High Scores And Egos: There's Always A Bigger Doodle 
The Last Moments Of GAME 
How Bad User Interfaces Are Ruining Video Games And Other Wonderful Things 
She Tried To Make Good Video Games For Girls, Whatever That Meant 
The Story Of Doodle Jump: Brotherly Love And Digital Snacks 
Sunday Comics: Dead Island
With around 82 million players worldwide, odds are at some point you’re going to be playing the hit Facebook game, Farmville. Kotaku went directly to Zynga’s Farmville team for tips and tricks on harvesting your way to the top.
Wired GameLife’s Chris Kohler sat down with some of the Harmonix folks to drag out some pro-drumming tips from them. Apparently it’s not just about playing a song over and over and over again, there are a lot of little secrets that can ease your drumming pains.
For instance, the article explains the difference between heel-up and heel-down kick pedaling and when each should be used. It also talks about some of the issues inherent with using a pedal created for a game rather than a real drum’s pedal. Other tips get into hand position, strokes, finger usage and some great practice tips. Finally there’s a listing of some places on the net to find some good drum instruction and the songs in the game that are best for practicing drums on.
All-in-all it’s a great read and an excellent primer for faux, and perhaps real, drumming.
In a rare leak for a Nintendo game, it appears scans of the Super Mario Galaxy strategy guide reveal a second, as yet unknown playable character. No, it’s not the penguin shown above, but someone familiar. The secret character won’t be available from the outset of the game and will, in fact, require a fairly high amount of item collecting to unlock.
While the alternate playable character probably won’t come as a whopping surprise to longtime Nintendo fans, in the interest of helping some of our more sensitive readers spoiler-free, details on the secret are after the jump.
I’d like to think I am not the only one who bought Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles for the PSP last week for the sole purpose of having a portable copy of Symphony of the Night on hand at all times, only to find myself jumping through hoops to unlock my main reason for picking up the title in the first place. Well rather than have you go through the agonizing hours filled with senseless deaths that I went through, I figured I would just give you the skinny on unlocking the game up front. First off, you need to get to stage 2 in the main game. At one point a giant bull creature starts chasing Richter, and rather than jumping over the holes in the floor, you’ll want to fall into the first one. Finish the level and you’ll find yourself in an alternate stage 3.
This is a little How To video for getting outside the level in the Pit on Halo 3 using Forge.
If you needed further (or, you know, any) enticement to get off your arse and earn all 1000 of Halo 3‘s achievement points, consider your reward for doing so: Ninja Gaiden swag. Get every achievement and you’ll pick up Ryu’s sword, which looks nice (if canonically blasphemous), but sadly isn’t usable. It just sits on your back. Get every achievement and every gold skull and you’ll get yourself his helmet.
Having a hard time finding all the hidden skulls in Halo 3? Curious about what they all do? Instead of bogging yourself down with icky reading, GameTrailers has assembled a helpful video guide revealing the locations and characteristics of (nearly) every one of the game’s boney power ups. Collecting them all nets you the ninja-riffic Hayabusa armor, further strengthening the Team Ninja and Bungie love-in.
