So after a month or two of staying quiet, RomCom is back! We’re playing for Muni’s #CutTheCrap gig this June 15, Saturday at Route 196! We’re playing with Pedicab, Ciudad, Slow Hello, Your Imaginary Friends, and No Rome.

In case you haven’t heard us yet, here’s our EP, “It’s Tight Like Prom Night!” which you can download here.

Show starts at 9PM. Gate price is 250 bucks. See you!

Poster by Rob Cham!

I would describe myself as a really frustrated gamer. You see, I love games but I don’t have the time, patience, or skills needed to finish through a complicated game like, say, Portal. I’d probably end up cutting myself in half because I’d turn off a portal while I’m halfway through. Put me in the middle of a multiplayer FPS match and soon enough I’d find both teams ending their match and turn it into a “who will kill Ade the most” game.

Basically, I’m this guy:

So I contented myself with not playing games on a console and just grabbing my phone and playing the fuck out of these nice games that are currently taking up my time.

Bastion

I’m a sucker for RPGs. It doesn’t mean I can easily finish them, of course. But still, I love playing them. I could spend weeks grinding and getting a more powerful weapon and trying to be strong enough for me to be able to fight the next boss.

Bastion was actually originally released for PC and Xbox, and when the iOS version was available locally I immediately downloaded and played the shit out of it. It’s about a post-apocalyptic world where the remnants of civilization (two of them) live in The Bastion. You play The Kid, a silent cowboy-type guy who goes off into the ruins to pick up artifacts to restore the world.

Pretty great RPG, even if the story needs a little more depth.

Injustice: Gods Among Us Mobile

I don’t even know why I’m playing this. This isn’t as great as the mobile ports of Street Fighter 4 and Street Fighter X Tekken, but I find myself holding on, match after match, tapping and swiping away at my screen, watching the delayed reactions of my characters as they try to punch the shit out of each other.

Is it because I want that Insurgency Batman? Is it even worth it? I don’t know.

The Drowning

I love me a really nice FPS for me to play around with. However I found games like N.O.V.A. to be overly complicated with the convoluted control system not really working that well on a touch screen. Seriously, every time I play N.O.V.A. I’m all “HOLY SHIT WHERE AM I LOOKING AT OH GOD WHO’S SHOOTING AT ME FUCK YOU FUCK YOU”

The Drowning, on the other hand, is a nice and simple FPS with a touch-based control scheme that lets me shoot down zombie monsters with no problem at all. I wish the story was more than “get stuck in an area for two minutes, kill all the monsters that you can, and scavenge shit and grind it all over again.”

I’d love to see a studio with real storytelling chops work on a horror FPS with this control scheme.

Punch Quest

You play a caveman that runs down a dungeon, punching down zombies, skeletons, bats, disembodied eyeballs, and orcs. He can also ride a velociraptor that shoots lasers, and he can also turn into a garden gnome and fight gigantic wasps.

In other words, greatest game ever.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

10 years on, this game still plays as great as the original. Even on a touchscreen. That’s all I can say.

Robot Unicorn Attack 2

Second endless runner in this list. Sensing a pattern?

I’m a big fan of the original Robot Unicorn Attack. My love for that game left me subconsciously humming Erasure’s “Always” non-stop for weeks on end. Okay, RUA2 does NOT play that cursed song out of the box (you have to buy it, bah) but it more than makes up for it with Unicorn customization and a social gaming system that’s pretty fun to play with.

What are you currently playing? I wanna hear about it. Talk to me and recommend new games for me to pick up in the comments!

With Doctor Who series 7 finished (read my review of The Name Of The Doctor here) I actually have time to watch other things. Actually, I’ve been watching a LOT of stuff, but I didn’t feel like sharing mundane stuff like the TV shows on my blog before. There’s GetGlue for that, but who cares. I’ll talk about the TV shows and movies I’ve been watching lately because why the hell not?

Star Trek Into Darkness

The guy playing Sherlock Holmes goes against the jolly crew of the Enterprise and all hell breaks loose. No, seriously. Space ships get blown up, people (red shirts AND OTHER PEOPLE) die, the Enterprise gets fucked up real good, RoboCop rides a spaceship, Alice Eve shows off her body in a gratuitously unnecessary scene (but we’re thankful), and Sherlock Holmes gets to chew on scenery and make all the ladies swoon and make their nerdy dates jealous as fuck.

I can’t talk about this movie any further since I don’t want to spoil you guys, but this is a pretty good NuTrek film despite being riddled with plotholes and a lot of stuff that will make any hardcore trekkie’s head explode due to all of the inconsistencies with the original universe. Way better than the first one, and I loved the 2009 film.

Game of Thrones

Daenerys Targaryen boobs aside, this is the greatest show on TV right now, bar none. Also, if you’ve read the books, you and I, we have knowledge of a certain scene that will make the entire fucking internet explode and we must never disclose it until it happens. Then we watch the Twitter and Tumblr live feeds.

If you haven’t read the books, summer child, you know nothing. Also, don’t fucking Google it.

Arrested Development

OH MY GOD YOU GUYS ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT IS BACK YOU KNOW THE SHOW THAT EVERYBODY JOKES ABOUT ENDING TOO SOON IT’S BACK OH MY GOD YOU GUYS YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW HAPPY THIS MAKES ME EVEN THOUGH I HAVEN’T REALLY SAT DOWN AND PROPERLY WATCHED ONE EPISODE BECAUSE I AM TOO GIDDY AND I DON’T KNOW WHY I’M TYPING THIS IN ALL CAPS OH MY GOD

Movie 43

They say that this is the Citizen Kane of bad movies, but I respectfully disagree. This may have been the greatest thing I’ve seen so far all year. Okay, so the jokes are so lowbrow, the comedic timing of some of the sketches are off, the sketch with Emma Stone made me go WTF over anything else, and some of the gags are so bad beyond redemption. I don’t care. This is the greatest movie of all year because it featured Kate Winslet on a date with Hugh Jackman. Oh, Hugh Jackman has balls hanging out of his neck.

That, my friends, is fucking art.

What have you been watching lately? Tell me about it in the comments!

Last month, I turned 30.

I normally spend my birthday hiding from the world, dreading another year gained and with me slowly speeding toward being yet another old man clinging on to his youth, wearing hipster clothes, growing a ponytail, and going to gigs with people who are more than half my age. This year was no different.

I STILL LOOK FABULOUS, FUCK YOU.

Nothing says mature more than me updating a blog I started seven years ago and filling it up with dick jokes like I’m 23. But seriously though, things like growing old is a pain in the ass and a tough pill to swallow. I might as well avoid a long and hard discussion on the perils of buggering my content with dick jokes.

As a sign of my maturity, I need to go about these grown-up things:

• Remember that time I started running and failed? I started it again, only to be laughed at by the girlfriend when I mistakenly signed up for a 10K run. Did I mention that I can barely survive 3K?
• I should start writing less posts that will make co-workers and other people I interact with on a daily basis doubt my sanity.
• That means I should stop talking to myself too.
• Yes, Ade, I’m serious. Stop it.
• Ok.
• Start complaining about my joints hurting more. To add drama and realism to my bodyache story, I should also come in to work smelling of eucalyptus oil.
• Also, I should dress up more in a collared shirt, chinos that are a size too big, and sandals. With socks.
• Sadly, I should stop reading comics and stop watching shows like Doctor Who. Then I should start listening to AM radio more and talk about politics with taxi drivers.
• Grow a Max Alvarado-type mustache. Ladies love the ‘stache.
• Also, an earring and a ponytail. To hide my bald spot.
• Learn how to scream “GET OFF MY LAWN!” with grace.

Or maybe I’m, you know, overreacting to me hitting the big 30. I don’t know. The fact that I’m no longer in my 20′s scare the shit out of me. Hell, I’ve reached a point in my life where I’m supposed to know what to do with myself. But I may look like I have it together, but I’m just as clueless as the next twenty-something. I don’t know. I’ll figure it out somehow. Like always.

Hey guys, I’m back! I’m really, really back! And now that I’m here, on the internet, blogging again, aaaand… I don’t really know what to write about. So I’ll have to play it safe. I’m here, and I’m writing about something that you may have seen me talk about in the past: Doctor Who.

Also, I just watched the new Neil Gaiman-penned episode, and damn it if I can’t talk about it.

For the record, I really, really loved Gaiman’s first time writing Doctor Who, the sublime The Doctor’s Wife. It dives deep into the show’s 50-year old mythology and adds something to it and takes the Doctor’s relationship with the old sexy TARDIS into another level. That episode isn’t just the best of New Who, it’s one of the best episodes of the show, bar none. With that in mind I had really high expectations coming in to Nightmare in Silver.

I really want this episode to not suck. Series 7B has been, in a word, directionless. I know Moffat was really adamant in his desire to have a no two-parter, no series arc season, but… wow. I can’t really describe what a mess this half of a season turned out. Except for Journey To The Centre of the TARDIS, the episodes suffered from the no two-parter rule.

Which brings us here. Spoilers ahoy!

Nightmare in Silver sees the Doctor, Clara, and her two wards, Angie and Artie, travelling. The children are unimpressed. Really, kids? The universe’s last Time Lord takes some time off his schedule saving random races and unraveling the Clara mystery to entertain you kids by making you ride his bigger-on-the-inside time machine, brings you to a space theme park in the future, and you’re bored? I wonder how Clara hasn’t quit her job yet.

Anyway, it’s revealed that the planet where the theme park is located is abandoned – except for a platoon of very incompetent soldiers, an awesome midget named Porridge, and the theme park owner. Thanks to a nasty Cyberman invasion.

Anyway, thoughts:

• Gaiman promised us that he is out to make the Cybermen scary again. I can’t say they scared me, but I could imagine the new and improved Cybermen scaring the shit out of a twelve year old.
• I love the idea that the Cybermen are such a a threat to people not named “the Doctor” that they have to blow up an entire planet once a single Cyberman is spotted.
• Awesome upgrades, by the way. The instant upgrades and how they quickly adapt to new situations is the logical extension of how the Cybermen should be.
• That bullet time sequence was beyond cool, by the way.
• The kids are fucking annoying. I, for the life of me, cannot figure out why Clara and the Doctor thought they were worth saving. Seriously, you’re in the future, and in space, and you’re bored?! Get a little perspective.
• Gaiman said that a LOT of scenes were cut out from his script. I really wish they made an exception to the “no two-parters” rule, because if anyone deserved a two parter it would be Neil Fucking Gaiman.
• Matt Smith’s menacing evil Cyberman-controlled Doctor was easily the best part of the episode. A chess battle with oneself? Brilliant.
• Thank GOODNESS they remembered that Cybermen used to be vulnerable to gold.
• Granted, this isn’t my favorite episode of the season (or the series as a whole) but I enjoyed it a lot.
• I am pretty worried because we’re at the penultimate episode and we have not seen the Doctor-Clara relationship progress at all. We have not seen any plot advancement as well. Are we going to see next week’s finale to feel really disconnected from the rest of the season?

All said, I think this was a pretty good episode. Not exactly The Doctor’s Wife level of brilliance, but as a Cybermen episode, it was fun. I just wish this season had more brilliance to it instead of having one mindless blockbuster-style episode after another.

What do you think of Nightmare in Silver? Gimme your thoughts in the comments!

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Hey internet! This blog was down for a bit a while back. Sorry about that. I’m still in the process of fixing stuff and soon enough you’ll find me restoring this blog back the way it used to be.

Now if I can only find things to blog about.

(Thanks to Jhay for helping me fix this!)

Hello, everyone. It is time once again for my review of the latest Doctor Who episode, so please indulge me as I bore the shit out of you while I talk about the various intricacies of the Christmas Special. Ok, ready, guys? Here we go.

I wasn’t able to talk about the last two episodes before The Snowmen, mainly because The Power of Three and The Angels Take Manhattan were two of the most heartbreaking  Doctor Who episodes I have seen since Rose Tyler and Donna Noble’s respective exits. I really, really, loved the Ponds, ok? Rory’s my second-favorite companion after Donna, and we all know about my unhealthy obsession with Amy Pond and her ginger sexiness. Which is why I was both dreading and anticipating Clara’s debut as companion in The Snowmen. How the hell is she going to live up to the Ponds? Also, is she going to be another sassy, sexy, companion in the same vein as Amy and River?

Full review, plus spoilers, after this point!

So The Snowmen is set in 1892, where the Doctor has been hiding and sulking after the Ponds died – despite the strong objections of Commander Strax and our favorite Victorian Detective Ninja Lesbian Inter-Species Couple, Jenny and Madame Vastra. (Try saying “Victorian Detective Ninja Lesbian Inter-Species Couple” out loud five times. Come on.) He meets Clara, a girl who is insistent that he helps her out figuring the mystery of the living psychic snow that turns into murderous snowmen. Murderous snow voiced by Ian “Gandalf and Magneto” McKellen with the manager from Spice World controlling the snow. Yeah. How awesome is that?

Anyway, the Doctor, despite his insistence that his days of adventures and saving the universe are through, ends up investigating the mysterious snow, and discovers how wonderful this Clara girl is. Seriously. The moment Clara shows that spark of brilliance in her when Madame Vastra puts her on the one-word test, I was sold. It was one of my favorite moments of any companion, ever. I also love the idea of her dying twice.

Anyway, thoughts, in bullet form:

• Before, I theorized that Clara Oswin Oswald uploaded her mind to the Dalek Neural Web before she died in Asylum of the Daleks. We all know it didn’t pan out this way, but I think she’s related to the Great Intelligence in one way or another. That’s how she keeps on living.
• When the Doctor gives Clara the key to the TARDIS, it felt so amazing. It’s just one of those moments that have earned its emotional gravitas. It has given me so many feelings.
• The resolution felt rushed, like in The Power of Three, but I’m willing to give it a pass because of the brilliant reintroduction of Clara.
• I love Strax, Jenny, and Vastra, and I would pay to see them in their own spin-off.
• Speaking of Strax, oh you poor potato, you.
• I love the Doctor-Strax dynamic. I want to see a few episodes of just the two of them sans other companions.
• And it felt a bit cramped, but I really, really, love the new TARDIS interior. I love how everything is moving inside. I kinda miss the coat hanger though – small touches like that make the TARDIS for me.
• I know this isn’t really popular, but I love the callback to the 80′s Doctor Who with the new title sequence. And hearing the new theme song and how it combines all versions of the theme songs over the years has given me goosebumps.
• Oh, hey, they brought back the Doctor’s face in the title sequence! Finally!
• Given that this was a Christmas special, I was ready to accept that it was going to be cheesier than usual. Yep. Thankfully it wasn’t as cheesy as last year’s special.
• We were SO close to having a modern Who companion who wasn’t from the 21st century! I was hoping to see Victorian Clara cope with the future.
• I liked Clara’s personality here better than her appearance in Asylum of the Daleks. She’s more subdued and less sassy, and her kindness really shows, as opposed to Amy Pond’s sass-back tendencies.
• I wish they’d veer away from the sassy girl personality of recent companions, but Clara’s different enough from Amy that I like her already.
• No more River Song, please. I don’t care how awesome a Clara-River confrontation becomes. I don’t want to see her anymore.
• Doctor Who, can we have a single companion who doesn’t kiss the Doctor? I mean, Jesus, you even got Rory and the Doctor to snog.
• The Sherlock Holmes bit was brilliant! Also, “it takes one to snow one.”
• “It’s smaller on the outside.” BRILLIANT.
• The joke about the London Underground being a weak strategic point in 1967 made no sense, until I found out that the Second Doctor first encounters the Great Intelligence in the London Underground in 1967. PREDESTINATION PARADOX, BITCHES.
• I loved the bow tie bit. Seriously. What else could be the best way to show the Doctor was back.
• More scenes of Jenna-Louise Coleman running. Please.
• I believe that this was the best introduction of a companion ever. Clara had huge shoes to fill after Amy, and she delivered.

A Christmas Carol is still my favorite special, honestly, but this is a great way to introduce a new companion. Excited for the rest of series 7.

Now, you tell me what you thought of The Snowmen – let me hear your thoughts in the comments!

Even though I got nothing off that Christmas Wishlist I made a few weeks back (you guys suck), I’m still greeting you all a MERRY CHRISTMAS! Anyway, here’s my gift for you all:

Okay. Anyway, bye, guys. I’m off to stuff myself with Christmas dinner leftovers. Enjoy the holidays!

Welp, 2012 just went by so fast. I can’t believe it’s December already. And yeah, I barely blogged at all. Sorry. To make up for the shitty year that was 2012, I’m going to write something now. And it’s a Christmas wishlist. Because, come on, it’s that time of year where I bug you, my readers, for expensive consumer electronics and with the lack of gifts from you all, I’ll end up getting disappointed in you guys. Again. Anyway. Wishlist coming up.

iPad mini or Nexus 7

I honestly don’t know if I need a tablet. My smartphones do the job fine, but I swear, I can’t read books on my phones. I’m actually thinking of getting a 7″ tablet just for books. And 7″ seems to be the perfect size because I don’t want to lug a full-sized tablet around. Aaaand yeah, getting work done on the without squinting on my phone’s screen is also a good idea.

Also, honestly, unlike people who would kill for their preferred mobile OS, I really don’t have a preference. I like Android and iOS. They’re equally good and bad on so different things that seeing people mouth off each other on the net is funny. Anyway, I want both the iPad mini and the Nexus 7. The Nexus 7 seems to be pretty superior, but I have a shitload of paid apps on the App Store already. I don’t know. Whatever. Either one works fine for me.

Ukelele

Yeah, this is weird. Watch a fat grown guy fiddle around with a ukelele. Weirdest shit ever. But I don’t care – I wanna have my own ukelele, because learning  and mastering a new instrument is always a good thing.

Uke-bass

I have no logical reason for wanting a uke-bass other than it looks cool. I mean, look at it. LOOK AT IT. Also, it seems to be a better choice than an acoustic bass guitar.

Wii U

I know, I know, I’m not a gamer, but I still want this baby. It might end up on the “Stuff Ade Barely Uses” pile, but right now, I don’t care. I want a Wii U and all that comes with it.

So, what about you? What do you want for Christmas? Tell me about it in the comments!

I’ll let you in on a secret: I’m not much of a gamer. Sure, I can survive a couple of rounds in Tekken or Street Fighter, and I’ve put in countless hours finishing Resident Evil 2 and 3, but I never bothered owning a console since my PS1 broke, I don’t have any games installed on my PC, and if you put me in the middle of an FPS multiplayer match I will suck so bad my teammates will kill me once the 3rd match starts.

But then, I’ve always loved scary games with loads of zombies in them, hence my fondness of the Resident Evil series, even though I failed to finish 4, 5 kinda sucks, and I didn’t even bother with 6 due to the bad press. And, yeah, don’t get me started on the fucking stupid movies. Which brings us to The Walking Dead: The Game.

I’ve heard nothing but good things about this episodic game from my officemates. Once a new episode comes out, they’d download it, finish it in a day, and end up talking about it like some TV show. I decided to give it a try. And even though at $20 it was hella expensive for an iOS game, if everything people say about this game was true, it’ll be worth it.

If you’re familiar with the comic book and/or TV show, you’d know that The Walking Dead isn’t all about zombies. It’s about how people survive and cope with the whole world going to shit around them, and with occasional zombie attacks.

The Walking Dead: The Game takes inspiration from that concept and runs away with it. You decide what your main character – Lee Everett, a man convicted of murder – says and does, and you deal with the consequences.

Anyway, the zombie apocalypse happens, and our favorite convict finds Clementine, a little girl who may or may not be orphaned, but is definitely alone and in danger. He takes her under his wing and decides to protect her from all the shit going on around them. They travel, meet loads of people, piss off said people, end up getting said people get killed, slaughter a bunch of zombies, and so on and so forth.

Again, I’ve mentioned that deciding what Lee says or does takes up the bulk of this game. However, in the midst of a zombie apocalypse, your decisions will never keep everyone happy. You will be bound to piss off people. You will make a lot of bad decisions. Your decisions will get people killed. People will never forget. You will deal with the fallout. You will feel feelings for fictional computer-generated people. And, I swear to god, this game will take an emotional toll on you.

Oh, yeah, there are loads of action scenes, too, whenever the zombies catch up with you, and with a timer showing how limited your reaction time is, and even though killing these zombies are easy, you end up freaking out like crazy. There are puzzles, but they’re kinda stupid and pointless and the less said about them the better.

By the time you get to episode 5, you’d be so emotionally invested in the story of Lee and Clementine that you find yourself getting angry whenever Lee does the same. And honestly, by the time the final scenes played I was in “Ade don’t cry Ade don’t cry Ade don’t cry Ade don’t cry Ade don’t cry FUCK IT I HAVE SOMETHING IN MY EYES I’M NOT CRYING” mode.

Anyway, I’ve spent three days finishing this game, and I can see myself going through all 5 chapters again, doing different decisions, seeing how it all turns out differently with my choices. Sure, the controls aren’t really all that great, and the framerate stutters a bit every now and then, but they’re not major problems.

Seriously, buy and play this game. Now. It’s not just for iOS – it’s on a shitload of platforms, and it’s totally worth it. Go on, download it.

Have you played The Walking Dead: The Game? How did you find it? Let’s talk about it in the comments!

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