Rob LeFebvre - page 37

SEATTLE, Washington – Walk into a comic shop, and you’ll probably see titles from publisher Dark Horse Comics. Known for its creator-owned series like Mike Mignola’s Hellboy and Sergio Aragonés’ Groo the Wanderer as well as television and movie adaptations like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or 300, the comic book publisher has a booth at the Penny Arcade Expo this weekend in Seattle to show off a different genre of comic.

The booth at the Washington State Convention Center in is full of video game-themed books of all stripe, from Mass Effect and Tomb Raider single-issue comics to larger, coffee table volumes like Hyrule Historia, which is chock full of the lore of The Legend of Zelda, and The Art of Naughty Dog, an art book that focuses on the popular game developer’s artistic output.

Dave Marshall says that video game books are the third pillar in the Dark Horse publishing strategy, and have become just as valuable a content stream as the creator-owned or media-based titles.

“We get the original writers and artists from the video games themselves to actually write or consult on these books,” he told us at the Dark Horse booth Saturday morning, “so we can come to the fans at a deeper level than just a crummy tie-in or cash grab.”

SEATTLE, Washington – Together: Amna & Saif puts you and another player on the same screen, controlling a mother and son duo of characters to solve various environmental puzzles. It’s a “couch co-op adventure puzzle game” that requires you to talk, interact, and think with another human being.

Lead designer Lyle Cox told us that he’s always wanted to make a game that benefits society in some way. “My hope is that people who play the game,” he said, “get some benefit to their relationship for having done so.”

Instead of just another HD video project clogging up his Mac, filmmaker Mike Ruocco set out to capture his cross-country road trip with something just a bit more retro: a 45-year-old Canon Auto Zoom 814 with a broken light meter and two cans of Super 8 film.

Ruocco, his wife, her sister and their dog Riley traveled across 20 states, spent time at nine national parks and then spent a week in the Adirondack Mountains, filming it all along the way.

What results is a video so warm and nostalgic that we just had to share. Check out this amazing blast of Americana below.

The hot new thing is to record your epic gaming feats on your current-generation consoles like the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, sharing your amazing skills with the world via Google’s YouTube or Amazon’s Twitch TV.

Microsoft just made it even easier to do so with an update to Xbox One SmartGlass, an iOS, Windows Phone, and Android mobile app that connects directly to your Xbox One console.

The companion app already lets you navigate your console using your iPhone or other smart device’s keyboard and touchscreen as well as control your media via a SmartGlass remote control function. You can brows the web on your TV using your mobile device, and track achievements, get game help, message friends and watch game clips all on your iPad or other tablet.

Just take a look at that beast above, posted by lead singer and guitarist for nerdtastic rock band OK Go, Damian Kulash. The Instagram photo, captioned “There is a machine that makes OK Go videos. This is that machine.”

Founded in 1998, OK Go consists of Damian Kulash (lead vocals, guitar), Tim Nordwind (bass guitar and vocals), Dan Konopka (drums and percussion) and Andy Ross (guitar, keyboards and vocals). They’re known for their extensive, quirky and technically complex music videos.

Here are a few of those awesome videos, made with the OK Go cart above.

Roguelike games are a retro treat, hailing back to the earliest computers. They used various ASCII characters to denote dungeon walls and dangerous creatures in an attempt to recreate the experience of playing Dungeons & Dragons.

There are many good roguelikes out there these days on both Mac and iOS with varying amounts of verisimilitude regarding the original game. This type of game typically features a randomly-generated set of dungeon levels so that you never play the same level twice, the idea of perma-death, meaning that once your character dies, the game is over, and lots of treasure, loot, and monsters to contend with on a turn-by-turn basis.

Nightmare Cooperative, from Bad Hotel and Gentlemen! developer Lucky Frame, is a finely-polished rendition of the familiar formula with a few fun twists.

Check out the teaser video below to get a sense of how it looks and sounds.

20th Century Fox just committed to producing a television pilot called All Together Now about six twentysomethings who promise to unplug from their mobile devices and engage with each other as long as they can possibly stand it.

Seems like all the networks are jumping on the high-tech bandwagon, with heavy dramas like AMC’s Halt and Catch Fire, lowbrow reality shows like Bravo’s Online Dating Rituals of the American Male and now this sitcom.

We can’t help but think turning off your mobile is a pretty thin excuse for a television series. Here are six other tech-themed pilot ideas the TV studio moguls might want to try.

We’ve all heard it: “Turn that TV off or I’m gonna take it and toss it out the g*dd*mn window.” Chances are, if you’re a parent, you’ve even said such a thing (I know I have).

That’s why after repeated watchings we just had to share this viral video from YouTuber McJuggerNuggets about a crazy family with a dad that resorts to mowing down his layabout son’s video game collection to intimidate the kid into getting a job.

Check out this NSFW video (F-bombs galore) below and you’ll be as hooked on the uncomfortable family drama as we are.

Earlier this week, a copy of the holy grail of comic book collecting, Action Comics No. 1 from 1938, sold on eBay for a record shattering sum of $3.2 million.

This pristine copy of Superman’s first appearance in comic books sold for a whopping $1,046,852 more than the previous record-holder, a less pristine copy of Action Comics‘ first issue, which sold for $2.1 million back in 2011. There are only an estimated 50 copies of the hotly collectible title left in the world.

I’m torn these days between wanting a functional wallet-style case for my iPhone and something a bit more minimalist. I tend to switch cases as I need them because I haven’t found a one-case-fits-all solution that works for me.

The minimalist new AL13 metallic bumper case for iPhone 5 or iPhone 5s is quite a classy little addition to your important iOS device, combining good protection with looks that invite stares. It’s got all the great stuff of its ultrathin predecessor, but it’s also easier to put on and doesn’t have any issues with dropped calls due to signal loss.

It’s a bear to get off, though, so if you like to change your iPhone case as often as you change your mood, you’ll probably be a bit frustrated.

With ski season closer than you can believe, it’s time to start drooling over the amazing HD footage out there on the web. So you can dream away your workday with these moving images, you’ll need to check out this amazing footage from four powder fanatics who used only Go Pro cameras to film their fresh exploits across the coolest drops in Hokkaido, Japan, Pemberton, British Columbia and Mt. Hood, Oregon.

Check out the extreme shots below and start gathering your lift tickets, high-end goggles and ski wax.

In an amazing twist of celebrity, Community star and rapper Donald Glover has gotten to voice Miles Morales, the Ultimate Spider-Man, in the Disney XD animated series.

As it’s Glover that was the original inspiration behind the alternate universe Spidey, written by comics star Brian Michael Bendis, this is a treat for fans and the actor himself.

“That’s the great part about the Spider-Man costume: He can be anybody,” Glover told USA Today. “Spider-Man could be a girl. Spider-Man could be an old man. You don’t know. So I just tried to be as me as possible, because you’re always just going to bring it back to yourself when you watch the show.”

Check out the clip below as Peter Parker (voiced by Drake Bell) meets Miles Morales, voiced by Glover.

Super Battle Tactics is a free-to-play iOS game published by DeNA that has you using virtual tanks to face off against other players or AI opponents; you’ll choose which upgrades and tactics you’ll use your available action points on to outwit and destroy the enemy tanks.

Sometimes, though, you just want a little help in climbing the leaderboards, ranking up as fast as you can. To that end, we went straight to the publisher for these exclusive tips and tricks to help you take your game to the next level. Check them out below, and feel free to add in your own.

It’s time, Tru Believers, to watch the very last episode of HBO’s vampire romantic drama, True Blood.

Overall, this final episode is slow and sweetly-paced, funneling down from the crazy, too-many-characters and plot lines of the past several seasons to a gentle, musing (and ultimately narratively safe) tale of people trying to find themselves and growing up in the process.

Luckily, since this is TV, they all eventually do. Hoyt and Jessica, Jason and Bridgette, and — of course — Bill and Sookie all find their own version of a happy ending, with very few surprises along the way; it’s a very safe finish to seven seasons of fangbangery.

As always, spoilers ahead. So keep reading at your own peril.

When my 2001 Subaru Forester died on the side of the highway a week or so back, I was not excited about trying to find a replacement.

Buying a car is right up there with heading to the DMV, going to IKEA and attending your ex’s next wedding. It’s depressing. And inevitable. The load of anxiety-ridden, “hurry up and wait” BS that has marred my every interaction with car dealerships both new and used is overwhelming.

So it was with glee that I bypassed all that crap and used my iPhone, email and Twitter to buy myself a new car. Let me explain.

Gabe Ibañez directs and Antonio Banderas stars in this gritty, realistic near-future sci-fi flick, Automata.

The premise is that, in 2004, robots have found a way to circumvent built-in Protocols against harming human beings or self-altering their own physical form.

The award-winning film looks to be a fantastic take on the robots-gone-wild sub-genre, and it’s got Javier Bardem (No Country For Old Men) as a rogue killer robot and Melanie Griffith as a scheming politician; what’s not to like?

When you’re gaming on a new-generation console like the PlayStation 4 or Xbox One, you’ll be astounded by the crystal-clear graphics and the silky-smooth 60 frames per second animations.

If you want to share this video at its native resolution, you’ll need something heavy duty to do the capture and editing. Something massively capable that can handle input via an HDMI interface. Something that doesn’t take up too much space — you need that for your gaming consoles. What you need is something like the Elgato Game Capture 60HD.

Because life’s too short for a crummy converter box with a huge footprint.

San Francisco-based developer Giacomo Balli doubled his take on his iPhone apps thanks to an April Fools’ Day joke. When he ratcheted up the price to an eye-popping $4.99 for an app that catalogs books, he got downloads instead of complaints.

The App Store lets devs change the sale price of their apps pretty much any time they like, but most folks take conventional routes: cutting prices during sales or dropping prices to free. Balli made his previously free apps premium with just a toggle.

“There weren’t any app updates, either,” he told Cult of Mac over the phone. “Just the price.”

If you’re freaking out about the new words added to OxfordDictionaries.com — like “adorbs,” “listicle,” “hate-watch” and “acquihire” — you’re not alone.

Most folks learn their vocabularies while growing up. Adding new words or changing the meaning of existing ones can be confusing to the human mind. Many of us pass judgment on these new words, upset about how technology is “dumbing down” the language.

This type of linguistic change — and the inevitable backlash to it — is nothing new, says Roy Mitchell, assistant professor of anthropology at University of Alaska Anchorage. “All living languages are always changing,” he told Cult of Mac over the phone. “Even some dead ones change,” he added, noting that Neo-Latin is simply the addition of Greek roots to a long-dead Roman lexicon.

You don’t have to like it. You just have to accept that it’s happening. And that there’s nothing you can do about it.

Tired of just tapping your way through The Simpsons mobile game, creating your own private Springfield, waiting for your energy donuts to replenish?

It appears that publisher Electronic Arts has heard your “Doh!” and has added a new bit of gameplay to The Simpsons: Tapped Out that is not-so-sneakily just like that of hit free-to-play game Clash of Clans.

Check out the video below to see what we mean.

Flappy Bird developer Dong Nguyen has a new game coming out this Thursday, and it looks to be as brutally difficult and addictive as his original viral hit.

According to Eli Hodapp over at TouchArcade, Swing Copters contains the same one-tap gameplay as Flappy Bird, only this time you’re guiding a little character up through platforms that have swinging hammers on them, rather than horizontally through Mario-esque pipes.

Here’s a video to give you an idea:

Beginning just moments after the shocking end of last week’s episode of True Blood, the final season’s second-to-last entry tightens down on the remaining relationships: Sookie and Bill. Hoyt and Jessica. Eric and Pam (and Ginger!). Jason and new girl. A little Lafayette and James, a tiny smattering of Arlene and Keith. Couples are the way to go in Bon Temps.

Once again, we’ve got character dialogue that sounds like a love letter to the fans from the writers of this HBO-powered vampire drama that airs Sunday nights.

“As much as I appreciate compelling character drama,” says Pam in full sarcasm mode, “but the Yakuza are upstairs, so need I remind you to keep it the f*ck down, volume-wise?”

Spoilers below, so don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Less than an hour ago, Microsoft founder and super rich guy Bill Gates took the ice bucket challenge, which has various famous folks dumping cold water over their heads to raise awareness for Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS).

While Tim Cook completed the challenge himself at an Apple employee event, Bill Gates has gone even further — he built a crazy contraption to dump a ton of ice water on his head. The video (below) shows his planning attempts, complete with Comic Sans blueprints and a Surface tablet to do all the work and YouTubery.

Watch the full video below: