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.
If ever I was forced to choose my favourite all time superhero from any universe at time of my life, my answer would always instantly be Spiderman. This is why I was so excited to get my hands on the latest Spidey game from long time web slinging publisher Activision, Spiderman Web of Shadows (WoS) for the Xbox 360.
While most superhero video games are just everyday ho-hum storylines involving one villain, or an adaption to the most recent superhero movie; WoS does something I feel no other superhero game or movie has ever done. This game feels exactly like an entire storyline of a comic book! While no other super-game or movie has had this large a scale, most comic storylines spreading over 10, 20, even 50 issues involve grand scheme battles, a plethora of extra characters and real world implications to the issues at hand. And not only is this story intense and huge, but it’s also pretty dark, swinging away from past Spiderman titles in that respect.
The story begins with Spiderman fighting his long time rival Venom in the streets of New York. In the midst of battle, a portion of the Symbiote (the alien ‘suit’ Venom is made out of) leaps onto and is absorbed by Spidey and he is given back his old black suit which changes his mentality. Now, Spiderman has had issues with this suit before, so he knows the repercussions of wearing such a dangerous costume and can control it to a certain degree. Life is ok, Spidey’s got some new duds, is stronger, all that good stuff then all of a sudden humans start acting like venom and it turns out because of their little exchange, Venom can now create little symbiote monsters out of anyone! The game turns from every other super-game into a full out invasion threatening all of New York and maybe even the world! Heroes from all walks of life team up, S.H.I.E.L.D. shows up, and even Spiderman’s villains must all work together to stop the spread of Venom and as such, you can feel the scale of this battle as you watch the entire huge city sprawl into chaos.
There are a few amazing aspects to this game that I would love to point out first. The most important is that while Spiderman was a great hero, what made him stand out was Peter Parker, the man under the cloth, he was an everyday Joe who was at the wrong place at the wrong time. Peter has to deal with such things as morality, the people he cares about, his own needs and the needs of New York and as such, with this symbiote in you, you are given choices. Will you be good and work a little harder for the citizens and the people you love, or will you be evil, use the black suit and get the upper hand in battle? All throughout the game your given choices, act as Spidey would, or act as Venom would, and each decision changes the progression of the story and even the ending. Another topic is the city of New York, it’s huge!!! Taking well over 5 minutes to web swing from one end to another, and the sky scrapers are just as tall, with freefalls galore. As well, no longer does Spiderman swing from clouds, what I mean is that if you are at the top of a building and you want to swing off, you will not be able to until you drop down low enough to use another building to swing. And finally, there are many many mini-sidequests to keep players busy, as well as spider symbols to level up your attributes and allies (both heroes and villains) to call in to help you.
The graphics are amazing, by far the best looking super hero game to date and with the amount of detail (especially Spiderman’s character model), you can see every little web, every flip, every grimace of each person in the game. As Spiderman web-swings or brings out his symbiote, the quality of what you see just makes you smiles. Camera blurs and explosions round out the visual package into a tight tasty treat for your eyes. Unfortunately, the only downside is the camera issues that plague WoS when Spidey gets too high up or moves to quickly across the city for rendering to keep up.
Sound wise, the hustle and bustle of New York streets pre-invasion are all there and present, and while the musical scale can fall flat at times, it works extremely well at others (namely the introduction to the game). All scenes have voice acting with a selection of responses to choose from when speaking to non-playable characters and while Spiderman is just as clever and witty as always, The big issue I have is that while every other voice actor sounds amazing and perfect for the part, Spiderman’s voice is one of the worst I have ever heard, whiny and nasally. It’s a shame such good script writing is ruined by not wanting to listen to what is said.
Spiderman’s controls can range from simple to complex, while you can go about button mashing and probably get far enough in the game, as you level up, you learn new moves and combos. These combos can then be combined with other combos to create Arial combo attacks to take out entire armies of flying monsters or soldiers hanging out on building sides in a flurry of fast paced action. As well, as you level, you are given the choice of learning new moves and skills for Spiderman’s red or black suit, realistically doubling all the maneuvers that can be pulled off. As well as the combos, there are web attacks, cars that can be thrown (nothing else can be thrown however) and counters. Taking this one step further, the counters can be countered by bad guys and even one step further, you can counter the countered counter… I think that’s as far as it can go, but while you are given a tutorial about how to counter a counter, I have only been able to do it once in the game, and that was on my 15th try during the tutorial.
Overall, I feel Spiderman: Web of Shadows is the best super hero game out there and compared to other games coming out this holiday season, I would venture to say the best action game not involving shooting this year! The story is amazing, the scale is huge on so many levels, everyone in Spiderman’s life is involved, the game is so intense that you actually share Peter Parker’s desire to do good (or not if that’s how you roll), the boss battles are huge and heart-pumping, the script is well written and there is plenty to do aside from the story line. Negatively speaking, some things felt missing: the lack of objects to throw aside from cars, the lack of controller sensitivity (its either run or stop, no walking), Spiderman’s voice is horribly annoying, there are camera issues at times and a few times there were minor glitches during cut scenes. Do the pros outweigh the cons? You bet your web slinging patootie it does! Go out and experience the hardships of Spiderman now! Oh, and did I mention that most of the other heroes / villains get infected and become symbiotic?
Gameplay: 4.5/5
Graphics: 4.0/5
Sound: 4.0/5
Replay Value: 3.5/5
