Greystone's Weekly Picks 2-25-09

Welcome everyone. If you’re reading this because you’ve stumbled upon my first Greystone’s Weekly Picks, Greystone’s Weekly Picks was to basically let you know what comics were going to come out the current week that I personally thought would be interesting to check out. Then I was considering making 3 more separate blog’s, one for games, movies, and one for monthly comic reviews. But then I realized that was too much of a hassle and I didn’t wanna have to do all that writing cause I’m too lazy. So I decided to make an Amalgam and have it all in one blog. So let’s begin. then I’m glad you decided to check out what else I had to offer. But if this is the first blog you’re reading of mine, then that’s perfectly fine as well. My initial intent for

Gaming with Greystone:

I’ve recently subscribed to GameInformer, partly due to my friend who used to get it for the past who knows how many years. But also cause I’ve always thought it to be an interesting magazine. Plus I kind of got my year subscription for free but you’ll just have to take my word on that because I won’t go into details. I’m pretty slow when it comes to reading my GameInformer’s because I use it for reading material in the bathroom. But let me try and change that mental image with that of what I’ve recently been reading about.

Singularity: Pretty much the first “inside look” game in February’s 2009 issue is the game Singularity. Singularity is set to release on the PS3, 360 and PC. Now I’ve yet to finish the article but from what I’ve gathered so far I’m kind of on the fence. Ok basically it’s trying to be similar to games such as Fracture, Timeshift, etc. where you have this cool gimmick you can use that pretty much shapes the game play. Basically the gimmick is that your character has this special device that he can use in 4 different ways.

1. Fast forwarding the time of an object or person causing it to rapidly rust or age.

2. The same thing but backwards thus causing old things to become new and people to revert into a placenta type existence.

3. Pulling an object out of a separate timeline and freezing it in your own.

4. Violently pushing an object away like your using force push which can also stun enemies it’s used on.

The thing with the separate timeline which is probably making you say, “WTF Greystone!?!” is because the game is kind of based in 2 different timelines at the same time. Basically, something happens on the island you’re on where time is kind of split in two, so it’s constantly changing back and forth from the 1 of 2 timelines. And they open up a portal to hell and now you must walk down into the basement to close the door back and this time lock the deadbolt. Ok so the whole hell portal thing isn’t true but you know most games always have something to do with opening up hell. Mean people tried building staircases to reach heaven and all this stuff but hell is just a door knob turn away.

But back to what I was going with earlier. Having such a gimmick is what initially makes me pull away from it. My friend would some it up nicely by pretty much saying that games with gimmicks aren’t necessarily bad but it depends on how you use the gimmick. Let me explain. Let’s take Fracture for example. If the gimmick of the game is re-shaping terrain then you need to have the gimmick add to the game play rather than have the game play revolve around the gimmick. Because if the game play revolves around the gimmick then it basically becomes all about the gimmick which usually is very limited in what it can do. Taking Fracture again for instance, you had like 4 things you could do to change the terrain in the game. Make it rise up, sink down, rise up into more of a peek, and I forgot the other thing. But it was almost so freakin linear that you were using certain techniques in situations that were made for the technique. I’m not really sure if I’m getting my point across accurately. I guess I’m kind of trying to say that I think the game play needs to be able to stand out on its own, without the gimmick but have the gimmick add a little pizazz.

Any who, I think if they can hopefully pull it off right, then it should be something definitely worth checking out. And even if perhaps it’s not that great, if it has trophies added (which I think most games from now on will) then I’ll probably be renting it simply because I am a trophy whore. So be on the look out for that sometime in the coming year if you’re big on games like Fracture or Timeshift or any other game that’s similar but not coming to mind. Now in all honesty I’ve only played the demo’s of both Fracture and Timeshift. I fairly enjoyed the Timeshift demo but heard it was pretty bad but I hated the Fracture demo and just seeing how it’s now priced at $20 this soon is also a big sign of it being crap.

I’ve recently heard and read that Nintendo is going to be coming out with a newer version of the Nintendo DS Light now called DSi. The handheld is mentioned to launch this April 5^th for $169.99 rather than its previous version which was $129. Initially it’s said you can choose from either the colors blue or black. It’s going to now have cameras added to it so you can take pictures of yourself or of those across from you who simply think you’re playing a game. As if camera phones weren’t bad enough. Also it’s said to house 256 megabytes of rewriteable memory inside the unit, used for pictures, music, and downloaded software.

In other Nintendo news, the Wii is said to be the only console for the second installment in the Dead Space series called Dead Space Extraction. From what I’ve seen of the teaser trailer it looks like it’s going to be very intriguing for that of a Wii game. Now it does personally frustrate me that it’ll be a Wii exclusive rather than being on the PS3 but my family has a Wii, so I don’t think I’ll really be left out. I heard it was suppose to be a rail shooter which I took to mean something similar to the Wii’s recently re-released versions of the arcade games The House of the Dead. So if that is the case then it will be interesting indeed to see how they go with that. I know I’ll definitely have my calendar marked for that, however.

Games coming out this week 2-24-09 for Nintendo are as follows:

• Blue Dragon Plus (DS)
• Imagine: Ice Champions (DS)
• Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop (Wii)

Blue Dragon, I believe, will be a big hit with the anime/RPG type fans. Imagine: Ice Champions is just another title to the “Imagine” series which is pretty much geared towards perhaps 8 year old girls and younger. Other “Imagine” games they’ve released are “Imagine: Teacher,” “Princess,” “Movie Star,” “Babysitter,” “Cheerleader,” etc. Ok now some of this stuff I could see how you might would sometimes “imagine” what it would be like to be or do some of these things. But if you’re trying to “imagine” what it’s like to be a cheerleader why don’t you get off your butt and try to join a squad. If your answer is because I’m too fat or whatever then that’s probably a sign that you shouldn’t waste time sitting around playing games to help you “imagine” because that might just be adding to the problem. And if you’re that desperate that you wanna “imagine” what being a babysitter is like, why not try and find someone who has kids that you can baby sit in REAL life. Yeah I know it won’t be nearly as fun perhaps and you don’t have to worry about the real life consequences that could occur but it’d help you to earn a little cash and help you buy the next “Imagine” game. Oh and if you actually land that babysitter job, don’t forget to turn the bathtub water off because you’re too busy focusing on playing your “Imagine: Babysitter” rather than focusing on the REAL kids. This has been a public safety announcement from XSE_Greystone.

And Dead Rising…oh where art thou my Dead Rising. Ok I was gonna go on a long Romeo rant but figured you’d rather want something with actual information in it. Basically in my opinion Dead Rising is close to if not the #1 funnest game I’ve ever played in my life. Now I’m really referring to the original one on 360 WHICH PISSES ME OFF NEVER HAVING COME OVER TO PS3!!! But I digress. Even though I’m certain the graphics won’t look like the 360 and the game play will probably be dubbed down compared to the 360. I think it would be very freakin hard to screw up a game like that and if they somehow managed to do so on the Wii then I shall forever spit in the face of Nintendo until my saliva glands dry up and blow away. Though I probably should spit at Capcom but I like Capcom too much. So if you have a Wii then you better bloody rent it or buy it or get your hands on it anyway you can (that is legal) or I’ll come after you if I have any spit left.

I’ve read that Microsoft is trying their best to buy out some kind of 3D company in order for them to start making what will be similar to it’s Sony counter part the Playstation Eye. Their new camera is also said will be a heck of a lot better one than that of the Playstation Eye. So once again Microsoft is being a B because they can’t stand for anyone to have something they do not.

Games coming out this week 2-24-09 for Microsoft are as follows:

• 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand
• Stoked
• Shellshock 2
• Star Ocean: The Last Hope

Now granted even though I don’t have a 360 (but secretly thinking of owning one…well not secretly anymore) I still wouldn’t be interested in any of these games if I did have one. Mean really, a 50 Cent game? I’d almost rather buy all the unsold copies of The Golden Compass than give 1 cent to 50. Couldn’t think of anyway to make a good joke about me giving him a cent now making him 51 cent…*crickets in the background* anyways shut up. So yeah if I had a 360 I might check out Shellshock 2 but my thing is once you’ve played 1 war game you’ve played them all.

Back onto my love for Dead Rising. There has been leaked a video which seems to be footage of a Dead Rising 2 which is said to be thankfully coming out on both 360 AND PS3. Mean you have no idea how excited I am at that possibility. Just wish they’d port over the 1^st one to PS3 as well. Really the only thing I wanted to check out this week from the Playstation Store is the Zuma and Afro Samurai demos. Upon playing Zuma I decided it was such a cool little demo that was worth holding onto (cause I usually delete demos once I’ve had my fill). I’m really glad that put out a Bejeweled 2 and Zuma demos. They’re so freakin fun and they almost make me wanna buy the games if they weren’t both $10 a piece.

But Afro Samurai is a whole other story. Now the only Afro Samurai I’ve ever seen was a short part of an episode where I wasn’t too keen on the art style and course didn’t really know what was going on so I changed the channel. But from what I gathered from the demo I think I’d get real tired of the combat very quickly. The combat seems very repetitive and fairly boring. I also had no idea what the tutorial was trying to tell me to do during the focus attacks. I did kind of think it cool that your health bar was pretty much yourself. The more you got the crap beat out of you the redder your body became. Really the only good thing I thought about it was Samuel L. Jackson’s voice work on the characters cause the characters were funny as mess.

Games coming out this week 2-24-09 for Sony are as follows:

• Killzone 2
• Eat Lead

Now of course I’d be a complete moron if I didn’t check out Killzone 2 but I’m not sure what to think of Eat Lead. I will say I wasn’t really excited about Killzone 2 coming out cause I had no need to be but after playing the recently released demo, it made me change my mind. So now I am curious to check it out and finally get a real taste of it.

Gamer Review:

WARNING: POSSIBLE SPOILERS!

Street Fighter IV: Well I picked up Street Fighter IV this past Friday and was very excited about checking it out because it looked so beautiful from what footage I’d seen. Of course I had to wait till Friday rather than when the game came out Tuesday because apparently rental stores don’t get new releases until the Friday after it’s released. Might be a little bit of important info for all you people big on renting or starting to be. Granted if you were already big on renting you probably knew that. SHUT UP AND REVIEW THE FREAKIN GAME GREYSTONE!!!

Ok ok…sorry. Now I, like probably 98% of gamers, remember back when I was a kid and had Street Fighter II for the Sega Genesis. One of the best acclaimed fighting titles still to date. While I had SF II and knew the basic “Down-to-forward punch,” moves and rapid button pressing of Chun-Li’s kicks; I still could not consider myself good at 2D Fighters. I wasn’t terribly horrible at Marvel vs Capcom but that’s another game for another time perhaps. As one would assume, yet I foolishly did not, if you’ve never been good at fighters you’re not going to miraculously kick A because you had some fond memories. Again, it was quiet apparent that I sucked at fighters the second I started my first match in Arcade mode. I somehow had the crappy luck of fighting against Zangief who, even on MEDIUM, felt the need to rub my inadequacy in my face by continually pill driving my head into the ground. But did I give up that easily…NAY!!! I pulled myself together for round 2 and once again tasted the utterly humiliating defeat at the hands of the Red Cyclone. After a couple rounds of this (a couple being a bit loose) I almost drove myself back to Hollywood Video to demand another rental. After a nights sleep I decided that I would have to find the character who best fit my personal style of play….button mashing. It was to my amusement to find the character I connected most with was none other than Zangief himself. I found myself tearing through almost all of the competition except if the CPU chose Zangief. They have like 7 varying difficulty levels ranging from Easiest to Hardest and where you’d think Medium were in the middle but when playing it felt like I had mistakenly switched it to Hard. I actually went back and checked a couple times to make sure I was reading it right, thus I decided to stick with Easiest. But let me get more into the game itself.

Pretty much the Story mode or Arcade or whatever you wanna label it is the same as it’s been. Choose your character fight about 6 or 7 other characters until you reach the final boss, who back on ST II was Bison now in SF IV is the dreadful Seth. Seth looks like Dr. Manhattan with a Ying Yang sign substituting for a stomach. He’s supposed to be an amalgam of all the best fighters or at least all the best moves…yet he has the blah name of Seth. Who tries to make one of the most powerful people on the planet and names them Seth? Each character has somewhat of a storyline but it’s so vague almost, that you wonder why they bothered trying to tell you at all. Each character has a different opening and ending animated clip which doesn’t look too bad and I think if it were done correctly could have been really sweet. There is a Training mode which I originally started in but after looking at the different screens trying to explain the character’s move sets I decided that it would be easier to become a rocket scientist and work for NASA. Honestly, the training mode is a complete waste of development by the programmers. The game also has a Challenge mode which I personally found to be the finest part of the game. The Challenge mode is further broken down into 3 categories Time Trial, Survival, and Trial (not 100% sure on the names). Time Trial consists of giving you a set amount of time which you have to go through a set amount of matches thus beating all the opponents while still having time remaining and not having died yourself. Survival, like it sounds, gives you unlimited time to kill as many opponents as you can before either dying or running out of opponents. Lastly, Trial is the #1 thing that proved most useful in SF IV. Trial has the computer set you in the training room with a dummy opponent where you are to complete the moves or chain attacks that it gives you. This is the reason that I found the Training mode to be completely useless for. I mean why have a training room that doesn’t do crap when you have a challenge that’s whole purpose teaches you the character’s move sets? Finally, the game does of course support online battles which I cautiously approached but soon found were pointless because no one was playing online.

In closing, Street Fighter IV is very stunning visually but I don’t recommend it unless you’re a hardcore fighter fan or find yourself wanting to be a hardcore fighter fan. But if you find yourself wanting to be a hardcore fighter fan then I’m gonna try and find that number for NASA and give it you.

Greystone’s Flicks:

Reviews:

Death Note: I recently stumbled upon the anime Death Note which I would highly suggest to any anime fans out there and even to those who aren’t that big on anime yet still like slightly more mature cartoons. But I only recommend it if you watch it in its original Japanese version. Yeah I know I’m not the world’s biggest fan of subtitles either but the character’s voices done by the Japanese actors is SO much better than the clips I saw of it in English. There just seems to be a more serious vibe about the story and depth to the characters in the Japanese version. So check it out.

Appaloosa: Now I pretty much grew up watching old John Wayne movies and all cause of my mother’s love for them and over the years there have been a handful of good western movies since. Tombstone was probably the last good western I’d seen in years until I saw the newer version of 3:10 to Yuma which I personally thought was very good. So I figured having such a good western in this day and age was a rarity of its self. When I watched Appaloosa I knew that the people of 3:10 to Yuma weren’t the only ones who could make a good western in the new millennia. Although I personally didn’t think it was as good as 3:10, it was still something that I was glad I watched. What personally drew me into as much as it did was the relationship displayed by Viggo Mortenson’s and Ed Harris’ characters. That type of friendship that could be described as brotherly love and the strength of such a bond were very well done.

Greystone’s Weekly Pick:

2-25-09

Origins & Omens Tie-ins out this week are:

• Green Lantern #38
• JSA #24
• Superman #685
• Teen Titans #68
• Wonder Woman #29

Batman: Gotham After Midnight #10: Honestly, I couldn’t tell you why I decided to pick up the first Gotham After Midnight comic a while back. No wait I remember…I believe because it first mentioned something about Scarecrow who, like almost all Batman villains, is a character you find to be very intriguing. Though it’s the mysteriously new Midnight Killer who’s the main villain arching through this 12 part mini-series rather than the Scarecrow. Now I’ve only personally read through the first 3 issues but it really only took issue one to grab my attention.

Green Lantern #38: Just the cover of this issue makes me wanna read it but as anyone who’s read more than 5 comics knows, it’s the cover that the artist uses to try and grab your attention though sometimes what the cover tries to show is a lie. It seems to be running still in the storyline Rage of the Red Lanterns. Now we all know there’s a Green Lantern Corp. and anyone who knows Green Lantern knows Sinestro. Well I’ve seen the covers recently of the whole Sinestro Corp. where all these villains have yellow power rings which I’d really like to check out sometime. So more or less we have the Green Corp. and Yellow Corp. but now from I don’t know where there seems to be a Red Corp. And then if you look at the following issue’s cover, it has what looks like a new Orange Corp. I’m just waiting for them to announce that all the corps. were made by the Skittle gods.

Dark Reign Tie-Ins out this week are:

• Avengers: The Initiative #22
• Dark Reign Files #1
• Mighty Avengers #22
• Ms. Marvel #36
• New Avengers #50
• Thunderbolts #129
• War Machine #3
• Wolverine Origins #33
  

Avengers: The Initiative #22: I’ve loved this series ever since issue 1. I highly suggest it if you haven’t read it, to really try and start at #1.

Dark Reign Files #1: It seems ever since House of M, Marvel publishes some kind of “Files” one-shot issue. Basically it’s like an encyclopedia for the event described in the title. It usually show cases some of the major characters dealing with the event and what there status is based on what’s going on at the time.

Dr. Doom and the Masters of Evil #2: Sure it sounds like something from He-Man but whatever. I’ve personally not yet read #1 so I honestly couldn’t tell you if it’s worth following or not but hey it’s got Dr. Doom in it.

Hulk #10: Even though this series has been as crazy as it is I still think it’s freakin awesome. Red Hulk or Rulk as some in the comic call him (yeah I know…retarded right?) is totally bad A. I mean he freakin walked up to Uatu and punched him in the face!

Mighty Avengers #22: This series and New Avengers have really made me an Avenger fan.

Ms. Marvel #36: Now I’m not a big Ms. Marvel fan but the Secret Invasion tie-in issues I found to be real good. Here’s hoping the Dark Reign tie-in issues are good as well.

New Avengers #50: I wonder what the 50^th issue will have in store.

Thunderbolts #129: This series is somewhat surprisingly good but I mainly follow it for Venom, Penance, and the occasional sighting of Bullseye.

Ultimate Spider-man #131: USM is, in my opinion, one of the best comic series ever made. Nuff said.

War Machine #3: The last I saw of War Machine in Avengers Initiative he was pretty F’d up physically wise. I can’t remember if that necessarily had anything to do with the O*N*E mini-series or not but he was looking rough. I’m curious to see if this War Machine is still Rhodes or a new character.

Wolverine Origins #33: As if Wolverine didn’t have ENOUGH series to be apart of. It appears there is no where in the Marvel Universe that Wolverine can’t stretch his claws into.

Well that's my picks for this week. What's yours?

Also which is your favorite cover of 2-25-09. I'd have to say Superman #685 for DC and Thunderbolts #129 for Marvel.

A Greystone Production