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 Quickjump reports that, according to a Nintendo news release, Disaster: Day of Crisis, being developed by Monolith Soft for the Wii won’t make its July 2008 release date in Japan and has been delayed indefinitely.
Reason for the delay: lengthen the development process to improve the quality of the product. That has back-to-the-drawing-board written all over it, IMHO. The game involves surviving/coping with repeated natural disaster strikes while taking down a rogue military unit that’s seized a nuclear weapon — 24 meets The Day After Tomorrow meets The Core meets … So it will need big visuals and super realistic physics to be a winner. Maybe that’s the problem, who knows.
Disaster: Day of Crisis Delayed Indefinitely [Quickjump Network, thanks El Cernex]
We meditated on the question of difficulty in games last weekend, and Ernest Adams is now over at Gamasutra mulling the same problem (sort of). What’s the best, most satisfying way to implement difficulty — or more precisely, difficulty settings? He looks at suggestions found in Interactive Storytelling by Andrew Glassner and has some of his own (and why dynamic difficulty adjustment may not be the answer):
This, courtesy of Playr TV over on the UK’s Bravo, seems to be the video that Flynn saw at the Sierra Spring Event back in April. If you’re itching for this game, due out on all platforms around Halloween, you’ve probably seen gameplay clips in other videos so far. This one is a good five-minute look that lets you form your own impressions of the game, due out around Halloween on all platforms. A few of mine after the jump.
Looking for new reading material? A new book is out examining WoW, and is available from Amazon for the nice price of $US 19.77 (not bad for a book coming from an academic press!). I’m personally really fond of edited volumes, and this one sounds pretty interesting — both in the contents and background of the research. Scott Rettberg, one of the contributors, explains:
Another reason this is hell? Think of another thing gamers enjoy that requires opposable thumbs.
My vision of hell would be something like no opposable thumbs and nothing to play but Left Behind: Eternal Forces. On Intellivision.
Gamer’s Hell [Toufee.com]
Alligator skin: Nothing like taking one of nature’s top carnivores, a beast with no natural predators (except some jackarses on a fanboat), and turning it into something trivial. Once I ate alligator meat on a foccacia. A gator might dismember you in two bites and I imagine that hurts, but winding up as a sandwich? Pwned.
