God bless you, sir; you're doing the Lord's work.

It seems a game can’t release any more without pissing off one demographic or another.  Within hours of a press release over a new game, people are sharpening pitchforks and setting torches ablaze with something to be furious over.   Whether it be Left 4 Dead 2’s extensive online protest over it’s less-than-a-year after launch sequel, or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2’s lack of dedicated PC servers, there’s always something for unsatisfied psychotics to complain about.

But, what a surprise, it looks like neither uproar did anything to slow down sales for either game.  Let’s take a look at the numbers after the jump.

I can appreciate honest-to-god protesting.  But do you think anyone cares about angry Facebook groups or stickied forum threads of hostility?  If you didn’t know it,  as easy as it is to commit to something with no consequences over the internet, it’s equally as easy to break that very same promise.

Modern Warfare 2 sold three million copies on launch day in the UK.  That’s one country.  I guess as offensive as the grenade spam video was, it couldn’t stop the juggernaut that is MW2.  Valve announced that Left 4 Dead 2 is currently sitting at four times the number of pre-orders than the original Left 4 Dead.  While this is no guarantee of what the sales are going to look like for a sequel, that seems like a pretty good indicator that the game is going to destroy the sales numbers of the original.

So where did all the protesters go?  All those people shouting to everyone that would listen that they wouldn’t be buying the latest title?  Are there still a few holdouts, sitting in their parents basement keeping the “www.ProtestLeft4Dead2.com” website alive, while the hundreds of their ex-protesters are already standing in line outside their local Best Buy waiting for the game to drop?

Numbers don’t lie, and the numbers for both Left4Dead2 and Modern Warfare 2 are already spiking mind-blowing numbers.  Stop saying you’re not going to buy the game and then go out like a drug addict sneaking out of the house to go score a fix.  Remember why you play games?  To have fun.  These games look like they’re going to be a lot of fun.  So go get a copy; we won’t tell your fellow members of “SoapMcTavishcansuckit.com”.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=226704
http://kotaku.com/5401980/modern-warfare-2-ships-three-millionin-one-country

It’s amazing how quickly things can change. Take Eliminate Pro – formerly Eliminate, and LiveFire before that – as an example. Originally planned as a for-pay game, ngmoco’s online first-person shooter for the iPhone/iPod touch now sports a free-to-play model, offering a gratis download that users can support through microtransactions.  The switch followed a mid-October Apple announcement that, going forward, in-app purchases could be incorporated into any application, whether free or premium.

To me, it seemed like a risky move, as ngmoco relies on a steady stream of cash to balance content and maintain global servers. That doesn’t even touch on development costs, or any promotional expenditures. Theoretically, users could play the game without ever paying a cent.

Based on initial results though, the decision appears to be paying dividends for the mobile games company.

According to numbers compiled by FingerGaming, and also reported by sister site Gamasutra, Eliminate Pro ranked ninth among the top-grossing U.S. iTunes applications for the week ended Nov. 10. The game launched on Nov. 2. It was the only free-to-play game to chart in the top ten, though JellyCar 2 and Skee-Ball – both $0.99 – made the cut as well. Also of note is the fact that Eliminate Pro is a new IP, and thus does not benefit from brand recognition tied to established IPs like Rock Band, The Sims 3, Tetris and Doom Classic.

Eliminate Pro was built to deliver a “console-caliber shooting experience” on the iPhone/iPod touch platform, and it appears – initially at least – that users are responding. If the game continues to perform well, it could have a huge impact on the mobile gaming market. Not only could it lead to increased adoption of the free-to-play model, but greater emphasis on core-focused iPhone/iPod touch games as well, further diversifying the iTunes application library.

Source: FingerGaming via Gamasutra

Paradigm13 and Hatakraa present episode 4 of the Sportscast.

• Intros
• Extra Life
• Top 5
• MVP

Subscribe to all of the great community shows via iTunes or RSS, or download this episode right here:mp3  

For those that subscribe to the iTunes feed and support the SGC Podcasts, we’d REALLY appreciate your iTunes feedback. Thanks!

On this edition of de humps, the crew discusses: Modern Warfare 2, a new song, Assassin’s Creed 2, Xbox bans and more.  So listen up, and get updated.

IMPORTANT: Please note that the Humpday Update is on its OWN iTunes and RSS feed. Please be sure to subscribe to the new Humpday Update feed in iTunesor RSS. If you insist, you can always just download the mp3. If you are currently using a computer with iTunes on it, would you mind heading over there and leaving us some feedback? Thanks for the Diggs!

I don’t know what to think about the controversial level of Modern Warfare 2 called “No Russian.” On one hand, it’s obviously grotesque, but on the other, it’s supposed to be a narrative tool to show just how villainous the game’s “Big Bad” really is.

Me? I just think its Infinity Ward attempting to be “shocking” and trying to one up their nuke blast death scene from Call of Duty 4. Why? because of how absolutely unnecessary the whole scene is.

The video of the scene for reference and a little discussion, after the jump.

Ok, just so we’re all on the same page, now that the game is out, here’s the controversial scene. Skip ahead to about the 1:40 mark.

[Warning: Very graphic and NSFW.]

Really? WTF was that all about? I honestly felt a little sick while I was “playing” that scene.  I consciously decided to not shoot anybody for two reasons. First, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Second, I wanted to see if the villain, Vladimir Makarov would notice that I was not participating in the carnage. My guess was that the whole thing was scripted and that the character wouldn’t react.

Unfortunately, I was right. There is no mention of my lack of participation by the villain. As the scene plays out, you’re eventually tasked with killing every FSB agent in your way as you make your escape.

After playing the scene, I couldn’t help but think: Was that necessary? Couldn’t there have been a half of a billion ways to show that Makarov was a bad guy within the game’s narrative, other than playing out a first person terrorist attack?

The scene’s lack of necessity is underscored by the initial warning you get when turning the game on that allows you to completely skip the scene. Furthermore, you get no Achievement or trophy for completing it. Why? Because it’s  unnecessary.  This further entrenches my belief that it was made just to “shock” rather than push the game forward.

Even if you’re staunchly in IW’s corner on this and you believe that video games need this to push the medium forward or whatever other argument you have for artistic integrity, or other convenient comparison to GTA IV you throw out, I really can’t see a reason for a scene like this to exist in a video game.

Is there an entertainment value in it? I think that is the REAL question. Modern Warfare 2 is ENTERTAINMENT. It’s not a meditation on the modern soldier, or a fucking dissertation on world politics.  It’s an excuse to shoot a gun. It’s an excuse to “play Army” and tweak that part of your brain that enjoys video gaming. When do we get to the point where there’s entertainment value in playing as a suicide bomber that goes into a market place and detonates his bomb?

How bout flying a jumbo jet into a skyscraper?

What are your thoughts on the scene?

Remember that old dog Call of Duty 4? We did a big ole post on helping the newbies out in Call of Duty 4’s unforgiving, yet completely addicting multiplayer a couple of years ago.  Turns out, that little old post was and still is one of the most viewed pieces of content on this whole site.

Well, the sequel to that fine game is out and Modern Warfare 2 could possibly be the biggest selling FPS of all time. That means lots of newbs.  If you fall into the “newb” category, should you fear the onslaught of CoD4 regulars? Should you cower in fear of high level prodigy’s smoking you from across the map.

One word: Nope. Why, because Modern Warfare 2 has balanced all that stuff out for you, to maximize your starting effectiveness and have produced, arguably, the most balanced first person multiplayer experience ever. Click on over to find out more.

In Call of Duty 4, whether you were an experienced gamer or a newbie to the genre, the CoD4 multiplayer experience was, at least initially, not a pleasant one. Iron sights, crappy perks and overall sensory overload led to an unpleasant experience, until you leveled up to at least 10.

In Modern Warfare 2, Infinity Ward has taken those lessons to heart and have redistributed the way perks and weapon add-on’s work, to give you perks and upgrades, not only faster, but in a more even handed fashion than its predecessor.

In the original Call of Duty 4, your starting pre-set classes didn’t include weapon add ons, just the plain Jane weapons with iron sights, which put you at a significant disadvantage against players that had unlocked red dot sights or grip add-ons for their light machine guns.

In MW2’s multiplayer you’ll start off with five pretty tricked out kits, with heavy and light weapons, complete with red dot scopes and higher level weapons that you’ll initially unlock, including the UMP, a stocky, stout little SMG that packs a punch at close to medium range. These upgraded starting kits put you on par with most players on the battlefield at level 1.  That’s not bad, but the way they tweaked the perk system is even better.

In CoD4, your starting perks were okay, but in MW2, you can use stopping power WITH slight of hand, as soon as you can create a class at level 4, which, in combination with the excellent starting classes, puts you at a very competitive level. If you can shoot straight and have played an FPS before, you should be okay.

So, if you’re a gamer that’s sitting on the fence about whether to pick up Modern Warfare 2, because of the seemingly impenetrable multiplayer, I think its safe to say that you’ll be okay.  My only question: Why haven’t you bought the game yet?

I’ve been hosting the Sarcastic Gamer PlayStation Podcast along with Frawlz and PacmanPolarbear for well over a year now, so it should come as no surprise that I really like the PlayStation platform.  When we started the show, we had to put up with a large amount of legitimate “crap” over things like inferior multiplatform titles, fewer exclusives, inferior online offering, etc.  The list was substantial and I don’t think we’ve ever tried to hide that fact on our show.  Over the course of late 2008 and 2009 things really took a turn for the better in PlayStation-land.  But lately, that same sour taste has returned… and it tastes… like sh*t!

Borderlands came out on the PS3 to immediate co-op problems on the PS3… a game largely pimped for its co-op gameplay!  I later got to experience a wonderful and awesome corrupted save which led to me losing about 6-7 hours of gameplay.  The game got patched (both server and client side) to address the launch issues, but the reason my save got corrupted is still unaddressed as far as I know. For those of you ready to ask, no… I didn’t turn off the PS3 while the HDD indicator light was on.  I think Gear Box needs to add a few more reasons to the list of things that could corrupt your game… like maybe just “Buying it for the PS3!”  “Bitter much?” you may ask;  yeah, I am.  On a side note, I rented the 360 version to play online with friends last weekend and THAT game save isn’t corrupt and I had no co-op problems.  I’m just sayin’…  :-/

Beatles Rock Band is giving PS3 owners fits in Europe if they purchased the DLC.  That’s just beautiful!  You buy a game, like it enough to want to spend even MORE money on it, you go buy some more music and BLAMO!!! Your game no longer loads.  How does something like that pass through QA?  It shouldn’t.  Someone screwed up and I hope a bunch of people learned a lesson.

Modern Warfare 2 just came out in case you didn’t notice.  Hey, guess what?  If you started playing right away, you might not get your trophies on the PS3 version.  Xbox 360 version?  Achievements show up as earned.  WTF?  Also, there have been reports of problems sending invites to other players on your friends list on the PS3.  Apparently deleting the friends and adding them again fixes this, but that’s complete and utter crap!  I know Sony doesn’t do this on purpose and Infinity Ward is a highly respected developer, but how does this sh*t keep happening?

Did we all quietly slip back into early 2008?  We’re largely getting graphical parity between 360 and PS3… we’re mostly getting frame rate parity… but now stupid sh*t is sliding through to retail WAY too often!  This kind of stuff really matters… REALLY matters!

Okay… I’ll admit it.  I bought Modern Warfare 2 for the 360 so I wouldn’t have to deal with the sh*t I figured would probably be attributed to the PS3 version (and largely because I’ve had better luck actually playing with friends easily on the 360.)  I feel like the PlayStation platform has been one step forward, and one step back (+/- a half a step.)

Sony, ultimately PlayStation is your brand… it’s your baby. I don’t want blame placed or fingers pointed, I want this sh*t to stop.  I, as a proponent for your platform FOR YEARS, need to have confidence that buying (or recommending) a game on your system isn’t a compromise or a headache-to-be.  End this sh*t… NOW!

PRIZES ANNOUNCED! END DATE ANNOUNCED! RULE CHANGES!  In other words, you’d better read the post, people.

Happy Modern Warfare 2 Day, everyone!  It also happens to be the day your grandfathers fought the Nazi scourge off the beaches of Normandy so your chunk ass could sit in a recliner and teabag people you shoot in the face in a video game.   The US calls it “Veteran’s Day”, and yes, I will be enjoying my day off with a little grenade spam.

Oooh.  Too soon?

Hit me after the jump for the updated leaderboard and all the updated information for Duelist League!

Leaderboard: (as of November 10th):
TheStonedSheep: 6 W/0 L, 205 XP
TinyButDeadly: 3 W/0 L, 140 XP
Jus Blaze Man02: 2 W/0 L, 135 XP
WildBanshe: 2 W/1 L, 120 XP
PurpleDemon: 2 W/1 L, 120 XP
Yamster:1 W/0 L, 115 XP
BlinkinCard: 1 W/1 L, 100 XP
Astro-Nit: 0 W/0 L, 105 XP
Eao: 0 W/0 L, 100 XP
NuclearNinja: 0 W/1 L, 90 XP
Spongebobbies: 0 W/1 L, 85 XP
AssassinsClaw: 0 W/1 L, 85 XP
TomCoopz: 0 W/1 L, 85 XP
Otacon91: 0 W/1 L, 85 XP
Pikminguts92: 0 W/1 L, 85 XP
Shanghai Six: 1 W/3 L, 80 XP
IceKatanaX: 0 W/1 L, 80 XP
Sjstennis: 0 W/1 L, 75 XP
SmellyPirate: 0 W/1 L, 75 XP
AlaDouche: 0 W/1 L, 75 XP
Fallout123: 0 W/2 L, 60 XP

We’re upping the ante here, and no, not just because Stoned Sheep is smearing everyone in Uncharted 2 on a weekly basis, but because there have been several weeks where no one in the league actually has the game to play.  I’m sure there are games out there that people want to get into Duelist League.  Instead of penalizing players for not having the game, let’s make an added incentive for those people who play the game that is chosen?

This week’s game, if you are slow on the uptake, is Modern Warfare 2.   If you play a match using the selected game this week, you win double the points wagered. You do NOT lose double the points you wager if you lose a match.  Bet 25 points: you win, you get 50, but if you lose, you only lose the original 25.  It’s an incentive to play the games listed, but it keeps other people playing who have a hard on for a certain game.

UPDATED RULES (PAY ATTENTION; RULE CHANGES!):
1) Each week, look for the thread in the Official Sarcastic Gamer Gamenights forum for the stickied Duelist League thread (link here).

2) Post in the thread the list of games you have that you are willing to duel against someone with.  This can be any game at all. Magic The Gathering on XBLA to Madden 10 to Peggle. Doesn’t matter.

3) Find someone with a game that you have and pick a fight with another forum member.  There is no limit to the number of matches you can engage in during the week.

4) All combatants start at 100 experience points. Both players agree to a wager on how many points they are playing for. Max wager is 25 points, and you cannot go below 5 points (so someone can work their way back up if they are knocked out). Not only will win/loss be registered, but the experience point tally will be kept as well.

5) If you are playing a match using the chosen game of the week (in this case, Modern Warfare 2), you get double the experience for a win.

6) The results of the match are posted on the thread.

7) Okay, here’s the big news:

Duelist League will continue until the end of the year.

Prizes!

First place: Collectors Edition of Fairytale Fights (PS3 or 360)
Second place: Darkest of Days (360) (well, you can always trade it in for credit)
Third place: Your choice of a variety of swag t-shirts picked up from PAX (unworn…yes, you’re welcome).

You see, I’m a nice guy.  Instead of me turning all this stuff in for cash to line my own pockets, I’m giving it all back to the community that got me all this cool stuff in the first place.

You’ve got just over six weeks to get your asses in gear.  Make it hot, people.  Let’s see some action!

Doc, Dave, and Lono are back to discuss Modern Warfare 2, Wii HD, and Dragon Age. That and a ton more… is right here.

Welcome to Episode 90 of the Sarcastic Gamer Podcast.  The Red Show.

Subscribe here.  Leave an iTunes review here.  Download the show here.

Zinc136, Demonoid, PureDarkness, and special guest daCooksta host Casual Core episode 13.

• Short interview with our Special guest
• Eurogamer expo
• SG War
• Favorite Threads of the week
• Take us out

Subscribe to all of the great community shows via iTunes or RSS, or download this episode right here:mp3  

For those that subscribe to the iTunes feed and support the SGC Podcasts, we’d REALLY appreciate your iTunes feedback. Thanks!

Electronic Arts’ promotional blitz for Dante’s Inferno continues with a look at the sixth circle of hell: Heresy. It’s Satan’s backyard, according to lead designer Steve Desilets, who proclaims: “You’re now in the sh**.” As you’ll see, it is indeed quite brutal, and certainly not for children, South Australian Attorney General Michael Atkinson, or the International Nanny Association. The INA previously decried the Bad Nanny Achievement/Trophy, claiming that it could “promote violence toward children.” Keep in mind though, the game is set in hell, and Dante won’t be dealing with defenseless babes. They’ll be swinging crescent-shaped blade arms, as you’ll see in the video.

Visceral employees also respond to some of the controversy surrounding the game, including complaints that it’s an affront to the literary masterpiece. In defense of the game, gameplay engineer Tom Wilson says a carbon copy of Dante Alighieri’s revered poem wouldn’t be much fun to play. I agree. If I pay $60 for a game, I’d rather it be fun than true to the source material. Besides, the existence of EA’s adaptation doesn’t diminish the quality of the actual poem. It’s still going to be considered a timeless classic. Visceral employees took liberties with the story, and they’re certainly not ashamed to admit it. If you ask me, people need to lighten the f**k up.

The video also offers some info on the judgment system, which allows you to punish or absolve as you see fit. I generally like to play the hero, so I’ll probably opt for the holy route. For more details, check out the Heresy Developer Diary.

With Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time available for purchase, I need a new game to latch onto, and it appears that Dante’s Inferno is that game. It will launch in North America for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable on Feb. 9, 2010, sandwiched between Bayonetta and God of War III. Europe will have to wait three extra days (oh noes).

I am pretty much sold on the game already, but if you’re taking a wait-and-see approach, Electronic Arts has announced a demo, set to launch in December. According to the official release, players will battle to the gates of hell, where they’ll square off against Death. Win, and the reward is Death’s scythe.

Violence is up next. Should be interesting, to say the least.

Source: Electronic Arts

Let’s get this party started! It’s time for the Sarcastic Gamer Racing League to fight tooth and nail for sponsors…in front of all of you fine readers! We have two sponsors up for grabs, and believe me, one of them is REALLY “up for grabs.”

Hit the jump, League participants, for all the info on who you should be getting noticed by!

Gold Sponsor: The Sarcastic Gamer Playstation Podcast
There is a certain level of delicious irony to a PS3 podcast sponsoring a driver in a 360 exclusive game. Boy, do we ever intend to play that up as much as we can. I’ve heard talk of a bumper sticker bearing the words “My Other Console Has A Cell Processor.”

The Contest:
Tell us why the Blu Show is the best SG Podcast in 69 words or less.*

Send your entries by email to undeaddog@sarcasticgamer.com

*What better way to introduce a series of contests than to excludes most of the potential contestants? That’s how the Blu show rolls! You have to be a PS3 owner to win this sponsor. Please include a valid PSN ID in your entry.

Sliver Sponsor: F’n Mustache Wax
Just in time for the Left 4 Dead 2 demo, we would like to introduce a sponsor inspired by the outtakes of a classic SG Left 4 Dead parody video. If you haven’t seen it, check this out.

The Contest:
Send us your best or funniest fake mustache photo. You can use an actual fake mustache or paint one on, but please No Photoshop. I can tell. Also, please no nude or crude entries!

Send your entries by email to undeaddog@sarcasticgamer.com

We will be accepting entries until the 22nd and will announce the winners shortly after that.

All are welcome to send entries! Only SGRL members can win, but we will be showcasing the funniest or greatest entries on the site and podcasts in the coming weeks. So, join in on the fun!

Our intrepid roving reporter MightyMutt tackles Ubisoft on Assassin’s Creed II and Splinter Cell, gets the facts on Alien vs Predator and Bayonetta from SEGA, learns a ton about LittleBigPlanet on PSP and gets the dirty on Split/Second from developer Black Rock.

Subscribe to all of the great community shows via iTunes or RSS, or download this episode right here: mp3

For those that subscribe to the iTunes feed and support the SGC Podcasts, we’d REALLY appreciate your iTunes feedback. Thanks!

Top row, L to R: Wonder Russell (PR for Runic Games), Jason Varden (PR for Perfect World), Mike Fisher (2D Artist) Matt Tanwanteng (Engineer), Patrick Blank (Lead Level Designer), Peter Hu (Lead Engineer and Founder) Bottom row, L to R: Travis Baldree (President of Runic Games, Project Director) Brock Jones (Producer) Jason Lamb (QA)

I love underdogs.  I love scrappy young upstarts who buck the system and manage to come out on top.   So, when I see Torchlight scoring an 86 over at Metacritic and getting positive front page coverage at Penny Arcade…well, it’s just a Irish jig fest all around.

Runic Games took some time out of their busy schedule of soaking up praise from the PC community to sit down and talk with me about their recent launch, their future plans, and even answered some of our community members questions!  Take a listen here!

Subscribe to all of the great community shows via iTunes or RSS, or download this episode right here:mp3

For those that subscribe to the iTunes feed and support the SGC Podcasts, we’d REALLY appreciate your iTunes feedback. Thanks!

I understand that games are pretty expensive compared to other forms entertainment media.  I also understand that people just steal things.  I used to work retail and witnessed several people steal things just to steal, they had no particular use for what they were stealing. That said, there have been a number of “WTF were you thinking about?!?!” gaming theft stories lately.

The latest incident involves a police officer in charge of (wait for it…) catching shoplifters actually get caught shoplifting two PS3 games himself.  Incidentally, he was stealing Killzone 2 and Call of Duty (I’m going to assume COD: World at War.)  His taste in games wasn’t horrible, but the icing on the cake was when he confessed “I had no reason to steal and no reason to steal PS3 games, as I don’t have a PS3.”

During his court proceedings he said he was simply “rearranging his trousers” and had only been looking at the games to “help him relate to young people.” Mind you this occurred after he was literally caught shoplifting on closed circuit television cameras.  I loved the reference to a “stab vest” in the news report.  In the US we have bullet proof vests, but they apparently have stab vests.

Not to be outdone, a Postal Service mail handler in Philadelphia admitted to stealing over $86,000 in rental discs from the GameFly service while working at his job.  The crazy part is that it took over a year before an investigation was initiated.  While I think it’s crazy to even contemplate stealing like that, I can certainly see how this idiot got complacent after getting away with it for months and months without so much as a question from anyone.

When he finally was due for arrest, the genius fled federal agents and crashed his SUV before trying to escape on foot.  Why was he so determined to get away?  Oh, maybe it was the 160 GameFly mailers he had with him in the car.  He also had gaming systems he was buying with proceeds gained by trading in the GameFly games.  I’m still trying to figure out why the guy had the equivalent of a gaming store with him in his SUV.  Lastly, when he was trading in all this stuff at GameStop, they never asked him how or where he was getting this stuff?  You don’t trade in $86,000 worth of games without turning in duplicates.

I guess the bottom line is we now have two fewer idiots roaming the streets stealing video games.  As for the rest of you crazies, go mess with someone else’s hobby!

"Breaking news! Godzilla attacks Tokyo!"

I’m sure there are people who hadn’t even put their wallets away after buying a DSi or new PSP when the “next gen” version of the damn thing was announced.  With last week’s announcement of the great-for-grandma’s-glaucoma DSi XXXXXL, roughly the size of a netbook with a stlyus that could be used to stake vampires, you have to wonder just what Nintendo’s portable division was thinking.

But then it seems that those folks are drinking from the same well that the developers over at Sony’s handheld division are drinking from with their latest release, the PSP Go!  Let’s take a look at both systems and mock them, shall we?

DSi XL:

- In the Land of the Rising Sun, they’ve decided to stop going smaller, instead going the good ol’ fashion American way and making their next handheld as big as humanely possible.  It is 50% larger than the DSi, and almost twice as big as the DS Lite.  Okay, maybe not, but I don’t feel like doing math right now.

- Well, apparently they’re not making enough money from the Wii anymore, so they’ve decided to play stupid like Sony does when pricing new hardware; looks like it will cost $22o-ish when it launches here in the States for Q1 2010.

- A full inch larger screen, but still same resolution graphics!  That’s right, kids!  You can now play 64-bit games like they were meant to be played:  huddled around a four inch screen like your freezing to death in a blizzard, using the LED screen for warmth!

- Oh, goodie!  It comes with two brain training games and a dictionary already installed on the hard drive?  Well, you can’t say Nintendo doesn’t give out anything for free, now can ya?

- Colors: The Japanese version will launch in three colors: Wine Red, Dark Brown, and Hemorrhoid Cream White.  Okay, I’m just joking about the Dark Brown.

- The DSi with it’s fancy camera and silly downloadable calculators was announced this time last year.   So just over a year before the next one launches; isn’t that a bit…soon?   Someone get the Left4Dead 2 protesters over here, we’ve got a new banner to rally behind!

PSP Go:

- Well, it’s old terrain, but let’s kick around in the mud for a bit.

- No UMD (Unviersal Media Disk) drive, and no UMD turn-in program.  I now have a very decorative coffee table that I super-hot glue gunned all my old UMDs to the top of.  Very “frat boy house” chic.

- $249.  Of course, they apparently weren’t talking with the folks over at Sony’s main office, because this came out just about the same time the price drop for the PS3 Slim came out.  Really?  Is there even a choice if you have $300 and could only buy one?  Hey, there’s still a recession going on: quit making me stop and think about buying new plastic crap.

- Ironically, much like the Nintendo Wii, no one is playing their PSP.  Well, except for PacManPolarBear, and we all know what that’s about…I mean, amirite?

- In it’s first week, Sony sold 1000 units.  One thousand.  Good for you, world, for not taking any of Sony’s nonsense.

I’m sure there are plusses and minuses on each side of the fence for this one, but I’m interested in hearing what the rest of the community has to say.  Which is why I wrote this in the first place: which system is more stupid-er than the other, because for the most part, they both are pretty ignorant.

Hello SG Community. How are you today?

I’m fine by the way, thanks for asking.

Here’s a new episode of [GAME] In 30 Seconds.

[This article is a special contribution from SGC Member and SG Forum Moderator Ala Douche, thanks Ala Douche!]

“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.” -John F. Kennedy

“If you want to make enemies, try to change something.” -Woodrow Wilson

Here we are, the release of one of the most anticipated (if not the most anticipated) games of the year, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. People across the world rejoice! The next iteration of one of the most addicting first person shooters of all time is upon us! Hold on a second there, it doesn’t look like everyone is happy. Oh my, an entire platform of consumers are angry!

I’m talking of course, about the amazing, the hardcore, the elite… PC gamers. Those who, for this (and last) entire generation, have been paying less and getting more than the suckers that call themselves console gamers. And why shouldn’t they? After all, look at what they’ve done to deserve such special treatment for all this time! They’ve… well, they’ve…I mean, I’m sure they’ve…hmm. Wow, it looks like they haven’t done a damn thing to deserve more for less, yet they expect it anyway.

Let’s face it, before last generation’s console boom and the video games industry expanding an unprecedented amount, who was there the whole time supporting the industry? That’s right, PC gamers. Before it was “cool” to own a video game system, who brought most of the revenue towards the industry? You guessed it. The PC gamers.

Now, as 2009 is dwindling to an end, how much does the PC platform support the video game industry? Well, when you take into account piracy, I would imagine it almost breaks even for no profit (for games like Call of Duty. MMOs are a different story completely.) Of course there is no way to put a number of revenue loss on the shoulders of piracy, and “consoles have piracy too!” Regardless, when you’re a game developer (even one of the most lucrative developers in the world), losing money is not what you want to be doing.

Let me take a step back at this moment and just make the statement that I am primarily a PC gamer. I have owned every single Call of Duty game (that was available for PC) since Call of Duty 1 back in 2003. As I was playing Call of Duty 4 the other day on my trusty PC, reading the little text of all the important PC gamers, furious about Modern Warfare 2, I read something interesting. A couple people who were bitching about the new Call of Duty were beside themselves because they wouldn’t be able to pirate it and play multiplayer. What will become of the world when there are no private cracked servers????

It was at this moment that I had an epiphany. PC gamers no longer deserve to get the special treatment they’ve had for so many years. It really is unfortunate that times have changed the way they have, but it’s the truth. The few legitimate PC gamers who actually buy the games they play may feel like they’re getting hosed, but among that very exclusive group, they feel like they deserve more than the rest of the world as well.

“Why should we pay more when we’re getting less?” The short and simple answer is because you don’t deserve more. The more long-winded answer? Because the video games industry is, in fact, just that: an industry. Unfortunately, Infinity Ward is not on a crusade to keep gaming how it was ten years ago. They don’t care about the golden age of gaming. They care about making money. They care about making their consumer base happy enough to continue buying games.

So, why? Why? Why in God’s name would developers keep giving PC gamers such special treatment? It doesn’t make sense from a business standpoint, a personal standpoint, or any standpoint. Face it PC gamers, your days in the spotlight are over.

Ratchet and Clank have been busting up intergalactic goons for seven years. A Crack in Time is the ninth franchise title, and the final piece of the Future story arc. With that kind of history, one might expect the formula to become a bit stale. Not so, in fact. Even in its advanced age, the franchise feels incredibly fresh, a true credit to the creative minds behind it. Thanks to humorous dialogue, dazzling visuals and memorable boss battles, A Crack in Time stands as the apex of the series.

Things pick up where Quest for Booty left off, with Ratchet still in search of his robotic pal. This time around, he’s aided by Captain Qwark, who makes his triumphant return following an absence from Quest for Booty. The lovable oaf never does much aside from emit pseudo machismo, but his colorful personality is certainly welcome. Qwark is one of my favorite franchise characters, and his presence definitely amplifies the funny.

As the game opens, Clank  is being held at The Great Clock, a massive and powerful machine that holds time together. Clank is, however, completely oblivious to the situation, unconscious and under the “care” of Dr. Nefarious. Turns out Nefarious has forged a tenuous partnership with the Zoni, hoping to use The Great Clock for his own evil endeavors. Since the titular duo’s split up, it’s no surprise that for much of the experience, gameplay is cut into Ratchet levels and Clank levels.

Ratchet gameplay sticks to the proven formula. You traverse colorful environments and obliterate outlandish enemies with over-the-top weaponry. There are, of course, new locales to explore and new toys to tinker with, but the core mix of shooting and platforming remains intact. At this point though, that should be a given.

A Crack in Time keeps with the tradition of absurd weaponry, boasting an impressive arsenal of old favorites – Mr. Zurkon, the RYNO, the Mag-Net Launcher – and new toys. There are even some novel twists on previous ideas. As an example, the Rift Inducer 5000 summons groping green tentacles, instead of sucking foes into a void. Of the new armaments, I prefer the Spiral of Death, a fan-created weapon that launches a boomerang-like energy spiral. It’s a beast when upgraded to the Spiral of Carnage, releasing three shots instead of one.

Outside of the story missions, the galaxy is cut into sectors, each of which functions as a miniature sandbox. There’s even a radio, which picks up four stations. I suggest Pirate Radio, hosted by Captain Romulus Slag and Rusty Pete.

Within each sector are smaller planets that house valuable items like gold bolts and Zoni. These are optional undertakings, but it’s beneficial to complete them. Zoni upgrade Ratchet’s ship, Aphelion, making space battles against Nefarious’ goons much easier. Gold bolts fatten your bank account, but also unlock extra skins. I’m partial to the Nefarious costume, a comically stubby version of the mechanical madman.

Clank gameplay, on the other hand, places heavy emphasis on puzzle solving, and requires far more brainpower than the exploits of his partner. As the suave heartthrob, you use time-altering gizmos – Time Bombs for instance – to navigate The Great Clock, which has erupted in chaos thanks to Dr. Nefarious. Dispersed throughout the machine are challenges that require clever manipulation of temporal pads. The object of each is to open a path for Clank, using nearby toggles to eliminate any obstacles. The pads are used to create separate recordings of Clank, allowing you to dash for the exit while the copies depress the buttons. The initial challenges are incredibly easy, but the puzzles increase in difficulty as you progress. Oftentimes, you have to make multiple recordings on a single pad, and some challenges max out at four pads.

Ratchet games generally offer tons of variety, and A Crack in Time certainly keeps with that tradition. By separating the duo, the develope can tailor specific gameplay elements to the strengths and abilities of each character. At the same time, nothing feels tawdry or unnecessary. The result is a tremendously polished experience that offers plenty of variety, without a bunch fluff. Most of all though, it’s just plain fun.

Visually, the game is stunning, offering a smorgasbord of colorful, delicious eye candy at every turn. I don’t harp on graphics that often, but it’s pretty awe-inspiring stuff. I’d deck my house with in-game assets if possible. They’re that sexy.

A Crack in Time is an absolutely spectacular game, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. There’s an obscene amount of fun to be had, whether you’re a longtime fan, or a Ratchet greenhorn. I’ve been a follower since  the PlayStation 2 heyday, and A Crack in Time shattered my expectations, usurping Up Your Arsenal as my favorite chapter of the franchise.

PS3 owners, don’t let this one slip through the cracks.

With The Beatles: Rock Band out in the retail wild, it seems that it’s full steam ahead on Rock Band 3. During a chat with the Chicago Tribune, Dhani Harrison, son of legendary musician George Harrison, confirmed that the game is in development, telling music critic Greg Kot that he’s aiming to make “the controllers more real so people can actually learn how to play music while playing the game.”

Rock Band 3 was inevitable, so no shock there. I believe that’s called a no-brainer. The promise of – as Dave would say – “realer” peripherals, however, is far more intriguing.

Consumers yearn for tangible products that improve upon established ideas, and business tends to stagnate – or worse, decline – in the absence of innovation. The rhythm genre, for instance, seems to be  a victim of its success, thanks primarily to Activision Blizzard and its shameless abuse of the Hero tag. Music game revenues are down compared to last year, but The Beatles: Rock Band and Guitar Hero 5 sold 595,000 499,000 units during the NPD’s September reporting period, respectively, proving that consumer demand is still there. Though, admittedly, much of the appeal of The Beatles: Rock Band is owed to the associated artists.

The year-over-year decline in revenues is partially attributable to lower peripheral sales, as market saturation has slowed the demand for plastic instruments. Harmonix might be able to boost sales by introducing some hot, new accessories, though it will certainly depend upon numerous factors, including pricing, quality and functionality.

It’s hard not to root for Harmonix, as the company continues to push the envelope. Having said that, I don’t see myself jumping back into the market for rhythm controllers. I still prefer my Guitar Hero III Les Paul, and find it ideal for my needs. I don’t care about learning to play a real guitar. I just want to jam to my favorite tunes from the comfort of my own living room.

I support Rock Band because it’s a platform, through which I can supplement a single release with downloadable content. Thanks to Harmonix, I get to build my own library, instead of being fed a new mix every fall. Neversoft Entertainment is beginning to offer cross-title song compatibility, but it’s a little too late, considering that Harmonix achieved it long ago.

Of course, with a constant stream of DLC, there’s very little need – for me – to buy another disc-based release. I already own many of my favorite tunes, and imagine more will pour onto the PlayStation Network in the future. There’s really no impetus for me to buy Rock Band 3, save for some earthshaking new feature. Though, it would need to be something truly special. Like the ability to generate holographic Mark-Paul Gosselaars to play at my side. Otherwise, I’ll probably stick with DLC.

Sources: Chicago Tribune via Destructoid, Gamasutra

AAAAAARRRRGGGHHHH! The Zombie hordes are almost upon us! Sarcastic Gamer does not like to see our forum members brains being eaten by Zombies — we have a strict anti-zombie policy.  Luckily, here at Sarcastic Gamer we have the ultimate zombie survival kit for up to 4 lucky winners! Read on4more details of what you need2do – you will need2prove your brain is worth saving from those pesky, brain munching zombies!

Prove your brain is worth saving from the impending Zombies hordes by answering 1 of the 4 questions below to win a Zombie Survival Kit.  Now unfortunately, Lono got all “lawyer-y” on me and stopped me including the intended double-barreled shotgun and chainsaw, but we can still include a Left4Dead2 T-shirt (dosed in zombie Repellent®), 4 Xbox Badges (1 for you and 3 more to help identify your fellow zombie survival team), 2 Rare pens (for keeping a zombie attack diary and stabbing them in their 2 zombie eyes – if they can’t see your brains, they can’t eat’em), and an SG Comic mousemat (to help deal with the likely impending zombie rodent threat)!

***PRIZES***

4 WINNERS WILL EACH WIN THE FOLLOWING 4 PRIZES

• An XL Left4Dead T-shirt (Kindly supplied by VALVe Software)

• 2 x Rare Pens (Kindly supplied by Rare)

• 4 x Xbox 360 badges (Kindly supplied by Microsoft Game Studios)

• 1 x SG “…I’ll Blame Doc!” Mouse Mat (Sarcastically supplied by MightyMutt)

***COMPETITION RULES***

• One winning entry per person

• First person to post their answers to one question ONLY, on the FORUM THREAD (i.e not on the thread on the front page but in the SG news section on the forums) wins the prizes for that question.

• Must be an existing Sarcastic Gamer forum member (NOT Dave!).

• Once a question has been answered correctly, it is out of play!

• If you answer the same question that has already been answered, then your post will not be counted, you can post again with answers to a different question (Do NOT edit your answers, edits will not be counted)

• Winner must not like Zombies!

***COMPETITION QUESTIONS***

Question 1: I’m a Survivor!

Name the 4 Survivors playing the lead roles in Left4Dead2

Question 2: Know your role!

Name 4 of the movie style campaign levels in Left4Dead2

Question 3: Know your Enemy!

4 Special Infected Zombies in Left4Dead were the Boomer, Smoker, Hunter and Tank

- name the other 4 Special Infected  Zombies in Left4Dead2

Question 4: Up close & personal!

Name 4 of the melee weapons that are appearing in Left4Dead2

POST ANSWERS TO ONE QUESTION ONLY IN THE FORUM THREAD IN THE SG NEWS SECTION

I would save you all if I could but 1 of 4 Zombie survival kits will be given to each worthy brain!

Remember the “Summer of Arcade” over at Xbox Live?  Games like Shadow Complex and Trials HD and Splosion Man? And then…poof…nothing?  XBLA started dropping games like Inferno Pool and Bubble Bobble Neo?

Amidst the flurry of games fleeing 4th quarter to get away from Modern Warfare 2 and Left 4 Dead 2, a little gem totally flew under the radar for me and just hit me in the back of the head like a boomerang.  I’m sure everyone focused on November 10th is certainly not paying attention to XBLA, so it would be easy to miss!

XBLA is about to get busy again with the November 18th release of Gyromancer, a Puzzle Quest-y roleplaying game-puzzle hybrid cooked up by…Square Enix and Popcap?    Pretty good chance while you clowns are busy shooting each other in the face in MW2, I’m going be playing through Gyromancer.

You have to see it to believe it, so I’ve put the trailer in after the jump!

DeathByWaffle, Killgraft and Snaps debut their first community podcast called GFC.

Subscribe to all of the great community shows via iTunes or RSS, or download this episode right here:mp3  

For those that subscribe to the iTunes feed and support the SGC Podcasts, we’d REALLY appreciate your iTunes feedback. Thanks!

UPDATE:  Team VGEvo survived their gaming and brought in $7,500.  Congrats guys!!

Team VGEvo is doing their 24 hours of gaming for Extra Life right now, and they are kicking booty!  Together with the PS Nation Podcast, they have raised almost $6000.  If for some crazy reason you haven’t gotten around to throwing a few bucks towards supporting pediatric cancer treatment and research, this is your last chance!  Click here to go to their team page and make a donation.

The guys aren’t even half way through their 24 hours yet.  They can use your support!

Episode 75 of the Blu Show is here which is sort of a milestone of sorts.  Rothbart, PacmanPolarbear, and Frawlz are back and having a good time talking about Nintendo saving the PS3, Sony Japan under-delivering for the PS3, Sony switching focus on PlayStation Home, the porting PS2, Battle Field Bad Company 2 is getting an exclusive beta on the PS3, listener questions, roomahs, and a lot more!

We appreciate you guys taking time out of your day every week to list to our show. For your convenience, you can simply download the MP3 by clicking HERE or if you’re one of those “set it and forget it” types, you can subscribe via iTunes, RSS, or Zune and stay in “real time.”

If you do use iTunes, we’d love to hear what you think about our show. A great way to show your support is by leaving us feedback on iTunes. Remember, you can also email us at any time by sending your text or audio comments to PlaystationPodcast@SarcasticGamer.com!

Analysts and gamer’s alike have constantly discussed the eventuality of Nintendo releasing an HD enabled console.  With the unparalleled success of the Wii, it’s pretty much a given that they simply could take the existing Wii model, give it the ability to pump out HD video and put a little more oomph under the hood while they kicked back to watch the “money printing” continue for several more years.  This all sounds great except for one thing… Reggie from Nintendo says they’re not working on an HD Wii at all.  Wait, that may be a little misleading…

An anonymous tipster sent in what we believe is a fairly authentic looking “leaked” memo detailing internal Nintendo plans for the next three years and I have to say I’m quite surprised while at the same time not surprised at all by what I read.

It would seem Reggie wasn’t lying after all, the memo does reveal a sequel to the excessively popular Wii and it does seem to be an improvement to the Wii in every way.  In true Nintendo fashion though, “improvement” is a relative turn with a lot of room for interpretation.  The new system doesn’t seem to be what people are going to be expecting from them…   Still expecting Wii HD?  Don’t…the minimum spec most people consider for “HD” is 720p (native 1280×720 resolution) but what Nintendo is planning is much more like “Wii ED” (our name, not theirs.)

With a native video output resolution of 1024×768 and a color palette of only 32 colors, the Wii ED will awkwardly straddle the grey area between standard definition video and high definition video.  Sure, it will be a noticeable improvement over the Wii in terms of resolution which maxes out at 480p (720×480 resolution or about 2.7 times the number of pixels per frame) and looks horrible on larger modern HDTVs but the reduction in color space made us scratch our heads.  Our initial reaction is that Nintendo wasn’t going to be bothered to support full HD but wanted to stop as soon as they reached what they considered “acceptable” resolution on an HDTV.  Presumably this will allow them to keep costs down and profit from hardware sales at launch; a strategy that has paid off enormously for them in the past.

Another enhancement detailed in the Wii ED is to the audio subsystem.  In a strange twist, the system is reported to support a rather non-standard 4.1 channel speaker setup (support for a center, left front, left rear, right rear, and a subwoofer are supported.  Where is the right front speaker support?!?!)  This information should start hitting the more mainstream gaming press anytime, just remember where you read it first!

Forza 3 is out, and it is brilliant. So, here I am trying my best to pull everything together for a racing league, and I’m having trouble figuring out how to tell you about all that we are trying to do. Hmmmm.

Well, If I were asking Doc to do a parody video about the Sarcastic Gamer Racing League, it might go something like this…

“Imagine a world where multiplayer was only the beginning… where community members were given the opportunity to make a fool of themselves, on and off the track… where podcasts pretended to be interested in how you did in Friday night’s race… where the logos on your car where walking a thin line between funny and inappropriate… where even people who didn’t like racing “for realzies” where bombarded with chatter from the dozen + rabid racing fans in the Sarcastic Gamer community…”

And who can resist Doc’s sultry (Mandark) voice? I’m sure the 6 spots we have left would fill in a matter of seconds.

So here’s the deal. In January, 24 drivers (hopefully) will embark on a 12 week season of racing, cursing, and possibly nude force feedback abuse. There no telling what might happen. In addition to the racing, we have real/fake sponsors. All four of our fine weekly podcasts will be sponsoring a driver, and we have several parody sponsors that reference many of our fondest inside jokes and material.

Our drivers will not be earning these sponsors on the pavement. Instead, each sponsor will have a silly, and possibly humiliating contest that will play out in front of the entire SG community. Fun for everyone! I should mention that the sponsorship contests are mere weeks away, as they will be decided before the racing actually starts.

As I mentioned earlier, we have a full division of 6 players still open. So if you’re a racing fan or just bought Forza 3 to help your godfather launder money, come check us out at the Sarcastic Gamer Racing League forums here.

Keep watching the front page as we release more details!

The third and final Eurogamer Expo podcast, recorded at the end of the second day by MightyMutt, Krelith, Pillowfort and Yamster. Featuring special guests Captain Average and TudorVII from the Respawn Radio community!

Subscribe to all of the great community shows via iTunes or RSS, or download this episode right here: mp3

For those that subscribe to the iTunes feed and support the SGC Podcasts, we’d REALLY appreciate your iTunes feedback. Thanks!

Halo Reach. Perhaps the last Bungie-made Halo game ever. Our last, best hope at a coherent narrative. Whatever your take on the next Halo game, very little is known about the game. Is it a squad based shooter? Is it something altogether different?

I don’t know, but I’ve got seven screen caps of it, after the jump.

Got this tip from the fine folks over at GamertagRadio, who pulled the photos from a poster on Neo Gaf, who pulled the pics from the MLG forums. They appear to be seven screen captures of gameplay from Halo Reach, or so the poster claims.

See for yourself and you be the judge.

Is that a modded Assault Rifle or a new/old Battle Rifle?

Another shot of the mysterious weapon.

Tall, dark, handsome and deadly. Who is that masked man?

Super Needler!

The poster had a bunch to say about this particular shot, specifically, he said:

“This is what the HUD looks like. In the bottom left, you can see your squadmates health and names. Right above the radar shows what perks you are carrying. When I played there were 3 perks-sprinting, cloaking, and halogram. The sprinting makes you run when you hold LB, cloaking makes you invisible (when you cloak your radar jams and you can’t really hear anything around you).

The halogram creates a hologram of yourself, so enemies will shoot at both.”

Interesting. Squadmates?  Hmmm…

Super Duper Needler!

Spartan Laser/ Rocket Launcher? WTF is it?

Very mysterious. What’s even more mystifying is what the lead guitarist of Rage Against the Machine has to do with all of this?

Post your wide eyed crazy conspiracy theories below!

Welcome to the reintegration of an arguably ancient SG feature, Review of the Reviews. In this feature, we essentially take on Metacritic at their own game, but rather than summarizing every review into a score, we use words. Words are better, right? Better than numbers? I mean, what was the last binary play you went to see versus the last literary one?

Words > Numbers. Come, read some words with me.

As you’ve no doubt noticed, Dragon Age is scoring pretty well in reviews. Even when you cast aside the entirely broken Metacritic aggregate system, the individual scores – be they out of ten, out of a hundred, out of five, letter-graded or starred – are trending very well.

I haven’t played the game beyond what I saw at Eurogamer Expo this past weekend, but based on the console SKUs alone, I’d have to question any review that heads up that high. Don’t get me wrong, I respect the talents of the reviewers in question, but I do find myself questioning, “Is it fair to judge a multi-platform title based on your time with its primary platform?”

I’m sorry, but after playing the PS3 version first hand, that game – no matter how deep and involving the world may be – was a reiteration of a stereotypical fantasy setting running on a platform that simply couldn’t render it effectively. As I understand it, the Xbox 360 version suffers from similar technical difficulties as well. The PC however – by all accounts – runs flawlessly.

Can anyone understand where I’m coming from? A game review should represent all platforms, or specifically represent one. When a PC-centric website gave it a 94, I had no problem with that. They exclusively reviewed the PC version, stated as much, and judged it accordingly. But when reviewers form one score to summarize all the platforms – especially in this case – I feel it’s unfair to the reader.

One website I frequent scored Dragon Age: Origins at 75. This is the lowest score I’ve seen thus far. Why don’t I have an issue with this? Simple. The reviewer in question explicitly stated that the platform being reviewed was the Xbox 360. Secondly, he went on to point out every issue with that SKU, from frame rate, to poorly rendered textures, to PC-centric gameplay minutia being poorly integrated into a console control scheme. This, for me, warranted a lower score. A 75 doesn’t necessarily mean the game was bad, just that it has some undeniable faults that a player cannot ignore.  I’ve played one of the two console versions, trust me, this is a fair criticism.

The game is currently rocking a 91 on Metacritic. I don’t want to get into the whole, “Metacritic’s faults” debate, but I do feel it’s necessary to point out the obvious here. 90% of these reviews were based on the PC. If you read a review that only points out one or two faults with the game, it’s undoubtedly a PC review. Same goes for any score above 90/9/4.5/****/whatever.

Here’s the bottom line people, this is a game that was built for PC, and the console versions were an afterthought. BioWare are entirely within their right to do it this way as well, because let’s be real here; anyone who hasn’t read this thought-provoking article, what I just wrote up is going to see a review score of 90+, think “Wow, that game must be good!” Buy the game on 360/PS3, and then instantly regret that decision.

After all, it’s not BioWare’s fault you were mislead. You can blame the more moronic shameless reviewers for that. Or at least blame yourself for not paying enough attention to the review.

Update: The audio issues have been fixed. Feel free to click on the download link below for a problem free episode of de humps.

In this edition of de humps, the crew with a special guest discuss: Left 4 Dead 2, a new song, party chat and Modern Warfare 2, and more.  So listen up, and get updated.

IMPORTANT: Please note that the Humpday Update is on its OWN iTunes and RSS feed. Please be sure to subscribe to the new Humpday Update feed in iTunesor RSS. If you insist, you can always just download the mp3. If you are currently using a computer with iTunes on it, would you mind heading over there and leaving us some feedback? Thanks for the Diggs!

Doc, Dave, and Lono are back to discuss Modern Warfare 2, The Ballad of Gay Tony and DJ Hero. That and a ton more… is right here.

Welcome to Episode 89 of the Sarcastic Gamer Podcast.  The Red Show.

Subscribe here.  Leave an iTunes review here.  Download the show here.

Hey, guys!  This post is the result of an idea I had for a short series of articles based on useful tips I might have to share with you, combined with tapping you to answer questions I myself have related to gaming.  Asking you is MUCH easier than using Google myself… I’m all about “the lazy!”… just ask my ex-wife!

No really, ask her!  She loves to be called at 3:00am, her phone number is 541-4… wait… Lono says I shouldn’t do that.  Damned attorneys and their legal advice!

Tips and taps, after the jump…

Tip: Gamesharing on the PS3

With the recent price cut, more and more people are buying PlayStation 3’s (or even 2nd and 3rd ones given the PS3’s ability to deal with digital media so well), but did you realize you can share your already purchased downloadable content across multiple PS3s?

Okay…who am I kidding?

This is of more interest for sharing someone else’s purchases than sharing with yourself.  Your best friend has been trying to get you to get a PS3 forever and now that you have one, you don’t know what to buy for it, right?  Guess what, you can Gameshare your PSN purchases with each other!

Have your friend come over and create a profile for himself on your PS3.  Now, have him link his PSN account to that profile (for ease of downloading future purchases, I’d recommended having it save their PSN password.)  Have him go into the PS Store and view his download history.  Just about anything he re-downloads on your console will be playable there (by anyone) as long as his profile stays on your PS3.

Yes, you read that right. Just about anything.  Warhawk? Wipeout HD? Fat Princess? Super Stardust HD?  Uno? If your friend bought those, now you have them too!  Just make sure you’re not a total douche… go set your account up on his PS3 and buy a few games to share with him so he can get a break as well.

Oh, this totally doesn’t work with video content or PSP games though, sorry.

I should point out that you REALLY need to trust the person you’re Gamesharing with as they could theoretically empty out your PS Wallet (or charge onto your credit card) if they were careless and/or malicious. Yes, some of you will point out there are ways to protect yourself and that this can be accomplished over the internet with (relative) strangers, but I don’t really consider those uses in line with what Sony was trying to do here and they can still get you into a bind, so it’s best just stick to trusted personal friends (or multiple consoles you yourself own) and everything will be just fine!

Just think of this as your own personal 50% off sale… all the time!

Last little tidbits: yes, this is officially sanctioned by Sony but you’re limited to 5 Gameshares per title (although if you’ve got more than 5 PS3s and/or friends you’re Gamesharing with, just buy multiple copies of the game, you greedy bastard!)

Okay, I made a good faith offering and gave you a tip (for the PS3), now I’m going to tap the SGC for help with a 360 question…

HOLY CRAP!  Something other than a first person shooter!

This is what is called “cross promotion”.  You see, UndeadDog has his crazy little gaggle of racing game fanatics hogging up all the primo real estate over on the Gamernights forum, so I figured I’d  ask him to see if he cared if I used Forza 3 as the game of choice for this week’s Duelist League.  He agreed, and now they are going to run over the FPS kids with their crazily painted speedsters.

Will someone be able to show their prowess in Forza and knock Stoned Sheep out of his death grip on first place in Uncharted 2?  Let’s see what the stats look like from last week.  I’d hate for the last few weeks of this thing to just be a race for second place because people keep thinking they can beat him in UC2.

Leaderboard: (as of November 4th):
TheStonedSheep: 5 W/0 L, 190 XP
TinyButDeadly: 3 W/0 L, 140 XP
Jus Blaze Man02: 2 W/0 L, 135 XP
WildBanshe: 2 W/1 L, 120 XP
PurpleDemon: 2 W/1 L, 120 XP
Yamster:1 W/0 L, 115 XP
BlinkinCard: 1 W/1 L, 100 XP
Astro-Nit: 0 W/0 L, 105 XP
Eao: 0 W/0 L, 100 XP
NuclearNinja: 0 W/1 L, 90 XP
Spongebobbies: 0 W/1 L, 85 XP
AssassinsClaw: 0 W/1 L, 85 XP
TomCoopz: 0 W/1 L, 85 XP
Otacon91: 0 W/1 L, 85 XP
Pikminguts92: 0 W/1 L, 85 XP
Shanghai Six: 1 W/3 L, 80 XP
IceKatanaX: 0 W/1 L, 80 XP
Fallout123: 0 W/1 L, 75 XP
Sjstennis: 0 W/1 L, 75 XP
SmellyPirate: 0 W/1 L, 75 XP
AlaDouche: 0 W/1 L, 75 XP

There are some pretty big changes coming up shortly, primarily with the release of Modern Warfare 2…and that’s when things get a little different.  I’ve got an idea for making the series more accessible, so we’ll give it a try after MW2 drops.

Remember, the rules are your friend.

RULES:
1) Each week, look for the thread in the Official Sarcastic Gamer Gamenights forum for the stickied Duelist League thread (SIGN UP HERE!). If a game is not listed for the systems you own (Wii, PC), you may choose one game for one of these systems and challenge someone else with it, but you’ll only be able to get one match that week.

2) Post in the thread that you own the game and that you are looking for a fight.

3) Pick a fight with another SG member who has registered on the thread. You can only challenge that member once a week. The details (time, place, system, game type) of the match are up to the two combatants.

4) All combatants start at 100 experience points. Both players agree to a wager on how many points they are playing for. Max wager is 25 points, and you cannot go below 5 points (so someone can work their way back up if they are knocked out). Not only will win/loss be registered, but the experience point tally will be kept as well.

5) The results of the match are posted on the thread.

6) WE HAVE PRIZES. Top duelists will be rewarded with forum titles, avatars, bragging rights, serving wenches, and yes, now top finishers will receive prizes. It won’t be for points cards like Summer Games was, but you’ll still walk away with something if you finish respectably well on the leaderboards.

Okay, someone please beat Stoned Sheep.  This is getting ridiculous.

Being a part of the Gamercast Network, we enjoy cross pollination of our podcasts and announcements.  Our friends at Gamertagradio recently released Volume 2 of their Grand Theft Auto pirate radio station celebrating the release of the Ballad of Gay Tony.

My friends we present to you, WGTR, or using Godfree grammar, ”We is Gay Tony Radio” after the jump.

GTR’s press release:

As the world awaits the next wild addition to the Grand Theft Auto IV world, Gamertag Radio, a gaming and hip-hop site is already prepared to take on the newest element to the GTA world. With GTA: The Ballad of Gay Tony, you’ll see the opening of a new pirate station in Liberty City, WGTR Baggins FM, for your enjoyment. Be ready as the station hosts some dope tracks to make your gameplay in The Ballad of Gay Tony more authentic. Let these be your custom soundtrack as you own the most recent expansion to the streets of Liberty City.

Check out the music as GTR staff member Peterocc throws down his own commercial free mix show. Wrekonize and DJ Idee collaborating together have created a sweet hip hop show for your listening pleasure. WGTR will be up and running at the same time you are, with two distinct and different mixes available for download, as well as an exclusive and brand new track from popular Miami hip-hop artist MayDay. Put them onto your Xbox 360 as a custom soundtrack and enjoy.

Wrekonize & DJ Idee Hip Hop Show

Peterocc Commercial Free Mix

I’d love to hear what a Sarcastic Gamer Radio station would sound like…oh wait, we already have.

I’m sitting here trying to think of the best way to determine who deserves the game the most and I think I’ve decided it should be open to YOU GUYS to convince me.  Clearly, no hateful, hurtful, or harmful stuff is allowed and will result in instant disqualification, but other than that…  impress me with your reasoning, your skill, your humor, bribe me with your frequent flier miles… okay, I’ve just been told that last one isn’t actually acceptable.

Post your “reason” (or whatever it is that you think will warrant you winning the game) in a comment below this post.  I’ll announce the winner (or least loser) tomorrow (Wednesday for those reading this late.)

[UPDATE: This is a US download code.]

There’s a bunch of new games out this week. A bunch came out last week and the MOAB of games will drop like the mighty God of Thunder next Tuesday.  I don’t have time to play them all, but I did have time to play the first couple of hours of:

Ratchet and Clank: Crack in Time

GTAIV: The Ballad of Gay Tony

Read on for initial impressions and see if either is worth your time.

As the weeks go on, full reviews will be difficult. I’ll try to finish as many games as I can while playing the crap out of Modern Warfare 2, posting guides, Fiction Friday articles and Podcasts. In the meantime, I’ll post my “First Look” to give you an idea of what to expect or avoid, so you don’t have to waste your money.

The Ballad of Gay Tony

This is supposed to be the last new Episode that we’re going to get that will use GTAIV as it’s back drop. The promise of The Ballad of Gay Tony (or TBoGT, as the cool kids call it) is more weapons, helicopters, crazy missions and last, but not least parachutes.  PARACHUTES I said!

You play as Luis a dude with problems, one of his biggest problems is his happy friend and business partner Gay Tony, who is supposed to be the brains of the outfit, but has made one bad decision after another and it’s up to you to fix it.

During my initial play through of about 10 missions or so, there seems to be a lot to do. You’ll have a fight club, golf and base jumping mini games to take up time in between main missions, and like Lost and Damned, you’ll have a meta game called “Drug Wars” that will net you sweet weapon drops in your crib.

Overall, the first few missions were just okay, but I see the action really ramping up. The new missions and helicopters are fun and the parachute is icing on the cake. For twenty bucks, you may want to pick it up.

Ratchet and Clank: Crack in Time

If you were an alien and you asked me what was a video game, I can think of no better example than ANY of the Ratchet and Clank games. I love the Ratchet and Clank series of games. It’s hard to beat down a franchise that does so much right. The last outing, “Tools of Destruction” was a bit of a let down for me. While still a good game, I really expected more in my next gen Ratchet and Clank. I’m glad to say that so far, Crack in Time has taken some nice steps forward to step up to the plate and compete with the classics such as “Going Commando” and “Up Your Arsenal” for best R&C game.

Sure, you’ve got new weapons, new locals and new mini games, but you’ve also got a gorgeous graphical overhaul, a ship that you can use to fly around the Galaxy where ever you want and also a return to the little sphere worlds that were a ton of fun early on in the R&C series, that incidentally predated Super Mario Galaxy…

If this baby had multiplayer, I’d recommend it in a second. It doesn’t, but I’m still enjoying the heck out of the game so far and I’d encourage you to buy or at least rent the game if you like adventure games, third person shooters or games that are just pure fun.

Do you have a brand one of those fancy-dancy new PS3 that sometimes sounds like a jet preparing for take-off while you’re playing Uncharted 2?  If so, Talismoon just announced the thing to alleviate your problems!  Don’t be content with the stock fan in your PS3 slim, the new (or should I say old) fan they’re offering has 19 fan blades on it, just like the cooling fan the original PS3 launched with.  The slim PS3, apparently as a cost cutting measure, uses a 15 blade version of the fan and needs to spin at a higher speed which producing more noise just to offering the same cooling factor.

I don’t know about you, but I want as many fan blades as technologically possible on my fans.  Ideally, it would be a solid disc of metal with fan blades crammed together at the molecular level, but I understand there are efficiency issues with “my” design.

In the grand scheme of things, I sometimes wonder what the total cost savings is to a company like Sony by switching to a fan with FOUR fewer fan blades?  I think I even forgot the best part; did I mention you have to completely disassemble your PS3 to replace your fan?  Sure, Sony lets you replace your hard drive on a PS3 without voiding the warranty, but this replacement fan SHREDS your warranty (as in “literally”… rumor has it that those four extra blades are laser sharpened to a razor’s edge specifically to shread your warranty!)

If one of you brave souls gives this stupid waste of money fan replacement project a shot, please come back here and share your results with us, we’d love to mock you hear how it went!

Podcast number two from the UK team of Yamster, Pillowfort, MightyMutt and Krelith, recorded at the end of the first day of the Eurogamer Expo. Hear what they had to say on the games they saw including Split/Second, Heavy Rain and more! Check out part one of the podcast here…

Subscribe to all of the great community shows via iTunes or RSS, or download this episode right here: mp3

For those that subscribe to the iTunes feed and support the SGC Podcasts, we’d REALLY appreciate your iTunes feedback. Thanks!

Our friends at 2K games sent us a some choice items in support of Extra Life. We used a few things in a raffle here but we had a lot of leftovers to share with you, so we did just that… Haiku Style.

A Haiku is a Japanese poem restricted to 3 lines.  The first and last lines must have 5 syllables and the middle line must have exactly 7.

Here are the winners that can Haiku with the best of them.

Borderlands and a poster

-St3ck

-entropyAEGIS

Games (Not Borderlands)

-Bluemanrule

-AnimeFreak869

-Purple Demon

-Draxxlith

Bioshock Shirts

-Volkov

-moobit

-Chubbaluphigous

-Titan923

-Ploogle

Posters

-Seeson

-Jazzersi

-Blinkin Card 41

-Dark Archon

-Doh!

-sjstennis

-shottie

-JustinShane80

-Shaxster

-V33G333

-TG Cypher

-Phil Osyfee

-mmm11105

-viklove

-ThatGuyKalem

-Iyeild2no1

-Dano

-jmikedarby1

Nintendo recently reported its six-month financial results for the first half of the current fiscal year, and the Kyoto, Japan-based publisher and developer had a pretty good haul, though certainly well below company expectations. According to data obtained by Gamasutra, total profit for the period came in at a cool $772 million, a 52 percent year-over-year decrease attributed to unfavorable exchange rates, as well as lower software and hardware sales. As a result, Nintendo significantly cut profit forecasts.

On the surface, it might seem like Nintendo’s gold-plated castle is eroding. Some might even suggest that the Wii and DS maker is in a tough spot, and should start searching for the panic button. Looking at the numbers though, I don’t agree.

Compared to the entirety of Sony, which expects to lose $1.04 billion during the fiscal year ending March 31, 2010, Nintendo’s financial results look much rosier. The latter is, after all, still making money.

While it’s true that Wii sales are down compared to last year, Nintendo still sold 462,800 units in the U.S. during month of September. Pretty impressive to say the least. On the NPD hardware chart, it ranked third behind Nintendo’s own DS handheld, and Sony’s PlayStation 3, the latter of which saw a significant boost in sales thanks to the introduction of the 120 GB SKU. Nintendo recently slashed the Wii price by $50, but the massive surge in PS3 sales suggests that a significant number of consumers were waiting for the price to hit a so-called sweet spot.

For the five months preceding September, the Wii easily bested the Xbox 360 and PS3, with sales ranging from 252,500 to 361,700, according to NPD data obtained by Gamasutra. From April to August, only the DS managed to do better.

In handheld-dominated Japan, the PS3 has outsold the Wii consistently since the introduction of the 120 GB system, though the numbers have been extremely close in recent weeks. It will be interesting to see how things develop through the holiday season.

At some point though, weren’t Wii sales bound to decline? According to Gamasutra, the system shifted 10 million units between March 31 and Sept. 30 of 2008. By comparison, the PS3 moved 10.1 million for the entire fiscal year. To expect that adoption rate to extend through an entire console generation would be beyond ludicrous. You’d have to be an utter moron with no concept of market saturation.

As for the DS line, it continues to sell like crazy, and seems permanently affixed to the top of the U.S. and Japanese hardware charts. Expect that trend to continue with the DSi LL launching in Japan in November, and the DSi XL in North America and Europe next year.

Nintendo-published Wii software has been pretty rank as of late, but the company has some heavyweights on the way, including New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Metroid: Other M and Super Mario Galaxy 2. I also expect evergreen titles like Wii Sports Resort, Wii Fit Plus and Mario Kart Wii to continue to sell.

On the portable front, Nintendo is prepping The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks for release in all territories, as well as Pokemon HeartGold and Pokemon SoulSilver, which have yet to launch outside of Japan. New Super Mario Bros. and Mario Kart DS are likely to remain popular choices for new DS adopters.

I’m not saying that Nintendo is an infallible juggernaut or that the Wii will always be a hot seller. To the contrary, I see unclaimed systems sitting on retail shelves all the time. I just don’t believe that the sky is falling. The platform holder’s “Blue Ocean” strategy has certainly given it the advantage this generation, though what will happen in the future is merely conjecture. Look how quickly Nintendo rose to dominance after the GameCube generation. At the same time though, it seems there will always be an audience for Mario and Zelda games. Many kids are growing up with the plump plumber and Hylian hero much like their parents did on the NES, Game Boy and SNES. Most importantly though, let’s not forget that Nintendo is king of both the home and handheld console markets. So, don’t sound the alarm yet.  From where I sit, Nintendo is doing just fine.

Sources: Gamasutra, Gamasutra, Gamasutra, Gamasutra, Gamasutra

Five Gamasutra links in one post. That must be a record.

As I said on our first podcast of the weekend, Dragon Age was one of my more anticipated titles to see and get hands-on with. Well I did get hands-on with it, briefly, for as long as I could stand to keep my eyes on that screen.

You know that feeling you get when you look at a really ugly person? Like, really ugly? So ugly that you don’t even feel guilty for thinking the person is unattractive? And no matter how much the view offends your eyes, you just can’t look away?

In retrospect, this is the Mass Effect platform argument all over again. Mass Effect was – and nobody can disagree – a superior product on PC over the Xbox 360 release. The idea of a PC build of a game being superior is a contrived point, I realise, but that makes it no less valid here.

Whilst I can’t speak for the Xbox 360 build, the PC and PS3 builds I saw were from two completely different worlds. The PC ran the high quality graphics you’d expect from a gaming rig at a steady frame rate of 60fps, reminding me of a smoothness comparable to Patrick Stewart’s glorious head. Whereas the PS3 was – for lack of a better description – painful to observe. Textures were low, frame rate was choppy, and I was convinced that had I stood there any longer I’d eventually be turned to stone, for it was as if I was looking into the eyes of Medusa herself… Except she was holding an ugly stick… And beating herself in the face with it.

As previously stated, I didn’t get the time to check out the 360 build. My guess is that it falls somewhere in the middle, but that’s only a guess. I’m a poor guesser. I once guessed that a cat would win in a fight with a lemon… I was wrong.

Bottom line? PC is the place to be on this game. And the same will likely go for Mass Effect 2 as well. If your only option is to go for the PS3 version (and possibly 360), HAHAHAHALOLZROFLCOPTERIFFIC!1! (That’s leetspeak for, “you’re in an unfortunate situation and should probably make a sandwich to help get over your bitter disappointment”).

[On an interesting tangent, HAHAHAHALOLZROFLCOPTERIFFIC does not get flagged up by spellcheck. I believe that makes it an official word]

As if that weren’t enough, they even roped in one last minute surprise: Sam Fisher.

We had a chat with Ubisoft’s Matt Benson (now officially on our Cool People List™, also interviewed on the site sometime soon) at the end of the first day, who told us that Ubisoft had brought along some Splinter Cell: Conviction code but weren’t really feeling a demonstration. MightyMutt, ever the suave gentleman, convinced him to bring out the bigger guns alongside the already quite sizeable guns Ubi had already rolled out on the show floor, and so the stage was set next day for a showing of Sam’s latest outing.

And what an outing it’s shaping up to be. The demo of Conviction shown to the Eurogamer masses might have been what we had already seen at E3, but it was no less, if not more, awesome to watch for ourselves as a genuine live demo in front of our very eyes.

In Conviction, Sam Fisher is on the trail of his daughter’s killers in central Europe — but the chances are we’ll see plenty of globetrotting as the game goes on. His first source in the demo we saw was cornered in a bathroom,having his face pummeled in by Fisher in the name of information. What was brilliant about this cutscene is that it was interactive: rather than just have you watch Fisher spit abuse in the face of his informant as he puts his head through a beautfully-rendered urinal, you get to do it for yourself.

When Fisher did get the info out of his new best friend, it wasn’t relayed to you in silly flashbacks. Instead, it was projected across the walls of the bathroom — names, faces, objectives are all projected along the game area as you play, meaning no bringing up a menu to see what you’re doing next.

It’s so slick that there’s not even any loading times to shake up the experience. Fisher’s contact’s face went down in a pool of blood that effectively segwayed into a red dress on a painting in a nearby art gallery. The camera swooped out, around the area, and landed behind Fisher, ready for you to immediately take control.

While this is part of a smoothy-animated, dialogue-packed cutscene, you still carry on the action rather than sit back and watch. Neat.

According to Ubisoft, each mission in Conviction is like a mini-sandbox, with multiple expansive routes to choose from depending on how you want to blow the head off of your next target. Or strangle them. Or push them off of a high balcony. Or…you get the idea.

In the case of this demo, Fisher took advantage of a massive crowd of civilians at market to create a distraction. First of all he pulled out his weapon — no, not like that — and started waving it around causing mass screaming and panic, as you do. He then followed the panicking crowd, blending in enough to avoid the security guards who ran in the opposite direction to investigate. With the guards out the way, he could sneak into the next place he needed to go.

Conviction’s big selling point is the ability to “Mark and Execute.” Marking and Executing is simply an easy way of deciding who you’re going to kill by first Marking — using your crosshairs to line up your targets — and then Executing the action, using anything in the environment to carry out the kill, be it your gun, a lamp, or even just a nice, high-up window. You can even use this feature to grab enemies to use as a shield and carry out further executions before finishing them off.

What was brilliant was how very there the action was. Basically, it was so sickening hearing a face crunch against a wall — being forced into it by Fisher, naturally — that the entire audience groaned in respect and burst into a fit of giggles when our man catapulted a henchman out of a nearby window. The action is so intense and so down-to-earth that even watching the game in motion gets you more excited in 30 seconds than playing a ton of the games at the show managed in 10 minutes.

While it’s not the Splinter Cell we knew before, it’s a good direction for the series and showing a lot of promise. The inevitable demo and the game itself roll into stores on February 26th next year. Day one purchase for me.

You might even be in some of them! Check them out over the jump.

12►

Mighty Mutt, Yamster, Krelith and Pillowfort’s debut podcast. With these fine gentlemen behind the wheel what could go wrong? Well, what could go right? Listen as they discuss their hopes for the (then) upcoming Eurogamer Expo. It’s like the Red Show, but with sexier accents.

The sound quality isn’t brilliant on this first one by the way: it gets better with the next few though. So be sure to listen to them all. They’re all very good.

Subscribe to all of the great community shows via iTunes or RSS, or download this episode right here: mp3

For those that subscribe to the iTunes feed and support the SGC Podcasts, we’d REALLY appreciate your iTunes feedback. Thanks!

UPDATE: The original IW video was pulled, but we found another feed. We had it up, but decided to pull the alternate link down ourselves.

Also we have Infinity Ward’s response, after the jump.

……………………..

Wow.  This video just dropped on twitter by http://twitter.com/fourzerotwo and htp://twitter.com/Infinityward. It’s a YouTube Video “PSA” for the Fight Against Grenade Spaming starring Phillies Pitcher Cole Hamels.

Yes. F.A.G.S.

Really, Infinity Ward?  See the video, after the jump.

Here’s the video:
**Video removed at users request.

I can’t believe that a company such as Infinity Ward would put a video out that basically condones the use of the word “fag” by every douche bag on Xbox Live.

As if the anonymous hate  it isn’t bad enough, Infinity Ward?  Now you’re basically saying it’s okay to call people Fags?  I highly doubt that was your intention, but come on… Are you kidding me? It would be like using an acronym that spelled a derogatory word for a Black person or Asian or Jewish person. I could see something like this done by some dumbass fan site, but seriously.

Stuff like this simply shouldn’t be produced by a company like Infinity Ward.  Is the controversy worth it? I don’t think so.

Catch the video while you can folks, once the Activision legal eagles catch wind of this, this video will go away faster than a fart in the night.

UPDATE: I received a message from Robert Bowling, IW community manager via Twitter a short time ago.  Here is his direct quote:

“ Wanted to apologize for my endorsement of video. I shared it due to the core gag but inadvertently endorsed the slur, for that I pulled it”

Zinc136, Demonoid, PureDarkness and Yamster are back again to host the Casual Core Podcast episode 12.

• Beatles Rockband
• PS3 sales rocket
• PAX swine flu
• Lono makes a return
• Threads
• Take us out

Subscribe to all of the great community shows via iTunes or RSS, or download this episode right here:mp3  

For those that subscribe to the iTunes feed and support the SGC Podcasts, we’d REALLY appreciate your iTunes feedback. Thanks!

See my title? Did you see what I did there? I made a fun-pun. Head over the jump for less puns and more coverage of Splash Damage’s upcoming sci-fi shooter – Brink.

Brink is a little bit difficult to define in terms of how it plays. Imagine you took Call Of Duty 4’s shooting, the free running capabilities of Mirror’s Edge, and the customisation and experience parts of Mass Effect. Confused? That’s no surprise. I knew next to nothing about this title coming into the demonstration, and by the time I left all I knew was I wanted to get my grubby little hands on it.

The shooting aspects of the game are instantly comparable to any of the best shooters of today, but what really separates Brink from the crowd is the “SMART” button. Simply holding this button whilst running at an obstacle will allow you to escalate/jump it whilst tapping it sends your character into a short slide action. As demonstrated to us, this slide can be used whilst sprinting as an additional method to avoid gunfire and other incoming nastiness. They’ve captured the animations in the first person view perfectly and the demo – which was a pre-alpha build – was running at a consistent and smooth 60 frames per second.

Visually the game is stunning, with vibrant colour pouring out of every part of the environment. This is a testament to the world Splash Damage have envisioned, a floating city known as The Ark.

During character creation you’ll be able to decide whether you want to play as the resistance, or the oppressive law-ensuring regime (who incidentally, are not aware that they’re a little hardcore in their politics). During play you will also be able to switch your character class at any of the terminals spread around the levels.

Co-operative play is a large part of the Brink experience as well, allowing at least three players to roll together (it could be four, but in this demo we only saw the three). When one player picks up a new mission objective, the other players are given objectives that are specifically intended to support their teammate.

I have to run now because we’re about to record.  It suffices to say I’m impressed with Brink, whether it lives up to my expectations or not really requires me to play it, but for now you can be excited… VERY excited.

For a massive Heavy Rain overload, hit the jump.

Heavy Rain revolves around four central characters — an FBI profiler, an insomniac photographer, a private investigator and a bereaved father — and how they all become interlinked through the actions of the Origami Killer, a man who enjoys making cranes while murdering children. As you do.

During the course of the game you’ll jump from character to character and play only a portion of the game’s 70-odd total scenes in a single playthrough, with no one scene having just one way to play. You’ll have choices throughout to do right, screw up, carry on ignorant, any sort of scenario you can think of where, in real life, you would have a choice to make and consequences to deal with afterwards. Each resultant consequence has a direct effect on the storyline and might even result in you killing off one of the central characters, even if it’s by accident.

Throughout the presentation earlier today, David Cage showed a really quite unbelievable level of enthusiasm for both his game and the interest of his audience. He bounded about as he demonstrated scenes available to play on the show floor — check out Pillowfort’s article for more on that — and each question was answered with astonishing energy and likeability. His accent was brilliant too, but we can touch on that another time.

Despite the huge amount of effort put into the storytelling and the characterisation, Cage was insistent that he wanted to make Heavy Rain as a game because of the feeling that comes across of playing God, due to the circumstances that can unfold depending on how you play the game. A great example of this? Depending on how calm or frenzied you are, the on-screen control prompts may be clear as day or blurred and indistinct, just like your own thoughts would be if you were under a lot of stress. You could easily make Heavy Rain as a film, but you wouldn’t get the same level of emotional understanding as you would from playing it as a game.

This is a man, evidently, who loved the game he was making and loved that people wanted to play it. Inspired by M Night Shyamalan’s dark, emotive stories, he saw Fahrenheit as a “prototype” of what he wanted from a game and Heavy Rain as the finished, complete product. He went to America and visited impoverished parts of Philadelphia to get the right sense of depravity that he wanted in the game, and spent a year writing the entire storyline and all of its individual branches.

Oddly, he doesn’t want you to play it over and over. Cage admitted he wanted people to play through it once and just think about the uncertainty that making choices can brin — but unlike real life, you can go back and fix what you did wrong, or screw it up just to see what happens.

So many games say they are openly-minded because there’s one or two approaches to how you play it; you can drive aggressively or precisely, or shoot people quietly or blow everything up. But with Heavy Rain, every little thing you do, in every little varied scene, has a consequence and a resulting action that follows, meaning that pretty much no playthrough will resemble anything you’ve seen in the game before. How many games can you really say that about?

Episode 74 of the Blu Show is here and Rothbart’s way to busy to type up a decent description because he’s playing games (Frawlz is not) so listen to the “mystery show” which SHOULD include a poem to Frawlz, a discussion about Netflix finally coming to the PS3, roomahs, and a lot more!

We appreciate you guys taking time out of your day every week to list to our show. For your convenience, you can simply download the MP3 by clicking HERE or if you’re one of those “set it and forget it” types, you can subscribe via iTunes, RSS, or Zune and stay in “real time.”

If you do use iTunes, we’d love to hear what you think about our show. A great way to show your support is by leaving us feedback on iTunes. Remember, you can also email us at any time by sending your text or audio comments to PlaystationPodcast@SarcasticGamer.com!

This is important. So important in fact, that if Chuck Norris approached you and said, “Hey, the contents of this box I’m holding are REALLY important,” you’d be all like, “No way Mr Norris, this article on SG is more important than your box. Goodbye, and I loved you in Forced Vengeance.”

After the trial and tribulation of exiting the expo hall and turning right, we almost instantly discovered a pub called The Monument, which is literally down the road from Monument Station. This is not a coincidence, there’s a large phallic monument outside.

We’ll be meeting in this pub after we get kicked out of the expo hall at the end of the day (Saturday), so if you haven’t had the glorious opportunity of listening to Yamster’s accent, or meeting the man behind the BoringFort, this would be the time to jump in and say, “Hey, aren’t you those guys we occasionally pay attention to on a website? Because we all think you’re jerks.”

For anyone not able to attend the pub aspect of the evening, we’ll be around the entrance-side of the show floor between 7 and 8pm. Just chillin’, maxing, relaxing, and trying our damnedest to blag swag.

ViDeO GaMeS..!!..!.!!.!

I’m not even sure what this game is. I played it for a quarter of an hour and it’s obfuscatory on an unsurpassed level.

That said, nude witches.

Bayonnetta is like Devil May Cry if they removed any form of holding back. The unreserved nature is evident from the get-go. Within seconds you’re doing handstands and using gun feet to shoot down cherub looking em-effers. Gun feet.

However as interesting as that sounds, it’s maybe too much? It’s hard to tell what’s going on in a lot of places and perhaps that’s down to being as intentionally hysterical and weird as possible. You try hard to be ridiculous and, well, you end up being ridiculous.

The demo available was a 5 chapter linear path that starts you off falling thousands of miles into the earth atop a giant clock-face. You’re being attacked throughout. If you input the right commands occasionally a giant boot appears from a portal and kicks opponents in the face. With me so far? Collect enough special orbs and you can throw attackers into an iron maiden. An on-screen signal for you to collect more gigatons appears. Gigatons are good? I can’t rightly say. The rings from sonic are there, you can pick them up, try getting a hundred, I don’t know what happens.

Your hair is a weapon. It turns into a giant wolf that eats the main boss.

…In stores January 5th.

Whilst trudging one of the Eurogamer Expo’s many well-carpeted corridors (seriously, these carpets are plush!), we passed a screen showing Avatar: The Game in three dee! Fascinated by the large, JVC, coruscating display we decided to wander over in hope of having our minds utterly blown. As we carried out the aforementioned wandering, we heard an expo visitor point to the screen and say, “Oh yeah, that’s the new Halo.”

To be honest, expo visistor, we made the exact same mistake (thrice, in fact!) and, well, it’s easy to see why.

Look, he said “Spiderman” to Pillowfort in the Mario voice. That makes him a winner in my books.

Some more photos, and impressions of New Super Mario Bros. Wii over the jump.

The man himself popped up in a secret, unannounced visit beside the New Super Mario Bros. Wii stands at the Eurogamer Expo and naturally, Pillowfort and I jumped at the chance to hear him say “YAHOO!” and get a photo with him.

He even made himself known over the venue’s PA system and gave MightyMutt the fright of his life; the poor lad confused Charles with another Mario voice actor who died just a couple of weeks ago. Silly boy.

Anyway, while we’re on the subject of Mario: myself, Krelith, Eoco and Pillowfort had a go of 4-player co-op in New Super Mario Bros. Wii and I have to say that it’s the most fun I’ve had playing a Mario game in a very long time. It’s not just a plain old Mario platformer – it’s a plain old Mario platformer with three other people. And that’s great fun.

While it’s exactly what you’d expect from a Mario title (jumping, running, ? boxes and pipes) the addition of three other players ramps up the chaos factor because you’re just constantly getting in each other’s way. This, in the end, means you’ll constantly fight to screw each other over and will become entirely distracted from the fact that, in the end, you’re just playing another Mario game.

Trust me when I say that you’ll enjoy New Super Mario Bros.Wii if you’re looking for some simple, easy-to-enjoy multiplayer fun on your Wii.

The wait for a chance at Heavy Rain was filled with peril, there was a distinct possibility that despite staying in line for a half hour I wasn’t going to get a chance at it. The code was very early, warning signs that the system was overheating were displayed with extreme frequency, and at certain points it would just lock up entirely, causing a lot of arm-waving to Eurogamer staff to come and “on-off” the machines.

The issues and waits really helped me decide how I was going to approach certain sections, Heavy Rain isn’t something you can play, more it’s a sequence of situations you have to interact with. A critical audience would see it as a collection of button bashing quick time events, but this is only true in a very broad sense.

I was able to try out two areas of the game. The first is a store that you visit to follow up a lead as a private detective investigating the “Origami Killer”, a dude with a penchant for paper models and kidnapping children. After an unfortunate conversation with the shopkeeper that appears to close off your search, a robber enters and it’s up to you to sort that out. I had seen this go in very different ways, I was adept at dispatching him before he realised I was there, but botching your approach in any way would cause a stand off. You would have to keep the trigger buttons held down to keep your arms in the air, whilst picking dialogue options to change his mind. It never works, he’ll either shoot you and run away, or you’ll get another chance to attack him while his attention is elsewhere.

The second “level”  is done slightly differently, as another character you’re able to use some form of futuristic evidence scanner, and can see clues in the environment telling you where to go next. The chapter contains a tense boss fight that few had the correct level of reaction to survive, and even when that’s over a simple mistake leads you to imprisonment inside a car headed toward a crusher. If I’m being vague it’s only because I don’t want to spoil a second of it — but even then your outcome might not be the same as mine.

Check out Heavy Rain if there’s a Demo, or preferably try and find us tomorrow if you’re in England and have some free time. And let’s be honest, if you’re in England you definitely have some free time.

Sit down and strap yourself in. I’m about to turn your world upside down. After this, you might question everything you know. Does the combination of blue and red really make purple? Is Tupac dead? Are Vienna Sausages really made with chicken, beef and pork? It’s highly possible that you could be driven to the brink of insanity, take to the streets to toss excrement at innocent passersby. If you’re nabbed by the Fuzz, you’ll surely share a cell with some guy with “Big” attached to his name.

You have been warned.

Dead Space 2 is for reals, according to Reuters. Although lacking official confirmation from property holder Electronic Arts, the international news service pegged Dead Space 2 for a 2010 release, mentioning it as part of an article focused on the success of horror games. No specific details were divulged, but if the game is indeed in development, it’s probably safe to assume that players will have to strategically dismember Necromorphs in space. Just a hunch though.

Once again, EA has yet to issue an official statement concerning a follow-up to the excellent 2008 sci-fi shooter. Though, I certainly wouldn’t bet against it. EA clearly wanted a Dead Space franchise from the start, what with the action figures, animated film and six-part comic series. And let’s not forget the feature film that is reportedly in the works. Let’s just hope that EA Games doesn’t turn Dead Space into an annual thing, similar to what Lionsgate has done with that tired piece of shit Saw series.

Besides, rumblings of a sequel have persisted for many months, and a September LinkedIn ad posted by Visceral Games – Team Dead Space, as I like to call it – acknowledged that a follow-up was already in pre-production. Seems to me that we are just waiting for an official release from EA.

I doubt this report is going to shock anyone, but as a Dead Space fan, I felt obligated to post the scant details. 2010 is looking pretty stacked, but if Reuters is indeed on the money, and Dead Space 2 does ship next year, it slots in behind God of War III and BioShock 2 on my list of anticipated titles.

Sources: Reuters via Destructoid, CVG

We are almost two weeks out from the Extra Life gaming marathon and the money is still coming in!  This past weekend was the official make up day for those who couldn’t get their gaming in on October 17th.  On November 7th, Team VGEvo will be putting in their hours. Extra Life keeps going and going and going!

It is important to note that today is the deadline to meet your goal of $192 to receive an Extra Life t-shirt.  The t-shirts will be ordered this weekend and should be landing in your mailbox in the next few weeks.

Thanks again to everyone who did their part to make this an epic success!  We are well on our way to hitting $160,000.  A special thanks to our friends at Kotaku for doing a follow up story on Extra Life.

Have a spooky and fun Halloween!

Apparently we all missed the Brink developer session for one reason or another, but there’s will be another one tomorrow! Upon realising this, we congregated upon the Avatar demo station. THE 3D ONE. And it looks freakin’ cool. We were all unanimously agreed that this was the best example of 3D technology that any of us have ever seen, and frankly, none of us want to ever play that game again unless it’s in 3D!

I then decided it was time check out the sequel to the game that absorbed my competitive online life for the longest time – Battlefield Bad Company 2. Unfortunately, the matches seem to last a while, and the queues were lengthy, so I decided to come back tomorrow for the hands-on experience. We did, however, enquire with the friendly EA representative as to whether we could get an interview, to which he replied, “We don’t do interviews, I’m afraid.” I was personally convinced he saw the ID badge and screamed “BOYCOTTERS” within his head, but we’ll never know, I guess.

MightyMutt scored an interview with the makers of LittleBigPlanet PSP, and as I type this, is in the process of interviewing one of the lovely fellows from Blackrock. We’ve also seen Heavy Rain, and Yamster successfully defended a shopkeeper from a gun-toting thug whilst MightyMutt dodged a lead pole in a scrapyard. My lazy descriptions of the in-game events aside, Heavy Rain plays remarkly intuitively and the graphics are fantastic… Which brings me to my next point in the update.

HELP! HELP! MY PS3(s) is/are ON FIRE!!! No fewer than three PS3s running Heavy Rain suffered system crashes, (un)coincidentally all at the same point in the demo. Code glitch? I think so. Yes, I do. But even then…the PS3 is just such a hot system right now. If you know what I mean.

I also checked out Dragon Age Origins on the PS3, but I was bitterly disappointed by the frame rate issues, combined with the less-than-stellar texture renders. This perhaps wouldn’t have bugged me so much had I not seen the game being played earlier in the day on a PC which ran it at 60fps without issue.

All in all it’s been a productive day thus far, and we still have plenty of things left to see and do today. We intend to check out the Developer Session for Army Of Two: The 40th Day in just over half an hour, as well as check out a few more games on the show floor (Left 4 Dead 2 with four players seems a high contender).

Also, the Press Balcony is seemingly always busy, and I’ve been sat on the floor multiple times upon my revival. On the other hand, FREE BEVERAGES.

While this story is over a week old, I let it simmer. I was hoping that someone would come back and debunk the information as PR spin, because to me, it just seems improbable.

Famitsu, one of Japan’s most prolific gaming magazines, has given a perfect four-reviewer 40/40 score to the Xbox 360 version of Bayonetta (the PS3 got docked two points for framerate issues).  The magazine has only given out 11 other perfect scores during its run, including games like Final Fantasy XII, Dragon Quest IX, Metal Gear Solid 4, and Zelda: Ocarina of Time. To give you a point of reference, Famitsu also gave Uncharted 2 and God of War 2 scores of 37/40.

Okay, I understand games like Final Fantasy XII and Dragon Quest IX, where the entire country loses its damn mind on launch day; these two series are Japanese national phenomena.  You know you reach epic status when schools are giving kids the day off because administrators knew so many were just planning on staying home anyway to play the new Dragon Quest, while a Japanese company actually instituted “Dragon Quest Vacation Leave”, giving employees nine days off to play the game.

And MGS: 4 and Zelda: OOT, got it.  But a spinoff of Devil May Cry? That game didn’t get a perfect score from Famitsu.  Granted, before Platnium Games existed, they were Clover Games, who also put out God Hand, Okami, and Viewtiful Joe, all critically acclaimed titles.

I played the demo at PAX and seen trailers…am I missing something?  I mean, it could always be about S-E-X.  Lead designer Hideki Kamiya claimed they focused the game around Bayonetta’s “sexy attacks”, with our shapeshifting demon slayer chaining combos together with only her long black hair covering her body.  They say sex sells, and this coming from the land of tentacle porn, Rapelay, and this place, it would make sense that a whip-wielding, gun-toting dominatrix tops the charts.  Does anyone else feel this strongly about this game?  With games like God of War 3 on the horizon?

The game released in Japan on the 29^th and is set to launch in the US on January 5^th, UK on the 8^th (see how I put that UK part in? You’re welcome).

Just three hours into the Eurogamer Expo and things are already looking awesome with a capital-friggin-A. We’ve all just come out of a developer session with Blackrock Studios, the team behind upcoming racer Split/Second. We were treated to an exclusive look at a new track in the game and given a little behind-the-scenes tour of how the game was put together.

Read some more over the jump!

According to Nick Baynes, game director at Blackrock, a lot of racing games are missing the variety you can get with a changing environment. Split/Second looks set to change all that with its dynamic, player-controlled environment alterations – ie: you get to blow a heap of shit up and this changes how you race. You play a driver in a reality TV series whose entertainment involves racing around movie-style sets and destroying opponents with the environment. Dancing With The Stars this ain’t.

Driving like a madman in one of Split/Second’s hyper-aggressive-looking muscle cars — jumping, drifting, ramming everyone else — builds up a 3-tier Power bar shown floating beside your car on the game’s HUD, which is all centred around your vehicle so you can see all of the chaos unfold without any screen furniture getting in the way. Using one of three buttons on your controller triggers a “Power Play” — or in layman’s terms, something cool happens — which changes the track  in some way to your advantage,

You can build up a little power and open up something as simple as a shortcut, or build all of your power up and unleash a massive level 3 Power Play to utterly obliterate your opponents and alter the track in as dramatic a fashion as you can possibly imagine.

In the docklands track we were shown (a new environment to go with the airport we’ve already seen in trailers) level one Power Plays would activate massive cranes which would hoist obstructive crates out of the way letting you cut a corner and shave a second or so off of your laptime. A level three Power Play would just wipe those cranes out altogether.

Fantastically, most of these came about because the design team essentially thought “wouldn’t it be cool if this happened?” and the scenario was storyboarded before it was realised by the animation team and brought to awesome life. As if that wasn’t enough, the link with Disney (who’re publishing it) meant that the design team got a sit-down with the Imagineers who design the rollercoasters for the theme parks, so they could make the tracks themselves feel as intense as Space Mountain.

My favourite bit, by far, was a lighthouse that I had assumed was just some background clutter. I had to stop myself from laughing hysterically as said lighthouse then detonated itself and collapsed all over an opponent a hundred feet or so in front. That said, our car was perfectly safe — Split/Second won’t activate a Power Play if you’re too close to the possible aftermath.

What’s more, multiplayer won’t skip a beat and all of the Power Plays will work just as well against real people as they will against AI opponents. In case you haven’t guessed it by now, I think we’re onto a winner here.

Split/Second is out next year on PS3 and 360, but for now I’m gonna go play it for myself and I might even let you know what I think. But you can probably guess what I’m going to say already.

Welcome to Eurogamer London, where the games of tomorrow (as well as the games of last month), are playable, and you can’t get anywhere near them because in true gaming fashion, the event organisers have set up what I can only describe as “choke points” throughout the building. Were I a hunter of gaming nerds, I’d be on a guaranteed kill streak.

I’m currently sat on the floor of the press room (hereby referred to as the press balcony, for it allows oversight of the entire show floor), typing this article up in Wordpad because the WiFi signal has gone – and I hate to use this phrase – mental bental chicken oriental.

We’ve just gotten out of a developer session with Blackrock Studios who have been showing off their upcoming racing title – Split/Second. Despite the misleading name of the game, no seconds were split, my ear drums were, however. The presentation was mostly a “What we’ve been through to get to this point” speech, but the trailers shown were a bit of a marvel to behold.

As an added bonus, we were also presented with a live on-screen gameplay demo of the “Docks” which proved without a shadow of a doubt that the visuals in this game are truly stunning, and the gameplay does – despite my previous doubts up until this point – seem quite capable of pulling off what the buzz promises.

MightyMutt is currently in the Splash Damage developer session looking at Brink, meanwhile Pillowfort, Yamster, Eoco and I are about to exit the press area (where we found free drinks and FINALLY lucked out on a table!), and get our gaming on. Personally, I’m heading straight for Battlefield Bad Company 2.

Keep an eye on SG throughout today and tomorrow for more news from Eurogamer!

Left-to-right: the back of Pillowfort's head, MightyMutt, Krelith.

Not much to say so far, but we’re here! MightyMutt, Eoco, Krelith, Pillowfort and I are here

in the Old Billingsgate in London for day one of the Eurogamer Expo and we’re off to a flying start.

We’ve seen — but alas, not played — a ton of new stuff already and as of now we’re sitting with Blackrock in a developer session, being introduced to the awesome world of Split/Second. We’ll be seeing Brink and a ton more later too.

And Eoco looks funny in person. And he’s too tall.

That’s all we have for now, I’m afraid. We’ve been so busy spreading the SG love among the Eurogamer crowd that we’ve not really thought about playing any games yet!

Rest assured, we’ll get our asses in gear and let you know how the games you’ll be playing later this year and beyond are shaping up. Keep an eye on our Twitter feeds too!

NB: This should’ve gone up yesterday but I sorta fell asleep before I could put it up. Enjoy regardless!

Guys: STREET FIGHTER. MightyMutt’s winning.

It’s just coming up to 1am in London, and I’m sitting here with MightyMutt, Pillowfort and Krelith in MM’s humble abode having recorded our first podcast (which might hit soon, might not).

To put today into simple terms: videogames and beer. Having successfully met up with PF in Euston we headed on out to MM’s little neighbourhood of Finchley and proceeded to visit his local pub in the name of research — getting our bearings, naturally. He arrived soon after before we met up with Krelith and made our way back to the doghouse (geddit? ‘Cause it’s MightyMutt? Sighface).

Beer, Chinese and the unintentionally hilarious X-Men Origins: Wolverine soon followed, followed by some introductions to MightyMutt’s EyePet. We didn’t like him. Annoying little bugger, so he was. I’d sit and tell you more about him but that’d ruin the review we have coming up. To put it simply: the shower head you use to clean your pet defies the laws of physics and will happily rain upward. That should give you an idea of the quality of the entire game.

One podcast and a couple of beers later and MightyMutt and Pillowfort are trading blows in Street Fighter IV and we’re getting all set for day one of Eurogamer tomorrow. I’m pretty excited. If anyone else here is going, I hope you are too. We have some videogames to play, after all.

Personally, I’m looking forward to Heavy Rain, Brink and Split/Second a lot (and the last two’s developers are on site tomorrow so we might even get to chat to them!) and I’ll be betting they’re as badass as they all look.

But I’ll let you know for sure tomorrow, and the rest of the UK team – maybe, maybe including Eoco – will share their own experiences with you too. But for now, I’m gonna go back to watching Pillowfort lose Street Fighter. Again.

In this Thursday edition of de humps, the crew discusses: Censorship, the best FPS of all time, the PSN, and more.  So listen up, and get updated.

IMPORTANT: Please note that the Humpday Update is on its OWN iTunes and RSS feed. Please be sure to subscribe to the new Humpday Update feed in iTunesor RSS. If you insist, you can always just download the mp3. If you are currently using a computer with iTunes on it, would you mind heading over there and leaving us some feedback? Thanks for the Diggs!

I’m really looking forward to BioShock 2. I haven’t spent much time talking about it, mainly because my focus has been on fall 2009 titles, but expect that to change as the Feb. 9, 2010, global launch approaches. For me, the game once subtitled Sea of Dreams is second only to God of War III, as far as my most anticipated 2010 releases are concerned. That’s pretty high praise, considering the mammoth amount of software that is scheduled to ship during that window. There’s the confirmed releases of Darksiders, Bayonetta and Dante’s Inferno, as well as Q1 titles like Split/Second and Dead Rising 2.

Why do I anticipate thee? Find out after the jump.

There have been plenty of complaints levied against BioShock 2, mostly at the multiplayer, but also that it looks just like its predecessor, considered the best game of 2007 by many. For me it’s a big selling point for the sequel. BioShock was a great, nay, spectacular game, and you certainly won’t hear me complain if the follow-up hits many of the same notes. I obviously don’t want the exact same experience, but would enjoy a title that refines the tremendous gameplay of the original. Rapture is absolutely stunning, even as a war-torn dystopia, and I can’t wait to dive back into that world.

GameTrailers has posted a slew of new videos, including some multiplayer footage that shows off Capture the Sister. As you might imagine, it’s similar to Capture the Flag, though not identical.

I have mixed emotions about the multiplayer component. I don’t bemoan its existence like some people, but don’t find it particularly enticing either. My enthusiasm will probably depend upon the depth of the narrative, set before the events of BioShock. If nothing else, it will be interesting to see the fall of Rapture as it happens.

Destructoid’s Hamza writes that there are seven multiplayer modes in total, including stalwarts like deathmatch and team deathmatch. Sounds like pretty standard stuff, with a few twists for an authentic BioShock experience.

The single-player campaign is undoubtedly where I will spend most of my time. Interestingly, the Big Sisters are controlled by the main antagonist, former political dissident Dr. Sofia Lamb, who uses them to prevent Splicers – as well as the player – from harvesting ADAM. For more details, check out GameTrailers’ interviews – one, two – with 2K Marin lead designer Zak McClendon.

BioShock 2 is looking quite promising, and you can bet your ass that I’ll be there on launch day to procure a copy. Already got my money set aside. I’ve stuffed it in a sock that reads: If you spend this cash before Feb. 9, rabid opossums will strip the skin from your body, and use it to fashion Halloween costumes. I’m a big fan of life, so I’m staying the fuck away from that sock.

Image credit to The Cult of Rapture.

Source: Destructoid

UPDATE: My bad. The mission is called Overwatch.

Sometimes serendipity comes when you least expect it. I dunno if that ’s the case here, but if it’s not, then we need to seriously think about redefining “serendipity.” Because of some scheduling snafu’s Doc, Dave and I didn’t record the Red Show until this past Monday, October 26th. During the show, we discussed Modern Warfare 2 and we happened to gush over our “wishes”  for Spec Ops missions.

The next day, our wish became true. Enter Spec Op Mission: Overwatch. Video and geekgasm, after the jump.

During the show on Monday, for those that haven’t heard it yet, we went “all fanboy” and discussed what we’d love to see in the MW2 Spec Ops missions.  For those of you that have no idea what I’m talking about, Spec Ops is the co-op mini mission part of Modern Warfare 2 that will have you and a friend play singular missions.

Anyway, one idea we tossed out there was, what if there was a mission where one guy flew around in an AC-130, while another guy was on the ground and they basically worked together to escape from something or take something out. That would be a blast, right?

Before the Red Show was finally edited and uploaded on Tuesday evening, I was watching X-Play and low and behold, Infinity Ward debuted a new Spec Ops mission entitled Overwatch. What is Overwatch, well, check this out:

Holy crap right? A Mission where one guy shoots the crap out of the bad guys in a bad ass AC-130 Gunship, while the other guy targets stuff on the ground.

Serendipity indeed. Wish fulfilled.

Now, what other types of missions would you all like to see? We’ll make it happen on the next Red show!

Some of the time leading up to a game’s release has nothing to do with development. It goes gold, the marketing cycle begins, copies start printing and then much later it’s opening day at the box office. You can’t keep designers and coders on the payroll if they aren’t doing anything, so studios throwing them an extraneous task to crack on with makes more business sense.

When that task finishes you’ve got another property that sits on the shelf while it could be making you money, the obvious reaction is to pump that out and earn some dollar bills while the game is still in the zeitgiest. Not to tell multimillion grossing companies how to do their job (especially considering my studious nature and current lack of income), but it doesn’t delight me as a consumer when I see an addition to a game, for an extra cost, available when I’ve barely taken the packaging off.

How soon, is too soon?

Double Fine is releasing a Brutal Legend map pack within weeks of the shipping date. As someone that has barely scratched the surface of the multiplayer (lack of enjoyment aside) this seems far too quick. I realize that it’s extraneous content that doesn’t have any impact on the genuinely interesting part of the game, but it’s an addition that seems to say that the original selection wasn’t enough. Why offer alternatives before the current options have run their course?

It’s like giving someone a delicious ice-cream sundae, then charging extra for honeycomb segments. It was already a delicious ice cream and I’m not done eating it yet!

The alternative is to hold off and release later, but that runs the risk of selling even less because your install base may have moved on, or worse, sold their copies entirely.

There is a comment box below this post! Maybe consider how you stand on this issue? Then maybe tell us about it?

Why am I on board such a marvellous contraption? If the header image and the title weren’t much of a giveaway, I’m making my way down the country to London for the Eurogamer Expo!

As I write, it’s just after half one in the afternoon and I’ve just passed through some place in the middle of nowhere called Preston. Here’s an entirely useless map to illustrate:

Didn’t help? Good. Here’s the plan, anyway:

• For the next two and a half hours I’m staying ridiculously comfy on this train and will probably tweet my brains out, as I usually do anyway. (@yamstersg, if you’re interested.)
• At about 4pm my train pulls into London Euston station, at which point I hop onto an Underground train to East Finchley – famous for featuring McDonalds’ UK base of operations (depending on how you define famous) and residence of SG comic artist and provider-of-bed til Sunday, MightyMutt.
• The chances are, MightyMutt will be in work until 5 o’clock and won’t be able to meet me until a good while after I arrive in Finchley. This means I will probably go to the pub to while the time away.

Now this, folks, this: this is what you call professional gaming journalism.

Don’t you worry though. The real deal starts tomorrow. For now, all I can do is sit on my extremely comfortable train, pig out on Coke, pretzels and sandwiches and enjoy complementary internet and power for my laptop.

It’s a tough life. isn’t it?

Well, the Uncharted 2/Brutal Legend Duelist League week had an unprecedented number of fatalities at the hands of  newcomer Stoned Sheep.  Not only did he beat all challengers at mutliplayer (including yours truly), but he then went on to take humiliating still screenshots of him kicking the hell out of each and every opponent.  Usually, this involved him holding onto a grenade launcher and his opponent being blown into small pieces.   It was not pretty.

A few caveats: I started a match with Astro Nit.  I beat him on the practice, then he won the first of three matches, and then he had to leave, so I gave him five points for coming out and mixing it up.  Also, Eao and Stoned Sheep’s match apparently didn’t happen because of connectivity issues (Eao’s from Cairo? Wowza!).

So, Mr. Stoned Sheep rockets his way to the top of the leaderboard while everyone else if left to lick their wounds.  Let’s take a look at what the new leaderboard looks like!

Leaderboard: (as of October 27th):
TheStonedSheep: 4 W/0 L, 165 XP
TinyButDeadly: 3 W/0 L, 140 XP
Jus Blaze Man02: 2 W/0 L, 135 XP
PurpleDemon: 2 W/1 L, 120 XP
Yamster:1 W/0 L, 115 XP
BlinkinCard: 1 W/1 L, 100 XP
Astro-Nit: 0 W/0 L, 105 XP (did not finish match with S6, points for showing up!)
Eao: 0 W/0 L, 100 XP (connection issues)
WildBanshe: 0 W/1 L, 85 XP
Spongebobbies: 0 W/1 L, 85 XP
Shanghai Six: 1 W/2 L, 90 XP
NuclearNinja: 0 W/1 L, 90 XP
AssassinsClaw: 0 W/1 L, 85 XP
TomCoopz: 0 W/1 L, 85 XP
Otacon91: 0 W/1 L, 85 XP
Pikminguts92: 0 W/1 L, 85 XP
IceKatanaX: 0 W/1 L 80 XP
SmellyPirate: 0 W/1 L, 75 XP
AlaDouche: 0 W/1 L, 75 XP

I wasn’t a big fan of using TF2 for a Duelist League game, but it covers several systems and had several votes originally as a good game for Duelist League, so I tossed it on it there.  Don’t worry, my pretties, Modern Warfare 2 is coming.  I’m running out of good multiplayer games to put in there, please feel free to suggest other games in the thread!

RULES:
1) Each week, look for the thread in the Official Sarcastic Gamer Gamenights forum for the stickied Duelist League thread (SIGN UP HERE!). If a game is not listed for the systems you own (Wii, PC), you may choose one game for one of these systems and challenge someone else with it, but you’ll only be able to get one match that week.

2) Post in the thread that you own the game and that you are looking for a fight.

3) Pick a fight with another SG member who has registered on the thread. You can only challenge that member once a week. The details (time, place, system, game type) of the match are up to the two combatants.

4) All combatants start at 100 experience points. Both players agree to a wager on how many points they are playing for. Max wager is 25 points, and you cannot go below 5 points (so someone can work their way back up if they are knocked out). Not only will win/loss be registered, but the experience point tally will be kept as well.

5) The results of the match are posted on the thread.

6) WE HAVE PRIZES. Top duelists will be rewarded with forum titles, avatars, bragging rights, serving wenches, and yes, now top finishers will receive prizes. It won’t be for points cards like Summer Games was, but you’ll still walk away with something if you finish respectably well on the leaderboards.

Okay, you’ve got a new target at the top of the rankings; GO GET HIM!

Good lord, I don’t even know where to begin.

Imagine if the makers of Diablo 1 and 2, Mythos, and Fate all got together and created a game that took Diablo 2…and improved on it’s gameplay?  And then gave you a construction kit that allows you to go in and create your own maps and classes and other content?  And then only charged $20?

Intrigued? If you have a PC and a pulse, you freakin’ should be.  Hit me after the jump for more juicy details!

First, a caveat.  If you’re familiar with my work, I’m generally sparing on my praise, and am able to find things wrong with everything.  A perfect example: I reviewed Darkest of Days, who I also met at PAX and had a booth right next to the folks who made Torchlight.  I felt bad trashing their game, but dammit, it’s the right thing to do, free copy of the game or not.

So, let me get started with the liberal ball washing that I feel this game deserves.

The small, ragtag group of freedom fighters known as Runic Games put this game together on a shoestring budget and have delivered on all fronts.  I don’t even know where to begin lavishing praise on it.

System requirements: I played it on a three year old Dell XP 1710 laptop, sporting 2 GB of RAM and a 512 MB mobile graphics card.  It would hitch every now and again during big fights, but it ran surprisingly well in 1600×1200 with all the bells and whistles turned up.  So, big points there.

Storyline: you are a wandering adventurer who has come to the town of Torchlight to seek your fortune.  Torchlight is the home to a sizable vein of “ember”, a precious magical element, so treasure hunters and scholars from around the world come to test their luck in the mines to get their hands on the precious ore.  The problem is that the ore has become corrupted as you descend into the mine, and it becomes obvious that a great evil sits at the very bottom that needs destroying.  Storyline is very Diablo-esque, but without the major cinematic cut scenes.

Graphics: What they skimped on storyline, they made up with quirky graphical concept.  Instead of the realistic, gritty dungeon crawler, it looks very similar to a more cartoony version of World of Warcraft…if that’s possible.  While there are still rooms upon rooms of monsters to defeat, they are done in a more graphically dynamic way this time.  Creatures will jump at you from sewer grates and ambush you from hut openings; when you send them to their doom, you’ll blast them off the sides of bridges or blow them into animated puddles of goo.

Gameplay: Well, it’s everything you know about Diablo 2, but improved upon.  You’ve got a hub world where all your vendors are at, including the guy selling random items that you don’t know the stats to until you buy it, etc.

The nice thing I noticed about this game that I didn’t feel about Borderlands was that it flows nicely.  The next level is right around the corner, the floor maps and environments are constantly changing, and while you’re looking for a good  necklace or shield, next thing you know, three hours have gone by.

There are three fixed classes: alchemist (mage),  vanquisher (bowman), and destroyer (warrior), but they can be leveled to any hybrid you want.  My alchemist was a ranged attacker, but I put enough talent points into strength and defense so I could wear heavier armor and wield a shield with my wand.

The big focus of the game is that they borrow heavily when it comes to gameplay ideas, even down to the sounds of potions and items being pulled out of chests and the hub world music, but everything is improved upon.

• Did you hate it when your bags would fill up with precious loot and you would have to portal back into the hub world to sell?  Have no fear, this time, you get a faithful companion dog/cat that can run a saddlebag full of gear back into town for you, leaving you to continue questing while it autosells all your vendor trash!  It’s not just a pack animal, mind you.  I had mine equipped with a healing and fireball spell combo for a mobile support turret.
• Uh, oh!  You just took a rare gemstone and slotted it into a piece of vendor trash! No problem!  There are a pair of dwarves in the main town that will get you your item/gem back after you socket it if you make a mistake!
• Hate having to identify loot using stacks of those damnable identify scrolls? No problem!  Any adventurer can now learn up to 4 support spells, one of which is an identify spell!  Your vanquisher can have an ice bolt spell, while your archer can cast a heal spell! Problem fixed!
• Beat the game and get tired of doing Ba’al runs for exotic and rare items?  No problem!  Instead of having to run the same areas and boss fights over and over again, town vendors sell map fragments that can open portals to level-specific, randomly generated dungeons instantly!
• Well, now what?  I’ve ground my character all the way to the level cap and don’t have anything to do!  Wrong-o!  Your hero can retire to hit summer home, which will in turn bestow special starting abilities/stats to a brand new character!  And, of course, there’s the legendary “hardcore” mode to really challenge the most sadistic of gamer out there; death is with a capital D, and there’s no coming back!
• I just can’t stop using exclamation points here!

Bottom line here: it’s as if the developers went out of their way to listen to people’s complaints about dungeon-crawler style games, and specifically address each and every complaint.  You know, like video game designers should do.

The only complaint that will get a lot of people grumpy early is that there is no mutliplayer element to the game.  So how do the folks at Runic fix that problem?

1) They announce the immediate work on an MMO portion to the game, planning on releasing it 12-18 months from release date of Torchlight.
2) They include an entire construction set/editor which allows people to go in and create their own classes, characters, maps, etc.  Modding community, rejoice!
3) They charge $20 for the damn thing.

There’s much much more I want to talk about the game, but I’m going to have to wrap this up.  If you’re waiting to get your inner loot whore on and don’t feel like waiting until 2015 when Blizzard finally drops Diablo 3, this is a hellaciously inexpensive way to fill that void.

If you haven’t figured it out, I highly recommend anyone with a computer run out and get a copy of this.  Period.

http://www.torchlightgame.com/

You want to know more? Course you don’t. Hit the jump anyway.

As I type, the Eurogamer Expo is currently taking place in Leeds, in the north of England, but on the 30th and 31st it’s coming to the Old Billingsgate in London and the entire SGUK team is gonna be there. We’ll be meeting and greeting with you guys and playing some of the biggest games of this and next year, and telling you all about them.

The Eurogamer Expo will feature Assassin’s Creed II, Dante’s Inferno, Dragon Age Origins, God of War III, Heavy Rain, Left 4 Dead 2, MAG, Mass Effect 2, The Saboteur, Split Second and a whole lot more. There might even be some time for some developer sessions (and our good buddy Chet from Valve will be there!) and naturally, you’re more than welcome to come find us and say hi.

We’ll be tweeting, writing, taking some videos and even throwing together a podcast or two if we have the time in between playing games and partaking in some light alcoholic refreshment (legal ‘uns only, folks; we don’t do naughty drinking).

The countdown begins here, and I’m hopping on the train to London tomorrow to meet up with MightyMutt and kick this all off proper.

SarcasticGamer.com’s Eurogamer coverage begins here; watch this space!

If you’ve heard anything about From Software’s Demon’s Souls for the PS3, you know it’s a beast of a difficult game, daring you to play it and laughing at your failures.  The realization that this game is the closest to survival horror that you’re going to get on a video game this console generation came last night.

Taking a break from reviewing another game, I sat down with Demon’s Souls yesterday.  It had been awhile, as I’d been deep in finishing ODST, Uncharted 2 and Brutal Legend.  While I was playing all of those games, however, there was a part of me that couldn’t wait to get back to the brutalization that is Demon’s Souls.

I entered a new area for the first time ever with my little hero.  For those of you with the game, it’s area 5-1, the Chieftain archstone. For those of you without, let me try to explain.  It’s a rickety hodge-podge of broken and fragile wooden walkways and nests of hay perched precariously above an instant-death drop into a swamp below.  The objective is to travel further and further upwards, climbing across these unstable platforms while fighting off enemies.  The enemies consist of this odd bird/goblin bastardization, who have the unnerving ability to drop out of the sky from unlit perches above and land unnervingly close to you, with the sole intent of pushing you off an ledge to your death.

The thing that got me was the breathing. 

The way the level is designed vertically, you can more or less hear these mouth-breathing zombie birds two levels above and below you.  They may not be near you…or there might be one perched directly above you, but you can never really tell.  I’ve got a pretty good surround sound system set up in my basement, so when I would hear this ragged gasping breath come from behind me to my left, I would spin around, shield raised, expecting an attack…but there would be nothing. 

The enemies are generally in the same locations every time, but sometimes, they can wander off and be places you are not expecting them.  Seeing that every fight can be instantly fatal and death can involve twenty minutes of having to redo the level over, these come as very “oh !#$%” moments as you’re inching along. 

Remember when the original Resident Evil was kinda scary?  That first hallway where the dogs would launch themselves through the window at you, and all you have is the stupid 9mm handgun?  After you recover from the shock of these demons breaking through the glass, you’re forced to quickly recover and fire round after seemingly useless round at them.  That feeling of shock paired with helplessness was a hell of a “survival horror” combination. 

Now look at Resident Evil 5.  “Survival horror” took a backseat to “Hollywood action flick”.  Was there any point in the game where you ever felt truly…afraid?  Where death came at a steep price?  Oh, no, chainsaw zombie just cut me in half.  Restart. 

Oh, here’s another one I just thought of for those of you with a Wayback machine.  Remember Clock Tower?  No?  That’s understandable.  Late 90s, PS1 title.  You played as this little girl with a dog, and the whole game consisted of you running and hiding from this guy with a pair of giant scissors.  No rocket launcher, no melee attacks, just a little girl hiding in cabinets and closets and running for her life. I just remember that feeling of “ohcrapohcrapofcrap, please don’t look over here and see me”.

The punishing death penalty associated with Demon’s Souls, paired with the darkly lit, confining areas and the fact that almost every fight can be deadly if you’re not on your toes leads to an anxiety driven experience I haven’t felt in a video game in a long damn time. 

And I like it.

Christian Slater. Elton John. Jake “The Snake” Roberts. What do they have in common? They have nothing to do with this topic. I just needed an introduction for my article.

Brutal Legend is already packed with a hearty helping of content, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt to have more. Keeping with that philosophy, Double Fine and Electronic Arts have revealed the Tears of the Hextadon DLC pack, which will include two new multiplayer maps, as well as an ax dubbed the Blade of Ormagoden. The namesake for the ax is the mythical fire beast of Brutal Legend lore, so I’m expecting something wicked. To be specific, a blade head adorned with “Street Sharks” stickers. Also, flame attacks, a neon orange tint and glitter.

For descriptions of the Circle of Tears and Death’s Fjord maps, hit up the official EA release. Also, note that Tears of the Hextadon is labeled the “first downloadable content.” From that, it seems that Double Fine is planning additional add-ons for the future.

This will be a free PlayStation Network download for two weeks starting Nov. 5, after which it will cost $4.99. The deal is exclusive to PlayStation 3 owners, as Xbox Live members will have to pay full price – 400 MS Points – from launch. Certainly a raw deal if you bought Brutal Legend for Microsoft’s machine, but that’s the nature of the industry. PS3 owners constantly get the short end of the DLC stick, and all’s fair in the console wars I suppose. Kudos to Sony for cutting a deal, if that’s indeed what happened.

In other news, Titan Studios has announced that the New Pork map for Fat Princess will be gratis, and Naughty Dog creative director Amy Hennig recently told IndustryGamers to expect Uncharted 2: Among Thieves DLC – free and premium – before the new year.

As an owner of all three titles, I say: Gimme.

Sources: Electronic Arts, Titan Studios, IndustryGamers via Destructoid

Doc, Dave, and Lono are back to discuss Borderlands, new Left 4 Dead and Modern Warfare 2 videos, a skit written by Dave, and NBA 2K10. That and a ton more… is right here.

Welcome to Episode 88 of the Sarcastic Gamer Podcast.  The Red Show.

Subscribe here.  Leave an iTunes review here.  Download the show here.

Our friends at 2K games sent us a some choice items in support of Extra Life. We used a few things in a raffle here but we’ve got a lot of leftovers to share with you, so we’re doing just that… Haiku Style.

A Haiku is a Japanese poem restricted to 3 lines.  The first and last lines must have 5 syllables and the middle line must have exactly 7.

An example of a Haiku.

Please let me win Dave

I will always be grateful

You are so realer

There are LOTS of FREE 2K Games to win here, too many to list, so let’s see what you’ve got.  Just post your Haiku below.  Extra points if you make it RHYME!

(in the comments)

The SG Store officially closes on Halloween night.  The store itself, and the stuff inside it will officially cease to be.

To blow out the rest of this stuff, we’re selling it on the cheap.

ALL SHIRTS – $12.00 ($2 more for XXL and XXXL)

Mousepads – $4.00

Once its gone its gone.  No more black shirts.  No more podhazard shirts.  Real gamers inverted?  Yep.  Gone too.

SHOP NOW.

No, the game’s title is not a crude reference to anyone’s sexual prowess in the bedroom.  It’s actually a cleverly designed PSP title by XSeed, where you play across a series of 30-second-long mini games spoofing Japanese role playing games like Dragon Warrior or Final Fantasy (the original NES version).  Think of it as the “Warioware” of role-playing games, with it’s tongue firmly stuck in it’s 8-bit graphical cheek.

I’m going to try and describe this to you, but it’s a game that breaks a lot of genres, so I’ll do the best I can.

Hero 30:
If you’ve heard anything about the game already, you’ve probably heard the main premise of the game.  You’re a hero who’s trying to defeat the Ultimate Dark Lord (yes, that is his name), who has a spell to destroy the world.  The spell takes 30 seconds to cast, hence the title of the game.  The key is that shortly after starting the game, you meet the “Time Goddess”, who, for a little bit of coin, can turn back the clock and give you a fresh 30 seconds.  Even at its longest, a level of the “Hero 30” style gameplay lasts a whopping 2-3 minutes at most, with 30 total levels.  This style is most reminiscent of Dragon Warrior, with your warrior grinding levels and crossing an overland map, completing quests in a frantic pace.

The circle is the level of power you possess to summon helper demons...and yes, that is an umbrella the Evil Lord is carrying.

Evil Lord 30:
Following the game’s silly timeline, the next 30 levels take place 100 years in the future, where you take on the role of an Evil Lord trying to cast a spell to break the curse on his beloved wife Millenia, who has been turned into a bat.  The gameplay is nothing like the “Hero 30” section, this time, you summon demons to defeat enemies and boss characters around you in under 30 seconds, focusing on a rock-paper-scissors type of game (shooters beat melee, runners beat shooters, melee beat runners).  The Time Goddess is also present, turning back the 30 second clock, but you purchase spell upgrades with coins as well, so you have to be cognizant of saving money.

Pew pew pew!

Princess 30:
A side-scrolling shooter, you take on the role of a Princess another 100 years in the future, leaving your castle to hunt for a variety of cures for your ailing father, the King.  You are held aloft on a chair and surrounded by a cloud of soldiers, able to fire a flurry of arrows with a magic crossbow in all four cardinal directions as your move around the screen.

Knight 30:
Unlocked only after beating all 3 previous gameplay styles, you take on the role of a knight escorting around a sage, who is trying to gather the forces of the previous three heroes (hero, princess, evil lord).  Along the way, they are beset by hordes of enemy forces, and your job as the knight is to protect the sage for 30 seconds until he casts an enemy decimating spell.

While people might immediately classify this as an RPG, it’s more of a fast paced puzzle game.  Each level has a quirk that keeps you from just blazing through it, and you have to figure out how to best deal with that problem so you can proceed, but there is really nothing in the game that is too hard to figure out.

The game’s storyline is a bit on the absurd side, but if you play in the order you are supposed to, it lays out a rather decent tale from start to finish, even with characters named as generically Japanese as the “Ultimate Evil Lord”.  The game breaks the fourth wall frequently as it pokes fun at itself and role playing genre, involving the player in a lot of the inside jokes.  A perfect example is during the Hero 30 section, where each level boss gets more and more goofy, to the point where the game even tells you that “it’s running out of ideas for boss fights” when you’re forced to fight a giant pile of rocks.

Much like SmellyPirate, I spent a lot of time in the bathroom playing this game, and found myself spending a lot longer than I had intended.  The levels are so short, it gets very easy to find yourself saying, “Okay, I’ll just get to the next level and then stop”, only to find that you’ve been sitting there for 45 minutes and your butt is going numb.

It ended up taking over 10 hours to get through the whole single player campaign, and I had a pretty decent time with it.  It does have replayability as well, giving you not only an ad hoc multiplayer, but the ability to go back and redo levels you’ve completed for faster times and in-game titles based on performance.

As far as video games in general go, I can say it ranks among some of the more unique titles I’ve ever played.  It’s not going to blow you away with the gameplay, but it’s pick-up-and-play feeling is perfect for the PSP, and you’ll find yourself with an unexpected smile on your face every now and again.

Haven’t you heard? Online petitions seem to carry a stigma. For the most part, the Ivory Tower gaming enthusiasts had set forth this idea that those that produce and possibly sign such petitions are nothing more than basement dwelling, Anime porn lovers that do nothing all day but sniff vending machine panties from Japan. Yes, these people exist and yes there are some crazy-ass online petitions, especially when it comes to video games.

On the other hand, most gamers are like you and me. We play games and we have a fierce devotion to how the medium works and those developers and games that do “right” by a gamer. When something comes along that breaks that trust, we freak the heck out. Our only recourse? Mobilization.  How do we mobilize? Online petitions.

The question is though, do they work?

Online petitions work. Well, at least the sane ones work. When I say “work”, there’s definitely a broad spectrum as to what that word means in this context. Do online petition’s bring attention to issues affecting a certain segment of gamers? Do online petition’s spark a discussion among the people who can affect change for said segment of gamers? Do online petition’s fundamentally achieve their goals through grass roots organizing online? Well, let’s take a look at each one.

Lets take a look at three prominent Internet “protests” that have taken place over the last year or so. The three that immediately come to mind are the Left 4 Dead 2 petition on Steam, the Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 dedicated server petition brought by PC gamers and our own call for a boycott of Battlefield: Bad Company for attempting to sell weapons to be used in Multiplayer matches.

At the time of this writing, the Left 4 Dead 2 and Battlefield: Bad Company boycotts have been lifted, with the interested parties in both declaring victory, while it appears that the petition against Modern Warfare 2’s exclusion of dedicated servers from the PC version appears to have lost. Or did it? What most do not seem to understand, including the TV and Internet journalist elites that pooh pooh most online petitions, including the ones discussed above, are that the petitions are usually not made to direct someone to act, but to force an  acknowledgment of the existence of the problem with the hope that said company will address it.

What the douchebags that deride online petitions fail to understand, is that the petitioners simply want to be heard. They want a Valve, or an EA to openly acknowledge the perceived problem. Whether or not they address it is also of importance, but usually by the time the issue is addressed, a solution is also found. Take the Left 4 Dead 2 petition. These protesters took exception to Valve’s perceived abandonment of the Left 4 Dead fan base, when L4D2 was abruptly announced at E3 2009. After gathering tens of thousands of signatures, the media elites that derided the petition while also promoting it on their blogs and TV shows, which inadvertently grew the protester’s user base. After numbers swelled that led to another round of media exposure, Valve responded to the protest and addressed their issues by promising more content and support for Left 4 Dead. Mission accomplished. Petition disbanded.

On the other hand, the online protest against Infinity Ward for dropping dedicated servers seems to be all but lost. IW recently told Game Informer that it is what it is and that all games would be hosted through their proprietary network.  There are a few good things that came out of the petition though. First, IW actually responded to consumers demands. Second, while there won’t be dedicated servers, IW has gone out of its way to assure that gaming demographic that many, if not most, of the options that these gamers seek will be available. But for the online petition, it is extremely likely that these issues wouldn’t be addressed, in my opinion.

Even with regard to our own attempted boycott of Battlefield: Bad Company, our protests were heard loud and clear by BF:BC producer Gordon Van Dyke, who admitted as much during our interview with him on Episode 56 of the Sarcastic Gamer Podcast. While Mr. Van Dyke labeled the issue a “misunderstanding,” he acknowledged that that they saw Sarcastic Gamer’s efforts and even the parody video that we produced. No matter how it was described, the push to sell multiplayer weapons never bloomed and I believe that Sarcastic Gamer’s push back was a big part of their decision despite what the ivory tower journos believe.

The basic principal here is sound. Gather up like minded people and pound on the door until someone either opens it, or acknowledges that you’re there. This is nothing new and it’s time that the “Big gaming media” acknowledge these petitions part. The better question is: why are such petition’s derided? Is it because big gaming media didn’t think of it first, or is it more likely that they’re just out of touch with the average gamer?

Here’s the best part, every time you hear some media elite douche bag make some sarcastic remark about “another online petition,” just sit back and smile, because while their busy taking pot shots, they’re too dumb to realize that they’ve moved the petition into the spotlight for all to see, which will only increase the support for the petition.

Thank you media elite douche bags. Now it’s time for me to go back into my basement, because I just got my UPS delivery from Japan…

Well, look at you. Getting drawn in to reading an article based on the surprisingly absurd title…

I bet you won’t click the jump. You haven’t got the stones. You can’t HANDLE THE JUMP!

Wow, you’re actually still reading? I suppose I should make some sort of a point then, just to reward you for your voluntary effort.

Borderlands was released here in the UK last Friday. I bought it as soon as I woke up in the afternoon (I’m not a lazy bum, I work nights. Quit judging me). I bought it for the PS3 because – unlike every other person in the world – I have more friends with PS3s than 360s. Upon getting home I inserted the disc into my console in an appropriate manner and proceeded to start the game… After the mandatory install… Which came after the mandatory system update… IT TOOK A WHILE.

Seven years later I was able to jump into the game and invite a friend. It was the most exciting thirty seconds of my gaming life. I say “thirty seconds” because it took approximately that long for voice chat to throw a fit and give that glorious s…t…u…t…t..e…r… effect that you’ll occasionally find on games with broken online service. Then his character started visually stuttering backward and forward in a squiggly line. This all preceded my frame rate dropping to no greater than 20 frames per second whenever I aimed a weapon at something (even a postbox). Then my PS3 crashed and I theorised that maybe, JUST MAYBE, I wouldn’t be playing a stable game online anytime soon.

On the bright side, both Single Player and Split Screen work fine. Which is where the point of this article comes in…

And I’ll reveal said point to you after I reward you for making it this far down the page. Have a winking smiley!

Borderlands is addictive. So addictive I’m going to exclaim it! And just as with all the best things in the world that are crazy-addictive, it wouldn’t surprise me if it were one day made illegal. It won’t be of course, but why not entertain the concept? I mean I’ve actually lost sleep over this game. Not in the usual ‘couldn’t put the controller down so I went to bed late’ way, I’m talking the ‘I woke up two hours after finally getting to sleep because I was dreaming about Borderlands and suddenly felt the overwhelming desire to play until I pass out again’ way. It’s that addictive.

What keeps me coming back? Firstly, the gunplay is as smooth as you can get, ‘Call Of Duty’ smooth. Secondly, the game appeals to every gamer’s inner loot-whore, with weapons and accessories being constantly thrown your way as fast as they can be randomly generated. Finally, the methods you can employ in laying waste to your enemies are seemingly unending. You can dissolve them, electrocute them, set fire to them, explode them, whatever! Grenade mods have kept me greatly entertained as well, with certain mods allowing me to do anything from making them super bouncy to teleporting directly to an enemy’s feet. Also, who doesn’t enjoy an armoured car with a rocket launcher on top? I know I do. Far too much in fact.

Bottom line, if you haven’t played this game yet and are thinking about picking it up, be warned. Time spent away from the game will become to you as thinking of an ex; forgettable and undesirable even when you do entertain it.

Here’s another winking smiley