In a recent Zero Punctuation review, Yahtzee couldn't declare which blockbuster game "about super-powered assholes" was better, but would give the honor to the studio that best drew the rival game's protagonist in drag.
Astoundingly and to their everlasting credit, both Radical and Sucker Punch participated. First up, Radical sent in two submissions, but that monstrosity takes the cake - Cole McGrath with Vegas showgirl peacock tail, a Marilyn Monroe birthmark and ... oh God are his pubes showing? NEXT.
Here's your winner: Alex Mercer, who shapeshifted up some heaving bosoms thanks to Sucker Punch, in a tableau that "could be the cover of a romance novel." Per Yahtzee's award citation:
It's a close call, but I'm going to declare Sucker Punch the winner by one lovingly-rendered pair of breasts. Also their unicorn is a much prouder, mightier steed, and Alex's expression is delightfully coquettish. Therefore InFamous must be the better game. Buy InFamous. Prototype's still good, though. Buy it as well.
Yahtzee's Prototype vs. Infamous Challenge [The Escapist via Joystiq]
4
Jul
Posted in PS3 Articles, PS3 Reviews, PS3 Tips by Glenn M. |
Nothing like a cute kid in a Mega Man costume to make your day. I wanted to be Mega Man when I was little too. Lucky for him, his parents must be gamers. Not only does he come with a left-handed buster, he also dons the oversized Mega Man boots to complete the look. Awww.
The costume took about 40-50 hours of daddy's hard work and cost about US 70. Daddy is a proud geek with a passion for gaming
Halloween costumes, and his three-year-old son is the lucky recipient of this adorable Mega Man look. The dad also put together a Captain N costume for himself and a Pit costume for his one-year-old.
Maybe when he's a bit older, Mega Kid here may want to step into a capsule and upgrade to a shiny new Ultimate Armor.
This is cool too:
In an interview with CVG, Valve's Doug Lombardi says the experiences of putting Half-Life on PS2 and Orange Box on PS3 have put them off Sony development for the near future.
He doesn't complain about the differences in developing for one console, or PC, over another, but does say the PS3 versions of Valve products have been inferior to the original releases, and so the company's not interested in doing anything on that console again unless and until they can put something out that gives Sony players the same experience as PC and 360 users.
We look at it as if we were customers of this product, how would we want to be treated and what sort of product would we want out of it? We've run a couple of experiments over the years of PlayStation in general; we did Half-Life on PS2 with an outside company and then we did Orange Box PS3 with an outside company. We weren't able to deliver the same type of product on PS3 and PS2 for that matter that we were on the 360 and PC.
[...]
Until we have the ability to get a PS3 team together, until we find the people who want to come to Valve or who are at Valve who want to work on that, I don't really see us moving to that platform.
We've kind of learned a lesson in that again, if we were customers of that product on PlayStation, we'd feel like we sort of got the stepchild version of the product while the guys on the PC and the 360 got the sweet version of it.
Translated, what it really means is there is no one inside Valve with any interest in PS3 development, and the company on the whole isn't interested in outsourcing any more ports after the experience with The Orange Box on PS3, which suffered some bad load times and framerate issues.
Still No PS3 Interest From Valve [CVG via TheSavePoints, thanks Meredith B.]
4
Jul
Posted in PS3 Articles, PS3 Reviews, PS3 Tips by Karl B. |
A couple of months ago, we had a report from
CNET saying that
Sony had been talking to some recording industry types about providing downloadable music for the PSP through the
PlayStation Network. Now that rumors of PS Cloud being a social networking tool has been debunked, the latest from the mill alleges that it's actually for this music service.
It's a rumor from an anonymous tipster, so take this with a huge helping of salt. PlayStation Lifestyle points out that the PS Cloud trademark Sony filed indeed covers "audio content provided via an on-demand service via the internet", but it's only one of the services covered in the filing.
Well, what do you think guys? I wouldn't mind if PS Cloud did turn out to be iTunes for the PSP and PS3, but only if Sony completely kicks its bad
DRM habits. You can check out more info that possibly support the "Cloud as music service" theory in the source link.
Related articles:
Last month, the swindling of more than 200 billion ISK resulted in an actual run on a virtual bank in EVE Online. The best part? The loot was sold IRL - just $5,000.
No, griefers from Something Awful are not claiming responsibility. Not that any of them would have the patience to play nice long enough to become a controller for EBank. User Ricdic was, and then he took the dough and sold it off, he says in order to place a down payment on a house and pay medical bills.
The heist dwarfs the earlier 100 billion ISK embezzled by an in-game investments manager. But 250 billion ISK was just 8 trillion of 8 percent of the bank's 2.8 trillion held in deposits. Still a tidy sum, but hardly the whole kitty. That didn't stop EVE Ebankers from rushing the teller windows once word passed of Ricdic's dirty deeds.
He has since been kicked out of EVE, as selling in-game currency for real-world value is a no-no according to the TOS. Had he kept the ISK in-game, he would not have been sanctioned - by CCP anyway. In-game depositors may have had something to say and/or do about it.
Billions Stolen in Online Robbery [BBC]
4
Jul
Posted in PS3 Articles, PS3 Reviews, PS3 Tips by Karl B. |
We've seen a lot of announcements and teasers being released via
Twitter this year. Here's another one from
LucasArts. Recent entries in the LucasArts Twitter account are teasing "awesome news" for their old school fans early on Monday. Here are the pertinent Tweets:
- Entry 1: Amazing news coming Monday! Super excited! You have no idea how tough it is not to start yelling about it! But it's secret! Until Monday!
- Entry 2: Okay, we will do hints. It is awesome news for our old school fans. (anything more direct might get me in trouble)
- Entry 3: It doesn't have to do with any specific intellectual property...
Craig Derrick, the producer of
The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition, recently intimated that they have "another platform announcement to make very, very soon", but that last entry kinda hints that it's not all about a PSN or WiiWare release of
Monkey island SE. Still, I think it's safe to say that point-and-click adventure fans are in for a treat this Monday. I certainly wouldn't mind having a go at a revamped
Full Throttle.
Related articles:
Last year, the coder who wrote the Atari 400 port of Donkey Kong revealed it had an Easter Egg but it's "totally not worth it." Someone has gone to the trouble of finding it.
Donkey Kong for the Atari 400 and 800 was one of the best early ports of an arcade game, and its writer, Landon Dyer, detailed how he built it practically by himself, with no support, reference code, or anything one would expect in a licensing deal. He also revealed the existence of the Easter egg, but incorrectly described how to get it ("something like: Die on the 'sandpile' level with 3 lives and the score over 7,000," he writes.)
Don Hodges, who earlier fixed Pac-Man's notorious kill screen, set to picking apart the Donkey Kong code and finding the egg. He did. It's rather underwhelming, but for posterity's sake, he found the conditions for achieving it.
• Play a game, setting a new high score that is either 37,000, 73,000 or 77,000. The digits for hundred thousands, hundreds, tens, and ones may be anything. • Kill off all of your remaining lives, but your last death must be by falling.
• Then set the game difficulty to 4 (press the option button 3 times.)
• Wait for the game to cycle through the demo screen where Kong jumps across the screen, then at the title screen, the programmer's initials, LMD, will appear. (Pictured above)
That is a set of conditions so specific I can't imagine anyone discovering the egg without prying apart the code, much less knowing how to repeat it. Hodges shows how he found it in the code, using an emulator.
I think the only question remaining is why Dyer made the egg so hard to discover. Certainly other Atari-programmed games of the time had Easter eggs that were not only easier to find, their methods were widely known and circulated.
Donkey Kong Lays an Easter Egg [donhodges.com via Game Set Watch]
We solemnly publish and declare that this weekend, all games are, and of right ought to be, free. Alas they are not. Scan the following for values to which you may pledge your fortunes.
Software
• Gears of War 2 is out there for $37 (free shipping eligible) via Amazon.com. That's only $3 off the current MSRP, but make sure if you're going out to buy it in person, you're not paying more than $39.99 [Amazon]
• If you're a PC gamer and you haven't yet tried Fallout 3, this weekend removes your excuses. Steam's offering it at half off, $25. It's a bargain when you consider what you spend each month on online porn, come on! OK, poor choice of words. [Steam]
• GoGamer's latest 48-Hour Madness has deals on 360 controllers, NCAA 10, Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood, BlazBlue and others. Don't take notes, just go here and see if they have what you want. [GoGamer]
• Is there a better value than free? This weekend only, Sega is offering Columns Deluxe for the iPhone and iPod Touch, free through the Apple Store. [Sega]
• Stardock's digital distributor Impulse is offering a Red Faction Bundle - $40 gets you Red Faction 1, 2 and Guerrilla. Other features include Prototype for $45, Flock for $7.50 and a slew of Unreals, ranging from Gold and II for $7.49 to a $34 pack of all of them [Impulse]
• Digital distro GamersGate has these three specials throughout the weekend - Today: Men of War, 60 percent off; Sunday: Arena Wars Reloaded, 50 percent off; Monday: Painkiller Universe, 50 percent off [GamersGate]
As always, smart gamers can find values any day of the week, so if you've run across a deal, share it with us in the comments.
4
Jul
Posted in PS3 Articles, PS3 Reviews, PS3 Tips by Karl B. |
Bundles are typically a hit or miss affair. Usually you get a good enough game but not something that you'd really want to play. This one, on the other hand, is a definite hit.
A report from Kotaku says that
Best Buy is readying a new 80GB PS3 bundle that comes with two of the PS3's biggest exclusive titles yet --
Metal Gear Solid 4 and
Killzone 2 -- for US 400, the same as a standard PS3. This bundle will reportedly be available starting next Sunday.
Kinda makes you think that Best Buy's doing all they can to clear their old stock of 80GB PS3s. How did that
earlier rumor go? "
Sony is expected to wait until after summer to make an announcement to allow the supply of the older units to dry up." Hmm.
Related articles:
This will be the first time I've ever worked on Crecentral Time, as I'm in Colorado hanging with Kotaku alum Adam Barenblat for the weekend. It's also a shortened two days thanks to July 4.
But to everyone who might be kicking back, lighting up and/or grilling out this weekend - Francophones, we realize you're waiting on Bastille Day - we start with a roundup of our reporting highlights, led by the Summer of Gaming package. McMike also got a look inside Blizzard and Starcraft.
Hey, wasn't Frank O'Phone a reliever for the New York Mets? I digress. The week in original coverage.
Summer of Gaming
Sink Or Swim? The Game Designer's Conundrum
Kotaku's 2009 Summer Reading List
Kotaku's Summer of Gaming
Blizzard/Starcraft
No LAN Play For Starcraft II
Three Things We Weren't Allowed To Photograph At Blizzard HQ
Ogle Blizzard HQ's Epically Mounted Orc
StarCraft II Beta Planned To Last 4 To 6 Months
What's Inside Blizzard's Library?
StarCraft II Hands-On: Round Three
Features
How To Name A Video Game Studio - And Hopefully Get It Right
In Defense Of The Classic Controller
Previews, Reviews, Hands-On and Impressions
Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen Review: Clench The Difference
Battlefield Heroes Review: The Great (Cartoon) War
Frankenreview: The Conduit
Mecho Wars Micro-Review: Landians Versus Wingians... Really?
Sony Expands "Official Licensing Program"
Let's Take A PlayStation Home Survey!
Captain Blood Preview: Errol Flynn He Ain't - But He'll Do
Dreamkiller Impressions: "Emotional Painkiller" Doesn't Sound As Cool
The Conduit Review: A Bland, But Enjoyable Shooter
Death To Spies 2: Moment of Truth Preview: SMERSH is a fun word to say
Bit.Trip: Core Preview: Thumb-Aching Good Fun
Gunstar Heroes Micro-Review: The Perfect Shot
MySims Agents Preview: Spy vs. Sims
Fight Night Round 4 Review: Boxing Beautiful
Rumor
Foot Controlled Silver Surfer Game?
News
PS3 Bundle Includes MGS4, Killzone 2
Ninja Gaiden 2 Sigma Premium Box Pack Premium Price
How Many Hours People Play Nintendo's Wii Games (Sorry, Donkey Kong)
Square Enix Brings Hammer Down On French Retailer
Midway Sale To WB Clears Court, Staff At Two Studios Given Notice
Grand Theft IV Auto Goes Discount In Japan
Xbox 360 Game Creation Tool Kodu Now Live - Got Any Ideas?
Dave Perry: How Gaikai Goes Beyond OnLive, Could Spread Gaming Everywhere
Square Enix Mystery Solved - The Four Warriors Of Light
Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 Dated And Detailed For Japan
Damnation Developers Laid Off
Nintendo Patents WarioWare Take On Othello
Carmack: Just About Everything id Makes Coming To iPhone
Doom Resurrection: The iPhone Game That Nearly Wasn't
Would Natal Enable User-Generated Mo-Cap?
Kotaku Reader
K6
Swag and Toys
Wish I Had A Record Player
Kotaku Kard Man
Check Out This Awesome Akuma Statue
At the Half
2009 Is Half-Done: What's Been Great So Far?
Facts and Figures
How Many Hours People Play Each Wii Sonic Game, Music Games Too
The Ten Most Avidly-Played Wii Games In America (As Of July 1)
