WWE kicks off The Road to WrestleMania and in 2013…Finally!…The Rock has come back to the Royal Rumble! Will the People’s Champ finally bring the WWE Championship home to Team Bring It for the first time in over ten years? Plus, 30 or more Superstars compete in WWE’s historic over-the-top rope main event where one resilient Superstar earns a chance to main event WrestleMania! Sheamus emerged from the pack in 2012 and went on to claim the World Heavyweight Championship on the grandest stage. Who will add their name to the illustrious list of Royal Rumble winners this year, and will they have a date to go one-on-one with the great one, The Rock, at WrestleMania 29? This is truly a monumental edition of one of the WWE’s most long-standing events, and a must-have for all WWE fans.

To celebrate the release of Royal Rumble 2013 on DVD and Blu-ray as of the 15th April (FremantleMedia), we have a DVD copy to give away to one lucky winner!


To be in with a chance of winning yourself a DVD, simply email us here and include your full name, mailing address and the answer to the following question:

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson stars alongside Mark Wahlberg in which upcoming Michael Bay movie?

(UK entrants only. One entry per household. Competition ends 23rd April 2013.)

Few games come pre-packaged with as much hype and expectation baggage as Bioshock Infinite. The original Bioshock delivered a narrative experience as engrossing and beautifully told – from both a storytelling and art design perspective – as almost any game before or since. It’s a bar that new developer 2K Marin never quite reached with sequel Bioshock 2, but with original developers Irrational Games back on board for Infinite, hopes have been set improbably high in the months leading up to release.

So it’s pretty shocking that, even as they settle into a comfortably familiar gameplay routine, Irrational still manages to casually step over the bar they’ve set themselves; Bioshock Infinite never really attempts to revolutionise or revamp the franchise in any major way, but their focus on simply tweaking and refining those familiar Bioshock mechanics and creating a finely-crafted narrative, well-written characters and a jaw-droppingly gorgeous, beautifully realised world pays off wonderfully as it manages to surpass its predecessor in just about every way.

The game takes place in 1912, some 40-odd years before the original Bioshock, where you step into the shoes of Booker Dewitt. A troubled former soldier and Pinkerton detective in serious debt to shady people, Dewitt is given the option to put his investigative skills to use and solve his problems in one fell swoop: If he retrieves a girl named Elizabeth from Columbia – a floating city among the clouds – and brings her back to New York, his slate gets wiped clean. But Columbia’s far from the skyward utopia it seems on the surface; on the brink of being torn apart by racial prejudice and class warfare, it’s ruled over by a self-declared religious “prophet” named Comstock who’s intent on keeping the mysterious Elizabeth at all costs.
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Mechanically, Infinite still retains almost everything you remember and love about the first two Bioshock games. You’re still juggling guns and superpower-from-a-bottle skills, combining the destructive uses of both in your quest to blast your way through to the next rewarding narrative nugget. You still buy weapon upgrades, ammo and skills from those retro fairground-style vending machines, still pick up enticing chunks of backstory from voice recordings found dotted around the landscape and still loot corpses, crates and trashcans for cash, health-restoring food, ammo and elixirs to top up your powers.

Super-powered ‘Plasmids’ are called ‘Vigors’ now and you fuel them with ‘Salts’ rather than ‘EVE’, but the principle and execution is exactly the same. In one hand you’ll wield your everyday firearm (in tried-and-true FPS fashion, there’s the pistol, shotgun, assault rifle, sniper rifle, rocket launcher and a few variants) while the other hand you’ll use to blast vigors at people. There are surprisingly few new powers in comparison to past games, but all the old bases are covered – amongst a few others, you can hurl fire, water and electricity around or possess turrets and people, while swarms of crows replace the ability to fire bees at enemies.

The vigors don’t makes as much narrative sense here as they did in the original’s tale of genetic spicing (and, strangely, vigor bottles are found on the corpses of almost every enemy, yet almost none ever use them against you, adding to their more tenuous inclusion), but there’s still immense fun to be had chaining together your gunfire and abilities to find rewarding combos, whether you’re lighting people aflame and hitting them with a blast of telekinetic energy to send fire blasting out in all directions, possessing a robotic George Washington (!) to lay waste to enemies while you pick off the strays or hurling foes up into the air and picking them off with a hand cannon as they float high off the ground.
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But while Bioshock Infinite certainly takes an ‘if it ain’t broke’ approach to its core gameplay, there’s more than enough laid on top of that foundation to make it still feel fresh and satisfying. Right off the bat you’re given an added melee weapon: a mechanical geared glove called a ‘skyhook’ that you can use to latching onto freight hooks dotted around, leaping sprightly up onto balconies and get the drop on enemies below. You’ll also use your skyhook to ride around on ‘skylines’ – rollercoaster rails that loop around the levels and connect different sections of the floating city. The skylines are a slightly underused concept, but it does there is fun to be found in hopping onto them during a gunfight and ride around picking off enemies from up on high as they struggle to land a shot, or hopping off and landing directly on a bad guy for a devastating attack.

Your handy new tool also allows for some brutal new execution-type melee finishers and whether you’re killing off bad guys with the grisly, blunt end of your revolving gears or finishing them with a well-placed headshot, orchestral horror movie-style stings on the soundtrack punctuate the moment to perfect, satisfying effect. Adding to the loot you’ll find is a collection of ‘gear’; stashed away in sometimes obvious, sometimes hidden locations you’ll find packages with items of clothing that grant you certain handy perks like reclaiming health after melee kills or unleashing a blast of fire damage when hitting the ground after jumping off a skyline. Interestingly, the effects of collected gear is randomised: If you pick up a fire damage perk and die, when you head from the checkpoint to grab it again, chances are the contents and effect of the gear package you pick up will be completely different.
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The most pleasing addition from both a gameplay and narrative standpoint is that of Elizabeth. She’ll follow you everywhere as the story unfolds and the mysteries of Columbia, Comstock and what makes Elizabeth so valuable become clearer, but she’s anything but a chain around your ankle as so many other AI companions can be. Oddly, Comstock’s goons never actually bother with her and instead focus all their bullet-spraying efforts in your direction and, being a sharp and resourceful girl, Elizabeth will raid the environment for ammo and health and toss them your way when you’re running low, throw you some extra money when you’re scraping together cash for upgrades and will pick locked doors for you when needed.

Very early on in the story, you learn that she has the ability to manipulate ‘tears’ that have started popping up around the city – cracks in space and time that provide windows into parallel realities – and Elisabeth can put that skill to use in battle, too. Around the level you’ll find tears that you can have her open that bring in extra hooks to latch onto and jump from, turrets and sentries to control, weapons and medical kits to use and points of cover to hide behind. You can only have her open one tear at a time, so you’ll need to switch and swap to the most useful tools at any given moment in combat which, when combined with the skylines and your gun-and-vigor combos, helps make the game’s action relatively fluid, rather diverse and always incredibly fun.

Elizabeth is incredibly handy to have around in a pinch, then, but it also helps that she’s a joy to have around in general. Between the game’s well-written dialogue and the faultless work from Courtnee Draper and Troy Baker as Booker, Elisabeth quickly becomes an endearing, wonderfully likeable and well-developed character and their natural interactions as you explore the world really flesh them both out to great effect. Having just been rescued from a life of captivity in a tower, it’s only natural that Elisabeth would be immediately inquisitive and awe-struck with wonder at all the new sights around her, and it’s hard not to feel exactly the same way when first dropped into Columbia.
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Irrational Games choosing to leave the underwater city of Rapture behind for somewhere new and different might’ve been a bugbear for some fans, but it’s one that pays off beautifully. Swapping out the water-soaked art deco style for sunlit turn-of-the-century architecture and idealised 1912 Norman Rockwellian Americana results in a game that’s arguably far more awe-inspiring than Rapture was. As you wander through the city, walking through a small-town mini World’s Fair filled with shooting galleries aimed at Columbia’s underclass Vox rebels and hucksters touting the miraculous wonders of vigors, only to step out the other side and be serenaded by a barbershop quartet atop a floating gondola singing an anachronistic acapella rendition of ‘God Only Knows’, it’s as gorgeous an introduction as any you could expect, and one of countless moments where you’ll just want to take your time and drink in the beauty of the city. It’s also the backdrop for a plot that spreads its grasp far further afield than Rapture’s story, dealing with a richer, deeper well of thematic content, from racism and religion to class warface.

Which makes it a bit of a shame that there’s no major exploration to be done aside from the linear path of the story and a couple of optional side missions (where the game’s makes backtracking to previous sections a bit of a chore). Still, with a narrative as engrossing as Bioshock Infinite’s as a driving force, you’ll hardly notice or care as stray dialogue, locations and encounters all do a phenomenal, organic sense of world-building along the way. To say too much about a story and a game that’s filled with lovely little moments and big plot turns would be a huge disservice, but it’s every bit as gripping and beautifully constructed as that of the first game.
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There’s some very minor nitpicks. The game is almost entirely unrelated to the original Bioshock and its sequel from a story perspective, but a more overt, concrete link that pops up between the two games feels more like clumsy fan-service than a natural plot thread. An early scene that popped up in pre-release trailers where Elizabeth opens a tear to glimpse a movie theater marquee in a future, alternate 1982 New York where Return of the Jedi kept the scrapped title ‘Revenge of the Jedi’ was a wonderful, geeky moment that perfectly established the parallel universe concept that runs throughout the game. Sadly, it doesn’t play out half as well visually (for English gamers, at least) in the final game, where the tear opens a portal to Paris and the significance of the now French title ‘La Revanche du Jedi’ isn’t as immediately easy to parse.

Again, as with the lack of many new vigor skills and relatively linear gameplay, they’re minor nitpicks in comparison to what the game accomplishes, and while Bioshock Infinite never tries to be a revolutionary leap forward for the franchise, it’s still everything you could want from another Bioshock story, taking that fun, creative action and the series’ stunning art design and storytelling and painting it onto a richer, brighter, broader canvas. It’s an absolutely wonderful game with a thematically deeper, more interesting story than its predecessors, incredible voice acting and character work, satisfying combat and an art design so gorgeous that it made me want to rush out and pick up the tie-in art book. If it’s not a top contender for Game of the Year, it’s certainly a shoe-in for the most beautiful.

Rating:

Bioshock Infinite is out now for PS3, Xbox 360 and PC.
Click here to buy the game from Amazon.co.uk.

Made by Production I.G, Oblivion Island: Haruka And The Magic Mirror is an action-packed fantasy adventure that sees high school girl Haruka magically transported to the titular island, whose colourful inhabitants collect humanity’s forgotten belongings.

A heart-warming fairytale packed with high-octane adventure and set in a lush fantasy world, Oblivion Island is a family-friendly film that evokes the works of Pixar and Studio Ghibli.

Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror comes to DVD and DVD & Blu-ray Combo pack on 1st April and courtesy of Manga Entertainment, we have a DVD to give away!


To be in with a chance of winning yourself a DVD, simply email us here and include your full name and mailing address. That’s it! Best of luck!

(UK entrants only. One entry per household. Competition ends 9th April 2013.)

Everyone’s favourite Australian suburb returns to DVD in the form of Neighbours From The Beginning Volume 2 (FremantleMedia) as of Monday 25th March, and we are doing the neighbourly thing and giving away some box sets! Ripper!

A must-have for any Sheila or Bruce (or should that be Charlene or Scott?) who are a fan of the much-loved Soap!


To be in with a chance of winning yourself one of two box sets, simply email us here and include your full name and mailing address. That’s it! Best of luck!

(UK entrants only. One entry per household. Competition ends 3rd April 2013.)

Maximum Conviction, the action bonanza that marks the triumphant return of the all-round American action hero Steven Seagal arrives on DVD and Blu-ray through Studio Canal on 18th March 2013.

Maximum Conviction proves that Steven Seagal is still a serious contender for the crown of the King of Action. He still brings the kind of unadulterated, high-octane thrills and spills to the screen that make you grin like a giddy girl! A real-life Aikido genius, Seagal is a true American action hero and it’s our maximum conviction that no one delivers a moody chopdown better than ‘The Great One’!

To celebrate the release of Maximum Conviction, we’re giving away a copy on Blu-ray!


To be in with a chance of winning, simply email us here and include your full name and mailing address. That’s it! Best of luck!

(UK entrants only. One entry per household. Entrants must be 18 or over. Competition ends 26th March 2013.)

The hottest high concept thriller of 2013 that’s guaranteed to make you sweat like never before – “247°F” – arrives on DVD and Blu-ray through Anchor Bay UK on 18th March 2013.

Based on true events, this sweltering suspenser follows a trio of trim, toned twenty-somethings that become trapped in a sauna. With the temperature rising and no sign of escape, a wild, hot and steamy weekend of “bare babes and brews” soon turns into a primal fight for survival! At 190°F, their skin will sear. At 200°F, their lungs will burn. At 212°F, their blood will boil. March 18th, the temperature is headed for 247°F!

To celebrate the release of 247°F, we’re giving away a copy on Blu-ray!


To be in with a chance of winning, simply email us here and include your full name and mailing address. That’s it! Best of luck!

(UK entrants only. One entry per household. Entrants must be 15 or over. Competition ends 21st March 2013.)

CM Punk has held the WWE Championship for a year, the longest title reign of the modern era, but will that reign continue when he’s faced with not one, but two opponents – John Cena and the man who was robbed of becoming champion previously, Ryback, in a Triple Threat Match. Plus with it being Survivor Series, there’s a staple of the event, a Traditional Survivor Series Match pitting Team Foley vs. Team Ziggler, and more!

Survivor Series blasts on to DVD and Blu-ray from 11th March.

One lucky winner has the chance of grabbing a copy on DVD right here!


To be in with a chance of winning, simply email us here and include your full name and mailing address. That’s it! Best of luck!

(UK entrants only. One entry per household. Competition ends 21st March 2013.)

A cult favourite and arguably one of the greatest, most unique role-playing games of all time, Persona 4 has found itself given an extra lease of life over the past year. Along with an improved, perfected port to the PlayStation Vita in the form of Persona 4: Golden and an unusually story-driven beat-’em-up spin-off in Persona 4: Arena, the game also got its very own anime adaptation with Persona 4: The Animation. Like its video game inspiration, Persona 4: The Animation melds monster-smashing action, surreal murder mystery and quaint, small-town slice-of-life comedy to fantastic effect, even if a few things don’t quite suit the jump from game to TV show.

As city kid transfer student Yu Narakami moves in with his detective uncle Dojima and young cousin Nanako, he does his best to adjust to life in the sleepy town of Inaba. But what first promises to be a quiet, boring year for Yu quickly grows more exciting as a ghostly urban legend starts to sweep the school. According to the kids around town, if you turn a TV to static on a rainy night at exactly midnight, you’ll be greeted with ‘The Midnight Channel’, which will reveal the face of your soul mate.

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While checking it out for himself, Yu finds himself pulled into the TV, discovering a surreal, dangerous world filled with deadly creatures called ‘Shadows’ and awakening a power within himself called ‘Persona’, which allows him to summon a giant, destructive, monster-killing personification of his inner self. When The Midnight Channel turns out to be linked to a series of grisly murders and disappearances, Yu sets about unraveling the mystery and stopping the killer, enlisting an unlikely group of new friends to help him: goofy, fun-loving sidekick Yosuke; feisty, tomboyish Chie; shy and reserved Yukiko; misunderstood delinquent biker Kanji and former teen idol Rise.

As adaptations go, Persona 4: The Animation is as faithful as it gets: Everything from the story and dialogue to the soundtrack, the visual style, the town layout, and even the between-scene calendar and statistic updates are pulled directly from its video game counterpart. For the most part, that’s fantastic and fans will undoubtedly be in geek heaven seeing one of their favourite games so lovingly retold in a different medium. But the creative folks behind Persona 4: The Animation often forget that this is a different medium, neglecting to shape the story to suit the narrative strengths and weaknesses its new TV home. In the rush to be rigidly faithful to the video game, the series occasionally short-changes some of the more important story elements in favour of things that don’t really work well outside of video game trappings.

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At its heart, Persona 4 is a riveting, kooky little murder mystery – the kind of story perfectly suited to TV. Sadly, at least in the first few episodes, some significant, if subtle chunks of that mystery plot fall a little by the wayside. TV shows and news reports that showed up in the game and offered up early clues to a pattern emerging in the murders are absent here, leading to lots of clumsy, hurried “Hey, isn’t that the guy who…?!” and “Didn’t we see her at…?!” catch-up exposition later to fill in the blanks.

There’s also a lot that feels lost in translation in the jump from game to anime. Having Personas correspond to Arcana Tarot cards and be powered by a character strengthening their social bonds made great foundations for RPG video game mechanics, but while that all still takes up a large amount of screentime, none of it really works well when dropped into a purely story-driven TV show. The writers make no real efforts to explain much of it to newcomers beyond some obtuse basics, adding to the ‘fans only’ vibe the show often exudes.

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The nature of the main character, Yu, makes an awkward transition from game to TV show, too. In the game, your actions and dialogue choices ultimately shaped who the silent protagonist was – he was a blank cipher for the player to give life and direction to. That worked well in a video game, but it means there’s no real concrete character for the TV show to work from when giving him a voice of his own – he’s got an often funny non-committal deadpan humour, but he’s ultimately a vague non-entity with no real depth or development.

Thankfully that’s not true of the rest of the cast, and the series’ shot-for-shot adaptation structure has the rich, well-written and incredibly likeable roster of characters brought to life again to wonderful effect. Each character’s journey to unlock the power of their Persona sees them facing their inner demons to overcome and control their darker ‘Shadow’ self – the part of their personality everyone’s ashamed, afraid or embarassed to acknowledge or confront, whether it’s jealousy towards friends or confusion about their sexuality. It’s a structure that leads to a slightly repetitive feel to the early episodes as a character per week goes through ultimately the same experience, but it leads to each of them feeling three-dimensional and well developed in an incredibly short space of time as the show tackles some surprisingly deep psychological and emotional content for each of its cast.

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More importantly, they’re a hell of a lot of fun to spend time with, and like the game it’s based on, Persona 4: The Animation does a wonderful job of blending its surreal character-driven action elements with those of a slice-of-life comedy. There’s breather episodes between the action centered on the group hanging out on school trips and such in the downtime between monster battles, and sharp writing, fun characters and a ridiculously effective sense of humour make those lighter episodes a great highlight.

Once things get back to the kinetic, ass-kicking action, while those battles feel slightly rushed, the shows benefits massively from using the vaguely Beetlejuice-ish monster designs of the game. It lends the series a great signature visual style for its weird and wacky enemies and gives fans plenty of fun moments of recognition as familiar adversaries pop up. There’s a tonne more of that fanservice, too, and gamers will undoubtedly have a nostalgic blast spotting all the little minor nods to and recreations of familiar Persona 4 moments, but perhaps the ace up the show’s sleeve is nabbing the game’s soundtrack and voice actors.

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Persona 4′s selection of infectiously peppy Japanese hip-hop/pop/funk fusion tracks made it one of gaming’s greatest, most memorable soundtracks. So it’s awesome that, along with a few new additions from the same team (including a stellar, addictive little opening theme), those tracks are all reused here to phenomenal effect and Persona 4: The Animation’s music is an absolute delight for the eardrums.

When the show was released on Blu-ray in the US, there was a minor fracas over publisher Aniplex not being able to include the series’ Japanese language track. Despite the fan uproar, Persona 4: The Animation is one of the rare instances where the English dub might be the better option anyway; with a series that’s so innately geared around being a loving recreation of a fan-favourite videogame, most viewers will likely prefer to watch the show with the game’s cast providing their familiar vocal talents anyway. It doesn’t hurt that they’re incredibly talented, too (the anime uses the Persona 4: Golden cast, which kept everyone else and swapped out the original Chie for an actress with less stilted, more natural delivery), making it one of the more impressive and enjoyable English dubs around for fans and newcomers alike. Still, for those who love having the option, this UK release from Kaze includes the original Japanese audio, unlike the US version.

Some awkward moments of game-to-series translation mean that Persona 4: The Animation isn’t always as satisfying an experience as its video game counterpart, especially for newcomers. Despite that, it’s a wonderful animated series that yoinks some of the best elements from the game and delivers a unique, funny and surprisingly deep character-driven show with an enticing murder mystery hook and an absolutely dynamite soundtrack. While long-time Persona fans will get the most out of it and love seeing familiar faces and places, it’s sure to hook its fair share of new fans, too.

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As mentioned above, the Volume 1 Blu-ray put out by Kazé in the UK, which includes the first 9 episodes, offers both the English dub featuring the video game’s cast along with the Japanese audio track and English subtitles. Again, considering the ties to the game, I personally felt like this was a rare occasion where the English language dubbed track was a much more enjoyable choice, but it’s great that the option’s there.

There’s also the obligatory anime home video stuff: You can view the “clean” opening and ending sequences by themselves with the credits removed, along with five trailers and a teaser. There’s also a director’s cut version of the first episode (which doesn’t really aid any of the rushed pacing issues, but is a nice addition) and an animated ‘Jikken-kun’ comedy short.

The Film:

The Blu-ray:

Persona 4: The Animation – Volume 1 is out on Blu-ray and DVD in the UK now.
Click here to order the Blu-ray from Amazon.co.uk.

The first ladies of horror, Twisted Twins Jen and Sylvia Soska, team up with the thinking person’s scream queen, Katharine Isabelle to bring you American Mary. Hot off it’s UK theatrical tour, American Mary comes to DVD and Blu-ray on 21 January 2013. Mary (Isabelle) is an increasingly broke medical student who, in her efforts to make ends meet, becomes drawn into the world of underground surgery and body modification with shocking results.

To celebrate the release of American Mary and courtesy of Universal Pictures (UK) we’re giving away a copy of the movie on Blu-ray!


To be in with a chance of winning, simply email us here and include your full name, mailing address and the answer to the following question:

American Mary actress Katharine Isabelle starred in which cult classic werewolf movie?

(UK entrants only. One entry per household. Entrants must be over 18. Competition ends 2nd February 2013.

From the producer of the multi-Academy Award winning “The Hurt Locker”, “Code Name: Geronimo”, the gripping dramatic account of the US government’s hunt and audacious military operation to apprehend Osama bin Laden, comes to DVD and Blu-ray on 24th December 2012! The film combines taut action sequences with riveting “Homeland”-style CIA scenes to great effect.

To celebrate the release of Code Name: Geronimo we’re giving away a copy of the film to one lucky reader in the format of their choice!


To be in with a chance of winning, simply email us here and include your full name, mailing address and whether you’d prefer to win the film on Blu-ray or DVD. That’s all there is to it! Best of luck!

(UK entrants only. One entry per household. Entrants must be 15 or over. Competition ends 7th January 2013.)