Another amazing appearance for the King of Cameos!
Famous comic book superhero creator, Stan Lee is set to appear as a playable character in the upcoming video game based on The Amazing Spider-Man movie. But we’ve already talked about that! Now, a trailer has surfaced revealing in-game footage and a discussion from the man himself. Stan Lee comes complete with hilarious one-liners in full character and is clearly a great example of great fan service for Marvel fans. The game will hit stores next week, a few days before the film swings into cinemas on July 3rd. Check out the video below.
Light Byte Developer: Steve Pastro Publisher: Ayopa Games Platform: iPhone(reviewed)/iPad Release: 14/6/12 Price: $0.99 – Available Here
Overview
Straight out of the Center for Digital Media in Vancouver, Steve Pastro has teamed up with indie iOS publishers Ayopa Games to produce an innovative and original puzzle game for the iOS. I know what you are thinking. Or at least I assume you are thinking about the plethora of shovel wear available to iOS users. Well this my friend, is not one of them. While it is inspired by Pastro’s favourite childhood arcade titles like Space Invaders, Tetris and Bubble Bobble; Light Byte takes a fresh perspective on a genre of gaming that has progressively been devalued and rendered stagnant by waves of shovel wear. Light Byte is the light at the end of the tunnel
Gameplay
On paper, Light Byte sounds a little cluttered. However, when those blocks begin to drop and you tap away, the game performs beautifully. Coloured blocks, at first three, but eventually five different colours, descend from the top of the screen. Matching them up breaks the blocks, and the more you match of the same colour in a row the more points you accumulate. Break enough in a row and can earn ‘frenzy’ which turns renders all blocks instantly breakable. There are also power-ups for each colour, which can be upgraded if obtained enough. Not only does the game progress by adding new colours, but the blocks, if not hit quickly enough, start to lose their colour. However, hitting the block will restore the colour. The gradual learning curve, from the tutorial to almost instantly transparent blocks of five colours, is nice for new comers to the game and allows players to ease in and enjoy themselves. As I said, it sounds cluttered when you describe it, but when playing Light Byte, all the elements fluidly work together to create an amazing and original puzzle title.
There are a number of different game modes, all of which you will need to unlock. The game starts with Endless Mode, which is exactly as it sounds. Once enough points are accumulated, you can unlock Time Attack modes. There are varying difficulties in Time Attack, each with a different number of colours to match up. Normal has three, Challenge has four and Extreme has five colours. The last game mode, which sadly I am yet to unlock, is Full Byte. All these modes can also be unlocked with in App purchases. To all unlock all modes it will cost you $1.99, more than the actual game will cost you in fact. To unlock individual modes it will be another $0.99 per mode. But lets face it, playing the game to earn these modes is just so much more satisfying. If there is one flaw to the game however, it would be the lack of variation in modes. Time attack is merely the Endless with a 60 second timer. Of course, the game works, so that is fine. But a little variety may have been appreciated.
Visuals and Audio
The interface and sound design are very minimalistic. There are a few gauges to illustrate how close you are to a power up or frenzy. Apart from that, the game is essentially just five coloured blocks moving across the screen. The colours work well together, although they don’t match. This is obviously to aid players in hitting the right blocks, and shows that the game has been thoughtfully designed both mechanically and visually. The game doesn’t need extravagant design to perform. Light Byte’s gameplay speaks for itself. The audio syncs well with the player’s actions, with noises accompanying hits of blocks, screen clears and power ups – as any good arcade title does. The music works well has just background noise, however, like most casual titles I am sure you could play without it. The real winner in terms of audio is the sound effects for hitting blocks in succession, where a little blip noise becomes progressively faster the faster you tap. If you are one to play with audio off, I suggest otherwise just to get that thrill of hearing the blocks disappear in a row right before achieving ’frenzy’.
Overall
The combination of original, engaging and creative gameplay, coupled with the minimalistic interface and sound design create a Zen like experience. As the blocks descend you continue to tap, building up speed and accuracy as you progress until finally, the inevitable happens, and the blocks reach the bottom of the screen. Light Byte is by far one of the best casual/arcade titles I have played on iOS in sometime. I can’t recommend the title strongly enough for any iOS owners.
The Fire Rises is now available to play online! As we recently reported, The Fire Rises ties into the upcoming film The Dark Knight Rises where players are henchmen of the villainous Bane and must help him rise to power by unleashing chaos on the city of Gotham. Rob, loot and take down Gotham Police Department alongside super villains such as Bane and Catwoman and work your way up criminal ladders. The entire game is browser based and free-to-play so why not give it a shot yourself if you have some time to kill?
Every hero needs a damsel in distress, and in The Amazing Spider-Man that so happens to be Gwen Stacy, played by Emma Stone.
In this new interesting and insightful featurette, Stone discusses her character and tells us what it’s like playing the woman behind one of pop culture’s most iconic and successful super heroes. Gwen Stacy is a rather important character in the Spider-Man universe so it’s awesome to finally see her brought to the silver screen. Make sure you check out the video below to see her thoughts on plays Gwen Stacy!
The Amazing Spider-Man is set to swing into theatres July 3rd.
Teen Wolf Season 1 Studio: MTV Publisher: 20th Century Fox Format: DVD Release Date: 16 May, 2012 Price: $34.98 – Available Here
Overview
Based on the 1985 Michael J Fox movie, Teen Wolf, the MTV series holds barely any similarities with its original apart from the whole teenage werewolf thing. Departing from the vampire craze that has been around for teenage fiction, TV and film, Teen Wolf focuses on the werewolf side of things. And there is definitely no sparkling involved.
Story
Teen Wolf manages to be a good mix of teen angst, humour, and hormones. And a healthy does of horror mixed in there for good measure. The story traverses the whole dealing with being a teenager, high school, girls, oh and being a newly turned werewolf. As can be expected from MTV, the actors are all crazy attractive and there isn’t an unattractive one among the lot.
Teen Wolf certainly fits into the teenage TV show type, though it avoids the more annoying stereotype of teenage shows where the characters end up jumping from one relationship to another. In fact, it’s probably the least annoying of the teenage shows in that regards.
The show has a good ensemble of characters, with Stiles being a great character that really brings humour and lightens up the mood. If it hadn’t been for him then the show would otherwise be fairly dark and dramatic with the main character, Scott’s, teen and wolf angst.
The dynamics between all the characters are interesting, and a big part of what I like about the show. They’re all quite likeable, but in their own flawed ways. Even the most annoying character becomes one that I liked quite a lot in the end. The characters all develop a depth and interesting dimensions that you don’t always see in all the members of an ensemble cast.
While the show does start of slow in the first couple of episodes, once it gains steam through the middle part of the season, it gets really interesting and you’ll find yourself getting more and more dragged into the story line. The action also steps it up a notch as the storyline ramps up and gets into the meat of the story’s climax. While it’s not all out action like you may be used to seeing in some shows, and the suspense sometimes leaves something to be desired, it is still quite an interesting story and worth putting up with the less well delivered moments.
Visuals
The special effects leave something to be desired, for sure. That is the one big downfall for the show, and something that could have resulted in the horror and suspenseful moments holding more weight rather than just ending up being kind of humorous looking and distracting entirely from the show. Personally I just didn’t find a lot of things as scary as what they were trying to portray. And it was sort of awkward to be able to tell that it was meant to be a scary moment, but wasn’t it at all. If they could just get better special effects the quality of the show would lift so much more, and be far more involving without being distracted and wanting to laugh.
Not just the quality of the visual effects, but the general look of the werewolves are questionable, and not really all that scary. In this way it probably would’ve been good for the show to move away from the original movie, and more towards a more wolfish look. While it definitely could have been done better, and it does result in a little bit of cringing, I must note that the story is interesting enough to be enough of a reason to keep watching.
Audio
The soundtrack for the show is great, which isn’t a surprise given that it is an MTV show. The music ranges between your standard alternative stuff, to some more interesting music that I, personally, think was quite good. It’s always nice to hear music that isn’t part of the mainstream on shows, but is still so damn catchy that you end up wanting to get a copy when you hear it.
Apart from the music, the soundtrack and sound effects are fairly standard, and this adds to the awkwardness when it makes it clear that it is meant to be a scary moment and it just doesn’t live up to it.
Overall
Teen Wolf is an interesting show, with some great characters that started off as stereotypes but have been developed to the point that they are all quite enjoyable to watch on the screen. While the special effects and attempts at CGI leave something to be desired, as long as you can ignore this fault, it is a good show and certainly something that you can get addicted to.
WWE 13 is looking like it will be a split between attitude era superstars, and the current roster. While we are still on the fence about “living the revolution” thus far, THQ have released a new trailer, confirming Mike Tyson for this year’s installment.
As many of you know, Mike Tyson took on the role of special enforcer at Wrestlemania XIV’s main event, where HBK battled Stone Cold Steve Austin for the championship. His character will now be honored with a roster slot in the next WWE game, and players can now fight just about anyone with one of the most controversial personalities in boxing history. Yeah, I’m interested as I always am (even after last year’s less than stellar title), but I can’t help but look at the game so far and feel that the visuals have slipped considerably. This could be an early build of the game, but come this fall, we will in fact know if WWE 13 lives up to it’s massive hype.
Chronicle Studio: Davis Entertainment, Adam Schroeder Productions, Dune Entertainment, Film Afrika Worldwide Publisher: 20th Century Fox Format: Bluray, DVD, Triple Play (reviewed) Release Date: 14 June, 2012 Price: $29.98 – Available Here
Overview
What would you do if suddenly you got supernatural powers beyond your comprehension? What kind of person would you be? Would you be a hero, or a villain? Well, Chronicle answers that question, except in a far different way than people are used to.
Story
The movie follows Andrew Detmer, a guy with a less than stellar life and a new habit of going around with a camera. The movie itself is quite strongly based in reality, and it’ll be no surprise if you end up relating to a couple of moments in the film. Especially since Andrew is kind of your downtrodden individual, but he isn’t the only focus of the film. In fact, there’s also the somewhat more average Matt and then the super popular and decent bloke Steve. Avoiding the typical popular, jock stereotype, Steve is a nice guy – the sort of guy who would actually become class president – and the biggest douches in the films are the typical angry guys you’d expect to be high school bullies.
As the boys discover and explore their powers you follow them through their elation at discovering their powers, their jealousy, and the pranks they pull. Plus you also get a healthy dose of the awesomeness that comes with the super powers. Because of the way it’s filmed, you skip all of the initial realizations of their powers, and this is can be taken as a positive or negative. It skips the time and slowness that movies tend to have in the initial realization stages, but I’m still curious about how exactly the boys first discovered their powers.
The movie feels quite short, even though it is only ten minutes shorter than your standard film. But that has more to do with the pace that it sets, because while it is slow to start off with and those who have seen the trailer or know the plot will be impatient to get to the good stuff, but once it gets going it really speeds along like a freight train.
The best part of the movie is the interactions between the boys. The actors all have a very realistic friend chemistry between the three of them, and everything they do as a group is really what you’d expect from a group of teenage boys who have suddenly got powers. My favourite scene of the movie involved them going around testing out their powers in every day life and messing with people. Just because it felt like such a realistic thing and the way it was being filmed added to that even more.
Visuals
Chronicle is all based around the idea that it is shot using hand held cameras, surveillance cameras, and other every day methods of filming. This presents a couple of issues to the movie for filming, but the way they come up with solutions for it is pretty impressive.
The visual effects done in Chronicle are impressive especially given the amount of effects that the film uses. The movie tries to use as many optical illusions and physical effects as possible, staying away from CGI, which leaves the movie looking a whole lot more realistic than a lot of the movies. Even the way they fly is more realistic than you’d expect, thanks to some innovative methods from the visual effects team, including Simon Hansen who worked on District 9.
Audio
The soundtrack to Chronicle goes between high-flying adrenaline tracks to the tense suspense to match the scenes. It isn’t just the music that does really well to match the scenes, but the general audio effects that accompany the movie. They’re great at setting up the tension using the accompanying sound effects and highlighting the natural tension of the scene and help along the pacing and emphasis in the scene.
Extras
The extras give you a look at some pre-viz of the scenes, that is a computer graphic version of what they wanted the scene to look like. It’s interesting to see the pre-viz in comparison with what the scene ended up being, and for those who like extras will like this.
There’s also a pre-production test that was done to show the idea to studio executives to get them interested in the film. This was done with different actors, and shows just how closely the film stayed to it’s original concept. It also shows the main part of the movie, which is the relationship between the three boys and the question of how they deal with their new powers.
Overall
Chronicle is a really interesting and different film that is entirely different from the usual story line of movies from the same genre. It drags you right in and gives a far more realistic version of a totally unrealistic series of events than is usually seen in mainstream movies.
Chronicle is a must buy, especially if you’re a fan of the superhero genre and want to see a bit of a remix of the usual.
Following the rumours of a second season of the Medaka Box anime earlier today, news has leaked from the forthcoming edition of Weekly Shonen Jump that the rumours as a matter of fact are true.
It has been 3 years since the manga series begun serialization in Weekly Shonen Jump magazine and as such the editors at Jump saw it fit to confirm that there will in fact be a second season of the anime adaptation of the manga.
We reported earlier today that there were rumours that the anime series will return for it’s second season in Fall 2012, those rumours have now been confirmed and the anime series will take a short break during the Summer and return for the Fall.
What do you think of a second season of Medaka Box? Let us know in the comments section below.
Square Enix revealed today that the soundtrack for the environmental puzzle game, Quantum Conundrum, which will be released on PC’s on June 21st and consoles later this year, will be recorded by none other than Chris Ballew who happens to be a two time Grammy nominated songwriter. He also happens to be the lead singer for The Presidents of the United States of America.
As to what inspired Crhis to work on the soundtrack for Quantum Conundrum he had this to say: “I like making music for kids because I admire their inventive imaginations, and as an adult I nurture that same creativity in myself. The gameplay, humor and art style in Quantum Conundrum embodies that same sentiment.” Those who are curious about what the soundtrack’s album cover will look like can see it to the right and also probably notice its distinct similarities to another album cover involving a baby and some money.
The XBLA exclusive Trials Evolution is just absolutely mental, there isn’t really another way to describe it, though you probably already know all about Trials Evolution unless you own a PS3. One of the best additions to the recent Trials Evolution was its heavily revamped track creator/editor system, as the variety and freedom within the editor is so large that the developers Red Lynx have admitted being impressed with the creativity of the community. All this newfound editor power has allowed players to come up with some of the most potentially crazy tracks possible.
Ubisoft recently announced that there have been over 100,000 player made tracks uploaded, so obviously something is enticing fans to continue to experiment with it. To showcase the potential of the editor and the creativity of the community Ubisoft has released a player generated tracks trailer.
Check out below the break to see some of the insane tracks that people have come up with;
Every hero needs a damsel in distress, and in The Amazing Spider-Man that so happens to be Gwen Stacy, played by Emma Stone.
Square Enix revealed today that the soundtrack for the environmental puzzle game, Quantum Conundrum, which will be released on PC’s on June 21st and consoles later this year, will be recorded by none other than Chris Ballew who happens to be a two time Grammy nominated songwriter. He also happens to be the lead singer for The Presidents of the United States of America.