When I first downloaded Journey off the PlayStation Network, I intended on giving it a traditional review. I had been mostly in the dark about the game itself other than hearing it mentioned after E3 last year. Quickly as I began playing, I realized this is not an ordinary game. In fact, it’s hard to even call it a game in the first place. So many conventions, not just of video games but of what people think of any kind of game be they sport, board, card or video game, don’t exist within the confines of Journey.

The name Journey, not to be trite, actually does say it all. Ralph Waldo Emerson is credited with the quote, “Life is a journey, not a destination.” In Journey, this statement rings true throughout as the player takes on the role of a faceless robed creature as they make their way towards a mythical mountain top location. Other than a three very brief “tutorial” instructions at the start, there is no instruction during the game. Journey is designed to give the player an indication of where to go and motivation to get there but never explicitly tells them why they are headed there. They don’t know what the ultimate goal is other than the location itself or even what the significance is.

In addition to being faceless, the player is also voiceless. While this has been used throughout gaming and worked well with specific examples such as Gordon Freeman of Half-Life or the boy from Limbo, it becomes even more interesting as the game has a built in multiplayer component to it. Much like the rest of the game compares itself to real life, players will find themselves crossing paths with others as they go through Journey. Through body language and the game’s brief musical tone abilities alone, players can determine how they interact with each other. Since Journey can be crossed from start to finish in about two hours, it is realistic that a pair can work alongside each other for the entire time. Others may intersect briefly with one deciding to hang back in hopes of new discoveries while the other pushes forward, a direct corollary of real life relationships. There is an added layer as players have no way of voice chatting over the PlayStation network as their identities remain hidden to each other so not to impair the game’s message by allowing players to chat over the network.

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Jeff is a jobless 30-year-old slacker man-child who does indeed live in the basement of his mother’s house. He is an expert at marijuana smoke rings, daytime television and pickup basketball but whines and protests when asked to perform a simple household errand for his mother (a wonderful Susan Sarandon). Lost and paralyzed, he casts desperately about for clues on what to do with his life, as per a favorite movie, 2002′s Signs, M. Night Shamalayan’s ridiculously self-serious examination of the eerie and paranormal.

So far the title character sounds like a cliché of the zeitgeist, but as played by the shambolically charming Jason Segel, and in the witty, expertly paced hands of the Duplass brothers, this movie is joyful entertainment from start to finish. Jeff is earnest and open-hearted. When the universe sends a sign, he follows. Never mind that every step ends in folly and humiliation. It is enough for him that there is a path.

That path merges him directly into the way of his distant, scornful brother, Pat (Ed Helms, channeling a lower-runged, far angrier version of his uptight corporate drone in The Office). Pat is an underling who has to spend his days in a hideous paint company shirt and tie, lives in a low-end apartment complex with his sweet and pretty wife (Judy Greer) and is suffering an early midlife crisis manifested by the purchase of a Porsche he can’t even begin to pay off, but hey, at least he has a job.

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As skeptical as I was when Ben Affleck took his first turn as director, he managed to prove himself more than adequate to the task with his first film Gone Baby Gone. Now with his latest directorial effort, The Town, he proves once again that all those years spent working with other directors, with a bit of his own talent thrown in, is more than enough to craft a suspenseful and entertaining crime thriller.

As this is a review of the Blu-ray Ultimate Edition of the film and not a full review of the film itself, suffice it to say I enjoyed The Town enough to watch it more than once. In fact, I’ve seen it at least three times. First, in a theater. Then, on Blu-ray and then again on Blu-ray in this Ultimate Collectors’s Edition.

The cast is excellent, especially Jeremy Renner and, somewhat surprisingly, Blake Lively. I also enjoyed watching Jon Hamm’s performance and, sadly, one of the last onscreen appearances of Pete Postlethwaite. Affleck is also quite good in the movie and has matured as an actor. At this point I can almost forgive him for Daredevil. Almost.

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Since our review of The Gunstringer, the TwistedPixel Studio was acquired by Microsoft. This came as no surprise since all of the games TwistedPixel released were exclusive to the XBox 360 with four XBLA titles and one retail release, that being The Gunstringer. Yesterday, Microsoft and Twisted Pixel announced a new DLC expansion

In addition to becoming available yesterday on Games on Demand for $29.99, the Kinect exclusive title will be getting a new four level chapter featuring “hang-gliding airmen, gun-toting brothel babes and angry bandits” as the king of the underworld, El Diablo goes on a search for his queen in El Diablo’s ‘Merican Adventure. Instead of reprising the role as the infamous skeletal cowboy the Gunstringer, players will don the boots of the half Satan, half Slash El Diablo marionette as he wields a half shotgun, half guitar.

“The Gunstringer was our first retail game, but it’s nice that we were able to make it available digitally as well,” says Twisted Pixel’s Michael Wilford. “Digital distribution is key to the studio’s ambitions.” Then Technical Director Frank Wilson added, “yeah, that, and we didn’t have to do anything extra to make it work. The new DLC is pretty rad though.”

El Diablo’s ‘Merican Adventure is now available on XBox Live for 240 Microsoft points. Check out the Screens and Trailer below.

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This decent thriller and remake of the Uruguayan film La Casa Muda is more fun than scary — the jumps, false alarms, little girls, bumps in the night, close-ups of the heroine’s boobies, etc. — border on abuse they’re used so often; first it’s spooky, then it’s overused, then it comes back around to being funny, like a joke that goes on and keeps going.

I counted at least three times the heroine hid under something. First a dining table, then a bed, then a pool table while someone ominously walked around and/or spotted and made snatch for her. Three times something crashed off camera and someone else dismissed it.

Twice a character appears to be dead; four times a little girl, ostensibly meant to inspire terror, appears from nowhere; twice does someone mysteriously stuff something down their pants; and a whopping eight-and-a-half times is the heroine surprised by something benign.

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One of my favorite things to cover in my weekly film score review is compilations. These sets are the most easily digestible forms of film music, and represented my entry into the world. It was the combined ‘Best Of’ albums of John Williams, James Horner and Danny Elfman that captivated me so much as a child. Now I take great pleasure in shining a light on these sets today, hoping that some non film score fans give them a shot.

In the world of film music compilations there is a top dog who has been releasing stellar sets over and over again. Silva Screen Records has been nailing it with re-recorded compilations of some of today’s most recognizable franchises. Mostly using the excellent City of Prague Philharmonic, these sets have been some of the most fun I have been able to review in my many months of writing about film music.

Today’s set is no exception, The Complete Harry Potter Film Music Collection is a well crafted, well performed and generally a great listen from start to finish. The set smashes together musical highlights from the eight film series that takes you on a journey from the optimistic sense of wonder in the first film all the way through the dark and dangerous end. It is a musical time-capsule that follows the decade long franchise.

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For several years now the modern iteration of Doctor Who has been a high water mark for genre television. Upping the ante with incredible writing, good budget effects and a group of actors that would put most prime time line-ups to shame.

Among this mountain of quality is also the superb musical scores Murray Gold has written for the series since it returned in 2005. The Doctor has always had one of the best themes in the history of television, but what Gold has been able to do is add so much life to the show by crafting complex themes and ideas that span across entire eras of the show.

The last two seasons have been the era of Moffat and Smith, who together have reformed the show into a stylistically very different beast than the Russel Davies run. Massive credit to Mr. Gold who has adapted to this new stylistic direction to write some of the best music of the show’s long and storied history.

So we come to the sixth series, the most recent and thus far most ambitious soundtrack yet. Series Six is a season dominated by answering very large and very important questions that have been presented over the course of the last few years. The season was also split down the middle which gives it a really great pace and flow.

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Not long ago, the gaming world was given the epic fantasy adventure of the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The game featured over 250 hours of gameplay for those looking to explore every dungeon and complete every quest. It was a task that many, though knowing they could never fulfill to its entirety, flocked to.

Just a few months later, gamers were told about a new fantasy adventure, different both in visual tone and gameplay mechanics that would rival that scope. In a recent interview when asked about the length of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, developers stated that the fastest speed run of the game by one of the QA testers who had already competed the game previously and knew locations of every major event in the game at just over 200 hours.

Originally started out as an MMO from former Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling’s 38 Studios, Reckoning split off in to its own single player action RPG adventure. With executive game designer Ken Rolston (Elder Scrolls III: Marrowind, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion), artwork from Todd McFarlane (Spawn), an epic 10,000 year world history from R.A. Salvatore (Forgotten Realms) and music from composer (Goldeneye, Viva Pinata), Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning had the most impressive pedigree for a new IP in recent memory and quite possibly the most hype to live up to.

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Sony released its newest console, the Playstation Vita, into the wild today. I got my hands on the console about a week ago, and after some quality time with the system I’m ready to deliver a verdict. Whether you’re thinking about picking up the device today or sometime down the road, read on to hear all about the Vita and what this tiny portable can deliver.

Design

Physically, the device doesn’t look very different from the PSP, but it is much improved. Rounded corners and edges make the Vita fit comfortably in your hands, and the smooth, flat touchscreen on the back is comfortable to rest your hands on. The Vita has the standard controls we’re used to from Sony: left and right triggers, D-pad, circle x triangle and square buttons, and volume buttons on the top of the device.

The big addition is the two, very nice left and right analog sticks that are a huge improvement over the PSP. Another welcome addition is the inclusion of a power button, instead of the power switch on the side of the PSP that I would constantly accidentally hit and turn off the device at pivotal moments in games. The Wi-Fi switch has been removed in favor of an option to turn wireless on or off in the menu.

Sony has done away with UMD discs, in favor of very small, proprietary game cartridges.So far, it seems that purchasing the games via the Playstation Store is the better option, considering there’s a 10% discount for buying digital and by downloading the games you don’t risk losing the incredibly tiny catridges you would get by purchasing a physical copy. Storage is yet again proprietary, and we can’t say we’re surprised about that.

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This past week John Williams had his 80th birthday. One of the first thing he will do during his 80th year will be attending the Oscars later this month where the Maestro is nominated for 2 best score awards. Even at this age Williams is at the top of his game.

In honor of the most prolific film composer alive today I wanted to use my weekly film score soap box to celebrate the man who has provided the soundtrack to the imaginations of several generations.

Everyone knows about his contributions to Star Wars, Superman, Indiana Jones and Harry Potter, but how many people are aware that he wrote not one, but two classic themes for Lost in Space?

It was John Williams music that made me fall in love with film music. I can pinpoint it all the way back to a single moment in Jurassic Park when the helicopter approached Isla Nublar, the cue still gives me chills to this day, and nearly two decades later I still look to Mr. Williams as the inspiration for a life long passion.

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This extraordinary documentary Pina by German filmmaker Wim Wenders (justly nominated for an Academy Award) on the choreographer Pina Bausch, his countryman, near-contemporary and fellow visionary, was a long time in coming. An artistic collaboration had been planned for some time but in an instance of epic bad timing, Bausch died just two days before filming was to have begun, having been diagnosed with cancer only five days previously.

The movie is thus haunted by the specter of death and of aging, compounded by the fact that many company members had been with Bausch for twenty-plus years. This theme is stated in the opening piece (returned to periodically in the duration of the movie), in which a long line of dancers chants Fruhling…Sommer…Herbst…Winter as they snake along a train platform, behind and onto a stage and later, on a wind-blown hilltop.

The Tanztheater German expressionist influence is clear in their affects, which ride the line between ecstasy and despair. Are they smiling in the face of death, or ruefully acknowledging that life and death march on regardless?

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Pretty much every guy has questioned their friends on who they would rather sleep with between Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton. Just the same, every girl has probably questioned her friends if they’d rather marry Brad Pitt, George Clooney or Matt Damon.

But what about those times where you can’t say “I’d sleep with all of them” and had to decide to actually marry a hot mess like Spears, Lohan or Hilton instead of just kicking them to the hoe-side curb they deserve to be on? Or, what about choosing between killing off Batman, Superman or Spider-Man? Kill/Marry/Fuc by Sarah Huber combines all three.

The way it works, turn to a random page and you have decide one person / object / concept /etc. that you’d want to marry, one you’d want to kill and one you’d want to get down with. Some of these are easy decisions, but others really make you think. That’s right. A book about hooking up, marrying and killing really starts turning the gears for some people.

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