Harley Quinn's Revenge Is Batman: Arkham City's Bad New Ending 
High Scores And Egos: There's Always A Bigger Doodle 
The Last Moments Of GAME 
How Bad User Interfaces Are Ruining Video Games And Other Wonderful Things 
She Tried To Make Good Video Games For Girls, Whatever That Meant 
The Story Of Doodle Jump: Brotherly Love And Digital Snacks After taking a look at what Peter Molyneux and Demis Hassabis were up to ten years ago, the final instalment of this ‘how did their predictions turn out, a decade later’ feature series asks some adventure game veterans.
Specifically, it chats to LucasArts’ Larry Ahern and Jonathan Ackley, who were just about to complete 1997′s The Curse Of Monkey Island, the first post-Ron Gilbert version of the franchise, and the last to use the famed SCUMM adventure game engine. Read on for what they said and whether they were right…
Yes, we’ve heard of the amazing cloning bug in Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed, but had yet to see it actually play out in video form. I wasn’t aware of how perfectly executed it was, giving Altair the opportunity to kill himself with some dual-assassin shenanigans. Is everyone sure this isn’t some clever plot point that we’re not supposed to know about yet? A second clip is after the jump.
The gang from LoadingReadyRun are enduring many, many, many hours of “playing” the commercially unreleased Desert Bus, a sadistically monotonous driving game from Penn & Teller’s Smoke And Mirrors, all in the name of charity. Originally planned for release on the Sega CD and 3DO, Desert Bus requires eight-full hours of play to complete, with no pausing and absolutely no reward (save for a single point). Masochistic players drive a slightly unbalanced bus in a straight line, from Las Vegas to Tucson, experiencing virtually no changes in the scenery. For eight hours. Then they go back. Another eight hours.
The Desert Bus For Hope web site is taking donations which will increase the number of hours the team is supposed to play, giving all funds to Penny Arcade’s Child’s Play charity. Feel good by doing a little bit of evil to someone this holiday season. Thanks for bugging us, Dave!
While boys are into things like carjacking, beating passers-by to death and sniping the heads off of local law enforcement types, this sort of harmless fun just doesn’t appeal to the fairer sex. Hence, Coolest Girl In School, which is being pitched as “Grand Theft Auto for girls” by mobile game developer Champagne for the Ladies. It replaces all that boyish drug-running and random violence with stuff girls like: experimenting with drugs, using sexuality for personal gain and clawing to the top of the social order by any means necessary. It’s fun on the go! While being a gossiping, shoplifting bitch may sound like a gamer’s dream, some uptight no-funsters are whining about Coolest Girl In School, claiming it’s “grossly irresponsible.”
I’ll tell you what’s grossly irresponsible—the game’s graphics! Monstrous!
The folks at Japanese developer Grasshopper Manufacture (Killer7, No More Heroes), headed by Suda51, have an enduringly pop culture trashy angle on game development – targeting Star Wars geeks and gravure fans ahead of the Japanese release of the Wii-exclusive No More Heroes, for starters.
But a lot of Western audiences are less aware of the pop culture-infused oddness of Suda51′s earlier PlayStation 2 title Michigan – which echoes many of the voyeuristic elements in other Grasshopper titles, and is the subject of a handy new overview by Insomnia.ac.
As the site explains of the PS2 title, which got an obscure European release via 505 Games, you play a news camera-man in an American town (‘Chicago, Michigan’ apparently), and “…whilst the real meat of the game involves simple lock and key puzzles to progress from area to area, points are awarded on each shoot [for the player filming in one of]three categories: suspense, immoral and erotic.” Blimey.
‘Michigan’ Game Impressions [Insomnia.ac]
This week’s additions to the Smash Bros. Dojo include more detail depth from some of the game’s non-marquee characters. Lucas, Ice Climbers, Saki Amimiya, anyone? Not exactly household names for Nintendo. But who cares? This is Super Smash Bros. Brawl and it’s for the hardcore fan. Of note is this week’s detail on costume changes. Don’t miss Solid Snake’s stylish alternate colorways, including a sexy cheetah print! The Dojo Dump is right after this.
The Americans already had their go at listing what’s lodged in the drives of their console of choice, but now everyone with a couple days off can chime in. This weekend, I’ll be continuing my world tour with Rock Band, unlocking what I can while attempting to make a dent in the Metallica tunes I’ve already downloaded. Our Thanksgiving Day band, Steeltown, won over plenty of fans with its drunken singing, spastic drum pounding and off-beat guitar licking. I nearly blacked out from my overly breathy renditions of Radiohead’s “Creep” while under the influence of a tryptophan-Coors Light cocktail. Good times.
I’ll grab a few spare minutes to get back into Super Mario Galaxy and finally fire up The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. Where’s my Nintendo DS charger, anyway? Oh, and what are you playing this weekend?
Finishing up this original series talking to game developers about the games that inspired them, we follow up High Moon’s Clinton Keith by chatting to Eidos Chief Technical Officer Julien Merceron.
Obviously, Merceron now oversees technical matters for the House Of Lara Croft, but he started out programming titles like Super Burnout on the Atari Jaguar (!), and was a long-time Ubisoft veteran, helping to program the original Rayman and working on R&D strategy for the French company.
So what game particularly made him believe that the medium had ascended to a higher level? Read on…
I had the chance to try out Geometry Wars: Galaxies co-op way back at E3 and, as I wrote then, the experience was great. It’s the sort of “you lean up against me and I’ll lean against you and that way neither of us sleeps with our head in the mud” gameplay that I love. On a side note, isn’t it refreshing that the industry has finally fully embraced the co-op experience?
For those who haven’t heard, Hitman actually got some decent reviews. OK, maybe not some. Maybe just notably one, from Roger Ebert. In the midst of screening films lusting after precious Academy Awards in full heat, he bestowed upon the movie 3 stars. What I found intriguing about the movie was the lonely self-sufficiency of Agent 47, his life without a boyhood, his lack of a proper name, his single-purpose training. When Nika comes into his life, he is trained to guard against her, but he cannot, because she is helpless, needy…To the degree the movie explores their relationship, it is absorbing.
But to the degree that it doesn’t?
