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 Anyone who has ever had the misfortune of having a mahjong addict neighbour can attest to the double-edged sword that is traditional table games: the sensation of having smooth and cool tiles in your hand can be a pleasurable one, but damn it all if that incessant shuffling isn’t irritating after hours and hours of it into the wee hours. Still, it’s the positives of the sense of touch that Ian Bogost picks up on in his latest Gamasutra column. Using the classic game of Go as a starting point and ending with Rez, he takes a look at what games can do — and maybe should do — to enhance the tactile pleasure of playing:
Quite literally. “The Hell of Sand” is a brilliant time-waster of a flash game. “There are many dynamics to this game but no goal. Play around for a while and you’ll get the hang of it.” Great premise.
You play with four streams of coloured sand using 18 different effects, some of them working in awesome combinations with each other.
C-4 and Torch, for example, wasn’t too hard to figure out. I’ve also been making little cups of gunpowder and blasting them to hell with torch. But can someone tell me what “plant” does? Does it grow in the water? I can’t figure it out.
I drink my beer out of plain glassware, but if you’re a Portal fan and prefer to imbibe out of something a little heftier, these $US 14.99 beer steins are for you. It’s a clever little twist on Portal‘s … portals, and reasonably priced to boot.
The Portal Stein [via Geekologie]
Oh, the punny, punny Chinese language — an article from an Indian site noted that a “new online game” is offering Chinese players the chance to go after people engaging in cangdu (smuggling drugs, 藏毒) which, if you use the other pronunciation of the first character, sounds like zangdu (Tibetan independence, 藏獨). Some perfunctory nosing around revealed some frighteningly nationalistic rambling and cranky Taiwanese gamers, though at least one ‘game’ would appear to be new content for an existing MMO, QQ Huaxia. Says the (unnamed in the article) company:
Game With a Brain put up this render of Scorpion yesterday, didn’t say where they got it from but it might be an in-game pose. Pretty nice uniform update, with the bone mask and all; but his tunic looks sorta like one of those beaded massagers cab drivers sit on. I kid, Mr. Scorpion, I kid.
So someone already did Dress Like Niko, can anyone tell me how much this business-caz ensemble goes for? I think I could pull off that look.
And remember children, bone masks are OK. Skull bongs are not.
Image of the Day: Scorpion Gets a Spiffy New Look [Game With a Brain]
So Bash ducked back in to give you the first Gears of War 2 gameplay footage from 1Up/GameVideos.com last night (apparently there was some international video-leaking and embargo-breaking intrigue; we had no part in it). This morning we’ll update you with GameVideos’ overnight post of two more videos: A CliffyB-free gameplay version (above). And an analysis (after the jump) of the first video, pointing out and freezing cool details that might have got lost in the action. They also analyse Cliffy, but not too closely.
“Gears of War 2″ is due for release in November on Xbox 360 only.
