Ken Butler @ AIRPLANE: Return of the Home-made Twang Bar King…

Posted on March 11, 2013 by geelw

OK, class: Time for some art appreciation (siddown, you in the back – you went to the restroom three articles back!). I saw some cool hybrid sculptures by artist/musician Ken Butler last weekend at Brooklyn’s AIRPLANE gallery and found his work to be pretty incredible overall. Some pics are below, but you should probably check out his site to see more and find more about him and his rather amazing work. I also shot a bit of video of one interactive piece I forgot to write the name down of (oops), so take a look below the jump and let your imagination go wild (or back to normal) as you make up your own story to go with the projected images on the wall. The fun thing about this particular work is it’s all found objects put together and transformed into a multi-purpose art piece (that can probably call down an alien spacecraft if played outdoors, make your cat or dog crazy when they’re chasing lights around the room or perhaps give a burglar a seizure if you play the keyboard fast enough when he’s breaking into your place to steal what he thinks is a time machine)… Continue reading →

Alien Spidy Set to Crawl Onto Xbox Live, PC, Mac on March 20th

Posted on March 11, 2013 by geelw

In the mood for some classic platforming action? Do you like (or more precisely, are you not afraid of) SPIDERS? Well, then… Kalypso Media Digital and developer Enigma Software Productions have a fun little indie game for you (well, provided you own a PC, Mac, Xbox 360 or PS3). Alien Spidy packs in 69 levels of that aforementioned platforming straight out the the NES and arcade days with pretty HD visuals and plenty of challenge. PS3 owners? You’ll be getting a version shortly afterward and it’ll cost the same $9.99 as PC and Mac owners will pay. XBLA users have to pony up 800 Microsoft Points (which is sort of the same price, I think) for the pleasure of playing with Spidy. I’m gathering that if you haven’t hit your monitor with a shoe or sprayed it with Raid ’til it keeled over DEAD, you’re still intrigued, so here are some screenshots to ogle while you wait for the 20th to roll around…

Game of Thrones Season Two Recap: In Case You Missed It (Pay Attention Next Time!)

Posted on March 10, 2013 by geelw

OK, OK… I was “off” most of yesterday and today thanks to last night’s Brooklyn shenanigans. Some art gallery visiting, meeting up with some friends I hadn’t seen in over 10 years and a three-hour wait for Roberta’s Pizza, which was a looooong damn wait for anything, but well worth it as that’s some REALLY good pizza they make (… people wait for). Anyway, I had a birthday party of sorts to attend today, so I haven’t had the chance to get in my minimum five or so daily posts. Ah well. Here’s that GoT recap show I posted about a few days back. Tomorrow is another day (and I’ll be making up lost progress then. Off to catch some rest after I watch the Shameless episode I missed.

A&E’s Bates Motel: Oh, This Could Go All Kinds Of Wrong…

Posted on March 10, 2013 by geelw

But I’ll give it a shot. Maybe. “My hobby is… stuffing things…” OK, I’m not a huge fan of mucking around with something as classic as the original Psycho and previous attempts at making TV shows based on and around the film have not exactly been must-see entertainment. That said, I thought Psycho II was an interesting black comedy and a fun homage to Hitchcock (his shadow has a cameo in that film that’s easy to miss) and Psycho III was an even weirder flick with a nicely nasty edge. Of course, if this new show is actually good, it still mucks with the canon by pushing things forward a bit time-wise, something I’m not actually happy about. Of course, this will all be “new” to those whippersnappers who’ve yet to experience the first film because they’re somewhat cinema deficient and need a proper introduction to plenty of movies they’d otherwise ignore…

Star Trek: Into Darkness Teaser #2: Or: On Funding More Dream Therapy For J.J. Abrams…

Posted on March 9, 2013 by geelw

Hmmmm… Does J.J. Abrams have the same scary dream about falling every night? Seriously. I haven’t seen so many people jumping off high places into certain doom in a trailer in a while. OK, well… that silly trailer to the last Die Hard flick was lousy with stupidly impossible to survive jumps, but I’ll catch the full film once it hits cable and see if that’s just one sequence split into a few parts for the trailer edit. Still, I just laugh away merrily now when I see one of J.J.’s flicks because I’m EXPECTING someone to do a running jump off of something tall and into an action sequence. Of course, if there’s a big gust of air that carries the jumping human bean UP and onto something else for a one point safe landing as a cool twist, I’ll be even more thrilled. Well, as thrilled as one could be from seeing the same sequence repeated in a few different films. Anyway, nice teaser here, right? I say go pay to see this just so the director can eventually pay his way through therapy and find out what this falling fetish is all about.

Capcom Arcade Trivia: “Did You Know…” You Don’t Need A Coin Drop On Your TV To Play These?

Posted on March 9, 2013 by geelw

No big prizes for knowing this stuff already, folks… BUT if you hadn’t a clue before, now you know AND there’s the whole side benefit of looking and sounding REALLY cool to your geek buddies who think you need to play more games. Or something like that. Video game history is pretty awesome at the end of the day no matter how you look at it, I say. Capcom Arcade Cabinet is out NOW for the PS3 (via PSN) and Xbox 360 (via XBLA). It’s possibly coming to other platforms, but you didn’t hear it here. Yet.

Shadowrun Returns Alpha Gameplay: First Look At The Return of a RPG Classic

Posted on March 9, 2013 by geelw

More proof that the best crowd-funded games do indeed make it into production once they grab huge sums of money, here’s a long look at a tiny chunk of what hardworking indie developer Harebrained Schemes (yes, that’s their name!) has cooked up so far with the $1,836,447 backers ponied up on Kickstarter. In addition, even if you happened to miss out on the big pledge drive, you can still pre-order the game in three affordable different configurations at prices ranging from $15 to $75 for PC, OSX and Linux-based computers. With an expected release window of sometime this summer (May/June 2013), as well as gameplay that’s decidedly old school (and great looking) 2D turn-based RPG in a cyberpunk setting (and you get a level editor to fool around with, to boot), it looks as Shadowrun Returns will be one of those cool indie games that makes a few “best of” lists once gamers get their hands on it…

Lost Planet 3 Cover Art: More Focus on the Man Than Machine (Is A Good Thing)…

Posted on March 9, 2013 by geelw

Given the major focus on the story and characters in the game (which is a PREQUEL and not a sequel, numbering aside) and the great-looking in-engine movies that feature some great motion capture work, Capcom deciding to make the cover of Lost Planet 3 look like an advertisement for Space Road Truckers or some other future Discovery Channel series is wiggling the already bent antennae of some fans of the franchise the wrong way. I rather like the cover, but I initially thought they’d go with a similar cover design to the previous two games. Then again, once the game is actually played by the skeptics (some of the same folks who bashed DmC for too long before realizing they were completely WRONG about it), I’m sure the bile will settle down a bit more. So far, Capcom is batting ahead of the fan curve this year (at least in my book)…

Defiance: Arkhunter Chronicles 3 & Weapons Modifications: More Fictional Fat For The Fire

Posted on March 8, 2013 by geelw

With that April launch rolling up sooner than you think, Trion Worlds and syfy continue to let loose more and more fun Defiance lore and game info. Here’s the third Arkhunter Chronicles video and below that, a look at some of the many weapons you can modify to your tastes in the game. Sure,it’s no Borderlands 2 with it’s bazillions of guns, but there’s more than enough here to keep the fans busy for quite some time. Speaking of… as I’ve been saying for some time now, the game looks really fantastic and plays as smooth as silk. At this point, it’s really all up to the show to hook the skeptics in (as in,it BETTER be great from episode one) and get them to plunk down that AAA game price for what’s looking to be one of the big deal potential Game of the Year candidates if everything comes together as all are hoping…

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons: Starbreeze’s Fantasy Fairy Tale Coming to PSN, XBL, Steam This Spring

Posted on March 8, 2013 by geelw

And just exactly what has Starbreeze Studios been up to these days you ask? Well, the busy and super-talanted developer has been collaborating with Swedish film director Josef Fares on an upcoming digital-only fantasy game headed for the PS3, Xbox 360 and Steam this spring and published by 505 Games. Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons lets you control a pair of siblings with a single controller as they try to find a cure for their ailing father in a nicely detailed stylized fantasy world. Check out the teaser above and the short walkthrough clip below to see how the game will play. This one looks quite cool and hopefully will gain a strong following and not get buried in the rather large online game libraries on PSN, Xbox Live and Steam. As always, we shall see…