I’ve been scratching my head trying to figure out how EA’s pricing structure works. My girlfriend and I have been looking for something fun to pass the time away on Xbox Live, and nearly jumped when we saw Monopoly available in the Arcade space. Euphoria turned to dread once we saw the $39.99 price, making it an impulse buy no more.

Electronic Arts is clearly not on the same page. I might have paid $10- $15 (and maybe even $20.00) and thought nothing of it. Forty bucks just seems cruel. Waitaminute, NO online multiplayer? ZERO? The WALMART board game is $15 bucks, folks. FAIL.

Compiled for your listening pleasure, a Youtube fan put together all of the hilarious Ellis stories from Left 4 Dead 2. Everyone’s favorite country survivor get his fifteen minutes of fame for your listening pleasure…

Artist Vince Proce posted concept art for a Mortal Kombat ‘re-imagining’ that he pitched shortly before Midway went under. Going into details about where he was heading with the designs, I’ve got to admit that this could’ve been an interesting reboot had this gotten off the ground. I’m really digging the new look for Kano. Which Otherworld fighter would you like to see?

Check out the redux after the jump.

Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter goes to Steam on November 24th. No word yet on when we’ll see the Xbox Live version, but with a steam release, the console version is soon to follow. Mindless old-school style first person shooter fun? Sign us up.

Year: 2009
Running Time: 82 minutes
Rated: R
SRP:$ 39.95
Studio(s): Universal Studios
Release Date: November 17, 2009

Film/Feature: B
(In Borat’s voice) Larry Charles and Sacha Baron Cohen’s extremely pop-u-lar 2006 film, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, put people on alert. Beware of an Anti-Semetic man with a camera behind him. This man, he have great powers, to show… people’s prejudice. I like him very-much!

Cohen’s latest film, Brüno does much of the same, this time, in a different costume, in the character of Brüno, a flamboyant Austrian TV host as the fish out of water, and plops him in Hollywood to seek out fame. He hires an agent (Lloyd Robinson as himself) to create the Brüno brand in the City of Angels. Brüno (Cohen) observes the star map of fame and like an instruction manual, follows in their footsteps: he tries to get his own talk show, start a charity, adopt an African-born child (Chibundu Orukwowu), and even, act straight. Surely, if successful, one of these will give him the reward of fame.

This time around Cohen never breaks character to hijack fashion shows, boot camps, sex parties, the Hollywood scene, blue-collar folk, and again, that bottomless pool of material, the Bible Belt of the USA. Brüno flaunts his over-aggressive sexuality onto men–unsuspecting or otherwise–who wouldn’t know a joke if it slapped them in the face with a 13-inch sex toy. Paula Abdul, Pete Rose, Latoya Jackson, Ron Paul; they all couldn’t escape him.

The degree of good taste or sensitivity is worth a debate, but Cohen and Charles are trying to get answers to the following questions: How far will people go to become famous? Would parents compromise their children to be famous? Is prejudice against race any different when it’s about sexual orientation? How vapid and removed are celebrities from their own common sense and independent thought? Can someone rid themselves of their “gayness” as easy as following a four-step plan? All of those sound like ludicrous questions but Charles and Cohen discover in some parts of America, it is quite the contrary. As Cohen found out with Borat, being openly prejudice put people at ease with their own prejudice. Here by being not just gay, but outwardly gay, prompts some of the strongest reactions out of people.

One of the most popular episodes of “The X-Files” was called “Pusher”. It involved a man who could use mind control, and as one would expect, this particular criminal had some serious moral deficiencies. That episode continues to be one of the most memorable for “X-Files” fans, so the writers for “Fringe” are treading on sacred ground for many.

The writers do manage to put a spin on the formula by having the mind control agent be a teenager, and giving the kind of explanation for the ability that meshes with the “Fringe” mythos. It’s been a long time since elements of The Pattern were directly linked to the activities of Massive Dynamic, so this was a welcome turn of events.

Since the end of the first season, The Pattern has largely been attributed to the activities related to immoral and illegal experiments conducted to develop both offensive and defensive capabilities for the coming war with Alt-Fringe. The role of Massive Dynamic in that scheme has never been completely clear, and this episode doesn’t necessarily change that. Instead, it adds to the evidence that Massive Dynamic was put in place to mitigate the human cost of developing an defense against Alt-Fringe.

That does much to render William Bell a more enigmatic figure. While he may consider it important to foster Olivia’s development as the most important element of Fringe Prime’s defense, there’s no indication of how far he’s willing to go to that end. We have yet to see much advancement in Olivia’s training, after all. But it makes sense that Massive Dynamic would be meant to facilitate that training, directly or indirectly.

That said, it’s hard to fathom what the current experiments in mind control are meant to achieve. Why create several versions of a single person, spread them around the country under foster care, and then conduct these experiments under those conditions? It speaks to the notion that William Bell never stopped the kind of experimentation that he and Walter started decades earlier, but it doesn’t quite seem to fit in the scheme of the conflict as it has been presented.

Having Peter be abducted and controlled made for some compelling tension, even if it was highly unlikely that he would be seriously hurt or killed. It was enough to see him try to work his way around the control and fail. Peter’s resourcefulness has always been an important part of his character, so it makes sense that he would keep testing and pushing Tyler’s ability.

More than that, it applied more pressure on Walter, who is slowly but surely losing the ability to hide what he knows about Peter’s unique background. Walter identified with the powerful emotions of losing a child, but at the same time, he was also reacting to the fact that he was, in truth, a child abductor. He’s been on both sides of that coin, and considering that Walter is not good with complex emotions, it’s hard to know how close Walter is getting to revealing the truth.

Overall, this was another solid entry for the second season, but the writers need to start pulling the threads together a bit more. Right now, the season seems to be struggling to present a clear direction, despite some key revelations along the way. Given some of the challenges to the ratings this season, thanks to an inexplicable timeslot shift by FOX, the writers need to make sure the story doesn’t get lose coherence.

Writing: 2/2
Acting: 2/2
Direction: 2/2
Style: 2/4

Final Rating: 8/10

Written by Eric Kripke and Nancy Weiner
Directed by Jim Conway

I must admit that I had some concerns when I first heard that an episode of the fifth season would be held at a “Supernatural” convention. I thought the writers were perhaps going a little too “meta” in the process. I’m still not convinced that it wasn’t a very bad idea, but it certainly had its charms.

Eric Kripke and the production staff love the fans, and they like to show it by gently mocking some of the sacred cows of the fandom. Just the fact that they tolerate the creepy Wincest fans is a testimony to their inclusivity. I think the writers did the fans justice by addressing, on a certain level, some of the common insults tossed at the super-fanatic. And I would hope that the fans enjoyed the recognition for what it was.

That said, I thought the episode was trying a little too hard to push its theme and moral underpinnings at the expense of the story. The entire ghost story aspect felt generic, and when even the main characters are wondering why they are getting sidetracked from their main mission, it’s telling. Only the fact that Chuck was able to toss out an unexpected lead on the Colt made it workable.

I mentioned in the review for the previous episode that the current run of relatively light-hearted episodes and side missions seemed to be designed to mitigate the darkness to come. Hopefully this will turn out to be true, and hopefully this trend is about to shift towards the darkness. Because if this continues for much longer, this season of “Supernatural” threatens to become a parallel to the disappointing sixth season of “The X-Files”.

As I’ve said before, comedy is a lot harder than drama. Most people can understand and relate to the core principles of the dramatic material, because it always boils down to the relationship between the Brothers Winchester. It’s a common language. Comedy, on the other hand, is largely subjective. Appreciation of a joke relies on relative context.

I also find it harder to appreciate the comedic episodes when the focus is less about revealing something interesting about the brothers and more on something external to them. The previous episode worked because, in the end, it was about Sam and Dean and the big picture. This was closer to “Hollywood Babylon”, though this episode did manage to still poke fan at something actually related to the show.

So far, this has been a somewhat surprising start to the fifth season, and not necessarily in a good way. While it has been solid and above average, the fifth season hasn’t been as strong as the fourth season. I think there have been some great episodes, but I haven’t been as hooked as I have been in the past. At least some of that must be the effect of too much light fare. There’s still plenty of time left for this season to ramp up, though, so I’m not expressing too much disappointment yet.

Writing: 2/2
Acting: 2/2
Direction: 2/2
Style: 1/4

Final Rating: 7/10

Your wives and girlfriends are going to need SOMETHING to do while you’re playing Modern Warfare 2, and EA has just the fix with Sims 3: World Adventures. Hitting shelves on November 17th, women-sim fans gobble these expansions like armchair quarterbacks binge on Madden at new release. If you want the missus on her good side, tease her with these new pics and trailer, then go pre-order the game. Go!

Modern Warfare 2 isn’t the only big game in November. If you’ve played the Xbox Live demo over and again, maybe you’re one of the thousands of fans that have swelled those pre-order numbers up to 4 times that of the original game in 2008! Zombie killing NEVER gets old, and Valve has been more than happy to supply screens to whet your appetite for that dead flesh you’ve been craving! Enjoy after the jump, and we’ll see you online on November 17th when Left 4 Dead 2 hits your retailer…

Year: 2009
Running Time: 106 Minutes
Rated: R
SRP: $39.95
Studio(s): Sony Pictures
Release Date: November 3, 2009

Film/Feature: B
Taking of Pelham 123 is a remake of the 1974 film, Taking of Pelham One Two Three. In the original film, Walter Matthau plays a New York City Transit cop who tries to stop four men from hijacking a subway train. The leader of the hijackers is played by Robert Shaw, and the film was a damn good one. I’d be the first one to criticize Hollywood in rehashing a perfectly good film–if it was bad.