At Comic-Con in San Diego we got the opportunity to take a closer look at the latest additions to Skylanders with Skylanders Trap Team. While we had already gotten a peek at the title, there were still some awesome announcements behind the game along with some great insight from the designers as well.

First came the announcement of the Skylanders Trap Team Dark Edition Starter Pack. Like last year’s SWAP Force Dark Edition, the set will come with some special dark paint variants of characters. Unlike last year’s though, there will be only three new Trap Team members without any sprinkling of classic characters.

It will also come with a new Portal of Power which will have a new feature in addition to a new look, the ability to use Traps to capture villains in game and use them while playing. The Dark Edition will come with a limited edition over sized trap allowing players to capture Chaos.

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Comic-Con International 2014 is set to kick off in just over 48 hours and after selling out 130,000 passes in just 90 minutes, San Diego is about to be descended upon by hordes of Con newbies. Every year those of us who have survived and live to tell the tale make sure to pass on our knowledge (whether or not they ask for it) to try and help these rookies get the most of their SDCC experience.

The best most important piece of information to take from this article is to have a game plan. Without knowing what your goals are for the show, there is a serious risk of wasting a lot of time only to not get the experience you’re hoping for. Luckily there is no shortage of information about the show, the exclusives, the panels, the autograph signings, the celebrities and everything else going down in San Diego during the show.

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Working in both the entertainment industry and in YouTube, you’re bound to hear a lot of silly things said. “There’s no way people would want to watch someone else play video games.” “She looked like she had to be 18, right?” “He can’t wait to put me in his next feature.” But there’s one statement that you hear and you just know people are full of it.

When prepping for SDCC this year, I was asking a bunch of friends from various social circles who was heading to Comic Con and there was a common thread from those who weren’t going. They all used the phrase, “I think everyone is over Comic Con.”

Now I can see where this statement might be coming from. One could argue that year after year San Diego Comic Con can start to wear you a little thin by the end of it. No sleep, bad diet and abundance of partying can kick your butt. But when you look back a month later after recovering from the nerd flu you inevitably were stricken with a few days after it ended, you’re up and ready to rock once again.

But this year, there seem to be people claiming that “everyone” is over the Con.  And this is where I call them out on it.

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You know what NFL? You’ve lost me forever. I never cared about your “sport” anyway. I sort of cared about Madden because it at least helped sell video game systems during the holiday seasons. But now, you’ve gone too far. Yesterday, the NFL announced they’d be banning “nonstandard/overbuilt” facemasks.

This includes Oakland Raiders defensive end Justin Tuck’s mask that resembled that of Shredder from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Now I don’t know who that is but damn them for not allowing a Shredder mask. They have also announced that the similar Bane styled masks will also be a part of this ban.

Now what is funny is the reason for the ban: because they don’t live up to NFL safety standards. The group of gargantuan men who are doing everything they can to throw their body weight on top of each other as fast as possible is worried about safety? Meanwhile hockey lets people play with a rubber puck flying at their face with no protection. Makes a lot of sense.

Well now I have given up on ever giving football a shot. The best chance they have is stepping their game up and creating a hybrid of the XFL and whatever the heck futuristic version of the game that they play in Starship Troopers and when they do it’s Team Shredder vs. Team Bane vs. Team Casey Jones vs. Team Mysterio.

Until then, I say “Good day” to the NFL.

For most of the gaming popular, this was the first game they ever took home. While there were the select families that had the Atari 2600 or even Pong, it was Super Mario Bros. that made its way into homes across the country in unprecedented number in 1985. After likely billions of hours played and incalculable deaths, there are people still playing in 2014 and trying to beat it JUST a little faster.

YouTuber LordSaradoc has made his name on the space with about 90 videos doing speedruns. Just about a week ago, he uploaded a new one where he looks to have broken the Super Mario Bros. speed run with not just a perfect run with no deaths, but also accomplishing it in world record time.  If everything is accurate, it looks as though LordSaradoc was able to complete the game in 4:57.69. In less than 5 minutes, he was able to run the perfect path doing what most people could only dream of accomplishing.

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It has come to be accepted that during the summer months, comic book stores are destined to be the home of big annual event books. Since House of M, every year Marvel has pushed out event after event with varying levels of success and long term effect. These events have been as discussed as who is a Skrull in Secret Invasion to the utter lack of attention paid to titles like Infinity.

But what makes one event a bigger deal than another? And ultimately, why does no one seem to care at all about Original Sin?

On the surface, the central idea of Original Sin is an interesting one. There is a murder mystery around who killed the Watcher, one of Marvel’s most iconic upper B-squad characters. But quickly you start to care really about who killed him because in comics no one stays dead forever so it doesn’t really matter since big baldy is going to come back eventually.

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The funny thing is that movie games have a pretty terrible reputation in the gaming world. Most are quickly put together knock-offs of what could be considered a full game that depend upon riding on the fame of the established franchise. But back in 2004, Spider-Man 2 based off the Sami Rami take on the franchise changed all that.

Without reliance upon the movie, Spider-Man 2 as a game was just good. It was a great movie game, a great super hero game and most importantly a great Spider-Man game (considered the best of the character up to this point). But ten years later, the game and movie franchises have both gotten a reboot and that’s not always a good thing.

The Long…

First let’s talk about the story of The Amazing Spider-Man 2. While I applaud the writers trying to separate themselves from the movie slightly be adding in a whole new subplot connecting the scenes between the movie as previous games often do, the beats in this one just feel off. The early beat that introduces the game’s main antagonist also directly messes with the whole Uncle Ben story and what happens to Ben’s killer. It feels about as accurate to the character as Superman killing in Man of Steel.

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LEGOs are a slippery slope. You see a cool Star Wars pack by the checkout at Target. It only costs five bucks. You tell yourself it would look cool on your desk. Then next time you see the Daily Bugle and think it’ll look great on your shelf. Six months later you have a replica of the Death Star and Batman’s Bat Cave taking up a quarter of your living room. And then, the sick bastards decide this isn’t enough and make something you’ve been waiting for since you were 5… the Simpsons in LEGO form.

Luckily I have the self control (lack of funds) to spend $270 on the Simpsons house even though it is pretty epic to say the least. Because of that, it’ll be easier to hold back purchasing Moe’s Tavern or the Quik-E Mart when they are inevitably released. But LEGO still knows how to stick it to you. They make a set of 16 blind bag minifigures of all of the top Simpsons characters and charge a “mere” $4 each. So just to get the entire set with no duplicates, it’s going to take $64 bucks, plus tax.

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Some games are defined by very clear mechanics. These games like Magic: The Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh or even Pokemon come down to two things, the draw and the ability to strategically exploit said mechanics. As with a game of chess, a game of Magic can be decided within the first three turns. Then there are the other games that are all about personal taste and even what some could think of as a trump card can be defeated out of nowhere. Cards Against Humanity and Apples to Apples are two such examples. Ultimate Battle looks to join that group with their Kickstarter that launched yesterday.

Ultimate Battle is what appears to be a nerd’s dream with a solution for solving the most unreasonable arguments. Players draw their own avatar on a play mat and get some weapon cards. They then theorize how their character would kill another using their items then the defending player comes up with how they’d defend it. If they agree that the defense works then the next player goes.

If the argument continues, there is a deck of dispute cards meant to solve the argument fairly, and by fairly it is by completely arbitrary and unrelated methods like Rock, Paper, Scissors or whoever has the shortest hair. It ends up being the best way to solve these kinds of arguments anyway since neither side is going to concede if Batman could use a blue whale to kill the Terminator whose only defense is spiders.

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Another day, another dollar. Another Loot Crate, another unboxing. Our apologies if you already came across it yesterday, but if you haven’t, you can check out Whiskey & Waffle’s Loot Crate War on the Adventure themed box. (Actually, even if you have already seen it, you can watch it again.)

This month’s Loot Crate theme is all about Adventure. As you can probably guess from the cover image above there is some Minecraft and some Legend of Zelda swag inside but also some Adventure Time love as well as some gear from some of our fellow YouTubers like Captain Sparklez and Markiplier.

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