Theres a fair number of Marvel fans and a fair number of Transformer fans around here. Both should be pleased to hear this: The long rumored crossover book between the Avengers and Transformers is a reality.

Comics Continuum reports:
“Stuart Moore and Tyler Kirkham are the creative team for the Transformers/Avengers crossover between IDW Publishing and Marvel. Look for more on that book soon here in The Continuum.”

Direct and to the point. No word on whether this is a “team-up” or a “versus” or what. This is of course, not the first time Transformers have found their way into the Marvel Universe. The original comic series was published by Marvel, and issue #3 guest starred Spider-Man.

Thanks to Shiv’kala for the tip.

Year Zero, the new album from Nine Inch Nails has a teaser trailer.

Yeah, that spooked me too.

The viral marketing campaign to get the word out on this has gone above and beyond youtube videos or strategicly placed lite brites. Following tour dates in Portugal and Spain, NIN concertgoers have been finding USB flash drives left in bathroom stalls containing new songs from the album. Some of these drives contain files of static that when analyzed through a spectrogram reveal images or phone numbers leading to clips of more songs or bizarre 911 calls. Its a good thing NIN fans are so willing to dissect every bit of info they get because I doubt other artists would live up to this scrutiny.

Year Zero has been described by NIN Mastermind Trent Reznor as a concept album and a “soundtrack to a film that doesn’t exist” about anything from the future, politics, to the end of the world. Naturally, Reznor mentions Public Enemy’s Bomb Squad production as an influence. Those less educated with Public Enemy’s work might think Nine Inch Nails is making a rap record, but he’s actually referring to the mechanical and static nature of loops and samples. The first single, “Survivalism” is already being played on many radio stations and will be added to many more today. Dial up your local rock station and request it.

This is perhaps the best movie poster we’ll see all year. Reminiscent of the work of Drew Struzan, it’s got a classic quality and fully conveys how ridiculous this movie will be. Do note that all credits at the bottom say “BLAH BLAH BLAH.” Thats not placeholder text, thats the real deal.

Our favorite animated extra value meal will also appear on Playstation 2 with… a combat golf game. It’ll be written by series creators Matt Mallerio and David Willis, Midway will publish. Apparently Frylock has been admitted to a country club to play golf, but Shake and various villains from the show ruin your game with traps and boss attacks. If games based on comedy series in the past are any indication, this has the makings of a terrible game. Of course, it couldn’t be any worse than Home Improvement, and with the talent behind the show actually writing it, it may at least be funny if not fun to play.

The breakout release on the download circuit this week has to go to Playstation Network’s “fl0w”

Fl0w comes from Jenova Chen, the lead behind the highly creative PC game Cloud. It looks like a mash up between Katamari Damacy and Geometry Wars. You control a small organism in a vast expanse of water, and can gobble up those smaller than you, but avoid anything bigger. Naturally, with everything you eat, your microscopic character grows and you’ll be able to take on larger organisms.

Wii Virtual Console gets one of my all time favorites this week with Donkey Kong Country. I mentioned to fellow Powet Army solider Phil Bond that this game is every bit as good as Super Mario World, and I stand by that. Going in for a few levels of Co-op and then beating that giant beaver, all the platforming fun came rushing back. This was truly a special game that resides somewhere between the retro cool of the NES days and the less favorably remembered 32-bit revolution. Back when this came out, the Playstation and Saturn hype machines were getting ready to roar, then Rare and Nintendo dropped a Super NES game that looked better than anything on a CD based system! Sure it wasn’t 3D, but 3D was pretty much a disaster until Mario 64 came along, so this remains one of the great 2D games from the days when 2D was starting to fade.

Xbox Live is taking the shaft 2 weeks in a row now. Wednesday used to be the day to grab new Live Arcade games, but the most notable release to Marketplace recently has been the Borat dashboard theme and picture pack (I’ve taken Azamat as my avatar!). Team 17 hopes to have Worms ready soon, but have been frustrated by Microsoft’s constant delays. THQ announced they’re releasing in a box, much to our surprise. Tetris Evolution better be budget priced, because theres no reason that the world’s most popular puzzle game wouldn’t fit Live Arcade’s standards. An even though I own many other versions of Tetris (in arms reach, I have no less than 5 copies ready to go), I’ll probably buy this Xbox 360 version too.

You knew it was coming. Two new characters, Leo and Zafina are unveiled.

Namco proudly displayed the game for the first time at Japan’s AOU 2007 coin-op exhibition. Tekken Official has been updated with several screen shots and a short trailer.

Tekken 6 will undoubtedly land on the PS3 sometime after its arcade run, but with Virtua Fighter 5 jumping ship to Xbox 360, is is possible Namco will finally go multiplatform?

Power Girl and Oracle try to have a conversation, but Bizarro keeps interrupting.

Fan Film director Chris Notarile has created a pretty wide variety of DC comics inspired shorts, featuring some of the best and brightest from the good ol’ days of Justice League International. After the jump see Blue Beetle and Booster Gold deliver a public service announcement, Flash gets a speeding ticket, and Maxwell Lord endorses Advil. [Read the rest of this entry…]

This enterprising youtuber pretty much sums up whats most fun about Crackdown. The sandbox genre needed some new blood, and the next gen horsepower combined with your abilities to lift and detonate anything in the gameworld are just what the doctor ordered.

You start out in a boring room, where you can grab one of four vehicles provided by your supercop garage. After a senselessly long drive in a tunnel, you land on a street corner in the middle of a firefight between gang members and police. I took this first oppurtunity to kill everything that moved, and it was much more satisfying than in GTA because the aiming system actually kinda works. It’s not great, but I’ll get back to that. Getting back in my car, I drove up the road and find that pretty much everywhere I go there’s gangs, so there’s lots of enemies to kill. I wasted no time finding alternate ways of dealing with this problem by running gangs over, tossing random items at them, using explosives. The visuals are much better than screen shots and even videos give them credit for. It’s a very vibrant world and the hint of cartoonyness keeps me from getting too serious and screwing around. I’m sure theres a target I had to kill here, but I spent all my time driving around, trying to scale buildings, and using whatever I had laying around to maul criminals and civilians.

I was never a fan of GTA. I didn’t think it played well, didn’t think it looked good, and the sandbox options were pretty much limited to driving and murder. Crackdown offers exploration and explosives, which are much more my bag.

The demo is currently on Xbox Live Marketplace, and according to Major Nelson, its already more popular than most full Xbox 360 games.

Transformers Ultimate Bumblebee in action. All this can be yours for only ninety US dollars.

Theres a lot of ground to cover here, with 2 days of the show already come and gone… [Read the rest of this entry…]