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.
Hot chick on the cover? Check. Kind of resembles the Baroness from GI Joe? Double Check. Guns? Check – check her feet too, cause those high heels are packing heat too. Wait, what? From the get-go, you know this isn’t going to be a normal shooter. But just how far down the rabbit-hole does it go? Come with me for an interesting journey.
To be totally honest, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this game. On the surface, it looks like Devil May Cry and God of War thrown together, mixed in with a few of the more “respectable” character models from the Dead or Alive series for good measure. In other words, it had the potential for being something very entertaining, or something that felt like it’s been done to death a hundred times before, and that within minutes I would be turning off my Xbox and tossing the game and case back into the Give to Friends I Don’t Really Care About pile of games.
But along comes one of the most over-the-top, guns-blazing, unforgettable prologues I have every experienced in my 20 plus years of gaming. Without warning, you are thrown into what in most other games would be the lead-up battle to a boss fight, with seemingly endless wave after wave of enemies, just asking to be executed in the most over-the-top style you can imagine. Of course, at this point, you have had no proper introduction to the control system or special move-list, so you are basically pulling off random combos and incredibly well animated visceral executions without knowing how or why you are doing so. Did I mention that this was all happening on the face of a giant clock tower – as it is careening end over end down the face of mountain? Bayonetta is a game that reaches through the 4th wall, grabs you by your face and screams “can you hear me now?” as loud as possible, while punching you repeatedly about the head and neck.
The art style for the game is very unique as well, which fits the over-the-top in-your-face atmosphere, from having still photo spreads for cutscenes (which are actually still images from a roll of film, interestingly enough) with the dialogue played over the images, to full out game-engine animated scenes mixed up to keep you on your toes. Bayonetta herself is apparently the last Witch on the planet, and has just woken up from a 500 year nap at the bottom of a lake, and is on a mission to find her memory and cause general havoc and chaos for the good guys – or bad guys, in this case. Every singles enemy in the game is an “angel”, replete with glowing halo’s over their heads, and your job is to eradicate them in the most awful and punishing ways possible. You even have the option of executing Punishment and Torture attacks, such as summoning an Iron Maiden to crush and destroy your enemies, or at later stages when you have improved your magic abilites, calling larger than life demons to eradicate all the enemies around you.
This just adds to the completely ridiculous, but incredibly enjoyable experience that Bayonetta actually is. Just when you think you’ve seen how crazy Sega let the dev team go with the game, along comes a disco-dance sequence in a graveyard, complete with Bayonetta looking into the camera and quipping that as long as music is playing, she might as well keeping dancing (!). The game continuously breaks the 4th wall, drawing the player in with subtle references to past games, similar games, and even celebrities (if Joe Pesci hasn’t tried to sue yet, just call me a Wet Bandit).
Having the ability to collect magical items and then mix them together and create new and more powerful potions and spells is utterly engrossing, as only specific items will successfully mix with other items, and each time you try a new combination you are rewarded with a new in-game experience, as well as the ever-elusive Achievement Points. Even if you aren’t a fan of fetch-questing, most of the items are found in fairly mundane places, and are very easy to pick out of the back- and foregrounds. Don’t worry – this isn’t like finding all 240 of the Riddler’s puzzles in Arkham Asylum. These add more depth to the game, but aren’t completely necessary. The overabundance of easy-to-perform, entertaining and highly-stylized combo moves more than make up for magic spells.
From performing backflip executions, to planting your feet (or hands) and rotating the Left Stick to shoot surrounding enemies with your hands (or feet as the case may be) and having Bayonetta move like a ballerina through it all is a sight to be seen. There was obviously a lot of time and effort put into making the action of our heroine as silky-smooth as possible, and it shows; from her vixen-like slow walk to the way she can nimbly jump from one execution to a group execution, Bayonetta looks good. And the other character models throughout the game are nothing to sneeze at either – they might not have had as much time in the oven as Bayonetta did, but they look damn good.
While the sound effects in the game are probably considered standard fare for most shooters at this point, the soundtrack is what stands out in my mind as something that they really nailed. Having a booming orchestral sound during epic fights works just as well here as it does in key scenes if larger than life films- you can feel your pulse quicken in time with the music, which is of course timed with events in the game, and you feel completely immersed in the experience. Which is exactly what you want when you have to fight off a 100-foot Godzilla wannabe. You want your palms to be sweating just a bit, your pulse racing, and then you realize you have to take a breath cause you’ve been holding it for the last thirty seconds in anticipation of just how insane this battle actually is.
Unlike a lot of other games, the Normal mode is Bayonetta is actually set to “normal”, so you shouldn’t feel scared to start there, if you aren’t sure if Hard is really something you want to deal with. With properly balanced gameplay, collectability, customization of spells and magic, and incredible visuals and sound, Bayonetta is a great game that everyone needs to try. Its completely over-the-top, crazy, irreverent at times, but by far one of the most unique entertainment experiences to slide into my disc drive in months. It took what was fun about Dante, furious about Kratos, and threw in just enough comedy to create an amazing final product that you would be very sorry to miss out on.
Graphics: 4/5
Gameplay: 4/5
Sound: 4/5
Replay: 4/5
