EA is in the Shitter!

Click to enlarge

Wow, if two years of secondary level education of economics has taught me anything is that this graph could not possibly be a good thing. Now we know recently THQ are also in the shitter business wise but I wonder when EA will announce they're in the same level as shit as them. It's hard to estimate considering I'm not Michael Pachter or.......any other stock person.....

I believe this sort of thing has been going on for a while now, EA's stock has been hugely dropping over the coming months and I wonder when this will affect any of there games. Well it's sort of been affecting their games considering they were taking down the multiplayer for some along with the servers of others.. But then I realised, I haven't bought an EA game since 2010 and I don't like any of their franchises. So right now I couldn't really give a fuck, they can eat shit and die for all I care. 

I guess the folks to be concerned would be the guys who work at EA and to any fans who like Mass Effect, Dead Space, Battlefield, Medal of Honor (lol), Fifa and the rest. 

Oh wait I do like Mirrors Edge, if they make a sequel to that they wont be on my shit list but you know they'll probably still be on the shit list business wise. 

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Rotten Tomatoes Closes 'Dark Knight Rises' Comments

Yep, the most anticipated movie this year has become so big the site was forced to close its entire comments system on the reviews of this movie. A ton of hate and well....hate on the rotten reviews of this movie has become unmanageable for the folks at Rotten Tomatoes, is it a surprise? Nope.

Rotten Tomatoes is a huge review aggregator for all movies. Recently critics were allowed to publish there reviews for the Dark Knight Rises and the majority has been pretty positive standing at 86 fresh and 12 rotten. But of course with those twelve rotten reviews fanboys and others with ridiculously high expectations expressed their hate and distaste for the reviews for a movie they haven't even seen yet. Some even going as far to send death threats to the critics. It's all very silly but it doesn't surprise me. While looking at a review for some random movie a while back on the site I saw that one guy was copying and pasting his comment on all of the rotten reviews. This was not only sad, but I thought it was a little excessive as I remember correctly all the reviews for that particular movie were rotten. 

But then again maybe one for two of these comments are constructive criticism on the critics reviews. Hey, some people make bad reviews its not uncommon. Plus you do tend to find critics who intentionally separate themselves from the crowd usually to make themselves looking distinctive or just to make a name for themselves. Yea, those guys are assholes.

But what I take from this is that people have ridiculously high expectations for this movie and for those people I say it is physically impossible for this film to be better than its predecessor. Well, I mean it could be your personal favourite but I think overwhelming majority of fans will go with the Dark Knight just because of Heath Ledgers performance. I mean it was flawless. 

Personally I am going in with very low expectations considering I couldn't understand a word Bane said in all the trailers but then again I barely watched any trailers. Either way I'm looking forward to see it on Saturday.

P.S. Some critics are spoiling the movie, don't read them unless you made sure they're spoiler free. 

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Sons of Anarchy Season 5 Promo's

As this years Comic Con comes to an end we're usually given more information on the things we play, watch and read. So for me one thing I was sure to keep an eye on was one my favourite shows and that is Sons of Anarchy. This show is fucking awesome, a lot of people overlook this big time because they look at the exterior roll their eyes and continue watching something which they believe has more substance. And to those people I say fuck you. 

With Sons of Anarchy people's initial impressions are usually style over substance, but as the show proves otherwise season after season I cant help but think a ton of people are missing out. Ok sure, it might not be the next Breaking Bad and it surly doesn't compare itself to Mad Men but sometimes I just wanna watch a show with a great story followed by enough action and twists in the plot to keep my attention. Basically I want a show that is consistently paced the same throughout and doesn't feel like a chore to watch at times and is just fun overall. SOA offer's that and for that I have become incredibly loyal to the biker show.

So obviously I am excited for season five and with the assurance of a sixth season I am digging these new clips they have released.

This video is an interesting metaphor. Is Gemma intervening in club business, with the intentions to protect Jax, but is harming him herself? We'll know in September....

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Why did previous Punisher movies fail? Because they were made by idiots...

Ok Lionsgate, you had your fun with the movie rights of Frank Castle and everything related to The Punisher. Now is the time for you to give it away so Thomas Jane and possibly Ron Perlman to make the best Punisher movie possible. 

Now I'm going to be honest, I have seen neither of the two Punisher movies mainly due to the terrible reception from Punisher fans which there is a boatload of. I just didn't seem convinced by the trailers and other promotions for both of those films, they tried to appear more action orientated than they should have. And this is painful to watch as Frank Castle isn't a hard character to portray, I mean there is tons of stuff from the source material they can use. Take Garth Ennis's work on the Punisher which I believe was a nine year run, his work got Frank Castle bang on. 

Garth Ennis is known for quite a few Punisher story arcs but one of my favourite is from issue 50 volume 6 onwards. That was the arc when they introduced Barracuda again and was out for Frank Castle, but the major twist in the story was that Barracuda had Frank's daughter. Unbeknownst to Frank of his daughters existence Frank had to make some big decisions. A pretty cool arc to introduce new Punisher fans to the awesome Frank, but my personal favourite is Garth Ennis's work in The Slavers. An awesome scene in that where Frank repeatedly bashes a women against an apartment window from seven odd stories up. And that's just two examples of awesome story arcs! 

Well there is no excuse when you make a shit Punisher movie Lionsgate, you have the audience and the right source material so either get Thomas Jane back or fuck off. Best possible Punisher movie being made would have Jane starring and Ennis in the writing department, man a boy could dream. Either way Jane and Perlman have made a statement with this short ten minute clip and it mainly revolves around "fuck you Hollywood".

Anyone else think this would make an awesome Jack Daniels commercial? Also read this...

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Metro: Last Light Demo looks more Horror orientated!

One game that seems to be wistfully building anticipation is the very distinct Ukraine made Metro: Last Light. Over the past few months publisher THQ were experiencing major problems in finance which sadly pushed the game a whole year back in to development. There has been very few trailers being released (except for that one awesome short film they made) and most of the media coming out of Metro: Last Light have been demos and each one represents the new features of the game. This has been very effective and far more reassuring than its predecessor Metro 2033. 

Metro: Last Light is thankfully keeping all the great stuff of the original while improving the core overall experience. The major issue of Metro 2033's gameplay was the clunky controls, flawed stealth system and bullet sponges for enemies. Earlier demo entries reveal that they have already fixed this problem, which you can view here. 

However the E3 demo is now finally revealed in all its glory, and I am stoked for the release of this game. Metro 2033 was one of my favourite games of 2010 with its creepy survival horror elements while keeping the action varied and interesting. I can't wait to return to the Metro and enjoy a true post-apocalyptic video game. 

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It's a Big Year for The Walking Dead...

It's mad to think that a comic book would easily turn into a franchise in less than two years. What is even more mad is that all of its ports into different areas of entertainment have been ridiculously successful. And not just successful in terms of making money but getting the critics and fanboys on board as well. It's a ridiculously difficult challenge to get one franchise across the board on every entertainment platform (or even the majority) and still remain as, if not better, efficient as the source material. But with The Walking Dead, you'd think it would be a fluke. Well, your wrong. 

It starts with a writer, who goes to a comic book publisher and wants to make a story. But the writer is given the creative freedom to do pretty much whatever he wants (because it's dirt cheap to make a comic book) and he gets to keep the rights to the world he has created (characters and all included). That last part is pretty important. This is because the writer chooses what he can do with it, depending if its popular enough of course. For one Robert Kirkman this is the case and because he has stuck by his franchise wherever it goes, it remain successful. There is no 'blind luck' when it comes to working with the entertainment industry. 

The TV show off the Walking Dead started with director Frank Darabont's love for the comic books and ,with his connections in the TV industry, started pursuing the rights. It took a while to make TV companies budge on a zombie show, but eventually AMC agreed. Robert Kirkman's role on the show stood as executive producer and as a writer. The show went on to break records in the TV industry, season two averaged with 6.9 million viewers and the finale brought in 9 million viewers pretty much shattering records. This officially made the Walking Dead one if not the most watched show in the United States.

The show follows the original source material which is the comic books. Of course not word for word and certainly not introducing all the characters of the comics, but it was expected. The story had to be translated for television viewers and that isn't difficult considering the Walking Dead focuses on character interactions than the actual zombies themselves. The show is fantastic, there is no denying that, a very well constructed show with great acting and compelling story which makes watching all the more enjoyable. The show surprisingly improves some elements and characters that weren't in the comic books. Take the character relationship that was between Rick and Shane. This was consistently being developed throughout season one and two and became the main issue of drama as the shows core. As I said the zombies are only a backdrop, Rick, throughout season two, was mainly concerned with his friends sanity on top of dealing with the whole 'you fucked my wife situation'.This was similar in the comic books but was nowhere near as good as the show. There's no denying that whatever circumstances anyone is under, they would still be concerned about these characters particular situations. It's gripping stuff no doubt. 

This year the finale of season two and the premier of season three will air later this year. It's exciting stuff especially this season as the introduction of the 'Governor' will truly make the shit hit the fan plot wise. I'm not going to spoil everything or anything for that matter, but if you haven't read the comics, get excited. Overall my rating for the show is considerably high and would lie at about 8.6/10. This will probably change after the third season, hopefully for the better. 

Just recently the franchise has extended itself on to video games. This was worrying at first, but now that I have played the latest episodes of Telltale's: The Walking Dead I have certainly built up an opinion for it. It's simply amazing. Honestly, I was sceptical about Kirkman's choice of selecting Telltale to handle a Walking Dead game. It's a huge project to handle for even the best video game designers out there, I mean some cant even tell their own stories correctly. But surprisingly they made all the right choices. For one you don't play as Rick, you play as a completely new character called Lee Everett. This is an excellent choice as we're not confined to a story that has already been told in the show and the comics, this allows the player to play the way they want to. Next is the gameplay, the game focuses heavily on story so characterization and emotion is a key thing to perceive as the player. This caters to the gameplay as the game plays a lot like Heavy Rain, quick time events is more or less the action sequences of the game (which takes up a third of the episodes) and the action usually focuses on planning and executing. The majority of the game however is focused on your interaction with the characters, this will tend to shape a large proportion of the story as whoever you feel connected to the most and if you prefer their decisions over others then they'll tend to trust you more, which could save your life later in the game. An example of this was when I tried to play the neutral and tried to get along with everyone, but this became impossible as I had to made a sickening choice in five seconds that determined the life of another character. I was too scared to make the decision and the game continued without my involvement, the result was the lost of trust between one character and the mutual respect of another. I wasn't proud about the decision, it made me feel dirty, and this all happened in front of a little girl I'm meant to protect, Clementine. 

Clementine is the sole responsibility of the player character, and keeping her away from the violence and zombies of the world is difficult. Like Rick in the show and comics he tries to keep his son from the horrors of the world they live in. And its gut wrenching to see you fail on that level. It's hard to describe it, you'd have to play the game to understand how sensitive the interactions between the player character and the other characters around you. One small statement in a conversation between your character and another is the difference between pending drama ahead or even more pending drama ahead. You have to stay on your toes to survive the game, but to be completely honest, I have never been more engaged in a video game in my life when playing this game. Telltale have not only told an amazing story, they have brought the Walking Dead to life and off the pages which I thought was impossible. Other than the mind blowing story, impossible player decisions and the overwhelming emotion while playing the game, the best part of the game is that they follow the comics. And not only that, they also fit themselves as a prequel to the comics books. In the first episode you meet the likes of Hershel and Glenn before they meet up with Rick. It's awesome, and you can pretty much consider it cannon to the main ongoing story which is the comics.

The success has been immense as the game is second on the most downloaded list on the Xbox and Telltale have announced that its their best selling game ever. Critics love it along with the fans, and Telltale have announced that a second season is definitely on its way. Overall I love it, it's easily comparable to the comics and I fucking love that the story is engageable it's easily a 9.7/10. And I don't think I have ever given something that high. 

As long as we're still on video games Activision has announced that a prequel to the TV series of the Walking Dead is in development. It will tell the story of both Daryl Dixon and his brother Merle. Having the Daryl as the main protagonist of the game is ace as he's easily one of the best characters in the show. The game will be more action orientated and will be an FPS. The two will be trying to survive in the zombie riddled Georgia and will include some characters of the show. The whole thing sounds interesting but I'll give my two cents when I see some gameplay. 

Last but certainly not least is the comic books,  the very origin of the Walking Dead. Recently it celebrated its landmark of one hundred issues, and given the sales of the book it's probably safe to say it may go one hundred more. The sales were literally staggering selling exactly 383,612. Wow, that is the best selling indie comic of the century and that's no joke. The last indie comic book that came close to this statistic was The Darkness in 1997 with fifteen variant covers and roughly 357,000 copies sold. I'm sure the Walking Dead's thirteen variants helped it get there but it's no doubt an amazing statistic and with the recent development of digital comics who knows what the total sales of physical and digital copies were. Either way I'm proud that Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard have come thus far and with the recent success of everything Walking Dead I hope they really shake things up for next one hundred or so. 

With the release of this landmark issue we also have to consider the new crazy mother fucker they have introduced into the Walking Dead and that guy is Negan. I'm not sure how you pronounce that but I'm going with Nee-Gan so, confirmation on that would be swell. But overall, the issue is.....god words can't describe it. Devastating? Pure anguish? Immense and overwhelming madness? Distressing for sure, but in the pure might of what makes the Walking Dead great. And that's forever killing my innocence over and over again, and it keeps happening, every fucking time! So short answer, yes, I love it in all of its gory detail. It's what comes next is the real question and only time can tell. 

So Negan.....I like him. Basing entirely on introductions, I'd say this guy is far more fucked up than the Governor, and that is saying a lot. This book was so creepy and so ominous that I shuddered a little at the thought of "eeny, meeny, miny, moe..." and this "vampire bat", again you'd have to read the books to understand exactly what they refer to but the very thought of this again is disturbing...to say the least. And as for Negan, I like him, he reminds me so much of Al Capone and is more an insane gangster than the estranged Governor. So (again) only time will tell how things play it for Negan. But one thing is certain, you can easily compare both the Governor and Negan, who will win on the most fucked up individual will be a good blog post in the future and one I will consider. But Negan has a lot to a live up to....but he's on the right fucked up path. Let the battle of the psychopaths begin! It's going to be bloody!

I'm going to give up this post on a hight note giving my review on The Walking Dead issue 100 to be a flat out 9.9/10. It's pretty much perfect and it was nothing I was expecting, as I didn't have much expectations to begin with. Mainly because I couldn't believe The Walking Dead could get any more fucking creepy, thankfully I was wrong and I was entertained. So I am happy how the issue turned out but I doubt I will ever forget....

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Mother of Sauron! THE HOBBIT Poster!

The Hobbit was supposed to come out at around this time I believe but was sadly pushed back to a December release date. 

This is easily forgiven by me because I haven't read The Hobbit yet, so a lot of time to dig in and read the book. That I'm looking to also, but for the mean time I'm going to stare at Gandalf's beard for a little while, while I imagine me being back to Middle Earth. 

Well I gotta go....the very thought of that is bringing back a huge hard on I have for the series that I'm sure you no doubt have also.....

Hopefully more news will be revealed at Comic-Con. 

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God Bless America

The following review should be considered NSFW due to language and pretty bloody imagery

"Why have a civilization if we're no longer interested in being civilized" - Frank Murdoch

God Bless America is an incredibly insightful (yet ironic) look into the culture of our modern day society in which we praise the least talented and most idiotic as we see main character, Frank Murdoch (Joel Murray) slowly mentally collapse as he is driven more and more insane by this social degradation until one day he decides that he's had enough and decides to kill all these idiotic "celebrities" that have corrupted modern culture. 

Trailer for the film

I'm not going to beat around the bush here. I LOVE this movie. No really, I LOVED this movie. It's almost as if this movie was made for someone like me. You see, I'm someone who thinks that society has skewed viciously away from what it should be with thanks to shows and people such as The Kardashians, 16 and Pregnant, Jersey Shore hell lets face it, everything on the modern MTV line up, The X Factor. I'm sure you see where I'm going with this. I hate modern society. Maybe it's just because I grew up watching shows like Viva La Bam and Jackass and they've now been replaced with teenage girls who can't keep their fecking legs closed or maybe it's just because I hate this tumour of stupidity which has infected modern day life but that's just my opinion. That's why I was originally pulled in by this movie, because it's main vibe completely melded with my current view of society and I couldn't help but feel...warm and fuzzy.

  One of the recurring jokes is a parody of the likes of FOX news... You can almost smell the republicans anger...

To start with, the script in this film was mind numbingly hilarious. It's written for people like me, who have a dark sense of humour. Someone who can laugh at teenage girls being shot and watching parodies of people you hate such as the Westboro Baptist Church, get completely obliterated on screen. The violence is akin to that of Shaun Of The Dead, minus the zombies of course. Within the first five minutes, I was crying with laughter and was saying "Holy shit, how the fuck did they just get away with showing that". The laughter continued for much of the film and there was recurrences of the same reaction that I had at the beginning of the film wondering really how the fuck they got away with making this film without an outpour of controversy. The acting from both Joel Murray and Tara Lynne Barr (Who plays Franks teen side kick) is about as good as it could get in a comedy movie meaning that we won't be seeing any Oscars or Golden Globes heading their way but they still both made it and entertaining ride. In particular I thought that Joel Murray's performance was very impressive as I felt he really connected with the character really well. The same can't be said for Tara Lynne Barr as we simply don't really get to see any scenes with her showing any emotion other than sheer joy from killing celebrities/plotting to kill them. 

This movie really was an amazing film for me, It had a lot of laughs, it really appealed to me what with the whole anti MTV and X Factor vibe and has left me reserving a special place for this film in my list of favourite movies. This is a film for anyone who hates the likes of the shows mentioned above however for those of you missing that crucial part of your brain called a brain and actually enjoy these shows, you most likely won't enjoy seeing parodies of your favourite people being gunned down viciously. In conclusion I'd give this film 8.5/10 as the acting in some cases left a little to be desired. 

One of the gory scenes I mentioned earlier. You don't want to know what all that blood is from...

In conclusion... GOD BLESS AMERICA!

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Rome Total War 2 Announced!

Rome Total War is one of my all time favourite RTS's and one of my favourite games of all time. The folks behind the Total War franchise "Creative Assembly have just confirmed work on the game and released a live action trailer based around the game. You can expect to see me make plenty of posts about this game in the coming months.

The large scale battles of Rome Total War 1 left me spellbound.

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Regarding Sexism in Video Games...

Sexism in video-games...

As most of you are probably aware, there is this woman who goes by the name "Feminist Frequency" on Youtube. On her channel, she discusses feminism under a variety of different mediums in todays world for example, Comic Books, Video Games, Tv Shows films and more and describes how these things are sexist. However Anita Sarkeesian (The main operator of Feminist Frequency) came under a lot of fire recently when she demanded money to make a series to explain under a variety of heading how todays video game industry is "Sexist". From vandalising her Wikipedia page to finding out a lot of her personal details, Ms. Sarkeesian was digitally assaulted by people who were angered by this (Mainly due to it's rapid popularity growth on 4chan). While I agree that there is a lot of sexism in the community of gaming, the idea that the industry itself is sexist is...RIDICULOUS! Before continuing to read this post, please watch the video below so you can understand more of what I'm going to be discussing.

Anita Sarkeesian hoped to raise $6000 however ended up blitzing passed that to score over $150'000, mainly due to the tremendous help from some of my fellow gamers who with their Shakespearean vocabulary posted comments like "im gun rap u up" and so on. However lets get back to the video's point. Ms. Sarkeesian wants to discuss the whole topic of sexism under the following headings

Damsel in Distress 

The Fighting F#@k Toy

The Sexy Sidekick 

The Sexy Villainess

Background Decoration 

Any active video-game player will know how bullshit this argument is. I'm going to post here, my own argument against these theories however this may be sexist according to Anita Sarkeesian as after watching more of her videos, pretty much everything to do with women is sexist.
To start off with, there's the Damsel in Distress, a foundation for hundreds of thousands of stories in the last hundred years or so, whether it's in the time of cowboys and Indians or during the era of knights and dragons. Calling a woman being trapped and a lover/family member/ friend/ random stranger to go and rescue them is both ridiculous and horribly one sided. There have been a variety of cases where males have been imprisoned and wives/friends/sisters etc. had to rescue them. Hell not 10 minutes ago, I just did a main quest in Skyrim where that was the whole objective, to free one of the Grey Manes from a Thalmor prison. In Fallout New Vegas, If you're aiming to be a paradigm of goodness, you can choose to rescue Benny before he's crucified. Almost every fecking war game/ film has had a male character imprisoned and his fellow soldiers would have to rescue them.
The fighting *^&$# toy is another idiotic and one sided comment, which is in regards to buxom characters such as Lara Croft, Tifa Lockheart, Chun-Li, Meryl Silverburgh and so on and so forth. Apparently it's sexist to have women who are good looking fighting. Of course we've never EVER seen a good looking man fighting in a game. Ryu from Street Fighter definitely isn't meant to be good looking, either is John Marston, Cloud from Final Fantasy, Nathan Drake, Marcus Fenix, Cole McGrath, Alex Mason... The list goes on and on with regards to both sides have good looking lead characters. If it's sexism to have good looking females, what is it for having good looking males too?
The sexy sidekick is the third opinion which discusses how women in video games are also used simply to be good looking sidekicks. As with every other point this video makes, there is a similar character who is male. Take for example, Saints Row 3, a game I recently reviewed here on the Blarg, there is pretty much an equal amount of sidekicks of both genders, some of them good looking on both sides, others not so good looking. In Skyrim you can have a big muscelly male nord running around with a warhammer, in Metal Gear Solid 4 there's Raiden and depending on your perspective there's Dante & Nero in Devil May Cry 4.
The Sexy Villaness is yet another idea. Of course, it's oh so sexist to have a woman who's good looking playing a villain, oh the humanity! Of course we've never EVER had a good looking male villain. Let's just ignore people like Liquid Snake, Sephiroth, Akuma, Anakin Skywalker (Before he gets burnt to shit) Colnel Volgin. Of course it would be sexism to have only sexy women playing villanesses etc. However like everything else to do with Sarkeesians arguments, there are also males.
Do I really need to expand further with this argument and prove how her saying having women as background decoration is also a load of bullshit and not sexism. Here are just some examples though yet again of men simply existing in the background and not really doing anything but chiming in every now and again. Otacon from Metal Gear Solid, Snow Villiers in Final Fantasy XIII-2, Zeke from Infamous.

So in conclusion, I think that this argument that there is sexism from video game players is spot on, however the idea that there is sexism in the industry is just ridiculous and in know way would you ever need $6000 let alone $150000+. I just expressed my opinion and if I pay (Just an example not an actual figure) 30 euro per month for my broadband, and wrote this in about half an hour- 45 mins, I'd only have to pay 20-40 cent. Even if I wanted to make a video, I wouldn't need to spend $6000 on a camera and editing software. So with that I'd like to end by saying how Anita Sarkeesian is in an idiotic fool who needs to look at both sides of arguments before she demonises one.

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