Fans of gaming, booze, and general socialites will soon have a place to gather when ‘Mana Bar’ opens up this year in Brisbane, Australia.
Currently in the last stages of setup in Brisbane’s night life strip The Valley, The Mana Bar will serve as a great place to meet up. Owned and operated by gamers Yug (Australian Gamer), Yahtzee (Zero Punctuation), and their comrades Prasant Moorthy and Shay Leighton.
Opening up this February the Mana Bar is set to host events such as game releases parties, competitions and trivia nights with a 50 person venue fitted with video games free to play. Imagine a bar like any other night club in The Valley, but instead of a pool table there’s Street Fighter IV or Guitar Hero ready to go.
Check out the official site for all the info in the lead-up to the opening with forums now up and a bunch of photos.
Developer – Vigil Games
Publisher – THQ
Available on – Xbox 360, PS3
Reviewed on – Xbox 360
Darksiders is the product of every 90s gamers fantasy, being thrown quite literally into the apocalypse. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time has been remade for the current generation and overall it’s a good experience. Darksiders follows the story of “War”, one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, whose coming signifies the end of days and the breaking of the seven seals, who is called to bring judgment on the three armies of Heaven, Hell and Earth. The game begins with War arriving on earth to discover that the seventh seal has not been broken, but either the armies of Heaven, or the Hordes of Hell have begun the war early. Given that his brethren have not to been called he is defeated by a Demon, “Straga”. The overseers of balance, “The Council”, blame War for leading into the apocalypse early, and he ends up having to find out who are involved and punish them to clear his name, and so begins our journey. (more…)
The Canned Geek Podcast is a monthly geek-culture podcast featuring Will Owen and Kyle Evans from Canned Geek and Myself.
Three Melbourne geeks sit around talking about two films from 2009 you should probably go see (Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs and It Might Get Loud), the surprising news that the Spiderman movie franchise is being rebooted, an account of a Tetris and DJ event at a Melbourne bar and how video games will combine with alcohol at The Mana Bar.
You can download the podcast and see the full show notes at the Canned Geek website.
The guest line-up and dates for this years Supanova expo for Brisbane & Melbourne were recently announced, and this year there are a couple of pretty big names in the world of geekdom appearing, most notably Buffy The Vampire Slayer’s Spike himself James Marsters and legendary fantasy artist Boris Vallejo.
BRISBANE
April 9-11, RNA Showgrounds
MELBOURNE
April 16-18, Royal Showgrounds
Full guest list after the bump! (more…)
Game Connect Asia Pacific is an annual conference and networking event for the Asia Pacific games industry, hosted by the Game Developer’s Association of Australia. This years GCAP was held at the Crown Promenade Hotel in Melbourne from the 6th – 8th of December and quite an entertaining event. (more…)
Fantastic Mr. Fox is a film based on the book by Roald Dahl and while I don’t recall too many specifics of the book, I do recall it being clever, amusing and one of my favourite books for a time. I’m uncertain just how faithful an adaptation this film is, but it does still conjure the same feelings of awesome – well, with one exception. (more…)
The Canned Geek Podcast is a monthly geek-culture podcast featuring Will Owen and Kyle Evans from Canned Geek and Myself.
Enjoy the ambient sounds of slurpees and cigars as three geeks talk about video games, furries and more video games. First Liam reports on the highlights of GCAP – a video game industry event. Then Kyle attempts to impress his cynical peers of the awesomeness the furry convention, MiDFur. Lastly Liam tells us about his visit to THQ Melbourne and the games he got to preview there.
You can download the podcast and see the full show notes at the Canned Geek website.
Developer - Gearbox Software
Publisher - 2K Games
Available On - XBOX 360, Playstation 3, PC
Reviewed On - PC & XBOX 360
First person shooters have been a stagnating genre lately with many developers happy to simply iterate on past successful franchises. Thankfully Gearbox and 2K Games are trying something new with several years of development and a whole graphical redesign bringing us the self-described “Role Playing Shooter” known as Borderlands. Taking cel shading to whole new levels on the Unreal 3 engine, Borderlands is an exciting and entertaining universe that reaches beyond unique presentation and actually tackles a new hybrid of gaming genres.
A mash of role playing game elements within an FPS make the label of “FPSRPG” quite fitting for Borderlands, but (more…)
Last Wednesday (9th of December), Melbourne’s THQ offices held a media event in their offices. They gave me free beer and pizza, and let me see their latest games and the coolest office decorations of all the game developer offices I have visited.
THQ spreading Christmas cheer… and chainswords.
(more…)
