This is cool. Although, if you don’t want to know how the magic is done and take a look behind the curtain, you may not want to watch. For the rest of you, here’s a video look from visual effects company Stargate Studios at their work on the latest season of The Walking Dead.

In addition to all the great zombie smashing and blood splattering, we also love what they did with the prison and how they made it look way more impressive, and messed up, than it actually is.

In short, these folks are pretty great at what they do. Enjoy the video after the break and be impressed.

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This week on The Flickcast, Chris and Matt are back with a new episode and even though they weren’t able to do one last week due to unforseen techical difficulties, rest assured this week’s episode more than makes up for it.

In this episode the boys discuss all manner of new and recurring topics including GDC in San Francisco, WonderCon in Anaheim, Jurassic Park in 3D, the state of the video game industry, celebrity politics, the Doctor Who premiere and the premiere of Game of Thrones.

They also talk all-things Walking Dead including the season finale and the evolution of the characters, story and the zombies themselves. Of course, they also make picks this week like Matt’s pick of the Injustice: Gods Among Us prequel comic and Chris’ pick of the Stanley Kubrick Shining documentary Room 237.

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques, offers of sponsorship or whatever, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter, at Facebook or via email.

Podcast: Download

“You kill or you die. Or you die and you kill.” – The Governor

The Governor has tied up Milton and is beating him. He knows Milton burned the walkers. 8 men died because of Milton (according to the Governor). Milton agreed that he was taken care of in Woodbury, but so long as he looked the other way.

The Governor tells Milton it is time for him to graduate. “You kill or you die” he tells him. The Governor wants Milton to kill Andrea. Milton goes to get the tools from the table near Andrea, and drops them on the floor, leaving one there on purpose.

Milton is not allowed to leave until he kills Andrea. He goes over towards Andrea, but then lunges at The Governor. The Governor is expecting this, however, and stabs Milton. The Governor’s actual plan is for Milton to die, turn into a zombie, and eat Andrea.

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Rick tells Daryl and Merle about the deal on the table to trade Michonne to The Governor in return for peace. Rick had decided to do it, but Merle knows he doesn’t have the guts. Rick tells him they have until noon to make the trade.

Carol asks Merle is he is with them or not. He says that he is with his brother. Carol reminds him that his brother is with them. Merle comments on Carol’s new attitude, and how she isn’t afraid anymore. He calls her a late bloomer, and Carol suggests that maybe Merle is a late bloomer himself.

Merle tells Daryl that he is in, but he knows Rick will back out. Merle thinks that he needs to be kept around to be the bad guy, doing the dirty work that no one else could live with themselves for doing. He says that Daryl and Rick are no better than him if they are going to trade Michonne to save the rest.

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AMC has become one of the best networks for edgy and entertaining drama on TV. And now, a new show is joining the ranks occupied by such excellent programming as Breaking Bad and Mad Men.

The new show is called Low Winter Sun and features Mark Strong, who reprises his role from the British version, and Lennie James, who’s recently appered in The Walking Dead. To help start the interest-generating maelstrom, AMC released a trailer for the show today and we, of course, have it for you.

According to AMC, Low Winter Sun is “a contemporary story of murder, deception, revenge and corruption in a world where the line between cops and criminals is blurred. I begins with the murder of a cop by a fellow Detroit detective. Seemingly the perfect crime, in reality the murder activates forces that will forever alter the detective’s life, and pull him into the heart of the Detroit underworld.”

Sounds cool. Check out the trailer after the break and let us know what you think. Look for Low Winter Sun to arrive this Summer.

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The Governor is setting up a back room with restraints and tools that are most likely going to be used for torture. Martinez is gathering artillery and men to follow The Governor to his meeting with Rick. The Governor wants options.

Milton tries to talk The Governor out of attacking Rick’s crew, to just let it go. The Governor will not forgive them for what happened to his walker daughter. Milton goes to Andrea and tells her everything. Her idea is to just kill Rick. Milton won’t let her, saying that all that will do is put Martinez in charge and nothing will be fixed.

While Andrea and Milton are talking above The Governor’s “dungeon”, he arrives. Andrea has a perfect shot to take him out, but Milton stops her. Andrea tells Milton she has to go back to prison, and wants to bring him. Milton says that he belongs at Woodbury.

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Been wondering exactly what happened to the Dixon brothers before meeting up with Rick Grimes in Atlanta? Well with The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct being tied into the AMC series, you’ll get some of those answers and you can get those answers today. Out today for XBox 360, PlayStation 3, PC and the Wii U is The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct. If you take a look below, you get a better idea of what to expect from this stealth FPS experience.

It is fair to say that The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct has its work cut out for it. And not even because of anything that has been seen from the game before today. It is because it will inevitably be compared to Telltale’s The Walking Dead adventure game. Despite being different in almost every way from the art style to gameplay style and the continuity it chooses to follow, parallels will undoubtedly be drawn.

The hardest part will be people giving the game a fair shake and taking it for what it is doing which is trying to give a new experience by trying to combine stealth and FPS gameplay together while putting people in the world of the TV series they have become so invested in. (Hopefully Andrea doesn’t show up until the absolute end.)

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Merle is locked up in a cell at the prison. Rick and the others discuss whether to stay or not. Rick doesn’t want to leave, but Herschel wants to go. Merle tells them all the things The Governor will do them if they stay. Herschel believes that Rick is slipping, and he needs to man up and prove himself.

Rick goes out to the tower to monitor the situation. Carl comes out and tells Rick to let Daryl or Herschel take over and to get some rest.

Milton and The Governor are talking numbers, apparently trying to figure out how many people they can train for warfare. Andrea confronts The Governor, asking about the attack on the prison. He tells her they were fired on first. It’s hard to say whether or not she believes him.

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Rick is gathering material on one of the ramps above the prison. He is keeping eyes on Michonne, when he sees the woman in white down by the graveyard. He goes down to see her, but she disappears. She is now outside of the gates, and this time when Rick follows her, we do see that it is Lori. Lori is caressing Rick’s face, and we see a shot of Michonne looking at Rick, and he is just standing there by himself.

The Governor goes to see Andrea, commending her on her speech that rallied the townspeople. He tells Andrea that he is not going to retaliate against Rick’s crew, so long as they stay away. He says that he screwed up Woodbury, and is not fit to lead. But Andrea is. He needs some time to get himself together, and wants Andrea to fill in for him. At this point, I am wondering how naïve can Andrea actually be.

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In 2011, there was an incredibly close race between Batman: Arkham City and Portal 2 between team Bitcast for the Game of the Year award with Portal 2 coming out on top. This year, the conversation went a lot smoother.

While there were lots of games that got our attention to be nominated, there was one game that stood out amongst the crowd as the clear favorite on The Flickcast. Dishonored, Far Cry 3, Journey, Unfinished Swan, Borderlands 2, Mass Effect 3, Slender were all great innovations in gaming in 2012 and all garnered huge followings. But there is one game that proved it was special to people on so many levels that when it came time to cast the final ballot on game of the year, it was a no brainer for the both of us.

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Don’t worry. We aren’t giving any more awards to Angry Birds. At least not today. But we do have four more games for the best of 2012. If you haven’t seen the previous two days awards, click here for Monday’s and here for Tuesday’s awards. Make sure to check back tomorrow for our final specialty awards and then again on Friday for the ultimate award from The Flickcast and Bitcast teams, the Game of the Year.

New IP With the Most Potential – Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

With writing from R. A. Salvatore and art design by Todd McFarlane, many would have thought that Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning would have the makings of a surefire hit. With over 300,000 units sold by March of 2012, Reckoning gave a good showing for a brand new IP and had many people talking about it. Unfortunately due to financial problems with a loan from the state of Rhodes Island, 38 Studios was forced to close and with it went the possible future of the Kingdoms of Amalur series.

Despite coming from a brand new studio, Reckoning had all the makings of a hit game. Beautiful design, interesting and complex story with tons of back matter and, the most important, incredibly fun combat and gameplay. It was a huge world with tons to do that players could get lost in. Whether or not they even cared about the narrative, there were unending areas to explore and enemies to vanquish. Now, one can only hope that someone else picks up this IP and gives it a second chance to continue giving more people the chance to explore its epic world.

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Almost a week has passed since The Walking Dead season 3 reached its midseason finale. On that night, Twitter and Facebook were filled with posts of people asking what to do with their Sunday nights now that they are forced to wait until February for the show to return. Well, there’s no reason for fans of The Walking Dead to be stuck watching the previous seasons (or doing something really crazy like going outside) as Robert Kirkman and the rest of the team behind The Walking Dead have put out tons of other materials that both set up the story and characters of the show and/or went off in their own directions.

The Walking Dead Vol. 1 – 17

It’s where it all started. Over the course of 102 issues, The Walking Dead has taken readers through a rollercoaster of emotions. They have seen Rick and his ever changing band of survivors try to deal with a world that can never go back to what it once was.

While viewers of the show may witness some similar instances, they will also see how two different stories have been able to be told about the same essential concept. One of the things that keeps drawing readers back is the idea that really no one is safe and characters that they fall in love with end up becoming the biggest tragedies.

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It’s the announcement that pretty much everyone knew was coming. With a second game based on The Walking Dead (this time off of the hit AMC TV series) due out in 2013 and being based on the characters of Daryl and Merle Dixon, it’d be downright silly of Activision to put out this game without the duo of Normal Reedus and Michael Rooker lending their likenesses and voices to The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct. Activision knows this as their PR has stated that “Their addition is central to developer Terminal Reality’s commitment to delivering an engrossing, original experience that stays authentic to the characters, tone and storyline of the series.” Rooker actually recently lent his vocal talents to a little game called Call of Duty: Black Ops II.

In the game, players assume the role of the mysterious, crossbow-wielding survivor Daryl Dixon. This first-person survival title takes place within the universe of “The Walking Dead” and before the events of the AMC show, following Daryl and his brother Merle on a gruesome journey to reach the supposed safety of Atlanta as the world around them ends. Reedus and Rooker will bring life to their characters’ desperate, unforgiving struggle against limited resources, the nightmarish walkers and, perhaps, their fellow survivors…

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With Halloween fast approaching, it is time to look back at some of the scariest moments in gaming. The horror genre of gaming extends from platformers and puzzlers to FPS and even point and click adventure games. Now while the delivery of the scary moments listed below all differ, every one below has given us an “Oh s*%t” reaction. Some were instant scares while others were reactions that took some time to really hit home. But be warned, there will be spoilers ahead.

Doom 3 – Mirror Scare

While Doom and its successor Doom II took players through the gates of hell, they weren’t exactly scary games. There were some moments when an attack would come from a newly opened door that players were not expecting but it wasn’t until Doom 3 that the series had its first horrifying moment. With updated graphics and sound, Doom 3 was able to explore atmosphere in a way its predecessors never could. With a new lighting engine, shadows played a huge part in the game and players had to choose between holding a flashlight or a weapon, making the game incredibly tense.

As a result, when players find a well lit bathroom early on in the game they don’t expect the glimpse of hell that quickly pops up on screen when they face the mirror. Music crashes, flames burn around the player and then almost instantly everything goes back to normal. From then on, no place in the game feels safe. Between the poorly lit corridors seen only through a flashlight’s bulb or the uneasy tension from walking into a bright open room, everywhere a player goes now feels like evil is lurking around the corner.

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There are many different schools of thought as to how gaming should be presented. Some people like epic, long storylines. Others prefer bite sized casual experiences. Still others will combine the two and let a story be handled through a series of smaller episodic experiences. Telling a story across multiple games isn’t something new.

It began in the earliest days of sequels where players would pick up with the lead character after the events of the original in a new title. But many of these games weren’t created with the intentions of being long form stories. They were just stories taking place in the same universe of one that happened to be a commercial success. It wasn’t until more recently that games specifically began being created to tell a story across multiple releases. This would lead to the advent of episodic gaming.

The advantages of episodic gaming extend to both the developer and the consumer because of the nature of the format. First and foremost for the consumer is the reduced risk associated with purchasing a new game. For the most part, episodic games are cheaper than full retail releases so if a player purchases the first episode of a game and doesn’t enjoy it, they only spent money on the first episode instead of the entire season. Some developers and publishers will actually even allow players the first episode for free to reign people in. This tactic was used by XBox’s Live Market Place on Fable 2 and is going to be in effect this month for PlayStation Plus subscribers with the first two episodes of Telltale’s The Walking Dead.

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