With the setting came an interesting visual style and a feeling that was pretty alien to me. My parents were alive in the 1960s. I wasn't. I'm also not very much into older movies and television shows, so even the themes and general mindset of this time period is pretty unknown to me. I could probably have told you that it was more racist, more misogynistic than the present, but other than that, I don't know. It's pretty much what I got here. Nothing eye-opening. Nothing that strikes below the surface, either.

The characters play to the stereotypes of the time, with chauvinistic male leads and subservient women. The entire point of the only woman who kind of respects herself is to be an obstacle, and that isn't even touching on how she has no character outside of this feminism. As for Don Draper and his crew, it took an incredible amount of effort to overlook the fact that for the vast majority of the episode, the amazing ad executives showed nothing to prove that they were even decent at their jobs. The asshole young ad guy seemed particularly out of place seeing as he was not only shit at selling products, but he was shit at selling himself as well because everyone onscreen hates him. Don Draper brought it home in the end, but how am I supposed to believe he's competent before then when he has absolutely nothing for any of his clients earlier in the episode?

To be fair to the show, though, it was one episode, and not much can really be done in one episode. However, my opinion of great television, and of a great pilot is that it's greater than the sum of its parts. The Mad Men pilot did have some clever dialogue and great direction, I admit. It just felt like it lacked purpose. If it's just meant to illustrate how people acted at the time, I can't really fault it. I'm coming to it late after the hype's gone up about it. Maybe watching it a few years ago, before shows started aping the throwback style, was much more interesting than now. I plan on continuing at some point to see if I end up liking it more.

Pretty plain to see that the podcast has been discontinued. I'd love to continue doing it, and we have tried a few times to record a new one, but it didn't work out since the three, four, or five of us would rarely have anything in common to discuss on the show.

JDUB and I began playing World of Warcraft late last year, which is pretty much what destroyed the podcast and the vast majority of the articles on this site, which were things I produced with rare additions from him, as well. (More on the articles later.) I was convinced, with regard to the content of the show, to not let it become a show that was just about World of Warcraft.... which meant that we didn't produce a show for a long time.

Sometime in the first third of this year we attempted to record a show, as before, but with a segment for World of Warcraft. It ended up being something none of us were happy with, since JDUB and I disagreed on what we wanted the segment's tone and structure to be. He listens to Warcraft podcasts exclusively now, and wanted to make something like that, but I wanted something more basic since most listeners don't know/play the game. I ended up scrapping the show, as well as the one Kholdstare and I recorded during PAX East. 

I still wanted to try more, but both JDUB and Kholdstare agreed that they didn't want to do the show any longer if it was going to continue to turn out the way it was going, and cause as much grief as it did. 

Similarly, with the web site, no one but me was as interested as I was in producing written content. JDUB was the only one receptive to the idea and he doesn't like writing. And, no offense to him, but he's not cut out for writing, either. I'm not the best writer in the world, either, with my disorganized thoughts and sometimes misplaced words, but I do enjoy it, which is why the site has as much content as it does. Still, though, producing the whole site alone was fatiguing and I'm lazy, which is why it never turned out like it should.

I've put a lot of work in this thing, though. I don't want to just tear it down. I still want to do a podcast. I still want to work with people putting up content for the site. I just need to figure out how I'm going to do it.

Probune, JDUB and Kholdstare are joined by GameEnthus's host, Indifference, to talk more about the games that E3 holds, including Nintendo's press conference.

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Another year, another E3! We reconvene to talk about Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft, and Sony's E3 showings and what we liked from them.

Voicemail us! (617)-863-6474

E-mail us! brokenfacemob@gmail.com

Twitter us! @brokenfacemob

Visit us! brokenface.net

Mars is the first solo table released for Pinball FX 2 and is a table that was included as DLC for Zen's PSN offering; Zen Pinball. The name of the table should give you a pretty good idea of what to expect as this table is themed after the surface of the red planet in the year 2100. You are charged with being the first person to explore the barren planet and discover its secrets.

Mars is simply a beautiful table with a lot of speedy ramp play and some interesting missions to attempt. Along the way you will assist a space shuttle, scan for distant galaxies, and discover the mysteries of an ancient martian pyramid. Mars also has a gravity defying multiball event that is very, very cool. As you play each mission you will interact with a space shuttle, light beam ramps, and a little robot spider that will move around as the action unfolds.

The table looks great, is bright and colorful, and has a few moving parts. It also has cool blue holograms that interact with you as you play each mission. This table also keeps the tradition of having a full 3D animated backdrop behind the pinball table which really adds to the atmosphere of the table. Also, as is to be expected with all Zen Studios releases, the sound effects and music are top notch.

Mars features all the same great features that made Pinball FX 2 and all its tables a pure blast to play and at 240 Microsoft Points is a very worthwhile addition to any Pinball FX 2 fans table collection.

Since my last watching column where I was somewhere in the middle of SG1, I've gone through many, many seasons of Stargate canon. Both predecessor series SG1 and Atlantis are over and done with, along with SG1's TV movies. Both series managed to do something that even the great sci-fi series have failed to do - they stayed interesting throughout. Stargate remains remarkably entertaining throughout its while fifteen seasons of two series. Hell, Battlestar couldn't do that for it's measly four seasons.

Now, Universe might be another story. After only having watched the first two-parter, Air, I can safely say that this series is off to a very rocky start in my eyes. Of course I enjoy additions to the Stargate mythos, and of course I enjoyed seeing more of Gen. Jack O'Neill, Col. Samantha Carter, and Dr. Daniel Jackson, who were all SG1 regulars. However, it's all the other characters that worry me. Seems that this series is going down a complicated path filled with antiheroes, grey areas, melodrama, and characters kinda hating each other. Sounds familiar, like a certain other SyFy series that ended several years ago with a whimper. It remains to be seen if this one will do it as well, but it's not promising, because I really dislike all of the characters in this series so far, even the ones who are supposed to be likeable.

I will watch more of it, though. I just wish I really enjoyed the first few episodes a bit more.

Have you ever needed to meet someone or be somewhere and found yourself not being able to take your usual path? Have you ever been confused about the best way to deal with a detour to get where you are going? If that is something that happens often for you then you will feel right at home in the puzzling worlds of ilomilo.

The story of ilomilo is a simple one. Ilo and Milo are the best of friends. Each and every day they like to meet in the park and spend their days together until saying farewell and heading back to their homes. This would be a lot easier if someone did not completely rearrange the layout of the park each and every night as they slept. It is your job to navigate the twisting layouts and bring the two friends together.

ilomilo is a grid based logic puzzle game that challenges you to navigate mazes made up of cubes, switches, platforms and other obstacles to reunite ilo and milo together to finish each level. Many of the mazes have special blocks that you can pick up and carry around and place where you please. These blocks are necessary to your success and generally have very specific places they need to be put down. Some blocks merely bridge a gap while others can do extraordinary things like flipping you upside down or serving as elevators to help you reach new heights. The goal of each level is the same, but how you accomplish that goal can wildly vary from level to level.

The levels in ilomilo take a lot of thought and a lot of experimentation to complete. Sometimes you can be oh so close to your objective and yet oh so far. The game does a great job of rewarding your experimentation and it feels great when you finally find that solution that was evading you for so long. The most interesting mechanic of ilomilo is the way you play as both ilo and milo. With the push of a button you can freely switch between them. This is necessary almost immediately in every single level. You will often find yourself unable to go any further with just one of them and will need to switch to the other to press a switch, move a block, or open a path so that both can continue on their path to meet each other.

The mazes can feel downright confounding at times with very little room to move around until you find the exact right way to progress. Sometimes the opposite can also be true with you being able to move quite freely but being unsure of what to do and where to do it. There is a lot going on in many of the levels and sometimes you will not even be sure which way is up. Sometimes, I found myself really over thinking the situation which is something that is quite easy to do at times thanks to the twisting, topsy turvy nature of some of the levels. I also found myself accidentally solving a few of the puzzles which I found to be a bit amusing. ilomilo does a fantastic job at being a puzzle game and rewarding the player for finding their way.

ilomilo has 4 worlds each with 9 main levels and 3 bonus levels. Aside from your main goal of reuniting ilo and milo, each level has a number of things to collect including songs from the soundtrack and a gallery full of images. Each main level also has 3 little guys known as Safkas. Collecting every Safka in each world unlocks that world's 3 bonus levels. The bonus levels are often much larger and require a lot more effort to complete than the main story levels. The game's final level feels quite epic and will test you on everything you have learned along the way.

ilomilo has some fantastic art and music behind it. The art style is bright, colorful, and whimsical, and everything about is just fantastically cute and charming. The game's four worlds are each unique and have a kind of patchwork look to them. Lots of little details can be seen in the background as well. I think this game would be absolutely stunning in 3D. The music is also cheery and very fun to listen to the entire time. The whole presentation is just a very joyful experience.

ilomilo is a fantastic game through and through. It's great for all ages and can be enjoyed by the whole family. What more could you possibly ask for only ten bucks?

The Patch: 4.1 changes a lot of cool stuff, and adds some new content and equipment to keep things interesting for players like JDUB who spend all their time chasing loot. It repurposes old Burning Crusade instances Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman (read about them here) as a couple of new level 85 Heroic dungeons that are a cut above the old Deadmines/SFK/Grim Batol group of Heroics in the game right now. They have better, 353 item level epic items in most slots, helping loot grind for non-raiding groups and gearing up slower raid groups for Bastion of Twilight and Blackwing Descent, the two big raids in the game right now. At this point in the last expansion, there were new raids, but since most raid groups haven't progressed past these Cataclysm raids since they're actually difficult, the new Firelands raid is coming in the patch after 4.1. That's not to mention the new class changes and all the other cool stuff they're adding to the game. For instance, my hunter pet's happiness? Gone. :)

As for what the Broken Face crew has been up to, well, we all joined a guild. EMERGENCY, on Deathwing US server. We used to roll in the Broken Face guild, but that was not going to go anywhere in terms of groups for raiding or even heroics, so we all joined up with a larger guild. It took a little while, but the guild is just starting to get into raiding. We've done about four days of two-and-a-half hour raids in Bastion of Twilight, where we downed Halfus and Valiona and Theralion, then Blackwing Descent where we killed Magmaw, as well as almost downing those Omnotron robots. It's been pretty fun contributing to a guild, all in all.

I've been most interested in making ungodly amounts of money in this game, I've found. I like inscription and alchemy for making things. JDUB is so into the loot grind that he'll amass thousands of gold to spend it on a BOE purple on the auction house just to raise his item level by one. That's kind of what the game is all about, but it's not my thing. As for Kholdstare, he plays a little less than both of us these days, since he likes playing other games, but he likes a little of everything. He levels alts like I do, he likes doing raids sometimes, and does some PVP as well, which neither JDUB nor I have really been into since we were originally leveling our mains. 

I'm pretty happy with how things are progressing. I'm not too into this game, though I do enjoy playing it a lot. It kind of paces itself with our guild and gives us a lot of free time. The raids, for us, aren't these ten hour things that you hear about from people who are totally addicted with hardcore, bleeding edge raid teams. We raid for two and a half hours on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Nothing too bad about that.

Everyone knows here that probune loves pop-punk. Even so, I think Paramore gets way too much shit. I really do think it stems from people liking bands less if they have female leads. I've had Riot! and whatever their first album is called for a while now, but only got Brand New Eyes a couple weeks ago, and let me tell you, that shit is upbeat as fuck even though it's hiding some emo problems underneath. I swear the song "Feeling Sorry" is about a dude who plays WOW, which made it awkward because I listened to the album for the first time while leveling my hunter. :/

Speaking of female fronted bands, I also recently got into Camera Obscura's latest album, My Maudlin Career, which is one of the most indie album titles ever. I've had it in my new album queue since it came out, which is forever ago. I'd had one of their previous albums on my iPod, but I didn't like it much at all. This one, though, reminded me a lot of The Gaslight Anthem's The '59 Sound in a bunch of bizarre ways. So, well, yeah the genres are different, but I'm a production guy and they sound similar in that way. The '59 Sound took some cool, catchy and smart music and gave it this awesome sound wet with reverb and delays. My Maudlin Career is similar, with every song feeling warm and huge because it's as if it's played in a hall. A concert hall with the perfect 'verb that still allows everything to be clearly heard. That's a special kind of sound that I am in love with.

I've got plenty more on my iPod, and plenty of more albums in the queue, so expect some of that soon.

I started World of Warcraft in November last year. In terms of gaming, it's been my only thing since then. Until a few weeks ago, it was the vast majority of my entertainment - I stopped watching Stargate, shows went on hiatus for the holidays, and hell if I'm gonna read a book or actually watch my dumb Netflix discs.

Obviously I'm enjoying it quite a bit. I almost didn't expect to. It's a part of that campaign I started for myself where I would try all sorts of games that I never considered, like Farmville, Mafia Wars (whatever it's called), and now World of Warcraft. Not so much into Farmville or anything, but I don't see myself leaving this MMO. I have tons of fun since I have so many friends that play the game.

I get a lot of shit about playing a ton of this game. It seems to annoy a lot of people that I play this game because it's seen as a time sink that doesn't give time for playing other games. In a way, though, it's what I like about it. I don't feel obligated to follow every game or system that comes out - I don't care about 3DS or PSP2 very much, and don't have a ton of games on my Gamefly. There won't be a time where I'm bored and have nothing to play, and add some shit game that I'm not even interested to my rental queue. People might think the game traps you in this addiction, but for me, it actually frees me from being so incredibly immersed in every video game thing ever.

You'll be hearing about this from me more in the future. Probably a monthly post unless something crazy is happening.