Friday, September 28, 2012

Friday Fun

Hello everyone!

I went shopping yesterday for 3 hours. You know what happens when I'm in a shopping centre for so long? I convince myself to buy something.

This time, I bought Alice: Madness Returns. It's a twisted game, showing Alice's story from a more mature perspective. I haven't started playing yet (I was too scared last night when I got home) but I've seen a couple videos on YouTube of this game.

You play as Alice, a psychopath, as you travel through wonderland, murdering all your favourite characters! Why? Her house is burnt down and her family is killed. Alice loses it and Wonderland is twisted by her broken mind. She must find a way to fix it... Or something like that.

When I bought the game, I found out that it comes with a free copy of it's prequel, American McGee's Alice. This is to provide backstory to the second game, though I'm not sure its necessary. I think it's just a free bonus!

However, I bought the game preowned, so I may not be able to retrieve my free copy of the Alice. I'm going to try anyway, so I'll probably let you know in the next post.

This video is the launch trailer for Alice: Madness Returns, just to show you a bit of what it's about better than I can explain it!

Monster Mash Friday

In celebration of these marvellous movies making their way into the world of Blu-ray, which is now at the top of my Christmas wish list, I wanted to share some delightful posters from these movies - part of the reason why I love them so much.

The details, the words used covey a complete overreaction (now anyway) about the movies and the fact that they are not photographed, photoshopped and manipulated is something that adds to the nostalgia.

The movies included in this DVD release are:


  • Dracula
  • Frankenstein
  • Bride of Frankenstein
  • The Wolf Man
  • The Mummy
  • The Invisible Man
  • Phantom of the Opera
  • Creature from the Black Lagoon.
I have seen most of these movies but when I saw them they had that fuzzy black and white sound to them, fraying edges of the screen and were pretty poor quality. The versions in this collection have been remastered and seriously look cool. This clip shows what the before and after looks like and I must admit I was fairly impressed. 




Movie poster for the Phantom of the Opera:


And just saying, he looks pretty freaky. 

Movie poster from Creature from the Black Lagoon - I want to hang a copy of this one in my study. 



Movie poster from the Invisible Man - HG Wells dreamt some pretty freaky shit. 


But they are all just so cool. 





Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Laneway excitement!

The Laneway festival lineup was announced this morning and I was SO excited to hear MS MR and Of Monsters and Men are coming to Australia early next year.

The full lineup is available here but to celebrate this excitement I wanted to share a few songs that you might just fall in love with.
Breezeblocks by alt-j


Ash Tree Lane by MS MR
(TOTALLY in love with this film clip)


Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Book Review Tuesday

As we have moved back to Blogger and have developed a bit more method to our madness (our mother would be so proud), welcome to Book Review Tuesday.

As a distinct number seven personality, please don't think this will happen EVERY Tuesday or even again on a Tuesday, it just happens to be a Tuesday and I have a book I've just finished reading that I want to write about.

So I had a fairly strong dislike to crime fiction and mystery books because either I read the ones that were crap or just the ones that included a very stereotypical main character ... I hate stereotypes and will/have closed books if I even get a whiff. Yep - all it takes for me is a whiff.

I was recommended Gillian Flynn's latest book, Gone Girl by my delightful boss (thank you for my study leave today! I totally nailed my assignment ;-) ) and completed devoured it in a record two days. It was one of those awesome books that I couldn't put down, and then when I did, it spoke to me in my head and I swear my Kindle was making me read more.

So I was keen to read her other work but I didn't want to fall into the trap of being in love with an authors first book and then having those feelings crushed by reading other books and feeling disappointed. It has happened before.

I started reading Dark Place late last week - it was finished on Sunday afternoon - I yelled at the Kindle. Yes. I yelled. Usually I save my yelling for TV and have only done it a couple of times when I've been reading.

If you could describe a book like this without giving too much away, I can do it for this book in five words:

This shit is messed up!!
Holey crapola!! Gillian has this amazing ability to tap into a dark part of society and portray a story that you can completely see it playing out in your head. It's not sugar-coated, the characters have HUGE problems and as a reader - I LOVE IT!

I want to horrified, mesmerised and get insight into people and although this is fiction, you can see it happening and like a crazy stunned bystander, you simply cannot look away.

Find the book on Amazon.




Monday, September 24, 2012

We Are Live From Blogger

Hello once again!


We have returned to blogger in an attempt to mix things up! the perfect day for it too!
As many of you (don't) know, I recently bought an Xbox 360 and I'm slowly expanding my gaming collection. Well, today I bought Halo 3, preordered Halo 4 and bought a 3 month subscription to Xbox Live!

Anyway, We'll be covering a variety of Things here, including gaming, reading, music and movies! I'll be covering most of the gaming side of things, with posts all about the games I pick up and play, whether I like them or not! Also, you will be able to find me online as I play though different games such as Halo, Portal 2's Co-Op campaign, etc.

Not only did I preorder Halo 4, I got the limited edition and it came with a sexy poster which is flattening on my bedroom floor. When that comes out, it'll be around $90 more for me, but I can afford it so I'm quite happy to pay for a bunch of extra stuff.

Seeing as I did go out and spend money on Xbox Live, I redeemed my 3 moths straight away and started playing online. I think I got a rough 2 hours of online play earlier. Anyway, if you wish to play with me (and lose) you'll find me as CorruptedCheese. If you wish to play against me (better idea), fair enough, I won't judge you. I will, however, scream at you through the television. Good thing I don't have a mic.

Anyway, I have been a fan of the Halo series since early on and I have played every game, so I think it's fair to say I know what I'm talking about when I judge the games. To be completely honest, while some reviews have said Halo Reach was too short, I quite liked it as a game and the missions were long enough (about 30 minutes each). The plot was predictable, but that's because you already know that Reach will be destroyed at the end of the game. The ending is quite sad, but the game is pretty nice and tidy. 8/10

Halo 3, it has to be one of me least favourite of the Halo games. The campaign is short (6 hours) but it's about as lengthy as Reach and Halo 1 or 2. The creepy flood infecting the deceased is quite creepy and it scares me every time I see it happen. For this simple thing (should have been there from day 1), I give this game 6/10.

Hopefully Halo 4, under the development of a subdivision of Bungee names 343 Industries, a group focusing solely on the development of Halo games, can live up to its predecessors and surpass some of them. I'm looking forward to playing it with a release date of November 6, I'm really looking forward to this one.

Finally, here is a video I found on YouTube, (It is pretty old) but, enjoy!

Also, Carrie, I hope you don't mind that I made the first post?