Jimmy and Ice-T Put The PS4 On The Hot Spot…

Posted on November 14, 2013 by geelw

Alright, it’s a given: CUTE ROBOTS SELL CONSOLES. And SUPER-cute virtual robots you can play with and/or kick around the room? When the audience goes “D’aaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!” more than five times a minute? Yeah, there’s Christmas in a box for Sony right there.

Okay, despite my occasional cranky side acting up from time to time, I’ll have to admit that Jimmy Fallon always gets me excited about gaming despite me having a longer history with them than he has. Granted, it’s his great enthusiasm for the medium and NOT his play style (that tends to lean towards the “Boy, do I suck at these games but I’m having FUN!” although he did beat Ice-T at that Pong variant) that’s hard to fake. And yep, game companies love him, Conan and anyone else they can get a console and controller to. Of course, none of them love ME, but that’s more my fault than theirs at the end of the day. Oh well, we’re workin’ on it… we’re workin’ on it. I’m thinking of writing a fake e-book (not really) called “How To Get The Respect You Deserve Without Being A Total Ass or Total Suck-Up” but we’ll say no more about that unless we want to be called a total ass. Or a total suck-up. Not too good at either of those, but I can swing both ways once I take some lessons. Is the Learning Annex still open here in NYC?

Valhalla Knights 3 Gets MORE New DLC. Game Definitely NOT Over!

Posted on November 13, 2013 by geelw

Wait, what? OK, I missed last week’s update thanks to me being buried in too many other games and other stuff, but it’s all good. So far I’m spending too much time playing this game and it seems Xseed Games NEVER wants me to stop. New content packs include last week’s “Good Cat Food” and “Foreigners No. 1” DLC that add some figurative (or is it literal) walking around money (every step gains gold!) and a new class to unlock and THIS week’s “Lady Clerks Set” and “Foreigners No. 2” that add a few new girls to the shops and another new class to learn once you beat the tough boss it gives you in the quest you’ll find at one of the guilds.

Xseed has more to come next week and most likely for the next few weeks, all of which are great for this action/RPG that’s much better than the reviews are saying. I’ve one of my own reviews to write (it’s about half done) that should help anyone on the fence decide if this one’s worth their gaming dollar (it is, but it’s not perfect and NOT for the kiddies). Alright, let me shut up here and get back to the game as once again… thing are getting innnnteresting in the story. Of course, there’s that VK3 Gold Edition Japan is getting that adds a lot of improvements and such that I hope to heck we see here at some point… but I’ll let Xseed take care of that when they need to and not say another peep until it’s a confirmed release here in the U.S. of A….

I Dream of Tee-Vee #1: Mothers, Russia Was The Bomb!

Posted on November 12, 2013 by geelw

(thanks, 2nicks!)

Yes, I have dreams about old TV shows every now and then and sometimes it’s a mash up of a bunch of old shows or dreams with music from some old shows. This particular dream I don’t recall much of other than it had the theme to the old NBC show “The Mothers-In-Law”, but it had some of the cast from “Ivan the Terrible”, a CBS show from 1976 that only ran five episodes and from my brief internet search, has NO footage or credits to be found. I actually watched every episode of that show as a kid and I was surprised when it was no longer on the air, but I guess a show about a bunch of Russians in a cramped Moscow apartment wasn’t exactly something America wanted to see back in that Bicentennial year. Whatever, I say – the opening credits were pretty funny from what I recall.

EDIT: Aha! I just checked and yes indeed, while the show was indeed very funny, your tax dollars at work back then (The State Department) colluding with the Russian government made sure it was taken away in a black car or something close. From IMDB:

Although the show got good ratings, the U.S. State Department, under pressure from the Soviet Government, gave instructions that it should not be renewed.

OK, maybe WE thought it was funny as hell (and I bet they were chuckling at the State Department until that red phone rang), but Russia sure hated the idea of us laughing too much (or at all) at their expense. As for The Mothers-In-Law? Hey, dig that funky title sequence and in those end credits, that bongo break will have you pounding the table like you mean it, I bet…

Killzone: Shadow Fall Launch Trailer: Sony’s 800 Pound Guerrilla Wants In Your House…

Posted on November 12, 2013 by geelw

I’m quite proud to say I know at least one person who’s worked on this game a little from another game he worked on at another developer, so it’s good to hear this latest installment makes for a fine launch title. That said, I won’t get to play it for a while unless I get socked on the skull with a sack of money. THAT said, I’m actually not ticked off at not having a PS4 on launch day as I still have way too many titles from THIS generation to cover here. I prefer to do things at a more appreciative pace (as in NOT rushing through games to be the first to have a review posted) and enjoy the ride, as it were… Continue reading →

Random Film of the Week: “X”- The Man With The X-Ray Eyes

Posted on November 11, 2013 by geelw

Ohhhh-kay... I’m having a SERIOUS case of déjà vu here. I know for a fact that I’d written up a review of this great 1963 Roger Corman “B” flick a few years back and posted it either on the old blog, here or somewhere else, but it’s nowhere to be found as far as I’ve checked. Crazy! Or perhaps I had such a vivid dream about writing this up that I merely THOUGHT that I’d run a review. Hey, it happens. But only to me, it seems…

Anyway, I despise rewriting stuff, so it could be that I did a draft that was close to completion but somehow was deleted or accidentally overwritten thanks to that oddball WordPress flaw where if you have two “Add New Post” tabs open and make the mistake of using them for new posts, you overwrite the first post with the second. Anyway, this is one of those really surprising low-budget films that, thanks to some great casting and some genuinely tight direction, manages to be much better than it should be… Continue reading →

BandFuse: Rock Legends Update: Say Hi-yo To Laiho!

Posted on November 11, 2013 by geelw

With only a week left before the game hits retail, I’ve been seeing some music game fans suddenly perk up the discussion about BandFuse: Rock Legends in a few spots. Realta Entertainment’s innovative guitar school on a disc is an open book of a music “game” experience that lets you hop in anywhere you choose and learn like a beginner or jam like a pro, something a certain other guitar game doesn’t. Between that, the legends on board to show you the ropes, the no-lag gameplay which should please every player and more, this one could be the music game of the year when all is said and done. Granted, some still want millions of TV ads to drop left and right just so they have an idea of how popular the game is or something. But expensive TV spots and building-sized billboards don’t mean anything other than a game’s PR department has a lot of money to work with and the game being advertised so heavily might or might not be any good at all. BandFuse doesn’t need some multimillion dollar ads running endlessly to sell it at all – it needs YOU to pick it up and learn you some killer guitar. THAT will help sell copies more than anything, I say…

Holding Patterns (Now With Aspirin)

Status

Oy yoy yoy. Let’s see now: It’s a STUPIDLY busy week here in NYC between CES Unveiled, the big, big PlayStation event I didn’t get an invite to today (grrrr… Sony, you’re killing me with this not keeping me posted on stuff!), a bunch of other things going on AND some reviews that need to get completed in the next couple of days. I’ve got a big, fat headache that’s fading now, but it kept me fuzzed out all day until the UPS guy rolled up with a new game (my stack of to-do games that was shrinking is now growing again) and I got a few more review codes I’ll get to starting Wednesday. There’s also the matter of laundry, but that’s usually a two-day affair I need to find two days this week to get to. Yeah, I do all my own laundry and cooking – so what. Don’t get any ideas, though, people. If you show up with a sack of dirty laundry and a sack of fresh fish, I’ll sock you with the salmon and stuff you in that bag with your unmentionables.

OK, off to boil some water. It’ll be for tea or pasta or both. I haven’t decided yet. Too much going on here…

Your Life Lesson for the Day, Courtesy Valhalla Knights 3…

Posted on November 10, 2013 by geelw

For a game very unfairly labeled “misogynist” and a few other choice negative terms by some skittish reviewers who clearly don’t know the meaning of some of the big words they use, Valhalla Knights 3 sure has a few interesting side-quests and resolutions. Sure, the skimpy outfits and NSFW “Sexytime” mini-game with certain ladies in the game are there to please the more prurient otaku with itchy fingers and the old-school RPG level grinding isn’t for every taste. But dang it if Producer Yoshifumi Hashimoto and his team at K2 didn’t whip in a few oddball surprises that prove they’re not the sexist neanderthals some “journalists” think they are for making this game.

Yeah, I’m still working on my review. I have a load of notes here and I think it’s going to be longer than I was initially thinking because warts and all, this one’s nowhere near as awful as some are saying. The Valhalla Knights series have never been known for the depth of its plots or stellar storytelling and VK3 continues that trend outside of some fun vignettes such as this one that aren’t tied to the main quest. That said, the main plot in the game does have its moments, but I’ll discuss some of those in my review…

Granted, I’ll admit right now that the game is NOT for all tastes and I can see some taking offense at a few of the more salacious elements. Of course, it’s a free country, so it seems that a bunch of people who probably shouldn’t be playing this are doing so with varying degrees of disgust or shame because they can’t handle the content. It seems that the completely humorless, kids who convinced their parents or some other adult to buy this for them and are turned off by the lewd elements (hey, it IS a MATURE rated game, you little dummies!), or those expecting a pure porn experience (it’s most assuredly NOT that at all) are getting slapped in the head with confusion on a few fronts (as always when it comes to games that toss even the mildest forms of sexual themes into the mix).

Super Fighter Team Reissues Two Classic PC Fighters As Free Downloads

Posted on November 9, 2013 by geelw

Super Fighter Team has been quite quietly busy these days, what with Nightmare Busters getting ready to ship out for the Super Nintendo soon (and yes, it’s simultaneously awesome and hilarious in the best possible manner to be typing this in 2013), but there are also some nice surprises you can grab for free that should greatly interest fans of classic 2D arcade fighting games.

Super Fighter Special Edition, a VERY nicely reworked version of the ancient PC fighter and Sango Fighter 2 are up and downloadable now, so if you’re into fighters, LOVE big, colorful animated sprites and wonderful pixel art backgrounds, yup, you’re already clicking away and getting yours I bet. Additionally, you can check out some music from Super Fighter HERE – it’s another pretty cool bonus that will get your ears grinning while you’re waxing nostalgic over either game’s old-school charms…

A Doctor A Day Keeps You Guessing (In A Good Way)…

Posted on November 9, 2013 by geelw

So, not only are we getting what looks like the ultimate Doctor Who episode on November 23 in a very special simultaneous broadcast, but an actual TV movie (and DVD, at least in the UK) about the show’s beginnings. Okay, so I’m a bit behind on this news, but hey – I’m a busy man more than an obsessed fan so I need to time my excitement properly or else it’s a permanent state of bug-eyed wild postings and potentially doing what every other overexcited fan does (posting crazy YouTube videos that make me look like a total nut). Anyway, An Adventure in Space and Time looks like it’ll be a nice history lesson for Who fans and hopefully it’s more fact-based than the crap Hollywood biopics that always follow the same predictable plot patterns and lose any sense of veracity in favor of hitting the audience over the noggin with the requisite schmaltzy elements that focus test better than the actual truth.