One of the big problems with Comic Con is there is too much to be excited over. It actually ends up being hard to even keep track of all the things to look forward to. One thing we were able to keep focus on though was Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions. At the Pre-Comic Con Activision event when they announced the fourth and final dimension for the game, we were able to get some hands on time with it.
Myself and the Flickcast’s Matt Raub both got to play through two sections of Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions. Unlike recent Spider-Man games, Shattered Dimensions most notably is not an open world. It is a more linear process where players for a more set storyline than traveling across the island of Manhattan back and forth, something that while intriguing the first time because tiresome by the third game to use this approach.
The first section was the Noir universe which didn’t feel like a traditional Spider-Man title by any means. Instead of running in cracking jokes as he dodged bullets, the Noir Spider-Man was forced to take a more Sam Fischer approach (Splinter Cell reference for those of you who are just comic fans and not big gamers). Using his environment as a weapon, Noir Spider-Man must traverse around a level picking off foes one by one and avoid direct combat. Attempting a head on attack would more than likely result in a Spider-Man riddled with Tommy gun bullets.
Who isn’t fascinated by an urban legend? Almost every community has some sort of local tale that is unique to its geographic region, and on Staten Island, that legend was known as Cropsey.
Cropsey is a documentary film that examines the finely blurred lines between fact, fiction, and urban legend. Filmmakers Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio hail from Staten Island, and remembered the tales that were passed about during their childhood about “Cropsey.”
Essentially, Cropsey was yet another manifestation of the boogeyman-the man who will get you if you go where you ought not be alone at night. However, the Staten Island community was understandably spooked when a 13 year old girl with Down Syndrome inexplicably disappeared. Suddenly, Cropsey appeared all too real. Eventually, there were four more disappearances in the area.
What really sets this movie apart is the foreboding presence of a massive decaying mental institution, where unspeakable negligence and atrocities befell the defenseless people committed to the facility. It is the perfect backdrop for a crime story.
Willowbrook Mental Institution housed thousands of patients (most of whom were mentally retarded), and an unannounced on-site report from the facility in 1972 (by an extremely young Geraldo Rivera) is horrifying to witness.
At Comic Con, we got the chance to check out a lot of games. Too many to even discuss them all. But at the Sony press event, we got our hands on a game that was such an odd concept, it deserved our attention. Developed in house by Sony Japan’s internal development studio, Kung Fu Rider may be one of the most Japanese games in concept seen in a long time.
The game uses the PlayStation Move to control a private detective named Tobio and his secretary Karin as they are on the run from the mob in Hong Kong. The way they make their escape is by using rolling office chairs and other office furniture for a total of 12 different vehicles on downhill street courses which they can grind rails, hop cars and duck under beams. All of this is done with the controls of the motion control to lean them in the proper direction.
Along the way, players collect money to help them speed through the races faster and unlock various items that will help them in their escape. It is confirmed the game will feature 26 courses, each featuring various hidden passages with alternative routes.
The game doesn’t feature a competitive multiplayer but it will feature a cooperative mode. A player can jump in and help the main player by knocking objects out of their way. They can also collect money and bonus objects to help progress through levels faster.
When we asked about the inspiration behind Kung Fu Rider, we were told that German Chair Scooting is very popular on YouTube in Japan. The result is an incredibly unique experience that puts the Move’s motion controls to different extremes than anything else we have seen thus far.
Congrats to all those who have made it past Comic-Con’s endless Hall H lines, sat through countless hours of the studio’s pleading with you to buy movie tickets, and made it back home in one, tired piece. What awaits you is a month filled with the studio’s last line of blockbuster attack ads until the holiday season.
Fear not, as the lines will be vastly shorter than the wait for Eclipse. Instead of emos and soccer moms in “Team Edward” T-shirts, you’ll find yourself beside teenage boys who watch Rocky V on their Evos while waiting for The Expendables.
Curiously, the generals of Universal and Lionsgate both decided to fire missiles into the 13-30 years old guys camp. With the troops dispersing, you should be able to deftly maneuver yourself to the safety of a comfy recliner at the multiplex.
My advice, do like Julia Roberts and Eat some buttery popcorn, Pray for a film worth the ticket price, and Love the below reviews. Let’s check out what’s in store for us in August.
This weekend, the movie going masses will be split into three camps. Some will be buying tickets for Julia Roberts’ new film Eat, Pray, Love while the younger generation will be headed to Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. That leaves the rest of us to go see the biggest collection of action stars together for the first time in one film. You know it as The Expendables.
The film’s premise isn’t all that important considering what most people are probably seeing the movie for. However, if you do care about that sort of thing the film is basically about a group of renegade mercenaries who uncover a international plot that they are called in to take down. The film is written by, directed by, and stars Sylvester Stallone and also includes some of the biggest names in action cinema. Here’s a brief list:
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Steve Austin, Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Jet Li, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, Mickey Rourke, & Eric Roberts. Not bad, right?
We’ve got a brand new clip from the film in which Sly and Statham argue about which is faster: Sly’s bullets or Statham’s throwing knives. Check out the clip after the jump and catch The Expendables in theaters this Friday. You know you want to.
We know, we know, these rumors have been swirling for so long now, you probably don’t believe anything anymore. But this time around, TechCrunch is reporting that a source intimately familiar with the hardware supply chain for Apple has noticed an order for millions of units of Qualcomm CDMA chipsets. Why is this unusual? Because Verizon’s wireless network requires CDMA chipsets to be present in the wireless devices that run on their network.
This can only point to one thing: Apple is revving up their supply chain for a Verizon-compatible iPhone. And because lead-times in the semiconductor market can be quite lengthy, sometimes as long as 26 weeks, we can start to forecast that a real-live Verizon iPhone looks to be a strong possibility in January 2011.
On its own, this latest bit of news is a strong prediction of AT&T’s expiring exclusivity arrangement with Apple, yet there’s more. In a SEC filing made by AT&T a few days ago, the company detailed what may happen to the company’s profitability in the wake of just such an event:
“We believe offering a wide variety of handsets reduces dependence on any single handset as these products evolve. In addition, offering a number of attractive handsets on an exclusive basis distinguishes us from our competitors. As these exclusivity arrangements end, we expect to continue to offer such handsets (based on historical industry practice), and we believe our service plan offerings will help to retain our customers by providing incentives not to move to a new carrier.”
And AT&T is even more clear in their final paragraph of their SEC filing:
“Although exclusivity arrangements are important to us, such arrangements may not provide a competitive advantage over time, as the industry continues to introduce new devices and services. Also, while the expiration of any of our current exclusivity arrangements could increase churn and reduce postpaid customer additions, we do not expect any such terminations to have a material negative impact on our Wireless segment income, consolidated operating margin or our cash from operations.”
Who doesn’t love a great story about the business of show? Some of the biggest TV projects on the air today revolve around the glitz and glamor of Hollywood and show business such as Entourage and 30 Rock. Well, what if you bunched those two properties together and focused on the growing popularity of original web series and new media? Enter Famous [On The Internet].
From Xtian Bretz and Zach Grafton, the creators of the hilariously gritty take on Super Smash Brothers titled There Will Be Brawl, comes this new and exciting project about the lives of internet stars.
The show follows 5 characters in their journey to becoming web superstars in a brand new series. There’s Perk, the gamer, Leif, the musician, Calvin, the new media agent, Chloe, the web darling, and Chance, the main protagonist, who’s goal is to get his webshow Splatter High off the ground.
The series is directed by Bretz and Grafton, with Grafton penning the script and Jordan O’Leary as producer.
The show is currently in post-production and will air online very soon. Be sure to keep checking the show’s official page and Twitter for more updates. in the meantime, check out the first official trailer after the jump.
With the upcoming big screen adaptation of Green Lantern now finished with principal photography and onto the lengthy post-production stage, it was only a matter of time before info from the film started to leak out. We’ve already seen some stuff, including Ryan Reynolds as the main character and him working on the set, and now we’ve got a picture of another character fans have been looking forward to seeing: Kilowog.
Courtesy of our pals over at ComicBook Movie comes the first image of Hal Jordan’s mentor and I have to say it looks pretty good. Much like his comic counterpart, the character seems to have all the necessary gravitas to be such a respected member of the Green lantern Corps.
Sure, the picture doesn’t show much else than a head and shoulders and we can’t see the character in action, but it does seem like the filmmakers have adhered pretty closely to the character’s appearance from the comics. Or, putting it another way, he doesn’t seem much like a Poozer. Unless, of course, it turns out to be fan-made — which can happen.
Authentic or fan-made, check out a larger pic after the jump. Green Lantern hits theaters on June 17th, 2011.
Now that San Diego Comic-Con 2010 is officially behind us, we thought it would be fun to put together a montage at some of the stuff we did and people we talked to during the show. Some of it you’ve seen, and some of it you may have to wait to see, but it’s all here in one finished package.
As much as the world loves playing through the single player campaign of the Call of Duty series, no one can argue the series’ long term appeal lies in its multiplayer mode. Players can quickly find themselves spending days and days in multiplayer death-match scenarios. With each iteration of the series, the multiplayer has gotten more intense and added various new dimensions to keep it fresh. In Treyarch’s last game Call of Duty: Black Ops, they added the horde -like Zombie mode where an unending supply of Nazi zombies took it to players.
In this new teaser trailer we see that Treyarch looks to be sticking with a more Modern Warfare theme as they introduce new gadgets and weaponry to the mix. The first new tech seen in the trailer is a surveillance camera.
It looks like it will send a black and white feed of what’s going on in front of it to the upper left corner of a player’s HUD. No doubt this will lead to some great in game traps for players as they can set up cameras around their position to prepare to attack incoming forces.
Up next, crossbows. And not just regular crossbows but timed explosive mounted arrow shooting crossbows. While the crossbow is known for being a more silent but deadly weapon, the silence part goes out the window once the bomb attached to it explodes. Thankfully, the person who it blows up on won’t hear a thing as the explosion will most likely remove their ears from the rest of their explosion riddled body.
This week’s pick pits a small group of international mercenaries sent by a British corporation to overthrow a two bit Idi Amin dictator in Sub Saharan Africa. John Irvin (Hamburger Hill, When Trumpets Fade) directs The Dogs of War (1980) which was based on the best selling novel from acclaimed author Frederick Forsyth (Day of the Jackal).
Christopher Walken stars as Jamie Shannon, an ex-soldier who hires himself out to the highest bidder whether its toppling a regime change in Central America, or putting a puppet government in power in the fictitious African country of Zangaro. Rounding out the cast is Tom Berenger (Drew Blakeley), Colin Blakely (Alan North), Paul Freeman (Derek Goodwin), Hugh Millais (Roy Endean), JoBeth Williams (Jessie Shannon), Winston Ntshona (Dr. Okoye), and Ed O’ Neill (Terry).
The film opens up in war torn Central America circa 1980 as the mercenary group is trying to make a hasty exit aboard a government plane as bullets and explosions are happening all around them. Shannon and his men push their way on board and force the plane into the air as soon as possible. Just within these few short minutes, you clearly can tell what their profession is and that they are not there working for the Peace Corp or distributing bibles for that matter. In this scene, a Central American army officer notices that one of the mercs is dead and demands that he give up his seat.
Drew (Berenger) pulls the pin out of a grenade and puts it in the palm of his dead comrade and tells the soldier “he’s alive you pimp.” Walken then barks, “he’s alive and he goes with me.” Derek (Freeman) looks towards the camera and with a knife he yells at the pilots “lets see this thing fly.” One of the best opening scenes of any action or war film ever. These are professionals you don’t want to mess with.
There’s no doubt that this year’s DJ Hero 2 has a strong focus on the multiplayer aspect. With the focus of adding a second turntable to the mix and a microphone, DJ Hero 2 is looking to define itself as the new party game. In the trailer below, you’ll get to check out the game’s six new multiplayer modes and how Jamie Jackson, creative director of the game over at Freestyle Games, says DJ Hero 2 is meant to inspire a party.
Party Play: The ideal party scenario mode. Someone puts together a set list and just hits play. The game acts as a soundtrack to the night where up to three players at once can jump in and out at a whim in one of two turntable or singing positions. There’s no failing this mode and the music keeps going whether or not someone is behind the wheels of steel.
Streak: Players are going head to head trying to build streaks of consecutive notes. Players must bank their streaks along the way to set the bar higher against their opponent. If a player misses a note, it drops them back down to zero. Players only are scored based on their highest bank.
Head to Head Star Battle: Straight up points versus points battle. Players are going against each other doing the exact same mix and a singer is being scored as well. Players will get the opportunity to screw with each other along the way using various mixing techniques as well.
One of the big problems with Comic Con is there is too much to be excited over. It actually ends up being hard to even keep track of all the things to look forward to. One thing we were able to keep focus on though was Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions. At the Pre-Comic Con Activision event when they announced the fourth and final dimension for the game, we were able to get some hands on time with it.
We know, we know, these rumors have been swirling for so long now, you probably don’t believe anything anymore. But this time around, 
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