Review: Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon! (PS3)

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is what happens when you plan your first major piece of downloadable content while drunk at the office party. The original Far Cry 3 was an open-world romp in which a dude-bro called Jason sliced up mercenaries and murdered wildlife in order to save his hideously unlikable friends from an inhospitable island. This standalone expansion, Blood Dragon, ups the ante considerably, by completely throwing everything about Far Cry away, and turning the island into a neon, futuristic (by way of the eighties) wasteland, plagued by blue-blooded cyber soldiers and laser firing mutant dinosaurs. Oh, and now you play gruff and profane Rex Colt, a cyborg commando with a robot arm and red-white-and-blue blood, voiced by Terminator and Aliens' snarling Michael Biehn. And did I mention that it's fucking awesome? And it looks like this...

But can Blood Dragon possibly sustain this amount of awesome throughout its 4 - 6 hour running time? You'll find out exactly what I made of all this madness... after the jump!

Gallery: Free Comic Book Day 2013 at Quality Comics!

Holy crap, you guys, it's Free Comic Book Day 2013 and, as promised, a lot of things are going on. Perth, Western Australia may be the most isolated capital city in the world, but that doesn't mean that Batman won't show up if he gets the call. Yes. We are now friends with Batman.

(You may also recognise Black Widow as our friend Courtney who joined me recently on The Book Was Better podcast). And there were plenty of other characters out in force to celebrate with our other friends at Quality Comics. Short version: Everyone is our friend.

If you'd like to see a lot more pictures of the awesomeness celebrating sequential art today then please join me... after the jump!

Free Comic Book Day 2013 Reviews and Recommendations: Part 2!

Free Comic Book Day is just getting closer and closer, so it's time to have a look at another selection of the comics that are going to be available. We got early copies of some of the books thanks to our good friends at Quality Comics, and there are some real gems among them. I trust you've already read Luke's post from yesterday going over Infinity, Star Wars, Mass Effect, The Tick, Atomic Robo, Judge Dredd and 2000AD? Good.

My picks from this year's crop were ones mainly aimed at kids, with a couple of zombie-fied adult books on top. I grabbed The Walking Dead, FUBAR, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H, Action Time Buddies, NFL Rush Zone and The Mouse Guard. We'll head below the cut in a sec to check them out, but first, a word from our sponsor.


Yes, Hugh Jackman is our sponsor. We're Australian, he sponsors all of us in everything we do. He's just that kind of guy.

Onwards to the comics, starting with the gory grown-up ones first!

Thank GIF it's Friday!!

I hope this enriches you as it has enriched me.

Thursday Threesome - Three awesome CD ROM games I played as a six-year-old

We didn't have consoles, in our household. Purely because as a family with three girls and a young boy (at this point, quite literally a baby) there wasn’t a gamer’s push to bring one into the fold. No one had yet identified as a gamer, and the only reason a CD ROM drive was installed in dad’s computer was because he had a fondness for new technologies and tinkering with his hardware components. He himself had no interest in gaming, but a quasi-professional interest in how the CD-ROM drive worked with games.

Our first unit was one of the ones with a cartridge you pulled out of the slot, inserted the disc into, then loaded back into the machine. It whirred and clicked like there was an engine and not a harddrive in there, and the slightest fleck of dust brought the whole thing to a halt. Dad furnished us with some (probably randomly) purchased PC games and we set forth on a voyage of pixels and discovery.
From what I remember, the games unlisted here but played were Recess in Greece (I remember most of the dialogue to this), Jungle Jill, Captain Comic, Commander Keen, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, Total Annihilation, Duke Nukem (the one where he wears pink and talks about Oprah. That’s all I know), and Encarta’s Mindmaze.

That aside, there were three that I spent more time on than any others. Come investigate after the jump!

Free Comic Book Day 2013 Reviews and Recommendations: Part 1!

Saturday May 4th is not just Star Wars Day, but also happens to be this year’s Free Comic Book Day, and thanks to our dear friends at Perth’s Quality Comics, we have a slew of the books in hand and have been covetously rubbing our eyeballs all over them. Yes, we’ve read them, and we’re going to tell you what you can expect and what we heartily recommend. And this year there’s some really great ones!

If you’re local, be sure to check out Quality’s event page. There’s always discounts and extra fun to be had, and I know there’s going to be a lot of customers showing up in costume. And if you want a preview of Marvel’s Infinity, Star Wars, Mass Effect, The Tick, Atomic Robo, Judge Dredd and 2000 AD, be sure to join me for part one... after the jump!

Review: Sci-fi Revoltech Iron Man Mark VII!

What do I know about Japanese company Kaiyodo and their line of super-articulated Revoltech figures? Not a whole hell of a lot, but I do know that they've made a lot of super-articulated Iron Mans (Iron Men?) and my Iron Man hype is at an ungainly high right now. I've oft admired these from afar but their relative high price has dissuaded me from purchasing one. Until now! On the weekend I finally caved and chose this Iron Man Mark VII (his "bracelet" armour from The Avengers, soon to be released as a Hot Toy). Is Japan Iron Man worth all the fuss?

I am going to slam you with all the excruciating details... after the jump!

Micro Muggs Review (Iron Man)

Mighty Muggs were the coolest thing a few years ago. Chunky, urban vinyl inspired figures done by Hasbro…. and done really well. Most of the art was non-conventional, and the character choices were great too (Lando was very early on in the Star Wars line, prompting me to buy all of them from that point forward). But if there was one major issue with Mighty Muggs it's that they were pretty big. At about 8 inches tall and about 6 inches wide, it only took a few to dominate your shelf space.

Back then I begged for Dunny sized Mighty Muggs. They eventually came out, but it was too late and they weren't perfect. They came 3-4 to a pack in those long, really ugly window boxes that you see Star Wars multi packed figures packaged in. They don't display that well and look more like a gift than a collectible.

And now many years later, I see that there are Micro Muggs. These are WAY smaller, more along the size of a Lego Minifigure or a vending machine toy. Even though they were Iron Man (I've never seen a movie or read an Iron Man comic), I bought a few just to satisfy my curiosity. 

Click through the jump for more Micro Muggs.

Stryder's Favourite Comics - 4/24/2013

Another week, another pile of comics!  Let's jump right in!!

Before Watchmen: Comedian #6 (of 6) - "After what you did here, it's better for everyone--you included--if we sent you home."

 The final issue of Before Watchmen has finally hit the stands, as Eddie "The Comedian" Blake is relieved of his duties in Vietnam and finally sent home to the good ol' U.S.A...there to face his final demons and perhaps his destiny as well...

It's been an interesting and controversial run...all of these Before Watchmen titles were bound to get people disagreeing before even a single page was printed.  Having read every issue of every title, I have to say...all the bother wasn't worth it.  Take away the hype, and all you really have are a handful of PG-13 super-hero titles, all very beautiful, with some more satisfying than others.  They complement the original Watchmen novel without stepping all over it and were for the most part pretty entertaining.  Silk Spectre in particular was even insightful!  I'm personally happy to have collected this series, but as time goes by I suspect they'll largely be forgotten while their inspiration, the original Watchmen, lives on forever.  Still, it's been fun!  At the end of the day, that's what I want from my comic books most of all!

Superman, The Flash, Batman, Incorporated and more after the JUMP!

The Book Was Better Podcast Episode 41: Hotel For Dogs (with guest host Sabrina!)

The Book Was Better is the podcast where we inexplicably read and mercilessly make fun of the novelizations of your loved and loathed films!

This week my openly reluctant guest host is my awesome pal, Sabrina, as we go doggy style for the completely infeasible Hotel for Dogs! How far will your suspension of disbelief stretch? You’re about to find out. And vegetarians beware - because this could be our meatiest episode yet!

You can download it right now from the official site, or why not be the alpha dog and subscribe to us on iTunes? Woof!