My time with Alan Wake began with so much promise. Tight controls, an engaging premise, and wonderful lead in via the Bright Falls webisodes. Unfortunately, despite a strong start, it doesn’t take long for Alan Wake to squander its potential with a slew of bad design choices.

It’s hot outside right now and Sweden seems like a cool place to be, so a little bit of ABBA seemed a natural fit for today’s Monday Music.  Rather than go with the standard version, I decided to spice it up a bit with a remix version.  Blame it on all the Dancemania albums I’ve been listening to as of late.  =^_^;;=

More Info:

• ABBA discography (Amazon)

This may come as a surprise to some of you out there in gaming land, but it appears that the gaming community is in the midst of a shmup (shoot ‘em up) renaissance. Thanks to the astounding success of the original Geometry Wars game and advent of easily accessible digital distribution models (PSN, XBLA, etc.), it seems that more and more companies are paying attention to this long abandoned genre then at any other time in recent memory. Over the past few years, gamers have been treated to a slew of remakes, re-releases and original IPs, but up until recently, moe shmups were still considered far too niche to ever make the leap from Japan to Amercian.

Thankfully, I’m here to bring some joyous news to the long suffering moe shmup fans across the country. Not only have several new adorable looking shmups just recently been released for home consoles across America, but Konami decided to kick to door wide open this past week with it’s surprising Otomedius announcement at E3.  Hit the jump to see some video related to that announcement as well as videos for several other moe shmup titles that are already available for purchase!

Okay, I have a confession to make: I’ve never purchased a figma figure before this review. Oh sure, I have a Yuki Nagato figure up on my shelf, but I’ve never taken her out of the package. Up until this point, my entire experience with Max Factory’s figma line has been limited to a brief play session with my friend’s Konata figure at a convention a several years ago. When I saw this cute looking Marisa Kirisame figma come up for preorder several months back, I just knew that it was the right time for me to take the plunge in the world of figmas.

I’m keeping it pretty simple this week on LWT with just a few pics I took of the adorable wise wolf Horo (Spice and Wolf) while on a recent jaunt around my apartment.  My wife was kind enough to buy this gorgeous statue for me a couple of years ago and I just had to take her outside on my first outdoor photoshoot.  Out of the numerous photos I took, the one above is my absolute favorite.  I was a bit disappointed that the most of the pics I took of her  down by the stream didn’t turn out so well, but I’m thinking that just leaves the door open for me to take her out on another photoshoot sometime in the near future. XD 

Hit the jump for the rest of the pics!