All posts by Andrew Fritzer

Cascading Style: Harry’s Razors

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Each week, we at GG aim to bring you some up-to-date and practical style resources and products, so that you can not only look and feel like a true modern gent, but save a few bucks while you’re at it. For that, we’d like to introduce our column, Cascading Style. Our first post is written by Andrew Fritzer.

For the inaugural post of Cascading Style, I felt it was important to cover something that almost every guy is familiar with, shaving. Now, I have no doubt that throughout the life of A Gentleman’s Review, there will be dozens of articles concerning shaving, since even within the Geeky Gentleman team there are a wide variety of blade styles, products, and techniques used and favored. A good razor can be a powerful tool in the modern gentleman’s arsenal as very few of us can pull off the wild, untamed mountain man look. Even if you choose to rock some facial hair as part of your style, it’s important to keep it looking like it was intentional.

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Crytek Aims To Improve Free-to-Play Market

Crytek has produced some of the most dynamic gaming experiences of the last few years. Best known for the Crysis series, they represent an industry leader in production of “triple-a” or top-tier games. However, they no longer appear to be satisfied in holding that title alone.

Recently in an interview with Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli shared Crytek’s new goal… to “transition entirely” to free-to-play games within 5 years.

“We decided five or six years ago that we want to marry the quality of triple-A games with the business model of free-to-play,” Yerli told GamesBeat. “And out of that position, Gface and Warface were born.”

Crytek is currently working on a new platform titled Gface which should will allow large numbers of PC gamers to connect with each-other. Those who have explored the closed beta have stated that it bears similarities to Steam. The company plans to launch GFace along with the first of its free-to-play a-lister games, Warface.

“I think over the next two to three years, free-to-play is going to rival retail with quality games like Warface,” Yerli explained. “We have quite a few console titles in our pipeline that are [traditional retail games] while we investigate free-to-play on consoles, but our primary goal is to make triple-A free-to-play games for the world market and transition entirely to that.”

For gamers in the U.S. this could be a tremendous improvement to the free-to-play genre.While it’s true that the free-to-play market has been bolstered in recent years through providers like Steam, Crytek’s undertaking will help move the genre into another league entirely.

Crytek’s latest release, Crysis 3, will be available in the U.S. on Feb. 19th, 2013, and U.K./AUS on Feb. 21st, 2013.

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Game Rated M for Mature: Blood, Strong Language, Violence.
Available on: PC, PS3, Xbox 360

Review- Guardians of Middle Earth (XBLA)

This weekend I thought I would give a new console game a shot, although not wanting to spend an arm and a leg at the store purchasing a new title, I searched through the Xbox LIVE Arcade store to see if anything grabbed my attention.

Now, if there are two things I’m most fond of in the culture of geekery its giant robots (which undoubtedly will comprise a lot of my articles) and Tolkien. Folks, I am a huge Tolkien fan and no, that doesn’t just mean being a fan of the films. Ever since I was young I found myself fascinated by his writings and read everything I could, from LOTR to The Unfinished Tales and everything in between. So naturally I was excited to find that a new game featuring my favorite universe was being featured on LIVE I knew my search was over.

Continue reading Review- Guardians of Middle Earth (XBLA)

Book Review: Gundam – Awakening, Escalation, Confrontation

For those of you who aren’t familiar with me, I’m a huge fan of giant robots in any form. Ever since I was a tiny gent, it was always something that captured my attention and imagination (a feat which could prove quite difficult at times…) Whenever I would come across one, whether in a comic book or on television I would drop whatever I was doing and focus only on that, including one unfortunate instance involving a dropped egg while helping in the kitchen.

Today’s review of the novel Gundam: Awakening, Escalation, Confrontation not only fuels my aforementioned obsession but also holds a special place for me, as the Gundam franchise was my first introduction to the Japanese genre of “Mecha”.

Gundam is arguably one of the most recognized Japanese cultural icons having established itself as a multibillion dollar industry over the past 30 years. It has garnered a fan base of millions, been featured in a dizzying number of tie-in products, and has even spawned a life-size 1:1 scale model of the RX-78 Gundam featured in the original series. Brightly colored humanoid robots fighting for the salvation or ruin of humanity, striking memorable poses, and giving an unusually relatable sense of the characters daily struggles. Gundam is nothing short of a tour-de-force.

So, after all that hype what did I actually think of the book?

Continue reading Book Review: Gundam – Awakening, Escalation, Confrontation

For Sale: A Throne of Awesome

Let’s be honest for a moment, who amongst us wouldn’t kill hordes of his enemies in order to claim the mighty Iron Throne? To sit upon it and have all of your co-workers and family members recognize your rule over the domain? That’s what I thought… And if you’re like myself and the other Geeky Gents, then Sunday’s season finale has left you craving for more from the lives of House Stark and the Lannisters! Well thanks to HBO, you can now have both! Minus the bloodshed of course.

The HBO online store is now taking orders for a life size replica of the Iron Throne! For those of you not familiar with George R.R. Martin’s epic book series and/or the HBO feature adaptation, Game of Thrones is the first of the series and tells the tale of Westeros and its various struggles, specifically its noble houses and their interactions. It’s presented through a number of plot lines and various points-of-view, making it an immensely in depth story. Continue reading For Sale: A Throne of Awesome