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 I’m not sure what’s up with the porn terminology, but taking off on the recent talk about diverging groups of connoisseur game reviewers and the hoi polloi, Tale of Tales takes off on a rant about Eurogamer’s review of Endless Ocean. Saying there’s a desperate need for a ‘non-hardcore games press,’ there’s plenty of criticism leveled at the rest of us. I’d agree that game reviewing could be improved in a number of areas, but I think this might be taking things a bit too far:
Luigi is mad as hell and he’s not going to take it anymore! This vengeful cross stitch has shown up on one of my favorite video game craft websites SpriteStitch.com and was created by the site’s owner John. If you’d like, you can even make it your very own as the piece is available for purchase on eBay for a mere $US 10 (for now). Since I’m poor, I’ll be sending this along to Maggie along with an email begging her to make me one for free. If she doesn’t agree, I’ll simply blackmail her into it with those incriminating photos from the Kotaku Kompany Kristmas party. Oh wait, those were of me. Damn, I really need to stop drinking whiskey…
Bitter Luigi cross stitch! [SpriteStitch]
While Jeff Freeman’s look at ELF Online was an instant classic as far as I was concerned, perhaps even better is an actual press release from Happy MMO. Nothing special seems to be happening (other than announcing that girls like the game), but there’s never a bad time for a deliciously awful Chinese MMO company press release — and what better way to drum up support for your wacky MMO than with an equally bizarre press release. Xin nian kuai le, indeed. Full release in all its Engrish glory after the jump.
The Raccoon City Times has a short but interesting interview up with Silent Hill V co-writer Patrick J. Doody. He covers some interesting subjects in the page long interview like the differences between writing for games as opposed to film, the difficulties of navigating the Silent Hill lore and how this game will be the scariest of the lot.
Gamasutra posted a great breakdown of one of my favorite series, Dragon Quest (née Dragon Warrior), all in a mere 10 pages — lengthy, but worth a read through if you’re a fan of the games. After a flying introduction on why Dragon Quest has been very popular, the author takes a detailed look at each installment of the series.
The front page of the Guardian has an interesting story on the tightening up of the UK’s video game rating system. According to the Guardian, only games that display “sex or “gross” violence to humans or animals” currently have any kind of age limit attached to them, leaving a large portion of games unrated that contain “weapons, martial arts and extreme combat.” To make sure that large portion doesn’t go unchecked, Ministers are proposing a completely overhauled ratings system.
Looks like the Grand Theft Auto IV machine is starting to kick into gear with this collection of videos. Rockstar has provided GameTrailers with five clips from the highly anticipated game that introduce us to some of the seedy denizens and businesses that make up the fictional Liberty City. The Steinway Beer Gardens commercial is may favorite. “This is male bonding the old fashioned way!”
Make the jump for all five clips.
