Leave a comment Posted on January 6, 2015January 5, 2015 by Steve Murray Video Games

Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes Review: The Real Next-Gen?

If there’s one thing that will get gamers excited, it’s the words “Hideo Kojima.” The man has generated so much goodwill among gamers for the epic Metal Gear series that he might as well walk on water. Just the announcement of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain was enough to launch the hype train to near unprecedented levels.

Then Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes happened. The game was released in March 2014 on console for $30 but it didn’t live up to the hype or the price. What was a very solid experience was overshadowed by backlash over fan criticisms of a lack of value.

And now Ground Zeroes has made its way to PC. It made a big splash with a smaller price tag than the console release and getting a 33% discount on release day thanks to a front page appearance during the Steam Holiday Sale. Can the PC port of Ground Zeroes salvage some of Metal Gear Solid and Kojima’s reputation?

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Leave a comment Posted on January 4, 2015January 3, 2015 by Steve Murray Link-Off

Sunday Link-Off: Welcome to 2015

It’s time for the first set of Sunday links of 2015. I’m a bit busy this week so I’m not going to guarantee what will be coming up this week apart from our review of the annual Doctor Who Christmas special. I’m working on a whole pile of video game reviews for et geekera so expect them here in the near future too. I’m hoping to get back into long form writing in 2015 so we’ll see what that brings us too.

Anyway, it’s time for the links. Since it’s a new year, let’s start with a new face on the blog. Here’s Dutch model Robin Holzken.

Happy 2015 everyone! Here’s a whole host of law changes that have come into effect in Canada already. (CBC News)

I think I’ve mentioned this a few times but there’s a federal election in Canada this fall. Right now, there’s no clear-cut frontrunner. (MacLean’s)

You thought your job was miserable at Christmas? Try working at Amazon. (Gawker)

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Leave a comment Posted on January 3, 2015January 3, 2015 by J Entertainment, Link-Off

Entertainment Link-Off: Brand New Year

2015 is here! Fresh start to the new year but it looks like people are still in holiday mode, so it’s another somewhat slow week. Let’s kick off the ELO entry of 2015 with Karen Gillan. It’s too bad her latest show Selfie got canned by ABC. Woulda been nice to have her in the weekly fixtures of the TV viewing schedule.

After the jump, Neill Blomkamp shares some very impressive concept art for his never-been-made Alien film, Oscar flicks getting their annual bashing before award season, Sam Raimi admits Spider-Man 3 was awful, and enjoy some music to your ears in the music recommendation(s) of the week. Continue reading →

Leave a comment Posted on January 2, 2015December 31, 2014 by Steve Murray Video Games

The Best of the Angry Joe Show

Let’s bookend the week with another YouTube themed entry into our Best of the Interweb series. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but both Jackie and I are gamers. Granted, only one of us is gaming on a now current-gen console but… at least I have a PC?

Now, we’ve looked at the best of Yahtzee Croshaw’s Zero Punctuation in the past. If I was to name the best game reviewer on YouTube, that would have to be Angry Joe and his titular Angry Joe Show. Joe has over one million subscribers and his Angry Reviews routinely get over one million views. So for today’s best of the interweb, we have Angry Joe’s ten most popular Angry Reviews.

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Leave a comment Posted on January 1, 2015December 31, 2014 by Steve Murray Randominity

The Lowdown Annual: 2014

With another year having come and gone, I thought it was time to look back at the best of the past 12 months here on The Lowdown Blog. We had our second major redesign in our six years online. We started integrating more video game and entertainment content. The Man Lab made a bit of a comeback. Jackie killed it with his movie reviews all year long. No, this might not have been our most read year in the blog’s history but I’m quite happy with the content we’ve been putting out.

So let’s look back at the year with our most read posts from 2014 and the most read posts overall in 2014.

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Leave a comment Posted on December 31, 2014December 30, 2014 by Steve Murray Link-Off

Wednesday Link-Off: 2014 in Review

Hello and welcome to the annual year-in-review linkdump on The Lowdown. Oddly enough, there weren’t many good recap posts that I found this year.

And, as always, the year-in-review linkdump also coincides with naming our woman of the year. Using the scientific analysis criteria of the blog’s traffic, posts, comments and so on, our 2014 woman of the year is Anna Kendrick.

A lot of people had bad 2014s but few were worse than Barack Obama’s. (Washington Post)

There were new scandals every day of the year as people got outraged over something and took to social media to share their outrage. (Slate)

It wasn’t just in Washington that people had bad years. Some folks in Toronto had bad years too. (Torontoist)

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Leave a comment Posted on December 30, 2014December 28, 2014 by Steve Murray Humour

Fails of the Year 2014

Usually, when we do our fails posts, it’s the best fails we’ve found from the last short stretch of time. This week, we have some compilations of the best fails from the past twelve months in the Fails of the Year.

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Leave a comment Posted on December 29, 2014December 26, 2014 by Steve Murray Entertainment

The Best of Honest Trailers

It’s been a while since we’ve done a best of the interweb post so I thought that I’d make up for it today. If you’re a fan of movies or frequently watch YouTube, you know the work of Honest Trailers. We’ve featured them on the blog more than a few times over the last few years. So today, the Best of the Interweb gives Honest Trailers with their own post. It’s the ten best episodes of Honest Trailers based on the number of YouTube likes they’ve received.

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Leave a comment Posted on December 28, 2014December 27, 2014 by Steve Murray Link-Off

Sunday Link-Off: You Survived Christmas

We’ve gotten through Christmas, more or less, and have survived, again, more or less. Christmas survival is made a lot easier thanks to alcohol. It sure helps with putting up with relatives. Anyway, this is our second-to-last set of links of the year. We’ll be saving the year-in-review links for the December 31st links so it’s steady as she goes for today’s post.

So it’s time for the post-Christmas slash pre-New Year’s links. Here’s Canadian model Kate Bock.

A Syrian boy was stuck between a rock and hard place in dealing with ISIS so he volunteered to become a suicide bomber and surrendered himself to security forces to protect his family. (New York Times)

The Beer Store has managed to dodge any public pressure stemming from the revelations about how their monopoly is hurting the consumer. That’s probably because of the power of their lobbying efforts. (Toronto Star)

There is a conflict brewing in the city of New York between the NYPD, the mayor and the people of the city. (Talking Points Memo)

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