I love me some of The Beatles. Problem is...they're all the fuck over the place right now. 40th anniversary of Abbey Road, The Beatles: Rock Band...where does it all end? It doesn't.
So, I have the balls to take the piss out of Rock Band: The Beatles...
So, the song choice is decent...no matter that the developers made the songs WAY harder to play on fake instruments than they are on real ones. Really, anyone with a modicum of musical ability could pull off nearly all of these songs at one listen, much less perfect them after a practice or two.
Pulling a cheap ass Guitar Hero stunt loses respectability with the users. Do us right next time...or we'll disconnect...or something.
September 29, 2009
Posterios Hairlip.
David Mazzuccelli...artist on Ultimates 3, and Batman: Year One.
An amazing artist throws his hat into creating a leviathan of a graphic-novel.
His effort? Asterios Polyp.
The outcome? The most discussed offering by any contemporary comics creator this year.
The review? A monstrosity of a tale about the duality of a single man completed by his forsaken but self-actualised other half...not his dead twin.
While the story is heartbreaking in it's delivery, so to speak, the art delivers more of the current of realization by Asterios as a whole. Even the utterly preposterous meteor strike ending Asterios' narrative makes a bit of sense, given his visualizations throughout the story.
Not for the everyday reader, by FAR! Give yourself over to this masterful piece of art.
An amazing artist throws his hat into creating a leviathan of a graphic-novel.
His effort? Asterios Polyp.
The outcome? The most discussed offering by any contemporary comics creator this year.
The review? A monstrosity of a tale about the duality of a single man completed by his forsaken but self-actualised other half...not his dead twin.
While the story is heartbreaking in it's delivery, so to speak, the art delivers more of the current of realization by Asterios as a whole. Even the utterly preposterous meteor strike ending Asterios' narrative makes a bit of sense, given his visualizations throughout the story.
Not for the everyday reader, by FAR! Give yourself over to this masterful piece of art.
Master Thief
Ok...I'm going on record here. FUCK HALO!
Story wise, maybe the Halo universe has it's merits...as a game? It's done nothing but repackage the same basic gameplay over two generations of home consoles. Be honest with yourselves...has Halo changed significantly outside of graphics since the first game? Answer: No.
Now, Production IG and TOEI are teaming up for a Halo anime...which looks like I expected...a shitty Americanized anime like Armitage. Sure, it has some sweet anime-style colors and their ilk, but the action is Americanized to the point of boredom. CG models of major elements in the scene rather than CG as enhancement. Thumbs down...across the entire Halo universe.
Fist Bungie Entertainment. The bastard is called Halo: Legends
Tyler
Story wise, maybe the Halo universe has it's merits...as a game? It's done nothing but repackage the same basic gameplay over two generations of home consoles. Be honest with yourselves...has Halo changed significantly outside of graphics since the first game? Answer: No.
Now, Production IG and TOEI are teaming up for a Halo anime...which looks like I expected...a shitty Americanized anime like Armitage. Sure, it has some sweet anime-style colors and their ilk, but the action is Americanized to the point of boredom. CG models of major elements in the scene rather than CG as enhancement. Thumbs down...across the entire Halo universe.
Fist Bungie Entertainment. The bastard is called Halo: Legends
Tyler
Your Heart Is No Place For A Wretch Like Me.
I offer up another first for thecomiccult!
A bona-fide music review.
My subject? Every Time I Die and their new release New Junk Asthetic.
Musically, ETID has always kept their releases interesting for the most part...Gutter Phenomenon aside (natch!). Lyrically, Keith Buckley brings the cock and drugs. This release is not too different.
Band wise, this album is tight as fuck. Big drums, big guitars, big bass, big vox. All the ETID cock and swagger is here. Jordan Buckley and Andy Williams get savage with the tone on their guitars. Borrowing a buried sound from The Dillinger Escape Plan to facilitate Keith's vox.
This is ETID at their most muscular...in all arenas. The single: Wanderlust sees Keith putting on his best Neil Fallon...and not disappointing.
I could go on about this album, but you should give it a listen for yourself to get the full effect.
Tyler
A bona-fide music review.
My subject? Every Time I Die and their new release New Junk Asthetic.
Musically, ETID has always kept their releases interesting for the most part...Gutter Phenomenon aside (natch!). Lyrically, Keith Buckley brings the cock and drugs. This release is not too different.
Band wise, this album is tight as fuck. Big drums, big guitars, big bass, big vox. All the ETID cock and swagger is here. Jordan Buckley and Andy Williams get savage with the tone on their guitars. Borrowing a buried sound from The Dillinger Escape Plan to facilitate Keith's vox.
This is ETID at their most muscular...in all arenas. The single: Wanderlust sees Keith putting on his best Neil Fallon...and not disappointing.
I could go on about this album, but you should give it a listen for yourself to get the full effect.
Tyler
It's "Go" Time!
Tonight, on the same cable TV network, I saw two seperate advertisements for two seperate Sony PSP products...
First up...Gran Turismo on PSP. Showed on a PSP 3000 series unit in glorious graphical eye-candy. 800 cars, 35 tracks...fuck yes! Or is it?
Launching the same day and marketed with a FAR sexier commercial is the digital-download only PSPGo system.
I'm torn...GTPSP is a major enticement for me...I love GT...like whoah! I have no PSP though...
Should I get the UMD based PSP3000? OR! Should I wait out the PSPGo and go all digital and not bother with stupid fragile UMD discs?
Oh...I get GT for free...
Shit!
Tyler
First up...Gran Turismo on PSP. Showed on a PSP 3000 series unit in glorious graphical eye-candy. 800 cars, 35 tracks...fuck yes! Or is it?
Launching the same day and marketed with a FAR sexier commercial is the digital-download only PSPGo system.
I'm torn...GTPSP is a major enticement for me...I love GT...like whoah! I have no PSP though...
Should I get the UMD based PSP3000? OR! Should I wait out the PSPGo and go all digital and not bother with stupid fragile UMD discs?
Oh...I get GT for free...
Shit!
Tyler
Batgasm!
More Batman?! Fuck yes.
Batman: Arkham Asylum. Our first game review!
I don't have much to say other than the fact that it's the single best comicbook character based game ever made. I worded it that way because the game's story doesn't follow anything in the comics canon.
As a game, the controls are top-notch. You feel like you're the Batman skulking through the shadows after your prey. The combat, though mapped to a single button for the most part, is intuitive and fully visceral at the same time. Taking out thugs ten at a time is such a fucking blast you won't even be bothered to get on with the campaign. Speaking of campaign...who scripted this bad-motherfucker out? Comics legend Paul Dini, that's who. The same Paul Dini that created Batman: The Animated Series in the early 90's and Batman: Mad Love in comics form. You can also credit him for creating Joker's girlfriend and Kevin Smith's daughter's namesake...Harley Quinn.
What's a great game without great voice acting? Most of the cast from The Animated Series returns...namely Mark (Luke Skywalker) Hamill as The Joker...in his last performance of the role:( and Kevin Conroy as The Batman.
There are a few hang-ups I have with the game, but they're minor... Things like having to walk across Arkham Island most of the time... Ease of defeating most bosses (I AM The Fucking Batman after all) Detective mode being 'on' all the time.
These things aside...you'll be hard pressed to find a better comics-based game for a long long long time.
Score: 9 of 10
Tyler
Batman: Arkham Asylum. Our first game review!
I don't have much to say other than the fact that it's the single best comicbook character based game ever made. I worded it that way because the game's story doesn't follow anything in the comics canon.
As a game, the controls are top-notch. You feel like you're the Batman skulking through the shadows after your prey. The combat, though mapped to a single button for the most part, is intuitive and fully visceral at the same time. Taking out thugs ten at a time is such a fucking blast you won't even be bothered to get on with the campaign. Speaking of campaign...who scripted this bad-motherfucker out? Comics legend Paul Dini, that's who. The same Paul Dini that created Batman: The Animated Series in the early 90's and Batman: Mad Love in comics form. You can also credit him for creating Joker's girlfriend and Kevin Smith's daughter's namesake...Harley Quinn.
What's a great game without great voice acting? Most of the cast from The Animated Series returns...namely Mark (Luke Skywalker) Hamill as The Joker...in his last performance of the role:( and Kevin Conroy as The Batman.
There are a few hang-ups I have with the game, but they're minor... Things like having to walk across Arkham Island most of the time... Ease of defeating most bosses (I AM The Fucking Batman after all) Detective mode being 'on' all the time.
These things aside...you'll be hard pressed to find a better comics-based game for a long long long time.
Score: 9 of 10
Tyler
30 Days Of "What The Fuck?"
Steve Niles... Oh what has become of thee? 30 Days Of Night was brilliant...as a comic, not that shite film adaptation. The work with Bernie Wrightson? Fantastic. City Of Dust? Not so much.
City Of Dust: A Phillip Khrome Story is Niles' melding of heady but lumbering sci-fi dystopia and fairytale horros come to life. In the universe of COD all imaginative thought and expression is against the law (think Equilibrium without the sweet ass action sequences). Philip Khrome is a police officer who was deemed a ward of the state after he turned his father in for crimes of thought at the age of 7. Many years later, after Khrome kills a wanted thought-criminal, he responds to a call regarding a brutally beheaded dead body. After a thorough tech-scan, no cause of death can be found. Khrome moves the body (against procedure) and finds an old children's book full of imaginary beasts under the dead man. Thus begins the skepticism by Khrome of the law he was raised on as truth.
There are conspiracies and horrors laid out within the story that would be really interesting if our focus wasn't placed on Khrome so early. He's basically a lifelong believer in this philosophy of non-imagination who's swayed, after YEARS as a police officer, by one murder and one glimpse at an outlawed book. I felt like I was being insulted as a reader by the audacity of the creators to let their stalwart character be so easily swayed. There was little internal conflict within Khrome at all. After the initial imagination spark Khrome goes on a quest to discover the truth behind the lies of thought-crime. Followed by a love interest (also a police officer) who needs no convincing whatsoever and has no personal revelation but does not question Khrome at all and a chief of police that is revealed to be an illegal robot, he sets out to discover what unidentified killer slayed the man with the book.
This was a mess to read, asking readers to take HUGE leaps with the main character that had seemingly dismissable reasoning.
The end of the story seems to point this out to be an ongoing series. That would be fantastic, if they started over and gave the material and reader the thought they deserve.
Tyler
City Of Dust: A Phillip Khrome Story is Niles' melding of heady but lumbering sci-fi dystopia and fairytale horros come to life. In the universe of COD all imaginative thought and expression is against the law (think Equilibrium without the sweet ass action sequences). Philip Khrome is a police officer who was deemed a ward of the state after he turned his father in for crimes of thought at the age of 7. Many years later, after Khrome kills a wanted thought-criminal, he responds to a call regarding a brutally beheaded dead body. After a thorough tech-scan, no cause of death can be found. Khrome moves the body (against procedure) and finds an old children's book full of imaginary beasts under the dead man. Thus begins the skepticism by Khrome of the law he was raised on as truth.
There are conspiracies and horrors laid out within the story that would be really interesting if our focus wasn't placed on Khrome so early. He's basically a lifelong believer in this philosophy of non-imagination who's swayed, after YEARS as a police officer, by one murder and one glimpse at an outlawed book. I felt like I was being insulted as a reader by the audacity of the creators to let their stalwart character be so easily swayed. There was little internal conflict within Khrome at all. After the initial imagination spark Khrome goes on a quest to discover the truth behind the lies of thought-crime. Followed by a love interest (also a police officer) who needs no convincing whatsoever and has no personal revelation but does not question Khrome at all and a chief of police that is revealed to be an illegal robot, he sets out to discover what unidentified killer slayed the man with the book.
This was a mess to read, asking readers to take HUGE leaps with the main character that had seemingly dismissable reasoning.
The end of the story seems to point this out to be an ongoing series. That would be fantastic, if they started over and gave the material and reader the thought they deserve.
Tyler
That Bastard's Faster Than Walt Flanagan's Bat
Who wants to guess what I just finished reading? Yes, the first comic creation from long-time pals Kevin (Clerks, Chasing Amy, Green Arrow: Quiver, Marvel Visionaries: Daredevil) Smith and Walt (Fanboy) Flanagan. My impression? Story: Decent, and a fuck-ton of fun to read. Art: Passable, while not Tim Sale or Jim Lee or David Mazzuccelli, and reminiscent of the animated series with a lot more blood and detail. Highlight? The characterization of The Joker. All the nutcase staples are hit but with a bit of tongue-in-cheek and a flirtation with cock-in-ass. As a three issue series, I wish it had two more installments to flesh out the story a bit more. Gist: Someone hires Deadshot to kill Joker while he's captive in Arkham (reading The Fountainhead no less) for the overdose of his son on "chuckles". A drug comprised of Joker's venom cut with ecstacy (by the lamest villain in Batman's Rogues Gallery: Maxi Zeus) that is de rigueur on the club scene. But a masked action-word quoting badass gets the drop on Deadshot! (and later on Batman...TWICE!) Thus, turning this foiled assassination attempt into an escape. An escape Joker is willing to give up his holiest-of-holies for...but is snubbed.
While I adore Kevin Smith, I'm not going to fellate him by saying this is the best Batman arc since The Dark Knight Returns. What I will say is this: If you want a nice one-off story with pop-culture references and poop jokes...pick up the trade of Batman: Cacophony. Now available in hardcover.
I sought out the individual issues...and paid $22.50 for the three, when the hardcover trade goes for $19.99 before my sweet ass discount...bollocks.
On a very related note: Batman: The Widening Gyre #1 by Smith and Flanagan hit a few weeks ago and issue #2 drops tomorrow. Fucked if I know what the name means...
Tyler
While I adore Kevin Smith, I'm not going to fellate him by saying this is the best Batman arc since The Dark Knight Returns. What I will say is this: If you want a nice one-off story with pop-culture references and poop jokes...pick up the trade of Batman: Cacophony. Now available in hardcover.
I sought out the individual issues...and paid $22.50 for the three, when the hardcover trade goes for $19.99 before my sweet ass discount...bollocks.
On a very related note: Batman: The Widening Gyre #1 by Smith and Flanagan hit a few weeks ago and issue #2 drops tomorrow. Fucked if I know what the name means...
Tyler
September 28, 2009
Down With The Browns?
No, I'm not either. The Cleveland Show premiered last night. Let's just say I was less than impressed. To put it into perspective, I'd rather watch an episode of American Dad. In as much as American Dad is a step down from Family Guy, The Cleveland Show is a step down from American Dad. I chuckled a couple times but my precious DVR space will not be filled with the new show.
I'm back from vacation and conference and hurting my foot so expect lots in the next few days...for realsies though, not like that tease Josh left:)
Tyler
I'm back from vacation and conference and hurting my foot so expect lots in the next few days...for realsies though, not like that tease Josh left:)
Tyler
September 16, 2009
Lost But Not Forgotten
So we have been absent for a while...but no worries Tyler will soon be back and I myself am going to be posting by the end of the week.
We are your only hope.
Joshua
We are your only hope.
Joshua
September 9, 2009
Hex Appeal
Get the fuck into this... There's a Jonah Hex film on the horizon. Josh Brolin is Jonah. That fact = awesome. Megan Fox is in there somewhere...getting billing...which is NOT awesome in any way at all. However, what is exponentially more awesome than Sean Astin's older brother starring in the film is the fact that Masto-motherfucking-don are handling the ENTIRE soundtrack for the film. No no no...not just an existing song or two...the whole soundtrack...form it's genesis.
I Pity The Champ
My esteemed colleague has informed me that the film version of The A-Team has cast it's B. A. Baracus in the form of ex UFC light-heavyweight champ (YES!!! 'EX') Quinton 'Rampage' Jackson. Really, filmmakers? Was Michael Clarke Duncan THAT busy?
Not that there was a chance in hell I'd actually go watch an A-Team film in the theaters in the first place. but 'what the fuck'?
80's TV-to-film shit piles: Transformers and it's sequel, G.I. Joe, Transformers...again, ...and the predicted A-Team.
My advice to Hollywood: Capitalising on nostalgia is only successful if you're a sports franchise. Give it up...cunts.
Not that there was a chance in hell I'd actually go watch an A-Team film in the theaters in the first place. but 'what the fuck'?
80's TV-to-film shit piles: Transformers and it's sequel, G.I. Joe, Transformers...again, ...and the predicted A-Team.
My advice to Hollywood: Capitalising on nostalgia is only successful if you're a sports franchise. Give it up...cunts.
Body Of Lies
I really want to encourage all you fine upstanding young folk to go and get you a peek at the film Jennifer's Body. "Why Tyler, why would you want us to do such a deplorable thing?" Well, my reasons are two fold. 1) I want every male with a chub-on for Megan Fox to realize that she's fucking worthless. 2) I want every script writer with a chub-on for Diablo Cody to realize that an ex-stripper isn't Hollywood's savior.
I'll drink to flashes in the pan on an hourly basis.
Tyler
I'll drink to flashes in the pan on an hourly basis.
Tyler
September 8, 2009
Buena Venom
Disney buys Marvel for $4 billion?!? Holy snikt I hope they don't thwip all that money on Marvel only to have it bamf out.
Seriously...out action-word me there!
Tyler
Seriously...out action-word me there!
Tyler
September 3, 2009
Bonnie
Waiting to go the eff home at SFO. The conference was pretty cool I guess. It actually ends up being the worst of both worlds. All that walking around and all you want to do is sit down. Then when the time comes to sit, it's for hours at a time. I thought I'd have more to report on but the vendors didn't really have much to show. Brutal Legend looks badass. We met Tim Schafer and offered him a wet lemon. I'm actually excited for a Splinter Cell game. Other than that...I got nothin' but dehydrated.
Tyler
Tyler
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