LEGO The Hobbit In Stores Today: CG Plastic Playground Beats CG Movie FX Any Day of the Week…

 
While I’m not a huge fan of the fantasy amusement park thrill rides that are The Hobbit films, TT Games has never let me down with their takes on the Lord of the Rings franchise and a bunch of other games they’ve done up with the full on LEGO treatment. While production values have been beefed up considerably since the first LEGO games, the same sense of silliness and all-out fun is intact, as is drop-in drop-out co-op play, loads of secrets and probably so many characters to play as that the game’s replay value is way off the charts if you’re one of those folks who wants to see it all and doesn’t care how long it takes to unlock everything. Anyway, this one’s available NOW for Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, Nintendo 3DS and PC, so round up the family and go grab a copy, I say…

Game of Thrones S4: Promo Onslaught In Full Effect…

 
Warning! If you still didn’t see the premiere, here and below there be SPOILERS! The premiere episode wasn’t even an hour cold when HBO started dropping videos galore and making me crack up because I think this was the fastest they’ve ever updated their YouTube page with GoT content. I’d have posted it last night, but I was busy with some other stuff (a few other shows and working on a bit of art). Anyway, here you go and I bet more is on the way, as this season seems to be one that’s going to be more memorable than the last one on a few fronts

 
Hey, I did say this post had spoilers in it, didn’t I? Of course, if you’ve read the books, you know most of this stuff already. On the other hand, as the show deviates from the books in a few very interesting ways, it’s great to see how the show’s writers have knitted things quite well into the overall story to date. So far, so good… and that second episode looks to be even more interesting. Six more days… only six more days…

Things I Learned @Toy Fair 2014: I Think A Crowded Coop Needs A Name Change…

TF_balloonicorn“How about a REALLY Crowded Coop?”Was what I suggest to Mary Olson after seeing the size of this year’s amazing lineup at Toy Fair, but I think she would have hit me on the head with that prototype Halo bag I’d been ogling. It’s a good thing she didn’t, as I’d then be responsible for the entire first run having a dent the size of my forehead in and I’d like to be a bit less of a negative influence on product design in the future. Where last year, the company had a handful of licenses that yielded a sizable amount of product, this year the booth was about three times the size and there were so many products on display that I had to swing by twice to see them all…
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Child of Light Gets The Always Amazing Amano Touch…

 
While I’ve had the great pleasure of seeing Yoshitaka Amano’s artwork up close and personal, it was too many years ago here in NYC when he was promoting HERO and I even got to chat briefly with him about his art on the Front Mission games thanks to a friend who translated my questions and compliments. Anyway, here he is doing what he does best for Ubisoft’s upcoming Child of Light and making me wish I could actually afford to own one of his paintings one of these days. It’s too bad this video isn’t longer, but oh well – sometimes you have to take the art you can get however you can get it, right? Child of Light will be available April 30 for assorted platforms and yes, you need to buy it.

IndieGala Every Monday Bundle: Hard To Pass Up (And Harder To Put Down)

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Let’s see now… six games for $1.89 for the next 15 hours, then the price jumps to a still insane $2.99 for the same content? SOLD, even though I already have the excellent A Valley Without Wind in my still hefty backlog of games to be played. Nice. Get this deal HERE and make sure to take a look at the assorted Happy Hour deals on other bundles and the other sales on too many titles while you’re there.

Random Art: All My Ghosts… And A Few Skeletons…

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Meh, nothing to see here. Move along! Started this before Game of Thrones kicked off, waited until that was over (yes, it was a fantastic premiere to Season 4) and finished it while being not at all impressed with the House of Lies season finale. Bleh, that was an annoying half hour of mostly unlikable people to see. Anyway, here you go. Did I mention i don’t believe much in ghosts, either? Hey, I have enough on my plate in real life to be walking around falling over stuff every time I hear a floorboard creak or see something flit by in my peripheral vision. I don’t even think I liked Boo Berry as a cereal (because Franken Berry and Count Chocula would have beaten the crap out of me if I let one more monster-themed cereal in the house)…

Storing Up Energy For Some Quality Time…

 
Shhh. Quiet back there! I’m kind of taking the day off until Game of Thrones pops up this evening. I made the mistake last night and early this morning of staying up to watch all of those House of Lies episodes I missed when I bailed on the series and man, that was a bad decision. The show is well-acted, but I ended up hating just about everyone on it beyond the point of caring (um… thanks, writers?) and with a season finale popping up, I figure I may as well commit to that at some point this week just to wrap that up as neatly as possible. I’m definitely watching the Shameless finale and may scoot back to HBO to catch the Silicon Valley premiere just because it’s Mike Judge and Office Space is one of my favorite films as a former office drone (in a few too many places in the past) and long time movie lover. Eh, we’ll see… or perhaps not. GoT has all my attention until Orphan Black returns in less than two weeks. As for Mad Men? Coin toss when it returns, period. I gave up caring about that show ages ago…

Always Sometimes Monsters Trailer: You’re The Moral Of This Story…

 
ASM_01Coming in May from developer Toronto-based developer Vagabond Dog and publisher Devolver Digital, Always Sometimes Monsters looks to tackle a few of life’s more interesting challenges in playable form. That trailer has piqued my interest for a few reasons, as it seems the game isn’t starring your generic hero or heroine and in fact, it looks as if you’re allowed to create a character that expands into what they used to call “alternative lifestyles” back in the day. Okay, I’m kidding a bit. It’s always good to see games embrace all types of people and this one looks as if it’ll resonate even among non-gamers who see that trailer and get to thinking about some of their own real life choices in similar situations. Well, that’s exactly what the developer wants, so I think they’ve got the attention of some of you now, right?

Alien Isolation Update: The Sounds Of Nostalgia Recreated For Your Screaming Pleasure…

 
What’s looking like the best Alien game to date is getting even better thanks to the development team’s focus on getting every element right as rain. Jerry Goldsmith‘s score to Alien was and in not only one of his best works, it’s one of the best genre soundtracks ever created (even though the original film drops a chunk of it in favor of cues from Goldsmith’s score to Freud and some classical tracks). I could write an entire post on the score alone, but I’ll wax poetic on it at some point in the future, as I’m kind of otherwise occupied with a living pile of work shuffling around the room here and making a nuisance of itself. Anyway, as you can see and hear here, Alien Isolation will get an additional layer of creepy thanks to the sound design and as a huge fan of the original film, I couldn’t be happier.

Alien Isolation lands on PC and PS3/PS4, Xbox 360/Xbox One on October 7, 2014. back with more once Sega hits the inbox with an update…

New Mario Kart 8 Gameplay Trailer: HD Does Make A Difference, Doesn’t It?

 
While a few previews I’ve perused say it’s more or less the same old Mario Kart in terms of gameplay, on the visual front at least, Nintendo has a killer game here. Now, I’m not a big fan of this series because I prefer more realistic looking racers and have been karted out for years thanks to too many sessions with older entries in this franchise. But it’s hard to ignore those shiny (finally) CG-quality visuals doing their thing (and how!). Granted, the Wii U needs more than one game to push its sales numbers up and this one will indeed sell to fans of the games and maybe even move a few folks to finally commit to purchasing the console. On the other hand, at the rate new first-party games are dropping on the console, Nintendo will need to hope this one blows the doors off anything else released in May just so sales are steady or at least massive within the first month. As always, we shall see, but I predict yet another “evergreen” for the company that sells for as long as they continue to make games for the console.