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Posted by Bob Muir on Nov 27, 2012 in Anime 
Looks like Viz is finally understanding that their digital magazine Shonen Jump Alpha was in an awkward place when it came to their content. With a two-week delay between the latest manga chapters that run in Japan’s Weekly Shonen Jump, their translations were not current enough to morally deter those who read free scanlations, yet too current to be collected into a full volume. As a result, I’m sure many fans of manga such as Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, and many more simply glanced at Viz’s offerings, asked themselves why they’d pay for a two-week old official version, and continued reading scanlations that appear a few days after a new issue was released. It looks like Viz got the memo, because now readers can get the content instantly. Read more…
Tags: manga
Posted by Bob Muir on Nov 22, 2012 in Cinema, Videogames 
Scribblenauts Unlimited is out, and if you’re unfamiliar with the series, it involves a boy solving simple puzzles by generating objects with his magic notepad. The dictionary includes a ton of nouns, so you can summon pretty much anything. What is new in Unlimited is the ability to create your own objects, and since the series typically avoids anything copyrighted (beyond some cameos like Mario in the Wii U and 3DS versions), gamers can now recreate their favorite characters and creatures in Scribblenauts‘ adorable style, as seen in the Ghostbusters screenshot above. Read more…
Tags: Fan Art, G.I. Joe, Kill Bill, Pokémon, Star Wars, Street Fighter, super meat boy, The Hobbit
Posted by Bob Muir on Nov 22, 2012 in Videogames 
2008’s Mirror’s Edge, from Battlefield studio DICE, was an interesting concept that ultimately didn’t perform very well due to insufficient quality and the challenges of being a new IP. The idea of first-person free-running is cool, and the game was very commendable for featuring a bright, shiny aesthetic with splashes of color in a time when brown-and-gray visuals were getting old. In the end though, many players were disappointed, yet still optimistic for a sequel to fix the first game’s problems. That sequel never came, but rumors indicate that Mirror’s Edge 2 may already be in development.
Previous teases indicated that EA and DICE were considering how to fix Mirror’s Edge‘s issues, that they were interested in what fans wanted from a potential sequel, and that any new Mirror’s Edge game would likely run on the Frostbite 2 engine that powers Battlefield 3. Now a tweet has surfaced in response to yesterday’s Eurogamer article about EA wanting to avoid making DICE a Battlefield factory that only churns out more war games.
Ben Cousins is currently the general manager at ngmoco Sweden, but was previously executive producer of Battlefield at DICE. He tweeted that “It is general knowledge in the Stockholm dev scene that Mirror’s Edge 2 is in production at DICE”. It’s far from official confirmation, and there have been many games that were in development yet later canceled, but combined with the other rumors, it certainly seems like good news for those waiting on a sequel. One can only hope that enemies with guns are one of the things up for reconsideration.
Source: Kotaku
Tags: Electronic Arts
Posted by Bob Muir on Nov 21, 2012 in Cinema, Star Wars 
We know that Toy Story 3 writer Michael Arndt is writing Star Wars Episode VII, but it’s never too early to look ahead to VIII and IX. After all, Disney didn’t pay $4 billion for Lucasfilm to half-ass a new Star Wars trilogy. So who is getting scouted by the Mouse? There are two guys the company has in mind, and if you’re holding out hope for these movies, you definitely want one over the other.
Read more…
Tags: Disney, Star Wars
Posted by Bob Muir on Nov 21, 2012 in Videogames 
Consider this a public service announcement of impending deals. No, Xbox Live doesn’t have absolutely insane deals like Steam does on PC, but that’s all the more reason to take advantage of times when a large amount of content goes on sale. And with Black Friday coming later this week, that time is now! Read more…
Tags: Xbox 360
Posted by Bob Muir on Nov 20, 2012 in Videogames 
With the Wii U out and fully “online” compared to the Wii, you’d think that Nintendo was finally getting the whole “online gaming” thing. Of course, none of their games are online, and while there are cool things about it (notably the Miiverse social network), there are many missing features found in PlayStation Network and Xbox Live. But hey, baby steps! How about releasing some DLC for a recent game like the DS’s Pokemon Black 2 and White 2? Read more…
Tags: Pokémon
Posted by Bob Muir on Nov 20, 2012 in Videogames 
That Legend of Zelda is pretty special. Even with Nintendo’s best efforts to muck up the latest installments with excessive handholding, the series still manages to retain a sense of wonder and nostalgia. It’s why fans clamored so much for an official timeline that Nintendo finally put one out in The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia, a companion book covering the entire series (minus the CD-i games, I’d imagine) filled with art and info. The book is coming out on January 16, 2013, and since that’s so close, publisher Dark Horse has released this trailer for the game. A trailer not for a game, but for a book about a game, and not even an adaptation of that game’s story — can you believe it? Read more…
Tags: Legend of Zelda
Posted by Bob Muir on Nov 15, 2012 in Cinema, Star Trek 
It’s been done before with The Dark Knight and I Am Legend, and again with The Dark Knight Rises and Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. So since it worked out so well for those films, it’s being done yet again with Star Trek Into Darkness and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. What is it they’re doing, you ask? Giving a little preview of a movie when you see the other one in IMAX! Read more…
Tags: Star Trek, The Hobbit
Posted by Bob Muir on Nov 15, 2012 in Videogames 
Square Enix has been putting out practically every other main Dragon Quest game on DS, so it seems natural that they’d work on a new version of Dragon Quest VII for 3DS. The game was originally released in America as Dragon Warrior VII for PS1, all the way back in 2000, where it was met with only moderate attention, possibly due to an overly lengthy quest and sprite graphics. If it isn’t obvious from these new screenshots, the sprites are gone, replaced with full 3D graphics. Read more…
Tags: Dragon Quest
Posted by Bob Muir on Nov 14, 2012 in Videogames 
The best way to get me to buy a major game at launch is to include a fancy, well-made statue with it. I’ve moved past being okay with dinky little figurines that barely look like the character; it has to be big and detailed so I can show it off with pride, space be damned. That’s why even though I just recently got a nice figure of Assassin’s Creed III‘s Connor when that game released, I’m salivating at this Songbird statue that is being included with the BioShock Infinite Ultimate Songbird Edition. Read more…
Tags: BioShock: Infinite
Posted by Bob Muir on Nov 14, 2012 in Videogames 
Has it really been over two years since StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty came out? I’ll be honest, despite my interest, I haven’t even had a chance to play it yet. So I feel really behind now that Blizzard has actually given out a release date for their upcoming expansion, StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm. It’s too soon for a gamer like me who is constantly behind, but for those who have been playing since Wings of Liberty‘s release. Read more…
Tags: Blizzard, StarCraft 2
Posted by Bob Muir on Nov 13, 2012 in Videogames 
You can’t have a new AAA game come out anymore without offering a collector’s edition or limited edition of some sort with additional goodies that only hardcore fans care about. (Considering that even new IPs come out with collector’s editions, targeting fans who haven’t played the game yet seems odd.) The new Tomb Raider reboot is no exception, with a collector’s edition being made in limited quantities. Read more…
Tags: square enix, Tomb Raider
Posted by Bob Muir on Nov 13, 2012 in Cinema, Star Wars 
I’ve been mostly optimistic about Disney taking control of Star Wars. It’s not like they could screw it up worse than the prequels, right? Those movies focused on expanding Darth Vader’s life in a way that didn’t need to be explained. The concept of a fallen, yet still honorable knight that finally finds redemption is a powerful one that doesn’t require pointless insight into how he fell. So with Darth Vader dead and Force-ghost-ed, we should be in the clear for Disney and Toy Story 3 writer Michael Arndt to tell new stories, right? Or not. Read more…
Tags: Darth Vader
Posted by Bob Muir on Nov 8, 2012 in Videogames 
Like most console launches, the Wii U is getting a lot of ports to fill out its launch window. A lot of these are pretty much what you’d expect, but Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Wii U Edition is getting some nice exclusive content to differentiate this version. Besides being able to draw on your characters with the GamePad to customize them, there are further customization options to make the Tekken characters look like Nintendo characters. That’s almost weird enough, but the extra content doesn’t end there.
Read more…
Tags: Namco Bandai, Tekken, Wii U
Posted by Bob Muir on Nov 8, 2012 in Videogames 
Okay, so Diablo III might not have set the world on fire when it came out earlier this year. The game certainly sold well enough, but between simplified skill trees, a completely unnecessary always-online requirement, and numerous other issues, Blizzard’s highly anticipated follow-up didn’t capture gamers’ hearts. With competition like Torchlight II and the availability of Diablo II, it’s questionable whether gamers will still be playing what many think is a short-lived game years from now. Maybe some additional content would fix that? Read more…
Tags: Activision, Blizzard, Diablo 3
Posted by Bob Muir on Nov 7, 2012 in Videogames 
Many gamers remember the N64’s Super Smash Bros. for having a memorable, almost anti-Nintendo commercial that still gets posted in forum threads to this day. Despite being low-budget, it had charm, and watching beloved characters hit each other around was funny. Fast-forward to 2012, and Sony is releasing PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, their take on the Smash Bros. formula, and they have a predictable ad for the United States. But in Russia, the ad is quite different. Read more…
Tags: PS3
Posted by Bob Muir on Nov 7, 2012 in Videogames 
I mainly enjoyed Portal 2 for its story and the exceptionally clever sections, not quite as much for its puzzles. They were certainly well-made and the main focus of the game, but the world that Valve built around these puzzle mechanics is what sticks with me most. However, I certainly enjoyed the co-op campaign, which has a much lighter story set around its interesting two-player puzzles. PlayStation 3 owners now have even more puzzles available to them, provided that they also have a PlayStation Move controller.
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Posted by Bob Muir on Nov 6, 2012 in Anime 
A two-minute trailer for J.C. Staff’s upcoming film, A Certain Magical Index: Endymion’s Miracle, premiered at the Dengeki 20th Anniversary Festival. It’s the first hint at the story of the film, since it is not based on any of the original light novels that the rest of the anime is based on. Instead, the film is based on a new story by Kazuma Kamachi, with new character designs by Kiyotaka Haimura. In Endymion’s Miracle, Touma and Index find Arisa, a level 0 girl who is on the run from Magicians. It seems she is an important part of an upcoming war between magic and science.
Read more…
Tags: A Certain Magical Index
Posted by Bob Muir on Nov 6, 2012 in Videogames 
Fresh off the heels of the rather-boring “Hearthfire” downloadable content, Bethesda has announced the next bit of DLC for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The main character of the game is a Dragonborn, but this latest content, also called “Dragonborn,” pertains to literally the first Dragonborn ever. He looks pretty tough too! Read more…
Tags: DLC, Elder Scrolls, Skyrim, Xbox 360
Posted by Bob Muir on Nov 1, 2012 in Videogames 
Halloween may have been yesterday, but that doesn’t diminish how scary this trailer is. I couldn’t play Amnesia: The Dark Descent, only watch my roommate play it. And while we only made it halfway, I can still visualize many memorable moments of horror, or even just the common moments of wandering around a very dark castle as the character’s sanity slipped away. Frictional Games and thechineseroom’s follow-up, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, looks to be just as haunting as its predecessor, and possibly more aggressive. Read more…
Tags: Horror
Posted by Bob Muir on Nov 1, 2012 in Videogames 
Of the PS2’s three mascot platformers – Jak & Daxter, Ratchet & Clank, and Sly Cooper — I least expected Sly Cooper to get brought back. Not many people seemed to talk about the series, though what I did hear was uniformly positive. But lo and behold, the PS3 is getting a fourth installment in the series, Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, from Sanzaru Games, the studio that did the HD conversion for The Sly Collection. And of course, while traveling through time, it’s not a bad idea to change your outfits to match the locale. Read more…
Tags: PS3, Sly Cooper
Posted by Bob Muir on Oct 31, 2012 in Videogames 
We knew it was coming, but now we’ve got a clearer idea of when: Grand Theft Auto V is coming as soon as Spring 2013. Rockstar North announced on their blog that the highly anticipated game would release for PS3 and Xbox 360. The company made no mention of a PC version, but PC versions of previous games in the series have typically released after the console versions. Read more…
Tags: Grand Theft Auto, PS3, Rockstar, Xbox 360
Posted by Bob Muir on Oct 31, 2012 in Cinema, Star Wars 
In news that took me a while to wrap my head around, today the Walt Disney Company purchased Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion in cash and stocks. Disney now owns not only Lucasfilm, but also Industrial Light and Magic, Skywalker Sound, and LucasArts, as well as Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and numerous other properties. This is a pretty big deal, and I’m not entirely sure how to take it. What conflicts my opinion even further is the news that Disney is planning a new trilogy of Star Wars movies. Read more…
Tags: Disney, George Lucas, Star Wars
Posted by Bob Muir on Oct 30, 2012 in Anime 
Anime studio Shaft really knocked it out of the park with their first non-adapted anime, Puella Magi Madoka Magica. The twelve-episode series was a subversion of the usually light-hearted magical girl genre, mixing daring visuals with haunting music and a dark plot that threw viewers for a loop. Shaft’s next original anime is also a magical girl story, but this one seems a bit more conventional, though still beautiful. Read more…
Tags: magical girl
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