So yeah, that real life thing called work has gotten in the way of me re-posting The Guild’s episode 3 from last week, but hey here it is. Ep 4 is already up on XBox live and I am fairly certain they throw it to the net on thursday’s so just hold your horses!

Any-who… Code becomes a TROLL! Which I think rocks since I love to watch her actually have some balls and bitch people out, but when she does it’s classic… Zaboo can’t catch a break (or a clue) and as always Vork has some classic lines!

As always go check out www.watchtheguild.com for all their old eps, and thanks for them for continuing to provide the greatest show there is!

Season of the Witch (2011– 95 mins) Nic Cage, Ron Perlman 

Behmen and Felson (Cage and Perlman) are knights of epic fighting proportion, who get tired of all the needless innocent slaying during their tours of duty in the crusades and unenlist themselves from the service to the self proclaimed mouth of God. It’s a time of dangerous health concerns as the black plague is ravaging the world threatening it’s very existence. The knights next order of business/job is to transport the witch suspected of being the cause of all the plague to a town where a sacred brotherhood of monks is waiting to cure her of her witchcraft and save the world. It’s sounds like a mouthful and a bunch of malarky but it boils down simpler explanation.

The simpler plot explanation—>  Cage is a bad-ass knight who has to bring a crazy ass witch to a random town with a band of a few men. Perlman is his big as hell wise cracking side-kick and also a bad-ass knight. As usual along the way there are some “forces” that be that will stand in the way of the band. And the constant undertone of is she a witch or isn’t she????

“Season of the Witch” is not a bad movie nor is it the fantasy laced action flick I think it could be. Yet, on the other hand I think it’s good that it was not all CG’d up with crazy monsters along the way, which might seem a bit like cheap tricks to get viewers. Instead it’s more action based and story based keeping you focused on the story of the witch and the band rather then what will they throw at them next. Don’t get me wrong (again) it’s not an art/story masterpiece either. It’s right on that line of not bad and not great of a movie. It’s not bad as the critics would have you believe, but it’s also not good enough to buy outright.

The good is the big two headliners. Cage and Perlman while not exactly what you would expect of medieval knights but they are believable, deliver a great buddy act, and are pretty funny in their little quips. The story is also not too long so it never gets too dull in one way or another. The bad? Well it also never WOWS you at all either. Some characters are never really fleshed out as much as we would like, and some of the extra happenings are not fully explained either. But most of the bad I can deal with since it’s kinda light and doesn’t really want us to think about everything.

Verdict–> I would say it’s a decent mid level recommendation. I wouldn’t grab it on the 1st look but if you are looking for something to put with another movie for a nice end of night mindless action movie then it fits nicely. I would grab it before a lot of the other indie crap that is out there. Another good cable movie to watch but not to buy for good.

EXTRA EXTRA!!! Yep a two-fer Tuesday in this review.

QUICK REVIEW –> Black Death–> I like Sean Bean (Lord of The Rings) so I decided to give it a try. Don’t make my mistake. It’s EASILY in the top 2-3 worst movies I will see this year. It’s a complete piece of crap and don’t even read the description in the red box. It sucks plain and simple. Don’t make me slap you up the back of the head like Jethro Gibbs when you tell me I was right it sucked… Just don’t watch it period!

The Adjustment Bureau (2011–106 mins) M. Damon, E. Blunt

So even tho I put “Inception” on my top 5 for last year based on the 10 movies the Academy had up for the best picture, it’s no secret it’s not a favorite of mine. So naturally when I saw all the previews and all the hype surrounding “The Adjustment Bureau” I wasn’t looking forward to this one at all. It’s got two actors I like in Damon and Blunt but I figured that it was another movie based on confusion just for confusion’s sake (yes I am looking at you “Inception”).  Honestly, I couldn’t have been more wrong. In fact, I liked this movie MORE then I liked “Inception” (but I reserve the right to change my mind after seeing Inception again… yet, it seems unlikely since the whole fact that I HAVE TO see it again already works against it). The Bureau might not be a complete straight line from A to Z but it’s not overly confusing or convoluted and has an intriging story that keeps you interested every step of the way. And again unlike “Inception” you don’t feel like if you blink for a second you might miss a plot point that will kill the whole movie.

Ok I’ll shut up a second and give you some plot…. Matt Damon plays a successful congressman running for NY state Senate. Upon meeting a beautiful woman in a bathroom he becomes smitten and falls in love immediately. However, there are some mystery men who have apparently some fate laced reason why they cannot be together, and are hell bent on keeping them apart. Will fate or love win out.

Ok so we have a group of mystery men following Damon around who appear to be either supernatural or time travelers (I’m not spoiling anything for you, you will have to see for yourself). It’s a very cool ride that is done well enough that  not only does it rake us in from the 1st scene it also keeps us motivated and interested every step of the way. Damon and Blunt both shine in their parts as strong and believable characters and all the guys who portray the mystery men are equally up to the challenge. Another good example of a movie that didn’t do great in the press or excell at the box office but I felt was a good surprise to watch and enjoy.

Verdict—> I was real surprised to enjoy this movie as much as I did. It’s a good romantic/action/thriller type movie which will have you interested from beginning to end. I would put this up there as a top level recommendation to watch at the red box simply b/c I doubt many of you out there have seen it yet. It’s a must see but I wouldn’t say it’s a must buy tho. Go ahead and see this with Arthur this weekend for the perfect 1-2 punch as a double feature!

Arthur (2011– 110 mins) R. Brand, J. Garner, H. Mirren, G. Gerwig

This is going to be a string of a few movie reviews of flicks that were BLASTED in the press, or completely ignored, that I either liked completely or just thought wasn’t too bad at all. Here, we have “Arthur” the remake of the beloved Dudley Moore comedy which was a classic of the 80’s. I am not entirely sure if the press hated it b/c they love the original, and you can’t tread on those, or if they just don’t like Russel Brand himself.

The story is light enough for a slap sticky rom-com. Brand is the rich playboy who will lose all his inheritance if he follows his heart and marries a woman his mother doesn’t like instead of the successful business woman she has picked out for her. It’s got plenty of great lines, alcohol induced antics and even some heart thrown in there. Brand gives us his usual drunken character who can’t help but be funny, which for whatever reason I love to watch. He seems to change up either his own accent a tad or some way of his speaking inflection as to not be another iteration of Aldous Snow. Playing his “nanny” or female butler type is Helen Mirren as Hobson. She is excellent as the comedic straight man. Being so completely dry that every word she says manages to elicit a smile or chuckle in some way. The elder Brit has come a long way in the comedy ranks in the last few years, including a great hosting of SNL and another good performance in the unappreciated “Red”.

The female love interests give a good polar opposite contrast. Gerwig as the sweat scenic and child loving NYer and Gardner as the win at everything in life at all costs and never admit defeat whether in business or love. Garner gives such an over the top performance that you get an uneasy attracted to her and scared of her at the same time. Arthur is so torn by his his real love and family obligations that it drives him even deeper into his alcohol filled lifestyle to hide from any and all responsibility for his life.

It’s a good growing tale in the middle of a rom-com and I really thought it was good. If there were any downsides to the movie, it’s that it drags in the 3rd act lul before picking up steam for the climax.

OR

If you want an easy way to describe it, a funny as hell romantic comedy that doesn’t exactly capture the whole spirit of the original but is quite enjoyable none the less.

Verdict–> Maybe I like drunken rom-coms, maybe I like Helen Mirren and Russel Brand, or better yet maybe I just like it b/c the rest of the world hates it. Either way I liked this movie, and I think you will too. Pick it up at the red box today it’s a top recommendation. You will enjoy the rapport between all of the actors and it will keep you chuckling throughout.

When will Zaboo wake up and smell the Codex….

This damn show keeps getting better and better. I am sure it ain’t cheap but I would love to see 20 min episodes soon. As soon as you start getting into them it’s over and 7 more days till more… But I guess then it wouldn’t be a “web series” if it was much longer… Keep up the good work Felicia and all!

In most people’s eyes when it comes to gaming Blizzard can do no wrong. And sure, in other peoples eyes, everything Blizzard does is work of the wort people in the industry. Just like with the RealID fiasco that was almost 1 year ago to the month, Blizzard has made HUGE waves with one of their feature announcements. This time, instead of a WoW feature a Diablo 3 feature is causing all the stir.

This week Blizz has announced that D3 will have an auction house. Sure, no prob. Oh did I mention this auction house would have a real world money component? Yup, that’s right, not only will there be a regular auction house with items listed for the usual gold of the D3 world, but in fact you will be able to buy items for REAL WORLD CASH from the auction house as well. It seems that Blizz is taking it upon themselves to combat gold farmers directly with their highly anticipated title.

Let me back up a bit and talk about the history of the storied franchise, and why this would have been thought of to be done by Blizz. Since there has been online games with any sort of currency and/or leveling there have been people trying to make money on selling in game currency and “power leveling” services. Basically, people trying to profit off of others laziness and lack of time. Everyone wants instant gratification so hey why not make a buck off of them. Unfortunately things like this can kill the balance of power even when done in a semi-“legit” fashion. Not to mention the scumbags who offer these services generally steal information of those who use the already illegal enterprises and steal more money as well. Furthermore to get even richer these farmers will use key-loggers and other nefarious ways to steal credit card numbers and log ins from people who don’t even use their services just to get more capitol to run these schemes and to get ahead without doing any real work in life… but I digress. So where does Blizzard and Diablo fit into all of this? Ok well one of the biggest draws of this franchise in history has been the ever constant longing of the player for MORE LOOT, and just one more boss kill to see what drops! These set items and possibility of purples and blue items to be had kept the player coming back for more. It was the original carrot-on-a-stick game. And with all of this comes the desire to trade items which were amazing items but ones which your character could not use for gold or items you could use. The act of trading so much itself became the real game by the time people had beaten Diablo 2 so many times that they lost count. This trading became so abundant that people went to ebay to sell goods/items to others and in some cases whole characters. Yet, as stated above sooo many of these people (if not all) who sold on ebay were scumbags and would pull scams to keep you from your goods and or services you paid for. So now we have both people who scammed others out of money and or items and also people who played the game so much to get items to sell to other people who wanted them to keep the cycle alive. The gold farmers and scammers found a good home in D2, and ever since Blizz has sought out a way to limit them and what they can make, and even keep them from causing so much havoc to the legit Diablo and WoW player.

Enter Diablo 3 and the real world money and gold auction houses. In essence Blizz has gone from trying to combat gold farmers to making everyone one. It’s kinda like legalizing gold farming in one way. In game you will be able to access the auction house (AH) from anywhere in game. You will be able to use the gold only AH or the real money AH. The good about this is if you do not want to participate at all, you can play the game by yourself and never touch the AH or only touch the in game gold AH. No one is forcing you. Also by making the game ONLINE ONLY they are trying to police hackers and modders so that no one can steal, duplicate, or defraud the system. I see what they are doing with the online part of this but the idea of having to be online at ALL times to play this game is one of the biggest parts of this I hate the most. I don’t always have Internet access where I want to play and further I might want to play on airplanes or hotels where access might not be available. Who is Blizz to say I cannot play a game I have paid for? Well they are apparently god as always but that’s for a different discussion.

Also Blizz has stated for the record that they have “no plans” to list any items ever in their AH making it completely player driven. So both the items on there and economy will be entirely player driven, which to me makes this a much easier pill to swallow. I would never play a game with real players (outside of friends only) in which someone could buy items directly from a cash shop, provided by the developer, in which they could instantly be the best in game without playing at all. It’s not fun to me and I don’t like the imbalance it brings. Yet, if someone wants to buy that +10000 strength sword of ass-kicking for 20$ from Skippy down the road from the auction house I kinda have no problem with that. I know it sounds contradictory, but hey in my twisted mind it seems just fine with me. I am happy they will be policing the game with no hacks, dupes or stealing. So if someone wants to make a few bucks or buy that item for a few bucks it’s ok. I don’t have to play with or against them anyway if I don’t want. The other thing that makes it right is I can make the same 20$ if I want also. There is nothing stopping me from playing the hell out of the game and acquiring money, crafting items, runes, gems etc and playing the AH game. Hell, way back in vanilla wow I made hundreds to thousands of gold playing the AH game and crafting/transmuting for people when Arcanite transmutes would be worth 300 gold and  you could only do it every 3 days.

The Rake. —> Like in poker at casinos, and like the AH in WoW, the house will be getting their cut of the real world pie. So every time you list something you will be giving Blizz a small fee (one exception to that I will be getting to in a min) and every time you sell an item they will take their cut as well. Oh and did I mention that when you go to withdraw money from battle.net you will be losing some of it as well? I do suspect the latter is Blizz way of taking “taxes” out of winnings. I cannot imagine the legal headache all this is causing their lawyers, and how much documentation and double checking with the IRS they are doing. Not to mention doing the same in the tons of countries they will be releasing the game in as well.

Blizz has said each account will be given a few free listings of items upon starting your acct in which they won’t take any money out for listing items. I think this is a good idea myself. It gives the casual person the ability to list and win a few items to build a sort of “bank-roll” to begin your trading career. Then they will have some money to use for listing all the rest of their items later. This lets those money shy people (or heck even kids) get started with nothing down and build a nice cash empire. Granted I am assuming that in order to even play the market you will have to have a CC on file with battle.net or they will just use the one you have in billing just to be able to access it. This little freebie listing while a good thing, also means that for the first few weeks (to months) of the games release we will still likely see things listed at crazy marked up rates just to see who might make mistake clicking on an item they thought was 1$ when in fact it was 100$. Once all those freebies are used up the AH should settle a bit for a while. It’s not going to be like the WoW AH where we see those listing constantly b/c with everyone having to have a legit copy of the game and hopefully no trial acct access to the real money AH, it should police itself very well. Will it still be there? Prolly. But not to the extent we see it now in WoW.

The thing I wonder about is the saturation of the AH after a while. Since there (reportedly) isn’t going to be soulbound items anything that is bought can later be re-sold. So simple logic + supply and demand says after a few months (at most) there is going to be a glut of the same items up on the AH. So I am guessing that if you are going to want to make some money either play a ton early or list items while the the iron is hot.

So I have a few parting shots or GeekJock Theories if you will….

–I think this is a bit of a test for the fan/consumer base. Blizz has some of the hardest cord rabid fans out there. Between the 11 million still playing WoW and the umpteen million Starcraft groupies the thing that is for sure is the majority of them love Diablo. Blizz knows stuff like this won’t deter them from playing the game but they still want to see how this goes. And as easy as I think it will go over I think there is a bigger picture. The big picture here is I think this whole thing is an experiment. The next gen MMO Blizz has in the pipeline (codename: Titan) has already been mentioned as being heavily social media based and undoubtedly, Blizz is trying to knock down even more walls and conquer the rest of the universe with it. So if they can get even more people on board with a game that has in game money component to it then the sky is the limit to the amount of money they will rake in. It could dwarf that of what WoW is making them currently and what D3 will make them. This is of course my speculation.

— More speculation—> Diablo is done. Yup, it’s finished. Sure they are prolly doing their whole “polishing it up” thing to make it completely ready. Also they need to do the whole stress test for the millions of people who will flood battle.net, but I still think the game is done. The big hold up? This whole real money thing is the big hold up. They are still likely programming and getting all their ducks in a row as to how to legally grab more money and let other people make more money off of this real money AH thing.

—My personal thing... I think I will give the whole real money AH thing a try. Don’t read that wrong. I don’t play these things competitively and have no plans to PVP, but I think a smart person, especially early, could make some cash on it all. I am going to play the crap out of D3 when it’s released (especially if it’s released on my week off) and I could very well rack up some decent items with some lucky drops. Even if I only make a small chunk of change, I could very well supplement my WoW habit a bit. Hey who knows Blizz might let us draw off of our credit in D3 to pay our month WoW fee. Likely even be able to do it rake free with no % taken out for themselves, since they are getting it all anyway.

So, NO the sky isn’t falling, and all is ok. Like I mentioned above it has pissed me off more that they will make us be online at all times (and making us wait more months for the game) then having a real money AH. Anyone who doesn’t like it, can not use it. People who want to use it can use it, plain and simple.

It all goes back to my same thing I say about the whole SWTOR thing. We don’t care anymore about things in the game. We have seen a ton of screen shots, and seen in game footage. WE DON’T CARE…. just release it already. We know we love it, we know we want it AND WE WANT IT NOW! Oh and as a guy who owns a decent amount of Blizz stock, hey Blizz I would like a 4Q release to see some of us stockholders happy.

Yes it’s that time of year again. The time where the new season of The Guild arrives and we all get to see some more killer episodes of the best web series out there.

So it’s now time for the convention for “the game” and the guild is traveling in style. Well in Vork’s van but who’s counting. Some new twists and turns, some Munchkin references and Bladez well being Bladez.

Sit back relax and enjoy the 1st episode. As always thanks to Felicia Day and Co for putting out a killer show… You can go directly to their site at www.watchtheguild.com. Or catch them for free on Xbox live as well. I will try and post all the new episodes as they get them out (the web posting is generally 2 days after it goes live on XBOX).

I have put a few things up with some comments this weekend but I wanted to highlight just a couple more things here as a conclusion to Comic Con 2011 weekend.

The Good

Gamespot.com and EW.com’s coverage were both amazingly awesome. EW had some great interviews (although most posted were only about 3 mins which was waaayyyy too short) and great pictures from the event (Sexy Sleeping Beauty HELLO!), and gamespot had some awesome trailers and now have some of the panels posted in their entirity. Great coverage guys. And if you haven’t seen it yet look for the interview with Nathan Fillion in the EW room where he plays a sort of 10 questions about Nathan Fillion with 2 big fans. The guy truly is cool as hell and a great sport.

The Bad

Some of the interviews. I mentioned above that some of the interviews were too short. That kinda sucked but that didn’t even scratch the surface of bad when you saw how some of the interviews were down right uncomfortable to watch. Take for instance the Pee Wee Herman interview. Wow was that just fricking odd, and uncomfortable. Then there was the interview with Chris Evans for “Captain America” in the EW room. It’s hard to find a guy who would rather be anywhere else more then Evans. It’s kinda hard to pass judgement on a guy like him tho, since I am sure that he had to do about 500 interviews the last few months about the part and being chipper has to get old. Then there was the interview with the cast of “The Amazing Spider Man”. Again we get a bunch of people trying to be chipper and then there is Rhys Ifans in all his who gives a crap glory. Barely paying attention to even his cast members he bumbles through the interview like a half baked loony. Which brings me to our ….

THE UGLY

Oh Rhys. Can you not wait for the after parties to get wasted? The daytime is about the fans and about smiling and showing the world you rock. Not being hammered and acting like an ass. British rocker wanna be Ifans made a fool of himself a few times yesterday at the con. He was reportedly arrested during the Spidey panel for pushing a security officer for the panel and being a complete tool. I really don’t care how bad you think the security is at these things. It still takes a special A-hole showing to be forcefully removed and arrested at an event like Comic Con, ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU ARE ONE OF THE CELEBS THERE! He reportedly said a big F-U to Americans as he was escorted out. To give  you a good idea of his plasteredness, here is an interview he did before the whole panel.

You stay classy Rhys!

THE GREAT

I want to end on a high note here with the great of the weekend. And that was the panel on SW:The Old Republic. This whole panel had me grinning from ear to ear like a fricking ninny. It was awesome to see them talking about it, awesome to see footage and actresses, and also awesome to hear of an impending large scale beta in September. Thanks again for the coverage by gamespot, which continues to be my favorite online gaming site for all platforms of info from PC to consoles to even ios device gaming. Check out that video also and enjoy!

Another great interview brought to us from Gamespot.com.

They show us some in game footage from Warhammer 40K  Space Marine. It’s a third person shooting fighting romp set in the hyper violent world of Warhammer 40K, where there is an unlimited supply of Orks and humans walk around in 7 foot tall armor and cannot be brought down by just 1000 orks alone. It’s pretty standard playing third person fighting with some rocket boosting and gun play mixed in. Seems like a God Of War mixed with a shooter in the WH universe. I can’t say it doesn’t look nice b/c it does. I just don’t know how long it would be before the same old same old would get boring. Seems more of a rental then a buy at this point but does seem to be some good old fashioned bash em in the skull fun. Due out in Sept.

While not exactly connected to comic-con 2011, I did stumble upon this new teaser trailer for “The Amazing Spider Man” on superherohype.com .

It’s a decent looking trailer but I have a few reservations that come to mind. First, the problem I have with re-boots, is that we must again go through the whole origin of the hero. Do we REALLY want to see Peter Parker bitten by a spider? Do we really want to see him learning about his new powers? Honestly I don’t. Don’t get me wrong I also don’t want to get blasted with so many villains that I cannot even keep them straight like in “Spider Man 3” but we need a happy medium. Next, the obvious question. Is the whole first person perspective thing a gimmick for the trailer or is the movie actually going to use this extensively? If it’s just either a gimmick for the trailer or just a short part of the movie then I am 100% fine with it. Too much of that and audiences will have people puking from motion sickness. Not a bad teaser I am just not sold on it. Just like I am not sold on “Captain America” that opens today but that’s a different story for another day…

Oh and anyone else think that Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) while he is narrating sounds like Kumar? (Kal Penn)