Review: “Captain America: The First Avenger” (2011)

Hollywood has its formulas for action flicks, screenwriters have their story beat quotas and Marvel Studios superhero films have to straddle the demands of savvy readers paying to see characters they love and the demands of audience members who have never heard of Captain America’s younger sidekick. This year, Marvel tasked Kenneth Branagh’s “Thor” with … Read moreReview: “Captain America: The First Avenger” (2011)

Playing Through: ‘Infinity Blade’

A long, long time ago, in December 2010 in fact, Chair Entertainment released “Infinity Blade” out into the wild, and using the Unreal Engine 3 set a new standard for elaborate graphics in games on iOS platforms. It turned out to be more than just another pretty game, too, as Chair’s updates and trickled-out weapons and upgrades to the game went on to show. “Infinity Blade” checks off a number of boxes that you would imagine to be on production, marketing, and sales professionals’ checklists; it’s got in-games purchases. there’s now Facebook character sharing, etc. etc.

The menu screen always had a “Coming Soon” message, however, promising arena and multiplayer options that recently arrived, and those implementations make “Infinity Blade” as ripe as it ever has been for a review.

The game mashes up third-person, “Punch-Out!!”-style fighting with sword-and-mace weapons combat set in dark, fantasy realm that could have been swiped straight out of a Frank Frazetta painting, the real story behind everything gets heavily glossed over in order to provide a few shock moments when you beat the God King or come face to face with history down in the castle’s basement. I won’t spoil the endings if you haven’t seen them yourselves, but they’re filled with extra doses of Medieval gibberish, and employ plot twists that ensure you will keep fighting forever (as long as you keep the game installed on your i-device).

Despite numerous updates, “Infinity Blade” has seen more than its fair share of single player mode bugs. Although a recent fix mended a problem I experienced on my first-gen iPad where my character would constantly open up empty chests, the game still suffers from constant crashing and subsequent crashes upon restarting from the iOS home screen. Additionally, the last update introduced a problem I’d never experienced before where after earning points from a weapon mastery nothing on the upgrade screen is selectable and the only option is close the app and restart. This occurs regularly and still routinely cuts my play sessions short. (Maybe its a product feature urging me to use my time more productively.)

Read morePlaying Through: ‘Infinity Blade’

Review: ‘X-Men: First Class’ (2011)

“X-Men: First Class” seemed like it could be the odd one out as 20th Century Fox’s entry on an ambitious slate of Marvel Comics-based movies this year. Director Matthew Vaughn turned the clock back to 1962 make an origin story/period piece, that may or may not be in continuity with previous X-films. (Indeed, I’ll be … Read moreReview: ‘X-Men: First Class’ (2011)

TV Reception: ‘Doctor Who’ Season 6, Episodes 1-7

Doctor Who Season 6’s mid-season finale closed with quite the emotional moment a few nights ago. Not to spoil anything here, but every time a TV show hinges its plot on a pregnancy in jeopardy, I’m wired to think that it is about to be cancelled. (Thanks, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.) Nevertheless, the … Read moreTV Reception: ‘Doctor Who’ Season 6, Episodes 1-7

Review: ‘Thor’ (2011)

Big budgets and special effects have not always been kind to Marvel movies. Ang Lee’s “Hulk” (2003), for instance, featured an utterly and profoundly abstract transformation by Nick Nolte’s character into a hodgepodge of Zzzax and the Absorbing Man. Jon Favreau’s ending for “Iron Man 2” (2010) opted for a shock’n awe treatment that was … Read moreReview: ‘Thor’ (2011)

TV Reception: ‘Game of Thrones’ Episodes 1-3

Three episodes into HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” I feel like I’m finally ready to have a fair opinion about it. The first two episodes, “Winter is Coming” and “The Kingsroad” really seemed to wander for me. If you’re curious to know how the series deviated from George R.R. Martin’s original work, I recommend starting out … Read moreTV Reception: ‘Game of Thrones’ Episodes 1-3

100 Days, 100 Comics #100: ‘Captain America’ #641

I’m happy that #100 gets to be a Captain America book. Yes, maybe I should have selected something riskier to end this review series, but issue #614 by Ed Brubaker and Butch Guice allows me to bow out of “100 Days, 100 Comics” with a pleasant taste in my mouth. From Dr. Faustus’ courtroom escapades … Read more100 Days, 100 Comics #100: ‘Captain America’ #641

100 Days, 100 Comics #99: ‘T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents’ #1

Nick Spencer has really skyrocketed up my list of writers to follow the last few months. Existence 2.0 never did it for me back in 2009, but Morning Glories made me a believer, and the owner of Evil Squirrel Comics up in Rogers Park recommended that I pick up his first issue of this new … Read more100 Days, 100 Comics #99: ‘T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents’ #1

100 Days, 100 Comics #98: ‘Wolverine and Jubilee’ #1

At their worst, X-Men stories completely glaze over their characters’ uniqueness and let the mutant class issues that Uncanny X-Men was built on dissolve into bland, sanitized adventures that stare down “God Loves, Man Kills” from an opposite corner of the storytelling spectrum. When writers really understand what they’re doing, as Kathryn Immonen and Phil … Read more100 Days, 100 Comics #98: ‘Wolverine and Jubilee’ #1

100 Days, 100 Comics #97: ‘Fantastic Four’ #587

SPOILERS IN HERE, FAIR WARNING: Well, marketing-wise this issue did everything Marvel wanted it to for me. The 11th-hour pre-release hype about the death of the Human Torch made me want to know how Jonathan Hickman and Steve Epting were going to dispose of him, and I stained my fingers black stretching and wrestling with … Read more100 Days, 100 Comics #97: ‘Fantastic Four’ #587