RPGs: Stop Making Bad First Impressions 
Is Hitman's Next Target Assassin's Creed? 
Why Kotaku Australia Should Never Work With Children... Or Robots 
Three Words I Said To The Man I Defeated In Gears Of War That I'll Never Say Again 
New Doom 3 For Xbox 360 And PlayStation 3 Supports Head-Mounted Displays 
Far Cry 3 And The Stranger In A Strange Land Simon Carless, publisher of Gamasutra and one of my favourite people in the world of gaming journalism, contents that LittleBigPlanet is Web 2.0 for games fulfilled — and makes a pretty persuasive argument for why it may be so. Of course, he’s basing this on access to the beta version and admits that we’ll have to wait until release to see how this will all pan out with a big community attached, but it looks promising:
Now, I’m sure some might accuse me of hyperbole in the face of relatively little evidence. And it’s true that I can’t tell what’s going to happen to the community based around the game, when the full weight (and, hopefully, ingenuity) of the PS3 masses are brought to bear on it.
But the game has managed to do what console titles have thus far shuddered to provide – an open, easy to use creation system that lets the community make the magic, while the creators stand back and marvel.
Here’s Karoshi Suicide Salaryman, a frighteningly addictive puzzler in which the object is to kill yourself. Of course, only that part of the game’s concept is backward, the actual means to kill yourself are obscured or protected from you, as you are a danger to yourself and others (and you have access to firearms). I made it to level 7 (it counts down from 49) in about 20 minutes. For a flash game, that’s a pretty good gameplay experience. The game remembers your progress if you want to come back to it later, so don’t delete your cookies. I really dig the soundtrack, but there’s no explanation of why you’re so desperate to end your own life. My guess is the global financial meltdown armageddon panic has something to do with it.
Karoshi Suicide Salaryman [Armor Games]
The next step in the evolution of the MMO species? Or just a gimmick? Eurogamer has noted Turbine’s Jim Crowley is talking about the launch of a genuine social networking site for LOTRO players before year’s end. Live news from the game world, character profiles, friends lists, and sharing screens and videos from the game. “Turbine believes that a closed eco-system will have to become an open eco-system,” he said. “The MMO needs to learn… to adapt itself to the ‘born digital’ generation. The MMO needs to step out of its shell and start reaching a much broader and deeper audience.”
I think this is a great idea. Virtual worlds need to move beyond the game client, particularly if it can let players do their MMO chores during convenient downtime during the day. If WoW had a mobile phone version of the auction house, for example, I don’t think I’d have left when I did. I’d have just kept playing that market to gain some gold between the times I could actually jump in and spend more genuine time playing the game. Allowing friends and guilds to interact as part of a world-specific social network can only be a good thing. Anyone see a downside?
LOTRO to get social network site this year [Eurogamer]
This wonderfully adorable (and kind of weird) game is pretty straight forward — guide the marshmallow around a variety of objects just waiting to take a bite out of your head and send you hurtling towards the ground so you can land with a ‘splat.’ It’s cute. It’s not terribly taxing. The soundtrack is … well, something (soothing? Weird? Vaguely Katamari-esque? All of the above?), but the game is really cute and a nice way to waste a couple of minutes or more ….
Marshmallow [forrent via IndieGames]
Noooo! Anyone who has seen Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles will tell you two things – 1) lady terminators are pretty and 2) if the bloody things can get on the internet they can hack anything and cause all kinds of hassle.
Fox has only gone and introduced the glow-eyed menaces to the iPhone. Great. Now death will be both swift AND stylish.
Terminator: Ambush is a mini MMO that can be played via the iPhone or a web browser. the idea is that players using the web interface hunt down and terminate those using the iPhone version. There is a GPS component to the game, so don’t play if you actually are being hunted by a killer robot – this will lead them right to you.
FOX Launches ‘Terminator’-themed, location-based MMORPG [Touch Arcade]
I love You Don’t Know Jack. Many who have played it feel exactly the same way. When it went to a web edition in the late ’90s it was the best damn thing on the Internet, but then it all went away. Regular installments of the new webshow have been enjoyed over the past two years, but now they’re set to call it a day at #100 to focus on a next big thing.
We’ve decided to actually try to make some money with this thing. We’re working hard on getting this game out to the masses… in the upcoming weeks, you’ll hear some real big news about a real big deal we’ve made with some real bigshots who can help get YOU DON’T KNOW JACK back to where it belongs – in the home of every living man, woman, and child, and most elves. And for all of our loyal viewers, and we know who you are, we promise to give you a token of our appreciation. Stay tuned.
Past rumours point to a Wii version in the works, and that could be a lot of fun. I’ll still cross my fingers for a Live Arcade or PSN version — they’d be a lot better suited to online play… but in the end I’ll take whatever Jellyvision give me.
If you’ve never played it, go play the last few episodes (plus all the archives are available) before they wrap things up to get to work on their ‘big news’ project.
Big News in Jellyland [YDKJ via Destructoid]
Good news and bad news for fans of the good old adventure game genre. Grey Matter, the next adventure game by Gabriel Knight creator Jane Jensen, is being reworked by it’s new developer Wizarbox and had to be pushed back as they reworked the infrastructure established by the previous one. The good news is, Jane herself is now keeping us updated on the game’s progress via her very own blog. Simply called Jane’s Blog, Jensen will use the blog to track the development status of Grey Matter and give fans a sneak peek at the game, such as this lovely piece of concept art, part of a batch posted on the blog today to commemorate the first post.
Hit the link for more concept art to help soften the blow of the unfortunate delay.
Jane’s Grey Matter Blog [Official Website]
While tooling about the web lately you may have come across an advert for a Free Online Batman Game (pictured).
I am not allowed near anything even vaguely resembling a trivia question at this point. Having received rigorous Trivial Pursuit training by my parents as a young boy, I’ve been condition to answer inane questions above any other priority. Case in point, the U,S, version of Sony’s MyBuzz website for the PS3 game Buzz! Quiz TV is now live, allowing players to create their own puzzles that can be shared with friends, rated by the community, and ultimately played within the game once it’s released later this month. As of this writing there are only four quizzes on the site, and despite being a bit behind in my work today I played them all.
Fans of pre-graphical RPGs like Nethack and Rogue might occasionally wander out from their UNIX labs and find themselves confronted with a modern web browser.
Once the initial shock of daylight and antialiased fonts has worn off, they will probably need to chill out with a quick dungeon hack. Tombs Of Asciiroth is a labour of love — recreating the look and feel of an ASCII roguelike in Firefox.
There is full-length quest to be had wandering the titular Tombs, and the usually obscure keyboard commands are illustrated with a nice tutorial level with pop-up tip windows.
It can be a bit slow, and you will need to install Google Gears if you want to save your game, but there is plenty of old school fun to be had. You can’t not like a game that includes the phrase “Use the sword against hostile Ampersands”.
The Tombs Of Asciiroth [Icculus.org]
