No 3D Shoot for Mad Max 4

Director George Miller and company have finally started shooting Mad Max 4: Fury Road in Namibia, Africa, but they have made a major last-minute change to their plans.

As Twitch Film notes, Miller has always been very adamant about filming the movie in 3D and even developing custom rigs from Dalsa Corporation. However, those plans have now fallen through, and although the film will still be screened in 3D, it will no longer be shot that way. Instead, the production team will be using a blend of Alexa digital cameras and Canon and Olympus DSLRs (for the trickier, more dangerous shots). The film will be converted to 3D in post-production.

Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron star.

Source : ign[dot]com

Tiny and Big: Grandpa's Leftovers Review

Great game design teams can take a well-tread genre and throw in a change to make it feel new all over again. Portal exemplifies this, taking first-person shooter mechanics and tossing in brilliant and inventive elements from puzzle and platformer titles to make it about using your brain, rather than spilling those of your enemies. In the same vein we have the quirky indie-developed Tiny and Big: Grandpa’s Leftovers. While its challenge level and narrative are uneven, Tiny and Big nonetheless brings a unique twist to its platforming that, when paired with its fantastic aesthetic and personality, creates an endearing and delightful little experience.

Tiny and Big is the story of the two titular characters. You play as Tiny, a bookish little guy with a penchant for science, using your wits to overcome obstacles in your quest to find Big and recover your inheritance – a pair of underpants. Big’s a jerk, though, and will do everything in his power to slow you down, constantly running away and using his underpants-conferred magical powers to throw gigantic chunks of the world or levitate himself to the higher ground.

Not to be outdone by magic, Tiny’s got a few tools in his arsenal that make him deft at reaching the unreachable. If Tiny encounters a sheer wall he has no chance of jumping up, he can pull out his raygun and slice the world apart. With a few clicks of the mouse you can dynamically cut apart rocks and structures, shaving a column into a set of stairs that you can easily hop up. With your raygun it’s easy to cut up the world, then deploy a rocket booster, use your arms or a grappling hook to push and pull the stone into a configuration that allows you to progress.

At its most basic level, Tiny’s quest really boils down to a few environments you have to scale, but it manages to stay fun because each step is a little sandbox that lets you use your imagination to succeed. You could walk up to a wall and slice it into tiny chunks if you wanted, or you could just as easy do a gigantic slice that allows you to bring the whole wall down in one swoop. Sometimes I would cut stairs out of the world, still other times I might attach a rocket booster to a felled piece of stone, jump on top of it and then ride across a chasm. I died a whole heck of a lot, but forgiving checkpoints didn’t make it too much of a headache. Even when I did die, it usually was the result of hilariously poor planning, with a piece of a rock or wall coming down and crushing me.

It only takes a few hours to get through the entirety of Tiny and Big, but in this case that’s a good thing. Tiny and Big’s slicing mechanism entrances, but since you immediately have access to all the gameplay mechanics from the start, it’d grow wearisome if it went on much longer. The occasional boss battle might force you to be a bit faster with your cuts, but Tiny and Big doesn’t introduce anything new or tweak the formula throughout the story. In many ways it kind of feels like a really long tech demo with incredible aesthetics.

Really, it’s hard not to talk about Tiny and Big without spending time on its looks and music. The most valuable collectibles in each stage are cassette tapes that unlock phenomenal – and often bizarre – indie rock tracks. With so little done as far as the character’s voices -- they’re mostly composed of single sounds and grunts-- it’s nice to have fun and beautiful melodies accompanying your journey. The music feels right for the scenery, too. The look of Tiny and Big feels like someone took the cartoon Adventure Time and put it into the Borderlands engine. Along with its quirkily drawn characters, there’s just so much character in everything you see. Even the game’s menus are fun, and keep in step with the whimsical feeling of the story.

Like I said, Tiny and Big’s length is just about right for what’s included, but I’d really like to see the team at Black Pants Game Studio do more with their ingenious slicing mechanic and story. Some parts of Tiny and Big made me feel like I had to think to overcome them, but other parts felt a bit repetitive or so obvious that I wondered why the studio even bothered to put it in the game (cut a very conspicuously placed column to get across a gap? I’ve done this before…). Likewise I’d love it if the story went deeper. The funny in-game cut-scenes really show that the team has a knack for humor and making lovable characters, but in between all you have is the music to listen to. Games like this, where you spend so much time alone, need more witty banter between a companion and backstory to make the world interesting.



Source : ign[dot]com

See The Latest Nintendo Direct Videos Here

Check out the latest videos from this evening's Nintendo Direct presentation below; we'll be updating this page as they arrive.

Exactly who you'll need around when you need change for the vending machine.

A little something something for the many millions of DS owners who haven't bought a 3DS.

Confirmed for North American release, available this November.



Source : ign[dot]com

Christopher Nolan's Catwoman Concerns

Director Christopher Nolan was initially reluctant to include Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises. So what prompted the change of heart?

In an interview with Empire (pointed out via /Film and CBM, Nolan credits his brother and TDKR co-screenwriter Jonathan "Jonah" Nolan with helping him see the value of including the feline fatale. "I was nervous about how she would fit into our world. But Jonah was very much convinced that there would be a great way to do it and eventually turned me around," said Nolan. "Once I got my head around the idea of looking at that character through the prism of our films, saying, 'Who could that person be in real-life?' we figured it out. She's a bit of a con-woman, something of a grifter. A hard-edged kind of criminal."

Jonathan Nolan added, "Chris often comes from a position of, 'Why should we do this?' You know, presumed guilty. But I said, 'What we're endeavouring to do here is tell a complete take on the Batman mythos'. And a complete take of the Batman mythos without the character for me was sacrilegious. You've gotta gave her, because she has a delicious greyness to her that helps define who Batman is. She keeps wavering on this line of, 'Is she a good guy or a bad guy?' Well, she's kind of neither. And that's why, to me, that relationship and that character only enhances the universe - and the Batman character." He also said that "Anne Hathaway threatens to steal the show."

And what about the much-hyped secret ending of The Dark Knight Rises?

David Goyer, who co-plotted the Batman trilogy with the Brothers Nolan, said the final scene of The Dark Knight Rises is "completely unchanged" from the one the filmmakers envisioned years earlier at the start of the franchise's reboot. "We both knew in our hearts that we were onto something special. I have to tell you, having finally seen everything strung together a little while ago and seeing that scene, I got a complete lump in my throat."

Source : http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/05/29/christopher-nolans-catwoman-concerns

Nikita: "Homecoming" Review

Note: Full spoilers for the episode follow.

Nikita fittingly capped off a sensational second season that began with "Game Change" by turning the canvas on its head yet again. "Homecoming" was a bold and satisfying season finale, daring in its unexpected hopefulness and lack of a traditional cliffhanger. Make no mistake about it though, the new balance of power places Nikita and her friends in very real danger - from outside and from within.

The hour's most pivotal event was obviously the death of Xander Berkeley's cruel and vainglorious mastermind, Percy. It's hard to imagine Nikita's world without him in it, even though we know his dragon's head is only one of many. He went out in grand style of course. I particularly loved when he confessed to his faithful Division recruits how he betrayed and used them all and that he wasn't sorry in the least because they were all "pathetic street trash." Ah, Percy. You will be missed. Nikita did deserve this hard-fought victory though, and it was truly thrilling to watch him plunge to his gorgeously gory death, breathing his last word before the end, as she once predicted, "Nikita."

The title "Homecoming" refers to Nikita and Michael's return to Division both as star dropouts returning to campus as well as Percy's prodigal progeny returning to the fold. All season we've been teased with Percy's "Luke, I am your father" comments to Nikita, but Percy's last was so over-the-top that it seemed to me to close the door on any literal interpretation of these allusions. Instead, he seemed more like Dr. Frankenstein intent on killing his monster. Once Percy was dead though, Nikita was finally able to stop running from the truth she's been battling all season: Division made her who she is today. Maybe it's just easier without anyone around to say, "I told you so."

"Homecoming" brought the audience back full circle to the beginning of the season as well as the beginning of the series. Starting in "Game Change" and continuing throughout Season 2, Nikita has wrestled with the concept of finding a home, and whether she'd deserve to finally rest there if she could ever find it. Here, she finally accepts that, like it or not, dreaded Division has always been her home. Taking over the organization she once sought to destroy sounds crazy at first, but it actually takes her back to her original mission. In the pilot episode, Nikita said she was the first recruit to get out, and she was going to make certain she was not the last. Now she's been presented with the opportunity to make good on that vow on a large scale, and bring "immunity, identity, absolution" to Division's masses. How could a girl with a guilty conscience matched only by her savior complex ever resist it?

Before he died, Percy also got to demonstrate his magnificent genius one last time. The elaborate satellite particle beam plot turned out to be a con, while his real plan depended simply on his most loyal soldier, Roan, physically placing the plutonium inside a nuclear reactor. This also gave me yet even more respect for last week's layered "Crossbow". Why was it so laden with references to science fiction? Because that's exactly what Percy's "Star Wars" satellite Death Star plan was. Roan's death was also a nice, ahem, shock, though the bigger and more welcome surprise was his moment of genuine grief when he realized that Percy was dead. There a heart beating under that Terminator facade all along.

Michael is my kind of spy... fearless and inventive.

Despite its general awesomeness, I did have a few problems with the episode. First of all, Nikita and Michael blew the hatch open last week and I don't believe anyone had time to reseal it, so why were the Marines struggling to cut through the hatch in this episode? Did I miss something? Also, Sean and Alex got from New Jersey to Maryland in no time. I'm not saying I need to see them chatting in the car or whatever, but there just didn't seem to be any suspense in regards to their tracking down Roan. Even terrific Nikita episodes often feel like they need maybe five more minutes to completely pull off everything that was attempted. I would've rather had one more "Where the hell is Roan?" scene between Sonya and Birkhoff and/or Sean and Alex than the Amanda scene at the end, which felt like an unnecessary reminder of things we all already know: Amanda has a black box, she's still one of the Big Bads on the canvas, she's super evil and so forth.

The almost-happy ending between Michael and Nikita was absolutely beautiful. The sun has come up and they've once again somehow survived the impossible. They're in plain clothes in a pretty pastoral setting, but it's phony. It's a fake farm that recently housed the trained killers who gave their lives for Percy's lie and it's a perfect metaphor for the life-after-espionage fantasy that they've been contemplating all season. Michael would still like to chase after it, but Nikita is not yet capable of believing a real happy ending awaits her, so she'll keep working on that atonement thing.

It was a finale without real cliffhangers, yet everyone's in flux. Can the government really be trusted to let Division sort itself out when killing them all is so much simpler? Will Division's power bring out Nikita's dark side? Can Ryan maintain his integrity? Will Alex be able to pursue a future with Sean or will her painful past continue to haunt her? Can Michael and Nikita's relationship survive this latest major life change? Season 3 (yay!) holds the answers to these questions and many more and I can't wait until fall to see how it all plays out.

Source : http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/05/19/nikita-homecoming-review