Not only is this the first Tekken game appearing on a console that doesn’t have Sony in the front of its name, it’s also the first Tekken game to ship with online multiplayer built right in. On top of all of that, the game features 42 different characters — the largest roster ever seen in a Tekken game.

With all of these big numbers and firsts going down, you’d think there was no way Namco Bandai’s latest fighter could fail. Then again, odds are you aren’t one of the assembled game critics. These guys are.

VideoGamer
It seems difficult to criticise Tekken 6 for feeling like an uninspired effort from Namco Bandai in the same year we heap praise upon Street Fighter 4 — a fighting game Capcom is delighted to hear described as Street Fighter 2.5. But it lacks the freshness, sparkle and zing SF4 has in abundance. It lacks excitement, pizazz and spunk. It feels tired and devoid of new ideas. And yet, it’s Tekken. The one-on-one fighting is just as bone-crunching, spine-snapping and easy to learn yet hard to master as it’s always been. If it ‘aint broke…

1UP
Tekken 6’s netcode will disappoint online players. Online matches persistently run below optimal conditions, even if your opponent lives close to your area. The netcode isn’t as bad as, say, The King of Fighters 12, but it’s not even close to other recently released fighters (Blazblue and Street Fighter 4). It’s a shame that Namco didn’t put more resources and development time into optimising Tekken’s online component, because Tekken 6 is an excellent fighting game. The core mechanics sit on a solid foundation, emphasising movement on the X and Z-axis, close-range fighting, mix-up games involving a high-low-throw system (high and mid attacks must be blocked high; low attacks blocked low; throws are unblockable) and frame traps based on a move’s speed and recovery.

GameSpot
Even series veterans may find Tekken 6’s jam-packed character selection screen a little overwhelming because it’s initially tough to identify characters from their small portraits alone. But once you’ve found your favourites, experienced Tekken players will see that the tweaks and changes made to the move sets of returning characters are, for the most part, minor. Most characters get a new attack or two, some stances have been modified, and it seems the damage dealt by some of the more powerful combos in the past have been slightly toned down. Despite this, all of the returning characters feel completely familiar, so you’ll never feel like you have to relearn your favourite fighter from scratch.

Game Informer
Newcomer Lars is the focus of the new Scenario Campaign mode, which is the weakest aspect of the game. Cutscenes are surprisingly long considering they make little to no sense and feature (surprise!) a spiky-haired protagonist with a case of amnesia. This mode has its own built-in version of arcade mode, featuring CG endings for characters after a few short fights. Going back to the lazy beat ‘em-up levels of Scenario Campaign is rough after a few traditional one-on-one fights, as the colourful and interesting locales of the latter are replaced by the cut-and-paste docks and bland environments of the former.

TeamXbox
One of the Tekken’s biggest draws has always been that its accessibility, regardless of your skill level. Whether it was the first time you’ve ever played a fighting game or it was just another notch in your extensive fighting-game prowess, you could pick up a controller and get into the action. Things aren’t any different in Tekken 6. While the simplicity of the game’s controls will keep newcomers from getting frustrated, there’s still a surprising amount of depth in the fighting system. Punches, kicks, throws, grabs, blocks…button mashing will only get you so far in Tekken, but to really excel, you’re going to need to pick a character and learn all of the nuances of his or her fighting style. Tekken is a game in which you’ll live and die by your use of combos. And all of this without a ranged attack anywhere in sight.

Kotaku
I’m a big fan of the Tekken franchise, but I really don’t care about the single player campaign. All I want is to be able to smack other people around online, at home or in AI-controlled arcade mode. So I can forgive almost all of the issues I pointed out. They’re almost entirely about what I think is a completely needless single-player campaign. What I can’t forgive, won’t endure, is online lag. Let’s hope Namco gets right on patching that, because until they do I won’t be risking my piddly ranking.

Aww, their poor net code.

We checked with four online retailers and online shopping services to see how their prices compared to the ones found in the online Playstation Store. The results? A little surprising.

With only half of the top-rated Playstation Portable games (shown in order of ranking) currently available online, it’s hard to do a meaningful comparison. It is interesting that the inability to find a particular used title can drive up the price in a store, but doesn’t seem to impact its price online.

While the difference for many of the available games online often isn’t substantial, the Playstation Store’s relatively high price for a game like Wipeout Pure, which has been around for awhile and will run you nearly half the price in a store, is troubling.

Methodology: We used Gamerankings.com to find the 10 highest-rated games on the Playstation Portable. Prices were checked Sunday night. For used games we used the “like new” condition prices when available or “very good” condition when the service didn’t include like new as an option. In the case of Google, we used Google Shopping to find the best price of a used title from a retailer.

Beware: Lots of words for body parts are used in this post.

As it has slowly revealed the parts of its least subtle action game, EA had revealed different sinful circles of its Hell in different regions. We’ve previewed some. There was no hidden meaning in introducing Lust in Japan, the game’s executive producer, Jonathan Knight told me as I got ready to play part of it at EA’s multi-game press event at a rented museum hall in Tokyo.

Each level of the game draws from the descriptions of Hell in the classic Dante’s Divine Comedy, referencing the imagery of the Inferno mapped in the legendary poem. The game uses that scenery as backdrop for its God of War-styled gameplay and as fodder for its base delights.

The result of EA’s efforts on Lust were evident in a snippet of the level I played on Wednesday in Tokyo. The a section that featured floors of Hellish architecture decorated with a pattern of swimming sperm. Walls in the level had more sperm designs as well as portals shaped as labia. Columns surrounding a circular elevator that the game’s hero, Dante, needed to raise, were topped with smooth, sloped tips. They were giant, metal penises.

The content in the game’s Lust level is unabashedly sexual. The first encounter I had on the PlayStation 3 build of the game shown in Japan pitted the game’s hero, the scythe-swinging Dante against yellow monster ladies known as Temptresses. With Dante, I could slice, slash, jump and dash against these and other enemies. I could use special magic and combo attacks mapped to controls that would remind any God of War player of the capabilities of that game’s lead character, Kratos. The Temptresses were a bit different than the norm. They could unzip the front of their torsos so that a 10-foot tentacle unfurled out of their body, then lean back, spread their legs and try to pull Dante toward their crotch. A well-timed button press by Dante could cancel that gesture, swinging the Temptress by her tentacle into a wall. This little contest is not played for titillation. It’s hideous.

After defeating a few Temptresses, my Dante was able to get a glimpse of his lost love Beatrice and then meet Virgil, a ghostly presence who will read from the famous poem or keep quiet for the impatient players who just want the action and not the culture. Near Virgil was a puzzle that challenged Dante to raise the aforementioned sperm floor through an opened ceiling. Levers needed to be pulled; a towering block had to be pushed.

Beyond that puzzle was the tease of a boss battle. The giant Cleopatra, scaled as King Kong to my Dante’s Fay Wray, scaled the exterior of a massive Hellish elevator shaft. She’s been seen in screenshots, her big, purple-gray fully-exposed breasts her most prominent feature. As she climbed and threatened Dante, the sperm floor raised ever higher. Temptresses attacked. Bigger beastly demons did too. When nearly vanquished the beasts flashed button prompts over their head. That indicated that Dante could attempt to damn them or absolve them using special finishing moves for extra karma points.

All of this played smoothly and was vividly animated. Behind me, another reporter wondered if the game needed more than its handful of enemies on the screen to compare favourably to the next God of War. At the PS3 where I played, a female journalist had remarked that the sequence I was about to encounter was the first time she’d fought a video game battle staged in front of giant video game breasts. She had reached, as I now did, a moment when Cleopatra stopped climbing, clasped one long-nailed hand on the elevating floor, moved her chest to the centre of the screen and then—swallow your food before finishing this sentence—stuck tongues out of her nipples. Next, she retracted those tongues and emitted winged babies from those nipples to attack Dante. In response, I was to swing at the demon babies, hack at Cleopatra’s hand, leap to some switches and turn two giant serpent statue heads toward Cleopatra’s figure so they could belch fire upon her. Lust level demo complete.

I had asked Dante’s producer Jonathan Knight to remind me what the nature of this circle of Hell was. It hadn’t seemed at all lustful in a sexy way. Dante didn’t appear to be on the verge of being seduced. His likely reaction—as was mine—would be revulsion. Knight told me that, no, Dante was not being seduced here. The Lust circle is the place in Hell for those who were to lustful. Dante’s quest merely takes him through it.

The journey through Lust was not tempting or titillating, but garish and gross. The toplessness in God of War has been played for cheap thrills, the opportunity for an off-screen threesome. If comparisons will be drawn—and they will—the toplessness that filled the Lust level was played for cheap chills, a visual argument about how ugly a sexualised body can be.

Right before I had started playing the Lust demo I had witnessed the game’s prototype menus screen. A more angelic beauty wearing not much white clothing posed prettily to the right of standard menu text. She was topless too. The Dante’s Inferno team can render bawdy beauty if they want to. Within their virtual Hell, however, they choose otherwise.

Penny Arcade

published Sept. 2

PvPonline

published Aug. 31

ActionTrip

published Sept. 3

Digital Unrest

published Sept. 1

DotGif

published Aug. 31

Little Gamers

published Sept. 1

EXTRALIFE

published Sept. 1

GU Comics

published Sept. 3

Ctrl-Alt-Delete

published Sept. 4

Dueling Analogs

published Sept. 3

8-Bit Theater

published Sept. 3

VG Cats

published week of Aug. 31.

Nerf NOW

published Sept. 3(?)

Rooster Teeth

published Sept. 5

Looking for Group

published week of Aug. 31

GG Guys

published week of Aug. 31

According to Campbell, the voice work done in that trailer was considered an audition for the role, and Blizzard has decided to go in another direction.

Voice actress Karen Strassman has updated her resume and added “StarCraft II – Lead” to it. More importantly, the end of her voice clip reel has this moody line: “For I am Kerrigan, Queen of Blades”. Listen to the clip here.

We are contacting Blizzard and will update if we get confirmation.

Karen Strassman Voice Over [Official Site Thanks, Bonertown!]

On Wednesday, Crecente posted a gallery of developers and industry insiders. Today, we continue that trend by showing you the workspaces and homes of those who bring us our video game news on a daily basis — video game journalists.

With more than ten game sites and blogs participating, you will be able to see the offices and living rooms of journalists at IGN, Destructoid, BoingBoing, and even some of our own Kotaku editors.

We hope you enjoy the gallery!

Blues News: Stephen “Blue” Heaslip’s game room.

As players move forward through the introductory chapters of the game and into the meat of the story, Batman’s moves and the challenges he faces blossom adding a surprising level of depth to what could have been a straight-forward brawler.

Ever-present is the jarring, taunting voice of The Joker, always there to ridicule and play faux sympathizer to Batman’s stumbles and dead ends. As Batman stalks through the mansion, the prison, and the other weathered buildings of Arhkham island, Joker’s army, the recently transferred inmates of Blackgate prison, quickly evolve from punching bags to real threats.

Initially that increased threat comes in the form of knives: Inmates armed with blades can’t be as easily dispatched and instead need to be stunned before being pummeled into unconsciousness. But early in Chapter three of the game the weapons available to the inmates start to include assault and sniper rifles and electrified batons. This changes the pacing of the game drastically, forcing gamers to more carefully plot their approach and tactics in taking out a group.

Fortunately, Batman’s arsenal also expands. As you progress through the game you can unlock new melee combat moves and fun gadgets like a remote controlled batarang, a grappling hook and the ability to throw multiple batarangs at the same time.

You will also likely find yourself relying more heavily on stealth. Using that grappling hook to zip from shadowy perch to shadowy perch, waiting for the right moment to take out the rare enemy separated from the pack. Once downed the prisoner’s collared, initially installed by the prison to monitor heart rates, sound an alarm, attracting nearby prisoners. The inclusion of weapons and alarms turn some moments of Arkham Asylum into elaborate games of cat and mouse.

This added subtlety bodes well for Batman: Arkham Asylum which could have easily rested on the three tenets of the game: Brutal, free-flowing combat, stealth takedowns and the occasional bit of detective work.

In the first two chapters we saw how the developers managed to blend those elements into an experience that has you shifting gears constantly. In chapter three we start to see how those elements may work together to exponentially increase the game’s potential.

And that’s just for the campaign. The game has plenty of extras built into its framework to increase playability and get gamers to squeeze every last drop out of this title.

Here are my stats just three chapters into the title:

I’ve found 23 of Riddler’s 240 hidden riddles. I’ve unlocked eight of 20 upgrades, five of 20 3D models and 15 of 42 bios, some of which include pictures, written files and audio files. According to the game, I’ve also completed 28 percent of Arkham Asylum.

There are also the Challenge Rooms where you can play as Batman (or The Joker on the PS3), either beating down waves of enemies for points or trying to silently clear a room. So far I’ve only unlocked two of those 16 challenge rooms.

Batman: Arkham Asylum is set to hit the PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 on Aug. 25.

Punch-Out on the Wii was a collaboration between Nintendo’s Japan home office and Canadian studio Next Level Games. Developers in both locations recently fielded Kotaku’s questions over email. Their answers gave rare insight into how these kinds of collaborations work.

And, as a bonus, the developers explained why players didn’t get to punch Princess Peach or Super Mario in the mouth with Little Mac’s gloved fist.

As much as Nintendo wanted Punch-Out, like its other games, to reach new gamers, this was a title the company also wanted to reach the old-school Nintendo fan. “We firmly believed we could not betray our traditional fans’ expectations,” the game’s Nintendo producers Kensue Tanabe told Kotaku over email. “We consulted with Next Level Games and decided to follow the overall design of the NES title in every aspect of the new one. Characters were designed to look almost the same, and we also asked NLG to design them to be beaten with the same tactics of the NES version. This is also when we first decided to adopt the “classic” control scheme of holding the Wii Remote sideways.” (Read Kotaku’s Punch-Out!! review.)

The interview helped reveal a bit of who-does-what, the division of labour and ideas that can often be a mystery in collaborative projects. This game’s development team spanned the globe, connecting Japan-based Tanabe and Nintendo with Canada’s Next Level Games. Choosing the game’s roster, for example, was a collaboration. Tanabe said Next Level wanted to go with mostly fighters from the NES version of Punch-Out. Next Level proposed the others, including Aran Ryan, who Next Level’s producer Bryce Holliday described as the game’s “resident hooligan.”

Credit for the inclusion of a certain famous Nintendo character as an opponent, however, came from an executive at Nintendo of America, with support from Next Level. Tanabe revealed to Kotaku that he had a different idea for who to include from Nintendo’s library of icons: “Princess Peach, but the thought of punching women out made me give up my idea.”

Holliday said that Next Level dropped plans to include some other Nintendo icons in the game “to help solidify the WVBA world and its characters rather than simply borrow from existing Nintendo IP.” WVBA is the fictional boxing leage in the game. He added: “nobody would want to punch Mario.” (Mario didn’t even make it into the game as the referee this time — as he did in the NES version — because, Tanabe said: ” We estimated that if Mario appeared within the toon-shaded 3D atmosphere of the game, it would not be a suitable match.”)

Tanabe credited Next Level with pitching the game’s graphical style. According to Holliday, Nintendo was supportive, generous in the amount of time it gave the Canadian team to test the look and hand-craft the game’s animations.

Throughout their interview, Tanabe and Punch-Out’s developers at Next Level Games came back to discussing the new game’s Title defence mode. This mode moved beyond making Punch-Out a nostalgia title by pitting Little Mac against new and re-mixed versions of his classic opponents in a series of rematches that pick up where the first game’s finishing moment of winning the top championship would have ended. Beyond giving something for experienced players to dig into after they beat a mostly familiar roster in mostly familiar ways, the new Title defence, according to Nintendo’s Tanabe, helped meet modern expectations for game size. “The volume of content in video games has grown significantly since the NES days,” he said. “I’m sure a NES-sized game could never satisfy players today.”

Next Level game designer Ken Yeeloy echoed his colleagues’ comments and added that the Title defence mode helped add colour to already-colorful personalities. “It … fit it with the idea of giving the characters more background and story to them,” he said. ” Since their personalities are such a focus in the game, learning from their previous fight with Little Mac and becoming better made sense and we felt users would appreciate that.”

Before the Title defence part of Punch-Out begins — beyond just its first several fights — the new Punch-Out reveals itself to be a crushingly hard game. Tanabe said that he believed the zeal of new gamers might compel them to overcome that challenge. His unflinching take at that question might seem un-Nintendo given the easiness of many recent games from the company designed for a broader audience. Compare, for example, the level of difficulty in New Super Mario Bros. to its tougher predecessors. Next Level’s Holliday said that his team simply tried to create something that was easy to pick up but a challenge to master: “Games are about choice and we believed at the beginning of the project we wanted to give any user of any skill level a great opportunity to enjoy what we loved as kids. Every circuit provides a distinct challenge. A new player who beats King Hippo gets a sense of accomplishment, while those who’ve played the original will choose to grind it out with the puzzles in the Title defence World Circuit. Losing in this game can actually be enjoyable because it gives you the clues to the design of the puzzles and will hopefully let you get a little further every time you play.”

The difficulty level took some tuning, but an even more formidable challenge, it turns out, may have been figuring out how to make this game work for two players”Unlike other fighting games, Punch-Out!! did not provide an easy template to realise multiplayer gameplay,” tanabe said. “As players are always viewing over the shoulder of their fighter. It made the situation more challenging that we could not manage the distance between fighters unlike other side-view fighting titles. I think it was the realisation of idea of Giga Mac at Next Level Games and the specification of stunning the opponent when punches are dodged which helped implement this new style gameplay in Punch-Out!!, which is unique to Wii and has a lot of possibility.”

The developers were expectedly coy about the future of the Punch-Put series. They agreed that whatever could come next would have to, in Holliday’s words, be “fresh and new.” Said Tanabe: ” We are not planning a sequel where simply the fighters are replaced. If we get so many requests for Little Mac and other fighters to come back, we will make another game in a totally new, different way. But of course, Doc Louis must also be there!”

The game comes with ten new levels and includes the “sights, sounds and storyline” of World of Warcraft… plus unicorns and rainbows. Levels in the freebie include “Too Soon, Executus” and “The Traitor King” and new challenges include “Phat Lewtz” and “Pwnyxia.”

“PopCap first brought Peggle to Azeroth in April 2009 and got a great reception from World of Warcraft players,” said T. Carl Kwoh, Associate Producer at PopCap Games. “We were jazzed to team up with Blizzard to make a World of Warcraft-themed version of Peggle that’s available to everyone for free.”

When a player quits the game the ending screen includes links to a free demo of the full version of Peggle and a ten day trial for World of Warcraft. Sounds like a pretty neat way to advertise too successful games.

Peggle WOW

The customised console is wrapped in a first generation casing. The innards seem new, but the shell is not. Below is a picture of the A/V slot for a first generation Xbox 360.
Compare this with the HDMI-equipped A/V slot of the Xbox 360 Elite.
Now look at this Frankenconsole mess.
The A/V and HDMI slots are shoehorned into a casing designed for only an A/V Slot. Meaning? It’s not possible to plug the A/V cable in and difficult to even get the HDMI cable in there. Last we checked, being able to plug your console in is kind of important.

Thanks Toast for the tip!