When the teaser for Hellfire began circulating a few months ago, everyone took notice. It simply looked amazing, with production values easily on part with a top tier SyFy show that hasn’t run out of money yet. Here it is, for those who missed it the first time…

And after much anticipation, the first episode has gone live…

Well, on the plus side, it’s still visually impressive. Though it’s also a testament of how crazy technology is these days. Which I was reminded of this past weekend, when a blurry and quite honestly banal photo on my iPhone was made 10000 times more interesting thanks to Instagram.

Point being, their really high end cameras are easily the best things thus far. Beyond that… Jesus, the acting. Sorry, I know these aren’t Hollywood A-listers, but still. I’ve seen far better in other YouTube offerings, at the very least. Also not helping is what they have to work with, which is equally oy vey.

At first, when the flashback kicked in, I wondered if I was watching some CW show. And then, once we hit basic training, I began to hope that we’d be getting something along the lines of Full Metal Jacket.

Yet as things unfolded, I began craving that CW-vibe, because that was at least was a gimmick that one could latch onto. Sorry, but the bar has been raised by countless others, and having enthusiasm for the subject matter just doesn’t cut it these days.

But hey, there’s always episode two, right?

First up is Mario, instead of trying to rescue the Princess, paling around with Toad instead. The joke itself is nothing special, it’s the execution that’s exemplary. The look of happiness on the mushroom retainer’s face, upon hearing the good news is simply classic.

Oh, and it also features one of the hottest Peaches I’ve seen in a while; I’m fairly certain that the primary motivation for such things is to simply show off one’s hot girlfriend, plus to let everyone know that they were able to convince said gal pal to dress up as a video game character for the internet.

Next is the GameCube classic, but different. It’s another one of those choose your adventures via YouTube, which you may have seen before. But unlike all those, in which there is an obvious single desired path, with all the other options being total cop outs that immediately result in a game over, this one has countless, fully realized avenues. The fact that it’s also well acted and is genuinely funny is an appreciated bonus…

There’s two basic paths set for in the beginning: either go to the mansion or don’t. If you chose to be a hero, all sorts of other possibilities are set forth, including the option to get high with Toad and Donkey. In addition to all The Shining references that pop up, there’s also an interactive cat and mouse element as well, when it comes to finally nabbing the kidnapped Daisy.

Now, if you opt not to go, there’s a series of sequences that follows, like the chance to walk Yoshi, an impromptu dance party, and most impressive of all, the chance to just chill with Mario at the apartment. Because I’m so impressed by it, I’ve chosen to directly link to that last part. And what makes it so special? Well, it lasts well over an hour and was completely improvised (and it shows)…

The Street Fighter tells the tale of an everyday dude, a journalist, and a divorced dad. After being laid off, he finds solace in you know what. The first episode is pretty slow, to the point that it kinda drags, but the methodical pacing really comes into its own in later episodes…

And here’s part two, in which our man finally puts his skills to the test, on the stage, and against some wacky diehard pro gamer…

Episode three is when everything and everyone really hits its/their stride…

Admittedly, the dramatics is sometimes awkward and forced, but kudos nonetheless for forging ahead into such bold new territory. I honestly can’t recall anything similar. Something that’s played so straight, but which also isn’t also hard-boiled or gruesome at the same time (most efforts either relies upon dumb internet jokes or zombie massacres).

There is touch of humor, but the number of yucks attempted is on the super conservative side, just enough so it doesn’t feel like every other YouTube show out there. So yeah, a great start! Can’t wait to see how everything unfolds.

Microsoft’s official Xbox 360 blogger, Major Nelson, gave the head’s up earlier this morning, about the arrival of a plethora of media driven apps for the console. Some of which I’ve gotten the chance to play around with, and a few I have no, for various reasons.

The blog post has the full list, and as you can see, not everyone is getting everything. Since I’m here in the US, it makes sense that I’m not able to access blinkbox, MUZU.TV, Rogers On Demand, and SBS ON DEMAND.

Verizon FiOS TV, on the other hand, is not available, despite it being for this neck of the woods. Maybe it auto-detects if you’re a customer or not? So instead, I was able to give the following a spin…

TMZ – Eh, it’s cool if you’re into celebrity gossip and the such. I believe it pulls clips from their website, just short clips of celebs being hassled at the airport or on their way to a car outside whatever club.

SyFy – Was really hoping a lot of this, but was perhaps the most disappointing. All it does is serve up clips for their shows; was expecting full episodes of at least their original programming. There’s also a pair of online specific shows that you can watch on your TV, and that’s cool and all, but otherwise, the app seems awfully pointless.

DailyMotion – It’s like the MySpace of YouTubes. People still use it? Apparently. Works well enough, and the categories provided makes accessing specific content quite easy, though some of the stuff I stumbled across was rather ancient, by internet standards.

ESPN – Works as well as one would like or hope. Since I have little if no familiarity with the previous incarnation of ESPN on Xbox Live, I’ll simply take their word for it when it is stated that everything’s bigger and better and easier to use. Being able to watch two football games at the same time, or one live and highlights from another, all simultaneously sounds great. Would be better if I actually followed football!

YouTube – The crown jewel. This will be the app that everyone uses since, hey, who doesn’t love YouTube, right? Watching your favorite cat videos on a console has been around since the Wii, and then later on the PS3, but both of those required going through the console’s web browser, and did the job I guess. But this is by far the best iteration, thanks to the Metro UI. The way it integrates with one’s own YouTube account (which was possible on the Wii or PS3, but I’m certain most folks were not even aware of) is super simple, and the fact that all videos play at full screen at default is the real deal sealer.

… There’s also the UFC channel, which hasn’t gone live, but I was actually given early access this past weekend, to check out the show that just happened. Long story short, and as I had expected, it works flawlessly. Was able to watch the show without the need of having cable or pirate the damn thing. Which is not only illegal but a huge hassle.

Plus all the extras, at least the ones that were available (I couldn’t engage in any of the social aspects since no one else I know has the thing yet), worked as advertised, and is basically what everyone else cooking up apps, or have already done so, could seriously learn from (aside from ESPN or YouTube, which again, are pretty flawless in terms of features and functionality).

I’m assuming the one true app that everyone is legit waiting for, HBO Go, will also work well, but you’ll need to be a cable subscriber to enjoy its delights. But i not, and you can actually just pay for the thing directly, expect everyone to start singing and dancing in the street once word gets out and the app is live. No word yet on either.

Without question, one of the best parts in one of my favorite games, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (the HD re-releases comes out next week, btw), is the cutscene in which one of the main bad guys demonstrates how handy he is with a gun in such an absurd manner that it would never make sense if it was done in real life.

Yet here we are, via the miracle of YouTube. And via Reddit…

Well, in other Meta Gear related news, it’s just been revealed that next week’s Video Game Awards on Spike TV will unveil a bunch of different things. Kotaku has the rundown, but there’s only one game I came about, and that’s Meta Gear Rising, which many had assumed was dead (including myself).

What’s it about btw? No one really knows, other than it stars Raiden and isn’t about penises, according to Mega 64…

Here’s another, of them celebrating MGS4, featuring a cameo by the game’s creator, Hideo Kojima, who was in American to receive a fancy award at the Game Developers Conference two years ago…

… There’s also a super brief appearance by Cliff Bleszinski, creator of Gears of War! Granted, it’s not quite as awesome as their last big leagues guest star, Yu Suzuki (see here, and which also has Cliffy B I just noticed), but it’s still cute.

Orcs Must Die! is a new action strategy game that just went live on Xbox Live, and also coming soon for the PC. I’m somewhat curious, but instead of downloading the demo via my console, which I’m kind of not able to at the moment, since I’m currently downloading a ton of porn at the moment (yes, on a Saturday morning), I’ll just give his a go; an interactive trailer, via the magic of YouTube…

… I will say, it works about a 1000% better than the first example here (but that’s not saying much, I guess). I’m also shocked that others don’t do the same.

Wouldn’t work with every game, naturally, but I’d normally never give a strategy game the time of the day, mostly since I find them overwhelming. But there’s nothing taxing about hearing some narrator explaining stuff and watching videos based upon my choices (and most importantly, having the important stuff that I might otherwise miss in midst of action, since again it’s all new to me, being presented front and center).

Simply titled Sonic For Hire, we find the blue hedgehog doing jack, other than stare at an old Dominique Wilkins poster. And because rent is due, the dude goes out to make some hard earned cash…

… What follows is, to be honest, ain’t half bad. Especially how the premise sounds “yeah, that’s cute… I guess” like 98% of all recurring YouTube series that pretty much go nowhere after a short while. I won’t pass along every installment, which there’s plenty of thus far, just the ones that matter.

Like episode 5, in which Sonic not only has to call a match in Street Fighter, but his old nemesis who first appeared in episode 4 shows up, the very first instance of all the episodes connecting with one another…

Episodes 9 is one of the lone stand-alone installments, and has Sonic being a male escort for Mother Brain in Metroid…

Episode 11 has Sonic trying to manage Tetris blocks, but being interrupted by Robotnik, who also brought Earthworm Jim along, whose suit got stolen by Sonic in episode 6. BTW, Sonic jacking off into Robotnik’s burger took place in episode 7, with the deed shown via surveillance footage that was viewed on Jim’s TV, which Sonic also stole. I also love the return of the Jamie Lee Curtis references…

Episode 12 has the dwarf from Golden Axe paying Sonic to have sex with the warrior chick, just so he can watch and masturbate…

Season 2 begins with Sonic giving one of the Excitebikes a spin…

And here we have Sonic helping a special needs kid, aka Goro from Mortal Kombat…

By this point, Sonic has had to take gigs from Mario, and this episode has him tracking down Toad. Whom he finds having sex with Birdo, in the face…

The follow-up, involving Angry Birds, is a real hoot as well…

… Sonic and Mario’s banter in the subsequent episodes are also pretty damn funny as well!

Now, it’ll take a little time before media gets distributed, and since there’s also no real to regurgitate all the PR jargon that was spilled, how about I just pass along my two cents to everything as it was said, in the order it was said, in real time?

Basically, this is me reposting my Twitter feed during the event, with some tightening up. Because game journalists believe that they’re so damn funny during such occasions, and this particular egotist wants to make sure his nuggets of truth have not been missed:

1. Re: the new Call of Duty, it’s nice to know enough time has passed in which game makers can go back to blowing up buildings in lower Manhattan without a second thought.

20. In the end, no hint of a Xbox 720, thank goodness. Was afraid with Nintendo about to make official a new system, they might be a bit trigger-happy. Then again, this is MS we’re talking about. They know when a cash cow is still giving milk. Look how long it took them to properly update XP?

This is not one of those pieces of news. In fact, although the gentlemen you’ll see in the video below lost part of his house, he’ll probably end up getting rich thanks to the tornado also stealing his burger.

Or, alternately, he’ll end up watching someone else get rich by auto-tuning his “Tornado Burger!” YouTube, and then getting angry when he finds out that 500,000 people named their fantasy football teams after his never-actually-uttered catchphrase.

Still, it may have been worth it, because this is an utterly rewatchable 45 seconds of a local news clip.

The one thing I never can figure out about these clips: do you think producers and/or reporters on the ground want their videos to go viral? Like, does Shelly Standerson of WTF-TV in Fakesy, Idaho seek out someone who’s going to make for a hilarious news clip that people watch on YouTube millions of times?

That seems like a logical move if you’re trying to get your face on television, but it’s also kind of evil, especially when a man’s just had his beef yanked out of his hand by some crazy spinning winds.

Of course, that terrible story has nothing to do with the YouTube awesomeness that’s below.

In this video, a 2-year-old child is riding in the back of the car, kicking it in his car seat. His parents, of course, are doing everything in their power to make sure he continues to sleep, and blaring the mess out of some Wacka.

It’s so loud, in fact, that the kid is bobbing and weaving in his sleep. Then all of a sudden — BAM! — he wakes up mid … um, kid rap?

I’m not even sure what you call what he’s doing but it’s superb. Handpound to Sharebro Ness for the link.

TEXT

YAY!

Or something. Look, in case you didn’t know, LeBron James likes himself. Which is cool, because he’s pretty awesome at basketball, and a lot of other people like  him too.

The beef folks usually have with James is that he’s a bit self-indulgent. Which I’m not entirely sure this webisode (isn’t that what the kids are calling cartoons that aren’t good enough to get picked up by television and therefore are only shown on YouTube these days?) will do anything to disprove, but it’s probably making money with Intel and HP as sponsors. And it means that LeBron gets an executive producer credit, as does his business manager Maverick Carter and other fun stuff like that.

Either way, it’s reached a point of popularity that it’s getting spoofed all over the place.

Conan O’Brien recently did a little mock of the game, and now Angry Birds has gotten its own movie. Well, not really, but it’s gotten a fake movie. Okay, so it’s gotten a fake movie trailer, courtesy of the guys at Rooster Teeth, who somehow managed to make a video game about launching birds with a slingshot into a pretty freaking dramatic little preview.

Yes, there’s now a 100 % chance that some movie studio exec sees the spoof and decides this could happen for realsies. So get ready.

Okay, the stupid stuff that people do on tape is still awesome and really funny. But the secondary creations that come from various memes are just epic. Like this dude named Kutiman’s (he previously put together a pretty sweet jam about two-and-a-half years ago)  latest YouTube Mashup.

It’s not making fun of anyone, however, it’s just kind of a killer jam session that utilizes a pile of different videos that folks have probably already seen in order to create one awesome, weird, kind of chillwave song. Or something. Just watch. And enjoy.

You Must Watch the YouTube Mashup Master’s Triumphant Return – [Gizmodo]

Personally, I’m just glad that the Rebecca Black meme can keep going even as the girl herself gets less and less interesting. Check out her appearance on the Tonight Show. First of all: She might be the biggest thirteen year-old ever. She’s like Shaq-sized. Second of all: She’s ACUTELY unaware of how terrible she is. It’s like she read all the negative comments and then said, “People just like having fun at my expense!” That’s bullshit. If what happened to her happened to me NOW, I’d probably cry and never want my face seen in public. And I’m a 26-year-old man. And then she’s donating all the money she’s making to Japan? Stop being so damned mature.

My new theory is that Rebecca Black is a developmentally stunted 40-year-old woman, like the little chick in that horror movie “Orphan” and this was her last great grasp for fame. I will not be swayed.

Ben Higgins almost had a very  bad day Thursday.

Sure the San Diego State Aztecs had won their first tournament game and Higgins, the sports director for ABC 10 in Tucscon, was doing one of those normal news reports from the front of a darkened basketball arena. Then the driver of the Chevy Suburban behind him nearly wrecked his evening by backing over him mid-newscast.

I think — key word: think — it’s funnier because a photographer jumps in at the last second and stops the car so that Higgins doesn’t get run over.

Any serious injury to the sports reporter might have made this an awkward “can’t really watch it” scene. Now it’s just snarf-out-loud worthy.

Well, I think it’d be perfectly reasonable to just give this girl the song and allow her to tour the country performing it. Bret Michaels has enough other stuff going on. Plus there’s a real uncanny similarity between the two. Kind of like how that Asian dude who replaced Steve Perry in Journey is exactly the same in terms of voice and look. That stage presence, that soul. Good looks that make even Susan Boyle look terrible in comparison. This lady is definitely going places.

I’m on board with Copper Cab completely. He’s taken up the cause for a group that no one even pretends to like, the Gingers (see his video on whether or not he is a soulless ginger). So what if he likes to put on make-up and a silly hat and yell a lot? That doesn’t make him gay or a bad person. Clinically insane, yes. But bad? No. All I’m saying is that if I were to allow one creepy ginger man yell at me through my computer monitor, it’s definitely this guy. Or Budnick from “Salute Your Shorts.” But definitely just one of those two.

Ginger Kid Dresses Like The Mad Hatter And Plans A Rap Video [Videogum]

Social networking is a part of everyday life for most people, but the sad thing is no matter how often you check your Facebook page, odds are you’re going to run into the same types of updates over and over.

9 Too Much Information
“Just got done cleaning the shower. Now I’m going to go make some spinach dip.” First of all, you shouldn’t cook right after cleaning. It just seems dirty. Second, did you really need to post that update? How many friends of yours do you think were curious as to what you were doing and what you plan on doing next? If you answered none, you’re correct. I can’t wait until you’re in your forties and posting status updates about your crazy cats.

8 Liking Everything
It’s great that people can share their interests over social networks and connect with people who like the same things, but the like button has just made me hate the things my friends like. I’m glad that you can finally be open about how you love things such as sleeping. I hope you aren’t a fan of breathing because I’m going to choke you the next time you hit the “like” button.

7 YouTube Videos
Internet memes are fun, but only when you catch them as they’re happening. Things that were funny in 2006 lose their appeal years later. At least one of your friends on Facebook has five-year Internet lag, so expect to see the Numa Numa Guy in your feed real soon.

6 Relationships
It’s said that relationships aren’t for real until they are Facebook official. It should be noted that those who say that are idiots. Half the time when you see that someone has entered a relationship, they’ll change back to single within a week. Side note: If you want to create an awkward situation, like the relationship status of a friend of the opposite gender when they set it to single.

5 Song Lyrics
Sometimes your own words aren’t good enough to express how you feel. When that’s the case, just steal someone else’s.

4 Games
Facebook has become a haven for third party applications. You can almost guarantee one of your friends is playing some absurd game right this second that requires him or her to acquire things like a hammer or cucumbers so they can complete tasks like…collecting hammers or cucumbers.

3 Quizzes
Have you ever been curious as to what state that originally seceded from the Union you’re most like? Well, odds are you friends were wondering that exact thing. While you’re at it, enjoy reading up on what Kool-Aid flavor Steve is.

2 Statuses that Beg for Attention
“Can’t imagine how things could get any worse…” You can’t imagine anything worse than what you’re going through? I know you want a comment asking, “What’s wrong” but I don’t play that game. Instead I’m going to assume you have a rare flesh-eating disease that somehow mixed with cancer and AIDS, which you contracted after getting attacked by a shark. If that wasn’t it, then step up your imagination.

1 Links
Your friends often discover things on the Internet, much like this article, that they find to be interesting. Often times, they aren’t. That’s not going to stop them from posting the link though on the chance that maybe you’ll accidentally click it while attempting to hit the “Hide” button.

I don’t know if Justin Bieber would approve of all this violence against others being perpetrated on his behalf. Slaps to the face, stepping on toes. Combine that with having to say Justin Bieber’s name in full and trying to convert others to fans, apparently being a Justin Bieber is roughly equivalent to being a Muslim jihadist. Which makes more sense than you’d think.

The Justin Bieber Fan Club [Epic Ponyz]

Come on, now. You know that principal giving out the diplomas had to take time out of her day to sit down and learn how to pronounce that correctly. Who in their right mind gives someone 12 middle names? It must have been hell on her when standardized testing rolled around and she had to print her name on the Scantron sheet. When naming a child, it’s a good rule of thumb to pick one special family member or loved one to possibly use as a middle name. You don’t have to go with half the family tree. Just ask my young son, Starsky Incredible Hulk Clooney Bud Doyle Indiana Jones Fonzerelli. Nobody ever gives him any trouble.