Three Words I Said To The Man I Defeated In Gears Of War That I'll Never Say Again 
New Doom 3 For Xbox 360 And PlayStation 3 Supports Head-Mounted Displays 
Far Cry 3 And The Stranger In A Strange Land 
Why Robin Makes Batman Better 
Resistance: Burning Skies: The Kotaku Review 
Harley Quinn's Revenge Is Batman: Arkham City's Bad New Ending To: Ash & Luke From: Maggie Subject: Wacom tablets are kinda sexy as far as peripherals go
So I’ve got one of those tightly-wound, high-stress personalities, the kind that’s constantly worried and/or in a state of panic about something. One of the upsides of this is that I find repetitive, low-stress tasks (writing footnotes, cross-stitching, Harvest Moon) really soothing, which means I also think organizing things is great fun (a bonus in a field where you acquire astonishing amounts of paper, books, and notes on a near-daily basis). This year, I’ve been trying to organise my academic life: I’ve finally started taking class notes on my laptop, use a nifty program called DEVONthink that organises everything without me having to do much, and my boyfriend just got me a little Wacom tablet so I can take notes on books while reading without having to transfer them to digital versions later. It’s currently sitting on my coffee table, practically begging me to take notes on it. I just want to pet it — it’s so cute and wee and slim! Now I have to get started making a padded case for it, since it’ll be traveling to archives and libraries with me.
It was a slow weekend around here, but here’s some stuff you might have missed:
Blueberry Garden looks like a bizarre, yet intriguing, upcoming indie release; SSBB isn’t playing nicely with some Wiis; The crocheted version of our own Witzbold is available on eBay; In more shocking news, ‘X-Box Live’ lies to parents about nude pictures.
I’m off to pon-pon-pata-pon my way through some more of Patapon (See? There I go with the low-stress repetitive tasks again) and get some reading done. Hope y’all have a good week.
With the Dreamcast resurfacing recently in the news, the Escapist‘s interview with the guys behind Cryptic Allusion — one of the pioneers of the Dreamcast homebrew scene that is waning — is pertinent. Even though Cryptic Allusion has shifted away from Dreamcast homebrew, the interview is taken up with talk about what they did do for the scene, where it’s at now, and where it may be in the future. On the question of whether they’d like to see Sega try and re-enter the hardware market:
We still have our first batch of three tickets to give away for the Game On exhibit, so if you haven’t entered already, or have another retro gaming experience you’d like to share, put fingers to keyboard and email us! Then, be sure to check the site this Wednesday when we announce the winners.
For specific info on how to enter, hit up the original post.
The exhibit opened mid-last week and has a few months of excitement left to go. The official site has everything you need to read to convince you of its awesomeness.
Thanks again to the ACMI for supplying the tickets for the comp.
Week 1: Win Tickets To Melbourne’s Game On Exhibit [Kotaku AU]
I love promotional music videos for games, since they’re usually so wonderfully terrible they’re fantastic. It’s even better when there’s a weird story attached: GameSetWatch turned up a NeoGAF post regarding the fate of Irrational’s cancelled release, The Lost. The game has resurfaced (with reworked graphics, but with core mechanics and story relatively intact) as an Indian release for PCs under the title of Agni: Queen Of Darkness. As GSW neatly sums up, “… evidently this title went south, Irrational got bought by 2K and turned their attention to BioShock, and FXLabs managed to rejigger it for a Bollywood PC release.” But that’s not all! It even got its own music video featuring Bollywood star Malaika Arora. I’m entranced.
Irrational’s ‘The Lost’ Turns Up… In Bollywood?! [GameSetWatch]
If you missed the news, Nintendo Australia has confirmed that Mario Kart Wii will hit our sandy, irregular-shaped shores on April 24. The pack has an RRP of $99.95 and will include the racing wheel.
“Damn,” you might think “that’s a long time to wait!” But when you take into consideration it’s only two or so weeks behind Japan and Europe, and four full days before the US release, it doesn’t look so bad. One might even be tempted to say it’s good, or tasty like a chicken.
A cooked chicken, of course. Which you’ll find none of after the jump, because there’s a press release there instead.
CDC Games, one of Mainland China’s heavy hitters, sent out a press release last week detailing some metrics for their Mainland games, plus info on how Lunia has been doing in the US. Lots and lots of metrics to be had, but I guess that’s why CDC’s Ron Williams talked about how to compare apples to oranges. Williams says that CDC is “excited about the game’s potential to be a top online game in North America this year” and is hoping to leverage Lunia fans for future releases. Pertinent parts of the release after the jump, plus a link to the full release:
New Condemned 2 Screens Damn, do I love creepy. And scary. It’s a good thing then that I liked the original Condemned and the sequel’s just around the corner, because it has both of these in spades.
Kotaku Originals: From Gygax to Our First Review Yes, it’s time for your stories. Original stories. Great reading material for a Monday morning.
Yes, Guitar Hero: On Tour Is A DS Game The Office of Film and Literature Classification – the only website where you can confirm a rating and the existence of an unreleased game!
Dalan Musson, who did the writing for the video game based on The Golden Compass, sat down with Gamasutra to discuss the challenges of writing for movie-based games, and what’s different between writing for film and writing for games. It’s a short and illuminating interview — considering the plethora of bad adaptations out there (book to film, film to game, game to film …), it’s interesting to get perspective on what goes into writing for both mediums:
With Eidos’ decision to move their production headquarters to Canada, Tiga (a trade association representing European developer interests) is asking the British government to ensure that developers aren’t bailing ship for lower-cost, subsidised locales:
“UK games developers can compete successfully against games developers all over the world where market conditions are fair,” said Tiga CEO Richard Wilson.
“The UK is the fourth largest developer of games in the world in terms of revenue generation. Games developers contribute 30 per cent of the country’s media exports.
“However, Canadian government subsidies for games developers mean that the playing field is increasingly tipped against UK based games developers.”
Beyond the short-term fix of tax breaks, Tiga is agitating for a World Trade Organization investigation into whether Canadian incentives are breaking WTO rules on fair trade. Wilson said “If they do, as seems likely, the Government must take action via the World Trade Organisation against Canada at the earliest opportunity.” Who’s ready for a gaming industry redux of the Seven Years’ War?
Tiga urges government to create competitive environment [GamesIndustry.biz]
I’ve been playing (replaying parts) of God of War: Chains of Olympus on the Playstation Portable for a week or so now and so far it strikes me as one of the best games to hit the system to date. I’m about five hours in, nearing the end of the game, I believe, and there’s really not much to complain about. Sure, it’s God of War on a PSP, but what more would you expect? Yes, a review is coming Monday.
If you didn’t get the free Demo on UMD when it came out, you can still grab it directly over on the Playstation Store. I point this out because the downloadable demo isn’t exactly easy to find and some of you may not have realised it’s out there.
God of War: Chains of Olympus Demo [PS Story, thanks Brad]
