Originally posted at PrimeTimeGeek.com.

Contents of Episode 181, brought to you by the Talk Nerdy Show and the AAA Network:

• Talk Nerdy Show Update: cast changes, recent interviews, upcoming plans; BONUS: Review of “Sucker Punch”!
• Game Reviews: Bulletstorm (People Can Fly, Epic Games, EA), reviewed by Ryan & Caitlin; Dragon Age 2 (Bioware, EA), reviewed by Felix
• Captain America: The First Avenger chatter: fighting back against “The Grand Director” (confused during the episode with “The Hate Monger”, a completely different Captain America villain) and negativity; plus, why both straight and gay gamers are apparently upset about particular characterizations in Dragon Age 2.

Below you’ll find the trailers for Bulletstorm and Dragon Age 2 (extended, bloodier “Director’s Cut” version) and the video recording of the podcast (w/ raw audio). Enjoy!

Dragon Age 2 Extended Destiny Trailer

Ustream video recording of PTG Episode 181

Originally posted at PrimeTimeGeek.com.

Contents of Episode 173, brought to you by the AAA (Anime Addicts Anonymous) Podcast:

• With the end of the Guitar Hero series announced, are music games officially “dead”?
• The Kinect: just a fad, or a vision of future gaming?
• Guest reviews: Chiaki (LittleBigPlanet 2), Mitsugi (Dead Space 2 for PS3)

And here’s the video recording of the live broadcast (raw audio). Enjoy!

Originally posted at PrimeTimeGeek.com.

Contents of PTG Episode 163:

• Rundown of the Spike Video Game Awards 2010 winners;
• Review of Fist of the North Star: Ken’s Rage for Playstation 3;
• “FLASH! TV Reviews”: Fringe – Season 3, Episode 9 “Marionette”;
• PTG Top Comic Picks – Independent Comics: Lady Death #0, written by Brian Pulido and Mike Wolfer, art by Marcelo Mueller; Star Wars: Knight Errant #3, written by John Jackson Miller, art by Ivan Rodriguez

And since we mention it during the podcast, here’s a look at that Mortal Kombat 2010 trailer, featuring the reveal of the exclusive PS3 playable character, a certain out-of-work God of War. Enjoy!

Originally posted at PrimeTimeGeek.com.

Contents of PTG Episode 160:

• Black Friday 2010 Reports and Stories
• Review of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow
• Top Comic Picks from Dynamite Entertainment – The Last Phantom #3 (Beatty, Ferigato), Kevin Smith’s The Green Hornet #10 (Smith, Lau)

Enjoy!

Originally posted at PrimeTimeGeek.com.

PTG Episode 149 is brought to you by Cool Stuff Games in Winter Park, FL. Hoss and the staff over at CSG once again put together a great pre-release tournament last weekend for the latest Magic: The Gathering expansion, Scars of Mirrodin. That set has its official release this weekend, so you Magic the Gathering fans who out there who have yet to get your hands on the new cards had best head over to Cool Stuff OR to Heroes Landing in Clermont and start buying packs to play with during Friday Night Magic tonight, or else risk getting stomped by some of the true nastiness that’s included in the set. Wherever you choose to get your cards, you’re going to like what you get!

In this episode, our second hour with guest co-hosts Mitsugi and Chiaki from the A.A.A. (Anime Addicts Anonymous) Podcast, we switch our focus to video game news and reviews. Among the topics discussed: The recently-released specs of the Nintendo 3DS and what they mean for what the system is actually meant to do; the PlayStation Move and how it compares to the currently-reigning king of motion control-driven game platforms, the Nintendo Wii; a comprehensive review of Final Fantasy XIV and how it compares to the previous MMORPG in the series, Final Fantasy XI; and the games all three of us are most looking forward to being released this holiday season. Enjoy!

Originally posted at PrimeTimeGeek.com.

PTG Episode 141 is brought to you by Cure For the Run MMX. SomaCow’s second annual charity event is just a few days away now, but it’s not too late to get involved. If you’re interested in “running” in the event, if you’re a local business and you’d like to contribute something to the raffle, or if you’d just like to make a donation, go to curefortherun.com and you’ll find all the information you need. It’s going to be a day of great memories, for earning a year’s worth of bragging rights, and for brief athletic achievement followed by copious amounts of eating and drinking. But most of all it’s going to be a day for doing something good for children who need it. All proceeds and donations will go to New Hope for Kids, a Central Florida-based charity whose goal is “to bring health, healing, and happiness to children and families suffering from grief, loss, or life-threatening illnesses.” So please, come on out this Saturday to Wall Street Plaza, get registered to run (starts at 2pm), come meet the hosts from all the shows at the SomaCow Media Network, as well as Slacker and the Man, the Talk Nerdy Show, the Orlando Ghostbusters, and more, eat, drink, and when the time comes, RUN!

In this episode we review a HECKUVA lot of stuff, but perhaps most interestingly we review a pair of movies that came out last weekend that couldn’t be more different in terms of tone, style, and target audience. About the only thing that Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and The Expendables have in common is that they both feature martial arts fighting and choreography. One of these films enjoyed considerable movie critic love, overwhelming approval from fans, and tremendous social networking buzz going into the weekend. The other movie, however, proved to be the more palatable to mainstream audiences (despite lousy reviews) because they knew what they would be getting, and therefore actually made money, winning the box office competition by a WIDE margin. Of course, if you didn’t know already, that box office winner was The Expendables. Shows how much I know about predicting the box office; as you’ll hear during the podcast, I actually said I’d be very surprised if Scott Pilgrim didn’t come out on top this weekend.

It’s just another in a series of box office flops by films made from lesser-known, niche or cult-favorite comic book properties. The Hero Complex blog at the LA Times this week features a great article by show business reporter Ben Fritz about why films such as Watchmen, The Losers, Kick-Ass, and now Scott Pilgrim vs. the World have floundered on opening weekend after riding huge waves of fan approval and hype generated by previews and screenings at Comic-Con. It’s a very interesting analysis, and the conclusions are hard to refute. Enjoy!

[EDITOR'S NOTE: During my review of Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors #1 in the final segment of this episode, I erroneously credited John Byrne as the writer of the DC crossover event "Legends", as well as mistakenly giving its publication years as 1989-1990. "Legends" was published in 1986-1987, plotted by John Ostrander, scripted by Len Wein, and penciled by Byrne. Apologies for the confusion.]

Originally posted at PrimeTimeGeek.com.

PTG Episode 137 is brought to you by Vindictus, the eagerly-anticipated upcoming fantasy MMORPG from Nexon nominated for “Best MMO” at this year’s E3. Once again, we want to thank Assistant Producer Chris Gyselinck for spending some time talking to us about Vindictus and all it has in store for the avid online role-player and gamer. The interview has lots of great information about the game if you weren’t aware of it before now, so if you’re into MMORPGs or action-adventure games do give it a listen, because Vindictus sounds like quite a different gaming experience compared to other games in this genre. We’ve posted the trailer for the game below, which shows extensive scenes of actual game play, so check that out, too! We also wish to thank Joanne Sibug, Public Relations Associate for Nexon, for making this interview with Chris possible. We hope to hear more about the game as it gets closer to its 4th quarter 2010 release.

In this episode, our second with Mitsugi and Chiaki of the Anime Addicts Anonymous Podcast, we focus almost exclusively on video games. In addition to our interview with Chris, Mitsugi weighs in the brand-new Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty from Blizzard Entertainment, which StarCraft fans have been waiting for now for a decade, and has much to live up to in terms of the fun its predecessor brought. Chiaki brings her own review of Final Fantasy XIII from Square Enix, measuring it up against its predecessors as well as assessing its strengths and weaknesses in its own right. And me? Well, I just listen, comment, and note the names of yet MORE games I hope to try out soon. Hey, I’m still playing Bioshock 2 and God of War III, so I’m a bit behind the times, I know, but at least they’re good games!

We wrap up the hour with reviews of new comics last week: Wonder Woman #601 (Stracynszki, Kramer) begins the new Diana-in-Pants Era of the Amazon Princess’ comic with a tale of legendary bravery and sacrifice, as Diana sees with her own eyes the destruction of Paradise Island and sets out in search of those responsible; while over in Marvel, Thor continues his battle with the soul-eating Disir (think Zombie Valkyries!) threatening Hela and the Asgardian dead in Thor #612 (Gillen, Braithwaite). Enjoy the show!

Originally posted at PrimeTimeGeek.com.

PTG Episode 127 is brought to you by The Talk Nerdy Show. We’ll be having the guys from Talk Nerdy Show live in studio this Saturday night, so don’t miss our live broadcast starting at 8PM. The guys are also teaming with our friends over at Heroes Landing to host a BBQ on Friday, July 2nd right in the Heroes Landing parking lot! They’ll be there all day, and so will we AND Slacker and the Man, so come out for burgers and beer, have your head sketched by uber-awesome Talk Nerdy artist Joe Carbonell, and hang out with the hosts of the best geek podcasts in Central Florida (well, we think we are, anyway.)!

In this hour, our second recorded down in Miami in the aftermath of Florida SuperCon, we focus our attention on that OTHER mega-geek event that went on all of last week in L.A., the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), which featured Sony and Microsoft unveiling their new motion controllers and Nintendo showing off the forthcoming Nintendo 3DS. We focus on what we thought were the top 10 stories coming out of E3, or rather, what IGN thought were the top 10 stories coming out of E3, and if you’d like to know more about any of these topics, head over to games.ign.com and check out the various stories for yourself. Speaking just for myself, I’m not big on the whole motion controller thing, but then again, I’ve only ever tried it on the Wii, and I have yet to see it applied to a game I would really want to play. I reserve the right to do an “about face” with my opinion if that should change and either the Sony Playstation Move or the Microsoft Kinect completely blows me away.

In addition, we bring you our review of Jonah Hex, the new DC Comics-inspired film starring Josh Brolin, Megan Fox, and John Malkovich. E-yeah, this one really bombed at the box office last weekend, and it serves them right for opening against Toy Story 3, which I saw last Tuesday and which I daresay is a better, more satisfying sequel than Toy Story 2 and a wonderful conclusion to the series. It’s safe to say that in the battle of cinema cowboys, Woody left Jonah Hex dead and in the dust. But one thing I do want to say about Hex that I didn’t mention during the podcast: This movie has far too many similarities to 2007’s Ghost Rider : both films feature similar visual effects and actor Wes Bentley, albeit in a far smaller role in Hex. Both films also truly misfire in terms of their interpretations of the character and overall tone: Ghost Rider tried to frame Johnny Blaze’s story as a monster movie, while Jonah Hex plays up a supernatural angle to Hex’s story while utter failing to create any sense of authenticity in terms of depicting a post-Civil War “western” story. I’ll say this for Ghost Rider, though–it has far more laughable moments to move it into true “guilty pleasure” territory, while Hex is simply a dull bore that feels a whole HELLUVA lot longer than its meager 80 minute running time.

We wrap up this hour by spotlighting two comic book releases from last week, Birds of Prey #2 (Simone, Benes) from DC Comics and New Avengers #1 (Bendis, Immomen) from Marvel. Enjoy!

Originally posted at PrimeTimeGeek.com.

PTG Episode 126 is brought to you by the Anime Addicts Anonymous (A.A.A.) Podcast. If you’re into anime of any genre and you’re not listening to this show, you’re really missing out. Chiaki, Mitsugi, Kimiko, Hatake, and Roukou are very passionate about anime, they know their stuff, and they have a lot of fun recording their show each week, and we here at PTG are hoping to bring some of that fun onto our program as well. Stay tuned in the coming weeks for announcements of some cool collaborations between PTG and AAA in the very near future, including the addition of a long-overdue anime review segment to PTG!

As you might have guessed from the title, this episode is all about my adventures at Florida SuperCon this past weekend, and basically serves as one big shout-out to all the great people I had a chance to hang out with or meet for the first time. Rather than try to encapsulate all of that into a written blog, I’d rather let you listen to the episode and instead use this space to provide website links for all the great people and groups we met and spoke to. Please do pay these links a visit, and tell them PTG sent you!

• Lisa Corrao – stand-up comedienne, producer of “Bad Movie Night” at the Ft. Lauderdale Improv Comedy Club, July 22nd!
• Ghost Shadow Studio – creators of the upcoming comic Torpidity
• B-Ru – illustrator extraordinaire
• Sci-Fried
• Cosplay Deviants – (NSFW!!!)
• The Channel Project and Stand Up Orlando
• Boundless Comics (New Home of Lady Death!)
• Miracole Burns – model, make-up artist, costume designer, stunt performer, cosplayer, uber nerd
• That Sci-Fi Show – Geekiness on Terrestrial Radio!
• Super Sidekick Records (producers of The Pursuit)
• Cosmic Times – writer/publisher of “Arthur: The Legend Continues”, “Souled”
• Top Cow Productions – publisher of Witchblade, Magdelena, Angelus, The Darkness, Artifacts
• Ancient City Con 2010, Jacksonville, FL, July 10-11

Enjoy!

Originally posted at PrimeTimeGeek.com.

PTG Episode 104 is brought to you by Talk Nerdy Show. The recording of their latest episode, Episode 5, is now available, so give them a listen, and you may want to do it BEFORE you listen to this podcast, as they talk a little about getting ready for their appearance on PTG and the sketch that Joe Carbonell was preparing for me as a gift. Joe worked on the sketch all throughout the first hour of the show, and as you can see from the final product below, the man’s got talent!

If only I could get my hair to do that in real life. Anyway, many thanks to Ryan, Josh, and Joe for the sketch and for sitting in on this hour and in Episode 105!

In this episode we’re honored to have Paul Wenglowsky, Curator of Education for the Orange County Regional History Center, on the phone to talk about the museum’s ongoing “Out of this World” exhibit and their upcoming “Cosmic Comic Connection” event on April 10th. The event will feature special guest Alan Bellman and panels throughout the day focused on the history and creation comics and film. Our good friend Terry Cronin of Students of the Unusual will be there hosting two discussions, one on independent film and the other on writing independent comics. For more information on the event and the exhibit, visit the website at thehistorycenter.org. Many thanks once again to Paul for spending some time with us on Saturday night talking up the event, and also to Jennifer Cipolla, Marketing Manager for the History Center, for all her help in facilitating the interview. All of us in the studio enjoyed the chat and we look forward to spending some time at the event this weekend.

Also in this episode, we bring you our thoughts on Clash of the Titans, the remake of the Clash of the Titans from director Louis Leterrier and starring Sam Worthington and Liam Neeson. The reviews from critics across the country have not been kind, nor should they be–Leterrier and screenwriters Travis Beacham, Phil Hay, and Matt Manfredi have “streamlined” and altered the story from the original film to such an extent that it’s now little better than what you’d find in a mediocre fantasy video game. Indeed, the God of War video game series treats Greek Mythology with more reverence and understanding of its spirit and themes. Kudos to the production designers for the look of the Kraken, Medusa, and all the other monsters, who all show the influence of Ray Harryhausen’s original designs, and also for the look of the Olympians. But that’s as far as any praise should go for this mess. Enjoy! (NOTE: During the podcast I mistakenly refer to director Louis Leterrier as “Paul Leterrier”. No idea where I got the name “Paul”. I apologize for the confusion!)