Category: Featured

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Featured Game Reviews

We Review: Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja Storm 2

If you’ve ever been a fan of anime and manga, then odds are you’ve come across Masashi Kishimoto’s Naruto at some point or another. Inevitably, a string of video games accompanies such a successful franchise, and since Naruto is a story about ninjas, these aforementioned games have a very heavy fighting bent to them. Happily, I am a huge fan of the Naruto series, so I was quite pleased to get a chance to play through one of the latest games in the series, Ultimate Ninja Storm 2.

Find my full review after the break.

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Arty Awesomeness Featured

Can You Draw The Internet?

It’s very difficult to imagine our lives without the Internet. We’ve so heavily relied on it for all sorts of personal and business transactions. With around 1.8 billion people on the Internet it’s becoming more and more difficult nowadays to distinguish between our online and offline worlds. Researchers say that between 5% and 10% of surfers suffer some sort of dependency on the Web (see Internet Addiction Disorder).

We surf the Web every day and people have been trying to visualize what the Internet looks like for years now. Ad agency Saint approached this in an interesting manner – they set up an online drawing contest and pitted a group of school children against professionals who work in the creative industry. These aren’t ordinary children though, according to Saint, they eat, breathe, and live the Internet.

Children today are growing up in a world of technology and communications. They have never experienced a world without the internet, with every part of their day consumed by mobile phones, websites, computer games, apps, Xbox, you name it.

The website Can You Draw The Internet? hosts the drawings from both parties and you can now vote for your favourite visualizations of the Internet. Have a look at some of the submissions after the jump.

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Awesomeness Competitions Featured Site Announcements

Win Funky-Fresh T-shirts From Springleap!

NOTE: This competition has ended.

It’s been an absolute age since we last had a competition here on the blog. Summer is just around the corner and we know the importance of looking crispy. T-shirts are a warm-weather basic that can take your image from zero to hero. In the last 150 years t-shirts have undergone an impressive metamorphosis from utilitarian mens undergarments to one of the most popular, fashionable items of clothing in your wardrobe.

From 19th-century stevedores working on the docks to rugged cowboys out on the range to armed forces in the heat of battle, t-shirts saw their first use as practical undergarments but it wasn’t until the early 50s when actors like Marlon Brando and James Dean turned them into something that every man and woman wanted to be seen in. We here at Onelargeprawn want to fulfill your earthly desires to look cool and are giving you the chance to win t-shirts from funky-fresh online apparel retailer, Springleap.

Springleap is not just an online purveyor of superb t-shirts, it also provides a platform where passionate designers can showcase their work – in the form of t-shirt designs. It’s a win-win situation for everyone including you because…

…we’ve got FIVE Springleap t-shirts to give away, one for each of the five lucky entrants that we’ll pick at the end of the competition. In a “have your cake and eat it” kind of fashion, we’d like you to choose your favourite t-shirt available in the Springleap shop and if you’re one of the winners you’ll get the t-shirt you wanted. Sounds pretty simple no? It is, and if you’re keen to be on winning ways, find the full competition details after the jump.

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Featured Game Reviews

We Review: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

Star Wars The Force Unleashed II

Let’s begin with a simple question, your answer will determine whether you will enjoy this game or not. What colour is Darth Vader’s lightsaber?

Is it…

  1. Blue
  2. Red
  3. Can we start hacking people up with it yet
  4. Meh… who cares

If you answered blue, you might be confused. Anakin Skywalker used a blue lightsaber and when he is turned to the dark side gives it up for a red saber, the colour favoured by Sith Lords. I knew I was going to have trouble liking this game about two minutes in when, in a stunning consistency error, a ‘memory segment’ shows Vader stabbing our hero with a… blue lightsaber. Shudder! How can a company that only works on Star Wars games commit such an obvious error? Well once you have played the game from start to finish you may have your answer. To my mind this game lacked polish, and whilst enjoyable it needed refinement. Maybe they rushed it out? Who knows, but let’s be honest this is a mediocre game. I’ll tell you why I think that, after the jump.

Star Wars The Force Unleashed II

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Featured Useful/Useless Info

Top 5 Places in SA to Survive the Zombie Apocalypse

Crocodile vs Leopard

When the Zombie Apocalypse comes, I will be prepared. You should be too, my friend Stephen is an expert in these things having watched every zombie flick ever made and he reckons it’s definitely coming. I believe him, although he also told me there’s no such thing as a left and a right sock… That aside we should all be prepared. Personally I keep all my gardening implements sharp and close to hand, I also have a supply of canned beans. But for most of you, huddling in a basement clutching a sharpened spade and eating baked beans isn’t the definition of surviving. It’s a confined space after all with very little air… my digestion is sensitive to beans ok, lay-off already.

So I put together a handy list of places you might try to get to in order to survive the mindless brain-feasting hordes. Grab a Urban Bone Machete Mark II from Zombie Tools and hit the jump to head to The Winchester one of my recommended safe spots.

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Featured Game Reviews

We Review: Castlevania: Lords of Shadow

Konami has been making Castlevania games for 24 years now. They have legions of fans and followers. I was not one of them, you see when all the cool kids were cracking whips and kicking vampire ass on their NESs and SNESs, I was relegated to the pitiful Sega Master System. Our other reviewer TyrannicalDuck is far more interested in the franchise but sadly he was taken ill with the flu when this review copy of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow arrived. So I thought I’d give it a bash seeing as I’m now a cool adult and possess a console that is able to run the game.

Being a newcomer to the franchise I have no preconceived notions of what a Castlevania game should be, and having chatted to TyrannicalDuck it seems people are wondering how this can be called a Castlevania game when there isn’t a hint of free-roaming nor does perpetual antagonist Dracula show up as the end-of-game boss. Another thing, it’s not canon – this reboot by relatively unknown developer, MercurySteam, has nothing to do with the rest of the franchise. OK, fine. Instead of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow we could call it Gabriel “Lesley” Belmont: Melancholy Monster Slayer but it still won’t change the fact that it’s an absolutely fantastic game. So now, you know my feeling about it right off the whip. If that’s all the affirmation you need then feel free to stop reading here and hunt down the game at the nearest shop, but if you want to hear more about the innards of this entertaining action adventure title, then my review continues after the jump.

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Arty Awesomeness Featured Movies Video Clips

TimeScapes: Rapture

I first heard about Tom Lowe in April thanks to a tweet from Pieterjan Grobler (we call him Krypty). I happened to find out today, again courtesy of Krypty, that the ace filmmaker and 2010 astronomy photographer of the year (his winning photo, Blazing Bristlecone) has just released some more footage debut film, “TimeScapes”.

Lowe uses Canon and Red MX cameras and mixture of slow-motion and time-lapse photography to create some of the most amazing scenes from the American Southwest. Have a look at this latest piece, TimeScapes: Rapture below.

More about Lowe’s project can be found at Timescapes.org and you can follow him on Twitter.

[via Krypty]

Categories
Featured Gaming News

Tales of a Console Newbie

I’m a gamer, always have been, probably always will be. I’m proud of it. However for many years my gaming has been purely PC-based. There are many reasons for this. The first and most significant is that I just could never see the value in a machine purely for games; my PC is my workhorse and its fancy graphics card delivers better gaming quality than I have ever seen on a console. So I get the best of both worlds. Besides no console gamer can ever tell me first person shooters are better on a console… they would be lying. This is a fact.

This is the story of how I finally caved and bought a console. The full tale is after the jump.

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Animal Kingdom Arty Awesomeness Featured Photoworthy

Beautiful Dog Portraits by Tim Flach

If you liked Evan Kafka’s funny pet portraits you may like the works of 52-year-old British photographer Tim Flach. He shoots a variety of animals including bats, turkeys, frogs, dogs, and fish.

“I shoot bats, embryos and flies on shit. I’m fascinated by how we interpret and humanize images of animals.”

Today we take a look at his series of portraits entitled Dog Gods where he pays tribute to canis lupus familiaris, our furry best friends. The set is made awesome by the super-cute thick-matted Komondor. Have a look at some of his shots after the jump.

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Arty Awesomeness Entertainment Featured Music Video Clips Weirdness

Kill Your Co-Workers

Unless you’re a one-man business (and you aren’t a douche), chances are high that you’ll encounter a co-worker who you just want to…invalidate. This rad music video for Flying Lotus explores the theme of killing off irritants in superb style. It starts off with a very happy parade down a town’s main street. The robots have been invited and are having a great time until Rhon, the human, behaves like a dick. It gets bloody from then on, but in a very endearing kind of way.

Check out Kill Your Co-Workers below.

The video was created by graphic designer, Mike Winkelmann. If you’re any good at animation, you can download the 3D models used in the video and create your own. Find the source files on Winkelmann’s website, Beeple.

[via Dooby Brain]