Ghostbusters canceled? Aerosmith selling? Jet Grind Radio returns?
By Ted Hucklebuck
Activision is unloading tons of Sierra published properties from their release schedule, some of which are real shockers. On the cutting room floor, but not necessarily gone for good are Ghosbusters (WHAT?!) and Brutal Legend (YOU HAVE GOT TO BE SHITTING ME). Nooooooooo! Say it ‘aint so!
The Bourne franchise has officially been offloaded, and Wet (which was starting to look really good, too), some game called Zombie Wranglers and the latest Chronicles of Riddick, World in Conflict, Leisure Suit Larry and 50 Cent games are all totally shit-canned for now.
What games survived the culling? Prototype, Crash Bandicoot and Spyro. Seriously? The official motherf**king sequel to Ghostbusters cut in exchange for Crash Bandicoot?! Unbelievable. Someone better pick these titles up soon before we miss out on some really great games. Except for 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand. That one’s just retarded. It’s like 50 Cent and his “homies” killing terrorists in Iraq or something. I swear I did not just make that up.
What kind of world is this in which a game like Brutal Legend not a publisher’s first priority?
In other news, Guitar Hero: Aerosmith inexplicably sold over 1 bajillion copies, despite the fact that no one has given a crap about Aerosmith for at least 100 years. This has prompted Activision (them again?) to jack themselves off publicly over all the bands that are now going to have their own Guitar Hero editions in the future, like Metallica and Van Halen. Because if there’s anything people don’t like, it’s variety, right guys? This sort of thing should be downloadable content at best, not stand alone games. Amirite?
Lastly, word on the street is that Sega is going to be developing a new Jet Grind Radio game for the Wii. For those of you who are not smart enough to know this already and need to be told, Jet Grind Radio for the Dreamcast is one of the best games ever made, and there hasn’t been a sequel of any kind in forever. This is great news for Wii owners that have nothing to play but lame ports of PS2 games and ugly, offline stepbrother versions of Xbox 360 and PS3 games.
Everyone knows that nine times out of ten, movie sequels suck so bad that they make you want to bash your head in with a petrified movie theater hot dog. Painful and unnecessary, they represent the unchecked greed that is destroying our entertainment industry, and the stupidity of the people that they are marketed to.
Except for these sequels listed here, which were all freakin’ sweet! Each and every one of the following films were even better than the originals, most (but not all) of which were pretty great to begin with. Please note that planned trilogies were considered for the list, as the second movie in any trilogy (except the Matrix) is always the best in the series and therefore unfair to include. So if you’re looking for Empire, the The Two Towers or Godfather 2, go look up some hack-job AFI list instead.
The Dark Knight
While Batman Begins was a far sight better than the couple of lame-o Batman movies that preceded it, there were still one or two problems with it. It had too much painfully redundant origin stuff, and lacked a truly memorable villain. Plus, Katie Holmes was intolerably out of place (bad actress, way too young to be the D.A. of Gotham, not even that hot to make up for it, etc.). The Dark Knight corrected all of these problems, nixing Holmes, adding The Joker and Two Face to the mix, dispensing with all the lame origin bullshit and getting right into the action. Everything about The Dark Knight was better in every way, and has the box office numbers to back it up. I still say it was about an hour too long though. Read the rest of this entry →
News from the worst week in human history since… last week
By The Most Pissed-Off Dude In The World
Some asshole hippy is asking people to vote on how he should destroy his $60,000, 2006 Range Rover SUV in a publicity stunt engineered to make him look some kind of environmental altruist or something…
Am I the only person who is growing tired of these privileged motherfuckers smugly rubbing their self-righteousness in the faces of citizens for whom that very same $60,000 might make save them from bankruptcy or home foreclosure? I hope he destroys it by personally driving it off a cliff, ridding the world of one more trust fund collecting prick bastard Nuevo-beatnik idiot while he’s at it.
Just look at this prick with his flip flops and cargo shorts and Ghostbusters T-shirt…
In other news, 50 Cent is suing Taco Bell for suggesting that he change his name to 79 Cent or some such for a day so that they can sell more tacos or whatever. 4 million dollars is what he’s asking for. If 50 Cent really gets 4 fucking million dollars because a shitty Taco chain made fun of his stupid ass name, I am going to shit a buffalo, that’s how pissed I will be. Fuck you, 50 Cent. Right in the bum.
Fallout 3 is destined to be the standard-bearer for all Post Nuclear Apocalypse Action Role Playing games to follow. Critical reception of the game at this year’s E3 was sweepingly, unanimously positive, despite the fact the 90% of the press had never even heard of Fallout 1 or 2. (Myself included.)
The story of Fallout 3 in the words of Bethesda Game Studios is as follows: Vault 101 – Jewel of the Wastes. For 200 years, Vault 101 has faithfully served the surviving residents of Washington DC and its environs, now known as the Capital Wasteland. Though the global atomic war of 2077 left the US all but destroyed, the residents of Vault 101 enjoy a life free from the constant stress of the outside world. Giant Insects, Raiders, Slavers, and yes, even Super Mutants are all no match for superior Vault-Tec® engineering. Yet one fateful morning, you awake to find that your father has defied the Overseer and left the comfort and security afforded by Vault 101 for reasons unknown. Leaving the only home you’ve ever known, you emerge from the Vault into the harsh Wasteland sun to search for your father, and the truth.
On your way to find your absentee father, you will be presented with numerous moral choices that will affect your gameplay experience and the way your fellow survivors interact with you. You will also be presented with numerous individual body parts that you can target (and blow to smithereens in glorious showers of slow motion blood and gore) on the various nuclear mutants populating the wasteland, using your totally awesome Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System.
Check out these pics and trailer from the future game of the year, 2009:
Chris and Sheva mow down an entire village, meet Baghead!
By Jeremy Azevedo
If you are reading this, you probably already know that Resident Evil 5 is looking like it’s going to be one of the best games of the year, or ever. Having played the game myself, I can tell you that these images are no joke, the game really looks like this in action.
In fact, RE5 almost looks better in action than it does in the cut scenes, which is a weird reversal of roles if ever there was one. Check out these new screens from the playable demo at E3 to see for yourself…
“Yo Momma so stupid she spent all day saying ‘Am not!’ to R2!”
By Jeremy Azevedo
The Robot Chicken Star Wars special was just released on DVD, strangely a full six months after the corresponding Family Guy Star Wars special was released on DVD and a whole year after Robot Chicken Star Wars’ original airdate.
Not that all this matters really, as the subject matter being lampooned here is roughly thirty years old and thusly not particularly time-sensitive.
It never ceases to amaze me how fully Star Wars has permeated popular culture to such a degree that there is even anything left to say about it today. But something about Star Wars just lends it an evergreen status that is taken full advantage of here by Seth Green and the cast of Robot Chicken.
Although the runtime is short, Robot Chicken Star Wars manages to pack more laughs in to its 23 minutes than most comedies get in two hours. I caught myself doing that annoying thing people sometimes do in which you loudly repeat a line that just happened to the person next to you, as if they hadn’t just heard it five seconds ago, my obnoxious laughter smothering the next joke. So really it seemed like at least 35 minutes considering all the times I had to rewind back to the previous scene.
The special features on the Robot Chicken Star Wars DVD are a lot of fun, particularly if you have any interest in how the show is written and animated. If you’re not at all interested in the special features, you might find RCSW more of a rental than a purchase, were it not for the fact that it was so reasonably priced. If you are a Star Wars fan, or a Robot Chicken fan, or especially if you are a fan of both, just buy it already you cheap bastard.
The new console version of Castlevania is… a fighting game?
By Jeremy Azevedo
From the moment he first saw the Wii, Castlevania series director Koji Igarashi knew that it would be the perfect system for a new, truly interactive Castlevania action game.
This is a guy who seems to actually carry a whip with him wherever he goes, so of course he would seek to replicate the experience of cracking the Vampire Killer whip with the Wiimote.
While Igarashi contends that his hew game, Castlevania: Judgment is more of an action/adventure game, it is clear that this is purely a fighter. Igarashi worried that using the Wiimote in a full-sized 3-D adventure might have made player’s arms tired after awhile, so he set out to make the gameplay enjoyable in shorter bursts.
While it doesn’t have the depth of Street Fighter or Soul Calibur, it does play quite a bit like Power Stone on the Dreamcast, one of the most entertaining multiplayer fighters ever made. All of the moves are simple to do, and the action is fast and filled with environmental hazards/surprises. I sure hope it’s four-player simultaneous like Power Stone too! In fact, it better be or I’m gonna be good and pissed. I mean, how goddamn hard is it? Smash Bros. did it like 100 years ago, Konami should be able to figure it out.
