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 
High Scores And Egos: There's Always A Bigger Doodle Lest anyone missed this little gem among the E3 hubbub, Blizzard has scored a victory against WoW bot maker Glider. Don’t remember that whole kerfluffle? Blizzard sued Glider over EULA infringement for copying code, as well as the ancillary issue of pissing WoW users up and gobbling up resources. Glider shot back with ‘But grinding your way to level 70 is boooooring.’ Probably unsurprisingly, this argument did not go over very well in court and Blizzard won its summary judgment motion. All’s well that end’s well … or is it? Over at PlayNoEvil, there’s some interesting analysis on what this judgment could mean and why it may not be all that it’s cracked up to be:
Not sure what to make of this. Bullshit radar says “proof of nothing” because there’s no reason for tech support to be looped in on a game in development. That said, two guys worked up an extremely patient, social engineering prank that had 2K Games support believing, or at least suspicious of the possibility of a hacked Grand Theft Auto IV demo on pirate sites. And in the back-and-forth, it turned up this reply from tech support:
With an aging gaming population comes more gamers with money, which means … money to spend on travel. Bonnie Ruberg takes a look at where gamers would go given $US 1,500 for expenses for a ‘game-related’ vacation. PAX? E For All? Tokyo Game Show? … Disneyland? I can’t remember the last proper vacation I had, but I can say definitively I wouldn’t be planning it around a convention or expo. In fact, a weekend off with time to do nothing but hang out would be a treat right now:
Reader Paul from Australia sends in this pic (and two others) of his homebrewed homage to Pyro from Team Fortress 2. Naturally, because this is how my mind works, I thought “well if Pyro is a female character, this dude is running around in girls’ clothes”. I kid! I keeeed! The mask is right on, but the suit’s not the same texture as Pyro’s rubberised get-up, which in addition to being expensive would also look like fetish gear. What. What?!
No really, I think I have a strange form of Tourette’s, that causes me to blurt out wildly inappropriate, if not profane, things. Fahey and Leigh can attest to that. So can my girlfriend from my senior year of high school. We saw “Ghost” on a date and, while she was crying during the scene where Patrick Swayze possesses the mystic’s body so he can hold his wife one last time, I leaned in close to whisper, “You know, what’s really going on here, is Demi Moore is actually dancing with and kissing Whoopi Goldberg”. And I wondered why I was a teenage virgin.
Wow, that was a digression. Hit the jump for the images.
Paul also advises that it’s available for sale if you want to buy it. You can e-mail him, just be sure to remove the ATs and DOTs.
Danc at Lost Garden has another take on the utility (or lack thereof) of game reviews in today’s gaming landscape, this one looking at the ‘expertise bias.’ He points out the disparity between reviewers and players when it comes to looking at new games — especially ones that have a gentle difficulty curve. His basic operating premise is that because game reviewers have plowed through so many titles and mechanics, they’re looking at ‘difficulty’ in an entirely different light than vast portions of the audience. What will the future look like? He posits observation of other players is going to become increasingly important to developers, and if reviews can’t keep up with that, they will really fall by the wayside:
Reader Sourside21 found four Photobucket images of Soulcalibur IV breaking the street date by about 10 days. Well, maybe. It looks like these guys are playing it in the back of a store, so maybe they’re employees (or friends) playing with the stock after hours. Naturally, we don’t see any gameplay. But we do see the character selection page and Kratos ain’t on it. “We’ll probably be getting a lot of information on how each of the characters play soon”, Sourside21 surmises. Good bet. All the full size photos are on the jump. Officially, Soulcalibur IV drops on July 29 in North America, July 31 in Japan, Australia and Europe, and Aug. 1 in the UK.
You know, when some of us decide we’re starting all over and the place needs a new look, we take some cheap furniture or knicknacks to the dump or have a yard sale. Lara Croft packs her home with explosives and goes for the extreme makeover. Speaking of, she looks completely different, like a Bratz biker, almost. Where are the trademark shorts?
Looooong trailer for the subject matter (and being entirely a pre-render.) But it’s out Nov. 8, on PC, the next-gens, PS2 and DS. And I suppose then, or before, we’ll get the story of why she went and blew up her own manor.
Tomb Raider: Underworld E3 Exclusive Trailer [Gametrailers]
This being the E3 week, we churned out a huge amount of reporting and you consumed it in record-breaking numbers. Knowing that this post would serve as an E3 recap of sorts, I’ve categorised some things out in the jump. This covers stories that we tagged original; there might have been some others from the conference that didn’t get that tag. Either way, this is our comprehensive E3 coverage list, so if you’re not seeing something below, check that.
As a part-timer and the least experienced game writer on this staff, I had my own impressions of E3 which I will write up later, from an outsider’s perspective. (I was only there Sunday and Monday). We all work in separate cities, and this event allows us a time to work together, in person. And the Kotaku staff of Fahey, Bash, McWhertor, Leigh, Adam, Maggie and of course, Crecente — with help from Gawker managing editor Noah Robischon in Los Angeles, and Jim Reilly working offsite on multimedia assets — came together like a team of superheroes to put out one hell of a report for you this week. They’re all recovering this weekend, but show the Supa-Kotakufriends a little love in the comments.
Highlights Nintendo Introduces Wii Motion Plus Xbox Division FINALLY Reports Profitable Year Tretton: Sony Considering PSP with Harddrive Mario & Zelda Teams Both “Hard At Work” On Wii Games The New Xbox Experience: Just The Facts (And Maybe Some Conjecture) Ladies And Gentlemen, We Have Booth Babes
Much more after the jump.
