subhumanzoids

How’s the new look? All gravy, or send that shit to hades? White on white, such a fright, or “sweet dreams, good night, this shit is so tight”?

Is it smellin’ like a yellin’ felon, or ripe and robust like a freshly picked melon? Does it live in trees and have greasy knees, or can its cheese freeze disease and make your enemies scream please?

Does it look like rotten cheddar with no chance of gettin’ better, or do its cool tones keep you heat-prone like a thick-necked woolen sweater?

Let me know it, but don’t blow it. Don’t get harsh like a swamp marsh or mince words like some songbirds. Leave impressions like confessions but don’t cuss at Lust-a-bust, ’cause our committee won’t be pretty and it’ll get meaty at the treaty.

If you guys haven’t been listening to the show, now is a great time to start! If you like games, movies, or all of the above, then surely you will love some velvety nerd voices jamming about them for under an hour every week.

Check it out here, and subscribe to the iTunes feed to make your lives both easier AND sexier!

Remember Raijin Comics? While doomed from the beginning, it was a really ambitious, and initially weekly, manga anthology released by a bunch of Japanese people that refused to admit defeat, even as their ship was sinking. No, scratch that, their ship was exploding violently from its very core.

Anyway, wikipedia can give you the lowdown.

Okay, got it? Well, you may also remember that I am a huge nerd. I loved most of the comics that they ran each week, so much that I sent them one of those pointless “I love your publication!” letters, and… they printed it in Issue 24. I am sure you are jumping for joy!

But I wasn’t alone. Everyone’s favorite troll, Daniel Zelter, also appears to have shot them a letter under the guise of his handle “GATSU” – in ISSUE 31! I win this round, Zelter! Way to come LATE to the party, while I’m fashionably dressed to the nines!

Those of you that fancy yourselves devout JLR supporters may recall the night in which I sat down to watch the DOA movie on Google Video. Shockingly, that was back in January!

Dodging what everyone on our Earth assumed was going to be a speedy DVD-only release, Yuen’s corn-fest actually managed to make it into the theaters, and everyone should rejoice!

John awaits the film with bated breath
Well, as you can see from the picture above, not everyone in Louisville was prepared to go see this epic butt kicker. This image was snapped a mere 5 minutes before show time. Some stragglers ended up pouring in after the previews, but a mid-flick walk out proved that even the mightiest of man might not be able to handle Eric Roberts and his magnificent mane.

The movie is as excellent on the big screen, nay, much more so, than it was on a small 300×500 embedded player. There is no real way to be mentally equipped for this motion picture prior to absorbing it fully, but alcohol helps.

It’s too bad that the Tomb Raider name became more or less synonymous with absolute garbage a few years back, because Crystal Dynamics’ drastically improved overhaul of the series with Tomb Raider Legend went all but unnoticed by those still wiping the bad taste from their mouths.

Jesus, the PSone game looks like fucking Cubeism now

And who could blame them? The series was a complete nightmare, and that’s being generous. I was a fan of the first game, not because of its strict, grid-based platforming controls, but because of how vast and ambitious it was. I liked that you were fighting wild animals and dinosaurs instead of a bunch of lazily programmed goons with guns, and when you weren’t doing this, you were traversing colossal heights in almost complete silence.

Legend was pretty fun, though. I’ll admit it, I rented it on 360 just to get some achievement points, but it ended up being really enjoyable for the few hours that it lasted.

Which brings us to what I’ve been boiling with excitement about deep under my skin, never showing my cards for fear of it being a wreck of a product: Tomb Raider: Anniversary. This is Crystal Dynamics reimagining the first game and catering it wholly to their excellent control scheme and newly implemented scenarios.

Anniversary is a really fantastic television game. So absorbing is its atmosphere, that it doesn’t take long to forget that this is a Playstation 2 game. It is, without a doubt, one of the best looking games on the console.

But don’t let that sell you on the game. After all, the original game looked like total anal fungus, but that didn’t stop anyone from playing it. What’s special about this one is everything I mentioned before, but in playable form. I would never ask anyone to go back and play the PSone game again, but that solitary atmosphere is back, amplified ten-fold. At certain points, the platforming action provided therein becomes a hypnotic experience, whether you’re running along walls with your grappling hook, or just trying to find one more foothold to make it across the room.

They added a couple sort of superfluous things to combat, like the ability to dive from a charging beast at the last second and time a headshot. If anything, this just makes it that much easier to bat off the hordes of wild creatures. There’s also almost no point to using medi-packs anymore, because when you restart at one of the frequent checkpoints, you have full health again. Oh, and expect to watch Lara’s limp, broken body hit the ground a lot.

Apparently, Anniversary might be released in small DLC chunks on Xbox Live, made available tomb by tomb to those that own Legend, and perhaps even further down the road as a retail bundle with the same game. I can’t imagine the former being anything short of highway robbery.

Forget that, play it now, now, now.