Chef-Robot Is "Better than a Man"

The term "iron chef" just took on scary new connotations.

Chef Cui, invented by Beijing restauranteur Cui Runguan, is a $2000 robot for Asian noodle bars. A motorized arm modeled after windshield wipers cuts fresh noodles faster and more evenly than most human workers can.

Robot labor is also cheaper than human labor (yes, even in China). Noodle bar employees earn about $4700/year, so Chef Cui is pretty much a no-brainer for any shop doing enough business that it would have to hire somebody just to slice noodles.

Runguan has sold over 3000 units already. "It's a great machine," one Chef Cui owner said, "and it is better than a man." A customer at his restaurant concurs: "The noodles made by the robot are as good as the man-made ones."

Chef Cui was expressly designed to eliminate jobs, but that's not necessarily a bad thing: slicing noodles all day would probably be pretty tedious and exhausting. As Runguan explains, "young people don't want to work slicing noodles." On behalf of young people everywhere, he's right.

Of course, when you make robots do menial work, there's always the risk of an uprising. Chef Cui is obviously quick with a blade, and just look at those creepy yellow eyes and sinister chevron-shaped unibrow. Why it has a head at all is a mystery, but we're just glad these things aren't mobility-enabled.

Will you refuse to eat android-sliced food on principle or welcome our new robo-chef overlords? Let us know in the comments.

Jon Fox is a Seattle hipster who loves polar bears and climbing trees. You can follow him on Twitter and IGN.

Source : ign[dot]com

First Footage Shown from Seth Green and Matt Senreich's Star Wars: Detours Animated Series

Robot Chicken creators Seth Green and Matt Senreich, joined by their collaborator Todd Grimes, finally unveiled footage and details on the upcoming new animated series Star Wars: Detours at Star Wars Celebration VI today.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/08/24/first-footage-shown-from-seth-green-and-matt-senreichs-star-wars-detours-animated-series

Source : ign[dot]com

First Footage Shown from Seth Green and Matt Senreich's Star Wars: Detours Animated Series

Robot Chicken creators Seth Green and Matt Senreich, joined by their collaborator Todd Grimes, finally unveiled footage and details on the upcoming new animated series Star Wars: Detours at Star Wars Celebration VI today.

It was noted that this series takes place in-between Episode III and IV, with a completely comedic take on the Star Wars world. The focus was on the mundane – what do these characters do in their downtime? As Grimes put it, “Where do Gamorrean Guards grocery shop? Does Darth Vader do online dating? The answer is yes. We answer all these things.”

A ton of footage was shown, beginning with a long trailer. As far as the show’s style, it’s CGI animated, but the characters are very exaggerated, Chibi/super deformed style – Folks like Princess Leia and Admiral Ackbar are very small, with large heads. And Leia’s trademark hair buns are HUGE!

The quick-cut trailer had a lot of gags that felt very similar in tone to what Robot Chicken does (though less adults only than that show can get). Gags included Boba Fett making up an elaborate lie to a girl about how he’d called her but she must not have gotten his message, Admiral Ackbar trying a ton of variations on what his catch phrase will be – It’s a frappe!” -- before finding the right one, and Obi-Wan getting a terrible response as he tries standup comedy and then using the Force on the audience, as he intones, “That joke was hilarious and you all liked it.” ” We also saw Jar Jar Binks walk up to Dexter Jettster and ask why everyone hates him and Dexter asking Jar Jar how honest he wants him to be.

Among my favorite of the gags shown were two Stormtroopers recreating a famous Luke and Leia moment, as they attempt to swing across a chasm in the Death Star. “For luck” says one to the other and they fist bump. As they swing across, the door on the other side slams shut and they hit it, plummeting down… only to land a few feet below on what seems to be the vast tunnel below. “It’s a matte painting!” exclaims one of the Troopers. “They haven’t finished…

Besides the trailer, several other clips were shown. In the series, the Death Star is being built, under the pretense that it’s a giant mall. As Green pointed out, if you’re building something the size of a moon, “people are going to know!” so that’s the cover story. “George was insistent that there be an IT guy,” Green noted, of the staff we’ll meet on the Death Star.

As for Darth Vader, the Detours producers joked that given that this was a relative time of peace in the Galaxy, Darth Vader is a bit restless. As Senreich put it, “He’s the guy cutting ribbons at the supermarket. He’s got nowhere else to be right now. He’s got nothing to do.”

The relationship between Vader and the Emperor looks to be a version of the very funny one seen on Robot Chicken, with Seth MacFarlane again voicing Palpatine. A clip was shown in which Palpatine tries to cover up to Vader that he leaked a story to a TMZ-like show called Galaxy Rumors and we see that Palpatine has made a lot of calls to this show, including exclaiming, “I totally saw the Emperor dancing the night away with three Twi'lek models!” Joel McHale voices the host of Galaxy Rumors seen in this sequence with Mass Effect’s Jennifer Hale voicing Major Steel, an imperial officer who will be a frequent presence on the show.

A lot of time will be spent on Tatooine on the series, including familiar locations like the Cantina and the Lars homestead (though interestingly/curiously, no footage of Luke was in anything we saw today). A scene was shown of Han and Chewbacca inside the Falcon on the desert planet – with Grimes noting that in the show, “They’ve been together so long, they’re kind of like an old married couple.”

And indeed, that was their dynamic, with Han coming home late, to find a furious Chewbacca sitting in front of foot he made for them. When Chewbacca growls at Han as he walks across the Falcon, Han replies, “Of course I have sand on my boots! It’s Tatooine! Nobody asked you to vacuum!” Finally, Chewbacca yanks the Dejarik table up and under his arm and storms off outside, with Han pulling up alongside him in the Falcon, swinging open the canopy and saying, “Come on Chewie, get in the Falcon!”

It was noted by Green, Senreich and Grimes that the Falcon in the show was completely based off the original toy version we all had growing up – hence the canopy opening up and the removable table, plus, Green revealed, there’s a lightsaber training droid hanging on a string.

Another major element in the series is Dex’s Diner, which gives an Alice or Cheers vibe to the proceedings, as characters come in and out. We saw a scene with Leia set here, who Green noted was a 14-year old who’s mad at the world, doesn’t know who her real parents are and sick of the decoys accompanying her everywhere to happen. As Green put it, “This is a bitch waiting to happen!” The voice of Padme on Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Catherine Taber voices Leia and all her decoys here.

In the clip we saw, Dexter dots on the bratty Leia and her decoys, with Leia proclaiming, “This is my favorite food. I only eat here,” only for a commercial to come on for a rival restaurant starring Leia, in which she says the exact same thing. Dexter looks appropriately shocked and we then see that Han and Lando are sitting eating at the counter eating and Han says, “That kind of betrayal is shocking!” Replies Lando, “Hey, business is business! They probably got to her right before Dex did!”

In a very fun reveal, we were told Billy Dee Williams was reprising the role of Lando for the series, along with Anthony Daniels as C-3PO and Ahmed Best as Jar-Jar. Detours head writer Brendan Hay (a Daily Show alum) and producer Jennifer Hill joined the panel, as more writers and cast members were revealed.

The impressive writing staff for Detours includes many Robot Chicken alums, including Dan Milano, Tom Root, Zeb Wels, Doug Goldstein, Breckin Meyer and Kevin Shinick, plus David Goodman (a Family Guy alum who worked on that show’s Star Wars parodies) and Simpsons alum Michael Price. There are also writers from The Venture Bros., Pinky and the Brain, Regular Show and Spongebob SquarePants involved, not to mention someone with a ton of geek TV cred – Jane Espenson, who’s written for everything from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Battlestar Galactica.

As for casting, Chuck’s Zachary Levi will voice “Biff Tarkin,” Grand Moff Tarkin’s son, while Breckin Myer and Donald Faison (the latter of whom also joined the panel) will play the two Stormtroopers seen in the trailer. Star Wars: The Clone Wars' Dee Bradley Baker will also voice characters on the series, including an old Clone Trooper who's none too happy with the modern Stormtroopers. Behind the scenes footage also revealed the voice cast includes Abraham Benrubi (ER), Cree Summers, Nat Faxon and two folks who got a lot of applause: Felicia Day and Weird Al Yankovic.

Regarding the presence of Jar Jar Binks on Star Wars: Detours, Green chuckled, "The places Jar Jar goes… will make you love Jar Jar." Added Hay, "Or at least you’ll hate him for new reasons!"

The final footage shown today was about as humorously out there as you can get. We were told how Donald Faison’s stormtrooper really wants to be a mattress salesman, as a clip was shown (written by Jane Espenson) in which that aforementioned Stormtrooper sings a parody of Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream” about mattresses.

Suffice to say, if the only Star Wars material you want to see is deadly serious, this show won’t be for you. But if you’ve enjoyed the Robot Chicken Star Wars parodies and take note of the impressive group of people creating this show, Star Wars: Detours looks to be a very funny and entertaining take on a very beloved universe.

There is no exact date (or network) revealed for Star Wars: Detours yet, but given how much near-complete footage we saw today, I'd say "sometime in 2013" is a safe bet.

Source : ign[dot]com

Hoodwink Review

A dystopian world where gun-toting anthropomorphs, recycled human brains plunked down onto metal robot bodies, and hippy rebels all co-exist under the oppressive thumb of a trigger-happy pharmaceutical company sounds like a neat setting to dig into. It could be, really, except Hoodwink totally botches its inherent potential from the get-go. Almost every major step of the way in this insipid, barely hour-long point-and-click adventure feels like a lesson in how not to design a game.

Navigating Hoodwink's story might be a lot more enjoyable if it made some modicum of sense. Roguish protagonist Michael Bezzle (M. Bezzle)'s adventure kicks off with a night out on the town to pilfer the items he needs to propose to his girlfriend Francesca. Most of your time spent fiddling around with rote fetch quests in the dirty slums of Global-1 is dedicated to this seemingly mundane quest, yet sporadic encounters with a cat-detective and the comically oafish UniCorp troops hint at bigger matters afoot. Wisps of frayed plot threads pop-up along the way, but none of them really come together to explain or intrigue. This total lack of cohesiveness comes to a head at the awkwardly-placed cliffhanger ending that does precious little to inspire me to play a sequel in order to find out what the heck is going on, assuming one ever gets made.

It doesn't help that things get off to a rough start. The impact of the clever narrative slight-of-hand that unfolds in the opening scene introducing Michael is lost amidst some of the most unwieldy point-and-click controls I've encountered in a long time. Simply moving around to access specific areas of the screen and interacting with objects is a constant wrestling match. Changing the camera angle and transitioning between areas is triggered by clicking vague hotspots around the environment, rather than walking over to where you want to go. While this will sound familiar to adventure gaming vets, the way its implemented here just doesn't work that well.

After I accidentally walked past a crucial puzzle hotspot sitting on the back wall following a brief cinematic, it took me several minutes of cursing and frantic trial-and-error clicking to figure how to get back there. I knew what I needed to do. The game just wouldn't let get there without a fight. This particular issue is less prevalent in the open areas found further along in the trek, but most forms of movement and interaction throughout Hoodwink's brief jaunt are awkward and sluggish at best -- and that's when they're not glitching out.

In several instances, using a staircase caused the camera to get stuck on the wrong floor, forcing me to restart the game from scratch. Wonky pathfinding also occasionally made Michael walk in the opposite direction of where I intended him to go before looping around to his destination in a bizarre roundabout way. These funky moments stand out among the more general feelings of frustration that set in when trying to get around.

Hoodwink's poorly conceived puzzles are far from inventive, and most boil down to fetching objects and bringing them to the obvious spot where they're needed. Some puzzle solutions are absurdly disconnected from their objective, like one early-on that has you hunting down matches, smoking a cigar, and cranking a machine on the wall to reveal the item you're hunting for. Others are either too basic to begin with or are ruined by the erratic hint system, which alternately tells you exactly what you need to do next or spits out vague leads. There's a rare instance or two where interactive mini-games have you turning cranks or catching bugs, but these tasks are tackled within seconds and add very little to the experience. It's not terribly hard to figure out what to do simple because there's barely anything to interact with in the environments to begin with.

The lack of puzzle creativity carries over into the one-dimensional characters that they frequently hinge upon too. Playful stereotypes abound, from the flower child hippie spouting "stick it to The Man" rhetoric to the agitated Asian food vendor peddling rat burgers in bad English, but they're more hokey than humorous. Dialogue alternates between cheesy and obnoxious too, and while some of the voice work is well done, most of it is overdone. All of this is a shame, because the cel-shaded artwork is really quite good, and the setting itself is an interesting place to explore. Unfortunately, everything else is pretty weak.

Source : ign[dot]com

Aquaman Gets a Robot Chicken Variant Cover

With the Aquaman-centric Robot Chicken DC Comics Special set to air on September 9th, DC is offering a very amusing variant cover to the upcoming Aquaman #12. TV Guide broke the image:

"Aquaman will play a pretty big role in the show. In fact, the title could just as easily be How Aquaman Got His Groove Back!" said Aquaman scribe Geoff Johns of the special. "This is the last thing I ever thought we'd put on an Aquaman cover because it's such a bizarre collision of worlds but I think it's one of the best covers we've ever done...I just love the look on Superman's face!"

For more with Johns and the minds behind Robot Chicken, head over to TV Guide.

Joey is IGN's Comics Editor and a comic book creator himself. Follow Joey on Twitter, or find him on IGN. He loves superhero pets so hard.

Source : ign[dot]com