Episode 3 of (other)media by Aniz Ansari for Wapeach.com – Talking COMIC BOOKS and music. Warning this podcast explains samples of explicit music and should be treated as such.

Episode Two Playlist:
“Pimp C, Lil Keke, P.O.P. – Knockin’ Doorz Down (Hyrule Field)” by Team Teamwork
“About Face” by Grizzly Bear
“I Wanna Be Where You Are (Micheal Jackson Cover)” by Erykah Badhu & The Roots

Comics Discussed:
Justice League: Cry For Justice # 1
Written by James Robinson
Pencils by Mauro Cascioli
http://www.dccomics.com/dcu/comics/?cm=12076

Green Lantern Corp #38
Written by Peter J. Tomasai
Pencils by Patrick Gleason
http://www.dccomics.com/dcu/comics/?cm=12038

PICK OF THE WEEK
Captain America: Reborn #1
Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by Bryan Hitch
http://marvel.com/catalog/?id=12380

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I just cannot do this anymore! This game is absolute crap. From it’s clunky camera system to it’s annoyingly time consuming licensing system this game doesn’t know where to give the user something to do. Action sequences are on auto-pilot, so the majority of your button presses are done during menu screens. For the first time in recent Final Fantasy history you cannot save anywhere on the world map.

I feel like this is a major weak moment in the series, following their misplaced adventure that was Final Fantasy XI Online. I’ve been fairly excited for XIII but this severely compressed experience of a game saddens me. I felt the textures and sound were better detailed in Final Fantasy X than they were in this pile of garbage. I’m pretty sure if this game had come out by any other company and were called “Random RPG Adventure” it would not have received such high praise.

With how many really cool games came out this May, it took me fairly long time to make this video. But here it is, my presentation of the best games that were released just last month. Looks like it’ll be a fun summer for gamers this year.

Anywho, click on the link below to watch my very first video of my vlog series.

Highlights of May 2009

This week we Andy, Aniz, & Tom discuss the third generation of console gaming by running down the NES memory lane.

Direct.

I came to realization the other day. I use my Xbox 360 more than I’ve ever had in my life. However, at the same time, I don’t play video games nearly as much as used to. That’s because at this point my xbox as evolved from the gaming console I bought, to a media hub I rely on. I just moved into a new apartment, and I’m not sure whether I can fit the monthly fee of having cable television in my budget. So to keep me entertained and sane, while I see how my financial situation ends up, I decided to experiment with using my xbox as my central media hub.

I set my console to stream video files from my computer (Easily done on any windows machine, available to mac users through programs like Connect360). Then I began downloading seasons of tv shows. Not just like stalwart hour long dramas that I’d normally watch on DVD, like 24 or Friday Night Lights, but I tried to get content that I’d tend to watch just channel surfing, cartoons like Flapjack or Chowder.

So far it’s been really nice. It’s like I’m creating my own on demand network. Where I can create a great mix of movies (purchased and streamed netflix), ripped dvds, tv shows, and especially great IPTV content available in high quality for free online (I lived off old episodes of ifanboy before my internet was working lol). After I week I think I can safely saw that using with the proper system setup, using your console as media device is great alternative to traditional cable and satellite. While you don’t even the features and ease of a traditional television setup, you can in a way create your own channel with only the content you want, and in the long you’re saving a lot.

Point Lookout is the fourth DLC to come out for Fallout 3 available for the Xbox 360 and PC (sorry PS3 owners, you’re going to wait a little longer). Like all the other DLC (except maybe Broken Steel), this one transports the player to a world not seen from Capital Wasteland. This time you enter an eerie looking swampland covered in dense fog…and mystery. *dramatic chord*

When you arrive at Point Lookout from the ferry transport, you can see that the town seems more abandoned than destroyed due to the nuke not directly landing there. The first few minutes of the game felt like a combination between the intro to Resident Evil and the Death Toll finale in Left 4 Dead. It was not long before I was lightly jogging for my life towards a mansion off in the distance away from the murderous mutants carrying shotguns and knives. Not to sound racist, but what do mutants have against smoothskins anyway?

The new arsenal available isn’t the most memorable for DLC standards. You get one standard double-barrel shotgun, two new rifles that can only be repaired by each other, and a variety of long melee weapons. The best weapons, however, are the Ritual Knife (a very low AP cost and rapid rate of fire turns every fight into Psycho) and the Dismemberer which does exactly what you think it does. The new perks aren’t that special either. One of them only benefits by eating fruit only available on Point Lookout and another only works against ghouls which I usually avoid fighting anyway.

With that aside, I’d have to say that Point Lookout is one of the better Fallout 3 DLC to come out. It continues the open-world, non-linear gameplay and let’s you explore a brand new, relatively good sized world however you want. And instead of the depressing post apocalyptic atmosphere of Capital Wasteland, Point Lookout changes it up with a slight horror flick vibe which makes walking outside that much more creepy. The main story should take around 4-6 hours for a basic run and you can go back to and from Capital Wasteland at anytime which is convenient. But be sure to bring a good number of stimpacks and some of your finest weapons when going to Point Lookout. There are some tough characters awaiting you if you don’t come prepared.

Time Runner stars Mark Hamill as… oh crap who cares? This movie is so bad you just have to watch it and thankfully this gem is on Netflix Watch Now. During a time of war with an alien species Mark Hamill somehow time travels time for some reason to 1992. Traveling to the time of production appeared to have been a pretty big fad those days. It’s cool in the moment but makes a film age badly, however adds some really cool “time capsule” feel to the movie.

Everyone overacts in an attempt to make a bland series of situations into an epic space opera. Whoever was in charge of the score decided to recycle the same cues over and not equalize the sound at all. It tickles me despite being so poor in production that Mark Hamill still puts every effort into his role. It’s almost a quiet dignity as the ship goes down when we see him take it so seriously. It really makes me think of Raul Julia in Street Fighter, but obviously Mark Hamill doesn’t carry the same weight as it wasn’t his final role. In the case of Julia it was just depressing, in the case of Time Runner it’s comical.

This all makes me wonder, as an actor how did you know reading scripts back in the day that this movie would suck or not? Really, if you read the script for Blade Runner or Star Wars you’d think “What the hell? A big walking dog is a co-pilot?” I can’t blame these guys for not knowing how bad it would be, this movie in fact could have been great if the production values were a bit higher. A good score, better sound mixing and editing could make this into a decent classic.

ZeniMax Media has published quite a few game of the year titles, all from Bethesda Software. This past year we saw Fallout 3 totally rejuvenate not only the franchise, but the genre with a new take on first person adventure games. id Software originated the first person shooter with Wolfenstein 3D and evolved the genre with Doom and it’s subseqnet sequels.

ZeniMax Media pulled in id Software this week, keeping John Carmack on board the developer team. Hopefully ZeniMax will breath some new life into id Software and give them a great environment to develop games in. Keep an eye out for the Doom 3 spin-off coming to the iPhone OS soon.

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