Ohhhhhhhhh shit! Cue the creepy Danny Elfman music and hide your kids! I’m on the prowl and I hungers for polygons, force feedback, and orifices! This is Press Start!, the column where I spit about five things that happened in gaming this week.  It’s late, the caffeine whispers lacquered promises of  mellifluous  nonsense, and I got an achin’ to elaborate.

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#1: Dude Huge Loves Musicals.
Cliff Bleszinsk is the mind behind Unreal, Gears of War, and he played a hand in Bulletstorm which was released this week. Dude Huge, as us legions of internet unwashed masses call him, is not one for subtlety. In fact, if I had to describe the genre he has helped conjure up from the miasma of gaming madness, it would be “Super Violent Permaboner Cockexplosion Death. Core.” I love his games, but fuck if they’re not ever fourteen year-old male’s screaming erection fantasies born in code. Enormous weapons? Word. Giant muscles? Check. Odd homosocial gatherings that would give Freud fuel for a new fucking  dissertation? Oh hell yeah.  Which is why I find the news that he likes musicals to be fucking awesome.

Joystiq quoted an article in which he dropped:

I can enjoy a twisted, strange movie like [Funny Games] but also be like, “Sweet! Chicago’s on Blu-ray now! Let’s go see The Lion King on Broadway! Oh my God, I love Wicked!” … There’s this weird dichotomy going on with my tastes. I think it’s important to enjoy all spectrums of entertainment that way.

Joking aside, I think he’s got the correct idea. Anyone who follows him on Twitter or the scene knows that he’s a rather sensible dude, even if his developmental proclivities leads him to embrace his inner adolescent. I take solace in knowing that it’s okay that I love Gears of War, but goddamn if I wasn’t heated over last season’s Project Runway winner. If Dude Huge can be complicated, conflicted, but still love his cock, so can I.

Right?

Party on.

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#2: Trailer For A Street Fighter Documentary Hits All The Right Beats.
FOCUS is a documentary coming out this spring by director Steve Hwang. The doc centers around a summer in the life of professional Street Fighter player Mike Ross. The trailer itself is expertly cut, and it sucked me into Ross’ life immediately. It hits all the beats, selling you on his life, his aspirations, and sprinkles in some personal turmoil to get the empathic strings a-buzzin’. I’m a sucker for plenty of things in my life, but none so much as I am a sucker for video games, and a heroic narrative.

Throw them together and you’re going to get me eating out of your hand. This shit is going to be like The Wizard! Maybe? Yeah!

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#3: Legend of Zelda Turns 25.
In other news, I’m feeling old as fuck. This week, Legend of Zelda turned 25, and all of a sudden I’m like how is that possible, why, that’d make me….28? Followed by me puking all over myself. My girlfriend rushing into the room, wondering why the manchild she’s dating is puking all over himself wearing only Mario boxers with a gold cartridge sticking out the ass of them. Truth man, that shit can hurt.

For a good portion of my generation, Legend of Zelda was formative on something only slightly above a genetic level. The caverns, the torches, the fucking endless forests. Everything that was born out of this original game has contributed to my existence in ways that are far from healthy. The happy news is that I’m not alone. Since the original title, the franchise has moved more than fifty-nine million fucking copies. That’s like, a zillion and a half rupees or some shit. Nintendo is definitely polishing their Master Sword to that. More esoteric references! Phallus objects!

What was I saying?

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Artist Patryk Olejniczak has rocked my tits with some ludicrously pretty Mass Effect art. The works, framed as promotional pieces for Mass Effect 3 are some of the best “fan” art I’ve seen for a game. Ever. Over at Kotaku, he’s quoted as saying his goal for these digital paintings was to “to make one of the best [pieces of] fan art (which would also work as promo or poster art) to be had”.

Well done.

Hit the jump for the gallery.

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I went ahead and killed the 365 project here on Omega Level. It was with hesitation, and a single tear rollicking down my stubbly cheeks. Call it a moment of clarity piercing through the dense, tropical haze of insanity that is my internal monologue. At a certain point I figured that as I am teaching to an extent and will definitely be teaching to a greater extent in the forseeable future, I couldn’t have hundreds of pictures of myself plastered around vomiting prose about the visual  correlation  between feces and beef tacos.

It’s just the way it goes sometimes.

Even Bruce has to clean up.

Banksy  continues  frolicking along in Los Angeles. His latest work went up alongside some taco joint in Oceanside. According to Hypebeast, “the piece came as a surprise to most, including the shop owner, who contemplated painting the piece over before he noticed the attention its received.”

If you enter into the comments section at Hypebeast, there’s a good three-thousand comments debating whether or not its actual Banksy. I have no fucking clue. I love how the aura of Banksy is so pervasive, his influence permeates throughout boundaries regardless of whether or not this handiwork is courtesy of his agency. The Banksy! He lives. He replicates. Or he doesn’t. But he still does.

It’s late man, I don’t know what I’m saying.

Hit the jump for the work.

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[face of a franchise presents two individuals that’ve fulfilled the same role. your task — choose the better of the two and defend your choice in the rancor pit that is the comments section]

William Shatner v. Chris Pine.

Whattaya think? Is Shatner a shoe-in because he’s the original urbane explorer of space? Or does Chris Pine’s reimagined Kirk, the Solo-meets-Skywalker take on the Trek universe, go places his predecessor simply couldn’t?

Let the games begin.

Now we’re fucking talking. Apparently Christopher Nolan and Zack Snyder’s desire man to play General Zod is none other than Viggo fucking Mortensen. While we’ve heard that both Lindsay Lohan and Kevin Costner have been up for parts, this is the first time that I’ve gotten my manjuices a-fluctuating about a particular casting rumor.

The kicker though? They haven’t even spoken to the dude yet.

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A new video by José Francisco Salgado featured over at Bad Astronomy displays the beauty of sidereal motion. That fancy term is used to describe the movement of the stars in the night sky. As Phil Plait explains, it is “the apparent rising and setting caused by the rotation of the Earth. You don’t notice it second-by-second as you watch the sky, but over minutes and hours the inevitability of our planet’s angular momentum makes itself known.”

Ah, our perceptions. I can’t help but wish I was capable of perceiving the Milky Way rise across a night sky without the aid of time-lapse. But for now, this’ll do.

Hit the jump for the video.

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[Alright, so check it. This review is by The Faux Bot and originally written for Mad Gear Solid. When I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to finish the game in time, I asked him if he’d want to syndicate his shit. He said yes. Faux Bot is a genius, scholar, and friend of the site. He’s also funnier than me, and Mad Gear Solid is our spiritual twin from over on the other site of the pond. So go to fucking Mad Gear Solid, or die by a flaming sword draped in profanity and hate.]

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Here is a list of some words that make me think of Bulletstorm; squelch, slam, gush, firework, meat, erupt, anal, cavity, spurt, squish, rupture, forced, insertion, sack, giblets, cram, innards, gullet, crunch, drill, impale, tear, bore, flesh, sever, penetrate. These are but a few, however, they perfectly illustrate the amusing meta-game that I’ve created inside my juvenile mind. I like to re-arrange the words as you would with those amusing novelty fridge magnets —you know the kind- so that I can make deliciously witty and outrageous phrases that help me to decide on how to orchestrate my upcoming blood-bath.FORCIBLY INSERT ANAL DRILL and it’s done.

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Drive Angry isn’t the movie Nic Cage devotees have been waiting for. It’s not a return to his genius form last seen in 2009’s Bad Lieutenant. He talks through his teeth and snarls a lot, but there are a lot of actors who can snarl better than Cage. It appears he’s trying to act cool, while it was probably his manic genius that got him offered the role in the first place. With that said, Drive Angry is still great in the expected ways a ridiculous b-movie should be. Oodles of blondes, bullets, and blood. But, sadly, having all the ingredients to a bitchin’ movie doesn’t mean it’s going to come out right.

Cage plays Milton (how subtle), a hardass who looks like a chewed up piece of gristle with a blonde wig on. Milton escapes from hell to avenge his daughter’s death and to save his granddaughter from a satanic cult. Sounds like a conflict of interest, but Drive Angry refuses to be bogged down by trite things like exposition. While Milton is pursuing the satanic cult and their Elvis-like leader Jonah King (Billy Burke), he’s accompanied by Piper (Amber Heard) – a firecacker with a mean right hook and a foul mouth. All the while, an unstoppable force calling himself the Accountant is out to drag Milton back to hell.

It’s William Fichtner, as the Accountant, who steals every scene in Drive Angry. He pulls off homicidal cool so convincingly while simultaneously looking uncomfortable in human skin. He’s got the funniest lines, the best kills, and a power tie that screams confidence. Amber Heard is…well, hot. That’s all she needs to be in this movie. B-movie legend Tom “Thrill Me” Atkins makes a great appearance as the police captain. But then there’s Cage.

Through the whole hour and 40 minutes I was asking WHY is Cage playing it so cool?! You escaped from Hell and you’re armed with a gun called “The God Killer” – be manic and jittery and scream a lot! I think he was going for Clint Eastwood or John Wayne redemption reaper. He’s just boring.

The 3D is put to good use. Meaning lots of limbs and bullets flying towards the screen. There’s not a boring moment and the frequent action sequences are done really well. Surprisingly, there’s not a lot of car chasing going on in Drive Angry. Shoot outs, brawls, and shoot outs while fucking and chugging Jack Daniels make up the action here.

If all the elements are there, how did filmmakers Patrick Lussier and Todd Farmer (My Bloody Valentine 3D) end up delivering a flaccid movie? They obviously know what makes grindhouse flicks so entertaining, but just throwing the ingredients into the same movie doesn’t automatically make a good movie. Story and characters to root for are essential too. Can’t blame them for trying though.

This review originally appeared on the Mishka Bloglin.

[images & words is the comic book pick-of-the-week at OL. equal parts review and diatribe, the post highlights the most memorable/infuriating/entertaining book released that wednesday]

At this point, it’s old news: Johnny Storm bit the dust. All that remains of the Human Torch are embers, flickering reminders of a hero that lit up the Marvel Universe for the better part of fifty years. Dedicated readers of OL know that both my brother and I have been wholly enamored of Jonathan Hickman’s Fantastic Four epic. In addition to covering nearly every Hickman-penned issue, I sang praises for The Last Stand of Johnny Storm and then Caffeine Powered offered his own pontification.

So at this point, one has to wonder: can anything else be said?

In reading what is being billed as the final issue of Fantastic Four, it’s clear that Hickman has nothing else to say.

But he’s got plenty to show.

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