In his latest movie, The Woman In Black, Dan traded his Hogwarts uniform for a totally new role as a Dad.
Natalia brings you the latest news on Adele’s interview with Anderson Cooper, Kristen Bell’s interview on Ellen is auto tuned, Ladyhawke’s latest music video and much more!
Natalia discusses what’s new with Pharrell Williams and her thoughts on Karl Lagerfeld’s mean comments towards Adele’s weight. She also shows a roster of animals behaving like humans and, wait until you see the new size of coffee available at Starbucks!
Natalia dishes the latest news on the Juno Awards nominees, the upcoming Spiderman 3D film starring Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield and is Katy Perry hooking up with Tim Tebow? Watch today’s episode to find out.
When The Kooks are in the studio they’re focused and most importantly, sober. Watch Hugh and Luke explain their reasoning below.
The Kooks released a new album called “Junk of the Heart,” and you would think Hugh and Luke would be very excited about it. Well, they seemed rather indifferent to be honest. We spoke about that and why they don’t care about critics.
Natalia dishes the latest in entertainment news on Joan Rivers, Lana Del Rey and a brand new trailer for the movie Hunger Games.
Natalia talks about how Snooki might be pregnant, Nicolas Cage’s Cage Rage, Elisabetta Canalis is dating Steve-O and more for Feb 1, 2012.
Natalia dishes the news on Miley Cyrus breaking her tailbone, a 100 year old woman who plays the Nintendo DS to stay young and Houston, Texas contemplating a statute of Beyonce.
David Beckham debuts a new line of underwear, the worst dressed celebrity – Shy’m and Matthew Broderick is back as Ferris Bueller with a brand new commercial airing during the Super Bowl on Feb 5th 2012.
Daniel Radcliffe is back with his new movie The Woman In Black. It’s a bone chilling remake of a film from the ’80s. Ironically, Daniel actually scares very easily but he’s not afraid of ghosts. In this interview he tells us what really gives him the creeps.
Next time you’re struggling to make conversation, try asking this question: “If you could invite anyone (living or dead) to the perfect house party, who would it be?”
Graffiti6 is starting to make their North American invasion, and they are hitting up the Tonight Show. Does this sound familiar? Well the Beatles made the exact same journey over 40 years ago. Naturally, @jordans_life had to make some comparisons.
Nick plays World of Warcraft. Not only that, he’s the head of his guild, demonstrating that it IS possible to juggle being a hardcore gamer with being a top-selling recording artist.
During a LIVE interview on andPOP.com Nick Carter gave out a number and took phone calls from his fans. These were real phone calls from real fans who we gave exclusive access to one of the biggest recording artists of our generation.
There were great questions about music, fitness, the backstreet boys but the most popular question, however, was about his underwear. In this clip Nick talks about his his ‘Haynes’ and covering his fans with glow in the dark paint.
When releasing new music today, half the battle is online promotion. However, contests, signed merch and giveaways aren’t always the best solutions. When working on their latest album, Hedley came up with a brilliant idea, they decided to make trailers.
It’s hard to prepare for an interview with Hedley. So in this interview, we threw caution to the wind, got a 24 of beer and broadcast the interview live on our USTREAM (andPOP.tv). Eventually Jacob, Dave and @jordans_life ended up talking about hairy legs, their newest music video and more.
Diamandis from Marina and The Diamonds talks to us about her very serious disease. It’s called synaesthetic. And we lied, it’s not a disease. More like a cool condition. Diamandis explains further.
Would you be embarrassed if someone scrolled through your iPod? We sit down with Spee and Brendan to talk about the diverse music on their playlist.
For those that say original ideas are dead in the world of video games, guess again as a new spin on an old aspect can revive an entire genre. Lock’s Quest, developed by 5th Cell and published by Play THQ (THQ’s new casual gaming label) is the next release from the creator (and first DS project) of the innovative and unique RPG, “Drawn to Life”. This yet again innovative Nintendo DS title was released September 8th, 2008 and promises more unique gameplay not found anywhere else. That being said, it seems a little odd that I tout it’s uniqueness, yet mention that it’s a take on an old feature, what I mean by this, is that Lock’s Quest reminded me a lot of the mini-game where you must defend the egg at fort Condor in Square Enix’s Final Fantasy 7.
Lock’s Quest begins by explaining archineers (architects / engineers), source (the resources used to build), and clockwork (evil soulless robots fighting for a period of time using source). You are told the tale of an epic past battle of good vs. evil, a good archineer king defending his kingdom against an evil force using clockworks to take over the world, an explosion occurs and everyone assumes the evil force is gone. If that were the case, would we be playing this game now? Of course you’re a young reckless farm boy with little archineer experience and just by chance you come across an archineer commander wounded in battle. Turns out the clockwork are back and heading right for your town! You send your little sister (which by the way, is an orphan being raised by your wise, strong grandfather just like you of course) to get help only to find out she was kidnapped by the evil forces and you must get her back. The game begins.
The game plays in certain stages, you’re given a grid, your battle field, sometimes you must defend a specific location from the oncoming forces and all you have to defend yourself are your fists and your archineering ability. Each round starts off with a build period in which you use source to build walls, traps, and turrets (which can be fortified with walls), each item costs a certain amount of source. The next stage is when you are being attacked by wave after wave of clockwork (soldiers, archers, berserkers, etc), as this happens you use your stylus to run around attacking the clockwork using special combo attacks, or running to your damaged defenses to repair them before they are destroyed. Every once in a while you find some scraps from fallen clockwork and use them to build new defenses, as well, every clockwork drops some source. Once the timer runs out, all the clockwork drop and you repeat the process until a storyline event happens.
The controls are pretty simple yet intuitive, you can use your stylus to do everything from moving around to setting up your to attacking. Tap on a clockwork to attack them and (initially) a set of numbers (in a random order) appear at the bottom of the screen, click them in the right order and you do extra damage. Tap on a damaged turret and a little wrench appears at the bottom, turn it back and forth the correct amount of times (there will be a number on the wrench) and you repair quicker. Simple and innovative controls to keep the action fast and stress-free.
Music within the game is orchestrated and epic feeling to the extent a DS game can please our ears. It’s not really anything exciting but you at least get a feel for the sense of urgency based on the type of music being played. Not really much else to discuss here, sound effects of clanks and whacks sound similar to that of Drawn to Life (5th Cell’s first DS game)
The graphics seem geared (pun intended) towards a younger audience but don’t let that sway your decision, simple animations and cartoon style still frames (during character interactions) may make some gamers decide against picking this title up, but I feel the simplicity of graphics in this title allowed the developer to focus on gameplay and depth. There is also a pretty sweet animated intro to the game that got me excited to play!
Once the story is over you can read the ten page mini-comic that came in the game case, OR you can check out the multiplayer option. Here two players (each with their own game cartridge) can play wirelessly in which they battle head on with a specific amount of source to spend both on offensive clockworks and defensive structures.
In the end, this game was a fun title to pick up and play on the subway or bus, allowing players to create their scenarios and use a little planning in the process, but a couple of little things annoyed me. First is the layout of menus, you aren’t given a main menu off the bat and only two save files to work with, both of which rotate auto-saves and I haven’t noticed an option to turn off, small little annoyances like this here and there. Secondly is the story, or holes within the story at least. An example of what I mean is you send your sister for help at the beginning, she just had to run one screen over to the village, but she never makes it, you tell your grandpa you have to go look for her, he says instead that you should stay and fight the army (without any training) while everyone runs away. Now don’t get me wrong, but if you have a village filled with experienced, strong men, why send a weak kid to the front line while everyone runs away? That’s just bad parenting. Another point in the story that annoyed me was also near the beginning. You’re walking with your new archineer friend you just saved and your grandfather when you spot your missing sister’s teddy bear (which she wasn’t carrying before). You see this bear and immediately assume she was kidnapped by the bad guys, even though right beside the bear is a friendly army fortress… it just doesn’t make sense to me.
Gripes aside, this unique yet simple game was quite fun if you take it with a grain of salt. Let your planning skills guide you and save the world while your at it. Grab a buddy that has this game as well and see who the better archineer is. P.S. Lock also has super powers.
Enjoy
Gameplay: 4.5/5
Graphics: 3.5/5
Sound: 4/5
Replay Value: 3.5/5
