One of the most excruciating moments in the life of any gamer is handing the controller to a friend, your face swollen with the joy of pure playfulness, and having your entire life ruined as your buddy clamps down on the controls, scowls, and starts spewing obscenities.  If you're anything like me, you've rebuked more than one person to just relax, have fun, it's really not that hard, you'll get it ... only to have your heart broken as they try to use their entire body (instead of a button) to jump a cliff, turn a spaceship, or fire a gun.

Those moments make me feel lonely.  I am no wiz, you understand.  But seeing someone lather themselves into a lockjawed froth because they can't push a button at the right time...it makes me sad for them, sure, but mostly sad for me.  Lonely me, offering the controller, and being waved away: "No no, I'm terrible, I'll just watch."  More comfortable in being terrible at something, than in learning a new way to have fun.

Jhonen Vasquez has never been one of these people.

Kids, being the blessed ignoramuses that they are, get easily excited and intrigued - It’s how they learn.  But adults…they’re a different, sadder story altogether. I’d put the controller in their hands, finishing it off by nailing it through their flesh, and suddenly there was a look of concern, a feeling of HAVING to do something and do it perfectly at the start.  Just try asking a broken noob to play Guitar Hero and listen as they make excuses about how they’ll probably suck and how they don’t want to embarrass themselves.

In his review of Flower for the PS3, a zen-like game in which you waft a cloud of flower petals over a lush meadow, he follows a thoughtful examination of the game itself, with a lament for the frozen state of the adult mind. 

[Via Mindspill]

Offworlder Joel Johnson spotted this over in the Bay Area Craigslist personals while cruising for a "casual encounter".  You know: bowling shirts, some brewskis, couple games of Fumble the Crumble (peach).

FRWARGGHH GHUURR (L4D)

Reply to: pers-1035659475@craigslist.org [?]
Date: 2009-02-15, 9:50AM PST

RAAAAAHHHHRHRRRGHGHGH

GURHRUGHHH

ROOOGH?

* it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

PostingID: 1035659475

If a meteor hit the Bay Area today, the entire Internet would go silent.  All of your torrents would triple in speed; Twitter would lose 86% of their user base, and LiveJournal would go dark. 

 Sometimes I pray for such a sky-hammer...today is not one of those days.  Soldier on, SF nerd army. I'd hit it.

 Craigslist Connections: "Pipe Bomb Over Here!" [Offworld]

In the most balls-out act of deep space espionage in the 21st century, GoonSwarm, EVE Online’s in-game Something Awful forum contingent, has finally defeated their arch enemies, absolute rulers of the game universe, Band of Brothers. Thus ends a years-long David and Goliath dance that has made modern gaming history on multiple occasions. As this is a breaking story as of today’s wee hours, I’ll spare you my verbal flatulence and put my better-informed friend Bjorn Townsend on blast:

Literally, Band of Brothers is no more. They got a spy into the executor corp at director level, kicked out every corp, stole all the assets they could lay their hands on, and altered standings so that everyone will start shooting everyone else. And then they closed the alliance, and created a new corporation called Band of Brothers with the same corp ticker, so they can't even have the old alliance name back.

Hit the jump for the big, beautiful story.

The buzz on the two new Ghostbusters games has been decidedly low on Dtoid.  Earlier today, in serious gastrointestinal distress, I was finally blessed with the leisure to slog through the December Game Informer, which had been sitting in my bathroom for weeks.

I will preface the following remarks by saying that I am always happier at proclamations of NEW properties, than I am of franchise deals, sequels, or remakes.  I have a brain chemical imbalance, you see, that precludes my enjoyment of repetition.  This causes cankers, and also isolates me totally from my peer group: repetition is a gamer specialty, gamers being a people which can carry on a conversation entirely in Simpsons quotes.  This is why They keep sharp objects out of my office at Dtoid HQ, and do not allow me to read the comments on my posts.  I keep hearing about this "Aldo Cox" person, but I have no idea who he is. Nobody will tell me.

Here is what we know so far about Ghostbusters:

A. There are two, semi- separate ghostbusting projects at this time, one for a Wii/PS2 release, the other, grander effort being saved for the 360, PS3 and PC.

B. The big project is being developed by Terminal Reality, and has realistic graphics running on a proprietary engine.  The focus is on the single-player campaign mode, and details about the multiplayer are still TBA.  It doesn’t look good for we co-op PS360 enthusiasts, though.

C. The secondary release on Wii and PS2, developed by Red Fly,  is a slightly dumbed-down version that will focus on multiplayer, and has cartoony graphics instead of the main project's realism. 

Hit the jump for the rest of the article, which contains BioShock spoilers.  I tell you this with the intention of shaming anyone who still, after all these many months, may be sensitive to such manila envelope-grade intelligence.  Snicker.

If you've played Portal, the Weighted Companion Cube is a memory that will make you flinch, weep, giggle, or a combination of all three.  Possibly while becoming aroused.  THAT scene in the game, and you know which one I'm talking about (if you know what I'm talking about), ranks as one of the most memorable in my gaming career.  And, in an odd, semi-hysterical way, one of the most moving. 

So what did I do, just after I finished the game?  I went and got a big piece of chocolate cake, of course.  But what did I do AFTER my eighth piece of cake?  I googled "weighted companion cube toy".  I followed some links, and ended up with this:

From: Gabe Newell
Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2007 1:08 PM
To: 'Oz Mills'
Cc: Portal; Jason Holtman
Subject: RE: Portal - Feedback

Thanks, Oz, for the thoughtful and detailed feedback. I also would like a companion cube toy on the Valve store (hint hint Jason).

Gabe 

------------------

RE: Portal - Feedback
From: Jason Holtman

They've been in production for two months; they'll be here in time for holidays. Thanks for feedback, Oz.

My adorable droogies, another internet mystery explained: this is how fetish mashups start.  Once those Cubes start to ship, I can guarantee photos of a plushie-feeder orgy at Dtoid HQ. 

Cuddle Your Cube [Rock, Paper, Shotgun]

It’s been several days since I completed Halo 3’s co-op campaign.  Reviews by other writers say that this was the least successful part of the game, and that multiplayer is where the thing really shines.  But honestly, it’s hard to understand anything over the smacking, slurping sounds of Bungie’s scrotum being gently suckled by an entire generation of reviewers.  Halo 3 is persistently scoring in the 9 to 10 range.  

Why?

I got up this morning (a mere figure of speech; I have not seen the dorsal side of noon since 2004), all lubed up to write my Halo 3 review.  I had my pile of Ritalin, my notes from the previous week’s co-op campaign marathon, a pot of fresh tea, and my list of synonyms for “horrible”.  I was ready.

And then, horror.  Something Awful, ever my nemesis, had scooped me.  They’d taken the words right out of my brain:

Halo 3's gameplay is pretty much like that time I was at the skating rink and a guy came in and shot the place up while riding an ATV. Goldeneye controlled better than this. That one first-person-shooter parody sequence in Conker's Bad Fur Day controlled better than this.

The weapons feel like toys and don't have the responsiveness or feedback of a game like Half-Life 2. Despite the fact that it supposedly takes place on Earth, you can jump 40 feet into the air and float down like a feather.

And they said it with less cussing, spurious anecdotes, and repetitions of the word “Stickypig” than I ever would have.  The irony of Something Awful’s supposedly humorous game reviews, is that they’re usually the most keen, accurate, and no-nonsense of the bunch.  Possibly because Something Awful is not in a position to curry favor within the games industry, no matter what they write.  The writers have to buy the games themselves, suffering the slings and arrows of a typical consumer experience, with no catered studio tours or laminated press passes muddling their writerly instincts.

Hit to jump to join me in my misery. 

 1UP: You've mentioned that the game will have multiple endings, perhaps as many as a dozen. Without giving away any spoilers, can you explain the sorts of things that will affect which ending the player reaches? For example, will conversations affect the outcome of the game, or is it primarily larger-scale, world-shaking actions?

EP: We went back and forth with the impact of dialogue on the character, and ultimately decided we didn't want to penalize or reward the player for carrying on a conversation. What you say and how you say it will certainly affect how NPCs react to you, and whether or not they'll give you quests, but not the ending of the game. [That] really depends on some of the big decisions you make during the course of the game, as well as your karma. And your karma changes based on your actions. So [if] you destroy Megaton [a city built around a supposedly inert atomic bomb], your karma plummets, so that will certainly affect the ending. But there are other moments too, key moments during the game, that greatly determine which ending you get.

I maintain that sequels should never be expansion packs, and that Same Shit, Different Day (SSDD) is a terrible game development model.  But as much as I despise the kneejerk, nostalgia-mongering attitude of many gamers when faced with terrifying new additions to their favorite franchises (I'm looking at you, No Mutants Allowed, you bunch of cretins), the fact remains that the retention (or expulsion) of some recurring traits can make or break a sequel.  Rewarding or punishing the player for conversational decisions is a fairly major part of intelligent roleplaying games.  Particularly Fallout.

Now, Aeropause seems to go a wee bit overboard with their reaction to what is really a small part of a larger, more all-encompassing interview.  The interviewee does state that NPCs will be affected by conversation, but doesn't particularly quantify the statement.  I will wait and see.  Dubiously.  Steepling my fingers and raising one eyebrow.

Fallout 3 to Eschew Long Dialogue Paths [Aeropause]

UPDATE: This interview sparked a shitstorm that caused the lead designer to issue a correction here. 

Hot off the presses, and by that I mean the Something Awful forums, is the news that the Jericho demo is a day early on Filefront and Gamespot. Jericho appealed to me because of its demonic time-traveling squad mechanic, although the trailers have made it look a bit silly in an eye-rolling, takes-itself-too-seriously way. Despite Dtoid's earlier good impressions following a preview, reports in this thread are less than enthusiastic:

Well I guess I'll say that I thought the demo was pretty damn terrible.

It feels like I'm looking at the world through a camera with a half-jar of vaseline on the end (including the jar itself), the character movement feels very sluggish and the DDR sequence is really awful both in pacing and style. I don't mind console-centric controls in my games, but this one just seems to be a half-assed "map some shit randomly to the keyboard" instead of any sort of thought being put into it.

I really hope this is the wrong version of the demo since it's out a day early.

I am personally unable to verify suck or not suck, as it were, since I am currently without a monitor.  Here's where you come in: I want you to cram every cubic inch of that comments box with your own very personal impressions of this demo, starting NOW. 

Allow me to present some real life, over-the-shoulder, excruciatingly imported and edited on an entirely underpowered machine, demo footage of Duel Love for the Nintendo DS.

At the Tecmo party, Flynn DeMarco of GayGamer and Kotaku took me by the elbow and led me conspiratorially aside.  “Look,” he said, his be-chained wrists arcing gracefully, “I know you’re a complete and total fruit bat.  Florian told me; right after he asked me about my rumpus.  It’s okay.  As long as you stay away from our REAL twinks, we really don’t mind.”  I blushed maraschino, these Gay Gamers knew me too well.  “I thought you might be interested to know about this little bit of stuff I found over at Bandai Namco.”

My piggy eyes lit up.  “Do go on.”  TGS is famed for booth babes of negotiable affection.

“It’s called Duel Love.  It’s basically yaoi Nintendogs.”
“You mean I get my very own gay puppy?!”
“No, idiot, you get to scrub some sweaty cakeboy with a rag.  He doesn’t have nipples, but it’s well worth the cost of admission.”  Flynn waggled his eyebrows, and then his sideburns, and then his beautiful folding fan.  My moustache fluttered in the breeze.
“I never admit to anything,” I replied.  After a moment’s contemplation I added, “Oh snap!”

But Flynn was right.  This boy on two screens, he didn’t have nipples.  And as it turns out, Duel Love is a respectable, if sweaty, addition to the teenager-tweaking lineup started by Doki Doki Majo Shinpan.  The premise, as put forth over at GayGamer:

Bandai Namco's Duel Love is the heart warming story of a young transfer student (female) who simply can't get enough of those shirtless adolescent boys [well, what of it?]. We will watch her as she is introduced to a secret "fight club" after school battle, and help her cheer your favorite fighter on, and maybe help to sop up some sweat off his budding physique after a match. How delightfully PG and not the slightest bit provocative.

Kentia Hall is the infamous vault one can find behind and between the normal passageways at E3.  From descriptions by various E3 attendees over the years, I have gathered that Kentia is mostly regarded as a sad little den of all the rejected, low-budget, low-class,  low-brow, high-hopes, little games-that-could. 

When I arrived in Tokyo yesterday, Eckhardt was babbling even before the stewardess that was carrying me piggyback lowered me to the linoleum in front of Customs.

"They have a Kentia!  A Kentia Hall!"  Brownish spittle machinegunned from his flapping maw.  I knew what this meant: that Nick Chester son-of-a-whore could keep his precious scoops.  We had something better.  We had quirky.  We had indie.  We had Hall 7.

The first thing one notices upon entering 7 is that it's delicious.  The entire cavern is steeped in airborne grease, which makes navigating the mostly art-college booths into something of a hungry venture.  No matter, we were armed with green tea and lingering nausea from reading FatGoon.com (better than hoodia by far).  No appetite, no problem.

Just a few steps in, we ran across what appeared to be the booth of a design college called TCA.  On display were several games, one looping demo video, and the exquisite figurine you see below.  

Sally Spider is from a project called the Diverting History of Mechanical Fellows.  It appears to be a steampunk fighting game based on the art book of the same name, by Keisuke Kishi, starring stunningly designed robots.  The video's star was most certainly Sally, and her shining teeth and gilded legs made me want nothing more than a duplicate of this figurine.  Crushingly, they were not for sale, nor was the illustrated book in the same exhibit.  Sigh.

Howard Phillip Lovecraft, who should need no introduction, kept a list of ideas.  As far as I am aware, all writers (and most artists) do this in one form or another.  I constantly struggle to keep my list compounded, as it organically tends to sprawl across several sketchbooks, notepads, and scraps of napkins and toilet paper.  I only wish I had thought to come up with such a sublime title for my own collection of nonsense; Lovecraft called his “the Commonplace Book”:

LOVECRAFT'S COMMONPLACE BOOK is a written compilation of ideas: from 1919 to 1934, Lovecraft wrote down fragments, plot ideas and scenario outlines, all concrete elements he could put to use at any given time. The texts contain suggestions for story-writing as well as a list of 'horror fundamentals', intended to stimulate the imagination.

Gamers are generally surprised when the topic of new text-adventure games is brought up.  Familiar as we are with pioneers of gaming such as Zork, Leather Goddesses of Phobos, and the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the idea that anyone still enjoys a rousing session of “guess what I want you to type” is baffling to most of us.  

On the other hand, there is something to be said for any game that implants alien weevils in your head and expects you to type your way out of it. 

 WHOOPS: the trailer isn't loading.  Troubleshooting now...

 A link to this trailer for the game “Night Journey” was sent to Ectomo a few days ago, by faithful Ectomite, kid icarus. Paraphrasing his email would castrate its enthusiasm, so I include it here:

I heard a rumor this weirdness was coming to PS3. Reminds me of Ico, so for the monstertrucking* sake of the elder gods, I hope it's true. Regardless, enjoy the possibility.

 p.s. I love you freaks!

kid icarus

To be fair, I have not played Night Journey, and there are plenty of instances of horrible trailers doing their products a disservice. But come on.

 Hit the jump to hear more chin-stroking speculation about the nature of art and video games.  Again.