If you’re a fan of the Friday the 13th franchise, you should definitely check out this new doc by Paul Zamerelli entitled How New Line Cinema Destroyed the Friday the 13th Franchise.
Continue reading How New Line Cinema Destroyed the Friday the 13th Franchise
We never even knew the Sega Dreamcast still had game developers working on producing new titles for it. The system’s life cycle came to an end in 2002, but Sega fanatics still play it faithfully to this day. Hucast Games made sure to give fans of the underrated console something new to look forward to with their Kickstarter funded project – a “bullet hell” shooter by the name of Redux: Dark Matters.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fofLU3UBbRA
Looking at this game in action should send you back to the days of flashy vertical shooters from the arcades. There’s bright colors, the music is a typical mix of electronic music fare, the enemies come in plentiful numbers and the action is intense. Redux: Dark Matters looks the part and will give you the ultimate nostalgia kick. This shooter looks great on your aging Dreamcast and even better on your iOS device and PC.
The premise of this spaceship shoot ’em up should be familiar to fans of the genre. You select the punishing difficulty of your choice and take the ship of your choice into the far reaches of the galaxy. Your ship moves through a daunting onslaught of bullets and enemy ships before you run into a screen filling boss. As you nab power ups for your ship, your weapons increase in strength and your shield gets built up over time. Blasting through dozens of ships, narrowly dodging enemy fire and getting more powerful along the way are the main points of this shooter that will pull in hardcore SHMUP fans.
The punishing difficulty of this game should come as no surprise. Your ship can get torn down by just one stray shot.Once you run out of extra lives during a stage run, you and your ship are sent back to very start of that stage without the increased power and defenses you had before. Playing on the easier difficulty doesn’t really make matters simpler. Games like this one are hard as hell and require your utmost patience and sharpest dodging skills. This isn’t a pick up and play game that you can complete in one sitting. Finishing Redux: Dark Matters is frustrating and a goal that you may never complete.
Redux: Dark Matters isn’t anything to go crazy over. It’s a decent shooter that’s hampered by its much too hard difficulty and familiar but stale mechanics. Fans of the genre will enjoy it, while everyone else who still owns a Dreamcast won’t find much to go crazy over here.
If you’re looking to get yourself a copy of this retro shooter, check out Play-Asia at this LINK.
Images: Hucast Games
Gotham is doing a lot of things right.
The oft-criticized FOX show that looks at a Gotham before Batman has been making strides in recent weeks. The writing has picked up, the villains are better, and they are making Harvey Bullock into an actual person rather than just the walking personification of a bad cop. Bullock made real strides in Penguin’s Umbrella, the seventh episode of the first season. During said episode, in a scene that felt ripped right from High Noon, our hero is totally deserted by his brothers-in-blue and left to stave off assassination from Falcone’s number one hitter – Victor Zsasz.
Continue reading Gotham: Gordon vs Black Mask, Batman vs Hush, and the Arrival of Two-Face
BioWare’s fantasy themed RPG series Dragon Age has garnered love and appreciation from its ardent followers. The mature plot threads, interesting characters and mix of strategic/action oriented combat have made the predecessor and its sequel huge hits. The newest entry in the series, Dragon Age: Inquisition, not only offers a satisfying mix of both games but it also offers up a new take on an already viable franchise.
Dragon Age: Inquisition places you in the boots of a character who has some connection to The Fade, a green portal in the sky that transports harmful demons into the world of Thedas. After discovering you connection to this chaos and your ability to close widespread rifts, you take on the role of the Inquisitor. This all-important leader position tasks you with spreading your armies influence, gaining followers along the way, dealing with opposers and finding a way to close The Fade once and for all. Thedas is packed with interesting individuals who all have their own missions and desires, which impact your campaign through the use of the immersive conversation system. Getting to know your party members and conversing with normal townsfolk for side missions is an engaging affair that never falters. Your role as the Inquisitor is important and reflected well throughout the lengthy main story.
The visuals themselves are expectedly gorgeous. You’ll take your party on expeditions within lush green forests, dark caverns and other types of familiar locales associated with the Dragon Age universe. The enemy design shines as well, as you’ll contend with hideous abominations that hop out of rifts across the many areas you embark upon. Along with the amazing visuals comes the great voice acting work provided for you and the rest of the game’s important individuals. Your decision making process and long-winded conversations have more of an impact due to the wide range of emotions each character exhibits. When you go for a dialogue option that’s less than nice, the response you’ll get will be sure to hit you harder than expected. The presence of past decisions made from past Dragon Age games also lends more importance to your current journey in Thedas.
As the Inquisitor, you’re tasked with entering huge areas and aiding the denizens there by completing an important mission that will impact your crusade. The huge offering of quests seen in each section of the game is staggering. You can aid the food gathering efforts of a village, take down a group of rogues near an important overpass, fight alongside a mysterious and hopefully future party member, close random rifts, and more. There is so much to do and see. Each side mission is filled with surprisingly important effects that impact your influence over the land. It feels good to take part in seemingly small-time missions and find out they’re outcome is more important by the end of them.
Dragon Age: Inquisition‘s combat is a perfect mix of the two previous games. You have the option to run head first into battle and actively participate in mowing down the opposition, or you can set up your party members’ actions through the press of a button with an overhead strategic setup. Both methods work well, but the sometimes unruly camera dampers the battle setups a bit. It has a hard time targeting enemies from afar and at different elevations, which sometimes kills the element of surprise before engaging enemies. This issue isn’t too much of a problem during the fun and chaotic co-op battles, which sees you and three other human players go crazy on the battlefield. Along with the battle camera problems are a few instances of game crashing and bugs rearing heir ugly head as well.
Even with those apparent technical issues, Dragon Age: Inquisition is still a finely crafted RPG. Each and every move you make as the Inquisitor has a huge impact on the world you’re trying to save and the incredible trek through Thedas makes you care about each and every person you come across. The open-ended mission structure, vast landscapes, wonderful visual and audio and immersive battles make this an RPG worth getting addicted to.
Images: BioWare, Electronic Arts
If nothing else, figure makers NECA certainly know how to keep a fandom happy. When they are not making superbly sculpted figures out of retro game franchises (Robocop, Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger and Batman are just a few of the characters that have under gone this process so far), then they are creating plastic versions of your favorite scary movie characters.
Now in its third series, the NECA Alien figures have given fans of the franchise the opportunity to own their own versions of characters like Hicks and Hudson from the series one, and exclusive NECA creation – Sgt Craig Windrix in series two. a tribute to NECA employee Kyle Windrix’s brother Craig, who recently lost his battle with stage 4 stomach cancer. Additionally, a whole heap of Xenomorphs are available too.
With series three we have some new entries to the collectibles with Bishop (Aliens), Face Hugger Kane (Alien) and the Dog Xenomorph from Aliens 3. Up until recently we only had some generic, (but well detailed) photos of these figures.
Luckily for all Alien fans however, NECA has released some higher quality images of two of these characters, giving us a much better look at the craftsmanship that has gone into their creation. Starting with Bishop (played by Lance Henriksen in the movie), we get an incredibly detailed facial sculpt of the actor, as well as his attire from the movie. Though not seen in this picture he does come with his trusty knife, so if you feel the need to reenact that classic cafeteria scene in figure form you now have the chance.
Next up is Kane in his Nostromo space suit with an unwanted guest, the Face Hugger. The details on the Nostromo suit are great, as is the sculpt of the Face Hugger itself, which looks just as slimy and horrific as it does in the movie. Looking at it too long can make your throat feel quite uncomfortable! The cool thing about this figure is that the helmet can actually be removed, giving you an even better look at the character design and Face Hugger sculpt.
NECA has also spared no expense on the packaging art, with the movie design of the film the character starred in incorporated into the actual blister pack artwork.
No news on the dog Alien from Alien 3 as of yet, but hopefully it shouldn’t be too long until we get some detailed photos of that figures design. But if you still need to get some Alien action figure freak on before the end of this article, then why not have a look at the soon to be released Alien Queen figure.
If you were impressed by the look and sheer size of this new figure, then wait until you see the box art it will come in which is equally as stunning.
And just so we end on even more Alien action, why not look a this other figure NECA also created, which has to be one of my all time favorite plastic creations.
For more news on NECA and other action figure releases then why not sign up to the Grizzly Bomb newsletter and don’t forget to keep checking the website for more Alien and up coming collectibles news. And remember to “like” us on Facebook.
What Alien franchise character do you think NECA should turn their hand to next? Why not let us know in the comments section below.
Images: NECA
Arguably Sony’s biggest exclusive IP slated to hit the PS4 in 2015, Bloodborne has been raking in excitement and anticipation the last few months, but Wednesday, developer From Software announced that the upcoming action RPG will be pushed over a month from its original February 6, 2015 release date to March 24.
From Software will use the additional seven weeks to push the game even harder, and producer Masaaki Yamagiwa promises that the final product will benefit from the feedback of their alpha gameplay experiment that took place in October:
Dear community,
It is with regret that I must inform you that Bloodborne will be slightly delayed.
While development continues unabated, we would like our team to deliver the best possible final experience. We were gratified by the feedback and data we received from those who participated in our limited Alpha test. The extra production time will also allow us to better integrate these learnings.
Bloodborne is now set to launch in North America exclusively on PS4 on March 24th, 2015.
Please look forward to some exciting Bloodborne news in early December. Thank you very much for your continued support.
It seems to us that reception to the alpha was generally positive, with Demon’s/Dark Souls vets praising the new setting of Yarnham and some of the IP’s newest refinements to the combat system. We were not able to take part in the alpha, but the footage we’ve seen of the demo shows a very polished-looking game – Even in this early stage, the game looks like it performs better than all three Souls games, which, despite glowing reviews, are burdened with frame rate issues of varying proportions.
Our guess is that From Software is focusing this extra time on Bloodborne‘s online gameplay, which is still relatively under wraps. Alpha testers got to test out co-op, which operates seemingly exactly the same as it does in the Dark Souls series, but player-vs-player combat was noticeably absent from the demo. The online aspect of Bloodborne‘s sister titles is one of their most unique elements, and veterans of the previous games will certainly want to dive headlong into PVP once the game hits store shelves. Network issues and online balancing is a nefarious thing to calibrate, and usually doesn’t get tweaked and perfected until launch (and these days, frequently not until after then), so it would make sense that From Software’s looking at user data from the alpha to tighten their infrastructure before launch.
All signs point to Bloodborne being a major success for the PS4, and both Sony and From Software are going to do everything in their power to make sure the game is as good as possible. If that takes seven extra weeks of development, so be it – Yarnham is still one of the most enticing new worlds to explore (and die in) in the coming year.
Bloodborne launches March 24, 2015 on PS4.
Images: From Software
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