I might not necessarily enjoy, I really can't start that process.

The EA Mirror's Edge Demo is currently available for download for its respective consoles and I picked it up last night. The game looked beautiful, and the controls felt surprisingly tight, and the concept of "Runner Vision" worked really well with jumping from BUILDING to BUILDING. Definitely a game I would pay to play, but I can't imagine a game like that lasting longer than eight to ten hours for the single player experience. The demo level presses the player to makes you move fast, so fast that the non-tutorial level of the demo took only about 10-15 minutes to complete. I highly doubt that this will inspire youths to attempt to jump from building to building, but the opportunity to blame the game for something obviously dumb like that will be there. It is apparently also going to ship on time.

I'm disappointed that Joss Whedon's new show will be debuting in February on the Fox Network on Friday. Most if not all shows that play on Friday nights, especially on Fox, usually last a month before they get canned. It has happened to some quality shows (Firefly, Freaky Links), and apparently The Sarah Conner Chronicles will be sharing the night with Whedon's Dollhouse. Yes, X-Files did play on Fridays but that was a rare case with mass appeal. Poor Joss Whedon, him and Judd Apatow should start a club of fantastic shows that get cancelled even though they are usually loved by fans/critics alike. The source is here.

Another fabulous artist that illustrates people in a unique way is Audrey Kawasaki. A strong Japanese influence is present in her work, from her style of painting iconic Japanese birds and the Inari (fox), to including Hiragana/Kanji in her work. She was a featured artist in Juxtapoz a few months back and I fell in love with her work right away. She is apparently currating a show at the Thinkspace Gallery called "Drawing Room". There's a blog that can cover it better than I will but it's definitely worth checking out.

Tune in next time, and thanks for listening chillllllllldren! (fallout3 reference!)

Oh that's who does these...

I love tour posters for bands, and am looking forward to stocking my future apartment with copious amounts of artwork from people like Kurt Halsey to Penny Arcade's Gabriel, but I also want to pick up as many tour posters as I can. That brings me to Jason Munn at The Small Stakes. I have seen one of these screen printed beauties up close and they are worth every penny, one of the Stars' "Key" posters. Most of the posters cost around $25, and from someone who works as an Art Consultant, that is not a bad price for a screen printed/giclee limited edition print AT ALL.