Looks like Team Bondi isn't the only Aussie developer after fresh blood. Pandemic today has posted new jobs on their website, if you think you have what it takes, or feel confident enough to trick them into thinking you have what it takes.

Keep in mind they're based in Brisbane, so unless you already live there, or are prepared to make the trip up for the interview (or even reside on that sunny, sunny coast), your dreams may be short-lived.

Pandemic Jobs - Brisbane [Pandemic, via Sumea]

We don't expect the lines in Akihabara or Den Den Town to reach the impressive levels of home, but don't think that Tokyo Game Show attendees are turning up their noses at Halo 3, just because it's on the Xbox Somethingorother. They waited, for hours—okay an hour at least—to get their hands on the game just a few days early. That 60-minute wait sign was quickly updated to 90 minutes after everyone in Microsoft's booth grew tired of playing Zoids Alternative and Dynasty Warriors 6. Respect, Halo 3. Much respect.

Sure, the waits for Biohazard: The Umbrella Chronicles (3.5 hours) and Devil May Cry 4 (just about all day) were a bit nuttier, but maybe the Japanese are warming up to Master Chief. We'll know at about 10 AM on September 27th if Halo 3 will be the 360's savior in Japan.

D3 Publisher's slash-hit series Onee Chanbara does cowgirls in bikinis right. The amount of zombie eviscerating is arguably perfect. The gameplay? Ehhhh... So why not add an extra layer of sloppy controls to the Onee Chanbara formula courtesy of the Wiimote and nunchuk controller? That was, I assume, the thrust of the white board concept meeting at Onee Chanbara R's developer Tamsoft. The TGS demo certainly gets the core elements right, there's loads of pink juicy blood squirting at the camera and plenty of opportunities for our hero Aya to perform fan service acrobatics. But the Devil May Cry Lite action doesn't impress. At all.

It sounds great on paper, perform slashing and stabbing motions with both halves of the Wii controller, using each hand to control an arm. It quickly grows tiresome when battling not only hordes of creatures, but fighting the craptastic camera as well. Many sword moves were interpreted liberally resulting in plenty of pantie revealing cartwheels. Yes, that was a complaint.

Onee Chanbara has never actually played that well, but slogging through the Wii version at Tokyo Game Show was more torturous than before. The only salvageable portions of the game—the campy blood sprays, the eyeballing of Aya, the progressively goofy kudos you get ("Sensual! Bluster! Ace!")—they're pretty much wearing thin by now. However, I will say that a zombie desperate enough to kick my ass, even if he's comprised of nothing more than some hips and a pair of legs, still gets a LOL.

Those who avoided the PlayStation 2 and Xbox 360 iterations may want to check it out for a laugh, but anyone looking for an action game on par with something like Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden or God of War will be disappointed. Anyone looking for a thrill should probably just tap into the terabytes of free porn available on the Internet.

While I'm all for the academic study of gaming, a lot of the "scientific" studies just kill me - if you spend too much time [insert time waster of your choice here] in college, your grades could drop? Really? And people actually get funding for this kind of stuff? The paper is being published by the National Bureau of Economic Research and was conducted at Berea College, where certain conditions meant that typical college time wasters weren't present. Video games, however, were - and they found that people who brought along video games to college (or had roommates who did) spent less time studying (and had a lower GPA) than people who didn't:

...The study needed an external factor that influenced study time. It found it in video games, specifically by dividing the students based on whether their roommates had brought gaming rigs to school. About half of the males and a quarter of the females fell into this group. But the impact of access to gaming didn't depend on the students' gender: those with video games in their rooms spent about two-thirds of an hour less on academic work per day out of a mean of 3.5 hours of study time. That decrease closely tracked the amount of time that the students reported spending gaming, suggesting that there was a direct transfer of effort between the two activities.

As Ars Technica points out, this is not really a gaming problem, rather a time management one. A life outside of academia is to be strongly encouraged (everyone needs an outlet for stuff not relating to books, lectures, tests, and essays), but it has to be balanced out with academic requirements. Isn't this simple common sense?

Deathmatch: video games vs. study time, a flawless GPA victory [Ars Technica via GamePolitics]

In celebration of Fallout's upcoming 10th anniversary, the people at No Mutants Allowed have been putting up information every two days since 17 September. Today's nostalgic treat? Four pieces of concept art from the original. You can check out the other three here and can keep an eye on their other offerings at their 10th anniversary page. [Thanks 'Brother None']

Gamasutra reports that Perpetual Entertainment has announced God & Heroes: Rome Rising is being delayed again, this time citing the need for more beta testing. In the same interview, Perpetual CEO Chris McKibbin said that Perpetual will be laying off 30-40 employees (the last delay of Rome Rising coincided with more layoffs) and clarified the company's relationship with SOE. As reported back in August, sources cited a changing relationship with SOE (with SOE moving from a co-publisher to a purely marketing role), but McKibbin clarified what he termed a "non-story":

Asked about reports that Sony Online had shifted from co-publisher to solely a marketing role with Gods and Heroes, representing a backing-off the project by Sony, McKibbin called it a "non-story that people spun a little." He clarified: "There was no change in our relationship with Sony... part of the confusion comes from the difference between online games and packaged goods games. Perpetual has always been the financer and creator of Gods and Heroes. What [Sony was] doing initially versus what they are doing now is the same; marketing and distribution, and that's it. We have a great relationship with them, and there hasn't been any change with that."

McKibbin didn't put a date on Rome Rising's ship date, saying only they are aiming for an early 2008 release.

Perpetual Announces Gods and Heroes Delay, Layoffs [Gamasutra via Worlds In Motion]

"Brooza" sent us a link to this pretty amazing Halo case mod. Me? Not a Halo person, but wow. The original post at Maxconsole says in part: "The creator is mentioned to be from the UK and is called 'Craget' with the following unit taking him 2 months to complete in his spare time. There are no internal modifications apart from the base cooler that he fitted with some LED's used to light up the case. The creator will soon put his creation up on eBay too." This is the sort of mod I'd love to see some step-by-step pictures of.

I was wringing dry the last drops of Activate Asia 2007 coverage from my notepad, and came across the childish scrawlings I took of Soldier of Fortune: Payback.

The details were presented to us by Steve Williams, Global Brand Manager for Activision Minneapolis - otherwise known as Activision Value - and given alongside such video game classics as Dancing With The Stars and Big Game Hunter.

Firstly, Raven, the developer of the previous two games, is not involved. Despite this, Williams said they will be bringing back the gib-enhancing GHOUL technology... it just won't be GHOUL. He didn't even say GHOUL. Just gibs.

There was also the promise of multiple paths through the story, which will revolve around the player's work for a merc group called "The Shop". To top this off, over 40 real world weapons have been replicated and implemented in-game, and 16-player multiplayer included.

Activision provided November 21st as the day Xbox 360, PS3 and PC owners will be able to snap SoF: Payback up. If you want to, that is.

Interactive fiction is a hot hot hot subject these days (at least in some circles), and plenty of independent takes have cropped up relatively recently. But David Cornelson, CEO of Textfyre, Inc., is setting out to see that interactive fiction gets a commercial resurgence, and has goals like getting a licence for Harry Potter IF game (hey, it would probably be better than the Wii version of the last game). Targeting reading-aged kids with an episodic format, Cornelson says to Gamasutra:

I think I will be able to sell hundreds of thousands of games in a year and we're going to expand into educational, subject-matter, library, and other markets and we will be the market leader in high quality text-based interactive educational entertainment.

I have to wonder how successful text-based games are going to be when aimed at a generation raised on CGI, but stranger things have happened (though it's certainly 'an eyebrow-raising prospect,' as GameSetWatch says). It's an interesting interview and an interesting concept - we'll see how it pans out in the future. Could it be that interactive fiction is no longer going to be the pet project of PhDs across the country? Though I really have a difficult time imagining this as a truly commercially viable concept.

Textfyre's Cornelson On An IF Resurgence [Gamasutra via GameSetWatch]

Shanda Entertainment - one of Mainland China's heavy hitters in the gaming industry - announced that their subsidiary, Aurora Technology, has frozen accounts of male players who have elected to play as female characters in the King of the World MMORPG. Apparently there are no bans on women playing male characters, but women (and men-wanting-to-play-as-women) will be required to prove their gender via webcam. How exactly is this all going to work? And is it going to last? Who knows - but it certainly seems very odd and not prone to lasting long:

Shanda (Nasdaq: SNDA) subsidiary Aurora Technology has frozen game accounts of male players who chose to play female in-game characters in its in-house developed MMORPG King of the World, reports 17173. Aurora stipulates that only female gamers can play female characters in the game, and it requires gamers who chose female characters to prove their biological sex with a webcam, according to the report.

PlayNoEvil's commentary points out that this doesn't seem like it will last long: a webcam gender verification system seems to be fraught with potential problems and headaches, and Aurora is trying to remove at least one aspect that attracts some people to online, fantasy-based games: the chance to be someone or something else.

Shanda's Aurora Bans Transsexuals [Pacific Epoch via PlayNoEvil]

In case anyone needed a reminder that nothing's ever anonymous on the Internet, and yes, your arse can get fired for stuff you put in your personal blog... or MySpace page... or Facebook page... comes the sad tale of Jessica Zenner, a 23-year old employee of Nintendo, was fired for her personal blog (allegedly). Of course, there's a "she said, company said" element here, and while Zenner says higher-ups never informed her of any Nintendo policy on blogging, a spokeswoman for the company said "[Zenner] was expressly discouraged from doing what she did. I've seen everything that she's written and it's really not work appropriate."

One post on Zenner's blog--titled "The Daily Weed"--begins with her disputing her friends' perception that she is a pothead. She digresses into a wry tirade against one of her bosses: "One plus about working with [a] hormonal, facial-hair-growing, frumpy [woman] is that I have found a new excuse to drink heavily," Zenner writes. "My gut tells me that this woman hasn't been fucked in years."

... [Rebecca Jeschke, a spokesperson for the Electronic Frontier Foundation] says labour laws vary from state to state, so free speech may not always be enough to protect a blogger from getting pink-slipped. According to the Washington State Attorney General's Office, there isn't anything in current Washington State law that specifically protects bloggers.

Ranting and raving against your boss is probably not the smartest idea in the world, even if you're writing under a pseudonym (Zenner posted pictures of herself, despite writing under the name "Jessica Carr"). It just goes to show that even tech friendly companies have their limits - Zenner is one of a longish line of people to be fired after their personal blogs were discovered by superiors.

Game Over: Nintendo Contractor Fired for Blog [The Stranger, thanks Stoli]

A new anthology on gaming - on design, architecture (both of the virtual and actual varieties), urbanism, and lots of other interesting and academic-sounding things - will be coming out next month (or November, for those of us in the US). Entitled Space Time Play: Computer Games, Architecture, and Urbanism: the Next Level, the volume brings together an impressive number of authors with a variety of backgrounds, and everything from game reviews to essays to interviews:

The richly illustrated texts in "Space Time Play" cover a wide range of gamespaces: from milestone video and computer games to virtual metropolises to digitally-overlaid physical spaces. As a comprehensive and interdisciplinary compendium, "Space Time Play" explores the architectural history of computer games and the future of ludic space. More than 140 experts from game studies and the game industry, from architecture and urban planning, have contributed essays, game reviews and interviews. The games examined range from commercial products to artistic projects and from scientific experiments to spatial design and planning tools.

"Space Time Play" is not just meant for architects, designers and gamers, but for all those who take an interest in the culture of digital games and the spaces within and modeled after them. Let's play!

The table of contents is, at first glance, a lengthy and fascinating list of topics that really do span a broad range. You can see for yourself at the Space Time Play site [via The Ludologist]

With the release of Halo 3 just days away the ultimate faceoff went down over the weekend at the Dover Speedway: Halo 3 took on the Wii in the form of a NASCAR racing pitting Greg Biffle versus David Stremme.

Exactly 306 laps into the 440 lap race Stremme's number 40 car blew its engine and sidelined the racer. No, I'm not making that up: The Halo car got a red ring of death.

Meanwhile Biffle's Wii mobile landed a respectable fourth place. Ouch.

Dover 440

I'm quietly confident that all the fuss over BioShock has passed... well, until Ken Levine announces in one of his many interviews an expansion or sequel, which he surely will.

You see, one reason why BioShock has done so well - and deserves an encore - is because of its amazing pedigree. One such father in the family tree is Thief, an FPS "sneaker" where the objective was to steal, rather than slay.

Over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun there's a fancy write-up (with included developer interviews) on Thief: Deadly Shadows, the third title in the Thief series. Although it was developed by the now-defunct Ion Storm, the first two titles were cooked up by Looking Glass, who's shattered remains became Irrational, and now 2K Australia/2K Boston (can we get this name shortened already? Sheesh. My vote is on 2K Aus/Bos).

The Making Of Thief: Deadly Shadows [Rock, Paper, Shotgun]

One of the most-ignored of the major titles on the showroom floor was the new Turok title, which found itself nestled at the back of Sega's impressively large presence. FPS shooters were going to struggle at the best of times at TGS, but this one isn't doing itself any favours. Mainly because the demo consisted of grass. Lots of grass. And very little else.

It was here, it was there, you could run through it, crawl through it, bad guys would pop out of it and you'd get yourself lost amongst it. Sure, it shakes in the wind, which is nice, as is the trample effect you get as you walk through it, but it's also BORING, and is literally all you notice about the demo. In an attempt to break up the grass walking there were some dinosaur bones, some gun-wielding soldier types and even some actual dinosaurs in there somewhere, but you could only sort of make them out amongst the, you know. Grass. On the bright side the dinosaurs were well done, and fighting them was a lot more entertaining than dispatching the generic future-army-guys.

If you're wondering if you can download this wonderful thing in digital form, the answer (at least for now) is a rather sad "no".

AhMan would like to point out that 2-player PS1 games via Adhoc is still in a very early development. It's not even in beta yet, actually.

[WIP Video] Adhoc PS1 games using 2 PSPs (!) [Maxconsole.net forums via Engadget]

All the Tokyo Game Show news in addition to the regular bits and pieces made Saturday and Sunday particularly information crazy. Here's the best of the rest.

Halo 3 Happy-Fun-Time Explosion
Frakenreview: Halo 3, Xbox 360

Halo 3 Review

Halo 3: Forge, Co-op Impressions

Halo 3 Super Duper Mega Gallery

Tokyo Game Show 2007 Super-Magic-Choice-Picks
King Of Fighters XII Confirmed

Square Enix Closed Mega Theatre

Justify Your Engine: Mark Rein

Look, It's A Wii Zapper Box

Discovering Infinite Undiscovery

Tokyo Game Show 2007: Good Impressions
As expected, the Xbox 360 doesn't represent much at all at TGS. Owners of Sony and Nintendo's consoles and handhelds should be ultra-excited, which is one better than mega-excited.

Project O (Wii)

Metal Gear Solid Online (PS3)

R-Type Tactics (PSP)

Space Invaders Extreme (DS)

No More Heroes (Wii)

Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword (DS)

We Love Golf! (Wii)

Bangaio Spirits (DS)

Final Fantasy Tactics A2 (DS)

I noticed that some of you were hoping to avoid having to read my sorta lengthy review of Halo 3 and just wanted a single score. I don't have a huge issue with providing scores to my reviews when I write for print publications, but I don't usually use them here on Kotaku because I don't think they do anything other than provide a hook for people to hang complaints on.

A review is a synthesis of a person's thoughts about a thing. A score is a synthesis of a person's review. So you miss out on a lot. But, I have a pretty specific idea of what I think Halo 3 deserves. When I reviewed it for the Rocky Mountain News (that review runs on Friday) I believe I gave it a B+, though I'd probably give the game a B to B+. So for the sake of specificity, I hereby declare that Halo 3 is a 87.5 percent game. And for the record, it didn't live up to the hype, but nothing could have.

Halo 3 Review

Marvellous Entertainment weren't going to let us leave TGS without a parting gift: these screens for upcoming Wii Strategy/RPG/thing Project O. Enjoy them at your own pace at home, on the go, alone or with friends. There's 12 in all, so hit the gallery for the rest.

Halo 3. It's Microsoft's trump card. Their ultimate attack. Their nuclear fusion kamehameha. And it's everywhere. More than any game that's come before, Halo 3 has transcended the cult borders of simple videogame launch to a full-fledged popular culture entertainment monster attack. But is the hype the fair response to Bungie's sweat or the product of Microsoft's mega-funded PR machine?

Hit the jump for our Frankenreview on Halo 3: you know, finish the reading.

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Only a Game has an interesting analysis of the potential impact of Will Wright's Spore. Some predictions and thoughts thrown out: Spore will move about 8 million units, has a poor hook outside more dedicated gaming populations, the game has swallowed up some of the industry's brightest talent, and has made EA rethink their strategy of relying on endless sports franchises. And what about changing the face of the industry?

A final problem with Spore is perhaps an unfair criticism. The games industry is in desperate need of innovation - new directions to explore. Spore doesn't really give us that. It's going to be an amazing piece of software, and no doubt an engaging play experience. But beyond that, it seems like a dead end. If it proves to be more successful than I predict, it won't help the industry because no-one other than Wright's team could afford to make a project of this nature. And if it proves to be less successful than I predict, will that make it even harder than it already is to push innovative projects through the publishing mill?

Some sweeping assessments, but a thought-provoking piece nonetheless. We'll find out how this all shakes out in April '08 (or later, if the release continues to be pushed back) when Spore is unleashed on the public.

Spore - An Assessment [Only a Game]

This was meant to be a review of the game, but is not. Why? Can't get out of the menu screens. See, Konami gave a few of us Japanese copies of Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops Plus. Which was awful nice of them, aside for the fact that none of us that got one are Japanese. Can't read it, can't speak it. First menu screen was probably the highlight (it's in English), but subsequent menu screens tend to clutter the game, resulting in a tedious, frustrating experience dogged by unintuitive controls and an over-reliance on text.

Contest time! We're giving away a Japan-only Adventure Island T-shirt signed by Takahashi Meijin and (yes, and) a Japan Halo 3 shirt as well as other stuff we stole were given. The contest is easy. Like, too easy. Here's the deal: Pick your favourite TGS post and write one paragraph why you like it. Be sure to include the post's URL! Send emails to kotakucontest@gmail.com with "fave" in the subject line... We will then pick the finalists, while Kotakuland picks the winner.

I got a little private room session with Kohei Shibata, producer of Super Swing Golf: Season 2. I had a great time with the first Super Swing Golf although I did find it rather hard. I had hoped they would do something to improve on it and my prayers were answered when the first thing he said was that they had made the game easier to use. They've taken the opportunity since the first game to brush up and simplify the controls and interface based on user's input about the first game. They made a point of reading blogs and reviews to see exactly what players were looking for as far as improvements.

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With monumental wait times for most games, TGS looks a bit like a Japanese theme park on its busiest day of the summer. I spotted these awesome Devil May Cry cosplayers waiting in a three hour line to play, what else, Devil May Cry 4. Poor kids, you'd think they'd let them to the front of the line...

After hearing from [NAME REMOVED] that Resident Evil 5 was set in Haiti, something we've been wondering about since the game's trailer appeared at Microsoft's E3 press conference, we wanted to check with Capcom on their home turf to see if we could confirm it. For the record, we really don't care where it's final location is—could be Raccoon Island for all we care—but we want to know why it's apparently some big secret. So we asked Resident Evil 4 producer Hiroyuki Kobayashi about it, assuming he probably runs into RE5 producer Jun Takeuchi now and then.

So, Kobayashi, is it Haiti? Because two online articles that fired up fanboy shields and cries of racism said it appeared to be set in Africa. The initial response was simply "Who told you that?" And after laughing off a rumoured alternate location ("What? Uganda?"), we finally got Kobayashi's response from the translator.

Kobayashi's answer was "I'm not working on Biohazard 5. I can't answer this question. You'll have to ask somebody else about that."

The translator helped us with the stuff between the lines. The real translation: "Don't ask me, basically. He said 'Please, ask me something about Devil May Cry.'" Damn, it's really hard to get a straight answer around here.

Regardless of the geographic setting, I expect that Resident Evil 5 is going to push some buttons and be the source of some heated debate. Racist exploitative trash or high concept metaphor wrapped in a horror-action game?

We'll have more Devil May Cry 4 details from our one-on-one with the man responsible for bringing Dante and crew to the new generation of consoles up later this week.

Because what the world really needs is another Naruto game, Ubisoft has announced their 2007-2008 holiday lineup. And what a lineup it is: there's quite a spread from chess to Beowulf to Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 (and, of course, Naruto). Full press release - and lineup - after the jump.

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Mark G. sent along a link to the Sega-themed episode of his show Geek Eats!. I laughed (it's been a long week), though I have to wonder if some people don't have too much time on their hands; still, it's a better way to spend a few minutes than watching 95% of the current offerings on Food Network. You can catch more episodes over at his Geek Eats website.

If our last Halo 3 gallery was ultra anatomical "ultraporn", our other gallery is more your stereotypical airbrushed shower scene. Every single in-game shot from Microsoft's 5GB asset disc is in the gallery below. Short of calling in a favour and having Master Chief show up at each and every one of your houses and performing fellatio on-call, this is the best gift we can give our Halo 3 loving readership.

Halo 3's single player campaign wasn't the only thing impressive about the game, it also has some pretty amazing multiplayer modes going for it.

I had initially blown off the need to play multiplayer during my trip to Bungie because I had played the game online with everyone else during the beta. But once they reminded me about their four player co-op mode and the Forge which allows you to edit multiplayer maps on the fly my interest returned.

Co-op will probably be the main reason I play the retail version of the game at my house once it officially launches. I've already beaten it on my own, so I don't really feel a burning need to do that again, but I would love to go through the game in Legendary mode co-op.

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I wasn't exactly thrilled when I heard that the only way I could play Halo 3 in time to meet my various deadlines was by flying out to Seattle and spending two days at Bungie's Kirland studio.

It wasn't that I didn't want to play Halo 3, or that I didn't watch to check out Bungie, I just didn't want to spend a big chunk of the week doing it.

The plan was to have a bunch of journalists fly to New York and Seattle and spend the next couple of days playing through the entire game on their own. The first day, I was told, was dedicated to the single player campaign. I would have time to play through the entire campaign by myself and then through a chunk of it with other gamers in co-op mode.

On the second day I was supposed to play around with Forge, Halo 3's robust map editing tools, and do some online multiplayer gaming.

I bummed a ride from an X-Play guy from the hotel that first morning, arriving at the studios about 9 a.m. We didn't get started until about 10:30 a.m. and I didn't wrap things up until about 11:30 p.m. Taking into account breaks to eat and drink and... um, dispose of what I ate and drank, the game took 12 hours to play through on the second hardest, Heroic, level. I've heard playing through on Legendary takes about 20 hours and scores you an extended ending.

After finishing, I realised why they had insisted we come to them to play the game. It wasn't because they wanted to exert some sort of control over our opinions, or control our access, they just wanted to make sure we had the time, and undivided attention, to play through the game's campaign in one go. And it was worth it. It helped me view the game from a unique perspective I'm rarely afforded. I was, in playing the game from end-to-end in one go, able to appraise it more like I would a movie, noticing both the plot's highs and lows, but also the ebb and flow of level design and issues that cropped up on occasion.

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Kids have gotta learn. And if there's one thing they need to learn about TGS more than any other, it's how to take lecherous photos of booth bots cope with waits of up to 2-3 hours just to play some game for 15 minutes. Best way to learn something? Experience it. This is the wait for Dragon Quest at the TGS Kid's Corner. 150 minutes, and that's just from where that sign is. So the total wait is around three and a bit hours. Pretty brutal for a six year-old, even if they get two free DQ cards for their trouble.

A four-kiosk attack of Xbox Live Arcade games was nestled in the middle of Microsoft's Xbox 360 booth at TGS, showing off dozens of titles old and new. Only one contained the XBLA remake of Treasure's black and white shmup Ikaruga in playable demo form. Featuring the first level of the game, the demo station at Tokyo Game Show may not have shown the remake in the best light. While Ikaruga for XBLA looks spectacular in screenshots—and according to Flynn, "really sharp" on a 42" HDTV—seeing it in non-tate mode on a 22" LCD doesn't show off the game's graphical upgrades in the proper light.

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Wireless provider Docomo publishes a series of motion controlled games (using accelerometers and cameras) that our own Luke Plunkett got to test for your enjoyment. Here he tries bowling, with the phone's screen transmitted to the television so we can see it. Luke's two-word review: "terrifyingly realistic".

The main section of TGS? Kinda seedy. There's hundreds of women walking around in naught but a sliver of PVC, there's an overpowering stench you could cut through with a spoon and the heat and crowds get most people a little on the surly side. In short, not a nice place for kids. Luckily, then, there's a spacious Kid's Corner at the end of the show, with plenty of ventilation, lots of suitably-attired, patient booth persons ready to help the little tykes out and a fuckton of pint-sized Pokemon and Dragon Quest demo units.

We don't feel that Resident Evil 4 director Shinji Mikami should have gone through with his threatened self-decapitation just because the Gamecube game got the PlayStation 2 port treatment, but someone simply must answer for Resident Evil 4 Mobile Edition. In all seriousness, the game looks pretty respectable for a 3D mobile port of the most attractive Resident Evil to date, but anyone expecting something better than a PS One-level appearance will be disappointed.

The demo on hand for Resident Evil 4 Mobile Edition was super brief, but the trailer running on the perimeter of the booth indicated that the game was very much in-depth. Boss fights, Ashley escorting, loads of shooting poverty stricken villagers in the face—it's all here. A bit rough around the edges and features extremely purple "zombies" but not a bad effort. Just don't expect a Gamecube in your pocket.