Outland: A Big Fat Review

 I reviewed Outland over on SPOnG. It's quite good. You should read it (please and thankyou). First two pars:

"The side-scrolling platforming genre's doing alright at the moment on the download services these days, isn't it? Between Limbo, Super Meat Boy, Sonic the Hedgehog 4 and at the very least three other games I've neglected to mention, the genre's positively glowing. Outland, another sidescroller from Ubisoft and developer Housemarque, is totally up for joining those ranks. It's positively glowing, too. Literally.

"So, you are this guy. You have to fight some gods over some stuff. To be able to do that, you have to travel around a bit and do some things. That's not really the point, though. The main hook is a colour-changing mechanism not dissimilar from what you found in Ikaruga once upon a time."

Press Release: Idris Elba in Reliant Robin Accident

This just came in over the news wires:

PRESS RELEASE - LONDON - April 28th 2011

Headline: Ham Actor Hit by High Speed Hirsute Hunk
Strap: Over-rated Thespian smashed against wall - Police seek bearded miscreant

Body:

(London: 28.04.2011) By Our Enterslayment Correspondent

Mostly over-rated actor, Idris Elba, was inexplicably smacked into a wall in North London today at 11:44hrs. Police are seeking a small car driven by a bearded, silver-haired and quite distinguished looking gentleman in his late 30s to aid them in their enquiries.

Film critics are also seeking the rather handsome driver to provide him with an award to actoring and that.

"Idris Elba will be remembered for one thing and one thing only", commented his agent today, "being taken out by a distinguished, greying gentleman with some aplomb."

ENDS

Portal 2 Reviewed to Hell (and Back)

What? Something that's not just a cop-out trailer post? Well, actually it's just a cop-out link post, but please give it a moment anyway. It's a link to my Portal 2 review on SPOnG. I can't vouch for the quality of the review, but the game's awesome so you should give it a look. It's through here. Extract:

"Portal 2 is everything you want it to be and a little bit more. Which, actually, is probably exactly what you want it to be. Yes, it will warp your understanding of how space and geometry works, but it will make you giggle while that happens.

"If you're one of the two people I need to explain Portal 2 to: it's the follow-up to Valve's 2007 physics-based puzzler that was named, 100% appropriately, Portal. In both games, you're Chell, a test subject made to jump through an increasingly brain-scrambling array of hoops that also double up as holes in the fabric of space. Testing out a portal gun under the watchful (and double-demonic) eye of AI GLaDOS, you have to navigate various hazards and obstacles to get through test chambers and stay alive."

Here, again, is that link.

Rise of The Planet of the Apes - Creepy-Ass Trailer

This might be good.

Four Minutes of Green Lantern from Wondercon

Loads more gravity than the trailer. Looks very CG-y, but I'm feeling a lot more chipper about this film than I was five minutes ago...

Brand New Doctor Who Series 6 Trailer (is Awesome)!!!

My brain was surely not built for this kind of excitement.

First Full Captain America Trailer, Then?

Spot on.

A Trailer: SUPER

SUPER.

Time Travel is Bad for You

I did a talk at the last Bettakultcha to 250 people on the perils of Time Travel earlier in the month. It gave me gulps. This is it:

Mark Johnson from Dave Naylor on Vimeo.

Multi-storey Tron Legacy: A Review

Put my review of Tron: Legacy review up on The Culture Vulture, featuring Obi Wan Kenobi, The Dude and Jeff Bridges' creepy CGI face.

I may have gone off on one a little about the problems in fiction in which writers get to set all their own world rules. Have an extract:

"The great strength and weakness of having a film set in a completely fabricated world is that said world’s creators get to decide on all of its rules. Those creators – director Joseph Kosinski, writers Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis, and, of course, Steven M. Lisberger, the writer and director of the first Tronfilm and a producer on this one – pay lip service to The Grid being a visual representation of the behaviour of software (its inhabitants, for example, are called ‘programs’) but the reality (unreality?) of the situation is that it is a fantasy world with rules that have more to do with Harry Potter than Windows 7."