The arguments over piracy are never-ending. From the legality to the methods, people will continue to argue over downloading copyrighted content till winter comes (and then some). The debate just got a boost recently, when news started making the rounds singling out Game of Thrones as the most-pirated show this year. In fact, the April 30th episode received 2.5 million downloads in the first day it was up. Erik Kain called out HBO themselves, saying “they have only themselves to blame.” In addition, HBO co-president Eric Kessler’s quote from November has been brought back up, where he stated that “cord-cutting” is a fad and that customers will flock back to cable once the economy settles. Read more…
The Minecraft money train keeps on rolling: on Wednesday, Minecraft released for the Xbox 360. Pretty cool, right? Especially for Notch and Microsoft as the game has already sold more than any other digital game on Xbox Live Arcade, in just the first 24 hours. Notch reported that the game has already become profitable, which is no surprise. It isn’t even updated to the same version as the PC game (it’s based on a year-old update of Minecraft and will be getting the other content later in updates), which just goes to show how popular Minecraft still is. 400,000 players popular, that is. Read more…
I’m not a huge Assassin’s Creed fan – I always had a hard time getting into the series. This trailer for Assassin’s Creed III, though, has me intrigued. The new animation engine for the game looks great as the main character, Connor, dashes about enemies and skewers them with ease. I’m also interested in escaping through buildings and ditching pursuers, as shown in the trailer. Can you do this with almost any house, or are they specific events? Oh, and fix some of those tree branches, Ubisoft: they’re much too straight.
I love how papercraft has been really picking up steam and becoming popular. It’s really incredible to see some of the things people make, and not all of it is the traditional boxy models. Cameron Garland has made a “papersculpt,” which is layers of paper laid on top of one another to give a dimensional feel to the creation. This Zelda: Twilight Princess set of weapons and items he created are super-detailed – they almost looked like drawings to me at first. It was on sale for $300, but it looks like someone has already gotten to it. Now this is giving me the urge to get out my X-acto knife and try doing it myself! Read more…
If you polled kids and asked them about their favorite fictional characters, I’m gonna guess Darth Vader and Batman would be pretty high up on the list. Now if you combine the two? You get the Darth Knight, an amazingly detailed custom action figure by John Harmon at Mint Condition Customs. This model stands 6 inches tall and would probably eat your other action figures for breakfast. If you were wanting to get your hands on this figure, though, you’re out of luck, as he’s already been sold. Better get cracking on making your own! Read more…
Here’s a great weekend-capper: Rickonami on YouTube has recreated the Star Fox intro using CGI. Yup, the whole thing, and he’s done an excellent job with it! This single video has made me more nostalgic for Star Fox than the recent Star Fox 64 3DS remake, so that’s saying something. I do like that he included the slightly-creepy-but-still-endearing puppets of the Star Fox crew as the profile images – it adds to the awesome factor. I hope to see more fantastic work from Rickonami in the future… he’s got talent!
I’ll be honest, I’m still a little pessimistic about the upcoming Amazing Spider-Man film. But this trailer has gone a long way to give me something to look forward to. The cinematography in particular is really great, and seeing Spidey swing through the streets of New York with such style makes me happy. At least we’ll get some good eye candy out of this. The Amazing Spider-Man releases on July 3rd, this summer.
For the 30th anniversary of Macross this year, what better way to celebrate than with a life-size, 1/1 scale VF-25 Valkyrie? Yup, that’s right – and it looks amazing too, as if could actually lift off from that room. This elaborate model is on show in Ikebukuro, Tokyo till May 6th, and then in Nagoya June 1st to 3rd, along with the rest of a huge Macross exhibit. Full-size statues of Lynn Minmay, Sheryl Nome, and Ranka Lee are also featured. You can get your photo taken in the hand of the Valkyrie, but sadly I don’t believe you can sit in the cockpit. Still, it’s an impressive model and the exhibit seems packed with content! Read more…
After much guessing, Game Informer’s exclusive cover story for their upcoming issue is none other than the heavily-rumored Elder Scrolls Online, a new MMO set in the expansive Elder Scrolls world. The MMO will encompass all of Tamriel, such as Elsweyr, Skyrim, and beyond. The setting, however, is a millenium before the events of the last Elder Scrolls game, Skyrim, allowing for plenty of new and different settings. I’m interested in how this will play out, as I’m not sure an Elder Scrolls MMO is necessarily the next step. The game is set for 2013 on both PC and Mac. Read more…
Episode 1: Our first ever special guest, Jake Thomas, joins us!
It’s the first (official) episode of Fanboy.com’s Fanocracy Podcast! Ben and Tim chat with special guest Jake Thomas about Prometheus, the Avengers, cameras, acting, and more! Tune in each week for discussion and news… or ranting and raving! Click here to subscribe to us via iTunes and listen on your iPod, iPad, or computer! Or, hit the jump and stream it directly in your browser! Read more…
EVE Online has always been fascinating to me, mainly due to the open nature of the digital economy it has. Anyone can do anything they’d do in real life – sell goods, steal goods, attempt to control a resource in high demand – it’s all possible. So for your lazy Sunday, take a look at this: EVE Online is currently going through a massive upheaval as a powerful federation called Goonswarm (a player-created federation, by the way) is killing anyone in the trading hub Jita. This is the final piece in a massive plan by Goonswarm to control alloy prices and become the sole provider right before the EVE expansion, Inferno, is released. And the game’s creators are going to stand by and watch it all happen. Read more…
That doesn’t mean it doesn’t look fun, though! Sony recently announced a new PS3 game that will finally combine all your favorite first-party Playstation characters into one fighting brawler. Wanted to have Fat Princess fight Kratos? Done. Parappa the Rapper versus Sly Cooper? It can happen. If you like the gameplay of Smash Bros. Brawl, then you’ll feel right at home here. No news on a release date yet, but I’m sure we’ll hear more at E3. Read more…
You’re going to have to forgive me for bringing up Portal 2 again so soon, because this new trailer featuring J.K. Simmons reprising his role as Cave Johnson is hilarious. If you pay attention to the computer screens, you can also catch a short glimpse of Meet the Pyro, Valve’s final short film for Team Fortress 2. I must also admit, the idea of utilizing alternate earths as gardens for harvesting creative ideas while never paying for them is very clever. However, what if the earth creating that idea is already being used by another earth for their ideas? It boggles the mind. I think.
The last G.I. Joe film was poor, in my opinion. It tried to run with the concept to seriously, which thankfully, the sequel doesn’t do. Instead, it embraces the silliness inherent in G.I. Joe and goes full-blast into the hectic action and crazy battles. I’m actually interested in Retaliation (although, as a silly action film, but there’s nothing wrong with that). Check out this latest trailer – it shows off the crazy stunts and ridiculous story – and who doesn’t want to see The Rock and Bruce Willis kick butt together?
I like Ridley Scott. I like his films. Apparently, these actors love Ridley too. A lot. Of course, it’s just how the featurette is cut, I’m sure, but the real news here is the excellent look at the sets and process behind Prometheus, Ridley’s latest sci-fi film. I’ve always admired Ridley’s desire to stick with traditional sets. Building the environments for the actors to actually move around in helps a great deal in enhancing the believability of a film. I’m interested in seeing how it all pans out when the film finally releases on June 8th.
I know a lot of you have been interested in Valve’s teasing of a map creation tool for their ace 2011 first-person puzzler, Portal 2. It was one of my favorite games to come out last year, so more free downloadable content is always welcome. Valve has officially announced the “Portal 2 Perpetual Testing Initiative” which will allow players to create and share their custom-made maps. You’ll be able to easily pull new levels from the Steam Workshop – with a single click it’ll be added to the game next time you start it. Read more…
God of War is back in prequel form with God of War: Ascension for PS3 – and Kratos still seems kind of pissed. According to the trailer, this game will take place before the events of the original trilogy, possibly when Kratos was serving under Ares. Of course, like any announcement trailer, there’s no gameplay and it’s all CGI. I wonder, though, do we need another God of War game? Probably not, but I suppose the demand is there. I hope they’ll spice things up a bit and try some new things with the series this time around!
Yesterday, Nintendo announced that the 3DS will be receiving a sequel to New Super Mario Bros., the best-selling DS title (and a Wii sequel that also sold gangbusters). New Super Mario Bros. 2 will arrive in August worldwide, and it looks like more of the same old Mario. The NSMB line of games have always been great, although I feel the art style isn’t nearly as solid as Super Mario Galaxy’s. But for you fans of older Mario games, the P-meter is back, as well as the Raccoon Tail and bolted blocks. And I must say, that logo is rather eye-catching – I like it! Read more…
Is winter coming? Watch plastic bleed as HDMprojects on YouTube recreates the Game of Thrones Season 1 trailer with Playmobil figures in one of the cutest renditions of Game of Thrones I’ve seen in a while. It’s probably just because they’re all smiling the whole time – endearing, or just creepy? It’s also surprisingly accurate, all the way down to the lighting and environments. The real question is, though, would you re-watch the whole series like this? Read more…
Wanted to get some of the Diablo 3 beta action but haven’t gotten in yet? Well, your good buddies at Blizzard are opening up the floodgates and letting everyone play the beta this weekend, until Monday, April 23rd at 10am PDT. You can play as five classes and up to level 13, according to the official blog. It’s mostly just a stress-test to see how the servers handle the load of new players (so it may be up or down sometimes), but hey, why complain when you can test the game for free? Start downloading here! Read more…
Consider this another bizarre cross-promotion from Japan. Sega had previously featured model Yukie Kawamura in their Japanese advertisements, apparently with much success, because they’re bring her back, but this time as a Super Monkey Ball Vita map. Now you can roll down Yukie’s face, beside her image plastered on the skybox, and down her… breasts? This is just silly, especially given how amateur the map looks – it’s as though all they did was a quick texture-swap and called it a day. How bizarre! Watch out for some mildly questionable images below. Read more…
Bethesda recently released a new trailer for Dishonored, their latest action game. It’s a first-person shooter, but you also have magic and technical abilities at your disposal, similar to Bioshock’s setup. The game will allow you to sneak up on enemies and eliminate them stealthily or simply run-and-gun everyone down. Although, a lot of games promise this level of choice, but don’t always fulfill it, so let’s hope Dishonored does. Apparently Half-Life 2’s art director is working on it, and you can definitely see some similarities. So: this looks great – now how about some actual gameplay? Read more…
I try not to share too many Kickstarters, if only for the fact that most are pie-in-the-sky dream ideas with poor planning or bad concepts. There are still plenty of good ones (ie, Double Fine) that have had success, but as always, remember: you are donating. Anyway, enough from me – instead, here’s a solid-looking Kickstarter called Pebble. It’s an e-paper watch with bluetooth support to hook up to your smartphone, and thus can run useful apps and display notifications (it vibrates, too). Another neat fact: the battery lasts roughly 7 days – not bad! Read more…
This is really impressive: to help promote The Phantom Menace’s 3D re-release in Germany, LEGO model creators Rene Hoffmeister and Lorenz Lnggrtnr made something amazing. An enormous diorama featuring 4 Star Wars settings (Hoth, Tatooine, Naboo, and the Death Star) and then hooked it up to a keyboard. The highest bricks rotate around the barrel and bump little sensors that then hit the correct key on the keyboard, thus playing the Main Theme of Star Wars. Watch the video above to see it in action! Read more…
