Hikari Friday: Mystic Powers Spidey Could Be Yours!

HIkari Premium logo 

This weeks Funko Hikari Friday giveaway? It’s a simply too colorful for his own good Spider-Man up for grabs. ONE lucky winner will get #1 of 1000 of this limited edition Hikari Premium Japanese Vinyl Mystic Powers Spider-Man in all his shiny rainbow-colored glory. Check him out below:

Funko Hikari Vinyl Mystic Powers Spider-Man 

As usual, entering is a cinch, but winning takes a LOT of luck. Still, take a chance and you never know. Spidey just may be slinging some of those mystic powers of his on your tchotchke shelf as a nice surprise! Anyway, hit up Funko on one of their social channels:

Facebook!
Twitter
Instagram

Follow the dirt-simple rules and you’re in it to won it. Hopefully! The lucky winner of this week’s figure will be notified in about a week. Good luck and check back next week for a new giveaway!

Review: Elegy for a Dead World

Elegy For A Dead World CAPlatform: PC/Mac/Linux

Developer: Dejobaan Games

Publisher: Dejobaan Games

# of Players: 1

ESRB Rating: N/A

Official Site

Score: A- (90%)

 

Whether or not you like to write, there’s an excellent chance that you love storytelling in one way or another. Dejobaan Games’ excellent Elegy for a Dead World is a game about writing that’s not just for writers and to some “gamers” out there, isn’t really a videogame in the traditional sense. There are no scores tallied, no bad guys to dispatch, and only three relatively small and short themed planets to explore. But it’s neither the journey nor the destination that’s the selling point here.

elegy_ks_gif The game encourages you to sit down, unhook your brain from its box and let your fingers do the talking as you write anything you wish. Yes, there are numerous writing prompts you can use and there’s great fun in pretending to speak in another voice as some of the prompts suggest. But for some players, the experience of free-styling their way through each world and sharing their stories with others will be the big draw… Continue reading

Back to the Future Part II Proves The Future Actually Sucks…

Yeah, yeah. I was trying to be less of a curmudgeon this year, but the fact that people are waxing a wee bit too nostalgic over Back to the Future Part II and its “predictions” about the world of 2015 has roused me into a stupor over all this fanciful fawning. Let’s face it, folks: most of us are just too eager to over-appreciate some forms of technology despite realizing it’ll be abused and very royally mucked up once it gets into the paws of the public. The combination of old and new bad habits will make that otherwise cool tech too damn deadly to be of any use unless it’s under VERY highly controlled conditions… Continue reading

Random Film of the Week: Strait-Jacket

Strait-JacketSomething has always bugged me about the 1964 William Castle horror/thriller flick Strait-Jacket ever since I first saw it as a kid. Nope, it’s not the too close to Psycho plot points courtesy of writer Robert Bloch (who also wrote that classic). And it’s certainly not Joan Crawford’s wide and wild-eyed performance as Lucy Harbin, the freed after twenty years in an asylum ax murderess now going through a potential relapse victim as the bodies start piling up again. It’s also definitely not Castle’s direction that downplays some of the camp potential of the material and goes for a handful of genuinely nifty 60’s era shocks.

Nope. What bugged me about the film that still bugs me today is how the hell George Kennedy’s creepy farmhand Leo painted three quarters of a car with the smallest damn can of paint and what looks like a two or three-inch wide brush. HOW DID HE DO THAT?!!
Continue reading

With Firm Resolve, A New Year’s Rhyme Exercise…

(Thanks, SPARTEN2!) 

Well, this 2015 greeting is not so hot, but that’s what happens when you stay up too long with the TV on. You need a resolution because you hate making them and your Procrastinator’s Club card has yet to arrive (don’t worry, they’ll get to you eventually)? Feel free to divine one from that wretched text below or get the hint on what you need to take care of if it’s a negative habit. And stick to it this year so I don’t need to do this again!

Happy New Year!
Hippie No Hair!
Boozy No Beer!
Scaredy No Fear!
Lazy Kick Rear!
Cloudy Get Clear!
Fishy Off Pier!
Whiny No Tear!
Yakky No Smear!
Dummy Get Seer!
Opaque Not Sheer!
Gloomy Get Cheer!
Cranky Get Jeer!
Snarky No Sneer!
Worldly Get Sphere!

Okay, that’s all I’ve got. Actually, there were more, but I wanted to stick to one syllable words and also wanted some of you out there to chime in with your own suggestions. As mother says, “knock yourselves out!”

Random Art: One More Before Turning The Page…

thumping 

Well, I was going to try and wrap things up for 2014 with a a few more posts, but it’s been a weird enough last month or three that I’m just about wiped out. Here’s something odd I whipped up last night or early this morning while up way too late thinking. Anyway, Happy New Year for those of you out there. If you’re out and about celebrating, get wherever you’re going and back home safe. If you’re like me and spending the evening home in front of the tube, yeah, stay safe as well. Don’t fall off the couch and crack your head on the carpet or whatever. Yeah, I lead the thrilling life, folks!

See you all in a day or two. I may post tomorrow, but that depends on me getting out for my resolution stroll in the cold air. I think two or three miles a day is a good start…

Persona 5: Last Gasp on the PS3/First Breath on the PS4…

Persona 5 2015 bg 

Atlus’ long running Shin Megami Tensei: Persona series of games has always been a reliably sturdy franchise for fans, surviving a few major artistic and gameplay changes some dislike while providing deep and generally well written plots as well as some interesting characters. The company has been teasing Persona 5 for a little while now as the game is still in development in Japan, and as this latest teaser shows, some of the familiar elements are back. Expect high-school age kids finding out they’ve got hidden powers called Personas, Japan at the brink of some sort of apocalyptic destruction, and dozens of hours of gameplay not counting plenty of side-quests. Demon fusion, teen angst, maybe a bit of romance options and a number of returning good, evil and neutral NPC’s to chat with will no doubt also be par for the course.


 

This second teaser trailer reveals not much at all other than some of the new cast of characters and their names. Additionally, as this will be the first Persona game for next-gen (or current gen if you’ve already made the switch), it will be interesting to see the differences between the PS3 and PS4 versions of the game. I’d imagine the more powerful PS4 will run the game at a steady frame rate and probably feature ore detailed environments. But outside that fighting game, the series has never been about super flashy visuals or lightning paced action. We’ll keep an ear to ground for more on this one, but let’s just say a chunk of time is being carved out in order to dive deep into this one and play it at length.

Unmechanical Extended Edition: Get A (nother) Grip Games Goodie in 2015!

Unmechnaical EE banner 

Grip Games is at it again with a cool enhanced update to one of its popular titles. Unmechanical Extended Edition is coming in 2015 for PS3,PS4, Xbox One courtesy of Grip and developers Teotl Studios and Talawa Games. Given that the original game was a critical success on multiple mobile platforms and PC, a console version with a bit more content was pretty much a no-brainer. Exclusive to the console versions is a new chapter that allows playing of the puzzle/adventure/platormer hybrid as a new character. Grip has also announced the Vita version of the game has been canceled, at least for the time being. The press release notes this, however:

While it is possible that this version will eventually be released, it definitely won’t be simultaneously with other versions.

Ouch. If speculation must be made, I’d imagine that getting Unreal to play nice on the Vita is probably trickier than expected. That or there are other issues keeping this one from its Vita debut. In any event, if Grip and company manage to work things out and get the game up and running, an update will be posted as soon as any news arrives in the inbox here. In the meantime, here are five screens to check out.

Unmechanical_1 Unmechanical 3 Unmechanical_5 Unmechanical 6 Unmechanical 8

Right now, sometime in January 2015 looks like when we’ll see Unmechanical Extended Edition land safely on home consoles. Stay tuned for more on this one…

The (Welcome and Hopeful) Silence of the Spams…


 

Bleh. I’m trying to wind this year down on an interesting note, but my mind is elsewhere. Too much home improvement stuff, some new ventures creeping into my schedule, perhaps a business thing popping up in a weird place and so forth and so on. Meanwhile, the internet has ticked me off royally this year on a few fronts to the point I almost kicked myself off a few social sites. I hate predictions and forecasting, but I kind of feel that 2015 will be the year people want their privacy back. Nearly everywhere you look or dink around online, you’re tracked, hacked and cracked over the head continually by folks good, bad and ugly. That has to be dealt with not by so-called “security” services or outside elements telling you they’re “taking care” of the problems. It has to be dealt with by people wisely retreating from spilling all their beans to the world thinking it’s okay because a site says it’s “secure” or “values” your safety at the end of the day. I’d bet a penny that most of them don’t because they can make bad news into good and gain users from it when all is said and done by tossing stuff into the spin cycle.

Eh, I suppose being cranky like this has its merits. But I want to end this year on a high note. No, not THAT kind of high, you sillies. Just a little rest and popping up to see the sun rise on that new year before zipping out a few posts to welcome in 2015. Back in a bit…

The Phoenix Project: Will it Rise to the Occasion for Sci-Fi Fans?

The Phoenix Project In short, raising the dead means raising hell if you’re careless (go, sci-fi science!), and of course this makes for some interesting films. The Phoenix Project is coming in January from FilmBuff and Ironwood Gang. Based on the IMBD trailer, looks quite interesting. I’ll hold off any further comments until I get my grubby paws on some sort of screener, but it’s pretty cool to get a vibe from a few other films while watching this teaser. A little Re-Animator here, some Frankenstein there, a dash of (and hopefully ONLY a dash of) Flatliners somewhere on the bottom, shake well and BOOM.

We’ll see if the final version is up to snuff soon enough. Hey, you look as if you need to read a bit of a press release. You go do that, I’ll go make some popcorn:

 

THE PHOENIX PROJECT

In Select Theaters & VOD/Digital Download on January 16th, 2015

Four young scientists work to craft a machine to reanimate deceased organisms. As the project develops, the machine exceeds their wildest expectations, creating boundless possibilities that challenge the very nature of human existence. However, success with this experiment comes at a price, as ulterior motives and reckless abandon lead to consequences none of them could predict. As their time and resources fade, this team of visionary scientists must face the realities of the task they have set out for themselves, bringing the dead back to life.

Directed & Written by: Tyler Graham Pavey
Cast: Corey Rieger, Andrew Simpson, David Pesta & Orson Ossman

Distributor: Film Buff

Genre: Sci-Fi, Drama

Runtime: 92 minutes