I picked up Drifters when I saw it was being done by Kouta Hirano. If you are unfamiliar with that name, you may be familiar with his work on the Vampire Manga Hellsing. Hellsing is a very cool manga and one in which many American audiences have picked up on quite well.

Drifters has an interesting idea to it, it’s basically a world of fantasy full of elves and goblins and such but it also has a bunch of random inhabitants. These inhabitants are called Drifters and they are real people from our Earth who at some point in their life disappeared and their bodies were never recovered. They were never recovered because when they disappeared they were taken to this alternate world to help wage the already existing war on this fantasy world. The main character is a Japanese Samurai named Shimazu Toyohisa who actually existed in the late 16th century. Some other famous people encountered in the book include Warlord Oda Nobunaga, the Carthaginian commander Hannibal, Butch Cassidy and his Wild Bunch and Joan of Arc.

If you read any of Hellsing you’ll find Drifters to have a similar feel, lots of cool action mixed with some subtle humor and even more action. The book overall was fun and a very fast read. Encountering a lot of historical figures is quite fun and seeing them hack and slash their way to victory is fun as well.

This book was put out through Dark Horse comics for 12.99

For those who have been following us for a while you will know a bunch of us are really into Pinball FX2. Well I have some new information to report, I didn’t really expect it to be so but my playing Pinball FX2 has actually made me into quite an expert at actual pinball tables. The way these guys make these tables is so fantastic because they use the real mechanics that you would find on pinball tables. There’s a local place I go to for lunch which has 2 pinball tables and since I got good at pinball FX2 I’ve been playing on those tables and for just a quarter I can usually get in a good 15 minute game. So if you’re anything like me and you always had the secret desire to become a pinball wizard, I’m living proof that these tables can actually make you into one.

The new table they’ve created is like the banner says “Sorcerer’s Lair.” It’s a good Halloween table full of spooky ghosts and goblins. As I first started playing this table it didn’t feel like it would be a good table for beginners, however once I got the hang of the overall feel I really started to like it. My favorite thing about the table is there are some new views and you can even change your view during multiballs. I really became comfortable and good at pinball when I got the hang of playing multiballs simply because they’re so chaotic, and so it’s tables like this one or Secrets of The Deep where there are a bunch of different methods to getting multiballs so you can really have a good amount of practice at becoming accustomed to multiballs.

As I said this table has some good multiballs but it also has some fantastic missions. Do you see those 3 yellow buttons in the middle of the table right below the goblin? If you hit all three of those buttons a stairwell appears and if from there you can go downstairs into the cellar where you can battle spiders in a smaller table.

Now I was saying earlier that this isn’t a beginners table but it’s a bit more then that, it’s not the easiest table to get started on however it’s incredibly fluid and once you get accustomed to the feel of the table it becomes one of the higher scoring tables you’ll play on. I was also really happy because I was actually able to get all 3 xbox achievements which on many tables seems too impossible. This table has been out for about 2 weeks now and it’s just 240 points.

GONK reviews this week’s Star Wars comics: Crimson Empire III – Empire Lost #1
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On October 16th, following the launch of Apple’s latest smart phone, Motorola released a refresh of their original power house the Atrix. Sporting that same snappy dual core technology from the original along with a pile of enhancements, this is a killer piece of hardware for anyone looking for an alternate to the iPhone, dedicated Android fans, or someone just looking for a great smart phone. Still sporting DLNA technology, a micro HDMI port and the ability to power a laptop dock the Atrix 2 blends business and pleasure in an unrivaled manner. Add the original features to enhancements such as an 8 megapixel camera, a higher resolution front facing shooter, more ram, a higher resolution screen and a lighter body, and the reasons to update your original Atrix or give this a try are hard to dispute.

My first impressions of the device were very very good. The improvements made gave me a more comfortable experience with the phone. The thinner body and bigger screen made it fit in my hand more snuggly, and still gave me the ability to manage it with one hand. My wife also found it easy to text one handed which has been the biggest challenge with the new generation of mini tablets our smart phones have become. I also noticed a huge improvement in battery life. The phone gave me a full 13 hours before it hit 15%, which under my heavy use is quite a task. The only modifications I made to the normal operation was to turn off mobile network while I was connected to wifi.

Transitioning phones was flawless with Android’s latest wireless sync updates. As I was checking my normal dosage of news my background suddenly became the old version, my custom launcher installed itself and booted to the correct theme, leaving only ringtones and widgets to be customized. This feature isn’t exclusive to the Atrix by any means, but makes transitioning from one Android phone to another a dream. Android users should rejoice in the fact that upgrading no longer means spending an afternoon putting your phone back together. Once they can start placing widgets and ringtones back with a simple account login we’ll have to find something else to complain about when upgrading.

The device itself handles very well under the scaled down Motoblur experience. No longer forcing the blue/green styles onto your phone the user experience feels much stronger, fluid, and less bogged down. The only system I found at all frustrating was the Smart-Dialer, it was grabbing anyone and everyone attached to the numbers dialed for about the first 24 hours. Once the syncing finished and the OS caught on to the contacts I dial most it became as second nature as the dialer built in to HTC’s Sense UI.

As you would expect installing apps and browsing the web is greatly enhanced by the beefier ram allocation. If your concern is processing power the benchmark tests alone should be proof that dual core on a phone makes a huge difference. The benchmark scores for the device came in between 2400 and 2600 which places the Atrix above most current gen phones, (it did lose to the Galaxy SII to my dismay). From a great form factor, snappy processor, and gorgeous experience, this phone is an incredible value at $99.99, I’ve had the phone a week and would be hard pressed to trade it for anything currently floating around the wireless world. Go try one out for yourself, you won’t be disappointed.

It’s a war that has been going on for centuries, a constant struggle for control of the arctic and farmlands. Hundreds of casualties in tens of battles have now been brought to your home console in Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken.

Single Player boasts a 15 chapter campaign with some of the most furious pressing of the R trigger that I have ever experienced. You play as a chicken who has presumably been on the same diet plan as Marcus Phoenix, and it is your job to overthrow the evil, oppressive penguin army. The game is played as a you would expect your typical side-scrolling shooter to be played like. Here, however, there isn’t really any side-scrolling so much as you are presented with one screen at a time. You run to the right and shoot baddies as you enter new screens. After entering into a new screen and immediately getting shot before I could react, I spent the rest of the game immediately firing my gun as quickly as I could every time I walked into the next screen. A lot of the time I would just waste ammo but I got too many kills this way. Also, you get a health bar here instead of dying in one hit because you will get shot a lot. Right off, though, the art stands out as very unique. The character design reminds me of Castle Crashers but what really caught my eye was the setting.

The environment is very well done, especially when you aren’t inside another gray army base. There are a levels that take place outside and it looks fantastic. I’ll go so far as to say that the art is the strongest trait of this entire game. The gameplay at first, was pretty fun and I found enjoyment turning militarized penguins into Swiss Cheese.  This got to be very tedious though once I found out that most of the game is played the same way: Walk into room. See enemy. Shoot enemy repeatedly. Repeat.

You cannot shoot in any other direction than straight ahead. This doesn’t usually become a problem because the enemies can’t either but what really bothered me was that I couldn’t jump and shoot. This meant that any time you jump anywhere, you are left completely vulnerable and this get you shot more than you would think. They introduce items like new weapons, a jetpack (which is kind of fun), and even a mind-controlling bugs throughout the course of the game which serve to kind of spice things up. But it all circles back around to doing the same thing again and again.

I can’t really complain about the story as it is just as in-depth as any other side-scrolling shooter I have played. X is the enemy and they need to be destroyed. Not that interesting but it doesn’t really need to be. The voice acting is a little lackluster and the jokes just fall flat most of the time. I would have preferred if they just didn’t have it in the first place, to be honest.

Then there is co-op. This is basically the same as the first game as you play through most of the same areas but with smaller chickens and a buddy at your side. They do much less here to keep you interested in the new story of “Find the President’s Daughter.” They take out the jetpacks and mind control bugs which introduced new dynamics into the gameplay of single player. You will probably spend most of your time accidentally jumping on top of your partner and sending each other into a jumping frenzy. You can stack onto each other to reach higher areas which adds a little new puzzle element but this becomes more of an annoyance than anything. I couldn’t even find somebody who would play through the entire co-op with me as it just got too repetitive for most of my friends.

I think that the art is fantastic but the gameplay definitely needed something more. The single player is more fun than the co-op but even still, I was bored well before the final chapter (15). I give Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken…2/5 Hardboiled Chickens

GONK goes inside this week’s Star Wars comics: Knight Errant – Deluge #3, and the The Clone Wars digest, Strange Allies.

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This week’s Blu-ray Pick of the Week is the latest entry into the DC Animated Movie Universe, Batman: Year One – based off the acclaimed graphic novel of the same name by Frank Miller.

Fellow robot, CitizenBot, was lucky enough to catch the premier of this film at Comic Con and was very pleased with it.

In terms of the look, given the somewhat minimalist leanings of the source material’s art, they had to add some more in, but also they wanted to keep the spirit of the original art. “We absolutely tried to follow it as closely as we could, from the colors to the characters. We tried to make it as dirty and ugly as we could… when you color things digitally things end up looking relatively clean, so we had to go in and add that extra bit of detail,” explained Montgomery.  “The city kind of had to be a character in itself,” she added, explaining that we, the audience, needed to feel the corruption, the dirt, the edge of the city- sort of an oppressive feeling as it closed in on Gordon and Batman.  In this, they completely delivered. The art was exactly as I’d pictured it. And they delivered on the character.

And as for the characters themselves, the voice talent was brilliant. We have Bryan Cranston as a pitch-perfect, world-weary Lt. Gordon. As voice director Andrea Romano put it in our interview, “Thank God he’s good at this.” Eliza Dushku puts in double duty as Selena Kyle/Catwoman (and yes in this version they retain her origin as a prostitute, just like in the book) and also in an animated Catwoman short that will be packaged with Year One. A little more about Catwoman- some have mentioned the similarity between the character design in this and the leaked pictures of Anne Hathaway in the upcoming Nolan Dark Knight Rises. Executive Producer (and superhero himself) Bruce Timm said it’s purely coincidental.  “I’m in awe of them,” talking about his admiration for the Nolan films. But? “I don’t think I’m even on their radar.”  So modest.

You can read his entire review from July here, including the part in which Katee Sackhoff, who plays Det. Sarah Essen, propositions him for a threesome! (SPOILER ALERT: She was joking.)

Batman: Year One is another home-run for DC and Warner Bros. on the animated front as they continue to pump fantastic films and adaptations onto home entertainment platforms. The animation is fantastic, the story is compelling and stays very true to the source material, and the voice acting is once again top-notch – for the most part. My only minor nit-pick of the film is that I thought Ben McKenzie (of The OC fame) was a little dull as Bruce Wayne, and Bruce Wayne only. His voice for Batman worked very well, but for me his Bruce Wayne was lacking some emotion. It may sound odd to criticize on this point, but Bruce Wayne was the only part of this film that seemed to leave something left to be desired – but it’s very minor and by no means completely takes away from Year One as a whole.

Batman: Year One on Blu-ray comes packaged with a DVD and digital copy and a handful of extras, including the option to watch the film with crew commentary featuring Alan Burnett, Sam Liu, Mike Carlin, and Andrea Romano. There is a very good half-hour documentary called “Heart of Vengeance: Returning Batman to His Roots” in which the history of moving Batman out of “campy” back to his pulp origins is discussed in length. There is also a feature titled “Conversations With DC Comics: Featuring the 201 Batman Creative Team” which mostly features the “current” Batman creative team talking about the Batman character and comics and what they mean to them. There is a lot of personal reflection in this featurette, but it’s quite interesting.

You will also find on the Blu-ray disc a digital comic copy of the first chapter of Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One graphic novel and two episodes from Batman: The Animated Series– both of which prominently feature Catwoman. We also get a sneak peek at the next DCU animate feature, Justice League: Doom, which is a loose adaptation of the Justice League comics “Tower of Babel” story arc. It looks like it will be very good.

Finally, but certainly not least, we have the latest animated short from DC and Warner Bros. with Catwoman included with this set. Once again featuring the purrfectly (I’m so, so sorry for that – I couldn’t resist) fitting voice of Eliza Dushku as Selena Kyle/Catwoman and written by Paul Dini, this animated short follows Catwoman as she goes toe-to-toe with Rough Cut who is smuggling some very precious and disturbing cargo out of Gotham City. This short is beautifully animated and again, well acted. Perhaps the thing I found most interesting is how well they married both Selena’s sex appeal and her all around bad-assery – most notably as she confronts Rough Cut in a “Gentleman’s Club”. Often times it seems writers and directors have a hard time walking the line of creating a strong but sexy character, often straying too far to one side or the other, but this for me was pitch-perfect Catwoman and I thought Selena and Rough Cut’s throw down through the streets of Gotham culminating at a dock was even more exciting that the climax in the feature film it came with.

Fans of these DC Animated Feature Films have come to expect a lot and Batman: Year Oneand all it includes once again hits its mark. The special features, the Catwoman short, and the feature film itself are all well worth the price of picking this one up and adding it to your home entertainment collection.

Batman: Year One is available for purchase today at retailers and online at Amazon!

Quentin Tarantino has a pair of classics out on Blu-ray and I wanted to take some time to talk about each of them.

First is his Magnum Opus, Pulp Fiction.  When this film hit the scene in 1994, people were in awe of it.  It was a completely different style of film from those being made at the time (consider that the Best Picture winner that year was Forrest Gump, a very traditionally told story.)  In my neck of the woods, it seemed as much maligned as praised.  I was 14 when it came out and my parents thought it was, quote, “The most retarded movie they’d ever seen,” and forbade me from seeing it.  Though see it I did and it blew my young mind.

It is a cool, stylish look at all the terrible behaviour I thought was probably cool and badass in my little 14 year old mind and there was a point where I thought that maybe the film didn’t hold up as well because of it.

Rewatching it for the Blu-ray release, I’m happy to report that it’s much less dated than I’d previously thought.  The film stands up rather well and looks gorgeous in this new HD transfer.  The sound pops and all of Tarantino’s signature flourishes are vibrantly rendered.

Watching the film this time around transported me back to the mindset of that 14-year old boy who first saw it and blew my mind all over again.  Perhaps the sign of a great film, that it’s able to mature and age with your understanding of it as you get older.

The special features are another great perk to this set.  The DVD I had of Pulp Fiction was sparse on special features, so this is a welcome improvement.  It seems as though it has most of the material from the much-coveted laserdisc edition that Criterion put out (yes, I collect laserdiscs, it’s at least much-coveted by me) and a whole host of new interviews to boot.

The fact that it’s only $12.99 on Amazon right now makes it a MUST buy.

The next film out recently is, I think, Quentin Tarantino’s most underrated film: Jackie Brown.  I saw this film the day it came out, excited to see a masterpiece on par with Pulp Fiction.  I was 17 now, and I thought my opinion of films had matured.  When I walked into this movie and saw what I thought was a run of the mill heist caper, I was a little disappointed.  After watching the new blu-ray version, I’m incredibly by how well this film has aged.

The filmmaking is much more straightforward than Pulp Fiction, the cinematography is much brighter, and the humour is amped up to 11.  The thing I was most impressed with was the one thing Pulp Fiction didn’t have:  Max Cherry (played incredibly by Robert Forster.)  Max Cherry is the king of cool characters and watching him in this film is more fun than I can convey to you with words.

The other highlight of this film is Michael Keaton.  As ATF Agent Ray Nicollete, Keaton is almost as fun to watch in this film as he is in Tim Burton’s Batman films.  There’s something about the entire cast of characters in this movie that is just so electrifying and compelling.  This might also be one of the best adaptations of Elmore Leonard’s work.

I know some people were down on this movie, but I would advise you to give it another shot.  Now that you don’t have the expectations of “The Follow-up to Pulp Fiction” weighing it down, come at it on its own terms and I think you’ll find that you’ll like it a lot better this time around.

With more than three hours of bonus features, the new Blu-ray has far too many features to wade through in one sitting, but I haven’t found one of them yet I didn’t enjoy watching.  There’s retrospectives, behind the scenes, deleted scenes, and even a review by Siskel and Ebert.

At $10.49 on Amazon, is it worth it not to revisit this one?

Tonight marked the much anticipated return of one of the biggest hit TV shows last year, The Walking Dead. And boy did it deliver! Now I’m not going to talk about this entire  episode because I don’t want to spoil the whole thing, but I am throwing out a spoiler warning because I will be talking about the first half or so of the episode. Also I’d like to invite any of you in the Salt Lake City area to join Big Shiny Robot at Brewvies Cinema Pub as we will be showing the entire season on the big screen for free.

This episode picks up right after the events of last season with Rick and company on the road out of Atlanta. Things seem to be going fairly well, that is until they come upon a traffic jam of abandoned cars on the freeway. While moving through the cars the radiator hose on Dale’s RV breaks and strands them in the middle of the cars.  The gang decides to salvage whatever they can from the abandoned cars while Dale fixes the RV. And then it happens, one of the most tense and nervewracking moments of this episode, the herd approaches. A herd of zombies is a giant group that ends up shambling along together. Luckily our heroes see them in time to hide under the surrounding cars. But it wouldn’t be The Walking Dead if nothing went wrong, and something indeed does.  Just when they think the herd has passed them by the little girl in the group, Sophia, starts to crawl out of her hiding spot just to be spotted by a straggler from the herd. He and another straggler end up chasing her into the neighboring woods with Rick being the only person to chase after her. Rick finds her and tells her to stay in a safe spot while he leads them away. He takes cares of them only to return where he left Sophia, and she’s not there. This sets up the rest of the episode with the group looking for the missing girl. I don’t want to spoil the rest of the episode for those that have not watched it, especially the cliffhanger.  When the big cliffhanger happened you could hear a pin drop In the 200+ filled theater that Swankmotron and myself were in. There was a huge feeling of “They did not just do that!”

All in all I thought it was a strong season premier.  It had the right amount of tension, not just because of the zombies but problems within the group. One such problem is the ongoing  jealousy Shane has towards Rick because he’s back with his wife and he can’t have her. If for some reason you missed the first season don’t worry, there is a pretty good monologue by the main character in the very begining that catches you up on what you need to know.  All in all if you’re not watching this show, you should be.

Androidika’s Rating: 4 out of 5 Severed Heads