05
Jul
09

Impressions: Resident Evil 5

By Russ Crandall 1 Comment
Categories: Games
Tags:


I know I’m way behind the power curve here, considering the fact that this game came out in March, but last night was my first time sitting down with Resident Evil 5. A friend and I split-screen-co-opped that sum’bitch and finished about 2/3 of the campaign in one sitting. Unfortunately, the game was his copy and we drove back home today, and GameStop has already closed for the evening (6pm on Sundays, what kind of bull honkey is that?); instead, I picked it up at Half.com for $30. It goes for $50 used at GameStop, so I actually saved myself a chunk of change.

Now why would someone who is very price-conscious actually be okay with shelling out $20 extra just to get a hands-on copy of the game that much sooner? Because the game is excellent. I already knew that it was going to be more action-orientated than Resident Evil 4, but I didn’t realize that I was going to like this orientation so much (insert generic gay comeback here). And believe it or not, I find myself happy to be playing levels that are VERY similar to its predecessor (the underground ruins gave me major deja vu). I’ll have to wait a few days to get back into the game, but I’m looking forward to it.

04
Jul
09

Happy Fourth of July!

By Threevue.com Staff 2 Comments
Categories: Editorials and News
Tags:


Today’s a day for celebration – even our British readers can celebrate getting rid of us smelly Yanks – and we hope you’re properly enjoying this holiday. And of course, in order to properly enjoy this holiday, you need three things:

1. fireworks
2. alcohol
3. the first level of Fantavision:

04
Jul
09

Cheevers: Gamerscore Weekend

By Russ Crandall Leave a Comment
Categories: Cheevers


Spending the weekend at a friend’s house, who is a certifiable achievement whore. I mean, can you be anything else with a gamerscore of over 108k? We’re working on co-op achievements, specifically Kane & Lynch and Gears of War 2, all for my New Year’s resolution of reaching Tyler’s gamerscore. Considering that fact that he’s only about 1500 points ahead of me right now, I just may catch him someday. The question is, will I pop in my friend’s copy of Jumper for a quick boost in score?

02
Jul
09

Back in the Real World

By Mark Hill 1 Comment
Categories: Editorials, Games and News
Tags:

Hey everybody, I’m back. It’s been a long few days of packing, travel, unpacking, more travel, and a little bit of sleep here and there. My girlfriend and I now in California, and have spent the last couple days apartment shopping in LA, which is the traffic capitol of the world.

I’ve had a few brief moments to play some games, most specifically Final Fantasy Crisis Core for the PSP which I bought for the flight over. I’m a few hours in to what is essentially my first major dip into JRPG’s, even though this one is much more of the action variety. I like it so far, but many of the gameplay elements haven’t exactly clicked yet, and half the time I don’t really know what I’m doing. I do know that all the dudes look like girls, though.

Alright, back to work.

30
Jun
09

A Few Admin Notes

By Russ Crandall 3 Comments
Categories: News
Tags: , ,

29
Jun
09

Film Review: Taken

By Russ Crandall Leave a Comment
Categories: Movies and Reviews
Tags: ,


First of all, I would like to personally guarantee that Liam Neeson never looks like Neo from The Matrix during this film, although the picture above is trying to make you think otherwise.

Taken is a daughter’s-been-kidnapped film with a twist – Mr. Neeson is a certified bad ass who wreaks havoc on his daughter’s captors (and anyone that stands in his way, really). The film opens up with Liam trying to patch things up with his daughter, after several years of being away doing secret spy stuff. His daughter is nails-on-the-chalkboard annoying, and I’m happy when she’s “taken”. The rest is for you to watch and find out for yourself. We don’t give anything away for free here on Threevue, most of all plot details!

I’d say this movie was a middle-of-the-road affair. I watched it on the plane ride home from Hawaii last weekend, and I’m glad I didn’t shell out any real money (minus the airfare, of course) for it. It doesn’t change the cinema world or anything, but it’s cool to see an actor I’ve considered awesome for many years actually be cast as a super-awesome character. So, it was a gratifying portrayal for me, and even though the ending is quite unbelievable, I would say it’s worth a Netflix for a lazy evening when you don’t want to watch anything that’s deep or challenging.

29
Jun
09

Threevue.com Game Give-em-Up! International Athletics (Update 1)

By Threevue.com Staff 9 Comments
Categories: Apple and Games
Tags: , ,


Update: We’ve pushed the deadline back to this Wednesday, June 29th, to inspire some more participation…get your comments in now!

Hey everybody, it’s June 26th, and you know what that means, right? It’s time for our first ever Threevue.com game giveaway! What, you didn’t know that? Check your inbox, because I totally remember sending you that email. Anyways, on with the give-em-ups!

Our first giveaway is a track and field iPhone game called International Athletics, which was originally born on the PSP.  It’s a great way to win a gold bronze medal without actually doing any physical training, and now we are passing that laziness on to you.

You can win this game by doing one, or all, of the following things:

1. You can leave a comment on this post about anything you want; your favorite Olympic event (curling FTW), your mom’s name, your bank account information, anything, and that gives you one chance to win.
2. You can reply to this Twitter message, and that gives you another chance to win.
3. You can re-Tweet said message, which gives you yet another chance to win (just make sure @threevue is in the message).

Doing all three things will triple your chances of winning this ten six dollar game. Math!

We will pick the winner on Monday, so good luck everybody!

(Rules of entry after the break)
Continue reading ‘Threevue.com Game Give-em-Up! International Athletics (Update 1)’

28
Jun
09

Boxing Day

By Mark Hill Leave a Comment
Categories: Editorials


This is it. In about an hour, all my Xstations and PlayBoxes will be sealed in a cardboard tomb, denying me the ability to start-and-not-finish any new games, as well as denying my girlfriend the chance to beat the shit out of me at any more Puzzle Fighter HD, for at least a few weeks.

I will have all of my portables in tow, like my iPod Touch, DSi, and PSP, and it will be nice to get some quality on-the-go handjobbing in. My flight is day after tomorrow, and I predict it will be six hours of Peggle, Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time, and the Simpsons comic I just bought. I’m actually really looking forward to it.

27
Jun
09

Polynomial Demo Is Free (Psst… You Need To Play It)

By Tyler Miller 2 Comments
Categories: Demotopia!, Games and Internet

screenshot_12

Via Bitmob.
Odds are that if you are reading his post right now you have a few spare minutes to head on over HERE and download the free demo for Polynomial, the incredible spaceflight shooter by Dmytry Lavrov.

From his site:

This is the game I’m currently working on. It is a 3D space shooter with mathematically generated fractal scenery and models. It is easy to get started – you fly around, shoot some stuff, collect some other stuff, and dodge enemy bullets, all while admiring the trippy scenery and self-repairing by flying close to stars. When you’re comfortable, you can set difficulty to “Insane” (press esc) for a very fast paced gameplay.

Ugh… So gorgeous.  As everyone knows I’m a sucker for mathematically generated fractal scenery (I love the video for Radiohead’s House of Cards). Hey, let’s make a deal, m’kay? I won’t write a whole bunch of jibberjabber about the simple poetry of the aesthetics of this game if you just go download the demo. How’s that sound? Deal?

Oh, you have to watch this video too:

26
Jun
09

Unlocked iPhone: Cleaning Up My Dock

By Russ Crandall Leave a Comment
Categories: Apple
Tags: , , , ,


My good friend and alter-ego Pus Handle (you know, the one that will admit to unlocking his iPhone) is all about aesthetics. Although the iPhone’s default layout is pretty nice looking on its own, there are thousands of themes and icons to download for free on unlocked iPhones, and after a bit of work, here’s what we’re looking at.

Screen #1: Homescreen
First of all, the phone currently sports a WinterBoard icon theme called “Mac OS X Snow Leopard” and a wallpaper theme called “Wood Shelves”. The Snow Leopard icons mimic the icons I use every day on my Mac, so it’s nice to see them repeated. Although I don’t care for the iChat icon being used for SMS/MMS messages; the iChat instantly makes me think of video chatting, not texting people.

Screen #2: Apps
This screen showcases the apps that are still necessary, but not multiple times a day like on screen #1. The three-hit combo of App Store, Cydia and Icy are all means of getting apps onto the phone. The two folders marked “games” and “misc” are actually part of an app called Categories which allows you to store multiple apps inside one folder, which really cleans up the interface. I love having lots of games to choose from, but having to scroll through them all the time gets a little annoying. Now they’re conveniently packaged together for waiting-room perusals. Also, pay no attention to the Jelly Car app that is floating around there – I just forgot to put it in the “games” folder.

Screen #3: Essential Games
These are the games that I tend to want at my fingertips at all times, and I’m afraid that if I put them into the “games” folder they’ll get lost in the mix of other, more mediocre games that I paid for and can’t bear to delete.

26
Jun
09

Hobnox’s Awesome In-Browser Audio Suite

By Tyler Miller 1 Comment
Categories: Games, Internet and Music

Picture 14

I paused a second before posting this thinking that maybe it wouldn’t pass mustard being put up next to my usual Game-specific writeups. Then I thought, nay, the world needs to know about this.

Look, Daft Punk I ain’t. I fiddle around with stuff like this without ever saving my progress. I’m not a musician like Russ. Still, I play with things like Ron Winter’s Drum Set. The Audiotool by Hobnox blows the doors off of anything I’ve messed with prior.

All of the instruments, pedals, drum machines and synths are faithfully reproduces in flash for your late 80s desires. The amount of play you have with this toolkit is overwhelming. Add to this the fact that you can record whatever music you make and the helpful online tutorial given by Hobnox and there’s really nothing stopping you from kicking out some insane jams.

Don’t forget the magic word either — Free.

26
Jun
09

Book(s) Review: His Dark Materials Trilogy

By Russ Crandall Leave a Comment
Categories: Books and Reviews
Tags: , , ,


Last year, I found myself enjoying The Golden Compass movie, more than I expected to. The film is based on the first of a trilogy of books called His Dark Materials; and considering the fact that the movie is the second biggest domestic box office bomb in history (#1 is Alexander), I figured the other two films will never get made and my only means of finishing the story would be through the books they’re based on.

I started right in on the second book, and I feel like I didn’t miss much by skipping the first one. The story gets much wider in scope right from the beginning of the second book, culminating in an epic tale that still remains focused on the little guys. One thing I like about this series is that it’s a meat-and-potatoes affair; there isn’t a lot of meandering for the sake of elongating the story. Every twist and turn seems logical and necessary. Although the intended readership of this series is definitely young (you can find the books in “young adult” sections of bookstores), its content is surprisingly deep and complicated. Most of it is centered on Catholicism and breaking down the early stories of the Bible. The story itself is actually a retelling and inversion of Milton’s Paradise Lost. It’s some heavy stuff, and it left me thinking about it for a few days after finishing the series. It definitely has an anti-religion take on life, which was thrilling for me to see something different than the typically-conservative tone of most books aimed at younger audiences.

If you’re willing to jump into some easy-to-read books that are akin to the Chronicles of Narnia or A Wrinkle in Time series, this is right up your alley. Personally, I plan on keeping these books on my shelves for my son to discover 10-12 years from now.

26
Jun
09

Cycocorder, PPVideoEnabler, and Pixelpipe

By Russ Crandall 2 Comments
Categories: Apple and Gadgetronic
Tags: , , , ,


So, I know this guy that recently unlocked his iPhone 3G using a program called redsn0w. His name rhymes with Pus Handle. It took only a few minutes, but it opened the phone up to all sorts of possibilities. Basically, it allows you access to the Cydia “App Store” which has all sorts of apps that the iTunes App Store won’t approve. Mr. Pus was a little hesitant about unlocking his iPhone, especially because this is what happened to his PSP after messing with it a few years back:


RIP, little guy.

Considering that someone else had unlocked his iPhone a few months ago and it still works, I thought I would be safe. I’ll write more posts about his discoveries, but for now, I wanted to talk about video recording. It’s one of the features that makes me want the iPhone 3GS, and it works fairly well on an unlocked iPhone 3G with an app called Cycocorder.

Cycocorder is free but is a little labor intensive. For instance, after you take a video, you have to take it off your iPhone using a secure FTP into the phone itself, which is a bit of a pain. From there, you would have to upload it to YouTube or whatever video service you use. Luckily, there are two apps that, when used together, can let you upload your Cycocorder-recorded videos directly from your iPhone.

There’s an app called Pixelpipe (free via the iTunes App Store) that allows you to upload photos and videos to all sorts of online services, like box.net, blogger, YouTube, facebook, MySpace, Dailymotion, and more. But you have to use a Cydia App Store app called PPVideoEnabler that will trick your iPhone into looking at your Cycocorder folder for videos. So, after figuring this all out and getting everything to play nice with each other, my friend can now take 15fps videos (with sound) and upload them directly to YouTube without having to use a computer at all. Granted, he doesn’t have a cool in-app video editor like on the 3GS, but he also got all of this for free. Here’s a video of Mark meeting the son that he may have fathered (we’re still waiting on the DNA test results):

25
Jun
09

I’m Talking To The Man In The Mirror

By Russ Crandall 1 Comment
Categories: Editorials and Music
Tags:


Before the internet goes mad with Michael Jackson tribute hysteria, I wanted to chime in a bit on his legacy.

Granted, everything post-Bad was pretty, um, “bad”, but in retrospect, does it really matter? I mean, last time I checked John Lennon put out a couple ho-hum solo albums before checking out (well, before “being checked out”, really), and no one today really holds his legacy to that. Let’s face it: at one point Michael Jackson held the music world in one white sequined glove, and that’s what he should be remembered for. I’m not the biggest fan today (and even then, I have 20 of his songs in my iTunes library), but he was pretty damn cool when I was a kid. I remember our entire family making time to watch the premieres of each of his music videos (which became increasingly strange; didn’t he turn into a cat at the end of one of them?).

What do you think? You gonna miss the little guy? Or did these past 20 years put a sour taste in your mouth? Mark, Tyler, feel free to update this with your own comments. Or just comment below. Whatever you want, I’m a smooth criminal like that.

Maybe now they’ll release Thriller as Rock Band DLC, just like I wanted.

Mark
I’ve loved MJ for a long time, and I have a very fond memories of listening to Dangerous after I got it on cassette tape one Christmas, which produced my favorite Michael song, “Black or White.” I am truly sad that he’s gone.

25
Jun
09

Threecast Episode 33!

By Tyler Miller 6 Comments
Categories: Threecasts

33
I wish I could’ve stuck around for the whole podcast this week, but as it was I had to bail on the tail-end of the show. I know that disappoints my hardcore fanbase, but try and keep listening to Mark and Russ as they struggle to make a complete show without me. Even though the thought of a Threecast without Tyler is like a June bug caught in a sweet tea jar on a hot Mississippi mornin’… AGH, I don’t get southern colloquialisms!

This week is all about games, I think? With some movies and/or TV shows?

Musical guest – Sunny Day Real Estate

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Download the .m4a file directly. (with pretty pictures)
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