the james review

Hero Academy: The Dwarves

james m. toburen — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 20:00:27 +0000

Robot Entertainment has done it again! Patch 1.1 went live last week, and Hero Academy is a brand new game. The Dwarves have been added as the next playable team. Dwarves use devastating explosive attacks and augmented bonuses from boost squares...

Hero Academy: Late Game

james m. toburen — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 17:00:01 +0000

Many Hero Academy matches are going to be neck-and-neck races to shatter your enemy’s gem, or a brutal exchange between units, leaving a definitive victor and a loser. But sometimes, that doesn’t happen. Let’s say you’ve managed to get most of your army on the field, upgraded the right units, placed your healers to provide [...]

Hero Academy: Dark Elves

james m. toburen — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 00:45:59 +0000

When Hero Academy was launched, Robot Entertainment provided a second team for immediate download, the Dark Elves. Thankfully, Robot Entertainment worked carefully to ensure that buying this second team wasn't an "I win" button.

Hero Academy: The Council

james m. toburen — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 21:00:15 +0000

Most players starting Hero Academy will play with the Council; the humans are a pretty straightforward faction to wrap your brain around. The knights serve as hard-to-kill tanks, the archers provide long-range single-target damage, mages handle crowd control, and the clerics heal units. No surprises there!

Hero Academy: Quick Tips

james m. toburen — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 22:00:22 +0000

Chances are, if you're reading this, that you're already a big fan of Robot Entertainment's Hero Academy. Released just a few weeks ago, Hero Academy has already proven to be quite the popular little game...

Business time

james m. toburen — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:00:40 +0000

James Toburen, Senior Editor, Writer, and Web Designer of the james review, now has business cards, courtesy of his better half!

Otherland headed to theaters?

james m. toburen — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 19:00:14 +0000

Warner Brothers picked up the film rights to Tad Williams' Otherland! They've placed Dan Lin in charge of production duties, notable for the recent Sherlock Holmes films, in addition to currently producing the star-studded Gangster Squad, arriving in theaters later this year...

Review: REAMDE

james m. toburen — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 20:20:15 +0000

Neal Stephenson's willingness to skip through time to tell his stories flaunts an authorial fearlessness. Snow Crash and The Diamond Age: or A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer both envisioned possible futures, near and far, respectively. Anathem leapt even further into the future, in addition to occupying an entirely different dimension. Cryptonomicon explored a fictionalized history of the modern computer's origin during the events of the World Wars; the multi-volume Baroque Cycle followed characters fictional and historical at the beginning of the 18th century. Zodiac, The Big U, and (portions of) Cryptonomicon all reside somewhere near our own time...

…Reamde

james m. toburen — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 21:00:54 +0000

With the arrival of e-books and online retailers, I fret that local book shops might be doomed to extinction, along with the dodo, glaciers, and letting children trick-or-treat on Halloween without supervision. I love wandering amidst the towering bookshelves of a book store or library, but I admit that I often turn to the Internet...

Review: Ship Breaker

james m. toburen — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 06:30:27 +0000

After the huge success of Paolo Bacigalupi's 2010 debut novel, The Windup Girl, the science fiction world waited with baited breath for his sophomore effort. Could he repeat his early success? After all, The Windup Girl struck an incredible cord with fans and critics alike, winning both the Hugo Award for Best Novel and the Nebula Award for Best Novel. Time Magazine went so far as to declare the story one of the top ten fiction novels of the year. So when Ship Breaker was announced, fans lined up to discover if Bacigalupi could once again snag the haunting thread woven through The Windup Girl. So, has he?