I still don’t know how I totally feel about Zombieland. I know that it wasn’t a bad movie, as I was laughing quite a bit while watching it. However, there were also moments during the middle where I was checking my watch like I was waiting for a a frozen pizza to cook in the oven. The movie had a lot of promise in the beginning. The introduction of the Columbus character with his rules was done really well, and watching slow-mo deaths were always enjoyable — that woman in the mini-van really should have worn her seatbelt. I’m also a sucker for low-budget horror/action flicks where very talented makeup people get to flex their prosthetic muscles to create some incredibly realistic effects. Between Zombieland and District 9, it’s nice to see some of this old-school style.

What killed the momentum for me was about halfway through, when I’d realized I’d seen this before. I had already seen the campy take on the zombie genre with Shaun of the Dead, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was watching a movie about Left 4 Dead. Four unlikely heroes team up to stave off a zombie-type infection while traveling across the country in search of a “safehouse”. On top of that, they spend the last act in an amusement park! With a clown zombie! And that’s why I’m thinking that Zombieland falls in the “average” realm for me. Originality. I can’t say it wasn’t fun to watch, but I can’t say that I plan to watch it again either.

What To Add It For: Art Direction/Production
A first-time director making a movie with impressive effects and really well-made setpieces on a small budget is to commended. The grocery and trader stores were made just for the movie.

What To Remove It For: Lack of a Scare
For everything that Zombie land was: fun, entertaining, gory and well-designed, it wasn’t scary and you never felt like anyone was in real danger.

Rating: 3/5

Image Source

About the Queue: I watch almost all of my movies through Netflix, either by mail or the Xbox Live Netflix streaming service. I thought I’d share what I thought of these movies, maybe sparking a discussion about older flicks or even get some recommendations from my readers. I write one to two paragraphs about the movie — trying not to spoil anything — sum it up with the high point and low point and give it a final review out of 5, as I would rate the movie on Netflix. And I want to hear what you think about these movies, so please, leave comments.

Welcome to Killer Robot Comics, Design and Illustration Version 3.0! I’ve spent quite a bit of time creating this, and I hope you enjoy visiting and reading through it as I did making it. For the past 8 months, I’ve been fine-tuning my WordPress ninja skills and this site is the fruit of that labor.

Let me tell you a little bit about what I’ve made here. This site is the home of my personal and art blog, my portfolio and soon to be the hub of all my projects and creations. The entire site is hard-coded from scratch by me, using the most basic possible WordPress framework as a starting point. It was made using a truckload of CSS, PHP and whatever help I could find in order to make my creation come to life.

With a little help from DOMTab for some Java in the sidebar, and IconDock for the free social icons, I have made what I think is the perfect home for Killer Robot. I know there are some things I want to add and change already — things that came up during production that I moved to 3.1 — but I think this is a cool starting point to show a lot of what I can do.

So please take a look around, try things out, comment on posts, and let me know if you think of anything you’d like to see added for ease of use, or if you see something that is borked pretty bad. Also, for the three of you that have subscribed to my RSS feed, you might need to update it.

And for everyone’s sake, please ignore the CSS behind the curtain. The file is a little messy and something to be cleaned up in a future update.

Thanks for reading!

Finally my home page is actually accurate! I really am working on a new website design. Currently, it’s in the early development stages (i.e. moving things around in Photoshop) but now that I have a plan and a timeline, I hope to have something new up around the first of the year.

Until this is done, I won’t really be posting anything new here — even though it’s been quite a while since my last post anyway — but once the new theme and site are live, I plan on coming back with more posts, more updates and more artwork to share with you guys.

While I’m working on the site, you can follow me on Twitter to get my latest updates and thoughts, and even if my new site can’t throw knives into heaven or dip ladies’ hands into acid, like George Washington, the new website is coming.

To leave you with something opinionated — it is a blog after all — here are some micro reviews of things I would normally post about:

Bionic Commando (Xbox 360): An incredibly fun and enjoyable rental even if the story is about as captivating as an empty trash can.

Iron Man (Netflix): One of the better comic book movies. The writers got the characters right, the designs right and the story was solid. The only thing missing was a more convincing bad guy.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine: As I’m trying to talk myself into X-Men Movie-verse Deadpool, I can’t help but be bothered by the fact that there was a complete lack of blood in this movie. A group of mutants killing people with claws, swords, guns and everything else, and no blood to be found.

Pineapple Express

Not since the masterpiece Dumb and Dumber have two best friends with less than stellar intellect and decision-making skills made a funnier pairing. Pineapple Express starts out funny and ends in insanity. When Dale Denton accidentally witnesses a druglord-related murder and his identity is traced back to his drug dealer, Saul, the two men have no choice but to work together to out-run their would-be assassins.

When you start watching this movie, you expect it to be a slapstick comedy with some raunchy humor, but it comes out with guns blazing. Does it have Gary Cole and Seth Rogan having a machine gun fight in an underground weed bunker? Yes it does. Is Danny McBride running over people in a Daewoo? Yes he is. And it all wraps up in time for breakfast at the Waffle House.

What To Add It For: It’s funny, man.
This really is a funny movie. With everything from comedic dialog to over-the-top action scenes that are hilarious in their ridiculousness.

What To Remove It For: Low brow humor.
Comedy is definitely subjective, and while I love a crass-humored stoner comedy done right, it’s not what others may like.

Rating: 4/5

Coraline

Coraline began with a lot of promise. Right away, I was in love with the character designs – something of a mash-up between The Nightmare Before Christmas and the classic Rudolph animated movie. Every character was almost immediately likable except for one, Coraline. I just didn’t really care about the main character. Similar to the main character in the book Where the Wild Things Are (and I’m curiously wondering how the movie will handle it), the main character is really a brat and you almost feel like she gets what she deserves.

Yes, her parents are stereotypically inattentive and borderline neglectful, but she’s a kid, and sometimes kids just need to do what they’re told. I really don’t think kids need more reasons to think they’re the center of the universe. All-in-all, it doesn’t really matter since by the time the story picks up and gets exciting, you are rushed through the rest of the film wondering what the long setup was really all about.

What To Add It For: Spectacular animation.
The character design is incredibly well-done and the stop-motion effect never gets old.

What To Remove It For: Slow moving story.
It takes a while for the story to get going, and even when it does, not enough attention is focused on Coraline’s quest during the third act.

Rating: 2/5

Tropic Thunder

Dismally unfunny is really my best description of Tropic Thunder. For all of the hype of how funny this movie was, it did nothing but disappoint. Ben Stiller is really hit-or-miss for me, and in this one he completely missed, Jack Black is irrelevant, and while Robert Downey Jr. gets the most laughs, his character felt like a Saturday Night Live skit that went on way too long.

The only bright spot in the movie was a famous cameo playing an unexpected role. This movie could have been only about this character and would have been much funnier and interesting. It’s the only thing keeping me from rating it a zero. Maybe they should have let Bill Hader take a run at a bigger role.

What To Add It For: That one guy.
If you haven’t seen it, I don’t want to spoil anything, but I will say that an overweight, balding dance maniac takes the cake in this one.

What To Remove It For: M.I.A. laughs.
While not completely devoid of funny moments, I was waiting for something truly obscenely funny that never came.

Rating: 1/5

Nerdcore Rising

This one is for all the nerds and geeks out there. Being a fan of Nerdcore Hip Hop (geek-inspired lyrics over rap beats) I was drawn to Nerdcore Rising since it is a documentary about the father of Nerdcore, MC Frontalot. The movie follows him and his band on their first national tour, and along the way you not only see that it’s hard out there for a nerd, but how there’s also a lot that is heart-warming about trying so hard to be a lovable outcast.

This movie makes you feel good about being geeky in that “they’re just like me” kind of way. Anyone with the same interests and hobbies with a love for music could see themselves in Frontalot’s place. Not only do you really want to see this band succeed, but it makes you feel good about being the nerd that you are.

What To Add It For: Nerds on tour.
Fans of Nerdcore Hip-Hop and MC Frontalot will appreciate the behind-the-scenes look at the life of a nerd on a rock tour.

What To Remove It For: MC in the front (a lot).
I was hoping to see more from other Nerdcore artists, but because Frontalot is probably my favorite, I didn’t mind too much.

Rating: 3/5

I try to tell myself that I am working on artwork on a regular basis, then I wake up one morning to find out that it’s been six months since I’ve opened a file in Photoshop. I’ve been “working” on Laura’s logo for over 6 months, and I feel terrible that it has taken me so long.

I love drawing and designing, and every time I sit down at the computer or table to do some work, I love every minute that I’m lost in those projects. It really is my passion and when I’m pen-deep in a project, there is nothing that makes me feel more productive. The roadblock for me is getting my lazy ass to move itself upstairs and get to work.

When the opportunity came along to take a couple days off work, I jumped at it. Not only did a want a much-need rest, but I thought I could use the free time to get back into my true hobby (i.e. not video games).

The image above is the final logo design for Laura’s personal website Sleeping Lion Designs. She’s amazing at sewing and makes these really cool hand-made purses and bags. She told me that she wanted to start trying to sell them online, so I got to work. I really wanted to create something for her that wouldn’t just be a portal to ship her stuff, but a place where she could show her personality and style as well.

She helped a lot with the ideas and design and I’m really happy with the way it turned out. The lion itself is completely hand-drawn and was digitally painted. I really wanted to capture some of the hand-made feel that her products have in the logo. I also think the font is a nice modern addition to the lion’s arts-and-crafts aesthetic.

Website development is next on the list, so feel free to bookmark it and I’ll post an update when bags are ready to be bought.

Most of the time when I start playing a game, if it fails to really sink its teeth into me or doesn’t seem that fun in the beginning, it ends up another discarded case on my pile of shame. With my limited free time and the never-ending stream of games to try, I don’t have the patience or hourly resources to force myself to play something just because reviewers say it’s “good“.

When I heard that Fallout 3 received multiple game of the year awards and was generally praised in the gaming circles, I wanted to give it a try. After I started looking into the artwork, gameplay and features — an action RPG with exploration and moral choices — I bought it outright, something I rarely do in this economy.

The problem was that I was so behind on the games that I had, I put off playing Fallout 3 until this past summer. When I finally got the chance to sit down with it and started my vault dweller, I hated it.

In the beginning I was having fun and I thought it would evolve into a game I could play for a while, but once I had been playing for around 5 hours, I started to become frustrated and wanted to stop. The game just hadn’t been what I had expected.

I told myself I would give it until I reached Level 10 to turn up the fun dial (another 5 hours or so). All I can say is that I’m glad I did. What started out as ten hours of mediocrity ended 100 hours later as one of my favorite games ever.

What It’s About

200 years after a nuclear war with China devastated most of the United States, you emerge from the protective world of Vault 101 in Washington D.C. to chase after your father, who disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Armed with only a pistol, the clothes on your back, and your wits, you leave to track him down.

What begins as a simple search mission evolves into an epic adventure that will take your vault dweller to the brink of humanity and back. Your decisions not only affect the lives of the people you meet, but the world around you as well, and how it all ends will be up to you.

What’s Awesome

Exploration Nation: The name of the game in Fallout 3 is exploring. The main storyline will only lead you through and around the smallest part of the world. Without exploration, not only will you miss sidequests and potential companions but you’ll miss a lot of what makes this world so impressive.

Shades of Gray: Many games have tried giving the player the option to be good or evil, but very few allow you to choose to live in the middle of the two. This game gives you the chance to play however you want. For instance, my character was mostly a “good” person, but would occasionally steal or play two sides against each other if it meant a better reward.

Have It Your Way: Would you prefer to have a gun-toting showboat, or a sneaky drifter? Do you want to wield firepower greater than anything you’ve ever imagined, or do you want to cut down people with a samurai sword? Do you want to be nice to peoples’ faces but rob them blind when their back is turned, or do you prefer to just kill them in their sleep? Any of these and more are possible. Fallout 3 gives you the chance to build the character you want to play: from weapons and armor to personality and behavior.

Side of Quests: The main storyline is fun and exciting, but it’s the dozens of side events and locations that really complete what it feels like to spend time in the Wasteland. And since the variety is good — some involve hunting and killing, others are collections or puzzles — they never get boring.

Art Deco-rated: The art style and graphics of Fallout 3 are awesome. Not only does the game look incredible, but since it exists in a reality that evolved radically different than our history, the style of the world is stuck in the 1950s. This means there are archaic-looking electronics that do extraordinary things, doo-wop music, and out-of-date fashions. Art Deco permeates the world around you: from posters and art, to architecture and vehicles.

What’s Annoying

Slow Start: As I mentioned before, I almost missed out on this game because it failed to grab me from the start. The game begins with a lot of clumsiness and really takes a while to get moving. It’s hard to explore at the lower levels and you find yourself outmatched in most of the fights. I don’t really know what they could have done to make a more appealing beginning, but I’m sure more than a few were scared off because of dreadful start.

Conclusion

For a game that received such high reviews, Fallout 3 really is very niche. It seems like it would be hard to find a lot of players interested in a Dystopian, Sci-Fi FPS/RPG hybrid that is slower-paced, challenging and long. You can’t just play shooter-style because it’s tougher that way, but you can’t just sit back and play the turned-based game either. A mix of both skills is needed to succeed. Overcoming the slow start is worth the effort because for your time and money, this game is a great mix of story, production, gameplay and graphics, and definitely worth a try for anyone who is a fan of video games.

Justin says: So good, it’s one of my top five favorite games ever.

Official Site

About Game Reviews: Since I usually buy my video games on the cheap, it means I don’t play them immediately after they are released very often and my reviews are “old news”. I know there are many reviews for the games I play already available online, and I don’t expect to be considered a review source. I simply like video games, and thought I would share what I think of the games I play.

Thanks for reading.

Football season is just around the corner — I’m talking NFL, not that sissy college stuff — and the excitement is building like it does every year. The only problem is that I’ve been a Bengals fan all my life. The team hasn’t been near a Super Bowl since I was in third grade, and it looks as if this year is going to be a long shot for even a playoff berth.

Luckily, my friends and I are heavily into Fantasy Football. Every year we draft our league and duke it out like the stat-dorks we are. My usual team, The Heroes of Cybertron, are sitting it out this time so that I can launch a new team into the fray. As the weeks go by, my rivals will learn to fear the name: The Fightin’ Corgis!

Even though I never had an original PlayStation, I knew people that did, and these people seemed to always have Resident Evil games. As I mentioned in my Dead Space review, I’m quite fond of the survival horror genre, and Resident Evil is no exception. I was particularly happy when Nintendo decided to re-release the original on GameCube so that I finally had the chance to own one of the games.

Over the years I’ve spent a good amount of time familiarizing myself with the games, the back-stories, the characters and (shudder) the movies. When Resident Evil 4 was released, I purchased it day one. I thought the reboot of the series and control style were very ingenious, but sadly, I never did finish that game, and it remains one of the great games on the top of my pile of shame.

After that, Resident Evil fell off the map for me and I continued my gaming life without it. When Resident Evil 5 was announced, I got excited but I also worried that it would suffer the same fate as the fourth game and become another forgotten gem. After being turned off by the demo, I finally decided to give it a shot a couple of months ago. And it is awesome.

What It’s About

After the events of Resident Evil 4, the B.S.A.A. (Bio-terrorism Security Assessment Alliance) was created to prevent the spread of the Las Plagas virus throughout the world. Chris Redfield has been sent to Africa and teamed with Sheva Alomar of the African division of the B.S.A.A. to hunt Ricardo Irving, who is attempting to sell a bio-organic weapon on the black market.

While attempting to apprehend the dealer, they are ambushed by Majini, who exhibit Las Plagas symptoms. Throughout their quest for survival the two uncover an intricate plot to reform the world, and meet a coupe of familiar faces along the way.

What’s Awesome

Co-op Fun: RE5 is meant to be played with another person. Another human person. This game is a flat-out blast to play online or split-screen with a friend, and the fact that money and progress is divided automatically, means there’s no fighting over treasure.

Seek and Destroy: Every level has multiple treasures to collect, ammo stashes to harvest, weapons attache cases to open and enemies to behead. The rare treasures are fun to discover and the different enemy types create moments of tense action.

Upgrades Galore: There dozens of different weapons to find and buy, and all of them can be upgraded by purchasing more firepower, capacity and reload speeds. After completing the game, you can even use points obtained from completing levels to purchase unlimited ammo for nearly every weapon in the game.

Infinite Re-Playability: The infinite ammo option is a great reason to replay levels. There are also emblems to discover that, along with the points from the levels, allow you to purchase figurines, video filters and costumes for the characters. Unlockable difficulty modes, a mercenaries option and the achievements on the Xbox 360 version are also enjoyable reasons for multiple replays.

What’s Annoying

Press X to Not Die: Quick-Time-Events (QTEs) are quite an annoyance in modern gaming. What’s more annoying is that in RE5, the less you die, the better your score at the end of the level. It can be frustrating to have an S ranking nullified because instead of just running away from something, you have to press the right sequence of buttons in time.

Weak Sauce Bosses: The bosses are not only unimaginative, but incredibly easy with enough firepower. Even the hardest boss dies with a couple rockets on the hardest difficulty. Add that to the fact that you battle one of the potentially cooler bosses from the back of a jeep with mounted machine guns and you’ll be missing the fun of the El Gigante battles from the last game.

Not a Scare to Spare: RE5 is definitely tense, but it’s not scary. I’m not sure if it’s because you have a partner with you, or if it just lost some of its creepiness because it’s more run-and-gun than the previous games.

Conclusion

Resident Evil 5 is definitely a good game, and if you have someone to enjoy playing it with, it can be a great game. The downfall of the experience is that it loses it’s grip as a survival horror and turns into a collection/speed-run game. While this definitely makes replaying it enjoyable, it does show that the game is lacking the character and story department, as these elements wash over you without anything sticking. I had trouble even remembering what the game was about when writing the earlier paragraph.

Justin says: Have a partner? Buy it. All by your lonesome? Try it first.

Official Site

About Game Reviews: Since I usually buy my video games on the cheap, it means I don’t play them immediately after they are released very often and my reviews are “old news”. I know there are many reviews for the games I play already available online, and I don’t expect to be considered a review source. I simply like video games, and thought I would share what I think of the games I play.

Thanks for reading.

In my review for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen I wrote:

Growing up, I was fascinated by machinery and form. As a young boy, like most boys, I really liked trucks and construction. Monster trucks, bulldozers and heavy farm equipment fascinated me, and I always loved cartoons and characters. When the two met, and I saw a tractor-trailer semi transform into a robot, that was it. Ever since, I’ve been collecting Transformers toys — I have ones that I received as gifts when I was four — and I still look forward to the new figures coming out now. I’m sure a therapist could explain the true, and possibly disturbed, reasons I hold onto and collect these toys, but for me, it reminds me that no matter how old I get, I never have to really grow up.

I thought I’d write a quick post to show you a what I was talking about. Here are a couple photos from when I was young. The first one is above, the other below the jump.

In the first one, I’m probably around five years old, maybe six considering the room I’m in, and you can see I have a few Autobots. This is how  the madness started.

The second one is a photo I found while looking for the first one. I’m probably around three in this one and I wanted to share it just in case you couldn’t picture me rollin’.

Once again, I’m back with another review and another reason to proclaim my love for Pixar. I can honestly say that if Up wasn’t a Pixar creation, I wouldn’t have been excited to see it. Even though the commercials and trailers featured some great comedy moments and showcased the great characters, a movie about a traveling septuagenarian, on its own, just doesn’t sound that appealing to someone who likes comics and books with spaceships on the covers.

I am grateful, however, that Pixar did release this movie because without that motivating force, I would have missed out on a truly fantastic story. It’s hard to accept that a movie with a 78-year-old protagonist moved and entertained me just as much as, if not more than, any other Pixar movie I’ve seen. Including Wall-E. I kid you not.

What It’s About

Carl Fredricksen’s life hasn’t turned out the way he had always dreamed it would. Even though he lived a long, happy life with the his perfect wife, he never had the chance to fulfill their dream of living in the wilds of South America, following in the footsteps of the famous explorer, Charles Muntz. Finally, when Carl is on the verge of losing his home to the city, he decides to tie thousands of balloons to the building and fly to South America. What Carl doesn’t realize is that a young wilderness explorer has managed to tag along, and he is about to get mixed up in a scheme perpetrated by someone very familiar.

What’s Awesome

Old and New Characters: While every character in Up is brand new (except for the delivery truck that makes a cameo in every Pixar movie) most of them feel like classic cartoon characters. Maybe they wrote it this way on purpose, to go along with their geriatric protagonist, but the annoying young kid, the dopey bird and the spastic dog all felt like characters I’ve seen before, while at the same time being brand new.

Gone to the Dogs: Most of the comedy in the movie revolves around the dogs with the translating collars. I don’t want to spoil anything, but yes, I wrote dogs. As in more than one.

Storytelling Seminar: Many script writers could stand to take some lessons from the Pixar folks (and I’m looking at you Transformers 2 writers). Every one of their films feels like a new fairytale. In an era where every kid show is either way too adult-themed or spastic seizure commercials, movies like this are very refreshing.

Laughs and Tears: I’m not ashamed to admit the eyes filled up during this one and there were also copious amounts of laughs to be had. It just goes to show how much you end up caring for these little polygons and wire frames.

What’s Annoying

I Got Nothing: Seriously. It has been known to happen, but there is absolutely nothing I can think of that I didn’t like about this movie.

Conclusion

Pixar films are always at the top of my list when it comes to “must-see” movies. The only film by this studio I have yet to see is Cars, but that’s more Larry The Cable Guy’s fault than anything. Even so, I will see it eventually because of its makers. Pixar puts so much care into their movies and the attention to detail is unmatched. Up rightly resides at the top of the list with the other heavy hitters from the studio.

Justin says: This is a must see, and if you can, the 3-D is very well done.

Official Site

About Movie Reviews: Since I don’t venture out into the theater very often, I don’t see a lot of movies as they are released. The ones that I do manage to watch are ones that I’ve been eagerly anticipating. In no way do I consider myself a true movie critic because I can be quite biased, and my taste is suspect at best. I’m writing these reviews to allow people with similar interests to know if it’s worth their money to check it out. Thanks for reading.