See Silent Hill Downpour in Action

Several “Let’s Play” videos of Silent Hill: Downpour have appeared on YouTube over the last week. “Let’s Play” is a style of video presentation where you record a game and also your vocal reactions on microphone at the same time, then mix the two into the final clip. The following clips are recorded from a leaked 360 version played by a couple of German guys who have a tendency to chat during the all-important cut scenes. Also, I think they’ve tweaked the brightness and contrast settings to way above the defaults. However, it appears to give a long and valid preview of what we can expect from the game, due out in March of 2012.

New Site Design

Early last week I uploaded my new site design for DanBirlew.com. My custom theme is running on WordPress 3.3.1 and is hand-coded in HTML 5. Inspirations for the design include GameInformer.com and the Black Sakura WordPress theme. I created the theme offline by installing WordPress on my computer, running it under XAMPP. I learned a great deal about developing WordPress themes in the process, and expect my future development time to run shorter and smoother in my future WP themes.

American Horror Story: Afterbirth

“Afterbirth” airs tonight on FX at 9/10pm, providing the finale to an amazing first season of American Horror Story. The description according to Cox Communication’s Channel Guide reads as follows:

Constance schemes to raise Tate’s baby as her own. Season Finale.

While a lot of sites having been claiming that the episode will run 90 minutes long, my cable guide only has it slotted for 70. Perhaps they can cram 90 minutes worth of TV into that time if they don’t show commercials, but I doubt they’d show a season finale commercial free. After all, the season finale of AHS is going to be an “event” in many a household, and any savvy network exec would try to milk such an event for all its worth, especially FX, whose series’ tend to be hit and miss with audience popularity.

American Horror Story: Birth

“Birth” will show tonight on the FX Network at 9/10pm. The description according to Cox Communication’s Channel Guide reads as follows:

Vivien gives birth; Tate and Violet try to rid the house of some of its ghosts.

Vivien Gives Birth: In the Pilot episode Vivien (Connie Britton) slept with a man who appeared in her bedroom in a rubber bondage suit, assumed it was her philandering husband Ben (Dylan McDermott), and had sex with him. Although the series hasn’t been too clear about the passage of time, certain bits of dialog (regarding Violet skipping school) would have me believe that each episode encapsulates the events of a week. So the fact is, only 10-11 weeks have passed since Vivien conceived, and now according to the promos she’s already going to be giving birth. The episode preview shows an unknown doctor telling Viv that “one of these babies is ready to be born right now.”

American Horror Story: Rules

Been quite a while since my last post, but not without reason(s): illness, travel, injury, writer’s block and, turns out, obsession. Although I’ve played Arkham City twice now, completed MGS4 and the entire God of War series, and should have probably blogged about that, I’ve been far more fascinated by a new phenomenon: FX Network’s American Horror Story.

AHS is the story of troubled Harmon family, Ben (Dylan McDermott), Vivien (Connie Britton), and their daughter Violet (Taissa Farmiga), as they flee from their troubles in Boston (including a miscarriage and resultant infidelity) to Los Angeles, where they move into a residence known locally as “Murder House” due to the high number of people who’ve met their untimely deaths there. Over the last nine episodes, the Harmons have gradually learned that Murder House is inhabited by the spirits of all who have died there, trapped on the property. And not all of them are happy about it: some plot to break up and/or murder the Harmons, while others have far more nefarious designs (including trying to bring the Antichrist into being and ushering in the Biblical Apocalypse).