Kotaku

Super Big Let's TGS Round-Up

The Tokyo Game Show expo is in full swing. And while we may only have one day left of event, we've got DAYS of coverage coming at you.

This year's Tokyo Game Show will be brought to you by myself, Brian Ashcraft, Luke Plunkett and Michael McWhertor, with back-breaking post counts and Tower support coming from Fahey and crew.

As with past coverage we'll keep this single post updated throughout the show by category so you can bookmark it now if you want a single stop shop for all Tokyo Game Show news. See you on Monday, can't wait.

Tart yourself up in the style of your favorite anime or video game character, ladies, and the lonely Tokyo Game Show hordes will eat you alive. Photographically, that is. When a largely bare-assed Cammy strutted her way out to Cosplay Alley, she instantly broke a dozen hearts, perhaps twice that number of zippers. Security was forced to insert itself into the situation, politely asking this top-shelf Cammy clone to move along, step to the side, attempting to stem the flow of bodily fluids from becoming a knee deep pool. It was gruesome.

Clearly, the full version of this photo could be considered not safe for work — and at TGS, safe for wank — so it will have to reside after the jump.

Look kids, it's the cast of the hit internet series The Guild! In case you've not heard of The Guild, it's a hysterically funny look at a group of MMO players and how they react when things get a bit too real. The lovely red-haired woman there is Felicia Day, who Buffy fans may remember as someone only Buffy fans would remember. She plays the guild's healer, Codex, who one day gets a surprise visit from Sandeep Parikh, the warlock who assumes the two have hit it off and decides to move in with her. If you've ever been in an MMO guild you know these people, from the inattentive mother Clara (far left) to the young, "spirited" player Bladezz, played by Vincent Caso there on the far right. Vincent...I am so sorry I called you a dick today. I really meant your character, I swear. You're a lovely man. Anyway, check out the show's website and find out what happens when a guild stops being real and starts getting...really real.

What's the Lousiest Game Gift You've Ever Gotten?

Bash left the TUD Giraffe in my care this weekend, so I'll close out my shift by asking the juicy question. Here's one for a good discussion: What's the lamest game, or game-related, gift you've ever received? Reaching back, I'm well past the get-gifts-as-games age, although my brother one year gave me a gift certificate to GameFly and then we realized it was only good for paying for a subscription, not used games, so that sucked. But I'm sure there's plenty of you out there with aunts or grandmas who gave you bargain-bin dreck that was camo-marketed to look like that latest game all the kids want. Or, worse, someone knitted you a "World's Biggest Super Mario Fan" sweater and you had to wear it whenever they visited. Anyway, tell us, dammit, in the comments.

Remember that excited feeling you got when you first killed a monster in the original Diablo? How you knew that this was going to be a game that ate a great deal of your life? And then Diablo II came out, and it was pretty much the same feeling as Diablo I, only updated for the computer systesm of the day, somehow maintaining the same level of excitement and fun as the original? Well I've just gotten a chance to play through a half hour of Diablo III, and damn if I don't have that same giddy feeling all over again.

Sure, the core concepts remain exactly the same as they did in the original game. You play a character that clicks their way through levels, hacking, slashing, and spellcasting your way through hordes of enemies. You still upgrade your equipment, quaff potions, and identify magic items along the way. In essence it is the same game we've been playing and loving since the very start, only updated to the point where we can look at it on today's systems and still go "Damn, this is an amazing game."

The Obligatory BlizzCon 2008 Cosplay Post

I'd have to say that the very best cosplay I've seen at BlizzCon 2008 I've sadly seen without a camera. Like the two girls dressed up as a demon and a Draenei, kissing each other as I rushed to an interview with the lead designer on StarCraft II. Priorities won out in the end, but I will forever carry the image etched in my mind. Here's a selection of some of the costumes I did manage to catch on film. Oddly enough, the pirate is a girl I've known for nearly 10 years now and hadn't seen in nearly six of them. Smallish world after all, isn't it?

Oh, you thought we were done with the Sarah Palin shit? Well think again, my friends. After last Sunday's post about Palin in video games, reader Marion D. sent me three screens showing his band's lead singer in Rock Band 2. Oh gosh, can she rock it or what? You betcha. Just make sure she doesn't sing any of Heart's greatest hits, should they ever become available.

Two more pics on the jump.

Reader Alex B. sent in this — Fantastic Contraption — a physics flash game where you string together wheels and joints in order to carry an object toward a goal on the screen. It's nice nonviolent trial-and-error fun, indulging both the competitive urge to be as efficient as possible, and the creative impulse to be as outlandish as you can get away with.

Well, here we go again. Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg, talking to slightly-interest party Major Nelson, says he's never seen such a "tremendous shift" in developer loyalty, and he means from Sony and to Microsoft. Guess we couldn't expect him to keep from smack talking after the Tekken 6 news earlier this week.

"We've come a long way... Square Enix's biggest RPG franchises, Namco Bandai bringing their top titles including Tekken 6. A lot of great arcade titles that the Japanese publishers continue to really recreate for this whole new generation, and we're finally at a price the world can afford."