Hahahah. There’s really not a whole lot to say, except this: I am vastly more attractive than that drummer and I always play on expert. Take that!

The Creature Creator for Spore was recently released, and there have been a bunch of creations going up all over the web. First up is SporeCraft, where some enterprising people created various StarCraft creatures like the Zegling and the Dragoon. We also have the cute little turret from Portal, and something I will have nightmares about.

And, of course, lots of penises.

Well, sort of. Pixeloo, a blogger and very talented artist, is well known for his realistic depictions of characters like Mario, Homer, and even Jessica Rabbit. Now he’s tried his hand at Grand Theft Auto IV protagonist Niko Bellic. Very cool.

Someone inside Activision has leaked new info that the next Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater game will feature a balance board. No, I’m not exactly sure what that means either, but it’s some sort of motion-based controller for the game, and will be available on the PS3, the 360, and the PC. No real details as of yet, but I’m sure we’ll hear more as the game gets closer to release.

Intel has just finished up a modification to Enemy Territory: Quake Wars that allows the engine to use ray-tracing rather than the traditional hodgepodge of methods used in other games. In most games, programmers use a variety of different tricks to determine, for instance, the opacity or transparency of objects, what the player can and can’t see, reflections, etc., mostly centered around the z-buffering algorithm. With ray-tracing, millions of simulated rays of light are shot out of each light source. Each ray, or photon, is then tracked along its path. This method can very accurately determine reflection (how many photons bounce off an object), transparency (how many pass through vs. how many are absorbed), and refraction (how the photons’ paths are bent as they pass through an object). The upshot of this is that most objects look only slightly better, but anything involving glass or water looks orders of magnitude more real, as you can see from the screenshots in the article.

Don’t get your hopes up that you’ll be running this version anytime soon, though. Using a 16-core (4 socket, 4 core) Tigerton system running at 2.93 GHz, Intel was only able to achieve between 10-25 FPS. Ray-tracing is not an easy task.

No, I don’t mean theme or setting, I mean directly stealing objects, textures, and even entire rooms — down to the placement of books on a bookshelf. GamePlasma stumbled across the thievery while doing a review, and posted some screen shots showing off just how blatant it is. In most cases the rooms are exactly the same except for Limbo of the Lost being graphically inferior. One developer ripping off another has a long and glorious past, but you rarely see anything so obvious as this. GamePlasma also raises the excellent point: how often does this happen, and no one sees it?

I just came across this hysterical video series from CollegeHumor. How have Dhalism, Zangief, Blanka, M. Bison and the rest of the gang fared after all these years? Of course, I’m a huge dork for liking it, but I can’t help laughing after seeing Zangief mopping floors in an arcade. Check out the first video above, and don’t miss the rest of it.

Kotaku has got some info on a rumored antagonist for Portal 2, sequel or possibly prequel to the underdog hit Portal from The Orange Box. Cave Johnson, founder of Aperture Science, is said to be a strong contender, and there is some dialog that hints at to whether the game takes place before or after the events of the original game. If you want to possibly spoil the game for yourself, head on over to Kotaku and take a look.

Roy Taylor, VP of content business development at Nvidia, has been quoted as saying that there is no future in PC-exclusive games. The PC is far from a dying platform, however: more and more, developers and publishers are releasing games on consoles and then converting them to desktop versions. Taylor says that companies are using the console code as a “baseline” and adding new features to make it more attractive to gamers who might have already bought the game on a console. “The PC version [of Gears of War or Assassin’s Creed] was better. That’s something that people need to get their heads around - the console is a baseline, the PC is going to be an improved version. That’s an exciting future, and that’s why I don’t see anything threatening about console at all.” It remains to be seen whether Taylor’s vision plays out or gamers get increasingly angry about the perceived need to buy a game twice if you want all the features.

Electronic Arts has released two new Spore videos today. They both take the form of a tutorial, with the first (above) teaching you the basics of building a creature, and the second walking you through texturing your new beast. Building a creature looks to be easy and fun, and it allows incredible amounts of detail. You can even add more joints to the creature’s arms and legs, which is sure to cause some weird looking creatures.

The Creature Creator comes out on the 17th (well before the full game, which is currently slated for September), and some of the creatures made in it will be used to seed the universe when the full game comes out. If you hop on the bandwagon early you might see a familiar face later on. Check out the texturing video after the jump.

A Japanese team has constructed a device that senses brainwaves regarding arm and leg movement. The first test of the device allowed a paralyzed Japanese man to control a character in Second Life simply by thinking about moving his limbs. While it’s unlikely to replace other input methods, the researchers hope to use the technology to alleviate depression in immobilized patients. It seems to me that, with some modifications, it could be used for artificial limbs aswell. The researchers are now looking into a device that will allow people to type by mentally selecting letters.

Gameriot got their hands on some Zerg concept art from Starcraft 2. We’ve got a nice look at art for the Queen, the Nydus Worm, and a bunch of stuff that I have no idea what it is except that it’s gross as hell. My favorite piece is described as “crabulous!” The concept art was released alongside the 3rd episode of the Blizzard podcast, which you can listen to or read a transcript of here.

It finally happened. We finally got 20 shaky seconds of Duke Nukem Forever gameplay footage. Jace Hall managed to weasel his way into the 3DRealms studios on the inaugural showing of the Jace Hall Show. He spoke to George Broussard and Steve Miller briefly, and then was allowed to actually play the game for an unknown amount of time. The shots of the game are pretty quick and often it’s hard to tell exactly what’s going on but, hey, at least the game exists! The 3DRealms footage starts about three and a half minutes in.

Just found out that Bethesda will be including a full-size replica of the Pip-Boy 3000 in the Fallout 3 Survival Edition, available exclusively from Amazon. The Pip-Boy is the wrist mounted do-anything tool that’s been in both previous Fallout games. From the picture, it doesn’t look like you can actually wear the thing, but it does function as a stylish digital clock. The Survival Edition also includes the items from the other collectors edition, including metal Vault-Tec lunch box packaging, a 5″ Vault Boy bobblehead, The Art of Fallout 3 book, and The Making of Fallout 3 DVD.

I must say, though, that exclusives like this make me very unhappy. It’s a staple throughout the entertainment industry, obviously, but it’s still a damned shame that people buy into it.

They’ve just posted a pretty blunt overview of the game review process over at ArsTechnica. Because exclusive or early reviews are such a huge draw for sites, game publishers wield a great amount of power over who gets a game and, more importantly, what they can say. No one is pointing fingers or saying that some sites are getting paid off to write a good review, but there is a very real problem where important information is left out of the review, and we often have no way of knowing what it is.

But don’t worry! Here at GameLedge we’re don’t ever get exclusives, so we always give you the straight up truth.

In preparation for the upcoming release of Metal Gear Solid IV, a fan with way too much free time has decided to play through the entire series over the space of 5 days, in front of a live internet audience. He’s already blitzed through the original Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (I say “blitzed,” but Metal Gear took 3 hours), and is now working on Metal Gear Solid. Tomorrow he’ll tackle Metal Gear Solid 2, and after that he’s onto Snake Eater. One more example of the explosion of the Let’s Play phenomenon.

I just got pointed in the direction of this massive archive of abandonware. Hundreds of classic DOS games are there for the taking, from Arkanoid, to Commander Keen, to X-Com. The legality of abandonware is a little dubious (and this site a little more so than usual — I’m not sure Blizzard has given their blessing for Warcraft 2 to be up there), but in a lot of cases you can’t find these games anywhere and the companies have long since gone out of business anyway, so go nuts. Relive your childhood! Revel in nostalgia! Maybe even find out what your parents were playing!

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to discover to my dismay that Alley Cats was actually a really terrible game and I must have been terrifically bored as a child…

The team over at Maxis has released another trailer showing off one of the many gameplay stages in Spore, this time the giving us some tidbits the Tribal stage. Instead of controlling one creature, as in the previous stage, players now have to control a whole village of whatever they’ve created. This stage is very much like a RTS game, collecting resources to build new units and structures. Interestingly, you can move to the next stage, Civilization, either by destroying all other tribes or befriending them, and your creatures will reflect your choice. If you are more warlike, their home life will consist of sparring matches, while if you’re the more friendly sort they will gather and talk and even play music. Very cool.

Ikiki is a guy with many games under his belt, but all of them have a pretty similar flavor, so if you like one you’ll almost certainly like the others. The only one I have real experience with is Nikujin, a fairly simple platformer where you take control of a badass ninja and make your way through a number of levels. The fighting is extremely simplistic, but where the game shines is the deep platforming elements. Your ninja dude has a ton of moves under his belt and combining them to reach goals can be an incredible pain, plus the floaty physics take some real getting used to (in a good way). It’s not quite as hard as I Wanna Be The Guy, nor as long (it can be beaten in under six minutes if you know what you’re doing), but it’s a great game that deserves a playthrough.

This video features very little about the gameplay, but it’s dripping with attitude, which is what they’re trying to convey the most, I imagine. Some veterans frome several serious game development teams have formed Bionic Games, and their first release is a sarcastic action adventure
game promising the fun of Saturday morning cartoons with the wacky antics that only a misfit group of super-powered bionic heroes can provide.

And it’s a Wii exclusive. Something about using innovative controls to create a one-of-a-kind adventure experience.

New game IP, innovative control scheme, sarcastic fun? 2009 seems so far away now.

Full press release for you marketing junkies by following the link.

SAN MATEO, Calif. — June 3, 2008 — Capcom® Entertainment, a leading worldwide developer and publisher of video games, today announced Spyborgs™, a new action game coming exclusively to the Wii™ home video game system from Nintendo. In Spyborgs, players take on the role of a diverse team of five bionic superspies in a fight to save the world from a group of dastardly villains. Wii gamers will be set to save the world when the game launches in 2009.

The first title developed by Bionic Games™, a newly-formed development team comprised of former Insomniac Games and High Impact developers known for their work on hugely popular franchises Ratchet and Clank™ and Resistance: Fall of Man™, Spyborgs is a unique action-adventure game set in a stylish world that resembles a Saturday morning cartoon. Engaging players in team-based challenges designed to utilize 2-player co-op play, Spyborgs takes the theme of “team” to a whole new level of fun. In Single-player mode the “team” theme continues as players jump from one member of the superspies’ team to the next, rapidly tackling different challenges designed around each character’s unique abilities. Fast, addictive gameplay, unique controls offered by the Wii Remote™, and a storyline that refuses to take itself too seriously, Spyborgs will provide players with a dynamic and fresh gaming experience like no other.

“Our goal is to maximize the potential of the innovative Wii Remote while delivering a new paradigm in cooperative game play,” said Michael Haller, president, Bionic Games, “We also wanted to bring a lot of humor to the game which we feel we have accomplished. This game will make you laugh — for all the right reasons.”

Players jump between the identities of a team of five bionic superspies to combat a rogue squad of wacky, dysfunctional super villains. Each character has unique powers to match their super-spy skills, such as heavy firepower, martial arts, bladed weaponry, acrobatic skateboarding skills or pure robotic destruction. This cast of characters may make a misfit group individually, but by utilizing them as a team, the Spyborgs will have the power to save the world – if they don’t blow themselves up first! Spyborgs’ tongue-in-cheek action and compelling interactive cartoon theme keeps players engaged from the first episode to the last with one of the most fun and entertaining games to be developed for the Wii system.

ABOUT BIONIC GAMES
Bionic Games, Inc. is an independent game development studio located in Hollywood, California. Bionic Games was formed specifically to bring the best talent together in order to create SPYBORGS for Capcom as the ultimate action/adventure experience on the Nintendo Wii. The studio pedigree includes leading artists, programmers and designers responsible for such mega-hit games such as RATCHET & CLANK, SPYRO, CALL OF DUTY, TONY HAWK, SHREK, LEGENDARY, SIMS, RESISTANCE: FALL OF MAN and MEDAL OF HONOR

ABOUT CAPCOM
Capcom is a leading worldwide developer, publisher and distributor of interactive entertainment for game consoles, PCs, handheld and wireless devices. Founded in 1983, the company has created hundreds of games, including best-selling franchises Resident Evil®, Street Fighter®, Mega Man® and Devil May C ry®. Capcom maintains operations in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Korea, with corporate headquarters located in Osaka, Japan. More information about Capcom can be found on the company web site, www.capcom.com.

Capcom, the Capcom logo, Lost Planet, Resident Evil, Mega Man and Devil May Cry are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Capcom Co., Ltd., in the U.S. or other countries. Street Fighter is a registered trademark of Capcom U.S.A., Inc. Wii and the Wii logo are trademarks of Nintendo. © 2006 Nintendo. All other marks are the property of their respective owners.

I just got pointed in the direction of this awesome little Flash game: Epsilon. The object of the game is simple, just guide your little ball to collect all the glowing orbs and then enter the end level portal, by using two teleportation portals to bounce it around the room. The game has a ton of neat tricks, though, all built on the realistic physics engine. Firstly, you can reverse time, sending the ball back on its previous track (and showing off where your mouse cursor was, a very neat little addition), but without causing any orbs to reappear. You can also muck about with gravity and make use of little wormholes. It gets brutally hard later on, especially with short time limits, and it’s a must for any puzzle nuts.

More hot trailer action, this time for the new Prince of Persia game from Ubisoft. Sadly, it’s once again just cinematic teaser stuff with no in-game footage whatsoever. An unnamed protagonist who is all about sword-slinging and his unnamed sidekick who is apparently magic-based (and bare-footed) battle it out against a strange demon while a deep-voiced movie announcer guy says epic things in the background. It’s cool and all, but I’d really rather hear things about the game.

Follow the earlier news that a sequel to Beyond Good and Evil was on the way, we now have a trailer to take a look at. It is very much a teaser, showing Jade’s uncle Pey — an anthropomorphic pig — eating flies while sitting next to a broken-down car in the middle of a desert. Jade, the protagonist from the first game, doesn’t make an official appearance, but it looks like she’s sitting on the hood of the car. The tailer is titled 1: The Pig, so hopefully we’ll see more around soon.

The Penny Arcade Game, Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode One, has been getting mixed reviews from some outlets. Not sure why — it looks pretty fun to me.

But in any case, don’t rely on the bloggers to tell you, download the demo and see for yourself.

Available for
http://www.hotheadgames.com/Demo/rainslickep1_windows_r1.exe
Windows
http://www.hotheadgames.com/Demo/rainslickep1_mac_r1.dmg
Mac
http://www.hotheadgames.com/Demo/rainslickep1_linux_r1.tgz
and Linux

The demo has a comfortable range of options, you know, for a demo:

• Design and develop their own character, seeing it come to life in 3D and in the comic-style 2D cut scenes
• Play through the tutorial level and the beginning of the game’s storyline
• Access the Startling Developments Agency screen to browse through the case log, inventory and dossier to get a sneak peek at the full game

So, get on that download link and enjoy.

Super Smash Brothers Brawl is a sloppy wet kiss from Nintendo to its fans over the year. The Smash Brothers franchise was this to begin with — a pinnacle of fanservice (the good kind, you pervs), but more than your typical fanservice. The basic mechanic of the entire series is bound to the idea that Nintendo threw together characters from its most popular franchises to let them whallop on each other outside of any story continuity. It’s silly, over the top, and has twice already succeeded in becoming that game, you know the one that you buy with the console. So, does Nintendo capture that same lightning in a bottle for a third outing?

If you don’t know how the Smash Brothers paradigm works, it can be a little disorienting at first, especially if you’ve cut your teeth on pretty much every other brawler known to man. Every other brawler gives you a life meter and you proceed to pummel your opponent to the point of zero life meter, equalling unconsciousness. Smash Brothers takes a different approach.

Probably stemming from presenting their properties in the best light possible, a character never dies/passes out/loses consciousness in Smash Brothers. Rather than a life bar, characters have a damage meter. The more they get hit, the more damage they take, and the easier it is to knock them out of the Arena. The damage meter turns the entire brawler mechanic on its ear, transforming this fighting game into a huge round of king of the hill, and it works. The Nintendo characters never get bloodied, and the mechanic is dynamic and interesting beyond the standard Street Fighter scheme.

So, the question is, does the game stand?

What Works
First thing that stands out is the visual presentation. The Wii is not a graphics powerhouse, at least not by the standards set by most of the current gen of hardware, but that doesn’t mean that the dev team didn’t work magic with what they have. Smash Brothers Brawl is a gorgeous game. You can see the denim on Mario’s overalls, particle systems abound, and at any given time, the screen is crackling with activity without skipping a beat.

Once the visuals sink in, you can settle in and see the game proper. It’s obvious a great deal of care went into the level design and overall package. This version isn’t just about the brawling. There are a number of single player options, in case you can’t drum up a friend to play with. For instance, there’s an entire single player adventure that ties in all of the characters into a storyline. It’s not a terribly coherent storyline, but it’s a story adventure all the same. Adventure mode will take you about 10 hours or so to just hammer through. About 15 if you want to unlock everything.

Playing the game is a excercise in good design and availability. Each character has the same basic set of activation moves. Smash moves with a direction stick and super moves with a direction stick. There are no tap three times, or forward back half circle punch, or anything like that. Now, each main character has a different set of moves to activate — on the up super, for instance, some characters fly, others have an up attack — but by and large, you can fiddle around with random characters and hold your own no matter the match. This opens up game options for any player and really extended my enjoyment of the game.

If the control schemes are good, the controller schemes are equally accessible. The Wiimote can be used alone (my favorite scheme), likewise you can use the nunchuck-Wiimote combo, and even plug in your old GameCube controller if you have one lying around. Other seasoned Smash Bros. players report enjoying their GameCube controller the most, but I can hold my own quite well with the Wiimote turned on its side. If you don’t like the default layout, Brawl allows you to set your own button assignments and remember it in your player profile.

Wi-Fi is a nice touch as well. This is the Wii’s first serious title to feature online game play. Don’t get me wrong — there are other online titles, but this is the first one that sold off the charts. The implementation is, by and large, as good as the Wii is going to get as long as we’re tied to those awful friend codes. Most of my online games were quite enjoyable. Sure, you could peg the serious players quickly from the button mashers, but this is one of those games where both types of players can hold their own pretty well.

The level editor is a welcome addition. It’s amusing to see how levels go together when you’re creating your own. The ability to share those levels is also fun with your Wii-playing friends.

Smash Brothers Brawl also has a large number of game modes for both single and multi-player mayhem. Add in the vast number of characters, levels, trophies, and other sorts of assorted goodies to unlock, and there are hours and hours of playtime to be had with Brawl.

What Doesn’t Work
THe unlockable content gets put into this column as well as the “What Works” section above. It’s lovely that there’s so much to keep a person playing, but when you tout certain characters so highly before launch, then give the players a game that has to be unlocked before you can see the characters behind the hype — that’s a problem. Before your friends come over to play, you’re going to have to put some time into the game if you want to show off all of the cool stuff the game has to offer.

The Wi-Fi connection works quite well most of the time, but when it doesn’t work, it’s spectacularly bad. Seconds-per-frame bad. I’d say about 20% of the online games I played started lagging so severely that they couldn’t be played. That’s pretty high. I was hoping it would get better as time goes on, but my experience is that it’s going to stay like this for the lifetime of the game.

The lack of online leader boards is a shame as well. Mario Kart Wii has them, why not Smash Bros.?

My last nit to pick is the size of some of the levels. Some of them are so ridiculously huge that, when zoomed out to accommodate all of the action, the avatars are mere dots on the screen. Teensy critters that make big flashes but lose all detail.

The Verdict
Coming in with highly accesable and fun gameplay, beautiful visuals, and a ton of content, Brawl overcomes its criticisms handily. Simply put, the good outweighs the bad. Or in other words, my six year old and I are still having fun with it over a month after release. It’s become a favorite game in the house, and is good for 30 minutes to an hour of togetherness at game time. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty dang good, and a fun game value.

Ars Technica had the first summary I found of this article, so the initial credit goes to them, however gamepolitics.com has been following this from the beginning.

In early 2007, the Florida Bar Association, representing thousands of entreaties by sane people, filed a 38-page complaint against outspoken video game critic Jack Thompson. In what seemed like a cut and dried case, the judge arbitrating the complaint had to take her time to deal with the 400+ missives sent by Thompson himself, ultimately delaying the inevitable.

As Ben Kuchera of Ars Technica puts it so eloquently:

These are not small offenses, as Judge Tunis recommended a guilty verdict for, among other things, “knowingly making a false statement of material fact or law to a tribunal,” “using means that have no purpose other than to embarrass, delay, or burden a third person,” “engaging in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation,” and “making statements that the lawyer knows to be false or with reckless disregard as to the truth or falsity concerning to the qualifications or integrity of a judge.”

As you can guess, Thompson is appealing this to the Florida Supreme Court, but as his conduct thus far has been such an egregious embarrassment to the legal profession at large, he probably won’t be able to rope it in long enough to make a cogent argument for the governing legal body of the great state of Florida about why exactly he should be allowed to keep his legal credentials.

It’s the association that says whether or not you can practice law at all — they filed suit. When your own people don’t want you, Jack, perhaps it’s time to pack it in. It’s not the games, you know. Unstable people behave in unstable ways, games or no games.

Here’s a very interesting story about a nice-looking shmup from back in 2004, its development process, its impressively bad sales (32 copies!), and finally a link for a free download.

Here.

As is the case with many postmortems I’ve read, it’s a frank analysis of missteps and successes, and quite interesting to get into the heads of some talented developers. For instance, one should not create a hard core shoot-em-up and market it to casual gamers.

Electronic Arts has just announced The Sims 2 IKEA Home Stuff. You can now ignore your squalid and unkempt surroundings, languishing in a fetid pit of your own filth, while your slightly-less-imaginary friends enjoy high quality — heheheh — overpriced furniture from IKEA. Look, I liked The Sims, and even The Sims 2, as much as the next guy, but this is getting ridiculous. But if you want it (and I hope you don’t), it’ll be available for $19.99 on June 23rd.

N-Europe is reporting that a sequel to Beyond Good and Evil is in the works. The original game was critically acclaimed (and loved by everyone I know who actually played it), but bombed horribly in sales. The lack of sales was probably due to being an actual new, inventive game in a sea of franchises, along with limited advertising. Anyway, creator Michael Ancel spoke to a French website called Jeuxvideo, saying that the game has already been in development for a year, most in pre-production stages with a small team. Ubisoft, who published the original game, hasn’t signed off on the project yet, but the simple fact that it’s being worked on is a huge step in the right direction.

Anyone remember that awesome little zombie Flash game, The Last Stand? Well, there’s a new one. The Last Stand 2 takes everything from the first game and adds a new story and new features. Instead of simply surviving, the unnamed protagonist is now making his way to Union City, where evacuation attempts are being held. He must search for supplies, weapons, and other survivors and inch his way closer to rescue. But at each city he holes up in, his defenses get more and more flimsy and last-minute. Survivors can now be equipped with weapons, and also be attacked and killed by rampaging, machete-wielding soldiers zombies. Cool.

Grand Theft Auto IV sold 3.6 million units on its release day, garnering $310 million in revenue and earning itself a place in the Guinness World Records. Rockstar is now the proud owner of the product listed as Highest Grossing Video Game in 24 Hours and Highest Revenue Generated by an Entertainment Product in 24 Hours. The success has not come without price, however: enterprising hackers have embedded viruses in files claiming to be either the XBox 360 or as-yet-unreleased PC version of the game.

To which I say, “Sign me up!”

I’ve been looking forward to this for a while. Large and small studios alike are trying their hand at WiiWare, bringing both indie effort and mainstream flair to my favorite little console.

To launch, we have a Final Fantasy exclusive, a platformer, an update to a flash favorite, gambling, and casual.

Here: check it out.

I’ll probably be getting Pop. Looks zen.

FINAL FANTASY® CRYSTAL CHRONICLES®: My Life as a King™ (Square Enix, 1 player, Rated E for Everyone - Mild Fantasy Violence, Mild Suggestive Themes, 1,500 Wii Points): FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES: My Life as a King takes a legendary franchise and launches it into the realm of simulation gaming. Players are challenged to rebuild a kingdom, leading its young king on a path of discovery through an adventure bristling with mystery and intrigue.

LostWinds™ (Frontier Development, 1-2 players, Rated E for Everyone - Mild Fantasy Violence, 1,000 Wii Points): A fresh, enchanting platform adventure that puts the power of the wind in the palm of your hand - from raging tornados to the gentlest breeze. You’ll wield your Wii Remote™ controller to power Toku’s jumps and glides, suspend and smash enemies, meet friends and solve puzzles using LostWinds’ novel, intuitive and playful control system.

Defend your Castle™ (XGen Studios, 1-4 players, Rated E for Everyone - Cartoon Violence, 500 Wii Points): Defend your Castle takes place on a grassy plain surrounded by invaders. You are the commander of your castle, and it is your duty to fling the invading enemies sky-high, watching them plummet to their demise. As you progress, add powerful spells and upgrades to your arsenal for repelling the attacks. How long can you hold them off?

Pop™ (Nnooo, 1-4 players, Rated E for Everyone, 700 Wii Points): Pop bubbles to score points and stop the timer from running out. Pop can be enjoyed by anyone - casual gamers can simply play to pop bubbles and keep the game moving, whereas advanced players will need to pick their shots rapidly and accurately and generate combos to maximize their score.

V.I.P. Casino: Blackjack™ (High Voltage Software®, Inc., 1-4 players, Rated T for Teen - Simulated Gambling, 700 Wii Points): V.I.P. Casino: Blackjack re-creates the casino experience, with fully animated players and a realistic Las Vegas dealer. Single players can increase their bankrolls, while multiple players can engage in a head-to-head mini-blackjack tournament.

TV Show King (Gameloft, 1-4 players, Rated E for Everyone, 1,000 Wii Points): TV Show King transforms your living room into a real TV quiz show studio where you’ll face the challenge of answering more than 3,000 questions across six different categories. Compete against family and friends and use your Wii Remote controller in original ways to make it to the finals to see who can win the greatest amount of cash in one final, deciding duel.

Some very exciting news from Activision. During a conference call with investors, CEO Mike Griffith said they’re planning the new title in the franchise for the XBox 360, Playstation 3, PC, and DS, as well as versions for the Wii and PS2. Speaking of the game itself, he said, “We’ll bring the intensity of the recent Call of Duty: Modern Warfare title to a new military theatre to engage our significantly larger user base which nearly doubled last year as new users came into the franchise.” There’s no word on what that new theatre might be. Modern Warfare took us slightly into the future, but there’s no certainty that we’ll remain there. Perhaps Vietnam?

Well, this is a refreshing story. A new report is suggesting that boys who play video games are actually less likely to turn to violence or criminal activity, contrary to the popular media opinion. Dr. Lawrence Kutner and Dr. Cheryl Olsen of Harvard Medical School ran a study of 1,250 children and 500 parents to determine the results. While boys and girls who played adult-themed games were slightly more likely to engage in aggressive behavior, other games resulted in absolutely no increase in violence. It was also unclear whether the aggressive children fought more due to the adult games, or were simply drawn to them due to their aggressive nature. All in all, it’s a very interesting new study, and hopefully we’ll see more experiments like this in the future.

Here’s a game that I’m getting pretty excited about. Mirror’s Edge.

Inspired by Parkour, aka freerunning, aka you’re gonna break your neck when you fall, Mirror’s Edge tells the story of a young woman looking to find her sister. Over the eyes and ears of a squeaky-clean surveillance-based totalitarian regime. While working as a courier for the underworld. Which involves taking messages from here to there out of the range of the cameras. Across the rooftops.

Here, just watch.

That’s all in-game footage, by the way.

So, let’s get out our little checklist here:
Interesting visual motif? Running across the rooftops: Check.
Compelling plot framework? 1984 is a favorite novel, so check.
Compelling character? We’ll see, but a woman fighting the good fight to rescue a sister has serious potential: Check.

I could play a game that involved nothing but running across rooftops all day long. Add in a good plot and I’m hooked.

The day before Portal was released, I found myself playing a little Flash game called, Portal: THe Flash Version. And it didn’t suck. In fact, the game was quite the opposite of suckful. It was, indeed, fun.

The fellas who came up with the Flash version of Portal decided to one-up themselves and release a map pack for the real Source-powered version of Portal.

You can download it here. This map pack requires you to have Half-Life2 and Portal installed, as it uses assets from each.

In it you’ll find 40 maps from the Flash game, brand new levels never before seen, and an experience the creators promise will reveal more about Portal’s place in the Half-Life universe.

Well, I don’t know if I care too much about a third-party interpretation, but at 3 hours of extra gameplay for my beloved portal, I’m all over that.

See you in the testing center.

This isn’t a channel you can download from Nintendo.

Support for SCUMMVM, Emulators, and loading of Homebrew executables from cards or TCP/IP, if I understand it correctly, this looks like a wonderful thing for the folks who want to follow the road less travelled.

Now to figure out when the release date is — none is announced — but if that video is any indication, it looks really sharp. I’ll be watching for more updates and hopefully, someday, we’ll get a video of the channel doing more than running the bootloader.

Don’t know about you, but I can live with downgraded graphics for some analog lightsaber tracking.

Lead designer Hervé Sliwa from Eden has written a new developer diary about the upcoming Alone in the Dark. He talks about the design decisions of the game, including the decision to make it more like an episodic TV show such as Lost or 24, rather than going in the direction of a movie.

The main source of inspiration for this game was the narration, that’s to say finding the best way to create the perfect narration for this type of game. At Eden we were all addicted to the new TV series like 24, Lost, Prison Break. We thought about this and said, hey, maybe there’s a new way to tell the story in a game. The length of the game is close to 10 up to 15 hours of gameplay and narration and so it’s not the same pace as a movie which is around 2 hours. Lots of games try to copy the narrative structure of a movie, but it fits better with a length of a TV season, so we had the idea to split the game into an episodic structure.

There’s lots more, so check out the full diary after the jump.

We were so impressed by the legacy of Alone in the Dark we wanted something very ambitious and very innovative, so the first proposal was in fact maybe a little bit too ambitious and too innovative, which meant it looked very risky to a producer. And we had a difficult start – the project was killed once, and after that we were so motivated to make this game, we worked on it and came back with a technical demo and a proof of concept of all the most risky elements, and Atari said OK let’s take the risk, and since then we’ve had full support to develop the game. Pre-production started in 2003 then full production started 2 years ago in early 2006. The team built up very fast and today there is around 120 people working on the game.

The main source of inspiration for this game was the narration, that’s to say finding the best way to create the perfect narration for this type of game. At Eden we were all addicted to the new TV series like 24, Lost, Prison Break. We thought about this and said, hey, maybe there’s a new way to tell the story in a game. The length of the game is close to 10 up to 15 hours of gameplay and narration and so it’s not the same pace as a movie which is around 2 hours. Lots of games try to copy the narrative structure of a movie, but it fits better with a length of a TV season, so we had the idea to split the game into an episodic structure.

From TV there’s the work of one guy I respect a lot, which is J.J. Abrams. He’s the guy behind Lost and Alias and a movie which was released recently called Cloverfield. I’m a huge fan of this guy and his work. He did a conference about how he works with the mechanics of what he called the magic box to create different plot twists. His work was a real source of inspiration for me.

My goal for this game is for the audience to say, oh yes, now a game can be more interesting than a movie. We think in this media we provide everything that a movie provides; we can have animation, acting, sound, music, everything of a movie, but we have something more which is interactivity, so you can be directly inside the story. With this approach the main goal is to give the feeling to the audience that now it’s time to re-think about entertainment.

What we try to achieve with this game is to have the broadest audience possible with lots of different types of gameplay, but we don’t want to disappoint the more core gamers so we’re trying to create a blend between the two worlds, give lots of innovative content and new action, new types of gameplay, but we want to really make it very accessible.

The most exciting thing in this game is we’re trying to provide lots of variety. Our goal from the beginning was to try to provide as much variety as possible in one adventure. The first thought was, in a movie like Indiana Jones or something like that the hero can run, jump, fight, drive a car, jump out of the car, use the car as a bomb etc, and everything in a full adventure and with a good narrative structure. Of course it’s very hard to provide this in a game because it needs lots of technology and different engines. If you make a car game it’s not like an adventure game or a fighting game – it seems to be impossible. But we thought maybe we could do it, so that’s why the project was maybe too ambitious at the beginning. So from the start we tried to see how all this variety of gameplay elements could come together. After lots of research and development on all these features we made our first prototype and we were able to have our hero run, jump, get in the car, get out of the car, use every object around him, and we said, ok, now we can build a full adventure game.

To put everything together was a nightmare, but one of the most enjoyable things is when everything comes to life. When you dream about some situation for years, then when you play it, it’s unique. It’s hard for a designer to say what he’s most proud of because by definition I’m never proud of anything, I always want more more more, but maybe one thing is the fact that we are breaking some video game rules and bringing some other real world rules. One thing I’m proud of is you don’t need a specific key to open a specific door, you can open the door without a key. If you are imaginative enough and creative enough you can build your own weapon and blow up your door and to hell with the key puzzle. It’s just a little example but it was so hard to build a level design and game rules to say ok, no more key, no more specific game rules, and try to make a good adventure game with that, but things worked out pretty well.

What we expect from the audience is, holy shit! But also to feel, it could be me. The idea is you are someone in a very specific situation, but it could be anyone. So it’s not a caricature of a perfect guy, it’s just a normal guy in an extraordinary context. You have to face up to all this shit happening around you and you don’t have a full arsenal of lots of weapons, you have to find them, to build them and be creative enough to survive. What I expect from the audience is, maybe if I tried that and that I could get past this, and oh, it works! Maybe you could try another way and it works too because it’s just logical and we don’t need to explain all the rules of the game because it’s as close as possible to the rules of the real world.

cdv Software Entertainment USA and Ascaron Entertainment GmbH have released a trailer showing off the gorgeous level design and some of the characters and monsters from the upcoming Sacred 2: Fallen Angel. The trailer also features an exclusive new song from German heavy metal group Blind Guardian. If you’re keen, you can check out the trailer here, or sneak a peak at the game’s website for more eye candy.

StrategyInformer got their hands on an interview with the president of Crytek, the company behind the eye-candy filled Crysis. The president, Cevat Yerli, commented on the state of the PC gaming industry as a whole when asked about the risk of going PC-only with a high profile title:

“It is certainly. We are suffering currently from the huge piracy that is encompassing Crysis. We seem to lead the charts in piracy by a large margin, a chart leading that is not desirable. I believe that’s the core problem of PC Gaming, piracy. To the degree PC Gamers that pirate games inherently destroy the platform. Similar games on consoles sell factors of 4-5 more. It was a big lesson for us and I believe we wont have PC exclusives as we did with Crysis in future. We are going to support PC, but not exclusive anymore.”

Very good news for console gamers everywhere. Maybe even us Mac users!

The guys at Kotaku posted about a problem that is apparently affecting both PS3 and Xbox 360 gamers who have just gotten their hands on Grand Theft Auto IV. An unknown bug is causing the game to completely freeze during the introductory cut-scene — and no one knows why. The author called Rockstar and spoke to a harried tech support person who said they don’t know what’s causing it, except that it’s affecting some 60 GB PS3s, but not all of them. It’s also affecting certain 360s, although if there’s a pattern there no one has spotted it. Rockstar can’t give an ETA on a fix because so far they have no idea what the problem is. A rather dark stain on a launch that has otherwise been a dream for the company.

…but not, you know, real video games. Casual games. A new study from PopCap Games says, rather unsurprisingly, that playing casual games can increase mood and reduce stress. I become enraged (no, seriously, ENRAGED) when I see stories like this. In the first place, pretty much everyone already knew this, and if they didn’t they’ve never played a video game before. Certainly I’ve beaten up my little brother over a game of Mortal Kombat, but sitting down to a game of Bejeweled or Solitaire will obviously calm anyone down. Secondly, who in their right mind is going to trust a study funded by the very people who the results most benefit?

A French magazine got ahold of some new pics from an upcoming Prince of Persia game. The concept art shows off some new creatures and the main character. The main guy seems to have some sort of claw attached to his hand and he’s wielding what appears to be a new take on the gunblade. There’s precious little other info about this game but this teaser is very nice to see.

Crysis LEGO map from Robert Tieber on Vimeo.

A new demo of the Crysis engine is showing that photo-realism is practically within our grasp, as long as you use Lego. The video shows a user running around a field full of Lego blocks and moving them by shooting them or blowing them up. It’s graphically stunning and looks nearly photo-realistic — especially in photos — but the physics the most amazing thing. Everything acts exactly as you expect it to, with none of the tiny moments you see in other games, where something doesn’t fall quite right or floats too long in the air. I’d love to see what an engine optimized for this sort of thing could do…

The RTS will never die. Simple fact. There will always be a segment of the playing population to whom the management of resources and top-down strategy will appeal.

And with utterly bizarre creations like Stalin vs. Martians, there will be something for everyone.

The year is 1942. Martians invade mother Russia, panic ensues. Stalin takes personal control of the top-secret extraterrestrial eradication arm of the Soviet army. Stalin kicks ass.

This is the sort of wacky premise that actually piques my interest. Release is planned for sometime near the end of the year.

Here’s a screen.

And here’s a website for more information.

No, it’s not a typo. Oolite is a space sim inspired by the classic game Elite, which was also the obvious inspiration for Ambrosia Software’s Escape Velocity series. You start off in a tiny ship outside a port, and from there you… well, you do whatever you want. There are literally hundreds of planets to explore and many different factions to interact with. You can fight on the side of good, or jet around the galaxy killing indiscriminately, or just make a simple living as a cargo hauler and rake in the cash. It’s not for everyone, however: the learning curve is incredibly steep, and the graphics take a definite backseat to the gameplay. Still, it’s more than worth a shot.

Kotaku stumbled upon this groovy piece of news. Earthworm Jim will be returning to consoles, and will be getting a feature film and animated series to go along with it. Best of all, creator Douglas TenNapel will be acting as creative consultant on all the new content. There’s no word on release dates for anything so far, so we’ll keep our eyes peeled for more info.

Woop woop! The guys at GamerCenterOnline put up this new trailer for Grand Theft Auto IV. It’s in Japanese and, unfortunately, doesn’t show off any gameplay, but there’s spectacular eye candy to be had. Also there’s an elderly Japanese man saying “Snakeu” and making me giggle.

The guys at Engadget found out that popular SNES emulator SNEX9X has been ported to the Wii. All the information you need is in this forum post. The emulator does include support for the Wiimote, but it’s currently at version 0.1.1a so don’t expect 100% perfect play. Opinions on its usability are, unsurprisingly, pretty mixed so far, but it can at the very least run SNES games, so have at it!

…and was, in fact, essentially laughed away when he asked. Blizzard’s Paul Sams was quoted as saying to Boll that they wouldn’t sell the movie rights, “especially not to you.” Even good ol’ Uwe admits he’d ruin it, saying “Because it’s such a big online game success, maybe a bad movie would destroy that ongoing income, what the company has with it.” So WoW players, go ahead and crack a bottle of champagne, and why not sign that petition six or seven times in celebration, while you’re at it.

The guys at IGN sat down with Aaron Garbut, Rockstar’s Art Director, to talk about the jaw dropping amount of detail that went into Liberty City, the setting for Grand Theft Auto IV. A taste:

The character artists would use clothing and sports branding on the characters, shop windows contain branding at a minute detail for items they are selling in a corner shop window or on a larger scale the shop fitting, logos and coloring. You’ll see branding for oil companies on barrels, gas stations and gas attendants clothing and then when you visit some of the more industrial areas of the map you’ll see the same branding on industrial facilities. We even created history in the branding with older variations on old painted ads fading on the side of old buildings. You’ll see virtual artists advertised outside galleries, see some of their work through the window and then see other examples in some of the homes you’ll get inside. Tiny businesses, dry cleaners for example will have a store on a certain street, and you will see their van driving around the area.

They also talk about the creation of pedestrians, the distinctive feel of each area of the city, and quite a bit more. Definitely check it out if you get the chance.

On Andy Baio’s blog, we find the beginning of the following story:

From an anonymous source close to the company, I’ve found myself in possession of the “Infocom Drive” — a complete backup of Infocom’s shared network drive from 1989. This is one of the most amazing archives I’ve ever seen, a treasure chest documenting the rise and fall of the legendary interactive fiction game company. Among the assets included: design documents, email archives, employee phone numbers, sales figures, internal meeting notes, corporate newsletters, and the source code and game files for every released and unreleased game Infocom made.

For obvious reasons, I can’t share the whole Infocom Drive. But I have to share some of the best parts. It’s just too good.

He then proceeds to reveal that he has not one, but two playable prototypes of Milliways, the unreleased sequel to the Infocom classic, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

To get your serious geek on, Andy goes on to piece together the history of this abortive attempt at game creation from notes and emails found on that errant. Then he actually posts the playable versions of the game.

For those over 30, you know how exceedingly cool this find is. To those 20 and under, this is how games used to look. And they were awesome.

Ikiki is a guy with many games under his belt, but all of them have a pretty similar flavor, so if you like one you’ll almost certainly like the others. The only one I have real experience with is Nikujin, a fairly simple platformer where you take control of a badass ninja and make your way through a number of levels. The fighting is extremely simplistic, but where the game shines is the deep platforming elements. Your ninja dude has a ton of moves under his belt and combining them to reach goals can be an incredible pain, plus the floaty physics take some real getting used to (in a good way). It’s not quite as hard as I Wanna Be The Guy, but it’s a great game that deserves a playthrough.

Mario Theme Played with RC Car and Bottles - Watch more free videos

I thought I’ve seen every rendition of the Super Mario theme possible: Piano, Guitar, Bass, Electric Sitar, Steel Drum Band. But now this.

And what’s more, it has an existential anti-climax to die for.

Another one of those “picture tells a thousand words” posts: This is Oblivion running on the CryEngine2 technology with time of day cycles happening. Check here if you wanna know more after you pick your jaw up off the basement floor.

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