This Week in Nerd News 8/10 - 8/16

Hey! Welcome to my blog. I recently got an idea for a weekly blog series and I thought I would give it a shot. It's called This Week in Nerd News, where I round up all the geeky entertainment headlines of the past week to remind everyone of what's going on in the world, and give my $0.02 on each subject. Nothing out of the ordinary, plenty of people do similar things, I won't be discussing everything, only the stuff that interests me the most. The majority of the topics here will probably be video game related, but expect a fair amount of movie, music, and comic book stuff, as well as anything else that might tickle my fancy.

 This is the first "issue." It's going to be sort of our pilot to see how I like doing it and if anyone else has any interest in reading it. If I get good vibes from the project, maybe I'll make this a weekly thing.

Volume 1 Issue 1 - 8/10 to 8/16 2015 

8/10 - Dragon Ball Super looks like garbage

Link 1 - Kotaku
Link 2 - Forbes

The Gist:
After a very well recieved opening, the animation quality of the latest Dragon Ball series plummeted with the fifth episode. Fans are not amused.

My Opinion:
To be honest, I'm not exactly keen on the series to begin with. I'm a big Dragon Ball/DBZ fan, but I'm also a fan of leaving well enough alone. I feel that with any work of fiction, there has to come an end eventually, and Dragon Ball's was a long time ago. I'm all for a movie or two here and there, but to create an entirely new canon series just felt like a cash grab to me. That said, if they're going to make it, they might as well make it good. By most accounts, the series up to this point wasn't so bad, but this just looks terrible. Some blame overworked animators. No matter what the cause, I hope it improves.

8/12 - Fantastic Four sucks

Link 1 - Rotten Tomatoes

The Gist:
One of the highest-profile movies of the year, Fantastic Four, released to terrible reception from critics and fans alike.

My Opinion:
Raise your hand if you didn't see that one coming. I'm probably preaching to the choir here, but this was an obvious cash grab and I think it says a lot about the state of super hero movies. It's the same cycle that happens every few years: a couple great films from a certain genre will get popular and make a lot of money, all the studios decide to jump on the bandwaggon to make a quick buck, the films start to tank in quality, and eventually people lose interest due to oversaturation and half-assed products. Look no further than zombie movies a few years ago, or the FPS genre in the video game market. I think this, along with other recent flops (Spider-Man 2, Man of Steel, Ninja Turtles) clearly indicates where superhero films are on the cycle. I'm not saying they are going to die off any time soon - on the contrary, we probably have at least a couple more years, and the MCU will probably stay strong for a while. I just think we're obviously entering the downswing here.

8/12 - Resident Evil 2 remake on the way

Link 1 - Destructoid
Link 2 - Gamespot

The Gist:
Capcom posted a video on the official Resident Evil Youtube account revealing that a remake of Resident Evil 2 has been greenlit and will begin development soon.

My Opinion:
Just as big as the announcement itself is the demeanor of the man in the video, Yoshiaki Hirbyashi. He is a producer from Capcom's R&D department who worked on the HD remaster of the last RE remake. He is very enthusiastic through the whole video, and is wearing a shirt that's bound to become a meme. It's refreshing to see so much love for the project. I think it bodes well.

That said, while this is good news for RE fans, let's not get too excited just yet. It's the same kind of thing that the big Final Fantasy and Shenmue announcements from E3 gave us. First, the announcement is that they are going to start working on it soon. They haven't even started yet. So it's still a long way off, assuming nothing happens to stop it. We also don't know what kind of state it will be in when it gets here. We assume that it will be in the style of the other REmake, which makes sense and is what the fans want, but given Capcom's track record, who knows if we won't get some action-heavy shooter like RE6? Plus, who knows what kind of DLC or microtransactions Capcom might dump in it. So who knows. But hey, here's hoping it turns out well.

8/12 - Entertainment Weekly shows off some Star Wars stills and info

Link 1 - Entertainment Weekly
Link 2 - esquire
Link 3 - Collider

The Gist:
The latest of issue of Entertainment Weekly features an article that reveals a few new plot details from Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, as well as a handful of movie stills.

My Opinion:
A major publication doing a feature on a major motion picture is hardly anything out of the ordinary. What has me interested is some of the stuff it has to say. I haven't read the whole article but it heavily talks about villain Kylo Ren and mentions his mask. The mask has always reminded me (and others) of Darth Revan, which makes me a tad nostalgic for the now-shunned Expanded Universe. The Collider article linked above also mentions Leia inheriting Luke's first lightsaber, which blatantly contradicts the EU in which said weapon was given to Mara Jade. The truth is, I have a lot of mixed feelings about the new Star Wars, and I've been trying to stay optimistic

8/12 - First pictures of Black Panther surface

Link 1 - Gamespot
Link 2 - Comicvine
Link 3 - Yahoo!

The Gist:
Behind the scenes photos from the set of Captain America Civil War have surfaced showing a stunt man in a Black Panther suit.

My Opinion:
There has been talk of a Black Panther solo film for a while now. I had no idea that he was being considered for Civil War. It's nice to see an underappreciated character like this one to get some limelight; he's come a long way from his inception as a token black guy super hero. All the characters that the MCU is getting is finally making it start to feel like the comic book counterpart in scope, althought I do have to question how they are going to be able to fit all of these different personas into their crossover films without some getting pushed to the wayside. As far as the suit itself, the photos are too blurry to get a good look, but it seems to stick relatively closely to the concept art which (as seen in Link 3) is absolutely badass.

8/13 - Pandora's Tower now in Wii U eshop

Link 1 - Destructoid
Link 2 - Destructoid
Link 3 - Nintendolife
Link 4 - Digital Trends

The Gist:
Wii action/adventure/dungeon crawler Pandora's Tower was released for download on the Wii U eshop in North America for $19.99. It was the third of the infamous Operation Rainfall games and flew mostly under the radar when it was released, despite getting good reviews. It was also one of the last major releases on the console. There is also a game called Wind-up Knight 2 coming out on Wii U, and a few miscellaneous games for 3DS.

My Opinion:
Pandora's Tower is an excellent game. I played it soon after it's initial release and quickly added it to my all-time favorite games list. In retrospect, putting it above Mario may have been a tad hasty, coming from the fact that I had just finished playing it only a couple weeks before writing that, but I still loved it. The only real complaint I could make was a game freezing glitch in the final dungeon in the North American version. No news on whether that's been fixed in the digital release, but I don't see why it wouldn't be. It's a really good game that plays like a mix between God of War  and Zelda, and I highly recommend it.

As far as Wind-up Knight 2, apparently it's a runner. There isn't a whole lot of info in those links. Hopefully it will be good.

8/14 - Iron Maiden release video game themed music video

Link 1 - Ultimate Guitar
Link 2- Destructoid

The Gist:
British metal band Iron Maiden released the first single, "Speed of Light," from their upcoming album, accompanied by a video game themed music video. The video depicts the band's mascot, Eddie, getting sucked into an arcade cabinet and battling his way through four different games. The new album is called The Book of Souls and drops September 4.

My Opinion:
Neat! I love heavy metal. I'm not as big of a Maiden fan as some folks but I really like a few of their songs. Especially The Trooper. The song itself is decent (Bruce Dickinson sounds a little flat in the chorus, but at least you know he's not using auto tune) and I love the video for the shoutouts alone. The first and third games are clearly based on Donkey Kong and Mortal Kombat respectively. It's unclear what the other two are based on. A lot of people keep saying Call of Duty for the last segment, though I don't recall any CoD games where you fight a T-Rex on a pyramid. More likely they are just generic things rather than being inspiried by something directly. Either way, it's a cool video.

8/16 - Kingdome Hearts III to feature world based on Big Hero 6

Link 1 - Kotaku
Link 2 - Eurogamer
Link 3 - Destructoid

The Gist:
Square Enix announced at D23 Expo that Kingdom Hearts III will feature a world based on the movie Big Hero 6.

My Opinion:
Cool. I've never seen this movie but it's great to see some variety. When KH first came out, there was a thrill in exploring all these different Disney worlds. Over time, they haven't added a whole lot, and so we've just been seeing the same ones over and over again. Hopefully this is an indication that we'll be getting a lot of new stuff in the new game. Still keeping my fingers crossed for Kim Possible.

That's it for this week. I know I missed a lot, but I don't want to turn this thing into a novel. Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think. I had fun doing this, so if people enjoy reading it, I'll turn it into a regular thing. So maybe I'll see you next week!

LOOK WHO CAME:

Adam P   

Agent9   4

Wes Tacos   1

Arm Length Interviews   1

GodEmperor Paige   1