The E3 Soup - What Will Joel McHale Say?
John’s at E3 right now. I’m not. He promised to text me when anything exciting happens, but we all know that’s not going to happen. No, instead I get to sit here at my desk working on other things and imagining what kind of wacky shenanigans are going down in LA.
To make matters worse, Ubisoft announced last week that comedian Joel McHale of E!’s The Soup fame would be hosting their E3 press conference. My mind has been atwitter with anticipation ever since. What celebrities will be unfairly mocked in association with what games? The only problem is we still don’t know much about what Ubisoft will be showing this year. Assassin’s Creed 2, for sure. Rabbids Go Home, definitely. Red Steel 2, most likely. No More Heroes 2, possibly? Um… Petz? Shaun White World Tour? Ah, damn you Ubisoft for giving me so little fodder for Soup-style celebrity ridicule.
As long as I’m imagining it all anyway, let’s pretend McHale is hosting EA’s press conference, okay? Much better. Here’s what I think the Soup star would have to say about some of EA’s big properties, given the opportunity: Continue reading »
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Tags: assassin's creed, comedy, dante's inferno, derrick sanskrit, e3, ea, half-life, hunter s. thompson, joel mchale, lenny bruce, lindsay lohan, need for speed, no more heroes, press conference, rabbids go home, red steel, shaun white, ssx, the soup, ubisoft
Here Comes the Sun: The Three Es
I’m getting on a plane at 7:30am on Sunday morning and flying to Los Angeles for the first time in my life. To be honest, I’m a little nervous. I used to travel quite a bit when I was younger but haven’t in some time. Life in New York tends to work in one of two ways. Either you’re a jet setter, one of those people that have some kind of crazy glamorous job that sends them all over the world for business and pleasure or you’re city bound. Make no mistake, it’s hard to get out of this place even just for a day. My favorite joke is that even if you walk over one of the bridges or through the tunnels, there’s going to be some gruff civil servant demanding two dollars to cross the border beyond the city limits. It gets comfortable though. Sometimes the city is a big enough world on its own. I don’t know what to expect from LA other than for it to be hot as hell, for the food to be expensive, and for the people to be a whole lot blonder.
Then there’s E3.
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Tags: alan wake, Atari, chrono break, chrono cross, chrono trigger, e3, fumito ueda, ghostbusters, ico, john constantine, metroid, metroid 5, metroid dread, Microsoft, nintendo, pokemon, psp go, sony, tatsunoko vs. capcom, team ico, trico
Rumorang: First Footage of Beyond Good and Evil 2
There are two possibilities. One, this footage is an elaborate fake lovingly crafted by an animator of immense talent. And two, it’s real. If it’s real, it means that Michael Ancel has returned to us with a powerful fury, delivering a sun drenched modernization of his beloved science fiction adventure in grand style. Six years ago, Jade ran across the rooftops of a Hillysian metropolis and it looked like this.
In 2009, Jade’s brand of investigative journalism looks like this.
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Tags: beyond good & evil, beyond good & evil 2, e3, hillys, jade, john constantine, michael ancel, mirror’s edge, ubisoft
Manifest Destiny: Red Dead Redemption Looks Spectacular
I don’t watch TV. This isn’t a point of pride for me. I’m not one of those snooty, high falutin’ fancy pants people that haughtily tell everyone, “I do not watch television. Phaw! That disgusting opiate of the masses! Please, I like to think when I am entertained.” It’s pretty obvious I’m not that guy. Up All Night wouldn’t exist if I was that guy. Truth is that when I moved to New York as a swarthy twenty-one year-old in 2003, I wasn’t exactly swimming in cash money. Fifty bucks a month for cable was fifty bucks a month I could spend on a new game and, so, I fell out of the habit of boob tube consumption. In the intervening years, I’ve only glommed on to a few shows, all of them spectacular. One of them was Deadwood, the single greatest piece of Western fiction in any medium made in the past fifteen years. It was pulpy, it was funny, it was sexy and tense and glorious, filled with some of the most memorable characters I’ve ever seen. The look, the dialogue, and the music embodied all the grit and glory of the perfect Western.
Red Dead Redemption reminds me of Deadwood.
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Tags: al swearengen, deadwood, e3, grand theft auto iv, john constantine, Red dead redemption, rockstar
John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself. 
Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Nerve, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.
Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.
Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines.
Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.
Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.
Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.
