Author: Ryan

Rediscovering Terror: Playing P.T.

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If you are planning to play P.T. and don’t know anything about it, I recommend you turn away now. It is best experienced with an unsullied perspective.

pt

This past weekend I played P.T., a demo/teaser released by Kojima Studios as a means of marketing the upcoming game Silent Hills. This teaser is only available for download on PlayStation 4, and does not cost any money. The game released very enigmatically, with little information within the game itself that indicates what it exactly is. You simply begin, without even a start menu.

This post will not be getting into what happens in P.T., because I think it is best experienced knowing as little as possible about what occurs. However, I would like to share my experience with this little piece of gaming.Read More »

Movie Review – Hercules (2014)

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A couple of weeks ago, among the rush of summer movies, I watched Brett Ratner’s Hercules, starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. The film is based on the comic book Hercules: The Thracian Wars by Steve Moore and Chris Bolsin. The story follows Hercules — famous for completing his twelve labours and supposedly a demigod son of Zeus — and his mercenary comrades who are hired by Lord Cotys to train the armies of Thrace to defend the kingdom from the bloodthirsty warlord Rheseus.Read More »

Book Review – Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk

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LullabyCover

Though it took me longer than I had planned, this past week I finished reading Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk. The novel follows Carl Streator, a reporter who discovers that unsuspecting parents are reading a deadly poem to their children on page 27 of Poems and Rhymes from Around the World — an ancient culling song meant to give a painless death to the old or infirm. The lyrics of the culling song kill whether spoken or even thought. Streator begins a cross-country quest to destroy all remaining copies of the song and save humanity from its disastrous effects.Read More »

Marvel’s Reinventions: Captain America and Thor

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May contain slight spoilers to various Marvel Comics story lines.

Though this is now old news to anybody who follows comic books, some changes in upcoming Marvel Comics storylines has created quite a lot of buzz across the internet. I am referring to the news that the next Captain America is going to be African-American and that the next “Thor” is going to be a woman.

To go into more specifics about this turn of events, Thor the character is not changing gender, but rather a female character — who as far as I know is yet to be identified — will be wielding his iconic hammer Mjolnir, thus granting her “the power of Thor.” Meanwhile, Samuel Wilson — better known by his superhero alter-ego The Falcon — will be taking up the mantle of Captain America due to Steve Rogers losing his super soldier powers and rapidly aging.Read More »

Playing the Uncharted trilogy

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As I mentioned way back in my post about playing the God of War series, it hasn’t been until very recently that I’ve been able to play prominent PlayStation titles. As a result, for the first half of this year I had actually been going through a backlog of games I needed to get through before access to a PS3 was whisked away. Between April and July I managed to play through all three games in the Uncharted series, and with that now complete I will take this time to reflect upon my experience with it.Read More »

The Wolf Among Us Concluded

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This past week, the fifth and final episode of Telltale’s The Wolf Among Us entitled “Cry Wolf” released for PC, PS3, Xbox 360, and other platforms. For those who do not know, the series is based upon the Fables comic books by Bill Willingham, the game’s story taking place prior to the beginning of the comics. I had been eagerly awaiting the release of this episode since the nail-biting ending of episode 4 “In Sheep’s Clothing” and I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed the way the game wrapped itself up.Read More »

Evolving Narrative & Orange is the New Black

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Recently, I actually managed to binge-watch season two of the Netflix original series Orange is the New Black with my girlfriend. I emphasize being able to do this because I have realized that as someone who tries to read, play, and watch as much content as possible, it is hard finding time to actually devote a lot of attention to one thing for long periods.

I do not intend to give a formal review of the season — that being a more daunting task than I feel up to right now — so I’ll first say that the show is excellent, and I recommend it to anybody with an interest in good drama and strong female characters.Read More »

Chester Brown’s Paying For It

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PayingForIt

Over the past few days I found myself reading Paying For It: A comic-strip memoir about being a john by Chester Brown. It wasn’t the first time I’ve read Brown’s work, having gone through Louis Riel a few years ago. Rather than review it, I want to address my experience with the work because of how it challenged my viewpoint on the world.Read More »