Best O' 2014

Obligatory Blog. Obligatory Awards.

Top 5 Games of 2014

5. Mario Kart 8

It’s the most beautiful Wii U game, it’s the best playing Mario Kart to date, the DLC is fantastic, and it dominated my free time towards the end of my college career. Too bad they ruined battle mode.

4. Transistor

I didn’t love Bastion as much as everyone else did. It was pretty and sounded nice but the style was incoherent and the fighting was dull. Transistor took everything good about that game and fixed all the flaws with a brilliant, creative combat system and haunting, ruined, yet still classy cyber world.

3. Bayonetta 2

Above all else, I am a fan of ridiculousness, and there was no other game this year that featured more, better ridiculousness than the continuing adventures of gaming’s favorite sexy librarian dominatrix bullet hair witch in Bayonetta 2.

2. Threes!

You can read my thoughts on why this is the best mobile game of the year over on 148Apps.

1. Super Smash Bros. for Wii U

Still hate the name, but Super Smash Bros. for Wii U is the best entry in my favorite series so how could it not top my list, even if its 3DS counterpart doesn’t feel entirely necessary.



More after the break.

Best O' 2013

Another year over, another collection of media to judge…

Journalism Ethics Goes to the Movies

Surprise! Original content coming at you! Book review! Exclamation point!

In Journalism Ethics Goes to the Movies, State University of New York journalism professor Howard Good entertainingly examines journalists’ ethical problems through Hollywood movies. While it initially seems like a strange conceit, melding the two topics is an effective choice. The films provide a useful context for readers less familiar with journalistic integrity. It doesn’t take a seasoned reporter to know that the blatant plagiarism in Shattered Glass is wrong.

Other examples include Broadcast News’s battle of style over substance, Mr. Deeds’s deception dilemma and Wag the Dog’s exploration of political media manipulation. Each chapter uses a specific film to make a specific point, and overall the book is a teaching tool with plenty of additional reading provided after each assignment.

Stuff O' 2012

2012 is almost over. Here's some stuff about it I liked.

Game O' 2012- Frog Fractions. Just play it. I hate this stupid spoilerphobic media culture we live in but to say literally anything about Frog Fractions besides "you should play it" would ruin it.

http://twinbeardstudios.com/frog-fractions

Movie O' 2012- TBD. I just haven't seen enough stuff to make this decision. Lincoln, Argo, Skyfall, The Dark Knight Rises, Looper, The Master, all great movies but with stuff like Django Unchained and Zero Dark Thirty still out there unseen I feel my opinion isn't fully informed yet.

Jam O' 2012- Skyfall Instrumental. It's a great song no matter what but the instrumental is perfect writing music for a top secret project I'm working on that may never actually turn into anything.

Show O' 2012- "Veep." Between this, In the Loop, and "The Thick of It," Armando Iannucci has proven that anything he makes about politics, no matter what country or position is targeted, will be brilliant and hilarious.

Book O' 2012- Books?




Pam Grier

Bond Books Bits: Best Be Going

How much better would James Bond be if he had two heads?

Bond Book Bits: Bond By The Bowlful

More James Bond short stories, more problems.

Bond Book Bits: The Beginning

This should get some regular content going for a while. I was watching Live and Let Die aka “James Bond vs. Black People” the other day and between that and the upcoming Skyfall, I just started thinking a lot about James Bond. This led to me reading the James Bond short story collections “For Your Eyes Only” and “Octopussy and The Living Daylights” which has now led to me briefly discussing them on this blog “Love Me Some Lovecraft” style.

I decided to go with the short stories because

1. I’m lazy… when it comes to reading.

2. Many of them were based on scripts for a failed James Bond TV show and that seemed interesting.

3. The James Bond movies are so episodic anyway, reading a bunch of short stories in that universe seemed like a good fit.

So let’s get started.

Stuff I Did This Week 4/13/2012

I wrote about this guy

and more

This Article is About Mad Men

Reviewing a Book about Game Reviewing

Fight Against Bullying with The Adventures of Timmy: Run Kitty Run

Freekick Battle Review

Magic Tree is a Fairy Tale Farm Sim

HeroesAndZombies Review

unlucky

Love Me Some Lovecraft: Hypnos and more

Halloween, it’s the perfect day to end our short and strange journey through the works of H.P. Lovecraft. With the final entry “Hypnos”, the emphasis is on the short as the version I read was only about a dozen pages. As such, telling too much about the story would just give the whole thing away. All you need to know is that it involves dreams, statues that are sometimes people, and of course bizarre monsters. The quick pace at which it moves heightens the bizarre, frightening, and dare I say, dreamlike tone. Plus, it is so short that one has very little to lose by reading it.

Love Me Some Lovecraft: At the Mountains of Madness

The inter-dimensional terror gets slightly longer and more snow-filled this week with the 12-chapter novella At The Mountains of Madness.

Love Me Some Lovecraft: The Dunwich Horror

When someone tries to unleash a demon, you should take him seriously even if his name is Wilbur Whateley. That's the lesson of this week's story "The Dunwich Horror."

Love Me Some Lovecraft: The Shadow Over Innsmouth

Sorry for the lack of a "stuff I did this week" post last week but I honestly didn't do anything. At least, nothing on the internet. But now I'm back for another one of these. Fish people and bizarre race metaphors abound in this week's HP Lovecraft short story review type thing.

Love Me Some Lovecraft: The Call of Cthulhu

For reasons that you should hopefully discover in the coming months, I read several works by classic horror writer H.P. Lovecraft over the summer, despite my stance on reading. What with this being October and Halloween and stuff this is probably as good a month as any to share my short thoughts on these weird tales.