Latest ‘Quantum Conundrum’ Trailer is Also a Science Lesson

Quan­tum Conun­drum , the upcom­ing first-person action/puzzle game from Air­tight Games  (and designed by Kim Swift, one of the lead design­ers who gave the world the amaz­ing­ness that is Por­tal ) has a new trailer out today that will give you a very sci­encey les­son about time and physics.

It’s SCIENCE!

There’s a Dimen­sion for That…

In Quan­tum Conun­drum, you’ll play as a 12-year old boy vis­it­ing the man­sion lab­o­ra­tory of your eccen­tric mad sci­en­tist uncle–Professor Fitz Quadwrangle–who dis­ap­pears after an explo­sion. You then dis­cover a spe­cial glove called an Inter­di­men­sional Shift Device (or IDS) that has the power to change dimen­sions, which you’ll use to solve physics puz­zles and fig­ure out what hap­pened to your Uncle.

The game will be out some­time this sum­mer, though an offi­cial release date hasn’t been set yet.

‘Turtle Power’ Documentary Coming Soon, Has a Kick-ass Trailer

If you have ever con­sid­ered your­self a TMNT fan in any capac­ity, then this doc­u­men­tary needs to be on your radar.

Tur­tle Power: The Defin­i­tive His­tory of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles is an upcom­ing indie doc­u­men­tary from Cana­dian pro­ducer Isaac Elliott-Fisher of i.Productions in col­lab­o­ra­tion with  Faux­Pop TV  that cel­e­brates over 25 years of TMNT history.

“Cur­rently we have col­lected well over 100 hours of con­tent, hun­dreds of stills, and over 60 in-depth inter­views with the peo­ple who cre­ated the Tur­tles, the artists behind the orig­i­nal comics, the design­ers of the toys, the voices and tech­ni­cians of the car­toons, the magic mak­ers of the movies, and the loyal fans world wide.”

It has a totally kick-ass trailer that debuted a few weeks ago, which you can watch right here:

If you’re not even just a lit­tle bit excited after watch­ing that, then clearly you’ve got some­thing shoved up your shell.

One of the most inter­est­ing things about TMNT has always been how it started as a joke and grew into a wildly pop­u­lar world­wide phe­nom­e­non, or as the film puts it, a series of “happy accidents.”

With the Tur­tle Power doc­u­men­tary in the works, Nickelodeon’s new TMNT ani­mated show just around the cor­ner, and a new live-action TMNT film set to hit the­aters in 2013, it’s an awe­some time to be a Ninja Tur­tles fan.

‘Dark Shadows’ Trailer is a Big Pile of Suck

Well, I was   look­ing for­ward to Tim Burton’s upcom­ing film Dark Shad­ows …

After wait­ing months and months for any hint of a teaser, the full blown trailer arrived out of nowhere last night. And man what a fuck­ing dis­ap­point­ment it is.

Ok seri­ously, Tim Bur­ton, what the hell? This was your chance to make a seri­ous film for Dark Shad­ows fans and you’ve com­pletely blown it.

I mean this has to be some kind of joke, right? Nobody asked for  “Austin Pow­ers with Fangs,”  as the Boston Her­ald puts it.

Yes, we know Dark Shad­ows was a campy, low-budget soap opera, but it wasn’t this ( what­ever the hell “this” is).  The orig­i­nal TV show had more integrity than that.

Despite its lim­i­ta­tions, Dark Shad­ows  at least tried to be a seri­ous show and stuck to its unique (at the time) for­mula of hor­ror, mys­tery and romance. It was never con­sid­ered a com­edy (well, at least not inten­tion­ally) and never had to resort to cheap jokes.

I love Tim Bur­ton and all, but this makes two films in a row now ( Alice in Won­der­land ) where he’s com­pletely missed the mark and ruined beloved char­ac­ters and fan­doms with his flam­boy­ant, style-over-substance treat­ment of the material.

Oh well. I guess we’ll always have the orig­i­nal Dark Shad­ows  to fall back on.

‘Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir’ Trailer Drops, Yay for More Horror Games on 3DS!

Today Nin­tendo unleashed a load of shiny new 3DS trail­ers in their  Nin­tendo Direct presentation.

The game that most caught my eye was Spirit Cam­era: The Cursed Mem­oir, which is the newest addi­tion to the Fatal Frame series of games.  It also has the dis­tinc­tion of being one of the only few hor­ror titles soon to be avail­able on the 3DS plat­form (in the US, at least).

Spirit Cam­era: The Cursed Mem­oir intro­duces a mys­te­ri­ous girl named Maya who has been hid­ing in the shad­ows of an old house. Play­ers must help Maya break free from a ter­ri­fy­ing curse by aid­ing her escape from the clutches of a malev­o­lent woman in black. By using the Nin­tendo 3DS system’s built-in cam­era, play­ers can view Maya in their own sur­round­ings as the game’s eerie events unfold.

Check out the game’s eerie trailer below:

I’m thrilled to see more upcom­ing hor­ror titles for 3DS, and frankly, it’s about time.  The DS plat­form sorely lacks hor­ror titles, but the few that exist are excep­tion­ally good games. I should really do a blog post about that…

‘Atelier Meruru: The Apprentice of Arland’ Trailer Sure is Pretty

Via Scoop.it — Shezcrafti

Let’s gush over the cute new Ate­lier  game!

Ate­lier Meruru: The Appren­tice of Arland , part three of Gust’s Ate­lier tril­ogy, is cur­rently being local­ized for west­ern audi­ences and prepped for launch by NIS in North Amer­ica and Europe this May. NIS also pub­lished the first and sec­ond entries in the series, Ate­lier Rorona: The Alchemist of Arland and Ate­lier Totori: The Adven­turer of Arland .   Via www.joystiq.com

Meruru is the princess of Arls, a lit­tle king­dom sit­u­ated in the far north of the Arland repub­lic. After her father and Gio, the leader of Arland, dis­cussed the merg­ing of the two lands, she met Totori, the now-graduated alchemist. Daz­zled by the power of alchemy, and with a desire to help her coun­try pros­per, she forced her­self on Totori as her first student.

Check out the game’s very pretty, very girly trailer here:

Must Watch: ‘The Hunger Games’ Epic New Trailer

Via Scoop.it — Shezcrafti

Jen­nifer Lawrence, Eliz­a­beth Banks and Wil­low Shields come together in an epic new trailer for the Hunger Games. It pro­vides a fresh look at the dreary cap­i­tal of Panem and some new action shots of Kat­niss, and we also get to hear more of the film’s score.

Now I REALLY can’t wait to see this movie!

Via www.theimproper.com

New ‘Asylum’ Trailer — Welcome to Hanwell Mental Institute

Asy­lum is the upcom­ing first-person hor­ror adven­ture title from from the cre­ator of Scratches, that to this day, I still con­sider the scari­est game I have ever played. Last year when I heard Sen­scape had a new game in the works, it imme­di­ately went to the top of my Most Wanted list.  Because I already do enough of it on Twit­ter & my favorite adven­ture game forums, I will spare you the copi­ous amounts of gush­ing I am capa­ble of doing when it comes to Sen­scape and just get straight to the point:

There’s a new Asy­lum trailer out that includes actual game­play footage. Check out this dis­turb­ing new glimpse into Han­well Men­tal Institute:

Dead Island Has One of the Best Game Trailers I’ve Ever Seen

Have you seen the new trailer for Dead Island , the upcom­ing sur­vival horror/zombie FPS? It is truly a thing of beauty.

Nat­u­rally, com­par­isons to LOST and The Walk­ing Dead are already being drawn. Is it gim­micky (and also a tad uno­rig­i­nal)? Per­haps. But there’s no deny­ing that it’s a great look­ing trailer, and it cer­tainly gets the job done. Peo­ple who have never heard of this game are gush­ing all over it on Twitter.

At this point, it prob­a­bly doesn’t even mat­ter whether or not the game turns out to be good. This trailer just con­vinced me I need this game—I’m sure I’m not alone. In fact, I’m going to add it to my list .

No offi­cial word yet on the game’s release date, in case you were wondering.

‘From Bedrooms to Billions’ is a New Documentary about the Evolution of Video Games

From Bed­rooms to Bil­lions is a new doc­u­men­tary by inde­pen­dent film­mak­ers Anthony and Nicola Caulfield ( Night­fall Films ) about the hum­ble begin­nings of video games, and how pas­sion­ate gamers have trans­formed them into a bil­lion dol­lar industry.

Here’s the trailer (which, very appro­pri­ately, is set to Pin­ball Wizard):

As some­one who was prac­ti­cally born with a joy­stick in hand, I am very much look­ing for­ward to see­ing this film.  From the press release:

‘From Bed­rooms to Bil­lions’ is a film about the remark­able story of how a small num­ber of indi­vid­u­als from around the world made up of enthu­si­asts, hob­by­ists, school kids, bed­room coders and entre­pre­neurs, whose vision and cre­ativ­ity pio­neered in shap­ing the bil­lion dol­lar games indus­try which today, dom­i­nates the mod­ern enter­tain­ment land­scape.

Fun stats time!

• Video games is the num­ber one enter­tain­ment industry
• Over 70% of the world’s pop­u­la­tion plays video games
• By 2011, the world­wide gam­ing mar­ket will be worth $48.9 billion

The film is set to release in Autumn 2011.

Midnight Son is an Indie Vampire Film You Should Know About

If you’re a hor­ror fan like me who enjoys vam­pire sto­ries with a dose of real­ism (a’la Let the Right One In ‚ The Reflect­ing Skin, Grace), then Mid­night Son should be on your radar.  It’s an inde­pen­dent film with a lim­ited release from writer/director/producer Scott Leberecht.

If first heard about Mid­night Son on Twit­ter ( @MidnightSonFilm ), which promises to be “a gritty, real­is­tic new look at the vam­pire genre.”  Of course it got my atten­tion right away.

Here’s the trailer:

From the film’s web­site :

MIDNIGHT SON is the story of Jacob, a young man con­fined to a life of iso­la­tion, due to a rare skin dis­or­der that pre­vents him from being exposed to sun­light. His world opens up when he meets Mary, a local bar­tender, and falls in love. Trag­i­cally, Jacob’s actions become increas­ingly bizarre as he strug­gles to cope with the effects of his wors­en­ing con­di­tion. Forced by the dis­ease to drink human blood for sus­te­nance, he must con­trol his increas­ingly vio­lent ten­den­cies as local law enforce­ment nar­row their focus on him as a sus­pect in a series of grisly mur­ders.

If you want to see this film as much as I do, you can help out by click­ing here to demand Mid­night Son in your area.

The New Moon Trailer: OMG Squee!*

*Dis­claimer: I do not ever say things like ” squee ” or other words usu­ally belong­ing to the ver­nac­u­lar of 12 year old  fan­girls, but felt the dis­claimer was nec­es­sary to save me from hav­ing to explain myself to idiots who can’t tell when I’m being sarcastic.

Here’s what all the fuss is about:

If the trailer is any indi­ca­tion, I believe  New Moon is going to suck and suck hard , but it’s really not the filmmaker’s faults.  My lack of enthu­si­asm for the movie can be blamed on author Stephe­nie Meyer’s dread­ful source mate­r­ial.  For your con­ve­nience, and for my own per­sonal amuse­ment, let’s re-cap Meyer’s super-epic plot to the sequel of Twi­light , shall we?

• It’s Bella Swan’s birth­day and her vam­pire friends throw her a party at their digs.
• At the party, Bella gets a paper cut.
• Jasper, one of the newest vam­pires, can’t con­trol him­self when he sees the blood.
• Pre­dictably, he goes into a rage and lunges for Bella.
• Bella’s sexy vam­pire boyfriend Edward Cullen (pause to swoon here) saves the day…
• …But then tells Bella he must leave her for­ever in order to keep her safe, then peaces out.
• Bella can’t han­dle him leav­ing and goes all emo, bor­der­line suicidal.
• That’s okay though, because there’s yet another sexy guy, Jacob Black, just wait­ing around to take Edward’s place.
• And Jacob just hap­pens to be a werewolf.
• Jacob tries to get Bella to “drop that zero and get with the hero” but she ain’t havin’ none, and con­tin­ues to mope around and do reck­less things, like ride motor­cy­cles and go cliff diving.
• At some point Jacob the Were­wolf saves Bella from Lau­rent and Vic­to­ria, two ran­dom vam­pires turned vil­lians, recy­cled from the plot of Twi­light .
• Then out of nowhere, thanks to some weird, poorly-explained mixup cour­tesy of Edward’s sis­ter Alice, who can see the future but fucks it up som­times, Edward thinks Bella com­mit­ted suicide.
• In true Romeo and Juliet fash­ion, Edward decides he can’t live with­out Bella either, and runs off to Italy to kill him­self too.
• But Edward’s a vam­pire, and sui­cide is eas­ier said than done.  Rather than try to explain about the evil Vol­turi and the other bull­shit sec­ondary char­ac­ters that Meyer pulls out of her ass when she needs a plot, Edward’s sui­cide attempt can best be expressed as: DEATH BY SPARKLES.
• Just in the nick of time, Bella saves Edward from expos­ing him­self thus sav­ing him from the Vol­turi and there’s a big dra­matic reunite­ment scene.
• Some other unim­por­tant crap hap­pens in Italy, then Bella, Edward, and the rest of the vam­pires return home.
• Bella wants des­per­ately to become a vam­pire, and so she calls a Super­friends meet­ing where all the vam­pires take turns vot­ing on whether or not it should happen.
• And like the end­ing of  Twi­light , Meyer recy­cles the same “does Bella become a vam­pire or not?” cliffhanger in New Moon .
• The end!

It’s mind-blowing stuff, I know.  If you really want, feel free to read  my less than glow­ing review of the  New Moon book over at Ama­zon.  It’s just all so ridicu­lous, even for a fan­tasy book based on vam­pires.  Most of the book’s 563 pages is spent with Bella, as she pines away for her lost vam­pire love, and let me tell you, it was hell read­ing through page after page of this:

“I was not allowed to think of him. That was some­thing I tried to be very strict about. Of course I slipped; I was only human. But I was get­ting bet­ter, and so the pain was some­thing I could avoid for days at a time now. The trade­off was the never-ending numb­ness. Between pain and noth­ing, I’d cho­sen noth­ing.”

So by default,  New Moon the film should at least be a slight improve­ment over New Moon the book, if only because the nature of the media spares you the lit­er­ary tor­ture.  But Hol­ly­wood isn’t dumb.  It knows there’s good money to be made by cater­ing to the overzeal­ous female fan­base that made the first film such a suc­cess.   Twi­light fans want hot vam­pires, mushy romance, and plenty of Rob Pat­tin­son screen time.  Make no mis­take, New Moon will be one big fan­girl orgy from start to finish.

But why take my word for it when you can read real reviews of the trailer writ­ten by (what I hope are) teenaged girls?

“ok WOW!!! new moon is going to be AH-Mazing, i love kristen’s face when she say ” kiss me” her eye­brow is funny! and the were­wolf, i didnt even expect it to be that big, but OMg i love it!! but tay­lor GOOOOSSH!! i thought he was Hott, now he like fire! but edward was really sad!cant wait! woooo and bella looked eally pretty”

“The part when she got the paper cut and jasper tried to get her but, edward pushed her was so intensed i was like O.O”

“omg omg omg not going to faint but omg. that as freak­ing awsume. may i faint from how hot jacob is. p.s. i think the wolfy looks friendly”

“OMG! This movie looks even bet­ter than Twi­light! It’s dri­ving me crazy cause I wanna see it so bad! Idk if I can wait for Novem­ber 20 to come! Btw: Jacob, so hot!”

Well there you have it.