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Which Home Consoles Do You Own? Why, Why?
Posted by Brian Ashcraft at 4:30 PM on April 5, 2008
Gather around children! It's that time of the week again, time to confess your sins to the TUD Giraffe. He's already to listen with open ears and arms. For those not in the know, Tell us Dammit is our opportunity to learn more about you reader person. That way we can feel closer! And perhaps, even for a fleeting second, feel kinda bad when we ban your arse. Here's how it works: We ask a question. You answer it. So! This week, the TUD Giraffe asks:
What home consoles do you own? And why?Here, in Japan, I've got a PS2, a broken DC, a GC, a PS3, an Xbox 360 and a Wii. Why...? Hrm, 'tis me job, boy, me job.
Didn't 
Eggs! Reader TheBlur send this TF2 entry he made with 3 buddies. Here's what's going on: Decorate an egg (yes, an actual egg), take a pic of it with a Kotaku sign and send it to kotakucontestATgmailDOTcom. Commentland will vote for its favourite finalist. Clocks ticking away, folks!
EA's multi-platform racer Burnout Paradise has sold a cool million copies worldwide. The open world game's gotten solid reviews and offers up 
You may recall the previously handy Nintendo evolution chart, chronicling the change from 8-bit sprite to modern day Super Smash Bros. Brawl polygonal form, but it wasn't quite complete. The creator, Kotaku commenter TaeK, has tied up a few loose ends, going beyond Mario, Link, Samus, Donkey Kong, Kirby and Sonic, fleshing it out with Wario, Pikachu, Peach and more. He's pulled out a few hidden, classic characters that may be considered Brawl spoilers. Make the jump for the full, giant pic.
What's it like making the follow up for million-selling, universally-panned 50 Cent: Bulletproof? Total freedom? Or is Fiddy running the show? ProllySays game director Julian Widdows at UK dev Swordfish Studios:
Enterprising map makers and modders will have a handful of new toys to play with in Halo 3's Forge creation tool when the Legendary Map Pack ships. And while new scaffolding and tweaked shipping containers may get you moist, it's the new suite of visual filters that may excite Halo fans most. The latest Bungie weekly update reveals the latest Forge improvements, including funky and fresh filters that will give your map a "juicy", "gloomy" or "old timey" look. That's great and all, Bungie boys, but what we need is the ability to generate lens flare under any lighting condition. We require massive amounts of lens flare!
Back in February, 
The story of De Blob is fairly simple. A race of evil aliens come to a friendly planet and suck all the colour out of it, leaving it all white and shades of grey. As one of the remaining unaffected blob-like denizens of the planet, it is up to you to restore the world to its full colour capacity. This goal is achieved by rolling your little blob around the world and picking up colour bottles. Once you have picked up a colour, simply touching an object will turn it that colour and give you some points. You can also mix your colours for some different effects. For instance, say you are yellow and want to change to orange. Simply roll over a red bottle and, voila, you are now orange. Rolling over the red bottle again will revert you to red. 
The folks from Pixar were on hand to show off the video game adaptation of their animated movie, Wall-E. In Wall-E, the world has been taken over by a benevolent corporation and in a little switch, it's the consumers who are the enemies rather than the big corporate menace. Players can either take on the role of Wall-E (a trash compactor robot that looks like a cross between R.O.B. and Johnny 5) or the sleek and "iPod inspired" Eve, a flying female robot with a killer laser, both of whom are trying to save the universe from its own twisted remains.
It's many years in the future and the great Apocalypse has come upon the Earth. Angels are fighting demons on what remains and those left behind wander the world as soulless zombies. This sets the stage for THQs new IP, Darksiders: Wrath of War. In Darksiders, you take on the role of War, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, making your way down to wreak havoc on the charred remains of the Earth.
I kicked off last night's THQ Gamer's Day with a look at Saints Row 2 for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. As we reported earlier today, the release date has been set for August 26th and, from the looks of it, THQ and Volition have packed it full of new features.
Next week, the "HMX Pack" of Rock Band bonus tracks—previously only available via the Official Xbox Magazine—will be released from its physical confines and arrive on the Xbox Live Marketplace via digital alchemy. The pack contains the following trio of jams, each of which will be 80 Microsoft Points, bundled for 240 Microsoft Points. PlayStation 3-style Rock Band owners will get them on or soon after April 15, when the PlayStation Store reappears, for US 99 cents each.
Rockstar Games has snapped up Mad Doc Software, the team that handled development duties on Bully: Scholarship Edition for Xbox 360 and Wii. Guess that buggy 360 version didn't leave too sour a taste in the Rockstar family mouth. Based in Andover, Massachusetts the studio will now be known as Rockstar New England, making it the fourth North American arm of the Take-Two publishing label. The new Rockstar New England is said to have "a particular focus on artificial intelligence and networking", potentially good news for online offerings from the pub. Congrats to the ladies and gentlemen in Andover. The full press release, with a bit more info, is right after this short break.
This week at the Smash Bros. Dojo, it's nothing but "spoilers." Hidden characters, unlockable stages, post completion goodies—you know the drill. The most interesting thing to come out of producer Masahiro Sakurai's official blogging was his wee opinion paragraph about the lack of new Nintendo owned characters this decade. It might be annoying as a producer, I suppose, but I don't have such an aversion to playing through yet another Mario starring adventure. The rest of the updates are more in the way of T-crossing and I-dotting, as the twilight days of the official site and its daily updates draw closer. In the meantime, take part in more Super Smash Bros. Brawl conversation after this week's Dojo Dump.
It's time to charge up the AAs and get some much needed Wii time in. I'll be mucking around with a bit of Sega's The House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return, as I've never made it all the way through the third game in the series. I've also been slacking on properly finishing Super Mario Galaxy, an unfortunate black mark on my permanent record. When I'm not doing that, I may be farting around on PartnerNet, working on something for next week. I'll also be performing the Great Gawker Contractor Receipt Hunt in anticipation of a gruesome meeting with my accountant, at which a fantastically large check to the IRS will be written out.
When long-time GameSpot reviewer and editorial director Jeff Gerstmann was let go from the site last November—with sources pointing to his review of Kane & Lynch: Dead Men as the catalyst for his termination—fingers were also pointed at executive Josh Larson, VP of games at parent company CNET. Larson, who replaced former Editor in Chief Greg Kasavin, was implicated by anonymous GameSpot employees to have had the "church-and-state" separation between the sales teams and the editorial team" "cracked" under his tenure. Whether the VP, Jeff's supervisor at the time, was the key decision maker in letting Gerstmann go we can't confirm, but we can confirm that Larson will be leaving the company next week.
We had some breaking Eye of Judgment news to tell you, but then we kind of leaked it all in the headline. Regardless, Sony has announced that the formerly delayed Eye of Judgment Series 2 cards will be available April 28th in US stores. The related download (we're assuming to make the pretty cards work) will be available in the PlayStation Store on April 25th. We're sorry, we mean the newly redesigned PlayStation Store on April 25th.
Nintendo's official "Iwata Asks" segment is up in which Nintendo President Satoru Iwata interview Kenichiro Ashida, Hideki Konno and Shigeru Miyamoto about Mario Kart Wii. Fans of the series will enjoy the interview that's chock full of "(laughs)" from the Nintendo insiders. But what's particularly interesting is their discussion about Wii Wheel development. They spill some interesting factoid, like that they tested roughly 30 different prototypes. Some were not white, some were not perfectly round.
Denis Dyack didn't break a sweat justifying the priorly planned Too Human trilogy, but could Bioware justify their plan for three Mass Effects beyond wanting to make three times as much money? Bioware co-founder Ray Muzyka had this to say on the matter:
Damn you, clever advertisers! Normally I'm immune to the charms of viral marketing. But give me a dramatic, nonsensical image and throw some things to find in it and...growing...weak...must...waste...time...
After transplanting Master Chief from his warm, green home on the Xbox 360 to the PlayStation 3, it was hard to imagine a greater iconoclastic modder offense...but one may have just happened. The newest entrant to the UTIII unlicensed mods club is this Samus Aran skin. Play Metroid, kinda, on your PS3!
30 Days Of Night artist Ben Templesmith does damn fine work - fine enough to land him a gig penciling the comic book prequel to EA's Dead Space, as well as doing some design work for the game itself. In a recent interview at Comics 101, Seth "4:10" Robison asked Templesmith how he'd react if EA approached him for a 30 Days Of Night game.
Gran Turismo 5 Prologue is a demo. A big one, yes, but a demo it remains, one that gives us but a taste of what we can expect from the full, final Gran Turismo 5 when it ships on the PS3 sometime next year. Serious fans of the series will no doubt already know what they're getting themselves into with this whole "Prologue" business, then, and won't give a monkey's brass balls what I say from here on in.
A sense of community is important to NASA. That's why they opened a NASA mansion for parties and just hanging out, hacking software and making Uranus jokes. But the NASA mansion was only good during the night. NASA's Andrew Hoppin explains how Second Life allowed connections during the day.
One day I hope to be half the video game shoe connoisseur that Crecente is, but I'm quite a long way off. For example, when he saw these Pac-Man-inspired kicks from British clothing company Ben Sherman, I very much doubt there is a measure of time small enough to quantify the time between the initial page load and check out confirmation. I, on the other hand, waited for several minutes, hemming and hawing over $US 60 for a pair of canvas sneakers that I will probably never wear for fear of scuffing them, like the Asteroids Pro Keds I picked up last year. Oh well, I suppose there's only one thing for it. *closes eyes and places order* If you don't see yourself buying them it doesn't count.
Last night saw a swanky soirée that was otherwise known as THQ's Gamer's Day '08. After being held in a room and plied with top shelf booze and fancy finger foods for an hour, we were finally treated to what we came there for, the games! They had quite a few games showing including Saint's Row 2, Red Faction: Guerrilla, Darksiders and Deadly Creatures. Also on hand were Battle of the Bands, De Blob, Wall-E, Baja and a new Destroy all Humans game. Despite being talked about at the beginning of the presentation, Dawn of War 2 was no where to be found amongst the demo stations. Keep an eye out this evening for all of my coverage of this rather large event and tons of hands-on impressions when the embargo lifts.
Codemasters Online has teamed up with casual gaming heavyweight MumboJumbo to bring causal gaming titles to all the good little boys and girls of Europe. 10 titles are on track for a release this month alone across the PC, PSP, DS, Wii, and PS2. Titles include LUXOR, LUXOR 2, and several games that are entirely unrelated to LUXOR. 
The abomination from Monolith's upcoming Project Origin doesn't look half as terrifying standing in freeze-frame as it