Despite what’s been a rough holiday season for Electronic Arts both in terms of sales and company layoffs, EA reassured us today that it remains commited to keeping its two new intellectual properties, Mirror’s Edge and Dead Space, moving ahead. Speaking in a conference call, EA CEO John Riticiello remarked on the future of these two new franchises:

Dead Space looks like a long-term big winner for us. Mirror’s Edge is one that was very strongly reviewed. That one’s gonna go forward – we’ll be looking at some issues around the design to make sure strong IP is married with strong business.

When he says look at some “issues around the design”, is Riticiello referring to the some of the more maligned aspects of Mirror’s Edge’s gameplay (ie, the combat, obtuse levels, etc)? Let’s hope so – if EA is really listening to us consumers and taking our complaints to heart in the way they’re building their IP, then maybe they deserve some credit (and some sales) for doing so.

Source: Shacknews

It’s Spore. Were you surprised, really? All that DRM nonsense, all those lackluster reviews, all those pirates urging folks to fight the power by pirating this game. Rounding out the list of the year’s most stolen are Assassin’s Creed, The Sims 2, Crysis (still? come on guys), and more. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas at number seven? That seems random.

When it comes down to it, though, it’s a damn shame that what a lot of us will remember Spore for is for being downloaded hella much. Then again, there are people who will say that EA deserved every dollar they didn’t get for this game. What’s your guys’ take? Does Spore deserve the decidedly undesirable title of “most pirated game of the year”?

Source: Torrent Freak

Once not too long ago, Blizzard joked about World of Warcraft coming to consoles in the form of a game called World of Warcraft: The Molten Core…for the Atari 2600.

Now some folks at Gamer’s University have been crazy enough to take that joke and roll with it so far as to create a playable game out of it, with “glorious” 192i resolution, 8-way directional control (!) and “revolutionary AI that reacts to your every move (which can be in any of 8 directions, remember?)”. I’m not sure how close it is to the real Molten Core having never done that raid, but it’s still pretty hilarious.

You get two characters (and of course Alliance and Horde), represented by two lines on the screen – they’re supposedly a Priest and a Warrior, and you go about exploring the dungeon, running into tough pulls and big bosses. Features include:

- 10 Bosses with 6 Unique Models
- Move in any of 8 unique directions
- Lush 2d environments
- Glorious 192i resolution
- Has Sound
- Revolutionary AI that reacts to your every move (which can be in any of 8 directions, remember?)
- Skinning a Bear should aggro every Bears in a 40 yard radius

I couldn’t really figure it out. The manual says “press your button” to attack and while I was trying to press my button I ended up dying. Oh well. Download it here.

Source: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

See the look on that kid’s face? It’s a look that says one of two things. “Man I really gotta go to the bathroom” is one of them. The other one is “Oooh I am stalking behind you and am going to knife you” during a COD4 match.

Unless you game with a mirror in front of your face, you probably aren’t familiar with what you look like when you’re playing something. “Immersion”, a new video gallery from The New York Times Magazine, does that for us, just with one key difference: it’s about kids.Photographer Robbie Cooper took a group of preteens (and maybe pre-pre teens), gave them games like GTA IV and COD4, and recorded their faces as they played.

The results are kind of eerie (watch how straight-faced one kid deadpans “how do you like bullets” as he scores a kill), alarming, and extremely fascinating.

Source: The New York Times

At and around the time of 9/11, I was a Counter-Strike addict. It sometimes struck me as odd while I’d played the game, but it never felt wrong. Should it have? It was a game, it was a whole mess of fun, and it didn’t matter much to me how topical the game inadvertently was. I was a teenager. I wasn’t smart enough to see that yet.

During 9/11, Naomi Alderman wasn’t playing terrorists vs. counter-terrorists on de_dust. She was playing Paladins and Sorcerers vs. Mephisto and Duriel in the Durance of Hate. She was playing Diablo II, for 30 hours a week. It was her way of dealing with the tragedy surrounding her in the streets of Manhattan. And, looking back, she sees absolutely nothing wrong with that.

As gamers I’m sure we all know the therapeutic power of playing games. A good Gears of War session can leave us satisfied, fulfilled, maybe a little less grouchy than we were before we started. Games as stress relief, sure. But games as a method of grieving, or of dealing with absolutely earth-shattering tragedy? That’s another level. Alderman writes:

I remember surfacing from four-hour Diablo II sessions feeling as if I’d been on holiday, so grateful that I’d been able to blot out the images of genuine horror filling my city. The game was so mind-filling it left no room for the anxious brooding that I was experiencing the rest of the time. This was a tremendous blessing.

As life began to brighten up, Alderman says, her desire to play gradually waned off – proof that the game served her as therapy more than anything else.

I sympathize with Alderman – people read (and write) books, watch (and make) movies in response to things like 9/11. Playing a game is really no different, and it’s only a result of our culture’s disdain for the medium that we should feel compelled to think otherwise. But that’s my opinion. Is playing games an appropriate response to tragic events, both on a personal and a national level? What do you guys think?

Source: The Guardian via RPS

Being a resident of a major American metropolis with you know, some people who are into arcades, I’ve gotten a chance to play Street Fighter IV – dare I say it – the way it was meant to be played. On a big ol’ cabinet with quarters lined up along the bottom of the screen, huddled up next to a crowd of fellow fighting game fanboys, getting my ass kicked by some quiet dude beasting with Blanka.

I should count myself lucky, and I do. Street Fighter IV won’t be coming to US arcades in any official capacity. No surprise to anyone, but Capcom just set it in stone. Capcom senior director of communications and community Chris Kramer explained:

At this point, it does not look like Street Fighter IV arcade machines will officially hit the U.S. arcade market… There’s not really an arcade business in the U.S. anymore. It’s sort of like an ‘amusement’ business that sometimes has arcade games in it

Arcades can always import it if they want to front the costs – that’s what my place did, but with the console version out in a couple months, why would you expect them to?

Source: EDGE via Joystiq

The Last Remnant, a game previously doomed to the bargain bin before it was even released, has received a near perfect score from prestigious Japanese gaming mag Weekly Famitsu. The game got a 10/10/9/9 and a shiny Platinum Award. One review remarked:

Players might be confused at first because you’re unable to select specific commands in battle, but once you learn how to form a Union and play around with the options of Formations and their arrangements, the game gets really fun.

What the hell? Since when is this game supposed to be near perfect? I’ll admit to judging this game without even playing it – I mean, come on, it sounded kinda interesting but overall it never looked like you know, Platinum Award material. Even Amazon thought so – they were pricing the game at a $20 discount before it even came out. Now just today, it’s back to $56.99. Guess they read Famitsu too.

Source: NeoGAF

Richard Garriott, aka Lord/General British, aka spaceman extraordinaire, has done a lot of great things in his life, exiting the Earth’s orbit notwithstanding. The Ultima games are landmark Western RPGs, and if it weren’t for Ultima Online you wouldn’t be playing World of Warcraft today.

Tabula Rasa, though, doesn’t really stand as much of a testament to the fellow. That’s not just my opinion – it’s Amazon.com’s as well. Previously listed as $4.99, it now costs a paltry $0.96. This is no database error – it’s been at that price for a few days now.

I didn’t play TR, but I heard it was pretty dang awful. It presumably still comes with 30 days of free subsriciption – but is it still even worth it when you’re paying more for shipping than you are the game itself? Sound off if you’ve played this thing, and let us know if it’s worth 100 of our precious pennies.

Newest good sign that Sonic Unleashed might be the first good Sonic in some time: It honors the time-honored tradition (first introduced in Sonic Adventure) of having a whale in a Sonic stage. Here Sonic’s taking it to the icy continent of Holoska, where he speeds around some snowy hills, rides a sled off huge jump and then runs off a giant whale that just sorta pops up in the middle of the ocean. See it for yourself in the trailer after the jump.

Leave it to CliffyB to raise the bar. Some of us here at Ripten certainly see Gears of War’s world as more than a mere backdrop for chainsaw duels and Mountain Dew-fueled testosterone fests.

But would we go as far as this? That photo pictured above – of Dom, Marcus Fenix’ right hand bro, and his girl – the subject of much melancholy in the ad campaign and supposedly the focal point of Dom’s story in Gears 2? You can own it for yourself – it comes with the Limited Edition of the game. CliffyB has his own, and he keeps it close at all times, more so than you’d imagine.:

“I keep it in my wallet,” Bleszinski told EDGE to their surprise. It’s good to know he’s that invested in his characters’ stories…

Personally I really don’t give a hoot about Dom’s sob story, but I know that game developers, no matter the game, must obviously take the worlds they create very seriously. Few of them, I imagine, carry them in their wallets.

I haven’t played Fallout 3. But please, somebody who has, please tell me: do all the NPCs have bulletproof adamantium skulls? I understand every action in the game is determined by stats and behind-the-scenes dice rolls, and that the game isn’t an action game or a shooter, but this is pretty ridiculous, and if it’s not totally indicative of what actually goes down in the game, well, it’s at least funny.

32 headshots. Ouch. Hit the jump and see it for yourself.

Call me sick, but in my time with Fable 2, I’ve tried to kill kids. Multiple times. You see, my character’s evil. He’d do that. He seduces men and women and takes them under the bridge and puts a flintlock rifle in their faces and pulls the trigger without remorse. He soaks up the upgrades to evil and corruption stats like they’re candy.

But kids, no matter what you do, seem to have an invisible forcefield around them. Just like GTA IV, just like in Fallout 3. Games that are about moral choices, that seem to say – we won’t go this far.

In the case of Fallout 3, lead designer Emil Pagliarulo had this to say on the topic:

We began to think, really what benefit would there be in killing the kids in the game? It just seems gratuitous, unnecessary and cruel.

Some people would say it is necessary, though.

Simon Parkin over at GameSetWatch specifically. For him, the moral depth of making the decision to kill or not kill a child is something from which games shouldn’t shy away or bar themselves from. In putting up a big “we’re not going there” sign, developers who would make a game that, on the one hand, lets you blow up an entire suburb (and probably kill some kids in the process) but doesn’t let you kill a child face to face, are failing the potential of their artistic medium:

In removing the opportunity to kill children in their anarchic game, Bethesda has admitted videogames’ ineffectiveness in providing meaningful disincentives and negative repercussions for in-game atrocities. That the team chose to carve the issue out of their game rather than attempt to engage it head on, speaks volumes.

I side with Parkin on this. Though I understand the pressure on Bethesda to avoid as much potential controversy with their game as possible, I do wish more games (like the first two Fallouts) would allow these kinds of moral choices – and if they do deliver them, to be mature, realistic and brave about it.

What do you guys think?

There’s a new Gears 2 TV spot/trailer that hit today – it’s another minute-long meditative piece in the vein of Gears 1’s “Mad World” spot that captured the hearts of so many. It’s got the same somber but pretty soundtrack, Marcus looking glum, minimal exposition, the works. Personally I think it’s a much better piece of advertisement than its predecessor, but the jury’s out on the larger consensus among gamers.

Now, the Gears of War franchise being something that’s very male, I wondered if maybe this ad would have enough artistic sway to win someone over who’s not exactly into big dudes with soul patches and chainsaw bayonets. Someone like my girlfriend.  After all that’s what these ads are designed to do – make the game seem like something more sophisticated than dudes killin other dudes.

Hit the jump to watch the clip, and to hear what my better half has to say.

So here’s the ad:

My initial thought was “this isn’t going to work like ‘Mad World’ did for people who don’t know anything about the game” because people aren’t going to get that these guys are riding drills underground to go fight aliens. I thought it assumed a little too much and failed for that, even though I thought it was artistically and emotionally more powerful than “Mad World”.

So I showed it to my girlfriend. Her name is changed for anonymity’s sake:

(4:27:58 PM) Mary Beth: i found it quite appealing
(4:28:02 PM) Mary Beth: it was mysterious
(4:28:17 PM) Mary Beth: and i liked the intro
(4:28:25 PM) Mary Beth: personal touches and stuff
(4:28:56 PM) Mary Beth: the big guns weren’t as deterring as they could have been
(4:29:02 PM) Mary Beth: cause i really felt the sense of mission

Sounds like it worked the way it was made to. The personal and emotional qualities shone through and pulled her in even though she hates guns. But what about the aforementioned confusion about the drills and such?

(4:29:32 PM) Me: people were saying “nobody’s going to get this ad because they have no idea that they’re going underground to fight aliens”
(4:29:40 PM) Mary Beth: i figured that out
(4:29:46 PM) Me: uhh
(4:29:55 PM) Mary Beth: i mean, i saw the other things going underground
(4:29:58 PM) Mary Beth: and then they got in one
(4:30:07 PM) Me: but how did you figure there’d be aliens
(4:30:08 PM) Mary Beth: and they always fight aliens, don’t they?
(4:30:19 PM) Mary Beth: it looked weird down there
(4:30:23 PM) Mary Beth: aliens would make sense

Microsoft has a hell of an advertising team. They’re smart enough to know that maybe holding off on some exposition works, too. Because it’s always aliens. You can count on people to assume that.

In case you missed it, yesterday BioWare revealed the newest entry in its Knights of the Old Republic franchise, an MMO called Star Wars: The Old Republic. Amidst equal amounts of fanboy protest squeal and outcries of joy, it was easy to lose yourself in the din. That’s why we’re here with a handy list of the most important things you need to know about SWTOR (we pronounce it Sa-Woah-TOAR).

1. It’s all about story.

BioWare is emphasizing that this game’s all about telling the individual story of your character in the KOTOR universe. Whether you choose to align yourself with the Sith or the Republic, SWTOR’s goal is to make sure your toon doesn’t just feel like Paladin A or Warrior C, but like a genuine person with their own story within the framework of a bigger universe. To that end…

2. Each class will play differently for each player.

Every class has its own story that plays out, but how they play out will be different for each player. Questlines will change, no experience will repeat itself. How BioWare intends to pull this off, I don’t know. But that’s what they’re shooting for.

There are 12 – count em – 12 full-time writers penning this game (does even Blizzard have that many?), so there’s certainly quite a lot of story spinning going on over there, to be sure. And with 12 freaking writers, you can bet

3. It’s going to be huge

Upset SWTOR isn’t KOTOR 3? Well, BioWare wants to tell you it is. Says Ray Muzyka:

We’re making KOTOR 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and beyond–this game is that big, it’s got that much content in it.

Well with that much content in a game you’re bound to have some crummy content, right? Well, the way BioWare sees it, there will be

4. No crappy quests

An MMO without shitty quests? You’re kidding me right. Well, in the case of SWTOR, it goes back to the whole emphasis on story and individual experience – quests are boring in WoW because they rarely have to do with your character – any Rogue or Warlock can kill five Murlocs and bring back their spines. SWTOR, apparently, will color its quests to your individual character.

“You will never have a stranger ask you to save her cat,” BioWare told Shacknews.

Speaking of quess, am I ever going to get a chance to grab some power convertors with Luke? Well, probably not, because

5. It takes place 300 years after KOTOR 1/2

Which means, here let me use my nerd math here, that it takes place 3000 years before Episode 1. So no Luke. No Anakin. No Jar Jar. Man, I was looking forward to some pod racing. Guess I’ll just have to dig out Star War: Episode 1 Racer for the Dreamcast…

Oh, and speaking of the great consoles, I wonder if SWOTR will be coming to my favorite system…

6. No word on console release

Aww shucks. Aside from an “it’s under consideration” remark, mum’s the word on console versions. But who knows. Technologically speaking, BioWare has said that they’re aiming for accessibility, which means it couldn’t be too hard to port in terms of graphics, etc. And basically every other BioWare since KOTOR 1 has come out for consoles, though. Speaking of other BioWare games…

7. It will take after other BioWare releases

SWOTR’s going to feature two hallmarks of BioWare games: companion characters and good/evil choices. Except this time the ante’s being upped on both: companion characters will have significant stories and relationships to your character that’ll impact your game world, and as for good/evil, in an MMO there’s no such thing as a quick save/load – so choose the Dark Side and I am afraid you’re on that path for good.

Maybe that’s not such a bad thing, though. Sith get those cool red lightsabers…

8. There are going to be lightsabers. Lots of them.

The cinematic reveal showed a Jedi putting together a lightsaber. Every screenshot has Jedi and Sith dueling. BioWare told Kotaku that you wouldn’t end the game with the lightsaber you started with. It’s a Star Wars game all about Jedi/Sith conflict. There are going to be lightsabers.

Excited, aren’t you? Yeah, lightsabers are pretty rad. Well, don’t get too amped up, because well…

9. It ain’t coming out anytime soon

BioWare remarked at the reveal that the game is “playable”. But judging from the screenshots we’ve seen, it’s got a long way to go. Rumors last year said a game would be released in 2009, but you know how the development cycle of any MMO goes. Especially one as ambitious as this.

So maybe we should just go back to playing WoW, getting Beastslayer enchants on our weapons and pretending they’re red lightsabers. At least we know some things won’t change when we pick up SWOTR in 2012, because for all the new things the game is doing, it won’t be completely breaking the mold…

10) It’ll have some standards of the MMO formula

Meaning PVE, PVP, RVR, raiding, crafting and guilds. Lightsaber crafting sounds pretty awesome, but you know what sounds awesomer? Huge armies of Jedi and Sith fighting it out in WAR-style RVR battlegrounds…

SERIOUS SPOILER ALERT. If you’re super-sensitive about Gears of War 2 spoilers, do not click the jump. You’ll feel horrible about what you’ve done afterward. Trust me.

If you’re curious about what lies next for the Gears saga, and have maybe snuck a peek at the leaked footage of the Gears 2 ending, well, then come on in. Don’t say we didn’t warn you though.

You know how after every Metal Gear Solid game, the credits roll and then the logo pops up, and there’s a little conversation after that, usually with Ocelot? Well Cliffy’s stealing one from Hideo’s book.

After the Gears of War 2 credits roll, the logo hits the screen. Suddenly a voice message starts playing. It’s static-y as hell, and the person on the other side of the line sounds like he’s in some serious shit.

This is Adam Fenix. Is anyone out there? Can you hear me? This is Adam Fenix. Can you hear me? What have you done?

Adam Fenix was Marcus Fenix’ pa, and he was a military scientist who discovered a complete mapping of the underground Locust tunnels where the “bad guys” of the Gears universe have been shacking up. What does he mean by “what have you done”? Well, that’s the mystery, isn’t it?

Source: Gears of War 2 Fans

The stereotype of the shut-in neckbearded gamer is going the way of the dodo. Aside from you know, people who raid in World of Warcraft (I kid), most of the gamers I know are regular, normal, socially functional people.

Maybe they’re even more socially functional than I give them credit for – a study shows that gamers are more likely to marry, date, have kids, and go out than non-gamers.

The study, which was performed by IGN and Ipsos Media CT and obtained by Gamasutra, says that more than half of the gaming population is married, almost half (48%) has kids, and the ones that haven’t settled down are twice as likely to go on a date in a month than people who don’t play games. Whether that’s because they feel a nagging sense of desperation or not, well study doesn’t say.

Gamers like to go out more, too. They’re 13 percent more likely to go to the movies, 11 percent more likely to play sports, and 9 percent more to go out with friends than people who don’t have to make guild meetings on a weekly business.

As always we can never really know the veracity of these studies, but still – good news Gamer: you like to go to the movies more than the guy who doesn’t play Pokemon.

Source: Gamasutra

When I was a kid cartoons only had one game at a time. These days if you like Naruto you get a whole Toys R Us shelf worth of choices: handheld RPG-lites, full-fledged action games on current-gen consoles, or four-player fight-a-thons on the Wii like (deep breath) Naruto: Clash of the Ninja Revolution 2, which drops this coming week.

How spoiled are Naruto fans nowadays anyway? Well, with Naruto: Clash of the Ninja Revolution 2, they’re getting an original storyline, waggle-tastic ninjutsu controls, a huge cast of characters and more.
While Naruto games have been more or less rehashes of the manga/anime storyline thus far, CotNR 2 breaks new ground with an original story with all new art. Otaku are a hard bunch to please – so it remains to be seen how the built-from-scratch plot will fare with hardcore fans, but we can at least take the new plot as evidence that the CotnR2 team isn’t set to rest on the laurels of their property.

A new story of course means new characters, and CotNR 2’s got ‘em in spades: Baki, Kurenai, Anko, Komachi and Towa who are Anbu (Naruto universe Black Ops), and Kisame and Bando, who are original villains for the game, as well as series first appearances for Awakened Hinata, 9-Tails Naruto (woot), and Second State Sasuke.

Gameplay-wise, CotNR 2’s got new Wii-specific motion-based controls. You can do hand-signs with the Wiimote (kinda like this dude) to power up Chakra, or use the Wiimote to launch Paper Bombs, which are like proximity mines and new to the series. Meanwhile, to do a basic attack you shake the Wiimote, to do a heavy attack you press A, matching different analog stick directions for different variations.

Another new series feature is tag-team matches, a feature that’s near default in fighting games nowadays – expect matches to get pretty hairy with tag-team combos and special moves, especially when you’ve got four people duking it out at the same time.

And if you’ve got four friends who want to get their hands on a Naruto fighter, CotNR2’s going to be the only game in town for you anyhow – it’s the only Naruto game out there with room for four. With a pretty robust feature list and fighting mechanics now tried and true through a good amount of Clash of the Ninja games, Revolution 2 could be another solid and substantial purchase for Naruto fans when it drops next week on October 21. Freakin kids. When I was your age…

It was a good show while it lasted, wasn’t it? Hey, let’s try another MMO. Oh this one has good PVP, it has cool innovations like public quests. But wait – there’s a new WoW patch? Okay, screw this, let’s play WoW.

That’s essentially the way Blizzard COO Paul Sams would tell you the story of how the folks who immigrated from World of Warcraft to Warhammer Online are already back to their previous MMO of choice.

We’ve seen a significant number of people, well over half, that cited Warhammer as their reason for leaving – they’ve already returned.

You think you’re out but then they just pull you back in. More thoughts from Sams after the jump.

While commending WAR on its success, Sams seemed a little backhandedly condescending in his comments on the game:

We respect those guys over there a lot and certainly wish them well to succeed but having registration troubles, having server troubles, these are things that come with the territory when you’re talking about managing a game as big as World of Warcraft or Warhammer or anything like that… I think Warhammer is best positioned to succeed out of the various products that have come out thus far since World of Warcraft has come out

But you’ll never beat us, bwahahahaha…

Source: Gamesindustry.biz

I like to crack a Gabe Newell joke as much as the next guy, but when it comes down to it you’ve gotta give credit where credit is due, and Gaben’s definitely a smart guy. Maybe not as smart as us joe six-pack gamers though, if you’re asking him what he thinks. Says he in the newest Game Informer:

It seems by and large that gamers are incredibly smart; the average gamer seems to know more about what makes a good game than the average person at a publisher.

How humble (and the guy plays Horde too – so you know he’s got his head on straight).

If there’s a downside to Blizzard’s monumental success with World of Warcraft, it’s where they go from here. With reaction to the company’s future endeavors ranging from the justifiably negative to the mostly positive, there’s certainly a fine line to walk for the company.

For their upcoming “next-gen MMO”, Blizzard’s got to win a whole new audience over while not cannibalizing their own properties – what’s their game plan then? Make something different, according to Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime.

We’re not trying to replace World of Warcraft with this new MMO. We’re trying to create a different massively multiplayer experience, and hopefully World of Warcraft will still be going strong when that one is released.

Sounds interesting – let’s just hope they don’t sell a different game for every race. Read on for more Morhaime.

I imagine that people at Blizzard, for all the money they’re making from it, are getting kind of sick of World of Warcraft. That being said, they don’t plan to stop raking in the dough just because they might be getting bored of the game, because, well, nobody else is:

We definitely don’t have a deadline where at this point we’re not going to support World of Warcraft. We wanna support it as long as people want us to support it.

Source: Shacknews

Hit the jump to see the trailer for yourself.

At this rate we might as well make the “hey look at this crazy-ass thing some dude made in LittleBigPlanet” post a daily feature. For a game that’s only in beta and that claims to have but a fraction of its working parts in place, you sure can do a hell of a lot with it – though I wonder if you could ever top this.

PSN user Upsilandre has constructed a working calculator in LBP, with 610 magnetic switches, 500 wires, 430 pistons, 70 emitters, and “other stuff”. It’s all other stuff to me, completely mind-boggling.  Hit the jump to see it in action.

Game advertisements, from the Halo 3 commercials last year to the Gears of War “Mad World” ad the year before, have gotten pretty damn impressive in recent times – and the trend’s continuing heading into this fall’s blockbuster season. Take this Fallout 3 ad, for example, snapped in a DC metro station by Ripten reader John Cangany.

It’s a pretty powerful image (and maybe a potentially controversial one) – the battered and broken Washington monument looming behind some twisted version of the American flag, and that robot guy that’s in all the Fallout media (sorry Fallout fans I don’t know what he’s called).

According to John’s account, plenty of people, most presumably unaware of the context of the game’s setting, found the ad totally compelling:

Anyway, metro riders were transfixed by this ad…people STARED. Like, legit stared, as if the ad were either a really pretty or really ugly, disfigured lady.

Nice way of putting it. In other words: good advertising.

Nevertheless – when asked what she knew about the Punch Out franchise, Dunaway replied:

I know that it was really popular 15 years ago, and that it’s been sitting there with latent demand. It’s got the … who’s the big character … Big Eddie.

She meant King Hippo. Mash the jump for more tidbits.

On the possibility of Soma Bringer coming to the US:

Okay, I’ve got to write these down. I’m not familiar with it… It’s not on my radar right now, but I will make sure that we put it on the radar.

On Mother 3 coming to the US:

It sounds like there’s an overall theme here about people being interested in these games that have not come to the United States.

Cue the circus music, please.

Source: Wired

Media Molecule are weeks away from shipping the quite possibly biggest PS3 game of the year (sorry MGS4), but they’re not resting on their laurels quite yet. Talking to Eurogamer, Media Molecule co-founder Mark Healy remarked on the possibility of a PSP version of the game:

There’s definitely scope for a PSP version. We’ve had discussions and talks…nothing concrete at the moment.

He’s even got the perfect idea for what it could be like – hit the jump to find out what LittleBigPlanetPortable could be.

It’d be great to make, for the people who are really into the Create side, some kind of companion products that allow you to create things while you’re on the train. One thing that I’d love to add is the ability to create your own music, for example, that you can import into the game. That seems like an obvious one to do and it’d be quite easy really.

Healy seemed to suggest that development wouldn’t be in-house, saying that Media Molecule likes to keep its team a tightly-knit group.

Source: Eurogamer via Shacknews

They say that if you give a man fish they’ll eat for a day, but if you teach a man to fish they’ll eat for a lifetime. Well, give a Korean a game other than Starcraft and they’ll play it for a day, but if you give them Spore they’ll turn it into Starcraft. That’s what happened here. Some intrepid fellow was so frustrated by Spore’s shallow as heck RTS gameplay that he had to make it look as much like Starcraft as possible to even keep playing it. And he succeeded – look at those Siege Tanks!

Source: Game|Life

If Dr. Peter Venkman is in Ghostbusters III (which is supposedly being penned by scribes from The Office), we’ll have one thing to thank: the Ghostbusters game. Bill Murray, who has previously been notoriously on the fence about a third Ghostbusters flick, has apparently down an about face and says he’s totally down with GBIII, and it’s all thanks to the Ghostbusters game. As reports Aint It Cool News:

He also went on to say that his enthusiasm for Ghostbusers was heightened after recording the voice of Peter Venkman for the video game over the summer. In fact, he said he found himself walking down the street singing the Ghostbusters theme song and then thought people walking around him were going to start yelling at him ‘get over yourself, Bill,’ so he stopped.

Source: Ain’t It Cool News

Can’t run TF2 but still want to know what all the hubub is about? Well, it might not be the same as the real thing, but Gang Garrison 2, a fan-built “demake” of TF2, is still pretty cool in and of itself (and most likely’ll run on your Intel Integrated Graphics cards). Yep, it takes TF2’s maps, classes, and core gameplay, and converts it all into simple-but-attractive 2D pixels. There are even some new maps, and *gasp* genuine online multiplayer. I haven’t tried it out yet myself, but it looks pretty awesome. See it for yourself: trailer (complete with a chiptunes-tastic version of the TF2 theme) after the jump.

Hey look, Gemma Atkinson. No doubt about it, Ms Atkinson’s a looker – we’re totally sure about that. What we’re not so sure about is this latest video from Red Alert 3’s increasingly bizarre ad campaign. It’s dubbed a “remix” and features a vast array of random clips from Red Alert 3’s superstar cast, interspersed with gameplay footage, some CG cutscenes, and a cheesy techno soundtrack. It’s like being at a party and someone says something so random and bizarre, you can’t tell if it’s a joke or just some evil form of awkwardness. Either way, if you ever wanted to hear George Takei say “All your base are belong to us” over, and over, and over again, then you definitely want to hit the jump.
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Hal Halpin, the president of the Entertainment Consumers Association, a non-profit consumer advocacy organization for gamers, has spoken out against EA’s DRM policies for Spore, calling the game’s restrictive DRM a breeding ground for future generations of pirates and a “giant leap backwards” for anti-piracy initiatives.In a guest column at GameDaily, Halpin wrote:

This DRM did nothing to combat the cracking of the game. In fact, it essentially helped in training legions of customers how to become pirates and legitimized their rationalization in the process. With each additional negative story – which seem to be released hourly – you can almost hear the collective cringing of anti-piracy executives who know that they have all been forced to take a giant leap backwards due to this fiasco.

Whether you agree or not with Halpin, I think we can all agree that it’s a damn shame that such an interesting and important game has been overshadowed by all this.