New Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Official Trailer 2 (Bay and Liebesman's)

     We get another new trailer for the new TMNT film.  It's pretty much the last trailer with a few extra close-up shots of the Turtles faces and a couple voices.  Not much extra, but it's still something, right?



     Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles hits theaters August 8th, 2014.

The Great Bob Hoskins has Died at 71

     After retiring from acting two years ago when diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, Bob Hoskins has died of Pneumonia.

     He was a tremendous character actor, with such versatility he could play villainy and charm with equal measure.  Many of my generation will remember him from films such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit or Hook, but I prefer to recall his roles in Shattered, The Long Good Friday, and Heart Condition.  All three of them are wonderful movies.  I might even go and find a copy of Super Mario Bros the movie to re-watch in honor of this fine actor.  It might not be the best movie, but it's still fun.  And it has John Leguizamo, which is always a plus.

     Sadly, he'll also be the only way I could picture the character of Bayaz (The First of the Magi) from Joe Abercrombie's book The Blade Itself.

     He will be missed.

Atari E.T. Game Cartridge Excavation Meme 2: It's Older Than We Thought

     Here's another thing I thought of for the digging up of the old E.T. video game from the landfills.  Even back in those days they were trying to decide what to do with them.

     Rumor has it that E.T. is responsible for the Big Bang.  He may have also killed the dinosaurs, sank Atlantis, and stole a little kid's Halloween candy.  He's a monster!

Batman Arkham Origins: Cold, Cold Heart: Review

     When it comes to Batman, he has a vast array of villains in his rogues gallery, but none of them quite as sympathetic as Mr. Fries.  In this Arkham Origins DLC we are given a retelling of the Batman: The Animated Series' origin story of Victor Fries, the man who would become Mr. Freeze, from the absolutely outstanding episode Heart of Ice.  Paul Dini wrote the episode and made one of the gimmicky bad guys into someone we could relate to- someone Bruce Wayne can relate to.  He's lashing out at the person responsible for almost killing his wife.

     The story goes on here unchanged, which is a pleasure because Dini did a fantastic job.  It starts out with Bruce Wayne in Wayne Manor (finally, we get to explore parts of it) and Freeze appears to abduct Humanitarian of the Year award winner Ferris Boyle.  Along the way to retrieving your Batsuit you must fight your way through the Manor, and enter the Batcave, then for some reason fight your way back through the Manor.  Once that's done a chunk of Gotham is opened for play- not the whole city.
     Vicky Vale makes an appearance and the Penguin is up to his arms dealing again.  For collectibles there are a slew of Anarchy tags to find and a side mission with Anarchy's men wreaking pathetic havoc around the few still explorable portions of Gotham.  There's also another side mission to thaw out frozen victims with the new EX Suit's thermal gloves, which replace the shock gauntlets.

     With the new gauntlets we eventually get a couple other substituted weapons and costume.  We now get the conveniently timed EX Suit and thermal batarangs.  Oddly enough these things don't become available until roughly halfway through the DLC.  The glue grenades are now gone and are not replaced with Arkham City's Cryogrenades, which is unfortunate for the stealthy players.  They do address why they are gone in the dialogue which is a nice little touch.

     Combat is the same old stuff- the same combat and predator challenges in place after place.  As for the Freeze boss battle itself, it follows in the same vein as Arkham City.  Freeze can't be harmed the same way twice.  He feels a bit more challenging this time, and the level itself has a larger vertical option for fighting.  It might seem to be another copied thing in the game, but it's done well enough here.

     There isn't anything new in Cold, Cold Heart but I believe it's a good addition.  The main game had plenty of stuff to do, but suffered some very large problems, ones that have not been fixed for this DLC either.  Honestly, Origins wasn't a great game, but it wasn't completely awful either.  Initiation was merely a series of challenges, but Cold, Cold Heart offers more actual gameplay and story.  It isn't super long but that can be seen as a good thing as well.  It felt like playing an episode of a show.  It actually makes me wonder why they didn't just make a handful of these instead of Origins.  WB Games Montréal has made something sleek, trim, and worth our time with this DLC expansion.



     Side notes: I found that if you die or save and quit a certain parts, the mission saves, but you must go back to redo a portion without it telling you to.  Such as ***SPOILER*** once you beat up the Penguin Thug to get the codes to enter GothCorp. if you enter then save and quit when you restart you'll have to go back and re-interrogate the Penguin Thug again for the codes.  
     I also found that if you defeat the thug in the My Alibi bar too quickly you cannot interrogate him and need to save, quit, and restart to do it over again.  Sure, it's small stuff, but it gets really irritating to have to redo things like that repeatedly.

Atari E.T. Game Cartridges Finally Excavated From Landfill (Indiana Jones Meme)

     Here's what I generally think of the recent unearthing of the mass grave of Atari E.T. Games in New Mexico.

"Death of Wolverine" Slated to Occur on Sept. 24th, 2014

     Marvel comics announced the upcoming death of Wolverine.  It'll come as a result of losing his life-lengthening healing factor being gone.  This is unsurprising to me, as they've killed off plenty of other major Marvel characters only to bring them back, such as Spider-Man, Captain America, Colossus, and even Charles Xavier- only to bring them back some time later.

     Even if Marvel doesn't bring him back, how many Wolverine analogs/clones are out there?  Sabretooth, Wild Child, X-23, Daken, and there is probably a long-forgotten Weapon X facility with an entire batch of clones in test tube tanks just waiting to be revived from stasis.

     If this is handled well, it could be a great story.  Possibly as good as some of the old Wolverine canon like Barry Windsor-Smith's Weapon X or Frank Miller's story of Wolvie in Japan.  So after a lifetime of killing it finally comes back to him.

    Will this be the end for good?

     It'll be tough for Marvel to truly let this guy go- he's been a Marvel staple character for decades.

     Death of Wolverine 1- "3 Months to Die" will be written by Charles Soule with art by Steve McNiven  will be available on September 3.

     Source [ Entertainment Weekly ]

BBC Sherlock May get a "One-off Special" Episode

     According to a Cultbox article, Martin Freeman mentioned to Alan Carr on an episode of Chatty Man that the next episode of Sherlock could be a "one-off" while we wait for season 4.

     “Mark Gatiss may beat me up, but there is an idea for this one-off special that’s such a good idea, and as I was listening to it I thought ‘we’ve just got to do this’. And I don’t know when we are going to be able to do it, unfortunately. It’s a fantastic, really mouth-watering idea. But I really don’t know when we are going to get to do it.” 

     Way to dangle a carrot Mr. Freeman in front of us devoted watchers.  It would be nice as both Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch have been quite busy lately, as have the shows creators Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss.  Due to all the scheduling conflicts season 4 cannot start shooting this fall as planned and as a result of the delay the show will likely air sometime in 2016.

     It would be nice to have a shorter installment of Sherlock while we wait for the next season.

Batman: Arkham Origins: Cold, Cold Heart Launch Trailer

     Today the Batman Arkham Origins single-player capmaign add-on DLC Cold, Cold Heart drops.  It is the origin tale of my favorite bat-villain Mr. Freeze.  Taking place shortly after the Christmas story of the Origins main game and it opens up some new areas such as the previously unreachable Wayne Manor.

     The Cold, Cold Heart story add-on introduces new locations including Wayne Manor and GothCorp, taking players on an ice-cold journey as Victor Fries encounters Batman for the first time. Players will have access to all new gadgets including Thermocharged Batarangs and Thermal Gloves. Batman is also equipped with his powerful Extreme Environment (XE) suit to take down Mr. Freeze and his Cryo-thugs in hours of new story content.

     Cold, Cold Heart is available for purchase on the PSN, Xbox Live, and Steam for $9.99, or free for those that purchased the Arkham Origins Season Pass.

Monument Valley: Possibly Coming to PS Vita

     With the success of Ustwo Games' Escher-like puzzle game Monument Valley, the company has been thinking of adding extra levels, and thinking about bringing it to other systems, such as Android markets (Already listed as coming soon), and what I'm rather excited and intrigued to play it on, the Playstation Vita.

     When it comes to expanding the game with more of its impossibly architectured levels, it's good to see they don't want to harm the completed story according to designer Neil McFarland:

     “The only thing is we presented a complete story in the game, which we don’t want to mess with, so what we don’t really know yet is how we’ll present new levels within that narrative. We don’t want to break it! But there are things we want to explore without destroying that experience.”

And for the part that interested me the most, the potential for a future PS Vita release:

     “We’re looking at getting it on the PS Vita, and a lot of people ask about a PC version, but we’re portrait and touchscreen, so it’s not easy. We could do it, but it would be a bit crap!” he says. 

Source [ The Guardian ] 

Game of Thrones: Jaime Lannister's Gold Hand: Meme: Masters of the Universe Jitsu

     This isn't the greatest meme I've thought of, but I knew I recognized that hand from somewhere!  Back in the 80's Masters of the Universe had a character called Jitsu with a fancy gold hand that looks vaguely familiar to a now famous Jaime Lannister's from Game of Thrones...