Looper

Joseph Gordon Levitt + Bruce Willis impressions + science fiction = ???

Dead Space: Ignition

As part of the release of Dead Space 2 last year, Visceral Games released this cheap, little mini-game collection as an interqual for download on Xbox 360 and PS3.  As someone who must play every game in a series to feel like I've accomplished something in my life, I downloaded it myself before playing Dead Space 2.  I'm only a year behind in game playing.  Woohoo!

Unlike the Dead Space game, there is almost no action to be found here, just some mini-games that, once figured out, are pretty darn easy.  The game follows a pair of space police, constantly on the run from the necromorph invasion (corpse monster-zombies to you), with only your ability to complete hacking puzzles standing between certain death and escape into the next comic-book style cutscene.  The games include a cute little hex-based real-time strategy game, a decent light-bending puzzle, and a freaking obnoxious and stupid "racing" game.

This hacking game sucks.

You can follow four pathways so, if you're a completionist like me, you can replay the game a few times with a couple of different puzzles scattered throughout.  I really like how the story utterly changed when following each pathway, basic choices to go one of two ways, casting you as a cold-blooded zealot in one and as a forlorn lover in the next, all dependent on the arbitrary decision of whether you go in the vents or take the long way around.  Kinda weird, but, it works fine if you're into Dead Space fiction.  The mini-games start a little confusing, get really fun when you master them, and then kind of boring when you've got to go through them yet again for achievement hunting which, if you don't do, leave you with a 40-minute game.  While Dead Space: Ignition really runs the gamut, I'll fall in the middle of my opinions and give it an OK.

Partners

But you said...but she said...OOOOH, my medication!

Partners is a new sitcom from the creators of Will and Grace, proving, once again, that egocentric, gay men are hilarious...and that sitcoms are a vile form of entertainment.

Yes Day!

Having young children, I have to read a lot of young children's books.  If I'm fortunate, my son chooses something tolerable; if I'm lucky, my son chooses Yes Day.  The story of a young boy who, once a year,  receives affirmation of his every desire could have easily turned into a cloying, obnoxious trek through the whiny, entitled dreams of a bratty American child.  Instead, it follows the imaginative, whimsical decisions of not just one boy but his entire family.  By the end of the book any reader, young or old, has been swept up in the wonderment that "anything could happen", experiencing the (naive?) belief that a break from the norm provides a special kind of escape to a land where possibilities are endless, even if only temporarily so.  Structurally, the book does a good job of showing, not telling, the results of this anything goes day with enough visual humor to garner a chuckle out of people weary of reading crap like SpongeBob Square Pants TV show adaptations or Fifty Shades of Grey.  I have a bad habit of seeing most children's entertainment as a reminder of just how stupid I must have been as a child; Yes Day just reminds me how special that childhood was.  One of the Best Things Ever to cap off the bedtime routine with my son.

The Walking Dead Episode 3

I love adventure games.  I love zombie games.  Two great tastes that could go great together.  And now, from Telltale Games, comes the adventure game version of The Walking Dead.  Adapted from the comic book (sorry, meh Walking Dead TV show!) The Walking Dead tells the story of convicted murderer Lee and his cadre of the living as they do what they can to survive in the early days of the zombie apocalypse.  This five-episode adventure game recently wrapped up its half-way point and, honestly, unless it poops the bed on the last two, this might be the best game of the year.

Old Doctor Whos

Despite their incredible age and, at times, irrelevance to my modern sensibilities, I'm getting a huge kick watching the surviving episodes of the 1960s Doctor Who.  Due to a policy of taping over episodes once the BBC had determined that there was no longer any financial benefit to them, over 100 episodes of Doctor Who no longer exist.  Fortunately, thanks to off-air taping and random clips gathered from around the world, many of these older episodes at least exist in part.  Compared to the highly edited and (partially) advanced special effects of the modern, excellent Doctor Who series, these original episodes seem more like a play than a TV show.  Yet these quaint adventures with the ridiculous Daleks and giant bee monster-puppets are fun for me and my son versus the more intense modern incarnation of the good doctor.  Old doesn't always mean boring.  A Good way to spend a lazy Sunday.

Wii U Is Coming!

I reeeeeeeally want to get a Wii U.