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 Competitions are fantastic. Except, of course, when they end. That’s exactly what happened to our Lost Odyssey comp, which finished on February 13.
It took a while to go through all the comments we received during the week, and I apologise for not posting the results sooner. Honestly, my job would be so much easier if the calibre of entries wasn’t so high. So in the future, can you guys please just post poorly punctuated fanboy rants*?
(*This is a joke. Please keep the wit, humour and intelligence coming.)
Thanks once again to Microsoft for supplying us with the prizes. One copy would have been great, but MS came to us with five. Which, as you can imagine, was awesome.
So, which five readers had the best comments? Hit the jump to find out!
You may remember – vaguely – that just before the holidays we ran a survey for the site. Essentially, we wanted to know what you thought about Kotaku AU, your likes, dislikes, and favourite flavour of pants.
Surprisingly, no one was willing to answer that last question. Except that one guy who said his name was “Heywood Jablowme”.
Anywho, we drew a winner for the survey, so post-humorous congratulations to Spencer, who opted for a $250 gift voucher for Coles Myer. Nice one!
I’ve been chatting back and forth with Justin, our lucky $US 2,000 shopping bot winner. Turns out he actually lives a few hours from me, so instead of going shopping on my own, packing his stuff up and mailing it to him, we decided to just meet at the store of his choice and do the shopping together. And no, I didn’t tell him to by a copy of Cruis’n, but I totally could have.
When he emailed me with the address to the GameStop he wanted to shop at he mentioned that he had called ahead of time to get them to hold some stuff. I just assumed that meant he had $US 2,000 worth of games and goodies sitting in a pile waiting to be paid for. Not the case.
There were more than 34 pages of comments and entries for our year-end Shopping Bot contest. And I can see why. Not only were we offering to give someone $US 2,000 in game-related gear, we’re going to do the shopping to pick it up and then ship it out to the lucky winner. And by we I mean me.
I just spent the past hour picking through the posts to find the entries and then used Random.Org to randomly select the winner. Who is listed on the jump page. Cross your fingers:
Holy crap our Hellgate: London contest was way too close to call! Finalist 2 and Finalist 4 ran neck and neck. Here’s our solution: We’re giving both copies of Hellgate: London. The other finalists must be satisfied with INTERNET FAME — however ephemeral it is. We’re not going to do this every contest, so do not ask.
Congrats to our dual winners and much love to everyone else who entered! Finalist 2 and Finalist 4 shoot tips an email with your address so we can get your prizes to you.
Here’s our winning entry, ladies and gentlemen. This smirk-worthy picture was submitted by Karen, who has won herself a copy of Mario Party DS. We’ll be in contact soon Karen to get your address, so the game spends less time with us and more time with you. I think everyone can agree that’s the way it should be.
See the link below for the details on the original competiton.
Know Your Japanese Music Men, With Prize Goodness [Kotaku AU]
Lest you forget, today’s the day I’m going to spring some sort of devious question on the 30 finalists. The first to answer the question wins a $500.gift certificate. Don’t worry I promise it won’t involve counting slivers, or stormtroopers, or birds.
What I won’t promise is when the question will pop up. If you know me you can probably guess when it might, but probably not exactly. For the record, I’ve got to ask sometime between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Kotaku Time (aka Mountain).
Back in October the winner of the US Create-A-Folk contest was revealed, and quite frankly my first thought was “meh” and my second thought was “I wonder if my roommate finished my Captain Crunch.” She did, and I was doubly disappointed, but now the winner of the European Create-A-Folk contest has been announced, and there is redemption all around. The Malion (Spore Lion) runs circles around the enemy whilst creating an intoxicating spore cloud from its tail and thorny mane. When the prey is dazed The Malion jumps in for the kill. The tail and claws are primary attacks, but this Folk is highly poisonous… wear protective gloves! The Malion fears fire.
The winning entry was created by a Jeff Read from the UK, which certainly narrows it down. His creation will eventually be downloadable via the PSN for all to enjoy, and Jeff also scored a goody bag and a copy of the game in which he can enjoy his creation. Head over to eu.playstation.com to get a look at the other entries, whilst I head to the pantry to dine on the Captain Crunch that has almost certainly triumphantly materialised there.
The good people at Bethesda threw a perk party an everyone was invited. The winner would get their own perk immortalised in Fallout 3 (along with a sweet PC or Xbox 360 pack). 17,000 entered. One won.
The grand prize went to: Grim Reaper’s Sprint Everytime you kill an opponent, all your action points are automatically restored.
And yeah, that’s a great freaking idea for a perk, so it’s cool that it won. But our favourite may have been the runner up entry:
Whew! What. A. Contest. For those who missed it, we were giving away a BlackSite: Area 51 Alienware computer and loot. There was public shaming, an apology, fuckin’ stormtroppers and luchadors. At the end of this long, long road there was a Quick Draw — where it’s not only important to be quick, but also accurate. The question was:
