batman_arkham_knight_logoI’m not gonna lie to you: I haven’t played the third Batman XBox game, Batman: Arkham Origins yet.

I haven’t played it for a few reasons, the first of which being that the property’s license was taken away from Rocksteady Studios, who did Arkham Asylum and Arkham City and which were simply the two best superhero video games I’ve ever played. And being someone who loved playing Spider-Man 2 and being disgusted by Spider-Man 3 by a different group of people, I have learned to be… cautious about sequels by different development houses.

The second reason being that I bought a plasma TV last year and I am afraid that, if Batman: Arkham Origins happens to be good, and I play it the way I did Arkham City, I will wind up watching episodes of The Walking Dead through a burnt-in image of Batman gliding in the middle of my screen.

However, I have made the snap decision that not only will I risk playing video games on (and possibly destroying) the new TV, but I will be obtaining either an XBox One or a Playstation 4. Or at least I will be obtaining one by early October. Because not only is a new Batman game coming out, but it reportedly will be by Rocksteady Studios again.

And not only that, but a new trailer for the game has been released… and it looks awesome. And you can check it out after the jump.

Rob swears he will put up that Robocop: To Live And Die In Detroit review soon. I know he’s read it because it’s in the bathroom, although that might also be where he figures its contents belong. All I know is Parker The Kitten tried to carve his name into our leather couch last night, possibly in reaction to yesterday’s Wolverine Cat post. So, Rob is going to be preoccupied for much of this day using various leather products to buff that masterwork out. Therefore, I’m going to step in for the moment to share this video, via Topless Robot:

How’s your geek cred holding up? Were you able to identify where each of those very self-evident geek truths came from? Check your answers, after the jump.

So here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office in Boston, we are dealing with our third snowstorm in the past seven days. This means that we are trapped in here with nothing but a case of beer, a variety of processed food products, and our Walking Dead Blu-Rays to bone back up for the continuing back half of the fourth season.

Oh yeah: we also have a cat. Parker the Kitten has no idea that the reason we are home with him all the time is that we are also trapped like animals and starved for human contact. All he knows is that he has a prey drive that makes him want to kill, and we are the ones who drive the stuffed mouse that allows him to satisfy that drive enough to sit with us on the couch without trying to remove our eyes.

Which means two things: we are busy being run ragged by this little guy to the point it is hard to write and publish anything substantial (although after all my disparaging remarks about the new version of Robocop the other day, I promise to put up my review of Boom Studios Robocop: To Live and Die In Detroit tomorrow)… and this cat video really cut close to home.

It is the origin of “Wolverine Cat.” And it hits close to home because, since Parker has been all wound up, he has gone on a rampage that will require me place an order for a new Transformer tablet to replace the one (and the completely separate keyboard dock) that Parker has utterly destroyed in the past 24 hours.

(via Bleeding Cool)

francavilla_true_detective_2Here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office, we have the full-boat cable TV package of all channels. This is because we are members of Generation X, which is the final generation to remember watching three channels of broadcast television as we waited for some cable TV provider to string coaxial to our doors. And even after the cable made it our door, many of us had the basic package while our peers saw tits and ass via Porky’s on HBO, because our parents were too cheap to subscribe to the good stuff. So now that we are adults, we not only get all the channels, but we tell our parents that we do and how much it costs. And we tell them that we’re finding the extra money in our “Mom and Dad Nursing Home” fund, so they know that when they’re slapped into a cut-rate home, they know it could have been avoided with a simple Skinemax subscription in 1983.

Not only do we have all the cable channels, but we have a top-of-the-line TiVo – not the cheapjack cable company no-name DVR like my parents use to try to save a few bucks to stave off the inevitable transfer into a place where medication is used so that state investigators don’t find restraint bruises on their wrists, but the real deal – with three terabytes of recording space, and enough tuners to record six programs at once.

All of which is a long way to go to say that we record a lot of television, not all of which we can watch in a timely manner. And one of the programs that we have been recording is True Detective, the Woody Harrelson / Matthew McConaughey show on HBO where they play two cops with dark sides investigating a possible serial murder. We watched the first episode and enjoyed it, but have allowed the following three episodes to stack up, thinking we’ll get to it eventually.

Well, “eventually” might have to come sooner rather than later. Because Francesco Francavilla, one of my favorite artists, has started releasing some fan art posters for the show on his Tumblr. Now, not only do we love Francavilla’s art (he’s gonna be a guest at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, and if he’s got a presence on the floor, that’s where my art budget’s going this year), but the guy has impeccable taste in television. And when he really likes a show, he does fan posters. He did them for Breaking Bad, so the fact that he’s doing the for True Detective is high praise indeed.

What? You want to see these posters without having to look for them? Some detective you are. You can check ’em out after the jump.

sdcc_logoPre-registration for the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con started at noon Eastern Time today for those who attended last year’s convention. It used a pretty radically different methodology to handle the sale than in previous years, but ended with the same result: with some people thrilled with the results, some people disappointed with what they were able to get, and yet others screeching with rage and hatred over glitches, technical roadblocks, and complete and utter frustrating failure.

Worldbuilders is a campaign organized by author Patrick Rothfuss to get people to donate to his favorite charity, Heifer International. Why that charity? Says Rothfuss:

Heifer International is my favorite charity. It helps people raise themselves up out of poverty and starvation. Heifer promotes education, sustainable agriculture, and local industry all over the world.

They don’t just keep kids from starving, they make it so families can take care of themselves. They give goats, sheep, and chickens to families so their children have milk to drink, warm clothes to wear, and eggs to eat.

Pretty cool.

In order to celebrate reaching a $500,000 stretch goal recently, Neil Gaiman agreed to read Green Eggs And Ham. Yes. That Green Eggs And Ham, the Dr. Seuss one.

Mr Gaiman reads a mean kids’ book. Damn.

Via The Mary Sue.

Ok, so, Telltale Games, makers of the award winning video game version of The Walking Dead, have turned their hand to developing a video game from Vertigo’s Fables series. They’re up to Episode 2. I must admit I’m out of the loop on this; I didn’t even know there was an Episode 1! I blame whiskey. Then again, I blame everything on whiskey.

Telltale’s official blog says the release is set for next week but no specific date is given: “We’re super close to the episode’s release now, and will announce dates as soon as we have them confirmed.”

If, like me, you completely missed this the first time around and want to see the trailer for Episode 1: Faith, check it out after the jump.

walking_dead_dead_insideOne of the most interesting, and occasionally infuriating, things about the AMC television version of The Walking Dead is how it had followed certain plot arcs from the original comic book, while in others it wildly deviates from those books. For example, Rick’s crew met The Governor in the original comics, but he sure as hell didn’t have a second act after Michonne got through with him (nor a second kidney, and the less said about his testicles, the better), and unlike in the comics, Andrea is still wandering about picking off bad guys almost at will.

Those deviations started early in the first season of the show – in the comic, if Rick ever visited the Center For Disease Control, it was to get a nasty rash he crossed back over the Mexican border with looked at – and at the time, many of us just figured that someone made a conscious decision to make changes over a period of time. Maybe because of something original showrunner Frank Darabont decided, or because of the whim of some focus group-armed network suit.

Well, it turns out, based on a panel that The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman have at this past weekend’s Arizona Comic Con, the decision did come from a guy in a suit. That suit being mostly denim and leather. And that guy being Daryl Dixon.