Maia remplit ses objectifs Kickstarter

La communauté des joueurs sait reconnaître un projet prometteur d'un projet foireux. C'est donc logiquement que Maia, projet indé de Simon Roth, parvient à remplir ses objectifs de récolte de fonds sur le site Kickstarter.

Le jeu a déjà amassé quelques 120 000 livres alors que 100 042 étaient nécessaires. Il reste d'ailleurs un peu moins de deux jours pour continuer à augmenter les fonds et ainsi ajouter du contenu au jeu comme des éditeurs de cartes et de robots. Mais qu'est-ce que Maia ? Il s'agit d'un jeu de gestion futuriste fortement inspiré

Final Fantasy fête ses 25 ans

Vous le savez peut-être déjà, mais Square-Enix ne semble pas prêt d'annoncer ou de présenter un quelconque projet nippon lors du prochain E3. Pas de surprise avec un Final Fantasy XV, encore moins de chance d'entendre parler de Final Fantasy Versus XIII et pas la peine d'espérer voir figurer Dragon Quest X sur le stand de l'éditeur. En bref, un évènement mondial réservé au catalogue européen de l'éditeur.

Et pourtant, en cette fin de mai 2012, il est un autre évènement de taille que les fans de RPG se doivent de célébrer. Il s'agit en effet du vingt-cinquième anniversaire de la saga Final Fantasy, débutée en 1987. Afin de marquer le coup comme il se doit, Square-Enix met à jour le site officiel de la licence en lui offrant un portail donnant sur divers informations relatives aux quatorze opus. Pour ceux qui savent lire le japonais ou sont assez débrouillards pour naviguer sur un site aux caractères incompréhensibles, vous n'aurez pas manqué de tomber sur la discographie, le listing des FF ainsi que tous les produits relatifs aux volets présents. Yôichi Wada, Président de Square-Enix, en profite pour communiquer un peu sur la suite des évènements.

"Afin de contenter les fans, nous, développeurs, n'avons qu'une seule promesse à faire. En plus du talent et de l'aptitude, nous nous assurerons que nos développeurs fassent preuve d'un amour sans faille envers la série Final Fantasy."

Espérons alors qu'ils soient assez amoureux pour oublier un peu le marché du MMO et pour se concentrer à nouveau sur ce que les fans attendent d'eux.

E3 Double dose de Little Big Planet chez Sony

C'est lors de la conférence de Sony, qui s'est déroulée cette nuit à Los Angeles, que deux annonces ont été faites quand à l'avenir de la licence Little Big Planet.

La première concerne le jeu original (soit Little Big Planet), qui vient traîner ses guêtres sur PS Vita. On y retrouvera bien évidemment le héros récurrent de la série, le Sackboy, dans une toute nouvelle aventure. Il lui faudra lutter contre un marionnettiste diabolique qui tente de pervertir une foire et ses occupants. Le trailer qui suit devrait d'ailleurs vous permettre de découvrir cela plus en détail.



La deuxième annonce, pour sa part, se concentre sur Little Big Planet Karting. Développé

THQ Des précisions sur ses jeux à venir

L'éditeur américain THQ a publié hier soir ses résultats financiers, peu brillants. Avec pas moins de 240 millions de dollars de pertes nettes sur l'année fiscale 2011, THQ est obligé de revoir sa stratégie et de décaler ou de se débarasser des titres les plus coûteux ou les moins rentables.

Le premier sur la liste est South Park : The Stick of Truth. Initialement prévu pour la fin de l'année, le RPG tiré de l'univers de South Park a été décalé par THQ à l'année prochaine. Sa sortie est donc repoussée à 2013, soit en même temps que les autres gros titres de l'éditeur, à savoir Company of Heroes 2 et Metro : Last Light.


C'est en revanche beaucoup plus compliqué pour Devil's Third, le prochain jeu de Tomonobu Itagaki dévoilé lors de l'E3 2010. Si l'on en croit les dires du patron de THQ, le développement du jeu est devenu trop coûteux et ne s'annonce pas assez rentable pour l'éditeur, en forte difficulté financière. Il faut dire aussi que le développeur a été obligé de changer de moteur graphique au milieu du développement, ce qui a entraîné des frais supplémentaires. THQ cherche donc un nouvel éditeur prêt à reprendre le financement du jeu, faute de quoi il abandonnera le projet.

2012-12-21-4

$35 Raspberry Pi computer delayed due to manufacturing mess-up

The $35 Raspberry Pi computer has been delayed due to a mistake in the manufacturing process which saw the wrong networking jack soldered onto the circuit board.

The credit-card sized computer, which features just the bare essentials, went on sale at the end of February, but the company behind it revealed that the first shipment of the device wont be able to connect to a computer network due to the mess-up with the networking jack.The problem arose in the Chinese factory that Raspberry Pi is outsourcing production to in order to keep down costs.The incident would not be such a disaster were it not for the fact that the networking jack is the only thing that distinguishes this particular model from the other one Raspberry Pi is selling, effectively turning the model B device into a model A.An even bigger problem for the company going forward is that it is facing supply issues for the proper networking jack, which means further delays for the sold-out cheap as chips computer, which has met with a positive reception by many sectors of society.Raspberry Pi apologised for the mistake and said it was a minor problem to fix.Source: BBC

2012-12-21-526

Aerocool Ships Cyborg X Chassis

Aerocool Advanced Technologies has begun shipping its Cyborg X mid-tower case in Europe.





Measuring 460 x 200 x 540mm, the all-black SECC case has five 5.25"drive bays, four 3.5” bays, seven expansion slots, pre-drilled holesfor cable management and water-cooling tubes, support for graphic cardsup to 280mm long, and a topside I/O panel with one eSATA, two USB 2.0ports and audio connectors. The tool-free case also comes pre-installedwith two 120mm fans (front and rear) and can be purchased from majorretailers and distributors at an MSRP of 62.60 Euro.


Features:

High performance "Mid-Tower" for gamers and enthusiast.Solidly constructed "ALL BLACK" chassisHigh-end Graphic card Support
High ExpandabilityEase of InstallationEasy Access Top I/O portsSmart Cable Management
Dust Protection
Mesh PCI cover
Bottom PSU position
Water-cooling Support

News via [Techconnect]

cinehoax “paul mccartney really is dead”

So, here we’re kicking off what looks to be a two-part sidebar (I’ll get around to the next film going under this banner sometime in the next week or two) your hose has decided to call “CineHoax” for reasons that should be pretty damn obvious pretty damn quickly. We’ll start at the supposed beginning and go from there —

In the summer of 2005, the Hollywood offices of fourth-rate rock n’ roll documentary producers Highway 61 Entertainment purportedly received a package in the mail from London with no return address (which raises the question how did they know it was, specifically, from London, and not just the UK?) that purportedly contained two microcassettes purportedly dated December 30, 1999 that (again, purportedly) contained the voice of George Harrison relating an amazing story — the Paul McCartney “death hoax” stuff that’s been floating around over the years is all true! The “real” McCartney apparently died in a car crash in 1966 after storming out of the recording studio following a heated argument with John Lennon and was replaced with a double (apparently some clown who won a Paul McCartney look-alike contest) at the behest of British intelligence in order to prevent what they felt was the mass suicide of hysterical Beatles fans (particularly of the teenage female variety) that would inevitable follow should news of this tragic accident reach the public.

For the rest of their career, both together and apart, the Fab Four were closely monitored by MI-5 to prevent them from spilling the beans on this, the original great rock n’ roll swindle — being the clever lads they were, however, the Beatles managed to sneak a few clues about the “truth” of the situation into various recordings through the miracle of backward-masking audio, and the result has been a slow but steady buzz that’s continued for over four decades.

Highway 61 president (and director of this “documentary”) Joel Gilbert apparently felt that, even though the material contained on these tapes could, of course, never be verified, the “information” contained on them is so explosive and revelatory that he just couldn’t sit on it forever — rather, being the massive humanitarian that he is, Gilbert had to get this information out somehow, no matter the risk to his own health and safety, and the result is the 2010 straight-to-DVD release Paul McCartney Really Is Dead : The Last Testament Of George Harrison?, a “film” which, in all honesty, is nothing more than a 95-minute voice-over of the “Harrison” recordings playing over a series of graphics, still photos, and backward-masking audio loops (obviously getting clearance to include any actual Beatles music was going to be waaaaaaayyyy far out of the question here). So, how convincing a case does this “blockbuster expose” present?

Well, let me be far from the first to call bullshit on some pretty obvious stuff here : to start with, the voice that the producers claim sounds “eerily like” Harrison sounds a lot more like an out-of-work American actor trying desperately to maintain a working-class Liverpudlian accent that Harrison no doubt — uhmmmmm — grew out of (or ditched, depending on how cynical about all things celebrity you might be) as time wore on. I’ve checked out a few YouTube clips of Harrison for the sake of comparison, and they pretty much sound nothing alike. Next up, there’s the “mysterious” origins of the tapes — my best guess, and mind you it’s only a guess, is that the original source of these “too hot to handle” recordings is Highway 61 Productions themselves. Now, they probably did, in fact, go to the trouble, after recording them, of then sending them to an associate in the UK who would then mail them back, unaddressed, in order to have a semi-plausible cover story, but this whole production strikes me as a thoroughly in-house affair from start to finish. And finally, we’ve got the plausibility of the whole story itself — sorry, but it’s just too soap opera to be all that believable. Paul and John have a fight — Paul storms off in his car — he’s not paying attention, and the weather bad — blam!, it’s all over, and the cover-up begins —

All of which is not to say, however, that I don’t think the “real” Paul might indeed be dead. Frankly, I have an open mind on the subject. But not because of anything presented in this flick. on the contrary, this production strikes me as the classic intelligence agency “double-bluff,” which basically works thusly —

Let’s say you’re a government agency or mega-corporate enterprise (what’s the difference, anyway?) and you’ve got some secret. It’s leaked out a bit, on whatever rudimentary level, and could cause you some headaches if it gains anything like real traction in the press. The best way to discredit it, as anybody involved in research fields as various and sundry as the Kennedy assassination of UFOs will tell you, is to “put it out there,” as it were, albeit in a form that strains credulity so far beyond the breaking point that it will thoroughly negate the story and consequently portray anybody involved in continuing to research it as a loon. So, if you’re British MI-5 and you want to discredit all “Paul is dead” theories and the folks pursuing them, the best way to do it is to put out your own film that says “hey, yes, Paul really might be dead” but do such a half-assed job of it that it makes any further investigation into the topic look like a waste of time. Throw in a few half-truths to make the premise itself or the research springing from it meet the unspoken standard that causes the average viewer to say to him-or herself “well, I guess I can see why they looked into this, but c’mon, people, this is just grasping at straws” as they watch with increasingly detached bemusement, and you’re all set. Mission fucking accomplished.

So, oddly (or perhaps not so oddly) enough, Paul McCartney Really Is Dead does provide some roundabout evidence to support its central claim(in fact, the existence of the film itself is this evidence) — not by advancing anything like a realistic and convincing examination of the rumors surrounding McCartney’s possible demise, but by doing such a shitty, third-rate, amateurish job of it that a questioning person has honestly gotta wonder if maybe there’s something to all this because the powers-that-be are so obviously still trying to discredit this whole line of investigation by dropping crap like this in the public’s lap. maybe Highway 61 Entertainment is being used deliberately, or maybe they just found a conveniently desperate huckster to peddle their wares through, but one way or another, by making “Paul is dead” research look like a fringe topic of concern to no one but sad obsessives, Joel Gilbert and company are playing right into the hands of the folks who would want to keep McCartney’s death a secret if it really did happen.

As to whether or not I personally think that Paul McCartney died in 1966 and was replaced by a double. I’ll just say this —

Given that McCartney’s post-Beatles career is made up of simple-minded drivel like “Silly Love Songs” and the truly, almost incomparably loathsome pro-”war on terrorism” anthem “Freedom” (which undoubtedly had both George Harrison and John Lennon spinning in their graves), does it really matter?

“the crazies” (2010) has enough blood, but it’s short on guts

I really — and I mean really — don’t want to compare director Breck (“Sahara”) Eisner’s new remake of? 1973 independent exploitation horror classic “The Crazies” with Zack Snyder’s “Dawn of the Dead” remake. It’s just too obvious. But then, the parallels are too blatant to ignore. And not just because they’re both based on George Romero films.

First off, like “Dawn,” the fact is that “The Crazies” just didn’t need to be remade. The original is as fresh, exciting, and relevant as ever. Sure, Viet Nam is no longer a contemporary issue, but substitute Iraq or Afghanistan vets for the lead characters in the original, and all the issues end up being the same. Biowarfare, massive paranoia in the populace, government fuck-ups and subsequent government cover-ups, and excessive state secrecy — the main political themes in the original are every bit as relevant today as they were in 1973 — hell, moreso.

Secondly, like Snyder’s “Dawn,” this isn’t, on the surface, a bad remake. It’s stylish, exciting, suitably grisly (although, also like the 2004 “Dawn,” not so grisly that it would only appeal to horror fans — this is definitely a mainstream flick not intended solely for a genre audience), competently acted for the most part, suspenseful, and a fun and gripping ride.

Thirdly, it’s respectful to the original premise without being a tired rehash. The basic set-up is the same — plane carrying a biowarfare agent code named “Trixie” crashes down in a small rural locale (this time the fictional town of Ogden Marsh, Iowa, rather than Evans City, Pennsylvania — again, as with “Dawn” 2004, Romero’s story gets transplanted to the midwest), but the characters have the same names and that’s about it, the focus here being? solely on David (Timothy Olyphant) his wife? Judy (Radha Mitchell) , and David’s best friend Russell (Joe Anderson) trying to both escape and learn what it is that they’re escaping from.

On paper, this should work. The original paid as much attention to the action from the point of view of the military as it did to the plight of its nominal protagonists. And while Romero was able to pull of this juggling act with his usual supreme skill, in point of fact the idea of a small confused group of principal characters who are in the dark as to what is going on so that we learn the truth of events at the same pace they do is, technically speaking at least, better and more gripping in terms of pure plotting.

As always, though, it all comes down to execution, and the creative choices made by the filmmakers along the way.

The “Trixie” virus itself operates in essentially manner as the 1973 film, inflicting loopy behavior followed by violent homicidal madness followed by death. The folks fighting it, though — that’s where the main difference between the two films is to be found, and it has profound implications for exactly what type of movie this remake is.

In Romero’s original, Dave and Russ are Viet Nam vets back in their home town, trying to adjust to a society they no longer quite understand. They’re blue collar guys trying to find their way in a country that has used them up and spit them back out. David’s girlfriend ( or, as the new version would have it, wife) is also blue collar, working as she does as a small town nurse. They are quite literally nothing to the political and economic establishment, outsiders to the system trying to eke out a means of basic survival within it.

In the 2010 version, though, that’s all changed — and with it, so has the tone of the film itself, at least from a political standpoint. You see, this time around, David is the local sheriff, Russell is his long-serving trusty deputy, and Judy is the town doctor. Our heroes, therefore, are no longer outsiders fighting against a murderous virus unleashed by a murderous establishment that’s trying to use a murderous military to clean up their mess — our heroes are yuppie system insiders who used to be part of the establishment but now are expendable to it since said establishment is out to use its military to clean up its mess.

In a way, this shift in focus is somewhat tolerable, in that it shows that the system is more than willing to eat its own to cover up for its excesses and/or incompetence, but on the whole, it’s a pretty serious cop-out compared to Romero’s original vision, because it the message in the 1973 version is that the system is rotten, corrupt, evil, and homicidal and can only be successfully fought by those outside it. The new version, though, sends an altogether different message — yes, the system is rotten, corrupt, evil, and homicidal, and yes, it will even turn on its own, but brave and courageous souls within the system itself can fight it. In Romero’s film, the system was co-opted from top to bottom and rotten to the core. In Eisner’s new version, the system is out to destroy innocent lives, sure, but our best chance for salvation comes from within its very ranks.

Another key difference between the films is that in Romero’s flick, the military were incompetent fuck-ups who were changing their plans on the fly every second and everything they did only made matters worse. This seems much closer to actual reality, as we have $300 million helicopters that can’t fly, “Patriot” missiles that can’t hit their targets, and more red tape and bureaucratic snafus among the brass than you can count. Who many times have we “changed strategy” in Iraq and Afghanistan? Has anything worked?

In Eisner’s version of events, however, the military, while certainly undertaking actions that anyone in their right mind would consider unconscionable, such as wiping out innocents and infected alike in order to prevent the virus from spreading, acts with cold, technical precision and absolute competence. So while Romero was telling us that the money we were shoveling at the Pentagon was wasted, the new, Hollywood-approved vision of “The Crazies” is one with a perfectly capable and dependable military — it’s just that they gotta be ruthless sometimes. You know how it goes.

If you feel like shutting your brain off and going for a well-made cinematic thrill ride that offers little or no actual food for thought,the 2010 version of “The Crazies” works just fine. It’s a pretty solid little white-knuckle rollercoaster of a flick. The effects are solid, the story is involving, and the premise is neat,the ending is pretty damn spectacular — and it even has the guts to show a news report during the closing credits giving the government’s official BS line about what happened in Ogden Marsh. But come on. The government and the media lie? That’s an easy and obvious criticism to make. We all know that.

And here’s where the final unfortunate parallel with the 2004 “Dawn of the Dead” remake comes in. Like that “reimagining,” where Zack Snyder and company managed to set the film in a mall packed to the rafters with excess yet somehow say nothing about consumerism and greed and “the American way of life,” this new version of “The Crazies” takes a classic Romero work of socio-political commentary and almost completely emasculates it. The film takes Romero’s bold and thoroughgoing critique of the entire system itself and makes it safe and palatable. Sure, the government lies, but they’re competent and efficient and there are good people within the system who can change it when things get a little too ruthless and bloodthirsty (provided they don’t, you know, get killed). In the end, Eisner doesn’t seem to have the guts to even seriously criticize the military itself, despite the fact that they’re clearly the bad guys in the film! Go figure.

And that is this movie’s ultimate failing. It portrays a ruthless and inhuman military-industrial complex engaged in full-fledged, wholesale slaughter — and metaphorically, if not literally, lets them, and even more importantly the system they serve, off the hook. The essential theme at the core if the film is no longer “smash the system, it’s beyond repair” as it was in 1973, instead it’s “work from within to change the system — even if it’s trying to kill you, hey, it’s nothing personal.”

As with? Synder’s “Dawn,” Eisner here has taken Romero’s work and replaced all its guts with stuffing, while preserving it an admittedly aesthtically pleasing form. You might call that a remake, I just call it taxidermy. And while stuffed birds are nice to look at, they’re not nearly as spectacular as those that are alive and flying.

halloween horrors 2012 “halloween resurrection”

I don’t think the Halloween season would feel complete if I didn’t include a couple reviews of films from John Carpenter and Debra Hill’s seminal slasher series featuring the one and only Michael Myers as part of my annual “Halloween Horrors” roundup, and while I’m pretty close to having written about all of them over the last few years, I’ve still got a few to go, and we might as well start with the one that causes me the most pain as both a viewer and fan, just to get it out of the way if nothing else.

I’m referring, of course, to director Rick Rosenthal’s 2002 release?Halloween : Resurrection, my personal least- favorite installment in the entire series (yes, I even like?The Curse Of Michael Myers better), the flick that had the less-than-stellar idea of relaunching cinema’s most venerable slasher franchise as an?I Know What You Did Last Summer – style teen horror, even though that largely lamentable subgenre was already pretty well running out of gas by that point.

Featuring Busta Rhymes and Tyra Banks (who, let’s face it, we were all hoping would lose her shirt at some pint in this flick — no such luck) as the head honchos and hosts of a “reality website” called DangerTainment (dumbest name ever) who get the hare-brained idea of putting together a group of randy teenagers to spend the night in the abandoned Myers house and broadcast whatever happens live on the internet, a plot conceit which also allows Rosenthal to attempt to spice up the proceedings with a few visual ?nods to the then-nascent “handheld horror” craze, the whole thing is a sad amalgamation of incongruous elements that frequently don’t even work out so well on their own, much less slap-dashed together in “throw enough shit at the wall and hope something will stick”- fashion like this. Add in an unceremonious and undignified final exit for Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode character and the end result is a movie that isn’t just plain?bad, but is frankly flat-out insulting to both longtime fans and more casual viewers alike.

It’s no huge surprise that this was the final nail in the coffin for?Halloween until Rob Zombie came along and performed his from-scratch relaunch — even though it did in fact turn a tidy enough little profit at the box office, it was so obvious that anyone and everyone who had been involved with the series for a fair amount of time (Rosenthal had previously directed the perfectly serviceable?Halloween II) was out of ideas with what to do with it that mothballing it for a good few years was the only option the Weinsteins, who by this point had obtained the rights to it under the auspices of their Dimension Films label, had left. The whole thing feels like nothing so much as an injured, limping, shot prizefighter running out the clock on what would prove, mercifully, to be his final turn in the ring. Michael Myers certainly deserved a better finale than this.