Xeno-swag: Anticipating Aliens

Certain franchises just stick with me. Perhaps the one that I chatter on about the most is Resident Evil. The RE universe has stuck with me because it used to frighten me; the games don't do that anymore, but I still play. Before Resident Evil came along, Aliens satisfied that fun and frightful itch. Yes, I was way too young to be watching rated-R movies, but I did anyway. And man, I loved the Alien franchise back then.

Actually, I still love the Alien universe. Whether it's Ridley Scott's Alien or Joss Whedon's Alien: Resurrection (he wrote the screenplay) or the retarded little brothers Alien vs. Predator and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, I have thoroughly enjoyed all the films. I can't say that I've spent too much time with the games: I completely missed out on the early Nintendo and Sega cartridge games and the AVP PC games were quick romps (if that) because I wasn't interested in their stories.

February marks the return to the Alien universe with Aliens: Colonial Marines, a first-person-shooter and spiritual sequel to James Cameron's Aliens; it's the one of the few video games without all the muddled predator pollution. I am one to ignore the FPS genre, but I will make an exception for Aliens: Colonial Marines because I really want to know what happened after the terraforming reactor and colony on LV-426 were supposedly destroyed.

Picking between the Xbox and the PS3 will be a tough choice, but the pre-order deals look pretty amazing. I'm a total sucker for gamer swag (especially games/franchises that I love) and ACM has a $99.99 treasure trove. The Aliens: Colonial Marines Collector's Edition comes with a statue of a power-loader fending off an alien. Patches and in-game items and characters, including Sgt. Apone and Pvt. Hudson. Man, I hope that includes their voices.

After hunting around online, I had to go with Amazon's pre-order because both Best Buy and Gamestop's pre-order allocations were all used up. Dry. This might be the hardest collector's edition to get your hands on right now. Here's to hoping that the aliens thrill and terrify just as they did when I first saw Alien.

For once, I am looking forward to February.

Enough of This Craziness

Last year's new year post went up on the fifth of January. The fifth. Can you believe that? That's crazy. Well, I'm here to tell you that craziness like that will not be tolerated on the DoNothingMan's blog.

There were 41 posts in the year 2012; that's almost three-and-a-half posts per month. Also a little bit on the crazy side. Let's pull those reins back just a tad and not get ahead of ourselves. On the bright side, I haven't changed my NASA wall calendar. It's still open to December 2012 with a picture from the Hubble telescope and a blurb about dark matter.

So what is on the horizon for the year 2013, the luckiest year of them all? I don't know. Grand Theft Auto 5 is set to come out this spring. Aliens: Colonial Marines has me really excited, but I'll probably be disappointed. There's another Iron Man movie in the works. Three. I'm successfully hacking PSP handhelds now. Fried chicken beam attack.

Yep, this is going to be a good year.

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