Staff Picks – Week of May 20th, 2016

Rogues Portal Staff Picks – Week of May 20th, 2016

Here at the Rogues Portal, we have a great and diverse group of writers with various interests. Each week, we will put on display some picks that our staff has chosen to share with you. From books to movies and everything in between, we share with you what has been keeping us entertained, here are our favorites of the week!

Amelia’s Pick of the Week: My pick of the week is The Drifting Classroom by Kazuo Umezu. An eleven issue manga written by an absolute horror master. The Drifting Classroom is about a normal Japanese school that suddenly finds itself in a cold, dark, lifeless, nightmarish wasteland. Panic sets in for the eight hundred students. Madness for the few teachers. The Drifting Classroom is terrifying in a subtle, makes you think and then makes you overthink, way. The implications of human nature presented are nerve-wracking. I’ve seen the apocalypse but not like this. With stakes raising ever higher at the end of each issue, this atmospheric thriller will keep you reaching for the next one with shaking, but eager, hands

Billy’s Pick of the Week: The Book of Lost Books by Stuart Kelly is a 2005 non-fiction book that chronicles the surprisingly vast number of books we know may or may not have existed at one point, but don’t have any actual recorded version of today. I’m so fascinated by this! How can so many important, globally beloved books just go missing? Famous authors like Homer, Shakespeare, and Charles Dickens are all listed within The Book of Lost Books. Did you know, for example, that The Iliad and The Odyssey were part of a trilogy? That the only copy of one of one of Ancient Greece’s best poets burned in the Library of Alexandria? For anybody who’s fascinated with building their library, learning more about favourite authors, or delving deeply into the many intellectual disasters of our history, this one’s for you. It’s a bibliophile’s painful journey through history reading about all the books that could have been. A whole library of books that were either lost, destroyed, or left unwritten.

Heidi’s Pick of the Week: My pick of the week is the Many a True Nerd YouTube channel.

MATN is a gaming channel which has reeled me in because of its hilarious but thoughtful game commentary and its special love of Fallout (my favourite game series). The channel is ran by Jon, and occasionally features a few of his friends. Jon’s challenge runs of the Fallout games have me glued to my computer screen more than any TV series, particularly the ever-tense You Only Live Once runs. He also features other new games, many independent smaller games, and revisits some older games as well. I recommend this channel to any Fallout fans and anyone who enjoys gaming channels with colourful commentary.

Stephen’s Pick of the Week: The season finale of The Flash is Tuesday and it is the pick of the week. Much as a recent episode of the show annoyed me, the last two episodes have been great hours of TV. With The Flash and the Zoom in a race that may decide the fate of two worlds, this last episode looks to be amazing. Not only that there’s still the mystery of who the man in the iron mask is that Zoom is keeping prisoners. The producers have promised that we’ll get an answer, and here’s my prediction that is informed by a few things that the shows producers have said and Zoom said. The producers have said that he will be revealed and it will be worth it. Zoom has stated that we’ll never believe who the man is. Given those two bits of information my prediction is that the man in the iron mask is the REAL, old man, Jay Garrick. Even if I’m wrong, I look forward to seeing the last episode.

Ryan’s Pick of the Week:  Fallout 4: Far Harbor, I have only put about 2 hours into the newly released DLC, but I am thoroughly enjoying it. To start the DLC the player boards a creepy old boat towards the surviving port of Far Harbor, Maine, looking for a missing person. The locale of a derelict sea town haunted by irradiated fog puts an eerie feel in the air with little effort. To top off the atmosphere, Bethesda has created truly terrifying enemies covered in ooze and scales. Even at level 70 with over 200 hours played, the Salamander inspired Gulpers were destroying me. That being said I refuse to go back to the Commonwealth to retrieve my carefully curated bad ass power armor, for fear of plowing through the DLC with ease. I look forward to spending the weekend fighting through the Fog in this excellent addition to the Fallout universe.

David’s Pick of the Week: My pick of the week goes back to 1995 with the movie Strange Days, directed by Kathryn Bigelow. Set during the last days of 1999, the movie tells the story of former police officer Lenny Nero, who now deals in illegal virtual reality recordings taken from live situations that allow the users to experience and feel the recordings on the discs as if they are the ones actually performing the actions. A disc comes his way showing a murder that traces the conspiracy all the way back to the police department that he once worked for. With the help from his bodyguard friend, they work feverishly to uncover the truth behind the murder. The movie stars Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, and Juliette Lewis. Very underrated film that if you have never seen it, then you need to check it out!