This week we welcome our good pal Dave Lovelock, and things get a bit fake racist.
New On-Set Photos Of The Batmobile
As you may have guessed from the title of the article, we’ve got more pics of the Batmobile. Images have emerged from the Detroit set of Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice with a look at Batman’s new ride. And my oh my does it look awesome.
Obviously it pays some homage to the Tumbler of Nolan’s films. With the knowledge that this is an older and grimmer Batman, it makes sense that he’d go for something that could both take and dish out a beating and Nolan’s militaristic Tumbler certainly fit that bill. But for a closer comparison, you really need to take a look at the Batmobile we’re going to be seeing in the upcoming Batman: Arkham Knight game.
There’s definitely a resemblance there. Either way, regardless of what influences Zack Snyder and co. drew on for the design of the new car, it is undeniably epic in looks. It’s like they combined the Tumbler with a cruise missile and then invited a fighter jet to the party, you know, just because. It’s sleek and sexy and I may have just gained an understanding of that whole mechanophilia thing…Annnyyway, quickly sidestepping that disturbing thought, you can see the rest of the pictures below and see Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice in cinemas in March, 2016.
UPDATE: The Batman V Superman team, in answer to the leaked pictures emerging, have now released this rather tasty, official image of the new Batmobile.
Concept Art for Bettany’s Vision in Avengers 2 Doesn’t Disappoint
Avengers: Age of Ultron has so very much in store for us but there is the inclusion of one particular character that has been the subject of much excitement and speculation. Paul Bettany (A Knights Tale, Priest), who has voiced the character JARVIS in four Marvel films, levelled up with his casting as Vision – the superhero-ing android. Since then there has been much banter as to whether the makers will stick to the traditional garb and red face which makes the character instantly recognisable.
The wait is over! We first got a fuzzy reveal when instagrammar Yeongjip Kim posted this image of himself in front of a banner featuring the Avengers plus Vision. Wooo! I hear you cry, he does definitely have a red face and the costume ain’t bad either, it’s hard to judge just how bright the colours appear on a filter applied Instagram image. Kim’s account has since disappeared of the face of the Earth and I suspect Marvel’s smartly dressed lawyers made an appearance, luckily for us once on the internet forever on the internet.
Yesterday another image appeared thought to be concept art for Sideshow Collectible that will inevitably be used to produce some top notch Marvel merchandise for the film. This better image reveals that Vision is adorned in a beautiful yellow cape, though I miss it not having the flamboyant collar. We have the signature red face and the costume overall contains more red and less yellow. If this remains the final costume design then I think, considering it’s for a live action film, it’s pretty accurate and quite impressive.
Karl Urban speaks about potential Dredd prequel at Chicago Comic Con
2012’s Dredd based on the infamous Judge Dredd, future law man of Mega City One, from British anthology comic 2000AD is one of the best comic to screen adaptations yet, with Karl Urban gaining legions of fans for his portrayal of the stoic judge.
Despite being a hit with critics and 2000AD fans the film was a failure financially this hasn’t stopped fans being vocal about their desire for a follow up though, with an online campaign amassing thousands of signatures. Urban himself has been just as vocal about his desire to don the iconic helmet again earlier in the year at a Star Trek convention he stated that “Conversations” had been happening.
Now Urban has spoken again about the potential for another Dredd film at Chicago Comic Con with the actor saying
“It is more likely that we will do the origins story with Dredd trekking through the Cursed Earth to find the first Chief Judge Fargo.”
In 2000AD’s Judge Dredd Chief Judge Fargo was the first Chief Judge and Judge Dredd was cloned from his DNA. The character featured in the much maligned 1995 film and was played by Max von Sydow. Urban’s statement has major ramifications, if the next Dredd film is a prequel it will mean that Olivia Thirlby’s psychic Judge Andersen is unlikely to appear as she was a rookie in the 2012 film.
Mike’s Magic Reviews: Card Wars
First thing’s first: No, this is not a MTG review but basically Wizards haven’t sent me any goodies since Theros so I can only assume they hate me and will be taking them off my Christmas card list. SO for the time being I will be reviewing any card games I stumble across under Mike’s Magic Reviews purely because It has a cool logo.
Anyway, most of you know that Adventure Time is one of my many vices. GP readers seem to agree with an AT article being the #1 most-read article on the site, which is pretty darn cool. I was hyped about the release of a Card Wars game for a long time and have had to wait for 6 months for the game to reach a place I could get to it and actually demo the damn thing.
Initial thoughts:
IT’S LIKE THE TV IN MY HANDS! It’s pretty cool that you can physically hold the cards as they appeared in the on-screen game. The combat system is the same as the show, as in a turn-based lane . The art is the same, the box is a little flimsy and has an unnecessary hatch opening (as opposed to the normal slide opening) . There are also some weird counters that, even after reading the equally baffling rulebook , I still didn’t understand the purpose of. The colours are vibrant to the point of seeming childish.
Play Test:
The concept of the game is really simple; you have two action points to spend each turn, which you can use to summon monsters, play spells , or draw another card. You then attack the opposing lane, dealing damage to the occupying monsters or the player if the lane is unoccupied. The first to reduce their opponent’s life from 25 to 0 wins.
The games typically last 15-20 minutes and is fairly balanced in terms of force strength between the Finn Deck (who uses blue “plains”) and the Jake Deck (who uses green “cornfields) . Combat is hard to track, but easily rectified if you add a few D6s to track damage.
Room For Improvement:
The combat system seemed a little staid, and due to being quite a regular tabletop gamer I decided to add a d6 combat role into every exchange:
1:miss
2-5: Hit
6: Critical (double damage)
The gameplay could really do with a customisation aspect. Initially you could run two dual colour (plains/corn) decks, but it will still be pretty balanced. The game is crying out for boosters and expansions (there is a BMO/Lady Rainicorn expansion already) but as there are no rarity indicators on the current cards there dosen’t seem to be any plans for this to happen. The main problem is that the game can’t really get more complicated unless you add more lanes. It would be really cool to see dual lane monsters or dual colours. This game seems to be geared specifically for children, and as with most Cryptozoic games. they seemed to have missed the mark a little.
The game would benefit by taking a page from the video game’s book. The Android/Apple game is a big hit, with slightly more complicated rules and a deck building mechanic that feels bespoke. If the physical game could do this, then there could be some longevity. The price (currently £20-25) really needs looking at as well as 120-card MTG dual decks are cheaper, and better.
Terminator: Genisys sequels receive release dates
With Terminator: Genisys – starring Emilia Clarke, Jason Clarke, Jai Courtney, Matt Smith and the veteran Arnold Schwartzenegger – being released in May 2015, there has been a lot of speculation concerning its sequels. According to Paramount, who holds the rights of the franchise, the movie will have two sequels that are to be filmed back to back.
The second movie in the rebooted (soon to be) trilogy would be released in the US on the 19th of May 2017, while the third movie will become available on the 26th of June of the following year. It might seem overly optimistic, given that everything still depends on the reception given to the first movie (but let’s face it, not all Terminator movies were fantastic and yet, it’s not like they’ve stopped making them, right?).
I’m not overly optimistic about its chances at the box-office, but only time will tell. We still have a few years until all this (might) happen. Fingers crossed for The Doctor and the Khalessi to save the world of Terminator. (Yes, yes, I know I’m mixing my fandoms.)
Boss Monster – Retro done right
Boss Monster – A Review
So a few years ago (2012) I heard about this Kickstarter going through the motions, and it appealed to me right away; Retro style gameplay, card based game, two to four players, it looked and sounded awesome. So I followed it through its paces, but like most things Kickstarterish these days, I hate committing my meagre wages to unknown Kickstarters. This is mostly due to the lack of success with Kickstarts. Luckily it succeeded and it’s finally made it way across to the UK, albeit two years later.
Inspired by the classic video games of old, with a twist of fantasy-based dungeon adventures from Dungeons and Dragons, Boss Monster sees you building a dungeon. This is where the twist lies; you’re not building it as a Hero, but as the Villain. That’s right, you want to bring adventurers into your dangerous dungeon and slaughter them. The more you kill, the closer you get to victory, but each Hero that succeeds brings danger. If too many Heroes manage to plunder your dungeon, you will die!
Boss Monster is a card game where two to four players build their dungeons around their “Boss” card, from which you have eight to choose from. Then using a seventy-five card “Room” deck, you go about building your dungeon. Each room card has a treasure value and once you hit the magic number of five rooms, your Boss levels up, activating its ability. All the while two ( or three, or four, dependant on number of players) heroes a turn appear in the local “Town” and then attempt to plunder your treasure from your dungeon. If you take five wounds, you lose. If you manage to acquire ten souls, victory is yours! With spells to throw around, and each room possessing its own abilities, the combinations are near endless. With the varying tactics available, I never got bored playing it, and it’s something that you can set up and start playing within minutes.
I also picked up Tools of Hero-Kind, an add-on to the original, which adds two spells and four advanced rooms to the game. It also adds a new card type to the game; Items. These items automatically latch onto the heroes when they appear in town, making them tougher to deal with. If you do manage to defeat those heroes however, the items become yours to use on your enemies. This adds a fantastic new element to the game, and after using this I can definitely say that the game improved vastly from the vanilla game out of the box. This is a must add-on for anyone who buys, or already owns, Boss Monster.
Overall I am outstandingly happy with my purchase of Boss Monster, and I would whole heartedly advise anyone who loves classic D&D, or playing NES RPGs/side scrollers, to go out and buy it now. It’ll be a walk down memory lane that you will be happy to repeat week after week. Also why not check out their brand new Kickstarter, where they are translating the game to electronic format. Boss Monster is available for between £13-20 depending on location and shop, Tools of Hero-Kind is around £10 as an add-on.
Why Steam is Identical to Real Life
You’re probably reading the title wondering what the hell I am going on about, but looking at my Steam library recently has made me realise that it’s very similar to how people live. No, hear me out, it’s almost identical. Here’s my list of the top five reasons why, so check it out and see if you believe me or not.
5: Space
When you first download Steam it is usually because a certain game you want is on offer, or requires Steam. So you download it and play the game, then you download and play another, and another. Then you continue this until you have so many games that you need to start uninstalling previously played games to make way for newer, better games. They go into your ‘ghost’ library, that library of games that, at any point, you can reinstall for your pleasure. You rarely will, but at least they are there.
This is identical to new cups, pans, plates, glasses, shoes, pants, jumpers etc. You have older ones, that go into boxes, into lofts, into any space that you don’t use. Eventually you’ll put them in the bin/charity shop/car boot – ten years later. You always have that item that you find years later, that you use once or twice and then repeat the same action: box/storage, and forget. Yet you need to make space for more, unlike Steam you can’t bin those nice shoes and pull them out of that bin ten years later. That is one thing Steam has on this scenario, but outside of that, things are identical in real life. I keep finding books, jumpers, t-shirts at my parents house from almost a decade ago. They still fit, but after wearing it once, it’s back in storage.
4: Money
The dreaded Steam Sale is something that almost everyone reading this will know about. It’s that time when that beautiful, green coloured, minus symbol followed by a percentage, tells us how many games we are going to be buying today (yes, daily). People are known to spending hundreds, sometimes thousands, of pounds/dollars/rubels/credits/simoleons on Steam sale games. It creates bankrupt humans. However, thanks to the previous item, when you’re older, those games will still be in virtual storage. Alas the amount of money we spend on Steam games doesn’t always equal the usage.
Sometimes we buy that amazing toaster that can double as a radio, but instead we use our iPhone as a radio. We buy that kettle that tells the time but we don’t look. We buy that beautiful surround sound system for our brand spanking new entertainment complex we built, yet we put our headphones on instead. We spend so much money on stuff we barely use and it’s the same with steam games. Money to entertainment ratio is low here, but as long as we’re getting a bargain, that’s okay. Right?
3: Achievements
You log in and see all of your mates playing that fantastic game. They won’t stop raving about it, but you know it’ll go on sale on Friday. So you wait. Friday comes and goes without any sale price on the game, so you wait another week. After work you come home and, bang, it’s on sale. After purchasing it, downloading it and then launching it, you log in and find your friends teabagging a dead Lvl.1 Boar, with Max level characters, and they’d prefer to mess around dancing for Deckard Cain, rather than show you the awesome world you’ve just downloaded to your PC. You uninstall it, move it to your virtual storage arsenal and rage quit.
Life is always like this. You watch a film and you fakking love it, but months after your mates have seen it, so they’re not interested in talking about it. You listen to that album, it’s ear destroyingly amazing, but your mates think the new one that just came out is better. You finally buy Logan Grimnar, but he has no sleigh and the new one does. Steam doesn’t forgive your lack of gaming knowledge or release dates, it doesn’t care; Gabe just wants your devastated soul. I was lucky enough to have some friends with their finger on the gaming pulse, so I usually caught the games at the right time, but the above has happened to me several times. Don’t worry however, you have the infinite virtual storage that is equal to the amount of space in Steam’s infinite bank account.
2: Time
So you buy that shiny brand new Music Entertainment System that is a six grand iMac with surround sound, 4 petawatt’s of sound power and a 48inch subwoofer. Then you play the Gladiator soundtrack through it, flailing around the room whilst your ears dissolve with the amazing quality of sound. The next day you check Facebook on it, thats the last music it ever played. I am not saying you can’t have that amazing iMac, what you spend your money on is your call. However the frequency that humanity spends buying pretty things and then never using them is a similar vein of the ‘storage’ point, is terrifying.
The amount of time I have purchased a game, installed it, started it and then put it into virtual storage is shocking. I am sure I’m not the only one. Look through your Steam game history and you’ll see a fair few games with an hour or two max played on them. That’s right, not even completed. Don’t panic, your not the only one, there are plenty of people out there who have done the same.
1: Expansion
So you have that new car, but your house looks like something from the industrial wasteland setting from Robocop, so you buy a new house, but now the car looks like Robocop’s car after it gets shot the crap out of it, so you need a new car. Catch 22. Every time you manage to get that PC that runs the game you bought on Steam last month, your PC is old hat. In the time you’ve managed to get a 32gb Graphics card, the new Crytech engine has been released that requires a 64gb Graphics card, meaning you can’t play the next gen games.
It’s a sad state of affairs, but with Steam being used as the current place to release games its not going to stop any time soon, or in the future for that matter. This next picture illustrates, in graphic detail, how most PC gamers feel after a week with a new machine. Luckily you’ll have that infinite storage to hold your games whilst you build the next supercomputer.
Steam is here to stay, no matter what, and I personally love it. It gives me the freedom to purchase games and put them on hold. Granted I miss the huge, hardcase boxes with a floppy (whey!) disc inside and a thick manual to read, but not having to lug them around is a god send. Considering how many games I have on my Steam library, I’d need a small van for the games alone if they were in boxes. Steam provides us with many advantages, and it’s great, but the similarities to life are scary.
All hail Gaben.
Top 5 Game Soundtracks
I love music, it’s the staple of my creativeness. A good soundtrack, or thumping album, can take me through hours of gaming, painting or writing. Musical inspirations are something that I really appreciate, but a great games soundtrack is another. What I present are, what I consider, to personally be my top five game soundtracks that have ever graced my ears. I will seriously mix it up, but I have also had to miss some games for which the soundtrack is outstanding.
Obviously some people will think “jeez Len, talk about mainstream”, well, no. I rarely played one of the games in the list and I barely played another. Yet both soundtracks are on CD’s or iTunes somewhere on, or around, my laptop. So sit back and be prepared to lose nearly a full 24 hours in great music.
5: Hotline Miami
This 2D top down shooter, released in 2012 by Devolver Digital, was inspired by the film Drive. One of the things that makes the game so outstanding is the soundtrack. At first you mistake the menu music for something akin to a relaxing meditation ritual, but that’s just the intro soundtrack.
If you recognise the artist list you’ll see artists like Sun Araw, M|O|O|N, Perturbator, Jasper Byrne, Scattle, Elliot Berlin, Eirik Shurke, CoConuts & El Huervo. All these are heavy on the electro, base and thumping beats. It’s a fantastically energetic soundtrack, one that I listen to when the word count needs to be here.
4: Halo: Combat Evolved
The game for Xbox’s exclusive first person shooter, released way back in 2011, should need no introduction. The soundtrack, created by Martin O`Donnell, was the first of its kind. Martin purposely went back and forward between writing and composing the music within the game, with the actual developers so he could get the atmosphere just right. A third of the depth of the single player game comes from the musical addition, which we can thank Martin for.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8vaCrVIR-Q
3: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Skyrim, an action adventure RPG, was the long awaited ‘sequel’ to Oblivion. Skyrim is a game where the graphics, characters and world all come together, and the music is the glue that binds it all. Jeremy Soule has written the music for many a gaming title, for example Morrowind, Oblivion, Star Wars: KOTOR, Company of Heroes and Dawn of War to name a few. The Skyrim soundtrack has the gentle appeal that the world of the game presents at points, with the violent thrust of a blade at others. It’s a fantastic soundtrack, great for relaxing, getting motivated or just if you want to feel epic.
2: Eve: Online
Eve: Online, released by CCP Games in 2003, is a persistent MMORPG set in a science fiction setting. Eve itself is a life within a life, you need to live within the game to get the full gist of what it’s about. It is a beautiful game, but for me the chill-out techno vibe of Jon Hallur Haraldsson and his original score created the game for me. I could sit for hours and hours playing this game, so long as the soundtrack was playing.
It’s the ultimate space based chill out soundtrack and without it, I think a chunk of Eve players wouldn’t be playing the game right now. So much so that actual real life radio stations were created to bring music to the Eve masses. None, in my opinion, could come close to Jon. I bring you six hours of Eve music, I dare you. Trust me, you won’t be disappointed.
1: Final Fantasy Series
Final Fantasy first came out in 1987, released by Square Enix (formally known as Square). The game has since had various sequels added to its universe, but one man has composed the majority of music for the titles; Nobuo Uematsu. Apart from the last couple of years this man has been the sole driver behind the Final Fantasy musical score, and my god does it sound sweet. Although I cannot include each and every single soundtrack, I can include my personal favourite, Final Fantasy VII.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlfGch8mGhg
What are your favourite game soundtracks? Let us know here at Geek Pride, we’d love to hear what your favourites are. Thanks for reading, and more importantly, listening.
Mike N’ Nick’s Gentlemanly Chats ep 19: The One Where Mike Ran Out Of Pep
I totally get if you skip this one. all the tired beardy moaning…. on the plus side YOUTUBE!!!!
