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 The patch notes for version 2.4 of Blizzard’s far-too-popular MMO World or Warcraft are out, along with the public test realm (PTR).
It appears many players were under the impression that the update would bring balance to the game’s player versus player elements, thanks to a story on MMO news site Curse Gaming. Unfortunately for them, it doesn’t take a prolonged read of the notes to deduce that as far as class changes go, there’s not much.
However, there may be hope for the game’s never-ending legion of fans. According to community manager Drysc, Blizzard is mixing things up a bit this time round. To quote the CM:
So, anyway, with 2.4 we’re moving in a different direction, starting small, and working our way through the PTR with changes in-mind, but not a huge glut of changes we throw out at the start.
Is it enough to silence the screams of nine million angst-ridden gamers? I guess we’ll know in a few months.
World of Warcraft – Test Realm Patch Notes [Official site]
Nice little collection of titles coming out this week. My money is on Professor Layton although Lost Odyssey seems rather intriguing. On the PC side of things, the new episode of Sam and Max is on its way as well as a new version of RPG maker. What will be taking money out of your wallet this week?
Professor Layton and the Curious Village (DS)
Lost Odyssey (X360)
Conflict: Denied Ops (PC, X360, PS3)
Jumper (X360, WII, PS2)
Dungeon Explorer: Warrior of the Ancient Arts (PSP, DS)
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic: Elements (X360)
Spaceforce: Captains (PC)
Sam & Max Episode 203: Night of the Raving Dead (PC)
Carrier Strike Force (PC)
XIII Century: Death or Glory (PC)
Wipeout Pulse (PSP)
Innocent Life: A Futuristic Harvest Moon (Special Edition) (PS2)
RPG Maker VX (PC)
You may be wondering where the heck we were most of Friday and Saturday. Well, let’s just say the server melted. Exploded. Disintegrated.
We’re all up-to-date now and the hardware’s back in action, so it should be sweet, old Kotaku goodness from now on, unless I explode. Which shouldn’t happen anytime soon, or so my doctor “tells” me.
Suspected Church Arsonist Brags On GameFaqs Forums Rule number one of committing a crime: Don’t tell anyone you’ve committed a crime. Idiot.
Grand Theft Auto IV Media Blitz Videos of everyone’s favourite crime-riddled third person shooter.
Kotaku Originals: From DICE to Energy Drinks A collection of original Kotaku posts. They taste extra good, we promise.
Crytek Talks Crysis 2, Far Cry Movie and CryEngine 2 The guys behind Crysis chat about their plans for the future.
That’s right folks, our very own fashion plate and male model Michael McWhertor made an appearance on the most recent edition of GameTrailers TV. Along with host and former Kotaku guest editor Geoff Keighley, McW discusses the upcoming Xbox 360 games of 2008 and how they will compare with last year’s blockbuster line-up. Clicking the link below will take you right to the section of the show featuring our most esteemed colleague. Be sure to check out the rest of the show too, it’s quite good.
This week’s Aberrant Gamer is an interesting look at sex/sexuality in games, from ICO to Mass Effect: Leigh Alexander has previously previously defended the busty and scantily—clad video game girl, but this time takes a different look at the subject. The mature vs. juvenile divide seems to be especially prominent in games, where it can seem like it’s either improbably perky cleavage stuffed into space age materials or sweetly innocent hand holding with little in between:
According to the game manual for Professor Layton and the Curious Village, the second game in the trilogy should be hitting US shores soon. Game Life is reporting that like it’s Japanese Counterpart, the US version of Professor Layton contains a password entry screen that can only be unlocked by playing the game’s sequel. The game manual states that the secret password “will be revealed in the sequel.”
We all know about horrible movie/game crossovers (going both ways), but what about books being turned into games? For the lit geek lurking in some of us, Insult Swordfighting has put together a very brief list of books that should be turned into games — and what those games ought to look like. For example, here’s one take on a Russian classic:
Former US Marine Eric W. Hall went missing last Sunday after leaving a relative’s house in Deep Creek, Florida. According to his family he had been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder since returning from from Iraq three years ago. Hall had returned home with a severe leg injury sustained from a bombing that also killed a close friend. Relatives report that Hall had been playing Call of Duty shortly before his disappearance and they believe that the game may have triggered some bad memories of wartime. While it is not a definitive fact that the game had this effect on him, given the amount of realism that is put into games these days it certainly seems a reasonable possibility.
Kotakuite the-hypnotoad toiled for months on this truly incredible 16 bit Samus painting. It is approximately three feet tall and stands watch over his desk. I’ve seen quite a few pixel paintings in my time and none of them comes even close to this. No decals here folk, that’s all hand painted. Amazing work, the-hypnotoad! Make the jump to check out a nice close-up of the work.
Rock, Paper, Shotgun has reprinted an older article of John Walker’s that appeared in The Escapist: a discussion of narrative versus graphics, old versus new. It’s an inherently flawed argument (which the author freely admits), singling out the FPS genre in a move that is a bit unfair, but it’s true that a strong narrative can overcome a lot of problems in the graphics department, assuming other pieces that make a strong game fall into place:
