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Come Get Some Duke Nukem 3d, Wii is prime for Hardcore, and is there really a Hardcore or Casual division? - Welcome to the column that believes birthdays are kinda like the yearly edition of Madden football, you get all excited for release day only to find out nothing has changed from the year before known as Dare to Play the Game.

Welcome to another edition of Dare to Play the Game. I had a birthday on Tuesday. I turned thirty-three. Yes, your favorite video game columnist turned thirty-three. The end is near; okay, okay not really.

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Gaming in the Olympics, Disgaea goes cheap, and the true reason why Final Fantasy is on Xbox 360 - Welcome to the column that is an Olympic gold medalist in Speed Snoring & Sarcasm (and did it with a broken friggin neck!) known as Dare to Play the Game.

Welcome to another edition of Dare to Play the Game. 52/27/??/??. That’s right. Two of my characters this week are currently doing the limbo dance. Talloween & Magkick. Magkick was the recipient of a doomed server from the start while Talloween has been on again / off again because it is very hard to solo a priest.

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Mario Bava is undergoing something of a revival of interest these days, what with Tim Lucas’ magisterial book Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark and the recent Anchor Bay box sets. Over the last little bit, I’ve been re-watching some of Bava’s films, along with a friend who hasn’t seen them before, and I was struck by a comment he made about Blood and Black Lace: that this was the first horror film he’d seen where the victims had no existence other than as victims. This is true, and it made me think about some of the other things that distinguish Bava’s films from the films they would influence.

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Death of Sierra, No Yoda vs Vader, and Pre-Owned Sales going extinct? - Welcome to the column that is about to start a rant the size of Barbara Streisand’s nose before the surgery known as Dare to Play the Game.

Welcome to another edition of Dare to Play the Game. 52/27/22/14. Every character this week in Warcraft with the exception of my hunter got some love. My troll rogue marched and hit level 52 with help from the Hinterlands and earned his first useable trinket. My blood elf mage stormed six levels and made his way into the Ghostlands. Even the dwarf priest who had not seen action for at least a month got some good shoulders & found his way questing again in Redridge.

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Welcome to this week’s edition of the New Release Tuesday Blog. Hitting the streets today (August 5th, 2008), we have…

Top DVD Releases

• Nim’s Island
• Starship Troopers 3: Marauder
• Starship Troopers Trilogy
• The Counterfeiters

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Flipping through the latest issue of Rue Morgue, I happened on a capsule review that mentioned how most grindhouse fare (whether actual or neo) rarely delivered on its promises. This is, of course, absolutely true, and I don’t for a moment pretend that this comes as news to anyone reading these words. I do want to consider this factor from two angles, though.

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XBLA Summer Time, Gears of War 2 going Backwards & the Bitter Core of Gaming - Welcome to the column that sees summer as a chance to stretch their feet and wiggle their toes as long as it is inside a house with massive amounts of air conditioning known as Dare to Play the Game.

Welcome to another edition of Dare to Play the Game. 51/27/22/8. I started another character, somebody please shoot me. No, I swear it is not Warcraft/Toon ADD. This time, I started a Blood Elf Mage named Magkick on a PVP server. Furthermore, I have the best of intentions.

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A few years ago, I had the pleasure of reviewing Larry Fessenden’s Wendigo for this site. Recently out on DVD is his much belated follow-up, The Last Winter (not to be confused with the Canadian coming-of-age tale of the same name). I’m happy to report that the skill Fessenden showed in Wendigo is very much on display in his new feature.

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Ubisoft Hacks themselves, Warcraft Achievements & Sonic’s got a Sword? - Welcome to the column that slices off their nose to spite their face known as Dare to Play the Game.

Welcome to another edition of Dare to Play the Game. 50/26/22. I finally did my last pvping for my rogue. I worked my way back up to 20 marks and got my blooming blue ring. The rest of the time was spent in dungeons mostly amassing money & items for my hunter to disenchant.

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Welcome to this week’s edition of the New Release Tuesday Blog. It is quite a slow day in the world of DVD/BD releases. The only notable titles hitting the streets today are 21 (DVD & Blu-ray), Vampyr (Criterion Collection) (DVD), The Mummy (Blu-ray), The Mummy Returns (Blu-ray), Las Vegas: Season Five (DVD) and Spaced: The Complete Series (DVD). Here are the rest of this week’s releases…

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Last week, as I was writing about lost films, I was musing about the many films I had read about in my youth but had never seen. Many of those from the early decades of film history are, I assumed, lost forever. I was thinking particularly of the really early stuff, and particularly of the films of Georges Méliès. While many of his films are still extant (and I have extolled the previous Kino release previously), many of those I had wished to see were those Denis Gifford describes in his Pictorial History of Horror Movies. A prime example would be The Merry Frolics of Satan (1906). The single still in the book – of carriage drawn by a skeletal horse with an accordion-like torso – has always fascinated me. So I was going to mention this film as an example of the lost but lamented. Just to be on the safe side, though, I did a quick search, and discovered, to my delight, that it is NOT lost. To my further delight, I found it on a collection which can best be described as mind-blowing.

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Xbox 360 Price Cut, New Wolfenstein & Xbox 360 Hard Drive madness? - Welcome to the column that went to E3, got way too belligerent with the Wii hard drive Booth (and later found out one didn’t exist) and was asked to leave known as Dare to Play the Game.

Welcome to another edition of Dare to Play the Game. 49/24/22. In World of Warcraft News, the patch for 2.4.3 is out as of Tuesday. The real news of course out of the patch is that level 30 characters get mounts, where it used to be that level 40 was the magic number. The cost of the mount training has also decreased, to 35 gold.

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So the news this week was very exciting for fans of vintage films, and especially for those whose dreams are haunted by thoughts of lost films rediscovered. Hot on the heels of Kino’s announcement of a new DVD release of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, due next year and apparently a further improvement on their previous (superb) release, came word that a completely uncut version of the film had been found in Argentina. That, friends and neighbours, is BIG. The full three-hour-plus version of the film hasn’t been seen since the original release, and not everywhere at that. In recent years, we’ve seen some pretty fine editions of the film, but all of them have had to make do with extensive summaries and mouth-watering stills to fill in the gaps. Certain characters that barely show up, if at all, in what has been seen to date, actually have quite substantial roles in the full version. And now it has been found. True, it’s in pretty rough shape, but it exists, and no doubt a full restoration effort is underway. Kino has apparently said that the found footage might well be added to the forthcoming DVD.

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Episodic Gaming, Irish Anthem screw-up & Pub Games for Fable II? - Welcome to the column that gets drunk & gambles a lot, but not enough to admit they have a problem known as Dare to Play the Game.

Welcome to another edition of Dare to Play the Game. So somewhere in my World of Warcraft experience, I think I burnt myself out a little bit. I was playing with my level 19 blood elf hunter quite a bit, going into battlegrounds and such.

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Welcome to this week’s edition of the New Release Tuesday Blog. Batman takes center stage today with multiple releases - Batman Begins (DVD & Blu-ray), Batman - Gotham Knight (DVD & Blu-ray) and Batman Begins Limited Edition w/ Gotham Knight (DVD & Blu-ray). Other notable titles hitting the streets today include Stop-Loss (DVD), Superhero Movie (DVD), The Ruins (DVD & Blu-ray), Sleepwalking (DVD & Blu-ray) and Stargate Atlantis - The Complete Fourth Season (DVD). Here are the rest of this week’s notable releases…

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We’re all familiar with the zombie movie, most particularly the post-1968 zombie flick. That was the year George Romero permanently transformed the zombie into a flesh-eating ghoul – perhaps the only instance of a long-standing monster having its rules of behaviour altered almost beyond recognition, and to the point that there have been virtually no NON-flesh-eating zombies on film since Night of the Living Dead. But that’s a topic for another time. Co-existing with the neo-zombie movie, and sometimes fusing with it (as in 28 Days Later and its sequel), is the tale of mass psychosis. A recent example is the 2007 film The Signal, directed by David Bruckner, Jacob Gentry and Dan Bush.

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No Piracy for Crytek, Free Rainbow Six & Diablo III? - Welcome to the column that cares about you as the consumer but asks that you don’t let the other consumers know about our torrid affair known as Dare to Play the Game.

Welcome to another edition of Dare to Play the Game. Rule #1 for this week, if you aren’t a twink in the 10-19th level World of Warcraft Warsong Gulch battleground, be prepared for many many deaths. I have a level 19 blood elf hunter and after my main Lantanador (who is level 49) had so much success in the 40-49 WSG battleground, I figured I would give it a try with my hunter.

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Welcome to this week’s edition of the New Release Tuesday Blog. Another somewhat slow day for big release news, but we do get a few good titles in Vantage Point (DVD & Blu-ray) and Drillbit Taylor (DVD & Blu-ray), Tyler Perry’s Meet The Browns (DVD & Blu-ray), Gangs of New York (Blu-ray), The Closer – Season Three and Mad Men - Season One (DVD & Blu-ray). Other then these, here are the other notable releases hitting the streets today…

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Well, I’m back, with apologies for a couple of weeks’ absence, and with some more facile musings. I’ve dumped all over M. Night Shyamalan in this space before, and it would be tempting to do it again, but I haven’t actually seen The Happening yet, so I won’t officially trash it right this minute. However, the vox populi has spoken, and the movie is officially a bomb, which makes three in a row for our boy, following up the atrocities of The Village and Lady in the Water. Which means it might, perhaps be time for a re-evaluation of the auteur, perhaps even time for a different branch of fandom to claim him for their own.

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PS2 Edutainment, Disney goes Rockband without the Band and the Beginning of the End? - Welcome to the column that knows the end is near when it’s mentioned in the mainstream press as informative & witty known as Dare to Play the Game.

Welcome to another edition of Dare to Play the Game. I don’t feel like crap anymore. Unfortunately, now my girlfriend feels like crap. So that means I’m feeling like crap by proxy I suppose. WoW update: 48/22/18 and I will be sick of Blacksmithing quests very soon. A man should not have to mine this many mithril bars in one sitting

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Postal wins an award, 360 Avatars all gassed up and ready to go, and a brand new TV Gaming Competition Show? - Welcome to the column that got dressed an hour early but realized it has no place to go known as Dare to Play the Game.

Welcome to another edition of Dare to Play the Game. I feel like crap. Actually I’m getting better, because a day or so ago I felt like absolute crap. It’s kinda different and usually doesn’t involve vodka. I stayed home from work on Monday and spent a good portion of that time either getting rest or playing World of Warcraft with my trolly troll and working on a blacksmithing quest. Cause I soooo love blacksmithing quests *insert sarcasm flag here*. But it helps your skill, it really does. I also did the unthinkable. I pvp’ed.

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Welcome to this week’s edition of the New Release Tuesday Blog. You know it is a rather slow release day when the top titles are Fool’s Gold (DVD & Blu-ray) and Be Kind Rewind (DVD & Blu-ray). At least we get a couple of good TV-on-DVD releases in Burn Notice - Season One (DVD), Californication - Season One (DVD) and ER – Season Nine (DVD). Other then these, here are the other notable releases hitting the streets today…

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