The first episode of the Call of Cthulhu Backlog is now available over at Eat Sleep Game under its new title “Rebel FM Game Club”. It’s looking like this segment will be releasing on Mondays as a file separate from the main podcast, but still distributed through the Rebel FM podcast feed. Be sure to set your podcast grabber to keep the latest two episodes in the feed.

I am playing along, though I waited to start until the first episode was out so that I could find out how far they played. Thankfully it was mentioned early on that they played up to “the sewers”, which during my gameplay was about two and a half hours in. I still haven’t encountered combat, which is surprising since I have gathered quite a bit of ammo. There’s also more stealth sections than I was expecting, much of which is very reminiscent of Thief. That is to say, it works well.

I’m going to try to continue following along, though Left 4 Dead and the Grand Theft Auto IV: Lost & Damned expansion have been eating up most of my non-portable gaming time this week.

The Night Witches is the first of three, three-issue historical-fiction comics that Garth Ennis has written for his “Battlefields” series. Published by Dynamite Entertainment, The Night Witches features Russ Braun on page-to-page art, with cover art by John Cassaday and Gary Leach.
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By now you should be well aware of the podcast Rebel FM that is produced weekly by the people that brought us 1UP FM. What you may not know is that there are now two more all-new podcasts created by ex-1UP employees.

Ryan Scott (of GFW Radio and LAN Party podcast fame) has a new show called The Geekbox. Each week Ryan Scott, along with Karen Chu, Greg Ford, Andrew Fitch and Ryan “Master” Higgins gather at Comics Conspiracy in Sunnyvale California to record The Geekbox podcast. The Geekbox is something of a spiritual successor to GFW Radio and LAN Party by virtue that video games are not the main object of conversation. Rather, the crew discusses all things “geek” as they come up. World of Warcraft, Burn Notice and Lost are some recurring topics in the first three episodes. Other conversation concern things from comic books to Andrew Fitch’s dating life.

Not to be overlooked is Area 5, a new production company made up of former GameVideos employees. Their debut project, CO-OP, is a video podcast produced in the same general style of The 1UP Show; roundtable video game discussions with relevant gameplay footage displayed throughout. The first “arc” of CO-OP is a two-parter called “Reflection”. Therein, the Area 5 folks invite over their former co-workers to discuss their favorite games of 2008. Both videos together tally up to about 45 minutes. While CO-OP is free and hosted at YouTube for now, Area 5 may move to a subscription model in the future. There is no telling yet.

Finally, Rebel FM is trucking along. Audio quality has improved immensely thanks to the new equipment they were able to purchase with listener donations. As I said in my last 1UP-themed post, they plan to continue the popular Backlog segment from 1UP FM. Their first game was selected on-air this week, and it is Call of Cthulhu. Discussion about that game sounds like it will begin on next week’s episode. I have not played the game before and have meant to for years, so I think I will try to play along. It’s available for Xbox and PC and there is a Rebel FM post with information on where to acquire it.

Here’s a Garry’s Mod machinima trailer that spoofs the Dark Knight with perfection. It’s a teaser for a highly promising upcoming series featuring Don Newman on a TF2 server called ATF. You may have seen a couple videos of Don Newman before. He’s a skilled Pyro who almost exclusively uses the axe, along with flare and airblast. We’ll have to see whether he also makes for a suitable protagonist for this machinima series.

Chaos Theory is an independent casual game created by German developer blurredvision. The objective of each level in the game is to populate particle collectors with magnetically charged particles. Objects placed throughout each level, each with their own behavior and rules, will help get the particles to their destination. Ample dexterity, short term memory, and timing will be called upon to complete most of the later levels.

Tutorials which introduce new mechanics are peppered throughout Chaos Theory’s levels. This applied-learning helps difficulty ramp up at a pretty even pace through about the first third of the game, but a close relationship with the “retry” or “skip” button will quickly develop thereafter. While solving levels is rewarding in its own right, there are also Steam achievements and a level editor bundled for enthusiasts.
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Gigantic is an on-going, Dark Horse-published sci-fi comic that is currently on issue #2. Written by Rick Remender with art by Eric Nguyen, Gigantic is the first time the duo has joined forces since creating Strange Girl for Image comics which ran from 2005 to 2007.
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