American Horror Story: Hotel

There it is. The next season of American Horror Story will be themed “Hotel” with Lady Gaga in a lead role. The FX show was approved for thirteen episodes and will premiere in October 2015. Nothing yet on IMDB or FX websites.

Wayward Pines

Upon watching this trailer for the first time I am immediately reminded of many things dear to my heart: The Twilight Zone, Silent Hill, Twin Peaks.  A “special” agent takes on a mission to search for an agent that has gone missing, wrecks his car in the process of searching for her and wakes up in the mysterious town of Wayward Pines.  Not only are the inhabitants of the town odd in the kind of way that the population of the Truman Show is odd, he locates the missing agent in Wayward Pines.  Only, it doesn’t look like leaving will be simple.  Mentions of dissimilar experiences of time and explicit directions to avoid conversations regarding the previous lives of the inhabitants of Wayward Pines hint at some strange alternate universe or rift in time that the town exists in.  A massive list of Hollywood names is associated with the production.  It airs on May 14th at 9PM on Fox.  I will certainly be tuning in.

Terraria: Otherworld Announced

OMG. OMG. OMG. Before I hyperventilate…. Yes, Engine Software and Re-Logic have just announced Terraria Otherworld. The pre-alpha work looks amazing as you can see in the video. I am instantly in love with the color scheme, the glow, ‘glitter’ and the new array of graphics with the same familiar Terraria feel. The game is going to continue with the sandbox adventure but with a greater RPG and strategy base. For me, I can’t put the first Terraria down! I’ve had it on my Vita since it’s first download. I love building, fighting and… dying. The challenge of trying to recoup from your death and refortify your defenses or build stronger weapons to finally defeat an enemy (who has already killed you 26 times) is one of those thrills that you can only get from video games. Add a dark, mysterious theme to it and you’ve just made gold.

Married with Jonathan van den Wijngaarden’s music (who also composed the soundtrack for Kick and Fennick), it’s sure to be an even greater success than the original Terraria. I hope we can get some more information from the upcoming GDC next month. I guess we will all wait in anticipation as the only thing missing from this announcement is a release date!

Pandora’s Station: Destiny of Spirits Review

Yay! Another game for free download on the PlayStation Vita! Destiny of Spirits was developed exclusively for the Vita by SCE Japan Studio and Q Entertainment. You have to allow the game to use Location Data or else you cannot play. It’s kind of like social networking sites where you can send friend requests and receive “mail”. The game’s trailer above is actually a great representation of the game you will be playing. The battle scenes are always set up the same and there are always three Chaos Spirits against three of your chosen Spirits.

Hellblade

Photo from: Hellblade.com

 

While developer Ninja Theory insists that this is not a sequel to the cultish Playstation 3 classic Heavenly Sword, they fool no one; everyone knows what this is.  It’s hard to watch the developers stream a Q & A session on Twitch with a giant Heavenly Sword banner in the background, talk about a new IP that shares so many fundamental characteristics with that game and not consider it a spiritual successor. I mean: Heavenly (Hell), Sword (Blade).  I wonder if this has anything to do with IP legality…? Ok, there is the topical change of swapping out an unspecified Asian setting for an unspecified Celtic/Nordic/Viking setting; but, this Single player game, featuring a strong female-warrior lead, will put the player in the position to fight in a stylized vision of Hell/Helheim.  Furthermore, runes feature heavily in Hellblade and although the markings of the Heavenly Sword could not be specifically labeled as runes, this aesthetic is remarkably similar.

Pandora’s Station: Kick and Fennick Review

I downloaded Kick and Fennick solely because it was free for PlayStation Plus members to download (February deal). The trailer makes this game look amazing but here’s the plot summary: A boy wakes up in a brightly colored electronic dystopia with well maintained facilities, despite an overflow of plant life, and it takes 45 seemingly similar levels to get his robot friend a battery. That’s it! That’s the game!

Poltergeist (2015) Trailer

Premieres July 24th, 2015 in 3D

Game of Thrones 5th Season Trailer

April 12, 2015