Jay’s Brainfart

Hmmm it seems that Activision have scored a few big names to star in their latest Call of Duty title… none other than my favorite actor of all time, Mr. Gary Oldman.

The actor well known for portraying movie villains such as Dracula (Bram Stoker’s Dracula) and corrupt cop Agent Stansfield (Léon: The Professional) will be voicing a character during the Russian portion of the game according to Kotaku, reporting from the Leipzig Games Convention 2008.

Alongside Oldman, Keifer “Jack Baur” Sutherland also stars in the game, voicing Sgt. Roebuck.

You can view the trailer for Call of Duty: World at War after the jump.

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The Street Fighter games have long been a staple of my gaming diet - I’ve played and owned every game in the series (yes, including the semi-dodgy pair of 3D SF Ex games)… and my favorite character is Akuma… his versatility and pure brutality in his fighting style makes him awesome to watch and play.

Anyway, he’s been revealed as a secret character in the brand-spanking new arcade (and soon to be console) Street Fighter 4… and I’ve got the first screenshots and footage of him right here for your enjoyment.

Feast  your eyes on these new images, courtesy of C&VG.com. More pics and the video are after the jump. :)

Akuma in Street Fighter 4

Akuma about to give someone a beatdown

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Remember that hugely popular game from your childhood that everybody played, and spawned many many successful sequels and spin-offs? For me, it was the Street Fighter series. Ever since Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, I’ve been hooked on fighting games - and almost every fighting game I’ve played since then has been directly influenced by that series.

With this in mind, you can see why video games are an attractive prospect for movie studios. Game to movie adaptations are an awesome idea… on paper. You’ve effectively already got the story sorted out, the characters are already developed, and there’s already a sizable fan base. So how do movie studios get it so wrong?

All too often movie studios take a great concept like the Resident Evil series, and they butcher it to within an inch of its life, skewing too far from the subject material and losing the whole point of adapting it in the first place.

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Well I haven’t blogged in a while, but then I haven’t had that much to blog about recently - life has trundled along and been generally uneventful… so I’ve decided to do a quick blog about loads of things I’ve been up to (that aren’t necessarily important).

Firstoff, another of my reviews is up over at Geeks of Doom.com, this time taking a look at the Guinness Book of Records: Gamer’s Edition.

Secondly, I’ve started using a website called Plurk in the past week… and I’m completely addicted to it already! The site is basically a microblogging site verymuch like Twitter, but with threaded conversations based around your “plurks” (twitter would call them “tweets”).

I have to say I’m loving it - there’s much more of a community feel to the site, and its great for sharing media like Youtube videos and photos etc. I’d highly recommend it, especially over Twitter what with its continuing downtime. You can check out my Plurk widget at the top right corner of my blog. :)

And lastly, I found a great image manipulation website that adds a cartoon-style to any uploaded photo… which makes it look a lot like the filming style in A Scanner Darkly… gotta say I love it, and have been fiddling with a few photos of me… take a look:

To get the desired effects as above, use the sketch feature first (set the brightness fairly low - it makes the sketch lines darker)… then click on the colour option and set it at medium/low.

Anyway thats all from me for the moment… I’ve got some more reviewing to do, but cashflow issues aren’t allowing me to do much yet. :( There will be a review of Ninja Gaiden 2 soon though… so keep your eyes peeled for it. :)

Now this is my idea of poetic justice.

Long time videogame violence crusader, and general moron Jack Thompson has finally had his arse kicked after leaving his court hearing in Florida yesterday - this prompted a recommendation of ”Enhanced Disbarrment”.

The recommendation means Thompson would be disbarred and prohibited from applying to practice law again for ten years, according to 11th Judicial Circuit of Florida spokesperson Eunice Sigler. [Source: Kotaku]

 Good news for any videogame developers that create games for Adult-orientated markets like GTA IV for example… but then I’d say good news for the videogame industry in general. Its about time that games, and gamers were cut some slack in my opinion.

To read more (a hell of a lot more - including Thompson’s 14-page objection letter he read out in court!), check out the story on Kotaku here.

As some of you may know, I’ve recently started writing game reviews and news for GeeksofDoom.com under the psuedonym Keyser Söze - my first being the Grand Theft Auto IV review I blogged about last time.

I have to say I’m enjoying getting my mind working in the process - its elating to actually have to think, and especially about something I genuinely enjoy. :)

Anyway I thought I’d post and give you the skinny on some more GoD goodness that I’ve done recently…

My first bit this week was just a little press release given to me by GoD editor Eve of Doom aka Empress Eve, detailing the news that GTA IV had broken 3 guinness world records… and that story also got Dugg, and became stupidly popular… :) Thats literally the first time anything I’ve actually written has been dugg properly… and at the time of writing its on 2194 diggs… and I was advised yesterday the story hit over 100,000 page views. Mental!

Anyway the next story posted this week by me is a preview of Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures… the game looks to be very good fun! So hopefully I’ll get a review done of it when it gets released. :)

The next review I have in the works is for Dark Sector on the Xbox 360, so I’ll let you know once that has been posted. :)