Hangar 6 R&D Review: Yep, I still love The Bureau.

I booted The Bureau up again the other day out of curiosity, afraid I'd finally see the cracks so many professional and trusted critics wrote it up for. But to my pleasant surprise, I found myself sucked in yet again. Eager to shell out a modest sum for whatever DLC they had on hand. I still think it's more sharply written and plays better than almost anyone I've talked to about it. But I do concede it's far, far, away from anything approaching greatness. It's hobbled scope, conspicuously absent base building, and over recycled talking animations are real issues.

But I have so much fun with it! And the only substantial DLC we'll ever get from the late 2k Marin is an absolute steal for $5. It's a 3-4 hour campaign set a few days before the initial Groom Range invasion staring Agent Dasliva as he volunteers to assist in 11 waves of surprisingly violent psychological tests being run on the Bureau's first captive "sleepwalker."

Naturally I expected some fun waves of combat with truncated and unsatisfying story beats to set up the main game. Wrong again! Beginning with a well staged walk-and-talk with Dr. Dresner and slowly escalating to; well... where it ends, a decent yarn is spun as well as a half credible explanation for how you can fight the outsiders before they actually show up.

 So yes, I still love The Bureau, and Hangar 6 is a solid prologue.


As well as a bitter-sweet goodbye.

Sherlock Season 3 Trailer. Has it been 2 years already?

After a very long (very BBC) hiatus, Sherlock will once again return to our respective airwaves. Wonderful. It's a very good show, a real drag on repeat viewings, but absolutely captivating the first time around.

... well that wasn't much was it? What about Orphan Black?

Come on! That could have been a teaser for the first season. Well at least I got a air date that time, Sherlock.

TellTale Games takes a seat on the Game of Thrones... throne.

Is Tell Tale Games the best interactive storyteller in the business? I'd like to think so, and so do the folks that hold the keys the justifiably popular Game of Thrones IP. Like it or not, this is what the team behind The Walking Dead will be working on now as well.

I haven't gotten around to their "Fables" yet, but I like to wait until the majority of episodic content is released before I go all in. I hate being an early investor in matters not related to The Neverhood and I'm personally just keeping time until their second season of The Walking Dead sets in.

Can they handle it? Absolutely. Will they handle it... well I can't see the future can I?

I can't stand how Bob Dylan just blew my mind.

I am not the world's biggest Dylan fan. My feelings towards him are the same I have for the Ramones. I respect the hell out of him... but I'm not gonna spend too much time listening to his work. That being said, this new video for his almost 50 year old song "Like a Rolling Stone" is incredible. It's like a Warhol masterpiece for the internet age. Ambitious, broadly appealing, yet so deceptively simple I'm kicking myself for not thinking it up first.

So bravo team Dylan, this is one of the greatest music videos I've ever seen.

Britney Murphy's Death may have actually been Murder.

I don't like to rumor monger, nor give into baseless scandal, but this is turning into a fascinating little mystery. I'm not here to pass judgment, but if the new medical evidence revealed by the Huffington Post is to be believed, Murphy's hair contained a "high level set" of heavy metals. To an M.E. that's a sign that points clearly to a case of poisoning. That could be an accident... but the plot thickens.

Britney's husband (Simon Monjack) also died of pneumonia after allegedly suffering from similar symptoms associated with metal poisoning five months later. That could have been a coincidence. Murphy's mother had sworn up and down a "toxic mold" found in their home was responsible. Speaking of Sharon Murphy, according to TMZ (and for the love of Christ, take all this with the absolute grainiest of salt) she had been sleeping in her son in law's bed after Britney's death and had purchased medication prescribed to "Sharon Monjack"

Going by Moscow rules here, I believe we can call this enemy action. But this is all speculation at this point. Sure the juicy noir narrative is floating in front of our faces, but please don't go buying into it just yet. Murphy's father has done some great work trying to get to the bottom of her daughter's death, and I'm sure this is far from the last we'll hear about this case. But just because the mother looks really suspicious doesn't mean jack. Not yet, so stay tuned... or bookmarked, or just refresh Huff-Po. I'm  going to draw all my evidence from them anyway.

Bethesda might, MIGHT, be teasing Fallout 4.

It doesn't matter though, I'm bouncing off the walls. So what if the only evidence is a teaser countdown site with an ominous morse code beep backing up a suspiciously fallouty type face. I don't care, I'll take the baseless rumor mongering because it's been over 3 damn years since I've heard anything at all about my favorite franchise.

Sure Erik Todd Dellums tweeted the possibility of the return of his DJ persona ThreeDog a while back, but that might also be a Fallout film project. A project that is also so up in the air the only thing confirming it is a character actor's twitter account.

For the record I am absolutely pro "more ThreeDog."

Grump! Fallout is too strong a brand to abandon, but I get the sneaking suspicion Bethesda is getting really sick of it. But maybe I'm panicking for no reason, (I tend to do that) seeing as they have a brand new MMO to promote. They probably don't want to become their own competition by advertising two products at the same time.

That being said, Skyrim was great and everything, but I couldn't be bothered to give two flying sh*ts about TES at the best of times. I can't help but feel like my true love is being held hostage by their pet IP.

XCOM Enemy Within Impressions: "Solid Copy, Big Sky."

Bah da bam bam ba daaaaah.

So... my day off just disappeared in a puff of smoke. Wanna know why, or more importantly, how? Well, the new XCOM expansion came out today. An expansion so massive it's the size of the main game. Actually, it is the main game; tuned up, tricked out, and packing a brand new story thread. Not only are you facing a global invasion of the martian persuasion, but now you have a more... human threat on your hands. Well, more human than the other guys anyway. But I'm getting ahead of myself, I've never actually blogged about what I thought about this game before, so why don't I get that out of the way first.

Enemy Unknown was a Firaxis game through and through. Meaning it was so mercilessly addictive I'd put it down for months out of fear of what it would do to my social life. I really liked it, but there were some nagging aspects that kept me from letting it in all the way. To my heart, I mean.

Did that sound sexual? It wasn't supposed to sound sexual...

 Things like a shallow pool of maps, repetitive enemies, and having to move your troops by hand outside of combat ground my gears sumthin' fierce. But Enemy Within has been a long time coming; after getting about halfway through the game and finding myself in my first run in with the gene splicing terrorist cell "Exalt" I'm over the moon. There's tons of new maps, oodles of troop upgrades, and several new in-mission objects to spice up your everyday abduction sites.

Is $30 a little much? Yes. Are you essentially buying the same game all over again? Technically. Will you care about any of that 2 hours in? Not a chance in hell.

I got sick of fighting aliens. I was tired of fighting robots. But robot aliens?! I'm... listening.