Onelargeprawn
Time flies when you’re having fun. It was three short weeks ago since we acceptable the challenge of Mission Samsung. For this specific challenge we were sent a 40” Samsung Series 6 Smart LED TV and tasked with a set of missions. In case you missed them, you can catch up on missions one and two. What follows is some of our notes that didn’t make it into the missions and a wrap-up of our experience with Smart LED TV.
I am a big guy. 1.91m weighing in at a megaton, I don’t get to sneak around very silently very often. So sometimes playing a game like Hitman Absolution reminds me why I became a gamer. You get to do things you can’t always do in real life. Also I should do some sit-ups. Let’s find out why after the jump.
There are only 15 days to go until the end of this year. If I could remember anything, I would say 2011 was a year like no other. There was good, there was bad, and everything else in between. In his retrospective montage, Filmography 2011, YouTube user genrocks celebrates the year in movies.
This mashup is composed of clips from 230 films that were produced or released this year. For more info on the film and music selection, visit the Filmography 2011 tumblelog.
[via Live For Films]
It seems to be my turn to review nothing but sequels, so in that vein, Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood (not Assassin’s Creed 3—this is an interim game) is the direct sequel to Assassin’s Creed 2. When I say “direct sequel”, I mean that the story resumes quite literally seconds after the action in the previous game stopped, so I guess you could say it’s the final chapters of Assassin’s Creed 2. The biggest selling point of Brotherhood is the multiplayer aspect, but surprisingly, it’s not the biggest part of the game; Brotherhood still has a fairly chunky single player campaign. Let’s take a stab at reviewing this game, shall we? More after the jump.
Forgotten some of the highlights and lowlights of 2010? Fear not, the omnipotent Google has you covered. In Zeitgeist 2010: How the world searched, Google collated the billions of searches they processed into an interactive visualization where you can compare the popularity of some world events as seen by different countries in the world.
In addition to the visualization, Google also created a Zeitgeist 2010 video. From songs about bed intruders, double rainbows, and parping vuvuzelas to more grave concerns about politics, oil spills, and natural disasters Zeitgeist 2010 summarizes some of the major events and people that helped to shape 2010 into the year it turned out to be. Take a look below.
BONUS: Here are Google’s most strangest searches in the United States for 2010:
Because of the slight lack of originality in this game, we’ve decided to inject some originality into the review. So this review will be in the form of an epic poem. The full, poetic review after the break.
Konami has been making Castlevania games for 24 years now. They have legions of fans and followers. I was not one of them, you see when all the cool kids were cracking whips and kicking vampire ass on their NESs and SNESs, I was relegated to the pitiful Sega Master System. Our other reviewer TyrannicalDuck is far more interested in the franchise but sadly he was taken ill with the flu when this review copy of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow arrived. So I thought I’d give it a bash seeing as I’m now a cool adult and possess a console that is able to run the game.
Being a newcomer to the franchise I have no preconceived notions of what a Castlevania game should be, and having chatted to TyrannicalDuck it seems people are wondering how this can be called a Castlevania game when there isn’t a hint of free-roaming nor does perpetual antagonist Dracula show up as the end-of-game boss. Another thing, it’s not canon – this reboot by relatively unknown developer, MercurySteam, has nothing to do with the rest of the franchise. OK, fine. Instead of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow we could call it Gabriel “Lesley” Belmont: Melancholy Monster Slayer but it still won’t change the fact that it’s an absolutely fantastic game. So now, you know my feeling about it right off the whip. If that’s all the affirmation you need then feel free to stop reading here and hunt down the game at the nearest shop, but if you want to hear more about the innards of this entertaining action adventure title, then my review continues after the jump.
Set 150 years from now, assuming 2160 AD, there was a colossal war on planet Earth. Combat mechs were designed to play out the war, but when it ended, nobody told them. Now these mechs ravage the lands, still following their century old instruction.
Our story starts you off as a prisoner on a Pyramid slaver ship. The hero then attempts to trail another prisoner who had a head-start on the escape and ends up being ejected off the ship with the aid of a escape pod (I say aid very lightly), to notice that the young woman has beaten him to it.
After the hard crash landing you wake up in a blur to find that she has equipped your forehead with an electronic crown of sorts. It turns out that it is a slave device, which commands you to the will of the slaver. She announces herself as Trip, a member of one of the larger tribes left on earth, who now wants to make her way home with our help. Not that we have a choice, because no one likes dying from an aneurism.
The hero, Monkey (Voiced by Andy “Gollum” Serkis), is a wanderer who travels the land for food and fuel, is now bound to Trip. Equipped with a plasma staff he has to battle his way through impossible battles with mechs of all proportions. The staff also doubles as a rifle of sorts where he is able to target and shoot enemies from a distance.
The +1, Trip (Voiced by Lindsay Shaw), is a computer wizard who helps Monkey through the adventure in every aspect. Be it with scanning environments, combat assistance, or just generally not getting involved.
Alright it is time now to get into the “nitty gritty” of things. The adventure continues after the jump.
However right or wrong, I tend to use Rotten Tomatoes as a yardstick when it comes to deciding whether I want to watch a movie. They’ve not always been right, for example Enduring Love garnered 61% and when I saw it I would have rather poked a bear in the testicles, an experience would have been far more pleasurable that what I saw on the big screen. In any case, sometimes you don’t want (or need) to read a lengthy dissertation about a movie by some pompous critic, you want to know what people on the street think about it.
Christopher Nolan’s Inception just released this weekend and in case you wanted to forgo the critics’ thoughts (spoiler: they liked it) and opt for opinions in 140 characters or less, then you’ve come to the right place. We’ve searched high and low on Twitter, from the mother city to eGoli to Polokwane for what South African tweeple are saying about Inception. You might think our sampling might be confirmation bias, but I assure you it’s not – of the tweets we found, only two people fell asleep and Sentletse Diakanyo from Thought Leader seems to have left before it ended – perhaps he couldn’t hold his pee in any longer.
Just watched Inception again…. Awesome… Again… Go watch it…. Now!
Cuan Robertson
Q121
A dream within a dream within a dream… within a dream. Inception – Genius filmmaking. Entertaining. Very clever! See it!
Scott Cooper
scottcooper_
So went to watch Inception. The movie is rather good, but it didnt prevent a guy from falling asleep. Could hear him snore
Kruger
MrGKruger
See a few more reactions after the jump.
OK, let’s get down to business. In Darksiders by Vigil Games, you play the role of War, one of the biblical “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse”. You have been mistakenly summoned to Earth where an almighty battle between Heaven and Hell is taking place. Having interfered with something you shouldn’t have, you are summoned to the “headmaster’s office”, given a severe talking to, and stripped of your awesome powers. As a last chance at redemption, you request to be sent back to Earth to find out who was responsible for bringing on the apocalypse prematurely. Darksiders chronicles your journey through god forsaken, scorched lands, ravaged citadels, subterranean lairs, and dusty plains in a quest for answers.
Let’s go through the mechanics that make up the soul of this a “whodunit” hack and slash extravaganza. Hit the jump to read the rest of the review.