Feb

16

2010

Gaming

Spirit for iPhone and iPod Touch

A few days ago a friend of mine, Marco Mazzoli, released his first iPhone/iPod Touch game called ‘Spirit‘.

It really is a great game, one which I thoroughly recommend and I’m not just saying that because Marco will find out where I live, and beat me to death with a sock full of batteries while I sleep if I don’t… is a friend but because it looks great, it’s very slick and the gameplay is incredibly more-ish.

Previously, you’d have to go along to the iTune Store page and stare vacantly at the screenshots presented there, trying to imagine what those lovely images would look like if only they moved… as if by magic! Well, not any more as Marco has put together a video of the gameplay and made it available on YouTube.

Now, in theory, I should be able to embed it on this post…

Phew!

So, as you can see, an excellent game and definitely one you should rush off and purchase right now! Especially since it’s still available for the low, low price of  $0.99 / £0.59!

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Oct

24

2008

Movies

Extended Watchmen trailer

Watchmen film stripThat March 2009 release date of Watchmen can’t come fast enough and to make sure you count every single damn second, that bastard Zack Snyder put together an extended version of the original trailer for Spike’s Scream Awards. The peeps over at FirstShowing.net were kind enough to have a wobbly cam footage of it but have recently updated their page with a lovely high quality direct feed version. Enjoy.

Featuring a few extra scenes shuffled amongst the ones from the previous trailer, this new preview certainly helps cement my faith that the finished product will be a definite step up from previous translations of Alan Moore’s work to the big screen. Sure, the tank scene looks like it might have been sponsered by Airfix but the new footage featuring Rorschach is excellent. You actually get to see his mask close enough to notice it changing patterns, something I hoped they wouldn’t mess up. And they haven’t.

So roll on March 2009, as I for one can’t wait to be watching the Watchmen.

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Jul

17

2008

Movies

Watchmen trailer

Watchmen TrailerTwo posts in one day? Unheard of! But being a big, fat fanboy, I felt I had to at least mention the first trailer for Zack Snyder’s take on Watchmen. Playing on the front of some film or other called ‘The Dark Knight‘ (presumably a sequel to Martin Lawrence’s ‘Black Knight‘), this is our first chance to see the comic book -> big screen adaptation in motion… if you haven’t been eagerly consuming the behind-the-scenes ‘webisodes’, I guess.

So how does it look? Well, I’ve very, very hopeful after seeing the trailer. Whenever something you’ve loved in another medium crosses over to film, you tend to get wary – and often, justifiably so. The people responsible talk a good game. They’ll harp on about sticking true to the source material and capturing it’s essence but then they just go off and produce their own bullshit take on the story, ignoring what you loved about the original, throwing out key elements due to budget, pacing or sheer-fucking-stupidity and drowning it in crowd-pleasing filler.

But it seems like we’re in for a treat this time round. The set shots have been true to Dave Gibbons‘ artwork, with the same muted colour scheme and design throughout. Dr. Manhattan looks the business and the scene from the trailer with three of him just captures the character’s expressions from the comic book perfectly. There’s even rumours abound that the comic book’s original ending might survive. For those in the know, that should be interesting.

So pop along to FirstShowing.net (a site you really ought to bookmark if you haven’t already) to check out the trailer.

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Jul

15

2008

Gaming

The Sims 3 E3 trailer

The Sims 3 at E3So E3 is upon us again with it’s usual glut of high hopes and crushing disappointments. Maybe I’m just bitter that the best I can manage is watching the various game site feeds showing the announcements and key notes by industry giants instead of being there in person, but it does seem we build E3 up to be some amazing font of new information and sneak peeks. Instead, it’s usually a lot of worthless posturing, statistics massaging and information that we’ve had for weeks.

As much is true of this new trailer for The Sims 3 that EA pimped during their little showcase. Still a long way off (2009 – I guess they’ve got a couple of expansions they want to wring from the stone that is The Sims 2), it’s claim-to-fame is the boast that The Sims 3 opens the doors for your little ‘digital you’ and allows them to explore their surroundings. Given your Sim’s need to ‘go bathroom’ every 14.7 seconds, hopefully the surroundings are full of W.Cs or, at the very least, that the very first store you encounter on your journey sells adult diapers.

I’m still looking at The Sims 3 with some suspicion, though. The open-world feature is basically just taking the training wheels off of the earlier outings – removing the loading screens and allowing you to explore other ‘lots’. Sure, linking them all together into one streamed world would be nice but does it merit a ‘3′? The fact they’re not plugging any other features at this point also makes me worry that they’re simply going to drip-feed them to the public when they inevitably reset the expansions counter back to zero upon launch.

Probably being cynical but after showing their hand twice now, I’d be a fool to expect EA intends anything else – especially when we’ve already proved we’re ready to snap it up and ask for seconds (or even thirds). The new trailer can be found on the official The Sims 3 site.

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Jul

11

2008

Gaming

Another Persona 4 trailer

Persona 4 Box ArtHot on the heels of the announcement the other day dating the US release of Persona 4 (official site here), Atlus have put out another trailer, this time showing off some of the characters you’ll be scampering around dungeons with.

Of course. with the game being released in Japan yesterday (lucky sods *cough* sorry), I’m guessing this is one of those final marketing pushes just to keep the game in the public eye but I’m still happy to see new artwork and scenes from the game anyway. Even happier if we got a European confirmation for the game seeing our shores (or even, *gasp*, a date for it’s arrival) but you take what you can.

The characters seem to be matching the standard archetypes introduced with Persona 3 but I guess that’s to be expected and not really a bad thing. School setting, small town environments and what appears to be another holiday locale – great stuff, can’t wait.

The video is only a YouTube affair so fairly blocky but better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, eh? You can find it here…

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Jul

7

2008

Gaming

Persona 4 US dated

Persona 4 TVJoystiq (and a few other places around the net) are reporting that the continuation of my current favourite JPRG series, Persona 4, should be hitting North American shores on the 9th December 2008. Of course, Japan will be getting their sweaty mitts on the title within mere days (10th July!) and no word of a European release as of yet (think sometime late 2009 knowing the delays we usually face in such matters).

Still, it’s nice to see some firm dates and signs of movement even if it isn’t for my local brethren specifically.

But that’s not all – along with the date there’s also news that “each copy of the game will come bundled with a soundtrack CD featuring “select music” from the title“. The music to Persona 3 really stood out for me, both fitting and strangely infectious. It’s rare I find myself humming music I hear in games but Persona 3 had just such a soundtrack. As Shoji Meguro will be returning to take up the music director reins, hearing Atlus are bunging in a ‘free’ soundtrack taster CD in with the package is great.

And still there’s more. The Joystiq snippet features a nice blurry YouTube English language promotional trailer just to get you wishing it was December already. You can find the article (and the English language trailer) in question here.

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Apr

4

2008

Movies

New Hellboy II: The Golden Army trailer

Hellboy II: The Golden ArmyThe first Hellboy movie was a bit of a perfect storm thing for me. Always been a big fan of Mike Mignola’s Hellboy comics, Ron Perlman was the perfect (only?) choice to star and Guillermo del Toro has been a favourite director of mine with films like Cronos and Blade II. Throw in a bit of John Hurt and Jeffrey Tambor and you can’t go wrong. The film didn’t disappoint and I’ve been eagerly awaiting a sequel ever since.

The new trailer really, really isn’t making that wait go any faster, I can tell you. The gang is back (joined by ex-pop imp, Luke Goss – who was also great in Blade II with Ron & Guillermo), and from the trailer, the action and the special effects have certainly been taken up a notch. The film is set to open (over here in the UK) at the end of August and I can’t wait.

It’s certainly going to be a good year for comic book heroes in the movies. The other big film I’m itching to see is Iron Man. The trailers have looked excellent and generally, Robert Downey Jr. can do no wrong for me. I’m actually looking forward to those two films a touch more than the new Batman flick, The Dark Knight. I thoroughly enjoyed the first film of the reboot but I dunno, this one just isn’t sparking for me as much. I think it lost a little shine when they were pimping out the Bat-bike (sorry, I mean ‘Bat Pod‘). Yeah, yeah, people perked up and took notice when you unveiled the new Batmobile but don’t make the vehicle ‘the thing’. Motorbike + Cape, not good.

Anyhoo, if you haven’t discovered the link to the trailer amidst the ‘link-arrhea’ of this post, you can get to it here. Enjoy!

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Mar

19

2008

Gaming

Persona 4 trailer

Persona 4 TVOne detail I left out of the post yesterday was that the DVD that came with the magazine contained a ‘trailer’ for Persona 4. It hadn’t made a break onto the interwebs at the time and there was no indication if or when it would. Anyhoo, it has.

‘Trailer’ might be the wrong word for it as weighing in at 17 minutes, it’s more like an presentation, or an introduction to the new world and characters of Persona 4. Summary? It’s definitely more of the same. With no way to read the text and a complete lack of understanding of the language, from what I saw it seems our protagonist moves to a rural town, makes new friends and gets drawn into some bizarre occurrences. And, of course, everyone discovers a previously unknown ability.

The long-nosed ‘mentor’ and his entourage is back, riding in what appears to be a limo. School life again seems central as does making social links and discovering back-stories to gain abilities. We see some trotting around a typical looking Persona dungeon, the cards make a re-appearance and so does the disturbing mask-wearing gloop. Of course, now I’m just depressed that it’ll probably be a year or more until I see an English language version of this game (best case scenario – worse case, they don’t bother). *sigh*

Anyway, if YouTube don’t get bullied into taking it down (magazines really don’t like their exclusives plastered all over the interwebs, strangely enough), you can find the ‘trailer’ here.

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