RE6 - Resident Evil 6 une fuite polonaise

Alors que le pays est célèbre pour ses plombiers, voilà que la Pologne fait parler d'elle au travers d'une fuite de jeu vidéo.

Le titre concerné n'est autre que Resident Evil 6. Des versions allemandes du jeu ont visiblement été volées en Pologne, ce qu'a confirmé Capcom, et se retrouvent maintenant en vente sur des sites d'enchères. Seules des versions PS3 du jeu ont été dérobées et se retrouvent donc mis en vente. La mise à prix était de 478,78 euros. Mais grâce aux enchères des joueurs avides de jouer au prochain survival horror de la célèbre licence ont fait monter les prix jusqu'à 1196,71 euros...

Un prix pour le moins exorbitant pour une version simple du jeu alors que l'on peut s'offrir l'édition ultra collector comprenant le blouson en cuir de Leon pour la modique somme de 1000 euros.

· Forum Resident Evil 6

Insolite La plus longue partie du monde...

S'il nous est tous déjà arrivé de passer des heures de suite sur un même jeu, il est cependant peu probable que vous ayez jamais passé autant de temps que Sam Braithwaite, dit “Milkfat”, à jouer sans vous arrêter. Ce joueur professionnel vient en effet d'établir le record de la plus longue partie à un jeu de stratégie jamais enregistrée puisque ce dernier a passé pas moins de 76 heures consécutives à jouer à Heroes of Newerth, un MOBA récemment passé free-to-play.

Le tout était visible en direct sur la page de streaming du joueur et la vidéo est en cours d'examen par le comité du Livre Guiness des Records afin de valider la performance. Généreux dans l'âme, Sam Braithwaite a profité de l'événement pour collecter des dons pour Médecins Sans Frontières et a ainsi engrangé 3756$ à quelques cents près. La même somme sera par ailleurs également versée

SSZ - Strike Suit Zero débarquera en janvier

Après le succès du financement de Star Citizen - Squadron 42 hier, c'est au tour d'un nouveau jeu se déroulant dans l'espace de se trouver kickstarté à 100%, avec 174 804$ récoltés. En effet, nous avons appris dans la soirée que le très alléchant Strike Suite Zero allait bel et bien débarquer sur nos machines dans un avenir proche.

C'est plus précisément le 24 janvier prochain que ce shoot them up viendra traîner ses guêtres sur tout bon PC qui se respecte, avant de se diriger vers les consoles un peu plus tard dans l'année. Pour rappel, Strike Suit Zero nous propose de piloter un vaisseau digne des meilleures productions animées japonaise, telles Macross ou Patlabor. Dans le détail, le véhicule spatial sera capable, à tout instant, de se transformer en mécha pour des phases de combats rapprochés. Au passage, signalons que le mécha a été désigné par Junji Okubo, un mécha-designer ayant déjà opéré sur des licences telles que Steel Battalion, Apple Seed, Infinite Space ou encore Viper's Creed.

Au final, cette campagne de recherche de fond n'aura permis à Born Ready Games de ne remplir qu'un seul de ses objectifs (les fameux Stretch Goals de Kickstarter), qui est cependant d'importance. En effet, avoir dépassé les 100 000$ donne l'occasion au développeur de mettre à disposition, en parallèle de la sortie de son jeu, un kit regroupant divers outils de moddings, qui raviront sans aucun doute la communauté.

Le rendez-vous est donc désormais pris le 24 janvier prochain pour découvrir ce titre promettant d'ores et déjà de remettre le combat spatial au goût du jour.

· Forum Strike Suit Zero

COD9 - Black Ops II s'offre Trent Reznor

Voilà maintenant plusieurs années que les jeux vidéo s'imposent comme l'un des loisirs les plus répandus sur notre petite planète. Aujourd'hui les développeurs sont à même de s'offrir la crème des scénaristes et compositeurs pour leurs grosses productions. C'est le cas du futur blockbuster Call of Duty : Black Ops II.

En effet, Treyarch a tout simplement décidé de collaborer avec l'illustre Trent Reznor, génial créateur du groupe Nine Inch Nails. Le musicien-compositeur s'est d'ailleurs déjà illustré dans le domaine en composant l'excellente bande originale de Quake. Il convient toutefois de préciser que Trent Reznor ne s'occupera que du thème principal de Black Ops II, le reste du boulot étant réservé à Jack Wall qui avait quant à lui officié sur la B.O. de Mass Effect 2.

Enfin, nous en profitons pour vous relayer un nouveau trailer pour Black Ops II. On y découvre plus en profondeur le personnage de Raul Menendez, le grand méchant de ce nouvel opus.



· Voir ou télécharger la vidéo de Call of Duty : Black Ops II (24 Mo)
· Forum Call of Duty : Black Ops 2

2012-12-21-253

3DMark03 Patch 3.5.0

Futuremark Corporation announced today the immediate availability of a patchto the 3DMark03 benchmark suite. 3DMark03 is the worldwide standard tool foreasily and objectively measuring and comparing DirectX 3D performance of Windowsbased PCs.

Available immediately, this free downloadable software patch provides the onlyvalid version (3.5.0) of 3DMark03. Only scores obtained through the new version3.5.0 and with approved drivers will be used in official statistics, comparisonsand services provided by Futuremark.

3DMark03 sets the standard for easily and objectively measuring and comparingmodern PCs' 3D graphics performance. It is the right tool for Windows based PCsequipped with DirectX 8 or first generation DirectX 9 hardware. 3DMark03features four different game scenes to determine the overall 3D performance andindividual tests and professional tools, such as a 3D audio performance test,CPU performance test and image quality test. 3DMark03 provides detailedbenchmark information and is connected to Futuremark's PC performance databaseof more than 10 million benchmark results. This allows users to compare theirown system performance with virtually any other PC configuration.

Technical Details Associated with the New Patch:

- Patch changes the program's build number to 3.5.0;
- Benchmark scores do not change between the build 3.5.0 and build 3.4.0;
- Updated System Info module with support for the latest CPU and graphicshardware;
- Updated version of the Entech library, which is used to detect the clockfrequency of the graphics chip core and memory;
- Fixes miscellaneous reported bugs

Futuremark's official mirrors carry both a 5.2MB patch download for current3DMark03 users and a full 178MB download of the patched 3DMark03 for new users.A list of official mirrors can be found athttp://www.futuremark.com/download/

2012-12-21-3

$3000 Nexus 4 8GB variant found on Ebay

I am all for getting the latest technology and sometimes you will pay a premium for a product that is normally unavailable such as this phone. The only thing that could have made this even more hysterical is if they charged shipping. There is one part of this ad that has me just plain dumbfounded, the seller doesnt have the product either.

This is located at the very bottom of the ad.

So lets recap..we have a seller on eBay that is charging a criminally insane price for a Nexus 4 8gb (base model with the least amount of storage) version AND he doesnt have it in hand to send it to you. What could possibly go wrong?

If for some reason you feel the need to spend $3000 on a Nexus device you can buy it here.

great halloween movie countdown #10 “the strangeness”

Ah, October. The air turns a little crisper, the leaves begin to fall, and your humble host runs runs out of autumnal cliches really quickly. So why not just cut to the case? (Whoops, guess I hadn’t quite run out of cliches after all.) With Halloween fast approaching, this is the time of year when people who don’t even normally give a damn about horror movies suddenly take an interest in finding some good ones, so in order to facilitate a happy horror-viewing experience for what readers I do actually have, I thought I’d spend my posts for the month of October on a kind of “countdown” of interesting horror flicks you may not have seen. I don’t in any way claim these to be the ten best horror flicks of all time, nor am I even purporting to list these in any particular order, I just thought I’d focus on ten good movies that you, dear reader, may not have ever seen and I think would be worth your time.

Let’s start the ball rolling (damn, another cliche) with a little-seen gem lensed in 1980 (though it didn’t see release until 1985, and even then it went straight to video) by three friends from USC film school on a budget of right around $25,000 that has just seen its first (and altogether excellent, it must be said) proper issuing on DVD from the always-awesome Code Red label (yes, they do appear to have a pulse!) a couple of weeks ago.

First off, let’s state the obvious : this movie is cheap—dirt cheap—and that certainly shows in places throughout, whether it’s the altogether unprofessional acting (watch one of the principal characters, purportedly from Britain, employ/unemploy a come-and-go accent, for instance), the occasionally muddled and confused camerawork, or the dime store- Ray Harryhausen (but damn cool nevertheless) stop-motion monster that’s stalking and terrorizing our hapless heroes, it’s patently transparent at numerous times that just about no money was spent on this thing.

Those financial limitations, however, forced our intrepid young trio to get creative if they wanted to make anything like an effective little horror movie, and in that regard, “The Strangeness” is something of a triumph. A qualified triumph, to be sure, but a triumph nevertheless—of necessity-driven accidental brilliance, creative gusto, decision making-on-the-fly, and sheer bloodymindedness. Our trio of USC recent-grads and almost-grads (director/producer/screenwriter/ editor/incidental music composer David Michael Hillman, producer/screenwriter/incidental music composer/actor/sound recording engineer/visual effects designer/opening “teaser” scene director Chris Huntley and producer/actor/sound recording engineer/visual effects designer Mark Sawicki, respectively) were determined to get this thing done and to come out with a finished product that neither they nor audience would feel compelled to turn their eyes away from in sheer embarrassment or disbelief (well, at least not too often).

The result is a truly admirable little (absolutely) independent creature feature that is by turns involving, gripping, impressive (especially considering its extreme limitations), atmospheric, and inescapably authentic. Chances are that even though the film’s basic premise of horrific-creature-living-in-a-mineshaft-picks off-trapped-and-terrified-ordinary-people-one-by-one has been done before and (numerous times) since, you’ve never seen anything quite like “The Strangeness.”

The set-up, as you have probably surmised by ow, is simple enough : a group of explorers go into a disused mine in order to see if there’s enough gold left to make reopening the underground facility a profitable venture for a local mining concern. There are some creepy legends about the place, though—it closed not because it had been played out but because the workers refused to continue going down there. A previous expedition that went with a similar eye to getting the mine running again disappeared. And then there are the old Indian legends about some kind of monster in the caves. For those reasons, our little crew is composed not only of prospective miners but of a mercenary/privateer-type and a writer on local California mining history and his wife (okay, I know it’s ridiculous that the last two would be allowed into a potentially dangerous situation like this, but if you can’t suspend your disbelief about scenarios like that, you’re just not gonna make it through this movie).? Things start pretty slowly, I’ll be the first to admit, and the film take a good 40 minutes to really get rolling, but this initial period of doldrums, resultant though it may be from inexperienced screenwriting, actually gives us a chance to do something we can’t always do in horror movies, which is to clearly differentiate each character and their (admittedly completely two-dimensional) motivations. It’s not terribly exciting, but? it works, even if purely by accident, and there is some some wonderful and truly professional northern California coastal location scenery throughout that wouldn’t look at all out of place in any film with ten, 100, or even 1,000 times the budget of this one.

Once inside the mineshaft (actually a few papier-mache rock walls inside director Hillman’s parents’ garage, but thanks to wisely-chosen camera angles and inventive and effective use of various lighting gels you’d quite literally never guess it, so well-constructed is the illusion-on-a-budget here) our adventurers are quickly trapped by a cave-in and while they search desperately for a way out they hear strange noises, come across evidence of those who have been this way before, and then start getting killed.

Okay, there are way too many obvious parallels here to draw to films like “The Boogens,” The Stuff,” “The Descent,”? “What Waits Below,”and even the newly-released “Pandorum,” (which is, for all intents and purposes, “The Descent” in a spaceship)—but “The Strangeness” was one of the first movies to realize the inherent dramatic tension that comes with setting a horror movie inside a mine or a cave, and in many respects it still outshines those later, more expensive offerings.

As for the monster itself, well—

Let’s just say it’s part penile, part vaginal, part Lovecraftian, and altogether Freudian. As co-producer/creature designer Huntley explains in an on-camera interview included in the DVD extras, he was living as a closeted gay man at the time and the idea of a giant dick-like appendage that grabs you and puts you inside an equally giant pussy that eats you up and swallows you whole is probably as obvious and public a statement about his confused sexual state at the time as he could make. In any case, it’s still nothing the filmmakers (nor the model-maker who actually built it, Ernest D. Farino, who went on to work for George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic) have any reason to hang their heads about and it has a certain amateurish charm that both draws attention to its bargain-basement origins and somehow transcends them thorough its brazen gumption at the same time. They’re not showing off their ultra-cheap creature, but at the same time you don’t get a sense that they’re actively ashamed of it, either—this is what they could do with the cash they had and it’s nothing to brag much about but still a damn sight better than what anyone has any right to expect.

And to be honest, that’s not a bad summation of “The Strangeness” as a whole. It’s nothing close to revolutionary, but it doesn’t pretend to be, and it’s miles beyond anything you’d think they could come up with given the circumstances. It’s got a creepy atmosphere and a “can-do” spirit and somehow the two complement, rather than conflict, with each other.

Now for the particulars of the Code Red DVD : Folks, what we’ve got here is one incredible little package that suits the film perfectly. There are on-camera interviews with principal filmmakers Huntley, Sawicki, and Melanie Ann Phillips (David Michael Hillman as she’s now known after undergoing gender reassignment surgery some years ago—probably the reason people have had a tough time tracking her down for the occasional interview over the years) that are both fascinating and fun, there’s a selection of their USC? student short film work (some live action, some animated), all three get together for a feature-length commentary, and there’s a nice sampling of trailers for forthcoming Code Red releases, as well.

In addition to all that, the technical specs are great. The original mono audio track sounds as crisp and clean as possible with only occasional drops in the sound, and the picture, struck from one of the film’s only answer prints and presented for the first time ever in a 1.78:1 anamorphic transfer,? looks as close to flat-out magnificent as this can. The colors are vibrant, the blacks are strong and well-defined, and compared to the earlier home video versions where the last 30 or so minutes of the film (which take place in almost complete darkness) were basically unwatchable because you couldn’t tell what the hell was happening, the difference is—well, like night and day (okay, last cliche of the review, I promise). If by some chance you have seen “The Strangeness” before, you will simply not believe that it could ever look this good. Sure, there are some occasional flecks and grainy spots, but it’s a 16mm print stuck in 1980—that’s inevitable.

So all in all, what Code Red gives us here is a flat-out technical miracle packaged together with the type of well-thought-out and highly personal extras for which they’ve quickly become known, all in service to a film that truly deserves this kind of TLC-heavy treatment.

Flawless “The Strangeness” is not. But remarkable it certainly is. And if you’re going to do a horror movie marathon sometime around Halloween, it’s a great choice, and is well-deserving of the new round of attention it’s hopefully going to get as a result of Code Red’s superb new DVD release. So why not take a trip down into the mine with “The Strangeness”—you’ll definitely find a gem. Not the prettiest, to be sure, and one that’s definitely rough around the edges, but a gem nevertheless.

don dohler mini round-up “alien factor 2 the alien rampage”

In 2001, nearing, sadly, the end of his way-too-short life, Don Dohler went back to the well a little more explicitly than usual and, rather than simply reworking the plot of 1978′s The Alien Factor for the umpteenth time, decided to make what would be billed as the film’s official sequel, Alien Factor 2 : The Alien Rampage. And while you could make a pretty strong argument that movies like Nightbeast and The Galaxy Invader had more in common with the original Alien Factor than this thing does, that’s really neither here nor there since, as we’ve already established, pretty much every Dohler flick tells a variation of the exact same story anyway.

This time around the escaped alien baddie (headed for some type of intergalactic zoo, as in the first film) is an evil invader that traps an entire suburban Maryland town within it’s insidious time-warping forcefield (a concept Dohler must have thought was pretty neat since he named his at-the-time straight-to-video production company Timewarp Films). Backwoods locales are traded in for more sorta-urban environs like warehouses and the like, 16mm is swapped out for videotape, and while there are still some garage-level makeup and other FX on display, it’s worth noting that, sadly, poorly-done CGI has replaced a good chunk of that, as well.

In short, Alien Factor 2 is Don Dohler getting with the times, to the best extent that his $35,000 budget allowed him to do so. Venerable members of his “acting” stable are gone,replaced with more youthful (though no more talented) replacements (although watch for the bag lady in this flick for a whole new definition of fourth-wall-smashing pantomime self-parody — and yes, never fear, George Stover is still on hand), and frankly a lot of the cram from those earlier, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants-and-just-shoot-the-damn-thing’s efforts are lost io translation to the video age.

But it’s still about as far from a “professional” (whatever that even means anymore) filmmaking effort as you’re likely to find in this blighted 21st century we live in, and Dohler’s love for the DIY ethos can’t be completely buried under all that newfangled technology. You get the sense of a guy adapting to survive, but not quite comfortable with his new environs. And that’s a shame given that he was, unbeknownst to himself at the time, nearing the end of his rather remarkable run. But hey, we don’t always get to go out on a high note, I guess, and it would be unfair to say that Alien Factor 2 is no fun at all, because frankly it still is. I like to consider this one guy’s struggle to retain the essential characteristics of his work in the face of long odds and changing tastes, but in truth Dohler’s work appealed to such a small segment of the public that he probably didn’t actually need to bend with the times as much as he did apart from the fact that things like 16mm film stock were getting too expensive for him to utilize anymore and what have you. As always, the day-to-day practicalities of micro-budget moviemaking take precedence over all other considerations in Dohler’s work.

Alien Factor 2 : The Alien Rampage is available on DVD from Image Entertainment and actually features a smattering of honest-to-goodness extras including a “making-of” featurette and a cast-and-crew commentary. It’s presented full frame with 2.0 stereo (yes, you read that correctly) sound. It’s probably of interest only to hard-core (or pathetically sad, depending on how you look at these things) Dohler completists, but I still consider it 75 minutes of my life well-enough spent.

And that’s probably going to do it for our little Don Dohler wrap-up here at TFG for the time being. I’ve got several grindhouse goodies I’ve been meaning to review for ages now and I’ll start in with those in earnest shortly after the new year arrives. In the meantime, to anyone and everyone reading this, have a happy and safe New Year’s holiday, and I’ll see you again either a couple or a few days on the other side of the turn of the calendar.

tfg comix month “harvey pekar’s cleveland”

It’s been nearly two years since the America’s unofficial poet laureate of the working class, Cleveland’s own Harvey Pekar, passed away, but thanks to the estimable folks at Top Shelf Comics, we’ve been given one last glimpse at his creative genius via their publication, in hardcover no less, of what’s apparently his last complete work, Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland, a book that serves as both a semi-mournful look back at a once-great city’s heyday and a final, and comprehensive, autobiographical sketch of its narrator’s life and an analysis of his admittedly complex relationship with the place that he called home for all of his 70 years.

For those of you out there unfamiliar with Pekar’s American Splendor (what, you mean you haven’t seen the movie?), it was a (mostly) self-published anthology series of short stories in comics form written by Pekar, a VA hospital file clerk and blue-collar intellectual, and illustrated by a bevy of the finest sequential artists of its day (most notably underground legend Robert Crumb) that ran for well over a quarter century. Although largely viewed (and categorized) as an autobiographical series, in truth it’s probably more accurate to say it was a “slice-of-life” series, since Harvey was just as likely to include stories about things that happened to people he knew as he was to relate stories about his own life and experiences in its pages, and often brief snippets of overheard conversations formed the basis for some of his most memorable strips. In short, it wasn’t always so much about Harvey Pekar himself as it was about events he witnessed, or that were related to him by others he knew.This presumably final work seamlessly blends the two, as it bobs and weaves downright seamlessly between tales of the city of Cleveland proper and Pekar’s life? and times within it. While he’s unarguably the main character, in truth his geographic locale as his “co-star,” as he both recounts straight narrative chronology of the city and gives detailed background on some of his favorite establishments within it. The net effect is a sort of historical odyssey through Cleveland, with detours chosen for specific purposes by our guide, who writes? with both the appreciation and disgust of someone who knows? his subject well (some might say too well). With painstakingly detailed art by the talented Joseph Remnant (a name I’d previously been unfamiliar with, but that I will definitely look for in the future) that conveys both the actual, physical reality of the city as well as the mood and atmosphere that permeates its environs, and a wide-ranging story that spans decades of the author’s life and even takes care to accurately relate events that happened over a century before his birth, the phrase “labor of love” would definitely apply here — except for the fact that Harvey makes it perfectly clear that he’s had a love/hate relationship with his hometown almost from the word go.

Longtime American Splendor fans will be glad to know that stalwart characters such as Toby Radloff and Mr. Boats are present and accounted for, but for those unfamiliar with Pekar’s previous work and the real people who populate it there’s no reason to be put off from reading this — in fact, even though it’s his final piece of graphic nonfiction, the truth is that serves as an excellent “jumping-on” point for new readers, as it’s such a comprehensive (yet conversational and frankly uncomplicated) work that one needn’t know anything about the city itself, or even who Harvey Pekar is for that matter, to find it a thoroughly engrossing and evocative work.

In fairness, however, it’s incumbent upon me to state that Pekar was never what one would call a “feel-good” author, and if the observations of a major metropolis that’s been on the decline for at least 50 years written by a guy with a definite curmudgeon’s perspective (and speaking of lovable, intellectual curmudgeons, Alan Moore provides the introduction) aren’t your cup of tea, then you’re going to find the tone of this book rather off-putting from the outset. Sugar-coating harsh realities was never Harvey’s “bag,” and while thos of us who are in tune with his wavelength will appreciate the rare form we find him in here, folks who like things a bit sunnier and less nonchalantly harrowing might be well advised to give this book a pass since it’s many things to be sure, but positive and uplifting aren’t among them.

I loved it, of course, and immediately read through the entire thing from start to finish a second time before putting it down. The only downside is that it made me miss Harvey’s distinctive, authentic, and altogether necessary voice more than ever.