Bryce's Pipe Bomb Survival Guide*

This one sort of came out of nowhere. It's described on the poster as Doctor Who meets Shaun of the Dead, and that's a pretty apt review. It stars three friends, two of which are uber-nerds, with the last being a cynical "normal" person. The lead is played by Chris O'Dowd (Roy from the IT Crowd) whose particular quirk is time travel. The story starts off with "Ray" getting fired from his job as a "time soldier" at an amusement park. Once our heroes have hit the bar to drown their sorrows is when things get fun. As Ray goes to get the next round of drinks, he encounters a woman who claims to be a time traveling operative, in charge of repairing leaks in the timeline, and she's just so honored to meet such a crucial figure in history. Of course Ray assumes that she's just putting him on at the behest of his friends as a prank. Until he goes back to his table, and then they find the time leak. Basically, it's a fun little romp t...

Well, it's been a few weeks since I took Brütal Legend out my 360 in frustration, and I just haven't felt like going back to it, so, here's my review: For some background, Brütal Legend is the latest game from Tim Schafer, who comes from a background of making some of the greatest adventure games ever at Lucas Arts, and is also responsible for the simply amazing Psychonauts, although I never finished that one either. You take on the role of Eddie Riggs, the greatest roadie the world has ever known, Riggs is so metal he just can't stand the modern music scene. During a freak accident, he is killed, and wakes up in a fantasy metal world, where music is power, and everything has spikes. The setting is really where Legend rocks it to eleven, the entire world looks like someone magically brought to life every metal album cover from their high school music collection, the animation is almost on par with a Pixar movie, which is a little incongruous to all of the gore and ...

Human Target is a new prime time show which just aired its first episode this last weekend. The premise is that our hero, played by Mark Valley, runs a firm which specializes in flushing out would be assassins. He does this by impersonating someone innocuously close to the target, to avoid spooking the killer, and then subduing them once they've revealed themselves. Thankfully this first episode doesn't do a lot to set up our hero's origin, there's no flashback scenes to his military service in Afghanistan or a Batman-esque origin a CEO who's entire family was killed in an attempt on his life. He's just introduced as the solution to your assassin problems, and then they run with it. The action was intense with the main plot involving a train scene which was very much trying to emulate the first Mission Impossible movie, and succeeding. Fight scenes were also very well choreographed, and featured a certain playfulness that I hope they manage to carry through...

What can I say about Red Faction? It's been out for quite awhile now, and it was actually the game I was playing the night I got blown up, so understandably, I took quite a break from it, but I just finished it the other night. Guerilla is actually the third Red Faction game, the first two being FPS's, their claim to fame was the "Geomod" system. With Geomod Red Faction was able to give environments a level of destructability not seen before in a shooter. Famously, you could take a rocket launcher, and use it to blow out tunnels through the rock. I played the first game for a short while, before ultimately finding that the action wasn't really engaging. With Guerilla, THQ decided to shakeup the basic gameplay model. Now instead of being a FPS, it's actually a third person sandbox, meaning that instead of progression of levels, you are dropped into a small city, much like the Grand Theft Auto, Saints Row, and Mercenaries games, except you're on Mars. ...

Just recently I started watching Fringe. I know, I'm behind the times, welcome to last year and all that rot, well listen, The Prisoner waited 40 years for me to watch it, and it wasn't bitter about it. In a year or two I might get around to watching Lost, and then you can all bitch about how I'm only writing about it now that it's over. Fringe has more to do with Lost than just me being late to the party, they were both created at least in part, by JJ Abrams. Along with Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman. Together this trio always rebooted the long stagnant Star Trek franchise with a motion picture this last summer. One could say it's got a good pedigree, but Orci and Kurtzman also wrote the script for both Transformers movies, which no one will accuse of featuring stellar plots or dialogue. Perhaps that's not their fault though *ahem* . Back to Fringe! Fringe kicks off with an airplane landing during a medical emergency, which it turns out was a virus intentio...

So, the general internet consensus is that this game did everything right that the first game did wrong and it's hard to argue with that statement. It's a beautifully polished game, and for the most part, the entire amount of time I was playing the game I was having fun. The feel of being an assassin is still very visceral, and by the end of the game, the array of ways at your disposal to destroy your enemies is staggering. A few of the new weapons that you get in this game is having two hidden daggers, one on each arm, which at first seemed really silly, and it is, but there's no denying how awesome you feel when you walk between two guards and just put your hands out and stab each one in the neck. There's also the ability to kill an enemy while hanging from a ledge, you reach up, stab him, grab him, and yank him off. My favorite new ability though, is being able to fight barehanded, and steal your opponents weapon, then kill them with it. You're also able to ...

I've been on a pretty big Warren Ellis kick lately, and I think that this might be the most unsettling book that he's done. The violence here is brutal and disgusting, as are all of the characters. By the time you're done reading this book, you'll be hard pressed to find a character you can sympathize with. The premise is that in the 60's a group of super beings shows up, calling themselves the Levellers, they fight injustice wherever they see it, their leader, who never dirties his own hands, gives the line that they do not intend to rule, but simply allow everyone to live their own lives as they see fit. The Levellers are all normal people that have been exposed to a drug that is a derivative of a psychoactive, which then grants them different powers, although by standard they are all very hard to kill. Throughout the years, the Levellers become the Front Line, and they have a revolving roster as members retire or are killed in action. The story kicks off...