Tales of Monkey Island: A Pirate Tale in Five Chapters
Whenever an old game franchise is revived it is met with fan skepticism and nervousness. This is especially true with games which have large fan bases. Over the years, I have personally seen a lot of old games updated to varying degrees of success. The most recent of those is a revival of one of my favorite series: Monkey Island. Telltale Games took the license from Lucasarts and released five episodes over the past 6 months. The story of Guybrush Threepwood is continuing on and is still filled with plenty of puzzles and humor along the way.
The plot starts off with Guybrush once again trying to take down his nemesis, the demon pirate LeChuck. In the process, Guybrush messes up a spell, and sucks all the voodoo energy out of LeChuck, making him human again. Unfortunately, all that voodoo is spread throughout the Caribbean, infecting all the pirates, making them all sick and prone to fits of demonic anger. Those possessed include his wife Elaine, and like in Evil Dead 2, his own hand. So it’s up to Guybrush to find a cure for this demon pox by traveling all over the Caribbean in search of… a voodoo sponge to suck up the energy, obviously.
You can see where this might be a problem
Photograph: The Other Side of the Lens
- A beautiful day for photography
NY is a place where anything is possible. A city where there are surprises around every corner and where an event, that may be a little too out there for most places, is just another way for us New Yorkers to have fun. Newmindspace, created by Kevin Bracken in order to create bonding experiences among city dwellers, recognizes this. Thus “Photograph” was born.
I guess the most important thing about “Photograph” isn’t the where (South Street Seaport), the when (Sept. 19th), or the why (simply because). What’s most important is the “who”. Kevin noted the oft commented fact that Newmindspace events have such a large amount of photographers present that they almost outnumber the average participants! Why not, he thought, stage an event solely for them? Why not have a free for all where the main goal is to have photographers photograph photographers photographing photographers?! If this sounds somewhat confusing, allow the pictures to speak for themselves as they’re meant to. Read more »
Audrey’s Door: Worth Opening?
Audrey’s Door, by Sarah Langan, is a very intriguing book. While it doesn’t shatter the horror/suspense genre, it sticks to conventions that work, provides us with incredibly believable characters, and deliverers a story that does not disappoint.
The story revolves around up-and-coming architect Audrey Lucas, a young woman who is plagued by a compulsive disorder and chaotic past. Having lived a nomadic existence with her mother Betsy, Audrey eventually decided to make it on her own by moving to New York City, applying herself in college, and landing a job at a prestigious firm. After having relationship issues with her fiancé, the gentle-but-lazy Saraub, she decides to find a place of her own and stumbles across the Breviary, which offers a surprisingly affordable apartment located on the Upper West side. However, the Breviary houses terrible evil, and it has been waiting for someone like Audrey to show up. Read more »
Enter the Asylum: Long-Awaited Emilie Autumn, in NYC
(Editor: I screwed up the passes so our awesome photographer, Frenchie, with her DSLR camera, couldn’t take pics. These are shots with a regular handheld courtesy of Thomas. Thanks man.)
A long line stood outside the Highline Ballroom on the night of October 13th, 2009. They weren’t waiting for a concert, however…they were waiting to enter the asylum. Emilie Autumn fell upon New York City with all of the grace and costumed pageantry that one would expect of a young woman from the Victorian Era.
The stage was adorned with everything one would need for a tea party at the asylum. Cakes, cookies, tea pots, dolls, skulls, and rats, all lit by candle light, created the perfect atmosphere for the macabre performance still to come. As the lights dimmed the enthusiastic screams of dozens of wayward girls filled the Highline. Their long wait to see Emilie Autumn on her first ever North American tour was finally was over (this after a cancellation months ago).
A spot of tea and cookies with The Bloody Crumpets
RyanAir: Hell on Earth, or Just a Cheap Way to Get Around Europe?
d42 is currently playing expat in Germany, and while there, she had the opportunity to try out RyanAir, the airline I always wondered about due to the fact that you can fly from one country to another for less than you would pay for a Greyhound ride to another state. They even offer free flights. “What’s the catch?” I thought to myself, and then d42 went to Stockholm…
Here’s the article my boyfriend and I would love to write:
Everyone can easily summon a fairly detailed image of their conception of Hell On Earth(TM). In fact, for many, this is a serious pastime, and one they dedicate countless hours to perfecting. For some, it’s sitting in a boardroom listening to the droning of a middle-management lackey, for others, it might be toiling in the malodorous, dimly lit kitchen of a scummier-than-average White Castle. For me it is, without a doubt, languishing for hours in a flightless airplane with no hope of exit, rescue, or a decent tuna sandwich. Friends, this past weekend was like a delightful subclause, within the Dark Prince of Hell’s parenthesis. And that parenthesis’ name is RyanAir. We traveled for hours to an out of the way airport misleadingly named “Hamburg (Lübeck)”– Lübeck is only close to Hamburg by way of some mad cartographer’s artistic license. We waited in a tent– a tent!– for our decrepit spruce moose. We crammed ourselves into acrid-smelling pleather “seats,” wrestled with our seatbelts, [...] Read more »
Little Red Riding Hood’s Zombie BBQ
I am a simple man, the littlest things amuse me. So when I see a game called “Little Red Riding Hood’s Zombie BBQ,” for the Nintendo DS, I am going to pick it up because it has an awesome title. All I expect from the game is two things: Zombies, and a way to kill them. The game does not disappoint in this department.
- Don’t know why Little Red Riding Hood has a huge rack
Dethklok Versus The Goon Makes My Brain Hurt
Two mediums collide, as well as two minds, to make animation, heavy metal, horror, gore and comedy into… well… something obviously driven by marketing. While Metalocalypse, created by Brendon Small, is absolutely uproarious on screen, with all four characters almost entirely unintelligible as they mumble the dialogue before delivering another nonsensical musical number, it really doesn’t work on paper.
Read more »
Pygmy: Is Palahniuk even trying anymore?
Chuck Palahniuk released another book a few months ago entitled “Pygmy,” just a year after his last book, “Snuff,” which I did not like. I was surprised when I found out another book had been released so soon; most authors usually have a larger gap between books. I figured with the steady decline in quality that his work has had that it probably wasn’t going to be any good, but it was short so I figured it wouldn’t take to long to read. So, going against my better judgment I picked it up, hoping it would at least be better than his last few books have been. I really need to start trusting those first instincts.
The story is about a young Asian spy from an unnamed country posing as an exchange student in America. While here, he is working to put a plan in motion that involves winning the local science fair so he can go to Washington and set off a device that will kill millions of Americans. This is different from his usual work and for some reason felt a little ridiculous to me. Yet I had no problem accepting the plot of “Survivor,” which involved a man becoming the leader of a cult and building a giant landfill of pornography. Maybe it had to do with the narrative style of this book that just completely turned me off to the story. Read more »
VNV Nation at Nokia Theatre
Ronan Harris of VNV Nation
I have a very definite opinion about music. Mainly, that it should make you feel something, anything. This is clearly an opinion shared by the members of VNV Nation; the duo being the Irish born Ronan Harris and Mark Jackson of Great Britian. Together they’ve become the most popular creators of a music genre called “futurepop”. For them, it’s not about the money, the fame, or even the art of creating the music itself; it’s about how that art can make people feel and that’s exactly why they’ve been so successful. It also doesn’t hurt that they make music almost certain to get you moving; losing yourself you feel inspired by the hope that Ronan’s voice and lyrics bring. Read more »
CC Copyright
