Columbia Pictures

"The news coming out of Skyfall certainly suggests a back-to-Bond-basics approach."

Exactly how big a role the car will play is being kept under wraps. The car cameoed in Casino Royale (Bond won it in a poker tournament), but recent 007 flicks have featured Fords and Jags among the latest Astons, while Range Rovers have also been snapped on the Skyfall set. 

The news coming out of Skyfall certainly suggests a back-to-Bond-basics approach, just in time to celebrate 50 years of 007 movies. The first official shot of the movie, as well as spy snaps taken on the London set, saw Bond wielding his iconic Walther pistol, which will no doubt see some action as he tries to defend MI6 from an assault led by bad-guy Javier Bardem. 

Skyfall will also feature the return of MI6’s much-loved Quartermaster, better known as Q -- the god of gadgets, from car ejector seats to the exploding attache case. Determined to keep things Casino Royale-fresh, they’re not going down the grumpy old codger route, instead casting 31-year-old Ben Whishaw. The fresh-faced actor has been acclaimed for his Hamlet on stage -- proper thespian alert -- as well as BBC drama The Hour. 

Skyfall will be released in November.

AMC

"Why should it take an apocalyptic scenario for a man with actual balls to have value?"

Where zombie metaphors aren’t obvious, people tend to use the undead horde as stand-ins for whatever group they currently don’t like. Hate the Tea Party? Zombies. Christian conservatives? Zombies. War protesters? Zombies.

Zombies, though, at their best are a natural disaster: a Hurricane Katrina, Haitian earthquake or Japanese tsunami. They are a worldwide extinction-level threat that forces the living characters to be stripped down to what they really are. Watching these plots unfold, you have to ask yourself how you’d handle a similar situation. Are you a leader or a follower? Are you strong or are you weak? Are you a man or are you a member of the indie-folk rock band Modest Mouse? There’s not much call for banjo and ukulele players in the zombie apocalypse is what I’m saying. Pick up a few survival skills, Isaac Brock, if you know what’s good for you. 

Zombies, Metaphors And Masculinity 

I think this speaks to a larger issue with men in the real world. Specifically, how society expects the modern man to be a sweaty, weak-kneed manchild who is overly concerned with ruffling the feathers of people who have no business being covered in feathers in the first place. A mangina who knows in his sensitive, bleeding heart that violence doesn’t solve anything and killing the bad guy, be it serial killer, murdering terrorist or genocidal evil dictator, makes you just as bad as he is. War, man, what is it good for? 

It would be awesome if that stuff were true, but it’s make believe. Sometimes the bad guys don’t stop being bad until they’re dead. Violence can and has solved lots of problems, and war, I’m sad to say, can serve a purpose -- like freeing an entire society, ending slavery or stopping a holocaust. And if you haven’t ruffled somebody’s feathers with something you’ve said, then you’ve never really said anything worthwhile in your life. 

Rick Grimes, played by Andrew Lincoln, is supposed to be the hero of The Walking Dead, but why? Because he’s a decent, sensitive man? Every decision Rick makes ends up with another member of their group injured or dead. Here come some spoilers: Merle, Carl, Otis, Sophia, Amy, Jim, Ed, and Jacqui have all died or nearly died as a direct result of actions Rick has taken in the show. 

Meanwhile, Shane, played by Jon Bernthal, is the guy the show wants you to think is too unstable and violent. But he’s the reason every single character alive on the show is still alive. That includes Rick’s harpy wife, his slackjawed kid and even Rick himself. Shane actually kills Otis so that he can get away from a group of zombies to save Rick’s kid, who got shot in the chest in the first place (by Otis, no less) because Rick was an idiot. 

The thing, of course, is that it’s a zombie show. People are going to be eaten once in a while, or you don’t have much of a show. Without hordes of cannibalistic zombies, gruesome kills and constant paranoid danger at every turn, you just have a show about a bunch of whiny, insipid white people sitting around on a farm, killing time between pharmacy trips by complaining about one other and shooting cans/logs as target practice. And, I mean, nobody wants that. 

The problem, I think, is the writers’ societal conditioning. The way they were raised in this man-hating era is causing problems within the story. There’s no question that if there were really a zombie apocalypse (like the one I’ve been planning and preparing for my entire adult life), a Shane will keep you alive and a Rick will have a zombie picking pieces of you out of its teeth. Why should it take an apocalyptic scenario for a man with actual balls to have value? Why should cowardice and conformity be accepted as virtues? 

Why would a guy who wants to calmly discuss the barn full of hungry zombies as if it’s some sort of zoning problem be a better leader than the guy who wants to kill them all immediately? I guess we’ll have to keep watching The Walking Dead to find out, but right now I’m not convinced.

- The Walking Dead, 10pm Fridays, FX

Sony PlayStation

"Tip: Asda's kicked off the PS Vita price war and has it from £197"

NEW MUST-HAVE APP: CLEAR
Looking for a next-generation take on lists? No, I wasn’t either. But this week, the five-star Clear has found it’s way onto my iPhone and now there’s no turning back. The app makes list-keeping simple, quick and – achieving the impossible – even satisfying to use.
Lists are priority-graded in colour from not-that-important yellow to list-topping, mega-urgent-red. It’s super-intuitive with swipes and pinches and… it’s British! Born in Brighton. So show it some love, as it’s a mightily reasonable 69p on the App Store. Here’s a video to convince you to stick it on the shopping list.

iCADE JR: ARCADE GAMING FOR iPHONE
The original iCade – an arcade-style cabinet gaming controller and dock for your iPad – was a sell-out success. Now its offspring is on the way: iCade Jr. It’s a similar set-up, only smaller to fit your iPhone/iPod Touch. The controls connect via Bluetooth and it works with all compatible game apps, including the 100-title Atari’s Greatest Hits app. Grab one, stick it on your desk and work will be a distant memory. Meanwhile, anyone with a 21^st century Xbox 360 and Xbox Live Gold membership can grab a free demo of EA Sports’ upcoming SSX reboot (ahead of the snowboarding title’s March 2 launch on PS3 and 360) now in the Xbox Live Marketplace, or get it queued to your downloads here.

25,000,000,000 APP DOWNLOADS
More app news for Man vs Tech this week, with word that Apple’s grip on Earth tightens as it hits a staggering 25 billion app downloads from the App Store (at least a billion of which may well be on my cluttered iPhone). To celebrate this milestone, whoever downloads the 25 billionth app wins a $10,000 App Store gift card. How do you organise ten grand’s worth of apps on your homescreen? Check out this fascinating new Pinterest board of random people’s iPhone homescreens for inspiration, and be sure to add your own.

AND FINALLY… HOW MUCH TO BUILD A DEATH STAR?
Students at Lehigh University in the US who run economics blog Centives have figured out how much it would cost to build the ultimate tech: the Death Star. Answer? Approximately $852,000,000,000,000,000 (and that’s just for the materials), equivalent to roughly 13,000 times the world’s GDP. Even if we could afford it (and we most definitely can’t), using Earth’s present steel production rate (they assumed it would be made from steel, like an aircraft carrier), it would take… 833,315 years to build.

EA Sports

For the most part, it succeeds admirably. Start, menu and loading screens are indistinguishable from those in FIFA 12. But it's the gameplay that really showcases what the Vita can and can't do. One of its major successes is preserving FIFA's core gameplay undiluted – moving, passing, shooting, all remain unaltered.

In-game visuals are fairly impressive throughout, with player likenesses remaining strong and stadiums looking impressive. This impressive continuity, however, doesn't extend to all aspects of the gameplay. Defending remains unchanged – you'll still be containing the opposition through a hectoring mix of applied pressure and jockeying. Precision dribbling, however, seems to have suffered. Players don't seem to have the same degree of close control. It's not a major fault; it just niggles slightly if you've made it a big part of your FIFA 12 game. It also serves as a reminder that while this looks and, for the most part, plays like FIFA, it's not the same game.

And nor should be. FIFA Vita isn't a slavish reproduction of its console cousin; it takes full advantage of the unique hardware at its disposal, using both the front touchscreen and the rear touchpad (although both are entirely optional), with varying degrees of success. Using the touchscreen to pass and switch between players simply does not work as a viable alternate control scheme. While basic passing between players is possible, anything more ambitious or attacking is too tricky to pull-off, even for the most digitally dextrous. Try it, and you're liable to lose possession and/or drop your brand-new toy. Furthermore, once you start tapping the screen, you're no longer able to see the overall field of play.

In contrast, the use of the rear touchpad for shooting is inspired. The conceit is rather elegant: given their comparable dimensions, the touchpad represents the goal. To shoot, simply tap on the pad where you want to aim your shot. The longer you hold down, the harder the strike. It's simple, and once you get your head around using the touchpad within a game, from a side-on perspective, it's a really fun addition to FIFA, and it makes it a much more accessible game.

Once mastered, the rear touchpad shooting mechanic turns everyone into vintage Paul Scholes – you'll be regularly smashing in shots from the edge of the box into the top corner. This is both a good and a bad thing, of course, depending on what you want from a FIFA game.

For those wanting something a little bit more in-depth, there's Career Mode. The interface, again, is entirely in keeping with FIFA 12, and loading/advance times are mercifully short, actually making the mode enjoyable on the Vita. Other FIFA standards – Be A Pro, Virtual Pro – are also present, but fans of Ultimate Team will disappointed by its absence. But you can't have everything, and there's certainly enough crammed into FIFA Vita to make it a must-have launch title.

Online multiplayer is also present. While at times online matches suffered from some minor lag issues, it never really affected gameplay, though it made timing slide tackles a little precarious.