Akira Kurosawa on Netflix Instant View

Yesterday saw a HUGE update on Netflix Instant View regarding Kurosawa films. They updated with the following:

Dreams
High and Low
Yojimbo
Sanjuro (just watched this today AMAZING, sequel to Yojimbo)
Hidden Fortress
Seven Samurai
Ikiru
Rashomon

Sanjuro is my second favorite besides Seven Samurai. But really picking your favorite Kurosawa film is like picking your favorite child. Do yourself a favor and watch them on your PS3 or Xbox Live start with Seven Samurai you'll love it.

Halo Reach

Excited for Halo Reach? Well don't be visit Youtube or watch the rerun of Spikes VGA's and you have waited two hours for a pre-rendered trailer that does nothing for most. Watch a ODST or Spartan fly in watch them leave toward battle. No game play, no mention of the beta absolutely nothing that has anything to do with the game. This almost puts a nail in the coffin for my 360. Face it Halo is out dated ODST was a fresh as Bungie can make it. Oh and Lucasarts....... Force Unleashed 2? Really? No Battlefront 3? Great....

Long break lots of loot!!

So I haven't posted for 3 months and well I'm sure about 5 people visited since then and they didn't notice. So in my break I have been busy. Got a new job starting first of the year and have been playing some new stuff. I started using Goozex to get rid of some old movies and games that I wouldn't get much for on Ebay. The system rocks send in old crap and at least get 100 points equal to about 5 bucks if I remember correctly. So got some points and got two new/used games. Metal Gear Solid 4 and Super Mario Galaxy. MGS4 is nothing short of amazing the first boss battle in the old shack vs Laughing Octopus was eerie and fun to figure out. I've upgraded my M4 with laser sight, laser scope and shotgun attachment. I spent so long just messing around the Middle East levels finding ammo and weapons. Weapons! I am such a weapon whore I want to find or kill guys so I can get more points for upgrades or new weapons from Drebin. I love the scene with Raiden. I'm enjoying it far more than anything else this year, well besides the next game.



Demon's Souls is the most brutal, sinister and scary at some points, game I have ever played. It's pretty unforgiving as most reviewers have said. So I went in to Boletaria with the perception I would die a lot, which I did. I spent 3 hrs at least in 1-1 memorizing the layout and how to kill the enemies. I spent a lot of time on the red demon knight in front of the mausoleum before I read online you can't kill him that early. I did do the trick of luring him all the way over to the large spirl staircase and watched him fall to his death for 2000 souls. But he seems to have wised up and won't fall for it again. I finished that up and started on 1-2 going in and out of other levels to get more souls and level up a little before tackling the Tower Knight in 1-2. Once you first see this guy you will shit your pants. He is huge and this is the first real boss battle that is a challenge. I can't get enough of this game it's like crack every night this week I have been playing for 3-4hrs. I'm still only done with 3 bosses total but with my level going up I'm having more fun just going through and farming souls. Visit http://demonssouls.wikidot.com/ for tons of info on everything from boss strategies and weapon upgrades. But try the boss on your own first it's more fun to figure it out yourself. If your stuck use the wiki on the second play through or just for hints. Thats all for now move along nothing to see here!

Muramasa The Demon Blade Wii

If you have a Wii and haven't heard of Muramasa there is something wrong with you. How you couldn't love this game and all it's eyegasm glory will never be known. Muramasa dropped Friday September 4th at every Gamestop and then hit last week the 8th in other stores. I'm almost done with Momohime's story now so I will give my whole opinion later this week along with some suprises. In the mean time check out for more info. The fan art contest has produced a ton of nice art as well.

ODST Live Action Trailer!!!

Holy shit this trailer got dropped on the IGN yesterday. Watch and take in all the glory that is Halo ODST



WOW just fucking WOW!!!!!!!

District 9 Neil Blompkamp

So with SDCC 2009 this weekend I saw many things that made me piss myself. I'm a huge geek and who doesn't the combination of comics, games, movies and booth babes. G4 has decent (and the only coverage). Although they ruined the Star Wars panel in my opinion otherwise it's pretty good. I'm most excited about movies from this Comic-Con and toys if I could get my hands on some of them.

So here is the run down thanks to Youtube!

Halo Legends Trailer!!

Video Games | Halo Legends | Exclusive Debut Trailer

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

This trailer gets me pretty excited I don't really care what people are saying about it being anime etc. I'm down can't wait to get a peek at more.

Halo Anime I'm In!!

Today Microsoft announced the release of Halo Legends which I assume will be similar to the Animatrix collection and set to release in early 2010. Available on DVD and through Xbox Live in a new section of Live called Halo Waypoint. Frank O'Connor formally of Bungie will be the director pretty cool news I hope they do as good of a job as the Animatrix guys did. The Appleseed director is involved so maybe we'll get a dose of the sweet CG he took part in that series. Pictures via Teamxbox.com

Picked up Helljumper and Gears #9 with the Jim Lee cover pretty sweet I'll tear through them shortly.




Picked up this little guy too. Who doesn't love Avery Johnson! Suck it up Marine!

Ninja Movie Alert!

Wow I didn't even know this existed



This looks like it might have decent martial arts action, cheesy one liners and the typical angry cop who probably ends up helping the Ninja at the end. Oh yeah and the token helpless girl who needs to be rescued. It's full of the usual and it looks like I would pay to see it. It will have to tide us over till the badass Ninja Assassin comes out.

Zelda Update Jump Into Hell Today

So I attempted to start Wind Waker the other day and made it about 30min in before I jumped off. I was supposed to finish more I know but I keep getting attempting to play Halo 3 and I'm having fun for a few minutes before some 10yr old douche ruins it. I started playing action sack because of the varied game types and maps. Today I got booted from two games in a row because some genius walked in front of my laser and got hit. So I'm done trying to play it. I have a lot of thought going into a opinion post about Live and PSN so I'll do that later this week or something. I have a lot of work this week so not much time. Ahh yeah and I somehow missed the release of Halo: Helljumpers came out today from Marvel. The drawings look better and from the preview at IGN the writing and art already look better so go pick it up asap it will sell out just as uprising did on the first issue. Hurry!!

Zelda Wind Waker Rewind Replay

So today while working away at my boring job selling parts I thought of something to do. I never finished Wind Waker or Twilight Princess so I'm going to restart both Wind Waker first and replay to completion and blog along the way. Hopefully it will be a good experiment and get me writing more here. Maybe I will drum up someone who will actually post here too! So tomorrow I will start playing and tell you how far I get.

Bungie Day Halo ODST and Nathan Fillion...

So July 7th was officially Bungie Day which I almost forgot. So when I got home from work made dinner etc I jumped on around 8. I logged into the Bungie vs The World hopper and of course didn't meet up with Bungie. When I was playing there were about 130,000 people playing making the chance of me winning the lottery better than getting some Recon armor. But I did get my 7 on 7 Vidmaster achievement which is cool so I'm a little closer to getting those done. On the 7th Bungie also released their best podcast ever with none other than Nathan Fillion showing up.



He got to play Firefight and even some Halo: Reach. He was at the studio for 2 days! I'm a huge Firefly fan so hearing what he thinks about the game was cool. He is a big Halo player and it sounds like he is pretty good. The guys talked a lot about Firefight which actually got me excited for ODST again. I mentioned in my E3 post it looked pretty crappy and well I hope it surprises me. I know Bungie has a great track record (we'll forget about Brute Force) so this should be no different. Horde was my favorite part of Gears 2 other than that I have literally only played 4 public matches ever. I used to play social matches with some guys from another site but they got annoying. After all the title updates to Gears the shotgun got worse and I hate it so Firefight will be a welcome change and I can't wait!! Going up against multiple hunters scattered with Brutes and Grunts oh my! Hell yeah can't wait.

One last thing for the toy collectors out there. I have the Halo 3 ODST trooper but McFarlane is coming out with a Rookie figure in October right after the release of ODST and it looks a little different a must have for fans.

Tekken 6 Featuring Cardboard Tube Samurai CONFIRMED

News confirmed Namco announced today that they are in fact offering this as a pre-order bonus. Great news!!

In a strange turn of events or at least to me Namco may be putting the Penny Arcade famed Cardboard Tube Samurai in the game. Here are the images to compare. Looks pretty close to me. The figure image is from the new figure that will be available at SDCC in San Diego next month. What do you think? If you look close you can see the pacman style logo on both shirts on the left breast. Seems like confirmation enough to me check out 1up.com for more info.

Retro Caming Still Cool

So lately I'm just tired of Xbox Live keeping up with game communites to try and play with certain people and create or keep up with a "friends list". I really am as I've mentioned before if it wasn't for Netflix I would have got rid of Xbox Live already. It costs around 8 bucks a month so I'm debating about just turning it off anyway. I'll bump up my DVD to 3 or 4 at a time. Getting demos early and playing multiplayer games isn't worth it for me. Everytime I turn on Halo 3 or recently Street Fighter IV I hear nothing but assholes. I'm really tired of it. So now fuck it I'm going back to my roots in gaming. I'm playing single player games that don't require co-op. I don't give a shit if a game has multiplayer or not. I never really have. I'm not saying I'm not playing anything new I'm just don't investing money in anything in hopes I can play it online and get a good experience. So I'm busting out my Gamecube and already getting a Wii next month. So that is my two cents about multiplayer games. I'm loving my PS3 lately I think this next year is going to be amazing for Sony and Nintendo with more solid games coming for the Wii than ever.

E3 Took Over Hollywood For The Week

E3 has surprised and disappointed me. The showing was strong from every platform I think if your a game fan you'll have something to play the next year. I was disappointed by some big games which really surprised me. All three have spawned their digital babies I'm just covering the ones I like because this is my blog and if your reading this you must have similar tastes. If not well your shit out of luck.

Microsoft had a impressive stage. The usual fanfare lot of screens lights colors like the opening of a basketball game. They open with..... The Beatles. Ok I know the Beatles were huge back in what the 60's and I am taking nothing away from them or their success. Their message of love through music, drugs and sex was great. But I'm not into playing their music with plastic instruments. I'm really not and I won't pay for that shit you have to be kidding on those prices. The 360 has a great line up I won't lie. Even with all the hardware issues (I'm on box #3) people are still buying them. The Netflix partnership really is the bane of my Xbox's life. I use it for that more than anything anymore. Without that I would have cancelled my Live subscription long ago. New Twitter and Facebook functionality??? Really wow fuck you MS who actually cares about that? Oh right the 13 year old boys who talk shit and ruin games that want to network with their equally as annoying friends. Innovative Project Natal while technically pretty neat I will never and most gamers will never use it. Why? In 10-15 years maybe the next generation of games will find it fun but if that is the way things are going I'll go back and play old games I'm not interested. I was really looking forward to Bungie showing off ODST and last weekend Reach was leaked so everyone knew it was going to be shown in some capacity. But ODST was my biggest disappointment of this years E3. The game looked good in some parts and really pure shit in others. Yeah you the bridge explosion scene WTF was that? That was the worst gameplay turn a dial on some charges fall back and snipe a couple grunts in the open and boom? The drop was great from there things were rocky. Reach well was nothing? Just some teaser which does anyone what good? We know many Spartans existed during that time adn that reach does fall. So hey going into it you know your fighting a losing battle. Bungie knows how to polish games and how to support them so I'm not that worried but I will not pay much attention to this till about August now.

Sony nice stage HUGE screens for maximum effect running PS3 for a serious HD experience. Seeing Uncharted and God of War that big was pretty cool. Uncharted looked amazing and to date one of my favorite games of PS3 so far. Grand Turismo 5 for PSP and the new Metal Gear for PSP also shown and look amazing. The PSP Go! turned into the worst kept secret of E3 which hey at least they can laugh at it. But I won't buy one why should I I have a year old PSP Slim and its great. I hope for Sony's sake it does well because it looks pretty sweet and from people on the floor it's a nice piece of hardware. Not a bad overall presentation I enjoyed watching it. I'm listing my favorite games below.

Nintendo pulled out the big guns and didn't seem to disappoint. Starting things off with Mario which suprised everyone that a new game is coming so fast but not just 1 but 3 big titles coming. Two new games for the Wii and a new game on the DS. No annoucement with Zelda until after the press conferance and Miyamoto himself said in a interview with G4 that he is working on it and it will be out next year. Hell yeah that is great perfect!! Who can forget the Metroid annoucement! That was sweeeeeet and that ties for my game of E3.

Ok so I'm sure I missed plenty of stuff at E3 but really that is what I've thought about so far I'm still going over 3 differant sites videos and articles on games. It's been a fun week with all the news good times. So below are the games I'm excited about for each system. Anything that is multiplatform I'm buying on PS3 because I can't rely on my 360 and I hate having to wait for a repair to make it back.

Wii
Muramasa
New Super Mario Bros Wii
Super Mario Galaxy 2
Metroid
Red Steel 2
Tatsunoko vs Capcom
No More Heroes 2

PS3
Call of Juarez 2
Red Dead Redemption
Castlevania Lords of Shadow
Assassins Creed 2
God of War
Grand Turismo PS3 and PSP Versions
Heavy Rain
Rachet & Clank A Crack in Time
Pixel Junk Shooter
Final Fantasy XIII
Fat Princess
Metal Gear Rising
Metal Gear PSP
Darksiders
Wet
MAG
Brutal Legend

Xbox 360
Halo ODST
Halo Reach
Alan Wake

As you can see from the list my PS3 and Wii lists are bigger and I plan on keeping it that way. So if your reading this what are you favorite games from E3?

New Mass Effect 2 Trailer and more Halo....

Well just got home from out of town and was reading Neogaf to find a new trailer of Mass Effect 2 and news of a new Halo game possible called Halo Reach set on the planet Reach of course from the novels. If you read any of the novels you would know Reach is a large lush planet that got toasted by the Covenant. Eric Nylund did a great job of painting a picture of this place and it would be a great world to play in. Anyway that is a rumor for now E3 is just days away. So check out this sweet mother of a trailer I can't wait to play ME:2 and is that Nine Inch Nails I hear playing in the trailer? Hell yeah

Video Games | Mass Effect 2 | E3 09: Exclusive Teaser

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Muramasa's Momohime

Muramasa is going to be a bad ass game complete with Japanese demons, water spirits and lots of T&A?? Hmmm well at least fans are making it that way. This was posted over at Ignition Entertainments forums not sure where it came from but it's a nice.... painting.

Team Ico's New Project Revealed!!!

This trailer was posted over at Playstation Lifestyle posted this video and through the talk it's confirmed this is the teams newest game. The PS3 is the first Sony console I've owned so I have truly missed out on their other games. Ico and Shadow of the Colossus looked amazing. I can't wait to see more of this at E3 in a few weeks.



This is definetly a baby Griffin the long tail gave it away in the one scene. Just imagine this little guy growing wings claws and huge teeth. I'm sure he can fly and you can already see him swimming around. This is going to be another EPIC game from Team Ico.

Star Wars The Clone Wars Republic Heroes Coming Soon!

So Lucasarts has announced another Clone Wars game today. Wow really another one huh? LA has been pumping out everything they can on the Clone Wars and it's getting old. The TV show isn't bad I watched a lot of episodes up until I got rid of the evil that is Brighthouse networks. I enjoyed Episode 2 & 3 but how many games, toys and video games can you milk it for? The screen shots look pretty bland see for yourself.



I just wish that Battlefront 3 would be announced and we can get it this fall. I'm sure at E3 we will get a sneak preview and get a time frame. I love you Star Wars but I will pass.

Red Dead Redemption Teaser Trailer!

This just went up in the last day or two I believe and it's amazing. It's setting up the next game and if it's anything close to GTA IV it's going to be massive! I can't wait to experience it.



So from what you can see in this video there will be the mandatory western fair. Guns, Native Americans (see what I did there), Horses, Trains and lots of dead folks. My hard on for westerns is still going and will be till I can ride with my own posse and coach jack some handle bar mustache asshole. Then ride off with my loot and look for another job at the next mountain pass. Maybe you can waltz into town like Eastwood in Hang em High and bang some hooker in the barn for free. hahaha just kidding I wouldn't do that.....

Game Update Monday

While this evening a smiling moon hangs above you I hope you had a good Monday. Mine was alright nothing special I still have a job and I'm still behind on bills. But a thing that did make me smile today was official news of a few new games/options in new games. Capcom made it official that Marvel vs Capcom 2 is coming this summer to Xbox Live and Playstation Network. Actually this Thursday May 2nd a demo exclusive to us lucky PS3 owners will be available on the PSN. I loved this game on the Dreamcast I can't wait to get into it again. The game will cost 14.99 and be available sometime this summer. But with a demo this fast after announcement I have feeling we'll see this in June at the latest. I can't wait to get Iron Mans huge blaster out again and string together 100 hit combos and slap you down like noob bitch you are online!

***I took down the videos of these games the aspect was reformatted and it looked like shit. Check out www.gamevideos.com if you want to see them again***

Second big news is Uncharted 2: Among Thieves will feature co-op, a deathmatch and a capture the flag type option. This video below shows it off and made me piss myself a little. Watch this in HD and check out the amazing lighting, reflections, textures I could go on and on. The gameplay shown seems pretty solid. You can assist other players reaching areas similar Splinter Cell when it first released MP. Spy's and Mercs I believe it was called. That shit was amazing and made MP really differant I can't wait for this game. I think it's turning into the 2nd most wanted game for me besides Bungie's Halo ODST.

Red Dead Revolver on your Xbox 360

I've been into westerns lately I'm not sure why either. The days of the new frontier are long over pretty much nowhere on earth is there any place left like the old west. I guess it's the sense of unknown the ruthless nature of the time. Hookers, gambling and shootouts crazy times! Well I picked up RDR (Red Dead Revolver from here) for the Xbox today at Gamestop for 4.99. I have to say it's a good find for that price, I played it years ago when it came out but now it's a classic. The headshots never get old that pop noise and the fountain of blood that shoots up. Long distance kills are my favorite great stuff. Anyway RD Redemption is coming out late this year and with Rockstars ability to make a open world I can't wait to see what they can do with this property. The only problem is the backward compatibility is jacked up. You get a crash when you get to the lady around mission 7? Can't remember her name and Red flickers every once in awhile when playing. Otherwise I'll over look this just to play its a fun game. Go buy it now! Buy Red Dead Redemption this fall too!

******UPDATE******

Besides the glitch with Bad Bessie crashing the game I reached a fatal crash at Chapter 12 also. The load screen plays as Red spins his revolvers and the fades to black.......waiting.........nothing. So my joy was short lived. To bad...

Update Spartans do die.....

Despite what the UNSC tells you Spartans can die. I have personally witnessed squads go down faster than a broke hooker on Friday night. Halo Wars is really a lot of fun but it's getting hard as hell toward the end. I'm impressed this game has gotten me into RTS style games I think I might like them.

Appaloosa my new favorite western.

I just finished watching Appaloosa and I am suprised, in a good way. I heard good things about this film when it was in theaters but I couldn't make it before it left theaters. This film seems to have gone almost unnoticed? I don't know how the western genre has gone under as quick as it has. I guess it's lost it luster since the days of John Wayne and young Clint Eastwood. Or maybe since we have come so far with techonolgy we don't see the appeal anymore of simpler times? Great idea for later blog I'll dig deeper on that. Ok so Appaloosa was a book by Robert B. Parker published in 2005 and by looking over his books seems to be one of the only westerns he did. He is definetly a master of characters and building relationships between them. I think I might pick up the book and give it a read pretty good stuff. Don't miss this film even if you don't like westerns this is a great drama and has action for the guys and a love story for the women. The characters really are well done and the story keeps you in suspense. This rates up their with one of my favorite westerns I'd give this 4 ninjas out of 5!!

Bungie almost done with Halo 3?

Over at Bungie's weekly update they gave us a small glimer of hope or did it completely squash hopes? According to this quote

"While we've indicated in the past that we don't have plans to deliver more content for Halo 3 beyond the retail launch of Halo 3: ODST, going as far as to call the return to New Mombasa the "exclamation point" on the Halo 3 experience, that's not a definite "never." That said, don't get too excited at the prospect as there are no current plans to make additional content post-ODST."

See the rest of the article over there they talk about Halo 3 continuing because of "us" the community making content. Really Halo 3 has some impressive play numbers still, which is no suprise. Halo ODST is going to be another reason to keep playing at least for a few more years. I can't wait to see what new projects Bungie gets into they really know how to keep a IP in the media and in your console.

Halo Wars is the shit.... my mini review.

Weeks after release I've finally gotten into Halo Wars and love it. I have never played a RTS game before. PC or Console so maybe I'm not a great person to review the game but I like it. It really doesn't have much to do with it being Halo either I really enjoy the gameplay. Being Halo doesn't hurt don't get me wrong I love the universe and think the story is pretty compelling. I see Halo turning into a Star Wars type of universe actually it already has.

So I move off topic here HW is not perfect you don't get around the map very easily and maybe that is why PC guys prefer to keep RTS games on PC. I think once you get the hang of it maybe it gets better but I'm 4 missions in and trying to juggle multiple conflicts it gets hectic. Which brings me to the next point the AI sometimes just sits here and watches shit get blown up. I was on a mission in the city protecting 3 evac ships. I would bulk up on pad one then move over to pad two or to my base to get more marines and get a message pad one is taking fire. I make it over there just in time to see my ship get blown up and my Hornets and Warthogs are sitting just out of the way. WTF? The AI is supposed to engage when near a enemy even if you don't request them too. I think the range needs to be reconfigured because that mission was BS.

The graphics are sweet watching your little marines shoot, drive, throw and fly has never looked better. Your base has lots of small working parts each supply pad has a conveyor belt. The level of detail is amazing to me and I get caught up just looking at them sometimes. Sound is spot on in all weapons, characters and explosions. The soundtrack stays true to the Halo series and fits in perfectly.

Over all I give this game a score of 4 ninjas out of 5. I think it's a great game and worth a buy for fans or anyone looking to get into RTS games.

Do you Afro?? Samurai that is....

Afro Samurai Resurrection played on Spike Sunday night and after watching it twice now I'd have to say I'm impressed with it. I really liked the first one I think the marriage of hip-hop and martial arts is a great idea. Resurrection really ties things together and hints at the next installment. Okazaki-san didn't have a lot of input in this from what I gather besides it being his creation originally. Comments he made on the offical site lead me to believe that. But this doesn't stray to far from his original. I'm going to really go deep into the meaning of a lot of Afro in a differant posting I just wanted to mention how much I love this follow up oh and before I forget get this soundtrack!!! I downloaded from Amazon.com for 8.99 it's a lot better than the first the RZA really out did himself putting this together. Watch this and comment, not many people have seen this blog but it would be great to get some discussion going around some common interests.

Red Rings of Death Xbox 360 shits the bed again

Well my Xbox 360 RROD on me again. This is only box #2 for me so I guess I'm lucky *rolling my eyes* I've heard a lot worse stories about people going through 3, 4 even more. So I should be getting a new improved 360 with the Jasper setup that started shipping at the end of 2008. New improved board that runs cooler with a smaller chip to maximize energy effenicy. So I'll give this one a shot and see what happens. I'm in warranty till Nov of this year then my 3yrs are up and I will not repurchase or pay to repair it. Consoles really seem to be sucking balls lately. PS3 is drowning in inventory. Xbox is selling and breaking almost the same number each month and the Wii is running away with the show because fat drunks think it's fun to play Mario Kart. Don't get me wrong Wii has some good games but the reason it's selling so much is because of universal appeal and that means gamers aren't the ones buying it. So hopefully I'll be getting my box back for Street Fighter IV because I'll be pissed if it takes long than 3 weeks.