Dota 2 (Defense of the Ancients) is hugely popular online. The action real-time strategy game genre is a massive industry with an enormous player-bases, and Dota 2, despite still being in beta, is already a major force and one of the most-played games on Steam. Valve, after picking up the creators of the original mod, made it into a polished, full-fledged game and now they want to document it. Not the game development, though – the players themselves. The doc will follow the lives of 5 professional gamers, their struggles and triumphs. Watch the full trailer after the break! Read more…
How would you like to have Game of Thrones-favorite, Tyrion Lannister, as a statue for your desk or display case? Dark Horse will soon be releasing a 10-inch figure of “the Imp” on February 20th featuring Tyrion in his ‘battle pose’ as he leads the defense of King’s Landing. While it’s great to see a model of Tyrion, it still looks a little off in the face to me. Perhaps I’m just spoiled by Hot Toy’s face sculpting! Tyrion Lannister will retail for $199.99 and can be pre-ordered here. Read more…
Remember that gorgeous Zelda art book released in Japan, Hyrule Historia? It unveiled, after all the long years of debate, the official Zelda timeline, and most shocking of all, it made sense. Mostly. Sadly it was only for Japan, leaving you with the options of importing it or reading about it online. However now Dark Horse has production descriptions listing the book for January 29th, 2013 at $34.99, confirming it will come out here in the US. That’s still a ways away, but confirmation is always great. The full product description is below, if you’d like to hear more. Read more…
Two big games got new cinematics this week to promote their updates! World of Warcraft has upcoming Mists of Pandaria expansion, and their opening video is mighty impressive – no matter how much you complain about Kung-Fu Panda. On the other end, Team Fortress 2’s Mann VS. Machine update went live recently and the new short featuring Red and Blu Team partnering against a robot menace is also quite cool. When will Blizzard and Valve just make us some straight-up CGI feature-length films? Come on! Read more…
Kickstarters can be annoying sometimes, given their popularity, but a ton of good still comes out of it, such as John Kricfalusi’s Cans Without Labels. Based on his own father’s penny-saving habit of buying food cans lacking their labels, John wanted to finish his latest cartoon using the help of the internet, and he got plenty of it. They’ve reached their Kickstarter goal of $110,000 and have gone a little over, too. There’s still a few days left if you’d like to donate and get in on the Kickstarter rewards. Watch the video above for John to sell you on the concept better than I ever could – plus he’s a great storyteller!
Valve has been known to love their ARGs (alternate reality game), and on Saturday they launched what they called their most “fiendishly difficult” ARG yet, involving roughly 5000 pieces of data to decode and collect. You had to download strange files, equip rare items in-game, and then high-five other players while wearing said items, all wrapped in codes and riddles. Their blog says they were worried it might take a while for the community to solve it, but they pieced the puzzle together in a stunning 12 hours. The ARG unveiled a new online comic for TF2 that indicates big things in the ever-popular free-to-play game. And the comic is pretty freaking hilarious too, so check it out!
Posted by Ben Huber on Aug 12, 2012 in Cinema, Fandom
After threatening to destroy a city and nearly doing so, you would imagine the penalty for a supervillain would be pretty severe. And it is! Just not how you might expect. Let’s just say Bane has a lot of community service lined up. Starring Chris Kattan of Saturday Night Live as the recovering Bane (who does a pretty good job with the voice), this short ends up being pretty clever. Just don’t get stuck in traffic with him.
Take a moment next time you watch E.T. or Alien, and really pay attention to the effects that helped make those movies so memorable, because you’re looking at the work of Carlo Rambaldi. He designed the cuddly extra-terrestrial from Steven Spielberg’s film, among many other popular works. He also famously created the effects for 1971’s A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin dog mutilation scenes, which at the time, were considered so realistic the film’s director was prosecuted for animal cruelty, only to be proved innocent by Rambaldi’s film props. He passed away at 86 after a long illness, and will be dearly missed.
Looking for something to add that extra ‘oomph’ to your Angry Birds gameplay on PC? I know, I know, don’t look at me like that. Sure, it’s Angry Birds, but the real story here is ingenuity: Andrew Spitz and Hideaki Matsui worked together to create a fully-functioning electronic slingshot for the popular game. If there was ever a project that needed to be on Kickstarter, this is it. Check out the video detailing the device after the break. Read more…
This is probably the best thing we’ll see all weekend: watch this new Funny of Die short featuring Sir Patrick Stewart as Ticket-Tooth Phillip, the best ticket scalper to ever walk the streets of London, along with his assistant Maisie Williams (aka Arya Stark). It’s incredibly hilarious, especially to see who they encounter along the way – mainly, Simon Pegg and Ryan Lochte. I won’t spoil any of the jokes, but I do love that these actors and athletes get in on little films like this. It’s a nice diversion! Now, can someone please get Sir Patrick Stewart in Game of Thrones? Thanks.
This is one of the more impressive and better mashups I’ve seen in recent times: The Game Station and Country Club’s Fistful of Rupees fan film. Combining westerns with The Legend of Zelda series, they do a great job of making something entertaining and fun, yet not embarrassing, like so many other fan films. Particularly the costume design – that poncho that Link is wearing is incredibly cool, and needs to be a real thing, pronto. I wouldn’t even wear it, but I want it. The whole film is split into 3 parts and spans a little over 20 minutes. Parts 2 and 3 are after the break! Read more…
Warner Bros. sure does want to make a Justice League film. After their darling, Christopher Nolan, has said he’s done with superhero films, they began searching for someone else to take the reigns of their comic book properties. And with the success of The Avengers, they’re eyeing the pie quite hungrily. Now, according to Variety, they’ve approached Ben Affleck about directing the Justice League film. Whether he’ll accept or not is up in the air, but in the meantime you can try and imagine how Affleck’s League might turn out!
Sometimes I see something both cool and bizarre – this is one of them. We seems to distance natural materials from our technology and gadgets (maybe all that wood panelling on our old cars turned us off from that for a long while) but this sandblasted wood grain overlaid on keyboard keys makes a lot of sense. Designed by Michael Roopenian, the tactile nature of it allows your fingers to more easily find the keys you’re looking for as you learn the layout. Although it’s just a prototype at this point, I’d love to see it become a real product someday. Read more…
Portal 2 had some great characters, and Harry Callagan (Harry101UK) wanted to try his hand at them too. So why not create a CGI fan-film? This 5-minute long video features some of the best Personality Cores from Portal 2, as well as a few Harry created on his own, to add to the cast. He spent three week making this along with a few friends, and it turned out fantastic! I can’t wait to see what else he creates in the future.
I know a lot of you out there love your Shenmue, so how about an officially licensed Hazuki Tiger hoodie from Insert Coin and SEGA? This is a pretty great rendition of Ryo Hazuki’s iconic jacket, but now in hoodie form! It’s hard to find well-made and good-looking game inspired clothing, so this is a pretty neat find. Check it out here for £35.00 in a variety of sizes.
That’s one of the most grandiose claims in this latest trailer for Assassin’s Creed III from Ubisoft. While most of this is just a deep-voiced announcer selling the bullet points for the game, it is quite interesting to see how the AnvilNext engine can handle both large amounts of NPCs and complex terrain. All this said, Assassin’s Creed III is the first Assassin’s Creed game I’m actually excited for.
Since everyone seems to be complaining or celebrating the news that Fox is pushing forward with a Prometheus sequel, I thought I would try to bring a different opinion to the table. While having Michael Fassbender (the best character of Prometheus) and Noomi Rapace return along with director Ridley Scott is good news in my book, I can understand why people may be hesitant about the return to the Alien universe. However, I think a sequel will actually end up solving several problems that existed in the first film. Spoilers for the end of Prometheus after the break! Read more…
Who knew that the lyrics from Pokemon’s opening theme, Gotta Catch ‘Em All, lined up so well with Adele’s Rolling in the Deep? Ian Bonds did (aka Insane Ian) and with some help from his girlfriend’s vocal talents, he created this very clever and well-done parody song. Is it just me or have fan-made parody songs been really well done this past year?
Taken has been a bit of a subject recently with Taken 2 slowly creeping over the horizon. And why not? Liam Neeson killing people and generally being awesome is worth watching. But CaptainHippo takes a look at what would happen in real life if you were kidnapped – and your real father was put in Neeson’s situation. Would he come dashing to rescue you in a bloody murder spree? Or perhaps get to it after he fixed the spouts. He still hasn’t fixed those spouts, has he…
I know many of you are really hyped for the return of Doctor Who this fall. BBC knows it too, and this new trailer for season 7 runs the gamut of episode stories, from “holy crap that’s a ton of Daleks” to “dinosaurs on a spaceship” to “dark, dramatic, body-carrying.” I think it’s an easy thing to say that this upcoming season seems to have a little bit of something for everyone. Looks to be another fantastic ride!
Flickr user _Tiler has been getting some attention recently, and rightly so: his small LEGO models, while made of only a few parts, have a striking amount of detail and character! Ranging in subjects from The Dark Knight Rises, Blade Runner, and The Fifth Element, I’d hope LEGO would take note of these, as they’d make great sets, especially as stocking stuffers or the like. Click through for a mini-gallery! Read more…
You may have caught the news from Comic-Con that VIZ Media’s catalog (via their new app Neon Alley) and the Crunchyroll app would be debuting on the Playstation 3 this fall. Great news for anime fans who want to watch their latest streaming shows on their HDTV, but that’s not what I wanted to bring up. IGN recently took a look at Crunchyroll’s app, and while the app seems to have all the necessary features, it lacks in one prominent area: it can only play video in 480p. Hopefully this will change before release! Read more…
Bioware cinematic designer James McVinnie was excited by the prospect of Source Filmmaker – it’s an easy-to-use tool allowing someone to make digital movies using game models. Combined with motion-tracking from two Kinects, he created Practical Problems, a short TF2 film in which two Engineers duke it out. It’s really quite cute, and shows the potential of Source Filmmaker to open up the animation world. Many of these videos are mighty impressive, and they’re onlygetting better!
I don’t think we expected much else, but Collider recently reported that Indiana Jone’s producer, Frank Marshall, said just that: to him, Indy has taken his last ride. I’m sure some fans might’ve wished for a better ending to the series than Crystal Skull, but I think another film might hurt more than help. We had heard inklings that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg had been thinking about another film, but Marshall says there’s “no idea, no Macguffin.” Maybe we’ll hear more in the future, but I’m fine with this – you got a solid three movies, Indy. You’re set, in my book.
