Aperture Science

Aperture Science
"We do what we must because we can"

In order to aid me in getting though my backlog of Blu-rays, comic books, video games and my newly imported four volumes of  George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice Fire (Game of Thrones), I’ve just picked up Valve’s Portal 2.

All hope of finishing Oblivion before Skyrim comes out has passed. As is the chance of me finishing the increasingly repetitive and grating L.A. Noire…ever.

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Retrospective: Guitar Hero Metallica Hands-on

Guitar Hero Metallica
Plastic guitar meets heavy metal

Guitar Hero: Metallica was one of the first “hands-on” that I did for NetGuide Magazine. The truth be told, I’d never even touched a Guitar Hero game when I turned up at Activision New Zealand. I had no idea what on earth I was supposed to be doing with that silly plastic guitar, and why would I? For I was a seasoned gamer, not a child that may enjoy twatting around with a little plastic instrument.

As I foolishly pressed those coloured buttons in time to the music, nothing happened. The Activision rep advised me that I needed to do more than just press the buttons, I needed to strum as well. Oh. It wasn’t long before I got the hang of it, my sneering elitism melting into adoration for this new gaming genre that had suddenly been revealed to me. I was hooked. The first thing I did on leaving the hands-on was to go get myself a copy of Guitar Hero: World Tour.

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Comic book review: Ultimate Spider-Man #160 and The Death of Spider-Man

RIP Peter Parker

So I finally did it. I finally got around to reading the build-up in Ultimate Spider-Man & Ulitimate Avengers Vs. New Ultimates and the death of the Ultimate Marvel universe’s Peter Parker.

I’ve been following Brian Bendis’ Spider-Man reboot since its first issue. Retunring Spider-Man to his high school roots, removed the forty years of baggage the adult Amazing Spider-man had collected. Bendis was afforded the time to retell classic Spider-Man stories with careful, nay skillfull pacing- as one should expect from a master story-teller.

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Game Console news roundup at techday.com

Here is a summary of my daily gaming news items as published last week on Techday.com, the online home of New Zealand’s Netguide magazine and Game Console.

Last week I looked into Kiwi Star Was fans being left out, Australia’s adult rating plans for video games, check out Sony’s new 3D technolgy, got all excited by Ezio’s final story in the Assassin’s Creed Ember animated movie and went all old-school god-sim with Ubisoft’s From Dust.

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Lucas takes to the skies again with Red Tails

Apart from the Clone Wars animated series, everything that Lucasfilm has been involved in for the past twenty-five-odd years has been a bit…tainted. Sure, Indiana Jones 4 wasn’t half bad, but generally the folks didn’t care for it much. Then there’s the Star Wars prequels.

It seems that George Lucas has pulled his figure out by executive producing the WWII movie, Red Tails (i.e. he signed the cheque). The film’s director is Anthony Hemingway whose TV work you would have seen on vampire drama True Blood and the Battlestar Galactica reboot.

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Retrospective: Enslaved: Journey to the West Xbox 360 Review

Ninja Theory’s Enslaved: Journey to the West was an ambitious undertaking. A Sci-fi retelling of an old Chinese myth. Even the mouthful of a title alluded to the game’s  questionable marketability.

The game review below was written for the Game Console print magazine. Due to space constraints it was never published. Which was a shame, as it was a devil of a review to write.It’s not problem to write a “I hate this turd of a game” or an “I adore this game” review, but it’s another matter entirely when you are battling with your conscience over a game so close to being fantastic.

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I’m Baaack!

I’ve just moved the site from the comfort of wordpress.com to its permanent home at www.stateofplay.co.nz.

Please adjust your links accordingly, although wordpress.com will redirect you here for the time being. You may notice a lack of functionality and the old hiccup as I configure plug-ins and edit the CSS. Hopefully it’ll all be up and running nicely by next week.

Why have I moved host? Well, this site started out as a simple  Saturday afternoon folly. I see a fair amount of potential that wordpress.org simply doesn’t allow for. About a month ago I purchased the domain www.stateofplay.co.nz and it has just been a case of getting around to it/being brave enough to migrate.

There is a lot more that I can do now. So please stick around

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