New Games

There's quite a few games due out next year or are currently out that I'll be living for. Here are the videos of such games.

Fallout New Vegas


Homefront


Deus Ex Human Revolution

Fallout: New Vegas teaser trailer

Anyone that's been paying attention for the last year or so should remember that I'm a huge fan of the Fallout series of roleplaying games. Last month, this teaser trailer for the latest game in the franchise was released.

Enjoy.

Super Smash Brothers Brawl

My entire week thus far has been consumed with the new Nintendo WII game Super Smash Brothers Brawl. Its a fighting game filled with classic Nintendo characters and some third-party non-Nintendo characters. It's frantic, seizure-inducing pace and massive amounts of collectibles have kept my obsessive side busy and quite entertained. Today I present to you some screen-grabs from the game.


Squirtle taking it to Pikachu in the Pokemon Arena


Squirtle teaching Nana and Popo (of Ice Climbers fame) a lesson


Squirtle taking on Master Hand, the final boss in the Classic Mode


I unlocked Solid Snake (from the Metal Gear Solid series) just last night... here he is shooting down Olimar from the Pikmin games


Solid Snake vs. King Dedede (Kirby's rival)


Snake doing what he does best!


Captain Falcon from F-Zero duking it out with Giant Pikachu!


Here's a diorama I made in-game of some of the trophies I've won so far. From left to right: Turret Tusk from Donkey Kong Jungle Beat; HM Mech Rosa from Chosoju Mecha MG; and ROB 64 from Star Fox


Feel free to brag about your own exploits in the game here. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go play some more. I'm having withdrawals!

Let's Get Ready to Rumble! Super Smash Brothers Brawl

It comes out tomorrow here in the United States.

In the Far Future... There Can Be Only War!

I'm featuring two different games today. Both are sci-fi strategy games. The first is the new Warhammer 40K video game due out for the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP called Squad Command.

The other is a rival offering to 40K by the French game company Rackham. It's called AT-43.

WARHAMMER 40,000: SQUAD COMMAND:





AT-43 ACCORDING TO WIKI:

"AT-43: No one Escapes War! is a science fiction tabletop wargame using 28mm miniature figures and terrain to scale developed and published by the French company Rackham.

Released in December 2006, the game features pre-painted plastic miniatures of mechs and infantry units with corresponding cards showing the stats and gameplay options for each unit type."



Here's the newest expansion army. They're called Karmans:







U.N.A. FORCES:


THERIAN FORCES:




RED BLOK ARMY:

Der Golem: Ancient Jewish Folktale, Opera and The Simpsons Did It

In conjunction with friend and comrade in nerdiness J. Ho, today he and I are posting about golems. I challenged him to a timed drawing, giving him scant few minutes to draw a golem. He posted the end product on his blog today.

For my part I'll be posting a few things about the golem, its history and pop culture references.

Perhaps through video games (most specifically role-playing games) we know the golem today as a humanoid creature made of stone or other such earthy materials. Here is the 'classic' image of the golem creature from the Dragon Quest video games:



The origins of the golem are similar to our modern idea of what a golem is. M-W.com defines the word 'golem' as: "an artificial human being in Hebrew folklore endowed with life". It is from this folklore that we get our modern golem.

The most famous and one of the earliest mass-media representations of the golem creature is the 1920 film The Golem: How He Came into the World and preceded by the 1915 film Der Golem (translated from German as 'The Golem' but originally released here in the United States under the title 'The Monster of Fate'). I found this on YouTube:



The basic plot of the golem tale is this: An antique dealer buys an old humanoid statue made of clay that was created by a Rabbi centuries before. By placing words written on paper into the open mouth of the golem, the golem will come to life and obey the written command. When the golem is brought to life by the antique dealer, it falls in love with the antique dealer's wife. Saddened the antique dealer's wife does not requite its love, the golem begins murdering people.

Here's an original poster for the film:


And here's a picture of how the golem was portrayed in the film:


If that picture looks familiar, it's probably because (in the immortal words of General Disarray): "The Simpsons did it!" In the 2006 Treehouse of Horror XVII episode of The Simpsons, one of the segments parodies the film. The segment was called "You Gotta Know When to Golem".

John Casken also wrote an opera called Golem that premiered in 1989, retelling the story of the creature with original music.

On a last related note: While looking for video of the golem, I found this on YouTube. This golem costume was hand-made from about five foam mattresses. Rad!




ADDITIONAL SOURCES:

Monstropedia

BONUS POST! Warhammer 40,000: Dark Crusade

Dawn Of War site

Zombies, Robots and Conan... What More Could You Ask For?

Here's this week's post. It's a three-fer. The social robot video is from a Nova ScienceNOW episode on PBS. The Conan video is from an up-coming game for the next-gen consoles called Conan (please note: this is NOT the MMO Age of Conan). The last video is the official E3 trailer for Resident Evil 5 which debuted last month. Enjoy!

BONUS POST: Warhammer 40,000

The intro to one of my favorite games on PC. This is Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War




Anyone got any cool mods?