“Let’s Play” videos are all over YouTube. You can’t make it through the site without a horde of Let’s Plays. Because of this, the Whiskey & Waffles team decided they needed to get some going as well.
Check out their first in a series with the release of Trials Fusion.
As I get older I find my constitution for extreme graphic violence isn’t what it used to be. Many years have passed since I’ve eagerly sat down to watch a horror flick, so gruesome fare like the Saw series winds up way outside my radar. Having said that, I can’t ignore the success and longevity that 2008’s Crossed series produced; and figured I’d just have to suck it up and see why this little universe has found a home with loyal fans.
Like most post-apocalyptic yarns, this story begins with one person who attacks another; spreading sickness among the population like wildfire and eventually burning through most of humanity with staggering speed. But that’s where the easy comparison to your average zombie plague stops. See, the infected aren’t mindless shufflers; they’re every bit as human as the rest of us, only they’re fueled by an uncontrollable evil to create havoc. There’s no reasoning, no negotiating; just carnage.
And it is downright terrifying.
Today is Wednesday so that means we’ve got a brand new episode of The Flickcast for you to enjoy. And like always, it’s a pretty darn good one.
On this week’s show Chris and Joe take on some new topics and revisit old ones — as you might expect. Some of these topics include the “sequel” to the classic Sword & the Sorcerer, Star Wars Episode VII casting rumors and what is now considered “canon”for the series, George Lucas himself, Justice League and Man of Steel 2 casting and potential storylines, the nature of the movie business and a whole lot more. As usual, you can’t handle all the more!
This week’s picks include Chris’ pick of the Lightroom app from Adobe and Joe’s pick of the ComiXology app for Android.
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, Google+ or via email.
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Avid comic readers know there’s one undeniable truth to any crossover or event featuring Marvel’s merry mutants: prepare yourself for the worst and hope for the best. For every Age of Apocalypse there’s a Utopia, Necrosha or Schism just waiting to drag you down. Tentatively, I dove into last year’s X-Men: Battle of the Atom crossover to see which side of the fence I fell on; the initial fan feedback was divisive, to say the least.
A 10-chapter arc weaving through X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, Wolverine and the X-Men and All-New X-Men and bookended by two one-shots; Battle of the Atom starts with the original, time-displaced team of X-Men deciding (arguing) whether or not they should leave the present day and return to their era. But why settle on past and present when you can have not one but two different X-Men teams from the future join in?
Though it slipped under our radar for the Kickstarter Watch, the team over at Ink Whiskey were able to successfully crush a $12,000 goal on Kickstarter by reaching just shy of $40,000 to get their concealed gaming flask to market. Most of the clever flasks we’ve seen are usually hidden inside other objects, like the famous classic novel that when opened reveals all the pages have had a section cut out to fit the flask.
The team at Ink Whiskey decided to go for something else entirely by actually making a flask that looks identical to classic NES cartridges. As my flask sits on my desk, it takes a keen eye to actually pick up on something being askew. The plastic housing of the flask, especially from a distance, is indistinguishable from a classic NES cartridge.
Most people would glance over it unless they got to the label. Drunk Hunt with a duck crashing into a bottle or the Bar Hop Bros where a familiar looking plumber is jumping inside of a bar are two examples of the clever puns from the Ink Whiskey team. In their initial run, there are five total designs (and a sixth special edition if you include the gold Legend of Drink Kickstarter exclusive) but hopefully the series does well enough that they can do multiple series of this.
For a movie that makes mention, nearly every five minutes or so, that this is Detroit, it seems odd that they would offer almost no evidence beyond cars. The Metropolitan? No, you silly bastards, the paper of Detroit is the Free Press. We drink Vernor’s and wholly expect to get shot exiting to both Joe Louis and Metro.
No mention of 8 Mile? Nothing of Motown? Not a word of Comerica Park. Hell, I don’t even live in Detroit, and — oh, and nothing about the Red Wings, either — and I know to reference all that.
There’s a point to that rant — as Brick Mansions is a movie about not quite getting there. The name, which is iterated an reiterated so many times before the title actually appears that I thought it had already appeared when it finally does, is Detroit 2018…or Arkham City: Detroit, a walled slum that is a world unto itself.
It has its own economy, the nature of which is never elaborated upon, and controlled largely by drug-lord Tremaine Alexander (rapper RZA) — how he became so rich and powerful selling to bums is also not very clear — who is presently engaged in catching the feisty Lino (David Belle), a slippery parkour enthusiast whose job is, apparently, swiping drugs from Tremaine’s operation and disposing of them at inopportune times.
The film opens with an impressive display of Belle’s agility, as he tumbles, glides, wall jumps, belt-lines, and neutralizes Tremaine’s thugs with minimal prejudice throughout his run-down apartment complex. It’s a good set piece, and director Camille Delamarre has a steady enough grasp of geography that you don’t get lost following Lino’s escape, but the camerawork, being yet another lift of Bourne‘s shaky cam, often makes it difficult to see what Belle is actually doing. It doesn’t ruin the sequence, and subsequent set pieces, but they’re innovative and skillfully executed by Belle, they deserve more.
Only a few weeks after Disney decided it was time to shoot a volley in the smart toy war by introducing the Avengers to Disney Infinity, Activision has fired back with a premiere for the latest Skylanders sequel. Again, focusing on innovation with gameplay implications, Skylanders Trap Team is coming to systems in October.
As you’ll see in the trailer below, Skylanders Trap Team introduces a new element to the series. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out this means traps. But it isn’t just a matter of trapping defeated foes. This game encourages players to take those villains and use them for good. Boasting 60 new Skylanders and 40 trappable villains, this could be the largest release of Skylanders to date.
It’ll be interesting to see how the traps work but it the trailer hints that specific traps work on specific enemies which means to catch them all, you have to buy them all too. How they are packaged will be interesting though. Skylanders may come paired with a trap or maybe a trap pack will be created with four or five traps sold together. Regardless, Activision has just renewed their license to print money.
When we play games around here, they usually fall into two groups. Sometimes you want to run around and blow stuff up with games like the Call of Duty franchise and sometimes you want to go fast. Project CARS falls in that second category.
Developed by Slightly Mad Studios, Project CARS (Community Assisted Racing Simulator) is “the most authentic, beautiful, intense, and technically-advanced racing game on the planet.”
In the game you “create a driver, pick from a variety of motorsports, and shift into high gear to chase a number of Historic Goals and enter the Hall Of Fame. Then test your skills online either in competitive fully-loaded race weekends, leaderboard-based time challenges, or continually-updated community events.”
The game features “world-class graphics and handling, a ground-breaking dynamic time of day & weather system, and deep tuning & pit stop functionality, Project CARS leaves the competition behind in the dust.” They’re not lying, the game looks amazing.
To prove it, check out a trailer for the game after the break. Look for Project CARS to drop for PS4, Xbox One, Wii U, PC and SteamOS this November.