Vanguard

I actually had an honest to god lol when I saw this one, starting at the 20 second mark and ending at about 25:

Atari 2600 Vanguard ad

I have vivid memories of playing this game, it was one of my favorites on the 2600, but apparently the terms "cool" and "lame" have undergone some manner of total inversion since 1983, thats the only explanation I can come up with for that commercial.

The Force Unleashed II

You can take this as Rob's must play game of 2010, Winter Edition:

PS3 Games - E3 2011 - Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

I can not begin to describe how much I loved playing the first Force Unleashed, it was my #1 game of 2007 and 2008 and I still play it from time to time.

This is promising to be even better. Unlike Bioshock 2 they seem to be actually carrying the story forward and enhancing the gameplay, along with, apparently, fixing some glitchy control interfacing that made the first a bit frustrating.

Taken out of context the above video may not be as exciting to you as it is to me, but to me it's promising a platinum coating on a gold masterpiece of gaming. And man that logo kicks ass!

Darcy's Scott Pilgrim vs The World Review

If your a bit of a nerd who likes comics and you remembers the old Nintendo glory days with some nostalgia your going to like and possibly love this movie. In short, if the topics of this blog interest you then you will likely truly enjoy the Scott Pilgrim movie.

I unlike most of my fellow WoW playing, comic reading, Nintendo worshiping brothers and sisters really wasn't overly excited about Scott Pilgrim. I don't like real life inspired comics and that's what I had always assumed the Scott Pilgrim graphic novels were until, A Comic Book Orange, set me straight. By the way, Casey McKinnon, please bring us more. I'm having A Comic Book Orange withdrawal and really miss your web series cuteness. Anyway, back on topic. The only real life inspired comic I ever enjoyed reading was Hate by Peter Bagge.
Hate was an amusing satire of the culture of the early 90s and after watching Scott Pilgrim I'm willing to bet the real life inspired aspects of that comic satire today's emo/alternative culture in a similar manner while combining video game inspired battles with evil exes. Alas I can't review the comic because I never read it so let us return to the movie.

Not having read the comic wasn't the only reason I wasn't to sure about the movie. The fact that Michael Cera starred as Scott Piligrim made me nervous. I have nothing against him as an actor and he does a good job as a side character but I've never saw him as a lead in any movie that I would have enjoyed.

I also wasn't sure about tying in the video game action in a movie. I can't help but think of the movie The Beach and it's Pitfall scene and shake my head. Google and Bing don't seem to return me any video links for that scene so your gonna have to trust me it was brutally bad and added the shit icing to a shitty movie.

Now having said all that the trailers for Scott Pilgrim look awesome and everyone raved about the comic books so I thought either this is going to be really good or it's going to suck. Typically when I think that, the movie sucks so I wasn't in a rush to go see it in theaters. However, I go to a movie every other weekend with my daughter and she really wanted to see it so I said why not and off we went.

Well this movie surprised me and I really enjoyed it. Apparently, I could totally related to the culture satire and characters in the movie could easily have been people I hung out with in University. The campy video game alternate reality just worked and I can't think of anyone other than Michael Cera who could have played Scott Piligrim ... well maybe Aaron Johnson from Kick Ass but I don't think he would have been as good. All in all I'm willing to bet that this will definitely be one of my favorite movies this year and for a while going forward.

Cheers

Having said that the movie trailers looked amazing so I was of the opinion that either this movie will work and be awesome or will suck balls. and has never been my favorite actor. He's okay as a side character but I could not see him

Bioshock 3

Well not quite, but close enough for reality. What we're looking at here is Irrational Games releasing not only the title but a trailer for a new game slated for 2012 release; formally known as Project Icarus, this new game will be titled Bioshock: Infinities. Checkout the cool trailer:

In a nutshell, here's what we know and is either hinted at or told in the trailer: It's very early in the 20th century (about 1910), the setting is a floating city/weapon of mass destruction, and you need to rescue a girl from a large armored creature. They also seem to be building on or expanding on the society is inherently corrupt themes that the first game gave us, but from more of a governmental aspect this time. Some really cool ideas.

Now I'm not going to get all carried away with gushing over this but it does look like they're going to be implementing a lot of the Bioshock mechanics and modify the atmosphere for the new world they've created. Will it work out? Maybe. The atmosphere is the thing that bothers me the most about this; Bioshock was one of the most solid shooters I've ever played, but it really wouldn't have been anything special if it hadn't been for the setting, a giant city/tomb underwater populated with insane drug addicts. They masterfully mingled the real pressures of surviving with the pressure of water overhead with an era that most people remember fondly, giving a tense nail biter of a world. I'm not saying that they can't do something similar, but I'm a bit leery about it.

While it is a little early to be making judgments, there is a lot of creative development that is going to take place in the next two years, most likely crushing a lot of good ideas, but I think this is a good direction. I'm hoping for a better game the Bioshock expansion pack, otherwise known as Bioshock 2. While a good solid game it didn't bring anything new or diverse to the world, whereas Infinities looks like it has the potential to deliver this and more.

Avengers Movie

While this is still a ways away I can't help but get a little caught up int he excitement of it. Marvel has been doing a spectacular job with their movies lately and the up coming ones are looking to be on the same vein (Captain America and Thor).

We recently found out that Joss Whedon is going to be directing the movie and I think I'm happy with that. I'm not a total fanboy, but I have enjoyed most of the stuff he has been responsible for creating; the only thing I haven't had a full appreciation for would be his X-Men writing, having never been an X-person/group fan I never read any of it. Having said that, I fully respect that it may also be good, but Serenity and Firefly are pretty good endorsements on their own.

The bigger thing that got me interested though was the possibility of the Infinity Gauntlet being the main plot point. Now this is very likely a leading rumor just to throw people of the scent of the real plot, but in my opinion this would be the very, absolute best thing for the movie. It would probably also mean the inclusion of Thanos as the villain, how cool would that be?

It's very likely we won't ever see the gauntlet or Thanos, but it will still probably be a good movie. And who knows, sometimes cool shit happens.