Okay, so it’s less an “official” promotional shot with broody looking actors set to an inevitably gorgeous Photoshop background, but more a cast and crew photo that’s not exactly befitting of Facebook because they’re not doing pose, though it is kind of hipster as they’re not looking at the camera. But hey, if you squint your eyes, there’s kind of a lens flare from the lighting equipment.

Click to enlarge

 
Taken on set, producer Roberto Orci tweeted the photo, adding “whole family, from in front and behind the camera.”

All we have to say is… IS IT MAY 17 2013 YET?!
 

 
I’ve been receiving emails about the upcoming game Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, so I decided to download the free trial on Xbox 360 (because I have a Mac and not a PC, this was my only option). Produced by 38 Studios, the game has some big names involved with it’s creation, including but not limited to Todd McFarlane, Ken Rolston (the lead designer of Morrowind) and RA Salvatore.

The simplest way I can describe my feelings of the game after the demo is this: World of Warcraft meets Dragon Age 2. It’s a pretty to the point summation of my experience, but also a little vague, so let me continue.

The game opens with a cutscene that explains the premise behind the game, and here’s where the World of Warcraft feeling begins. The visuals in the game, especially the colors and the look of the gnomes in the opening scene, are very reminiscent of WoW. The cut scene is a little long, but when you have a game written by RA Salvatore, you’ve got to expect a thorough explanation of what’s going on.

The opening area of the game — and the beginning of the demo after the cut scene — are your basic tutorial mode, teaching you how to fight, gather items, and equip weapons and armor. This is the part that reminds me of Dragon Age 2. The basic fighting system seems to be pretty straight forward, and you press the RT button to bring up your radial menu attacks, each keyed to the A,B,X,Y buttons, or use A to do general attacks.

Combat is a little clunky, but overall it’s fine. It was easy to master after games like Dragon Age 2, and it’s a nice change of pace after months of playing Skyrim. My only problem was that the camera, even after turning down the sensitivity, was extremely crazy and sensitive, sending my screen moving around with just the slightest touch.

The game gets back into a WoW feel after you fight your first boss, level up, and see that you have three different branches of skills (for warrior, rogue, and mage) that have multiple talent trees. After you’re finished with the main quest, you have about 40 minutes to explore the world. Even though it’s a little rough around the edges, I enjoyed it for the most part. I was intrigued by the idea of the game, enjoyed the elements that felt like World of Warcraft (without my least favorite part of WoW — other people!), and the simple, straight-forward gameplay. The amount of quests I encountered in my short period of trial play after the main demo led me to believe there are lots of quests to do and places to go, which will hopefully make for a fun, open-ended game that I can complete and still work on — or have fun with and come back to the main story later — like with Skyrim.

In the end, this seems like it will be an RPG worth picking up for any fan of the fantasy/RPG genre.
 

 
I will remember February 2, 1994 for the rest of my life. Not because a large rodent in Pennsylvania decided there would be six more weeks of winter – no, readers, I am talking about Hedgehog Day, of course. It was on this very day eighteen years ago (who else feels old now?) that Sega released their highly anticipated Genesis title, Sonic the Hedgehog 3. As a nine-year-old boy I was in full Sonic fever; I watched Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog every morning before school, and I didn’t miss an episode of Saturday morning’s Sonic the Hedgehog (or SatAM for you fanboys and fangirls out there). I bought every issue of Archie’s Sonic the Hedgehog comic book. I even persuaded my mother cook Sonic’s favorite food: chili dogs.

It was this fervor for the iconic blue hedgehog that dictated the events of Hedgehog Day for me. You see, my sister was on the fifth grade girls’ basketball team that year, and she was having her very first game. However, this just so happened to fall on Hedgehog Day – and if you remember the hype for Sonic 3 like I do, you know what a big deal it was. It was right in the heat of the Genesis vs. SNES battle (“Genesis does what Nintendon’t”). The previous Thanksgiving, Sonic had made history as the first video game character in the Macy’s parade (only to meet an unfortunate end with a lamp post). McDonald’s was preparing to launch a Happy Meal promotion (and yes, I ended up collecting all the toys).

So, did I attend my sister’s first basketball game? Hell no. I insisted that my mom drive me to Toys R Us to pick up a copy of Sonic 3. My sister was upset at the time, but I think even she remembers Sonic 3 more fondly than her fifth grade basketball game. Sonic 3 was everything I’d hoped for. The levels were huge and encouraged exploration in a way the previous titles only hinted at. You could save your game progress Tails could actually fly! Knuckles even taught me and other gamers what an echidna was (a spiny anteater)! I didn’t even know at the time that Sonic 3 was technically half of a game – it was originally to include the content of Sonic & Knuckles until time constraints and cartridge costs forced them to be split – I was so engrossed in Sonic’s adventures on the floating island that nothing else mattered. The level design… the boss fights… and oh, the music (some of which was written by Michael Jackson)… I still remember it so fondly that I don’t hesitate to rank Sonic 3 (along with Sonic & Knuckles) as one of my favorite games of all time.

As I look back on Hedgehog Day, I realize that this was probably the high point of the Sonic franchise. Knuckles’ Chaotix and the 32X itself were experiments that didn’t quite pan out. Sonic 3D Blast failed to match the quality of the previous platforms. We may remember Sonic Adventure being fairly decent, but let’s face it; this was the beginning of a decline, the lowest points involving Sonic in a romance with a human princess, and Shadow getting his own game. Then there was the were-hog, but don’t even get me started on that. Granted, Sega has tried to return the franchise to its former glory. The Wii titles weren’t so bad, and Sonic Generations even enhances and gives a context to some of the games I don’t hold in high esteem. Sonic’s even on a commercial for Progressive auto insurance! Kids still know who Sonic is! It can’t be that bad, right?

The sad truth, however, is that even Sonic 4 can’t recapture the feeling I had playing through Sonic 3 as a kid. Maybe it’s just that I’ve changed – but I think Sonic has changed, too. To be fair, he’s still better off than a certain bandicoot. I can’t help but feel that Sega is trying hard to make good Sonic games, but not quite reaching the full potential of the franchise. Will they ever be able to redeem my faith in the blue hedgehog? We’ll see. Episode 2 of Sonic 4 promises to be a spiritual sequel to Sonic CD, which tickles my nerd fancy. However, I’m going to honor Hedgehog Day today by remembering Sonic at his best – speeding through Angel Island, careening through Carnival Night, and snowboarding down the slopes of Ice Cap.
 

 
Star Trek: The Next Generation – The Next Level hit shelves yesterday, bringing with it the hope of revitalizing of one of the most successful shows within arguably the most famous sci-fi television series.

The Next Level features The Next Level is just a sample of things to come, giving us a teaser into the future of TNG as it boldly goes into the world of 1080p. This Blu-ray, which is a steal on Amazon.com for only $14.99, features three episodes of the series remastered with footage recreated from the original film elements rather than upconverted from video tape, given upgraded special effects, and digitally remastered with 7.1 sound. The three episodes that have been remastered include the feature-length series premier, “Encounter at Farpoint,” as well as well-known episodes “Sins of the Father” and “The Inner Light” (one of my top ten TNG episodes).

StarTrek.com spoke with CBS executive vice president of Home Entertainment, Ken Ross, who promised that much more is on the way, but it will take time.

According to Ross, the first season alone had more than 1,700 VFX shots to recreate. “It was and continues to be an enormous project that will take several years to complete,” Ross said. “From a manpower perspective, we have more than 20 people working on this project full time in three shifts 24 hours a day. It’s a huge commitment to transfer all seven seasons to high definition.”

Fans of the hit television series can expect the first season to be released at the end of summer or the beginning of fall, and it is the hope of those working on the project to release 1-2 seasons per year.

In the meantime, The Next Level is definitely enough to whet the appetite of any TNG fan.

 
It looks like worrying times ahead for UK specialist videogame chain, GAME, after reports surfaced on the Internet today that cast aspersions on its ability to continue trading.

Speaking to NowGamer, a source told how the retailer has “lost credit assurance with most of its publishers.” What does this mean to the consumer? Well, given the credence to the story now that a big-wig at GAME has all but confirmed its precipice-teetering position by assuring that the PlayStation will launch in their stores and online and that they are actively “talking to publishing partners… regarding future launches,”, it very much puts the company’s stocking of new titles in question.

Essentially, GAME purchase upcoming titles from publishers with credit, but with this option now in jeopardy, they would be forced to pay the cash equivalent instead. This leaves the publisher at a quandary as to whether to proceed with the transaction and take a chance on the copies of games that do not sell.

Gaming news giants Eurogamer were told that GAME are having trouble with “all publishers and not just a select few.” Their publishing insider also went onto to suggest that GAME is also in financial difficulty as finding the money to buy new titles as opposed to on credit is “proving difficult for them.”

Quick to chime in on the news, various spokespersons from GAME have assured – as mentioned above – the launch of the Vita is guaranteed to go ahead, and that the new releases this Friday (Final Fantasy XIII-2, Metal Gear Solid HD Collection, Soul Calibur 5) are “moving through our system as we speak” and that all are “booked in for launch on Friday.”

Eagle-eyed gamers spotted – myself included – that the listing for Metal Gear Solid HD Collection on both PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 has been removed from the site; and as of writing, they remain unlisted. This is not just as of today as I searched for the game on Monday evening to double check its release as I’d completely forgotten about it, but no, it wasn’t there. It’s not unusual for GAME to remove listings, nor is it for any other site though admittedly most implement an ‘out of stock’ listing that bars anyone for adding the item to their basket. However in light of this news, it really isn’t promising. They claim that they are investigating the game’s removal and in talking with Eurogamer, confirm that new pre-orders for Mass Effect 3 are being cancelled.

Update: To further add to the growing doubt and worry, although some may see it as a positive, GAME announced this afternoon on their Twitter that “The first wave of 2012’s releases… have hit the warehouse and the machines are warming up…”

As a long time customer of theirs – and as many others will also tell you – they usually start processing and dispatching orders Tuesday mid-morning for Friday release. Perhaps this day delay is hopefully just a blip, but with all the chatter, it is somewhat compounding. Further reading of their Twitter feed seems to suggest a sense of positivity that customers will be able to pre-order new titles and go onto say to one gamer that “there’s nothing to worry about, some untrue stories get published at times.”

Along with many other retailers, GAME have not had a good financial year but that is to be somewhat expected given the current clime. They also had a hard time last autumn when they launched a rebranded website that had all kinds of teething problems which many were infuriated with. They were also the target of a hack rumour that was swiftly proven false. Their speed and general prompt customer service, especially their beyond helpful and engaging Twitter team, does imbue you with a certain sense of hope, and it would be an awful shame for yet another company to begin the tentative steps to folding.
 

 
As a massive White Stripes fan, this week’s column can only really be about one thing: the release of his new single online: ‘Love Interrupted’, taken from the forthcoming album, ‘Blunderbuss.’ The single is available to listen to through his website if you are a member of the Third Man Records site.

This is exciting news for all White Stripes/Raconteurs/Dead Weather fans, as well as anyone who has ever enjoyed music before as, arguably, Jack White is one of the most innovative and interesting musicians working today. The announcement of their split in early 2011 was upsetting and disappointing for millions of people, but if one thing is certain, it’s that the busiest man in rock was unlikely to just sit back on his laurels. And, sure enough, his solo album is due out at the end of April, and promises to be as stimulating as ever.

The new single deals with the idea of a love that doesn’t just wash over a life, but consumes it, corrupts it, desolates any semblance of the life that once stood in its place. White sings: “I want love to roll me over slowly, stick a knife inside me, and twist it all around. I want love to grab my fingers gently, slam them in a doorway, push my face into the ground.” These powerful words are played along to a simple, acoustic guitar track that does not steal the show but, rather, quietly compliments the lyrics and White’s voice. Unlike the latter White Stripes’ work which ever-increasingly involved heavy, dirty bass tracks and the meaty use of instruments and an odd, train-of-thought style to their lyrics. White seems to have stepped back from this and stripped it down completely, producing an unassuming and yet fascinating single that, actually, I’m happy to listen to over and over again.

I, for one, am excited about the new album release in April – it promises to be as unique and interesting as everything else that Jack White produces, and, as usually happened with an upcoming White Stripes release, I’ve got that anticipatory feeling in the pit of my stomach. Roll on April!
 

 
I live in Perth, a small, distant city in Australia. It’s so distant, Perth has the eye twitching record of being the most remote city in the world! If that wasn’t enough, it’s also hot most of the time! Not hot like it’s hot in Britain, because only the British find it hot in Britain, hot like Phoenix. The hot that kills!

I’m a geek without a desk. I don’t believe in it. Why would I want a desk in 2012 when everything is wireless? All I need is my MacBook and the armrest of my leather couch for a shelf. The shelf mainly consists of my phone, chocolate biscuits (for energy I assure you) and a few Coke Zero cans of varying age. Usually cross-legged, I perch my Mac between my thigh and my ample stomach. Here is where I find trouble.

MacBooks, like every other laptop, have a hot base! Not British hot either! How am I suppose to write in comfort when my tools are trying to make me as uncomfortable as possible! Sure the first few minutes are OK but inevitably my leg will be sweating enough to short out my screen! This is the main reason I don’t blog in Summer, yet here I am, filling my time with the first of many grumpy posts in what the Americans call, 108 degrees, my leg leaking worse than my worn washers!

Yes, I know there are a multitude of laptop tables I can use to rest my tech inspired heater but, I have a laptop to de-clutter, not to purchase a wealth of tables and arm rests that will no doubt create more mess in my home than a simple desk would! My girlfriend has one of these lap-tables bigger than a scooter! Why should it take something five times bigger than my laptop to protect me from it? Clearly, we are being let down by our tech selling overlords.

Next time Apple launches their latest Mac, I don’t want higher res, or a better camera, not even more free iCloud space. Next time I want a laptop that sits on my leg and keeps me cool! Is that so hard? Even better, I want a Mac that air-conditions my house! Air-conditions my house with a pleasant fragrance scientifically created in a lab by glasses wearing blonde girls! Blonde girls with masters degrees who spend their weekends posing in calendar shoots. Calendar pictures that, through the power of the net, populate my iCal!

I digress. My MacBook is hot! Fix it!
 

 
More than a few of us here at Geek Life are gamers of various sorts, and so we’re always tickled pink to hear new gaming news and rumors. Engadget has reported that the next Xbox console (Sometimes referred to as Xbox 720 or Xbox Loop [Editor's Note: Or the Xbox Lube, amirite OLR? --R]), might be out as soon as the end of next year — assuming, of course, that the Mayan Calendar was just a count down to the Hobbit movie and not the end of the world.

The next-gen Xbox will have a GPU that will beat out Nintendo’s upcoming Wii U by a whopping 20% — and graphical capabilities that will be six times greater than the original 360.

We’ll wait for a moment while you wipe off that drool.

Now, Microsoft hasn’t officially announced anything yet, but we’ll likely see some news about their next-gen Xbox at E3. I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait!
 

Gurren Lagann exists on, revels in, and hyper focuses pure human awesomeness into a reality punching fist-drill of amazing despite its humble beginnings. Wait, nevermind. The beginnings aren’t humble. The beginnings involve a teaser scene of some kind of awesome space battle with mentions of using the very fabric of spacetime to wring enemies out of existence and targeting something called the Maelstrom Cannon on “The Great Dimensional Waterfall”. Nothing akin to the scene is ever touched on again.

Actually, to be honest? This is a hard series to review. There’s no way to properly sum it up properly to let you know how amazing it is, but I’ll try. Mid-level spoilers ahead, because once you start talking about the show it’s hard to stop.

Simon is a tunnel digger who helps to expand his underground village with his drill. His “bro” Kamina is the most awesome example of crazed, shirtless, tattoo’d, shades wearing awesomeness to ever attempt to ride a stampeding pig-mole to a surface that may may not exist. They find a robot head that sprouts arms and legs and a forehead drill so they can fight a giant robot that looks like a cow skull that has arms and legs. They drill the bloody crap out of Cow Skull Face all the way up to the surface. Whoops! There was an apocalypse!  (That’s the entire first episode right there. No dawdling in this series.)

Yep, the surface world is pretty barren. What few humans that live there are locked in constant battle with these humanoid animal beings called Beastmen that pilot the giant robots that are heads with arms and legs. From there Kamina makes it a point to steal a robot, break its security locks and bend it to his control by sheer force of will and then against all reason and sense, combines it with the tiny robot head they found before to create the epic fighting robot Gurren Lagann.

Then they steal a walking robot battleship and use their sheer force of awesome to control it, give it their personal color palette and make it roundhouse jump kick a flying battleship and steal its levitation engine. A quick, plug and play install later and their walking battleship with arms is now flight capable and ready to  take on the Big Bad’s capital city which of course is a giant robot with the Big Bad’s personal giant robot inside. Not that said Big Bad even needs it since he ends up engaging in fisticuffs himself with Gurren Lagann’s  head.

Then it’s over. Wait. No! Then there’s the most well done Time Skip I’ve ever seen implemented, before they have to go beat the moon into submission. But that’s okay, because they use Gurren Lagann to transform their giant space ark into a fighting robot being piloted by the Gurren Lagann robot and battle the moon that itself is just a well disguised and much larger space battleship that can be transformed into a fighting robot to be piloted by the robot that Gurren Lagann pilots.Wait… What? Yes.

So they use their giant space battleships, their bio-computer powered by the severed head of a cosmic warrior thousands of years old, and their very will and desire to fight their latest enemies; aliens that believe that beings of spiral DNA are a danger to the universe. They punch said enemy right through reality itself and then go hyperdrive jumping after them to blow up their homeworld.

This inevitably leads to them needing to fire spiraling drill missiles of awesome into time and space itself and blow the enemy out of the past and future. Then from what I managed to gather, they use their robot piloting a robot piloting a robot to pilot a galaxy sized robot made of a pure thought form given life by way of the collective force of the human species to battle the hive mind alien force bent on destroying humans and all things with spiraling DNA. Entire galaxies are tossed around like ninjas throwing stars.

Despite me explaining all that, it still doesn’t even begin to cover all that there is to this series. It doesn’t cover the character growth and evolution that takes place. It doesn’t cover the reoccurring themes and phrases that brought a big, stupid grin to my face. It doesn’t cover the post apocalypse rebuilding of society against all odds. The amazing milestone scenes that one doesn’t expect coming. The complete and utter unsurpassable odds these characters are faced with, that they beat down by sheer force of human determination. The complete and utter stupidity and physics defying balderdash evident in each and every episode.

Yet, despite the weirdness, the stupidity, and the impossibilities, it all works. It works beautifully. It’s crazy and strange and bright and hopeful and cheer worthy. You actually find yourself coming to love the characters and want to see them succeed. Even the characters you might not have liked when they first appeared. They feel human. They act human. Without being bogged down by some many of those themes and traits you often see in other such shows.

There’s no one sitting there expounding on the nature of the human creature and trying to convince everyone that peace should be made with the enemy. No one having a nervous break down and ruining the battle plan. Just the celebration of “Hey, we’re human! We’re awesome! And we will NOT be denied ANYTHING! Now sit down and shut up while we cram this drill the size of a solar system down your throat hole!”

If I had to sum up Gurren Lagann succinctly, I’d call it satisfying. Because that’s the feeling you’re left with at the very end. It covers everything it needs and wants to and it’s all down with love. From the writing to the very impressive animation*.

I honestly believe that if given the chance, this is one of those shows that can easily appeal to an audience beyond just the anime junkies. Just sit back, set your brain to “Oooh pretty!” and turn logic off for a while and I think you’ll get quite a kick out of Gureen Lagann. The entire series is currently streamable on Netflix and Hulu.

*The animation does have a couple of dips in quality earlier. One the first episodes is a huge downgrade in quality due to being nothing but one huge experiment on Gainax’s part but its only the one episode and it after that it goes back to being awesome again.

 
This column contains spoilers for Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol.

 
When I went to see Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, I did not expect to experience a moving commentary upon the nature of my life and my relationship to technology. Mostly I was interested in watching Tom Cruise run a lot. He’s good at running. But I found the film weirdly relevant to my own life. And it was also the most impossiblest of all the Impossible Missions upon which Mr. Cruise has embarked.

The main thrust of the film is that a Swedish scientist guy wants to start a nuclear war to create peace on Earth. I think… a charitable reading of this character would be that he is sketched lightly and deftly so that the audience may read between the lines. To stop him, Agent Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team must go rogue and overcome their internal squabbling to… do spy things. You know the drill. As with most of the M:I films, our heroes use amazing, futuristic technology to do this. But in the fourth film, this technology continuously fails the team. They experience one setback after another. Agent Hunt has to jump for it after his sticky gloves fail way up on the world’s tallest skyscraper. After those cool masks that are a trademark of the series go haywire, they must rely on Jeremy Renner’s Academy-nominated acting ability. When more than one Russian guard looks at it, the invisibility screen Simon Pegg spent so much time setting up goes to pieces. And yet the day is saved, and Tom Cruise gets to hit a big red button and say “Mission: Accomplished” (note: that is an actual thing that happens).

Context: My fiancée and I have been having something of a bad run with technology. We bought a video game used… it is too scratched up to work. We bought a printer online… it will not recognize that it has paper. We had to buy a new laptop cord because the dog chewed the previous one. And what with a wedding and maybe a move coming up, that kind of streak of luck is… concerning. It was in this frame of mind that I went to see the most impossible of all the missions.

And I found that even when technology malfunctions, we still have each other. Tom Cruise’s team will catch him. Though Simon Pegg gets to say “I don’t know what’s happening” in various ways while staring at a computer screen, the world will still not end up in nuclear war because we don’t need technology for Jeremy Renner to beat up a Swedish guy. You see what I mean? No? This is a metaphor for life, my friends! We don’t need technology, we’re told. Even if the only thing that’s functioning properly is our relationship with each other, we’ll still hit that big red button in time.

The wonders of modern technology are everywhere in M:I: Ghost Protocol. The Burj Khalifa towers above the desert, a glass monument to the 21st century. The finale fight between Hunt and our villain takes place in an ultra-modern Indian parking garage, of all places, where cars are lifted by complex robotic systems. But for the most part it just gets in the way. Tom Cruise gets stuck way up on the Khalifa, he has to destroy the futuristic car to save the day. But at the same time, they never would have even been able to start to attempt all the spy things that they do without the technology.

I met my fiancée through the internet. Without Al Gore’s amazing invention, we would never have even known each other. But we don’t need the latest technology to function perfectly to start our lives together. Even if our cat Ser Pounce-a-lot knocks the TV off the wall and the car is stomped on by a giant Tripod from Mars, we’ll be okay. That is what Tom Cruise taught me in the fourth installment of his spy franchise, based upon a TV show from several decades ago. Thank you, Tom Cruise.