Taking a cue from the designs of Pacific Rim, The Art of Titanfall shows the titans as less than beautiful pieces of hardware that feel like lumbering hulks meant to take a beating as well as delivering them. With only three basic units, there is a great balance in diversity and design of each titan. During the fast paced battles of the Titanfall game, it’s incredibly challenging to try and notice these details but the art book allows you to really appreciate it from the pulled back perspective.

The Art of Titanfall does an awesome exploration of the maps as well. Though not giving a full breakdown as if it was a strategy guide, The Art of Titanfall allows a player to again appreciate the care put into each map that they’d never get to during the heat of battle.

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It may sound gimmicky on the surface. If you tell someone there’s a special pair of glasses they can wear while gaming that will reduce eye strain, it sounds like hype to sell overpriced goods that don’t actually work. And at first, I would have agreed with that assumption. But trying to be a fair and unbiased person, which is really a challenge for me, I put in a request for a pair of Gunnar glasses and to my surprise, they actually accomplished the job.

I won’t get into the science behind it. That’s mostly because any of the science I would know about it comes from reading the Gunnar website and as we all know, websites can provide whatever “facts” they need to in order to make a sale. Yes, a wonder drug may reduce hair loss but that’s because it kills you but at least they are still telling the truth that your hair doesn’t fall out.

Instead, I just did my own test. After a busy week at the office where I spent between 7 to 9 hours each day in front of a monitor I decided to spend the better part of a Saturday marathoning a game. It’s been some time since I have done a full on marathon but after the initial few hours it usually resulted in taking breaks to get up for various reasons, just to get my face away from the screen. Eventually, the time in between started to reduce and after a full day I’d have a nice headache to deal with.

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Our apologies for the hiatus, but the team at Whiskey & Waffles is back for 2014 and ready to kick things up to the next level. For the new year we are bringing gameplay footage to Whiskey & Waffles for the first time and expect more of it moving forward. For our introductory gameplay, WallE and I are going head to head in the Loot Crate War for the month of February with the theme: Warriors!

For those new to Loot Crate, it is a monthly subscription service that sends a box full of themed geek goodies. This month’s crate revolves around Warriors, with the most popular warriors in the geekspace right now being the Bravest Warriors on Cartoon Hangover. But without spoiling it (since that defeats the purpose of our video), I will tell you there are more Warriors tied into the contents of the box rather than just the Bravest Warriors too.

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That’s not even me being sarcastic, as I have been known to be. Who were the people, aside from the ones who made money directly from it, hoping for the return of Heroes? I could maybe understand Jeph Loeb looking for a comeback, but he’s busy with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. right now, so I can’t pin this one on him.

When talking about Heroes with the many geek friends and acquaintances I have, the common thread is that it started strong and by the second season had fallen apart. After that, popularity, ratings and the fandom waned.

In the end during what we thought was the series finale, everything got wrapped up in a trite and contrived little package that most of us hoped would stay sealed away with our HD-DVD box sets of season 1. The plot holes, hanging threads and characters that devolved could all be laid to rest and we’d all be better for it.

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These kids today have it too easy. Back in our day there were certain aspects of being a gamer you just had to deal with. Polygons could be maxed out on screen. You’d have to use your imagination to see what the little collection of blocks represented. And one thing we all knew was that if you made it into the beta testing phase of a game, things were bound to be broken. But that was to be expected. A beta wasn’t a finished product and you “paid” for the early gameplay by dealing with the bugs. Kids today don’t get betas. They just get an extended demo and that’s why they don’t know the pain we went through growing up.

What brought on this jaded old man tirade you ask? The Titanfall beta of course. Don’t misinterpret, there is nothing wrong with the Titanfall beta. Between the beta and the awesome art book I got today (don’t worry, a review is coming soon), I am going to be picking up Titanfall on launch. But when playing it, it hasn’t been a beta experience. The game runs smooth, controls great and looks fantastic. The only limits are some of the maps and weapons not being fully unlocked. It’s basically a smaller version of the final product. And that’s not a beta. It’s a demo. But they’ve changed the name because beta access is a better buzz phrase for marketing.

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Part of what we loved most about the High Moon Studios entry into the Transformers world is that it was the original G1 canon most of us had fallen in love with during our childhood. Wanted to know what happened before Optimus and the crew made it to earth, you got the story finally from Transformers: War for Cybertron and Transformers: Fall of Cybertron. But Activision has gone and done something that is not only unexpected but for some of the most hardcore of Transformers G1 fans… unwelcomed.

Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark will be a part of the G1 Universe but it will also be a part of the Michael Bay movieverse as well, with events taking place before Transformers Age of Extinction. That means that they are doing what could be the absolute worst offense when it comes to G1 territory by combining it with whatever Michael Bay is throwing at the wall this time.

A lot of people say I am too harsh when it comes to the Michael Bay films but after the first one, it just kept getting farther and farther away from the franchise I grew up on into a poorly put together film with sophomoric level comedy forced into it. In Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, we got Grimlock and the rest of his dinobot compatriots but now that could all be washed away because of the new Michael Bayified Grimlock that we were introduced to during the Super Bowl trailer.

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Though they haven’t given us the release date yet, the big day keeps looming closer for Super Smash Bros. for the Wii U. It may end up being what makes me care about my Wii U once again but like I said, the release date wasn’t announced. What was announced though was the addition to the Super Smash Bros. roster of Little Mac.

This is one for the nostalgia freaks out there as Little Mac was the main character in the classic Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! (or as Nintendo now just calls it Punch-Out!! after all of the… unpleasentness). Kids today don’t understand the torturous boss battles we had to endure back in the day with pattern memorization and Punch-Out!! was the king of memorized sequences.

Another big hitter was focused on yesterday at the first Nintendo Direct of 2014 was Mario Kart 8. Rather than worry about silly gimmicks like two person go karts, Nintendo has stuck to their roots with the successful franchise and is expanding its roster.

In possibly the biggest single day roster expansion announcement ever since the franchise’s beginning, Mario Kart 8 adds seven new playable characters with the Koopalings. Iggy, Larry, Lemmy, Ludwig, Morton, Roy and Wendy will not only be playable in Mario Kart 8 but it will be the first time the lot of them has ever been playable on any game on any platform.

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I know. I can’t believe it. As quickly as Flappy Bird came to us, it has now left us. But in the process, it has left an eternal stamp on the gaming world that not many would have expected from a simple mobile game. Filling YouTube with rage quit videos and costing thousands of dollars in damage, Flappy Bird has clipped its own wings.

For those who don’t know, Flappy Bird was a game that came out and quickly became a viral hit much in the way that Angry Birds and Tiny Wings did (and it is completely ridiculous how popular birds are on mobile gaming). Unlike its avian cousins though, Flappy Bird was not easily accessible to all players.

Our parents and grandparents can’t just pickup and play and have a good time. Even seasoned gamers are terrible at Flappy Bird. After maxing out my high score at 6, I had to put down my iPhone or risk throwing it across the room.

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The start of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was a little rough. After the first episode, not much really happened and the name Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. quickly became synonymous with the bitter comic book audience with saying that not much was going on. But then, seemingly out of nowhere, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. came back to the new year with by far one of their best episodes only to put us on a two week hiatus.

And then last night it came back with another great episode, some quality references to events of some of the movies, some great comic book fan “ah ha!” moments and a cliffhanger ending. Did Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. actually get it right?

Well I’ll leave it to Eric for his episode recap for you to decide about how good the episode was. My problem actually came from the preview for the next episode… that will be airing on March 4th. Yes. You read that right. March 4th. As in one month away. Not for nothing guys but what is that? We take a break, get one episode, and then it’s another month? That’s garbage.

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With Sam Keith recently tapped to relaunch a remastered version of his cult hit The Maxx through IDW, it only makes sense that the publisher would try to bring the famed creator in on another one of their franchises. While licensed titles with most companies fall flat, IDW is one of the few to take them and run to success by staying true to the original content but working well within the confines of comics. It ends up seeming like a natural pairing to put the man who created a purple clad giant with perpetual middle fingers that roamed the outback to take on one of the most comically messed up invasion forces ever.

Mars Attacks: First Born takes place in the aftermath of the failed Martian invasion. With the world devastated, people must begin to rebuild but the Martians have left something behind in a secluded neighborhood. Found by a group of kids, there is a Martian infant left amongst the rubble and the aftermath that follows it. The miniseries was written by Chris Ryall and coplotted by Sam Keith and Ryall with Keith taking sole duties on the covers and artwork.

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