I love Dragon Age: Origins. As soon as I’m finished with Mass Effect 2 I’m diving back in to finish my second play through.

I am excited with all the new content released or announced for Dragon Age lately.

The Return to Ostagar DLC was released about a week ago. It came suddenly after some delays. I am trying my best to finish ME2 before running off to play this. Going back to look for King Cailan’s body can wait. I was a dick to him anyway. A full retail expansion pack titled “Awakening” will be released on March 16th. The darkspawn aren’t all dead after all. Some survived because they follow a leader other than the Archdemon. This new baddy is known as the Architect. That’s ok, I like killing darkspawn. There is a video to watch over here.

We know that a sequel is coming due to information about EA’s 2011 fiscal year. Also a Bioware person said that Dragon Age 2 will have improved graphics over the first game. Before March 2011 we should get our hands on it. I’ll bet EA will make an official announcement sometime soon.

Keep on gaming people!

]]> http://nintendo-okie.com/2010/02/08/max-and-the-magic-marker-release-drawing-near-this-march/ Mon, 08 Feb 2010 22:17:14 +0000 News Team http://nintendo-okie.com/2010/02/08/max-and-the-magic-marker-release-drawing-near-this-march/

PressPlay has announced today that their WiiWare/PC title Max and the Magic Marker will be hitting WiiWare in North America this March.  The game released in Europe on January 22nd and was released for PC and Mac on February 5th.

For anyone that still doesn’t know anything about this game you can find our preview of the game here.

Source: Official Max Website

HIM

Tis the season for HIM promotions with the new album right around the corner – And just in time for Valentine’s Day…

New album full stream available in full at the bands Official Myspace page.

New Album title: ‘SCREAMWORKS: LOVE IN THEORY AND PRACTICE’
U.S. Release Date: February 9th, 2010

HIM: 'SCREAMWORKS: 'LOVE IN THEORY IN PRACTICE' Album Cover

HIM, WE ARE THE FALLEN, DOMMIN, and DRIVE A tour dates:

Mar. 26 – Philadelphia, PA – Theatre of the Living Arts
Mar. 27 – Baltimore, MD – Sonar
Mar. 28 – Boston, MA – House of Blues
Mar. 30 – Montreal, QC – Metropolis
Mar. 31 – Toronto, ON – Sound Academy
Apr. 01 – Cleveland, OH – House of Blues
Apr. 02 – Pontiac, MI – Clutch Cargo
Apr. 03 – Cincinnati, OH – Bogarts
Apr. 07 – St. Louis, MO – The Pageant
Apr. 09 – Chicago, IL – House of Blues
Apr. 10 – Milwaukee, WI – The Rave
Apr. 13 – Calgary, AB – MacEwen Hall
Apr. 14 – Edmonton, AB – Event Center
Apr. 16 – Vancouver, BC – Commodore Theatre
Apr. 17 – Seattle, WA – Showbox SoDo
Apr. 18 – Portland, OR – Crystal Ballroom
Apr. 20 – San Francisco, CA – Regency Ballroom
Apr. 21 – Anaheim, CA – House of Blues
Apr. 23 – Los Angeles, CA – The Wiltern
Apr. 24 – Las Vegas, NV – House of Blues
Apr. 25 – San Diego, CA – House of Blues
Apr. 27 – Englewood, CO – Gothic Theatre
Apr. 29 – Dallas, TX – House of Blues
Apr. 30 – Houston, TX – House of Blues
May 02 – Orlando, FL – House of Blues
May 03 – Atlanta, GA – Center Stage
May 04 – Myrtle Beach, FL – House of Blues
May 07 – New York, NY – The Fillmore at Irving Plaza

Go HERE for VIP and pre-sale ticket info.

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Source: Myspace.com/Sevendust

New album title: “COLD DAY MEMORY”
Release date: TBA Spring 2010

*** no Drowning Pool

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If you’re a fan of the Phoenix Wright series and you’re interested in downloading the WiiWare versions of the game you know that they were planning on releasing the games every couple of months.  The first Phoenix Wright game was released in January and the second in the series, Just For All was planned for a March release date. 

Capcom has announced that Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Justice For All will now be available for download through Nintendo’s WiiWare service on February 15th, 2010 and will cost 1,000 Wii Points.

Sun Microsystems last ever CEO Jonathan Schwartz created a bit of a stir last week, when he came up with a more novel way of announcing his resignation than a standard envelope-on-desk routine, when he tweeted it in the form of a haiku.

“Financial crisis/Stalled too many customers/CEO no more,” - @OpenJonathan

The tweet came late on Wednesday night, a week after Oracle completed its contested $7.4 billion takeover of Sun, a move which had been scrutinised by the EU competition authorities for over three months.

As old as the cyber hills, just beyond the askjeeves site, lies Sun... but all good things...

Schwartz took over Sun in 2006, replacing the company’s original co-founder Scott McNealy after the company had suffered serious losses since the dot com crash, only to be compounded by the recession in more recent years.

In the past few years Schwartz had brought the company in a new direction by releasing its top software ranges under open source licenses.

Schwartz’s resignation had not come as a surprise to some, Larry Ellison, the CEO of Oracle had stated in an interview that he had expected this, rather than Schwartz to stay and take a position in the merged company.

One of the biggest questions on people’s minds with the Oracle takeover is whether or not Sun’s popular open source office suite, Open Office, long seen as the struggling under dog to Microsoft Office, would survive.

One of the best open source programs, to date - let's hope it doesn't go the way of Netscape...

Oracle allayed these fears by announcing that the free, popular software would indeed survive and have also suggested a cloud version, possibly to bring the suite into competition with Google Docs, with which it could fare a better chance given that there is less market competition for web based applications, when compared to its more bloated and commercially standard competitor, offline, in Microsoft.

Rumours suggest that Open Office Cloud has been in the works for some time, but had not released any details about possible UI designs or a release date.

Exactly how the cloud system will measure up to Google, or indeed Microsoft Office is yet to be seen, if it is released at all. however its continued existence will keep many freeware users and champions of open source happy for the most part.

Now this was something I was waiting for. But hey, how in the world will I play this game if I don’t have the minimum spec requirements. Yea, My macbook (0_o) is 2 years old and it can only run minsweeper. Laptops from a gamer’s point of view is sucide for any gamer. So…. yep I have to look at youtube videos and satisfy myself. What a pity! I haven’t been able to play Assassin’s Creed 2 or Crysis or any of those top range games there on the shelves. Well I guess my gaming days will be over soon as I am heading to Uni in a year. Anyways for you gamers out there with your proffessional hand-made hig spec custom-made PC “rigs”, this should be fun! AVP is such an old game inspired by the movies obviously. It’s been 5 years since I played the AVP and AVP2 games…

This is a remake, upscaled and also a lot of new features added! This is HD folks. A PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 AVP:Multiplayer demo was released today on Steam (those playing CS:1.6, CSS etc. would know this AND Valve), PSN store and the Xbox LIVE network. So go ahead gamers and grab this demo and post more YouTube videos for people like us to see! lol.

Anyways… PC people heres stuff you should know:

Release Date: February 16, 2010, in the U.S. and on February 19, 2010, in Europe

Minimum Requirements
Windows 7/ XP/Vista
1 GB System RAM (XP)/ 2 GB System RAM (Vista)
3.2 GHz Intel Pentium 4/Athlon 64 3000+ or equivalent processor
DirectX 9.0c compliant video card with 128 MB RAM (NVIDIA 6600 or better, ATI X1600 or better)

Recommended Requirements
Windows 7/ XP/Vista
Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 or equivalent processor
2 GB System RAM
DirectX 9.0c compliant video card with 512 MB RAM (NVIDIA 8800 series, ATI HD2900 PRO or better)

Screens:

Marine Perspective:

Alien Perspective:

Predator Perspective:

Attending meetings with the Linden staff often results in cryptic messages when they cover upcomming features. Jeremy Linden explained that it is due to the official company policy. If you are not 100% sure of something, it is “it’s better to say nothing than to say the wrong thing.” This may be a good way to go about being called out for delays and missing features, but it is a bit hard to communicate with the lindens during their office hours. Rumors start to build up as well.

Many Lindens start to answer questions by indicating what is possible, or what will not happen. It’s as if it were a game of twenty questions, but you’ll never get confirmation if you got the answer or not. The closest that you’ll come is a reply of “you’ll be pleasently surprised when the 2.0 viewer comes out”. Some Lindens will ask other Lindens in the office if specific information can be released, but it’s mostly a game of chance. As far as the release date goes, don’t plan on having ample time to prepare for a release party.

Once Jeremy Linden was cloasing up the meeting, he posted a transcript of it. Regarding how he formatted the text into a nice chat log, he pointed me over to http://slog.whiz- kids.de/index.php.

posted by Dedric Mauriac on Beaumont using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

FEAR FACTORY 2009

New Album title: ‘MECHANIZE’
European release date: 02.05.10 via AFM Records
U.S. release date: 02.09.10 via CandleLight Records

FEAR FACTORY 'MECHANIZE' Album Cover

“Mechanize” track listing:

01. Mechanize
02. Industrial Discipline
03. Fear Campaign
04. Powershifter
05. Christploitation
06. Oxidizer
07. Controlled Demolition
08. Designing The Enemy
09. Metallic Division
10. Final Exit

Read a track by track accounting of the entire album by Burton C. Bell HERE.

FEAR FACTORY lineup:

Burton C. Bell
Dino Cazares
Byron Stroud
Gene Hoglan

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In the leadup to their trip to Australia for Soundwave 2010, Placebo are releasing their new single/video ‘Bright Lights’ next week (Feb 8th).

Whats more, the band has also released a special ‘Making Of’, where fans can check out all the behind the scenes action when making the new video.

Be sure to check out the making of at:

Demon Hunter has announced The World Is A Thorn as their fifth studio album!

The new album follows “Demon Hunter: Live in Nashville” and “45 Days”, the last projects from Demon Hunter. The former being their first live album which was taken from the latter, a documentary film with matching soundtrack and DVD that showcased the band.

Their fourth studio album was Storm the Gates of Hell and released on November 6, 2007, so it’s been a significant enough amount of time since their last record that fans are pretty rabid now for new Demon Hunter material. And personally I CAN’T FREAKIN’ WAIT for it!

*SPOILER WARNING* Below is the tracklist for The World Is A Thorn followed by the official cover artwork!

1. Descending Upon Us
2. LifeWar
3. Collapsing
4. This Is The Line
5. Driving Nails
6. The World Is A Thorn
7. Tie This Around Your Neck
8. Just Breathe
9. Shallow Water
10. Feel As Though You Could
11. Blood In The Tears

Demon Hunter has also updated their official myspace to include the official description/announcement of The World Is A Thorn along with lots of spoiler information on their thoughts for the new album. Here is that piece:

It’s rare that a heavy metal band delivers on the promise of a record that’s “heavier than ever yet more melodic,” but Demon Hunter has done exactly that with The World is a Thorn, their fifth studio album.

The World is a Thorn follows the breathtaking and sometimes heartbreaking documentary 45 Days and a catalog of landmark albums that have made the band one of the most important in the genre. It was produced by longtime collaborator Aaron Sprinkle (Acceptance, Anberlin, The Almost) and mixed by Jason Suecof (All That Remains, Trivium, Chimaira). It’s a pairing emblematic of how skillfully Demon Hunter has always blended metallic might with melody.

Songs like “Descending Upon Us,” “Lifewar” and the title track are by far the most aggressive of the band’s career and tracks like “This is the Line” and “Collapsing” are hard-driving, fist-pumping anthems while “Driving Nails” and “Blood in the Tears” are ballads the likes of which their fans, “the Hunters,” both expect and cherish.

Guitarist Patrick Judge, who made his debut with the band on the Live in Nashville collection, is joined by new guitarist Ryan Helm (The Ascendicate). They lend their talents to a new batch of songs written by co-founder / vocalist Ryan Clark. Yogi Watts returns with another jaw-dropping drum performance, backed up by longtime bass player Jonathan Dunn. The World is a Thorn recalls the best of the genre’s past while pushing the envelope forward at the same time.

“The album title refers to the often harmful and destructive world that we live in,” explains Clark. “Most of the songs deal with the current state of the nation and the world as a whole. In particular, the lyrics take aim at the ideals of a Godless people and the depletion of our morals and values.”

Demon Hunter has always been a Christian band and has represented their point of view strongly, despite the larger trend of watered down philosophies that straddle the line for popularity’s sake. This stance has won them respect from fellow believers and opposite points of view alike.

“In this age it has seemingly become more and more detestable to be a Christian,” Clark elaborates. “Our opinions on social and political issues are no longer tolerated as valid and we are commonly viewed as the enemy. Subjective truth, self-love, unrestricted perversion, the destruction of morality: these are the things that have ultimately brought us to a place of depression and madness.

“This album is the antithesis of the modern way of life.”

The World is a Thorn follows previous studio albums Storm the Gates of Hell (2007), The Triptych (2005), Summer of Darkness (2004) and Demon Hunter (2002), as well as the live album and three disc CD / DVD set 45 Days, which have sold close to a combined half a million copies. It’s an incredible feat for a band that has yet to venture from North America and has never toured regularly.

“Fading Away,” the first video / single from Storm the Gates of Hell, has received over 1 million views on YouTube. That song, “Carry Me Down,” “Undying,” “One Thousand Apologies,” “Not Ready to Die” and “Infected” — to name a few — have all been staples of Christian, college and speciality radio and featured continuously on MTV2’s Headbangers Ball and Fuse. Ryan Clark was featured on the cover of Revolver in 2006 as part of their “Christian Metal” cover story and they are regularly a huge draw at festivals.

The “Hunters” in the “Blessed Resistance,” as the band’s most devoted fans are known, have championed the cause since day one and are making their voices heard throughout the underground.

Demon Hunter’s level of commitment to the quality and presentation of their music is matched only by their attention to detail with their packaging and overall aesthetics. Ryan Clark’s graphic design firm he co-owns with his brother Don (formerly of Demon Hunter), Invisible Creature, has racked up several Grammy nominations in the packaging category.

The fans match that passion and dedication, proudly displaying the group’s symbol on their social networking pages and tattooing it on their bodies. The connection these men have made with their audience is staggeringly beyond compare.

Demon Hunter is an anomaly in today’s heavy music scene, jettisoning fashionable trends and easily recognizable cliches in favor of traditional heavy metal power and melodic hooks. The World is a Thorn is a definitive mission statement from a band at a creative apex, firing on all cylinders with awe-inspiring intensity.

Hell aint a bad place to be…

Release date: February 9, 2010
Official site(currently only available in US version): www.dantesinferno.com

GUY RITCHIE

The Cast Of 'SHERLOCK HOLMES'

Director Guy Ritchie has set aside the planned “Lobo” film to clear his schedule for a fast-tracked “Holmes” sequel, according to producer Joel Silver.

Silver is a producer of “Holmes” as well as “Lobo.”

Read more HERE.

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I couldn’t resist posting this – As Michigan’s largest independent bookseller, Schuler is a member of Indiebound, an organization connecting independent bookstores and helping to promote local commerce across the nation. Each month they publish the Indie Next list, a collection of reviews written by booksellers from indie stores all over.

Carol Schneck, the inventory manager at our Okemos location (and possibly the most voracious reader I’ve ever met – to which she’d say, “Hey, I don’t have TV”), is the national Indiebound all-star, with a review published nearly every month! Up til now, I’ve submitted for years (though not nearly as often as she), and the only review I got published was one that I submitted for a co-worker that they mistakenly attributed to me.

In March, that will all change, with my first published review declaring my love for Joe Hill’s upcoming horror novel Horns!  Woo hoo!

I really can’t tell you how amazing I thought this book was – I thoroughly enjoyed his first novel Heart-Shaped Box and hand-sold it like crazy. Horns is 10 times better. It really is just superbly crafted, with every nuance considered and carefully planned out.

Annnnd, lucky you, they pushed the release date up to February 16, so now you don’t even have to wait til March to read it! If you read it and love it and live in the Lansing area, the Fanged Fiction book group will be discussing it on April 26. Trust me – if you read it, you’re going to want to talk about it

And, a little research suggests that Horns is in production for a feature film. It’s been optioned by Mandalay Pictures and is listed as a 2011 project on IMDB.com. Cross your fingers!

So here’s the brief review I’m acting like such a dork over:

Horns: A Novel by Joe Hill
(Morrow, $25.99, 9780061147951)
“When Ignatius Perrish wakes up with horns and discovers that everyone he meets will tell him their darkest desires, he finally begins to piece together the events behind the brutal murder of his girlfriend. But when everyone in town thinks you are the murderer, it’s quite possible you don’t want to hear what they’re really thinking. Joe Hill’s new novel is a brilliant mix of horror and mystery.” –Whitney Spotts, Schuler Books & Music, Lansing, MI

The new installment in the Metroid franchise first debuted at last year’s E3 as one of Nintendo’s biggest surprises. While we weren’t too surprised to see a new Metroid game on the way, we were surprised to learn the developer: Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden development studio Team Ninja.

Team Ninja is still working away on the game, but it appears that they’ve gotten far enough in development that Nintendo has been able to pencil in a Summer 2010 release period. This time frame is just for Japan.

Nintendo also opened an official site for the game today. The site shows a character whom we presume to be Samus Aran standing against an evening skyline as a gentle piano theme plays in the background. Before this scene fades in, we hear a voice, also presumably that of Samus, say “That Dream — it was like watching a playback of a tragedy that actually occurred.”

What does it all mean? A summer release time frame is hopefully an indication that details will be coming soon.

Empire Online obtained the international poster for The Last Airbender, which merges the two recently unveiled Aang & Zuko one sheets into one, thus adding yet another poster to the growing pantheon of Orange/Blue movie posters.

The Last Airbender is set to open August 13, 2010 in the UK.