Article: Mafia: The Old Country

And now we come to the end of the ride. After nearly twenty years of delivering a bazaar of culture and commentary, this will be the final post on Popzara.

Ever since I was sent the Toshiba Rice Cooker last year, I’ve been using it like crazy to not only cook rice, but also stews, cakes, and more. For the longest time, I’ve heard about the famed company Zojirushi and their top of the line rice cookers that professionals use, especially the hilarious YouTube personality Nigel Ng aka Uncle Roger that swears by their products.

I won’t deny it, the cutesy looking artwork on Kimono Cats drew me in to check it out, as I had no idea it had already been released on mobile devices last year. After playing it for a bit, it does remind me heavily of most mobile device games thanks to having small but fun mini games, collectables, and even some building and managing your town that’s perfect for passing the time whenever you need to.

I’ll start off by stating I’m a huge fan of the now classic 2012 PlayStation 3 game, Journey. It literally took me on a journey of emotions as I made my ways through different lands while having random online players helping off and on to reach the end of it.

Quality is a big deal when we're talking about gaming peripherals, but comfort's also important in its own way. If you’ve ever finished a multi-hour gaming session and taken off your headset with a sigh of relief, you've got a pretty good idea of what I'm talking about.

The Mafia series has always occupied a special place in the wide world of crime simulators. Compared to the satirical action of something like Grand Theft Auto or Saints Row, Mafia tends to be the more serious, cinematic alternative.

With jaw-dropping entries like The Wild Robot and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, DreamWorks continues to show us why it owns the crown in terms of American animation quality. While other studios keep trying to perfect the same digital animation style we’ve been seeing since the mid-‘90s, the Universal-owned studio has found a way to bridge the hand-drawn look of yesteryear with the sleekness of modern-day computer graphics.

Going through so many games that have released lately, I would often hear about Medieval Dynasty and how people enjoyed playing through its survival and building challenges to create a thriving town in ancient times. It only made sense for publisher Toplitz Productions to build upon this (pun intended) and release a feudal Japan version called Sengoku Dynasty.

It’s Popzara’s Movie Time! Podcast, where our in-house movie nerds Ethan Brehm and Nate Evans take you on an unscripted journey yakking and chatting about some of their favorite movie moments and cinematic scenes, from past and present, presented without snark and snobbery for your listening pleasure. For this extra-special episode the guys take a look back at 1973’s American Graffiti, George Lucas’ cinematic love letter to a bygone era that would redefine the word nostalgia and would become one of the most beloved films of all-time. Its impact on the culture would be profound, influencing everything from cars, music, fashion, and politics, and would introduce iconic talent that would dominate Hollywood for generations, especially writer/director George Lucas, Ron Howard, and Harrison Ford. Among the most successful efforts of the ‘New Hollywood’ era, our hosts discuss the meaning of nostalgia itself, the surprising similarities between it and Lucas’ followup, Star Wars, perhaps the greatest soundtrack in film history, and why capturing the liminal space between yesterday and today continues to be so elusive. More than anything, they discuss how American Graffiti (and films like it) prove that good storytelling can make us care about the troubles and concerns of another generation, about the universality of being human, and why the things that mattered can still matter long after the lights have gone off and memories are all that remain.

You've got a new console, and now you've got a problem: the second controller dilemma. You want to play with friends or family, but the thought of shelling out nearly a hundred dollars for another official gamepad is a tough pill to swallow, and this gets even more painful when you start thinking about having groups of friends over.