Gamertell

Title: The Horus Heresy: False Gods
Author: Graham McNeill
Publisher: The Black Library
Release Date: 2006
Price: $7.99
Rating: One thumb up and one down, 79/100, C+, ** 1/2 out of five.
Pros: Incredible writing, great story, memorable characters are built up more, hard-hitting description
Cons: Same problem most sequels have. Too much attention to smaller details and it occasionally blocks out the story. Also inconsistently deals with characters.
Overall: It’s full of flaws but for a sequel it’s worth the money.

With False Gods, Graham McNeil has written a great second installment to the Horus Heresy series that tries too hard to outshine Dan Abnett’s Horus Rising.

Click through for the full review…

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On August 16, 2008, Kamikaze Pop in conjunction with Tokyopop held a Gothic & Lolita Fashion Showcase to promote the pre-release of the Gothic & Lolita Bible book. The event was held in the Action Theater of Sony’s Metreon in San Francicso, California (USA), amid a swarm of participants of all ages and sizes.

While waiting for the showcase to begin, guests were invited to shop the wares of local vendor, Miss Carlyfornia. Miss Carlyfornia offered many dainty and eloquently detailed hand-made accessories and crafts intended for the GothiLoli fan. Guests were also encouraged to…

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Check out the gallery: Kamikaze Pop Gothic Lolita Showcase 2008

In 1998 Sergei Lukyanenko created a dark fantasy mystery-thriller franchise that will grow to include four books, two movies and a computer game.

This Russian craze is known as World of Watches and began with the book Night Watch released in 1998 and translated into English in 2006.  The movie Night Watch was released in 2004, two years earlier than English translation of the book. The move is quite incredible although it is a bit bizarre and only loosely based on the book.

The franchise will soon be expanded further with the fourth book titled Final Watch being released in English October 2, 2008, and a second movie tentatively titled Twilight Watch and released in 2009.

The PC game Night Watch, developed by Nival Interactive and released in the United States on June 29, 2006, follows both the books and the film. The game is a weird mixture of strategy and role-playing that plays out like…

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Title: The Horus Heresy: Horus Rising
Author: Dan Abnett
Publisher: The Black Library
Release Date: 2006
Price: $7.99 (Borders price)
Rating: Two thumbs up, 100/100, A+, ***** out of five.
Pros: Incredible writing, great story, memorable characters, hard-hitting description with Tolkien-esque attention to detail.
Cons: It can be a little hard to follow in terms of the topics brought up. If you don’t understand British English, it will take some time to get used to the writing style.
Overall: More than worth the price and avoids the pulpy nature of Science Fiction

The Horus Heresy is a Warhammer 40000 licensed book series that takes place 10,000 years before standard franchise, illustrating the events that lead up to the perpetual war. The series is up to eight books, one of which has been released this month (August 2008) with a ninth to be released in December 2008. Horus Rising, written by Dan Abnett, is the first of eight books that detail the rise and fall of Horus and his faithful legions of genetically engineered Space Marines…

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Though the book series is completed, the fans still go on in the case of Harry Potter. The latest big event is the fan convention being held in Chicago this weekend. From August 7 to 11, 2008, downtown Chicago will be host to a slew of series’ fans. The event, known as Terminus, will feature Quidditch matches, a vendor area, a talk show, keynote presentations by Cheryl Klein and Tamora Pierce, a Wizard Rock concert, fan-creation displays, workshops, exploratory programming and academic programming. The event is taking place at the Chicago Hilton.

There is also going to be an extra, pre-convention concert. The Wrock Chicago concert is going on tomorrow (August 6, 2008) at the Hilton Chicago Hotel. Wrock Chicago is going to be a massive event, with 30 bands inspired by the Harry Potter series performing on three different stages from 11am to 5pm, and then from 7pm to 1am. That event is an extra $20 for people who have registered for Terminus, and $30 for those who haven’t. Some of the bands scheduled to appear are Harry and the Potters, Draco and the Malfoys, The Switchblade Kittens and The Whomping Willows.

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Title: Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing
Author(s): Sande Chenm Richard Dansky, Wendy Despain (Editor), Beth A, Dillon, John Feil, Alice Henderson, Erin Hoffman, Chris Klug, Jay Posey, Rhianna Pratchett, Haris Orkin, Evan Skolnick, Anne Toole, Maurice Suckling and Andre S. Walsh.
Price: $39.00 (paperback, 250 pages)
Release Date: May 19, 2008
Publisher: A.K. Peters
Format: Paperback
Pros: Written in easy-to-digest chunks and includes a few useful examples. Great text book for an upper-level high school course or lower-level college course.
Cons: Not quite as in-depth as a true professional guide. Should have more real-word examples with notes.
Overall Score: One thumb up, one sideways; 85/100; B; * * * 1/2 out of five.

Pro Techniques is not the in-depth guide that will satisfy skilled, professional writers. It is, however, an excellent primer for beginning writers and would make a decent text book for either an upper level high school course or lower level college course.

Click through for the full review…

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Title: Game Boys (aka Game Boys: Professional Videogaming’s Rise from the Basement to the Big Time)
Author: Michael Kane
Price: $24.95 (hardcover)
Release Date: June 23, 2008
Publisher: Viking (part of Penguin Putnam, Inc.)
Pros: Conveys the excitement, personality and seriousness of competitive gaming in a readable tone. A good book for gamers and pro gaming skeptics.
Cons: Starts a bit slow and has some overly simplified explanations of gaming and gaming terms.
Overall Score: Two thumbs up; 90/100; A-; * * * * out of five.

Kane’s Game Boys is so much better than the pop-catchy name implies. It is instead a well-formed, personal and serious look into select groups of pro gamers.

Click through for the full review…

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Gears fans, did you play the game for its story? Probably not but that isn’t stopping Epic games and Del Ray publishing from releasing three novels based on the games. The first one out the gate is Gears of War: The Battle of Aspho Fields, by Karen Traviss. It’ll be released on October 28, 2008 - just in time for the second game, which hits…

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Shonen Jump is going to be 40 years old soon, and Shonen Jump magazine is going to be five years old as well. So Viz media is going to use this as an opportunity to celebrate some of the most popular series. There will be a special edition issue of Shonen Jump, a contest to attend Japan’s Jump Festa anime convention and hardcover, collector’s editions of the first volumes of six popular series.

The highlight will be the special, hardcover edition of the August 2008 edition of Shonen Jump. For $24.99, fans will get a hardcover version of the magazine that has all the manga chapters that appeared in the very first and second issues Shonen Jump in December 2002. It will also have interviews with manga authors, a special Yu-Gi-Oh card and a poster to collect character stickers that will be found in volumes of Bleach, Death Note, Naruto and Slam Dunk.

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The latest set from Magic: The Gathering is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, the set was broken into two mini-blocks (Lorwyn and Shadowmoor) with two expansions each. Second, the set has two of the best story cycles written in the game’s history. For the purposes of this article the focus is novels.

The block novels for the current set begins with Lorwyn, named after the plane that it takes place on. The plane of Lorwyn is one that is stuck in midsummer, full of color and life. The story follows a motley crew of characters from every walk of life while they try to stop the elves and treefolk from what seems to be…

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