Spoiler Alert: I’ll do my best to refrain from spoiling plot details, but as the gameplay and the plot are wound tightly together it will be difficult. You have been warned.

Before jumping into the undead apocalypse I should mentioned that, like many, I really love zombie lore. I’ve seen the movies, played the games, read the books; I’m an apocalyptic aficionado if you will. I mention this because I’m of the belief that there is no such thing as an objective review.

Sure I could end a review with an official “8 out of 10” or give it a decimal “8.5!” to make it look legit, but unless I fork over some sort of rubric any number I create is arbitrary. I’m also a fan of AMC’s The Walking Dead, so my brain will most likely draw subconscious similarities between the game and the show. There is no point in pretending that I have no expectations when sitting down to play a zombie game, so I’m going to be honest about it. I was psyched to sit down and play Telltale’s The Walking Dead, and I really wanted to like it. This was my mindset as I sat down for my first play through of Episode One: A New Day. Continue Reading »

We did it folks, an entire episode of Game of Thrones without ANY nudity. Who ever thought that was possible? Instead we had to compensate with some killing, and lo and behold we have our first major character death of the season. Oh George R. R. Martin, you never fail to disappoint.

Spoilery discussions of all that ensued in last night’s episode start below: Continue Reading »

In my review of The Vow a few weeks back, I initially mis-identified it as being based on a Nicholas Sparks book. It had Sparks veterans Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum, and was a straight-faced romance in an age where those sort of movies usually have to have a “comedy” addition on the end.

As it turns out, the story about a woman who has amnesia and forgets her husband, causing him to try and woo her all over again, was a much too plausible scenario for a Nicholas Sparks book. But now with The Lucky One, we’re firmly back in Sparks territory.

The film means to be a sort of “growing up” vehicle for Zac Efron, long past his High School Musical days and attempting to convince us he’s badass enough to go from singing point guard to combat marine. After Logan survives a mortar shell attack because he left his location to pick up a lost photo on the ground, he feels the need to find the woman pictured and thank her for cosmically saving his life. Continue Reading »

This weekend, I got the chance to spend a few hours with the Diablo II beta, which was opened up to the public for one weekend only ahead of its May 15th release. But by a few hours, I really do mean a few hours, despite the fact that I was prepared to devote most of my weekend to the experience.

Part of this has to do with the length of the beta being rather short. It’s an hour long if you play it normally, two if you’re the type to search every nook and cranny. I ran through it three times with three different characters to try them out, but by the end I didn’t think I could handle the same level for the fourth and fifth time.

But the other reason so little time was spent is that the “stress” test beta lived up to its name, and much of the weekend was spent sampling Blizzard’s collection of error messages. There was Error 37, Error 33 and who could ever forget Error 3004? These connection problems had the beta servers offline for much of Friday and Saturday, and Sunday I was only able to get into a game by spamming the start button about fifty times per login .

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Magic has been a dormant force for a long while in Westeros, but now as Game of Thrones marches on, it’s clear it’s going to be a bigger and bigger part of the story. I haven’t yet made up  my mind about whether that’s a particularly good thing or not. Dragons? Pretty cool. Um…other…things? A little iffy.

We’ll have to wait until after the jump to start talking spoilers, and there is a whole bunch of other non-magic ground to cover from this week’s installment.

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Ever since Tony Jaa retired from acting to be a spirit monk in the forest or whatever insanity consumed him, there has been a distinct void in the action genre. There hasn’t quite been a mainstream-released feature like either of the Ong-Baks or The Protector in years now, and that’s why, ever since the first trailer for The Raid debuted, there was a bit of hope.

The film comes out of Indonesia, and unfortunately due to stupid trademark issues, it’s called The Raid: Redemption in the states. Most impressive is the fact that it actually, finally came to big chain theaters, and doesn’t have to be seen in an art house or pirated off of the internet.

The premise alone makes for an inevitably solid action flick. A SWAT team (err, whatever the Indonesian equivalent of a SWAT team is) is tasked with taking down a drug lord on the top floor of a fifteen story tower. They take the first few levels in stealthy silence, but soon realize they’ve fallen into a trap. Continue Reading »

5 out of 5 stars

In an age where Hollywood seems to be running out of ideas at an exponential rate, there’s not a genre where that’s more evident than horror. It seems that every film released in that category is either based on a book, an older film, a newer film, a foreign film , or some combination of those identifiers.

On the surface, Cabin in the Woods would appear to be a story we’ve heard a thousand times already. Partying teens head to a remote cabin and misbehave until something kills them for their transgressions of being young and sexy. But right away, you can see that this film is something much different.

Rather, we open with two middle aged men (Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford) in a secure government facility. They joke around and talk about weekend plans, but soon we learn their job description is something far more sinister. They assume their positions in a grand command and control center, and we learn that they’re monitoring the film’s titular group of teens. Continue Reading »

God, I’ve missed Avatar. No, not James Cameron’s blue aliens. Rather, that would be Avatar: The Last Airbender, my favorite animated show of all time, and probably in my top ten overall list. The three season arc was a brilliant introduction to a world where people master the elements of fire, water, air and earth, all without the aid of Captain Planet.

Once the show wrapped, I figured it was the last we’d seen of the series, as it was about as conclusory as can be. But now the show’s creators have found a way to bring it back with The Legend of Korra, a sequel set probably close to eighty years later in the same universe.

This weekend brought us new episodes of Game of Thrones and Mad Men, but also our first look at the new Avatar, master of all four elements. Korra is from the southern water tribe, and when we meet her, she’s already a pretty powerful bender. The last Avatar, Aang, spent a season learning each of the three elements that weren’t native to him. Korra already has fire, earth and her native water under her belt, with only air to go. Continue Reading »

This week in Game of Thrones, 60% less nudity than usual! I know, it’s unheard of to only see four boobs per episode, but in this installment, they had to get in some healthy violence as well. We only got a taste of action at the end, but it was better than last week which didn’t have all that much going on in the killing department.

Finally the show has decided to start cutting storylines out in the interest of time. They couldn’t show absolutely everyone’s happenings at all times forever, and so this week we were left to wonder about the plight of Daenerys and her mini-horde, and Stannis Baratheon and his witch lover.

Also conspicuously absent were Rob and Joffrey, for the second week in a row to boot. I understand a show with so many major characters has to jump around, but the two of them are really the two main opposing forces of the series right now, so it’s a bit strange we haven’t seen them in two weeks.

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A founding member of Unreality has returned to review Ninja Gaiden 3. Take it away Madison…

Let’s get something straight immediately:  Ninja Gaiden 3 is a step backwards from Ninja Gaiden 2 and Ninja Gaiden Black.  Aside from the graphics – and even that’s debatable – the first Ninja Gaiden game to be released without Itagaki at the helm suffers from fundamental design flaws that can make gameplay tedious.  At times, Ninja Gaiden 3 does offer challenges worthy of the Ninja Gaiden name, but in the end, this third installment can’t overcome the dreadful changes made by Team Ninja in Itagaki’s absence.

Ninja Gaiden 3 features three different play modes – story mode, ninja trials (which can be played alone or co-op), and online multiplayer.  Team Ninja made a point to humanize Ryu this time around and attempted to add depth to the game’s story, but does anyone playing a Ninja Gaiden game actually care about the story in the first place?  Ninja Gaiden is supposed to be about intense combat, ultraviolence, a variety of weapons, and a challenge to even the most skilled gamers.  Story, with respect to this series, is and should be an afterthought.  Now, it’d be one thing if Team Ninja decided to focus on the story this time around while keeping the combat and upgrades static, but it seems as if other aspects of the game were diminished as a result of this decision.  Gone is the dismemberment from Ninja Gaiden 2.  Gone are the variety of weapons (aside from recent DLC, but everybody knows that’s a weak move on Team Ninja’s part).  Gone are the different types of Ninpo.  And gone is the essence left behind by slayed enemies, which brings me to what I believe is the game’s biggest flaw.

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