The James Logan Courier

By Billy O'Keefe
McClatchy-Tribune (MCT)

If you've grown tired of the tower defense status quo, "Dead Block" might interest you. Because while this, too, is a tower defense game at heart, it's also a third-person action game in which you directly control multiple survivors (either solo or via four-player splitscreen co-op) under attack from zombies. "Block's" mechanics are simple: You have to destroy furniture to gather wood for boarding up windows, scour through other objects to find keys and parts with which to make traps, and manually attack zombies who break through your defenses.

By Billy O'Keefe
McClatchy-Tribune (MCT)

Is it possible to be both a mostly excellent game and a big letdown? It sure is, and "F.E.A.R. 3" — the arguably misnamed fruits of a game in development since before "F.E.A.R. 2" released — stands as enjoyable, aggravating proof.

First things first: the story. Because of "F3's" unusual development experience — look it up if you're curious about the reasons and means — it feels more like a continuation of the original "F.E.A.R." than its sequel. The game opens a big window into the tormented origins of the first game's chief protagonist and antagonist, but if you're hoping for a payoff on the second game's cliffhanger, you'll mostly be stifled until the very end.

Far more jarring than any of this, though, are the changes new developer Day 1 Studios has made to the core "F.E.A.R." gameplay, which is known as much for its pristine enemy intelligence and creepy atmosphere as its unique storyline.

Los Angeles Times (MCT)

LOS ANGELES — The process behind Brian Eno's new album, "Drums Between the Bells," a collaboration with the English poet Rick Holland, is based on a simple premise but one that could change the way you hear your next conversation.

"We are all singing. We call it speech, but we're singing to each other," Eno said (sang?) from London during a recent phone exchange. Eight years ago the British-born composer, producer, visual artist and sonic conceptualist began putting his belief to a test: "I thought, as soon as you put spoken word onto music, you start to hear it like singing anyway. You start to develop musical value and musical weight, and you start to notice how this word falls on that beat, and so on."

By Billy O'Keefe
McClatchy-Tribune (MCT)

When a game lets style run completely wild over substance the way "Shadows of the Damned" does, it's usually because there really isn't a whole lot of substance in place to stop it from doing so.

But while "Damned" doubtlessly will be best remembered for its characters, setting, humor and overall audiovisual presentation, each of these headliners serves to complement rather than mask the actual gameplay, which is — while mostly conventional, save for a few hit-or-miss bits — quite good in its own right.

By Dan DeLuca
The Philadelphia Inquirer (MCT)

PHILADELPHIA — "Rejoice & Shout," filmmaker Don McGlynn's raucous new documentary about gospel music in America, reaches all the way back to 1902, when Virginia's Dinwiddie Colored Quartet made the first African-American religious recordings, almost two decades before the first jazz and blues records.

Listening in on the music that came out of black Baptist and Pentecostal churches in the century since, "Rejoice & Shout" focuses attention on big-name and not-so-big-name gospel greats, from Mahalia Jackson and the Staple Singers to the Golden Gate Quartet and Swan Silvertones.

"These are people who really believe in God and are expressing themselves, body and soul, though this music," McGlynn said in an interview from Los Angeles last week.