Ye Olde Rerun Department: Digital Press Edition

DP_Did You KnowOK, I’m still getting ready to reboot the engines here, so here’s a little old post from Digital Press to tide you fine folks over: Yeah, it’s long as hell (well, for the short attention span crowd) and no pictures means a bit of a wall to climb, but it’s a mere 11 paragraphs and not a bad read if I do say so myself. That and if you have a stack of disc-based games from a few console generations ago (or even some old PC games), it’s worth popping them into a CD player to see what you can unearth.

Rise of the Triad Remake Pokes Fun At A Certain Long-Toothed FPS Franchise

Woof! Yes, gog.com, Interceptor Entertainment and Apogee Software (wow, they’re STILL around?) all want you to pre-order Rise of The Triad (and get a bunch of other games for free in the process) and they’re not above (or is it below?) sticking a fork in the butt of a certain super-high profile game series that pops up in yearly installments. I’m sort of tired of this genre, but at least RoTT is supposed to be as funny as it is violent and isn’t trying at all to be the “best” looking game out there. I’m tempted… but we’ll see what a few friends who’ve pre-ordered this one say…

Elysium Clips: Blomkamp’s Blockbuster, Bit By Bit…

I’m not the biggest fan of these clip job teases, but they sure didn’t spoil District 9 for me by the time I got around to seeing it. Neill Blomkamp and his effects team certainly have a way with mixing CG and practical effects that doesn’t look fake or too overblown at all and yeah, Matt Damon as a cobbled together cyborg is making for a pretty interesting character.

As long as the ending feels right (and doesn’t necessarily set up a sequel), I think this might do well and yes, we may see someone at Microsoft kicking themselves in the ass for not letting Mr. B. do that Halo movie. Of course, those folks are still in desperation mode, so I can see them throwing money his way to get on board that Xbox One’s content machine for a super exclusive.

As usual (repeat after me, class)… We shall see.

Random Art: While You’re Waiting For Updates… A Few Pics From Hell!

everybody knows your name 

always openOK, I do need to catch upon a TON of stuff I’ve missed out on over the past few weeks, but I may as well drop in another random piece or three from the gallery for fun. These are from a “series” of fake vacation photos from a trip to hell, which looks just like here, but with more heat and different neon signs. I can’t say if it’s any more miserable a place than the “real” world, as both have good and bad points.

For one thing, despite what some tavern signs say (hey, lies are everywhere down there!)… they don’t serve beer in hell, but the food is always hot and cheap. Yes, that includes the ice cream, which is weird… but tasty and somehow holds that familiar shape when it’s scooped and put on a hot off the stack waffle cone. Yum-o(uch)!

they don't serve beer in hellOh, I just KNOW you’re curious now. Don’t worry, though… you’ll find out soon enough. I went and got you a free ticket while I was there. The place is ALWAYS open and yep, they just love visitors. Don’t forget to visit the gift shop on the way back up. Everything is free and they’ll even gift wrap as much as you can carry. Just avoid the Sisyphus Rock replica, as it’s actual size, but to a mortal, only feels as heavy as an average-sized grapefruit in the underworld. However, it turns into a REAL 500-plus pound boulder when it leaves the basement level. if you can roll it home afterwards, it DOES make a great gag gift for a friend or enemy…

Snoopy Was A Part Time Sleuth? Who Knew?

snoopy mystery

Well, well, well… and here I thought he was just a WWI Flying Ace, a failed author, a former owner of a multi-level underground doghouse fit for a billionaire (until it burned down!) and a few other cool things. My dad had this tote bag in storage with a bunch of other stuff and it’s a pretty cool find as I’ve never seen it until now. I did some quick research as I was typing this post and apparently there was indeed a TV special called “It’s A Mystery, Charlie Brown” – nice! I think it was also done as an illustrated book, but I’ll need to dive deeper into that research at some point.

(thanks, PeanutsOnline!) 

Granted, as old as I am, I probably SHOULD know this already, but I haven’t seen EVERY single Peanuts special and hey, I don’t have catching up on the ones I missed high on my to-do list. Actually… as I’m sitting here thinking about it… I do vaguely recall seeing this one, but it’s been over thirty years since so my memory is supremely hazy about those days. Anyway, the mystery of yet another old item is solved. 30 boxes of stuff to go. Yikes. Anyone want to help out here?

Amnesia: The Dark Descent (Finally) Crawls Onto GOG.com. Steady That Spine!

If you’re a fan of horror but not a gamer, you might not initially be interested in Amnesia: The Dark Descent because it’s a video game and you’ll probably have preconceived notions of running around with a gun and shooting up zombies or whatever until your brain walks out of your left ear in protest. On the other hand, all you need to do is watch that trailer above, smile (and perhaps shiver a little) before boogieing over to gog.com to check if your computer can indeed run this supremely scary gem from the fine folks at Frictional Games. System requirements are pretty low, so I think some of you folks without beefy gaming rigs but a recent to decent 3D card can get this going and spend the next few days under the bed after you’ve played. Or tried to play but got too damn freaked out and couldn’t take another step.

Yeah, the game is THAT creepy. To me, at least… I think it will scare the crap out of you as well – give it a go and let me know what you think…

Deadly Premonition: The Director’s Cut Steam Bound!

While a small but vocal bunch of PlayStation 3 owners have been ranting away for Rising Star Games to contract Access Games to stop working on their upcoming Xbox One exclusive D4 to do some fixes for Deadly Premonition: The Director’s Cut, that’s not going to happen any time soon. On the other, stranger hand… the game was recently surprised-dropped onto Steam Greenlight for a potential PC release with even MORE content and wonder of wonders… it was approved in what seems to be record time. Wow. Now, I’ll be the first to say I’m shocked and thrilled at this news, but I’m not expecting the PC version to be “perfect” by any stretch of the imagination. Even higher resolutions and tweaked controls aside, the game will still look intentionally cheesy and probably have the same driving setup for the cars as the PS3 version did (which is much better than the original Xbox 360 game from a few years back). Anyway, this is indeed great news and soon, you horror game fans looking for something TRULY weird and memorable will all get a little FK in your own coffee when DP:TDC is finally let loose for PC. Once I get an actual release date, I’ll let you know…

Gravity “I’ve Got You” Trailer: Well, You Did Just Now…

OK, I’ve been not paying much attention to the upcoming film Gravity thanks to me not being much of a Sandra Bullock fan (yeah, yeah, she’s America’s Sweetheart #181 and blah-blah) and doing a coin toss with Clooney’s films because they can be great or not so great depending on the director. Granted, this isn’t the first time on the sci-fi carousel for either actor, what with Sandra earning her cred in Demolition Man (dumb flick, but the opening sequence was and is still amazing) and George doing a solid job in that Solaris remake from a while back (it’s a decent flick, but the book is still the best way to go). Of course, everything is really riding on the shoulders of director Alfonso Cuarón (“Children of Men”), as I’m betting a handful of pennies that some going in to see this will be expecting something of equal depth and design on a few fronts. Well, this trailer sure piqued my interest, that’s for sure… et tu?

Things to Do When the Real World Stinks (One)…

(thanks, Game Empire HD!) 

OK, I actually didn’t do anything TOO productive today other than blow through 34 missions in Earth Defense Force 4 and take a bunch of notes for my review. Ive got a long way to go, as the game has got 94 missions total (eek), four character classes and five difficulty levels. I most likely won’t solo the entire game through ALL the difficulty levels before starting my review, as EDF games are made for seriously long play time. I’m probably going to complete Easy and Normal, but I’ve already played some missions on Hard and Hardest just to see how tough they are (they’re tough, but beatable), but haven’t gone near any Inferno maps yet because I need my sanity for the rest of the week. Which so far consists of a meeting to see a new game tomorrow, a screening I may or may not attend (it’s a bit last minute) and a bunch of stuff I need to write up from this week and last.

Er, that’s about it… I guess. Oh, right – I’ll add a few Random Film reviews in a bit. I haven’t watched anything in a few days, so I’m thinking I need a decent old comedy or really bad “B” movie to get back on track. My brain is still packed with mud a little from reality and I made the silly mistake of watching the news this evening (blech… too much crap going on in that real world and too many crazies at the wheel all driving off different cliffs). I’d go bake a pie or something, but I haven’t done that in oh, maybe a dozen years or so, I have no ingredients and I’d probably end up eating the whole thing once it cooled. Who doesn’t like pie?

Random Art: The Return of Frankenstein’s Monster? Sort Of… Maybe?

FlowersI forget if I’ve posted this piece here before, but what the hell – I need to up my post count a bit, as it’s way down this month thanks to all the stuff going on around here. Anyway, this one’s a MS Paint experiment (yeah, done entirely with a mouse) from 2011 when I was really bored yet inspired to fiddle around with that stupid program just to see if I could get it to do stuff in as simple a way as possible but look somewhat hand-drawn. I have a Wolfman pic that’s been sitting around unfinished for a while, but I may start it over, as it wasn’t coming along well at all (the layout is OK, it’s just in need of some scaling of the figures and I haven’t had the time to get back to it since. Eh, perhaps I’ll just redraw the whole thing… we’ll see.