Kotaku

What Are Your Gaming Resolutions For 2008?

Some of the Kotaku staff, those who live in the future, have already rung in 2008. But many of us in the tower are anxiously awaiting a thrilling night in of TV watching, complete with copious amounts of sparkling, non-alcoholic cider enjoyed in our footie pajamas. Fifteen minutes of partying, then we head off to bed around 12:01 AM and wait for the sun to rise to get started on our chores. While we wait for New Year's Eve festivities, resolutions are being made—get that third nipple removed, finally cancel our subscription to Grit magazine, and spend more time gaming!

Personally, I'm going to make the effort to play more with my friends, wherever they may be. A multi-hour session of Team Fortress 2 that's due to happen as you read this with two of my best friends will make sticking to that one a bit easier. I'm also planning on spending less, buying only exactly what I plan to play and leaving nothing in the shrinkwrap. There will be more downloadable gaming in my future, more online gaming and more attention paid to indie and homebrew wares.

Let us know what you've got planned for a self-improved 2008, whether it's less fanboyism, more time with your SNES or even the shedding of that unsightly 80 pounds gained at college.

Pock!!!

To: Someone, Anyone?
From: Crecente

We left the family home today heading north through Georgia, Tennessee and finally into Kentucky to rest for the night. My son spent a lot of time sitting quietly in the back marveling at the wonders of Wii in a van. I sat up front game-free working all day via a cell connection and my poor wife drove all day. About 6 p.m. my son, who had been eying a box of Pocky I received for Christmas, suddenly broke the silence by begging me for some "Pock!" I'd been promising him a taste for two days and finally decided I probably should go ahead and give him a stick or two. Looks like I'm going to have to start stocking up on more of those now. He LOVED it.

What you missed:
Wii Officially Hacked, Lies Naked And Defenceless
First Tiberium Screens
Jade Empire 2 In Development At BioWare
Fake PSP Selectively Electrocutes
The Club (Demo) Impressions
Reader's Choice Winners
Left Brain Right Brain Surprisingly Brainless
Man Uses Live to Stalk, Threatens Rape
Frankenreview: Top 5 Games of the Year Edition
Calling It: The Xbox 360 Won 2007
Microsoft: We're Investigating the Recon Armor Hack
Major Nelson: All Hands on Deck Working on Live Problem
The Year's Most Popular Stories
Gates to Announce DVR 360 at CES?
Meet Your New King of Komments

Win A Copy Of Grand Theft Auto III, Signed By Jack Thompson

We've seen people go to extreme lengths for both charity and eBay auctions, but this particular item, a copy of Grand Theft Auto III allegedly signed by fan fave Jack Thompson at VGXPO, combines the two in an attractive package. According to the listing, the PlayStation 2 version of the game can be yours (we think) for the low, low price of $4,000, the proceeds of which will be redirected in full to the Child's Play charity. There's even a picture of the signee and auction lister—who we're told is not TV's famous Wil Wheaton—to aid in the proof of authenticity.

What is suspect, however, is whether you actually get the signed copy of the game for your four large, seemingly the entire point of dropping this much cash on a used PS2 game. The eBay listing comes with the unclear note "Please note: I do not actually want to sell this. I am just listing it for show and to hopefully win a contest. However, if you want to spend $4000 on this then I will donate 100% of the proceeds to Child's Play Charity." The seller does have a 99.9% positive rating, so I wager you'll be satisfied. If you do decide to give up the cash, let us know when (and if) you get it.

Grand Theft Auto III Signed By Jack Thompson (PS2) [eBay - thanks, Rick!]

Library Tricks Kids Into Reading By Promising Wiis

In an effort to get the kids to read books, Cape Coral, Florida libraries are bringing in Wiis, in a classic bait and switch scam that will get the youth hooked on "learning." The lure of Nintendo software will probably be more successful than clubbing them on the head and transporting them to the library via gunny sack, think local parents. "If each kid plays for 15 minutes, the rest of the kids are going to be waiting and they're going be talking. They're going to be picking up books," said a concerned parent of a four-hour-a-day gamer. These poor kids. They'll be choosing their own adventures in no time, enjoying the works of R.L. Stein and J.K. Rowling and dozens of other child-friendly, initials-only authors like a bunch of book addicts.

Library Wii's [WRCB TV]

The world's best gaming deals can't beat "free!", so for those without a gift card in hand this post-holiday season, you may want to take a gander at The Independent Gaming Source's best freeware games of 2007. The number of titles, across an amazingly broad 30 categories, point out the year's best shooters, platformers and RPGs that can be had without anything more than some disposable bandwidth. Topping the list is a game that I only recently discovered myself while searching for Gradius pics, a Warning Forever-style top down boss fight-only shooter named Fraxy. The Japanese freeware game lets players create their own levels (bosses) with an intuitive editor. Other titles you may already be familiar with, including Knytt Stories, Guxt, Sam and Max: Abe Lincoln Must Die and the now free Command and Conquer.

Best Freeware Games of '07 - 30 Categories! [TIG Source]

You'd think with modern vehicles, especially the ones pre-loaded with built-in entertainment systems, it would be easy to play modern video games on the go. Unfortunately, I haven't been so lucky.

While planning our driving trip from Colorado to Georgia I just assumed it would be simple to plug a PS3, 360 or Wii into the van's ceiling-mounted DVD player. But when I tried the 360 and PS3 both just freaked out when I tried plugging them in to the heavy duty inverter I picked up for the van's back seat power outlet. The 360 nearly gave me a heart attack by flashing angry red rings at me and the PS3 just sat there, quietly refusing to power up at all. Dejected I plugged the Wii in and it popped to life immediately.

Once the power was sorted out, getting the Wii plugged into the drop-down screen was a breeze. Right next to that rear seat power plug is a set of component plugs, so I plugged the console in and then threaded the cords to let me set the Wii up in between the driver and front passenger seats.

No problem, until I tried using the Sensor Bar

Online Worlds Do It For The Kids

Second Life may pull in big numbers, attracting furries, virtual real estate moguls, corporations desperately attempting to appear "hip" and Something Awful forum goons raining penises down upon the unsuspecting, but it's online worlds targeted at kids that are drawing attention from executives. Take Webkinz, for example, the online world that sees wee lads and lasses logging on to the tune of six million uniques per month. That's three times the amount who logged on a year ago. Similarly, according to the New York Times, Club Penguin, which involves dressing up penguins platonically, has seven times the traffic of Second Life.

Everyone's getting into it, for those of you not aged in the single digits, including Disney, Lego, and Mattel. The goal? Shill wares to kids while they play free games, establish brand recognition, then help them "graduate" to the next-generation of online worlds, whether it's Pirates of the Caribbean Online, World of Warcraft or simply fantasy baseball. Oh yes, it's quite dastardly. Good thing I'll be raising my kids with good Quaker morals and no electricity.

Web Playgrounds of the Very Young [New York Times - thanks, Duane!]

We've been running this contest into the ground throughout the month, so I think it's about time to announce who the new king of comments will be.

If you remember we had narrowed down the list to these five:

Witzbold
TheIrishNinja
EnigmaNemesis
Kirbytheslayer
PapaBear434

Each of these commenters are daily readers, heavy commenters, people who spend an inordinate amount of time reading our stories and calling us on our bullshit and for that we love them. But unfortunately, we could only pick one for the new position of Commenting Czar, a person who will be giving the mighty banhammer, a tool which has both the ability to strike down lesser tools and to give life to once bannified accounts. The new czar will also earn $200 a month for their hard work.

Hit the jump for the name.

Bill Gates might be making an Xbox 360 2.0 announcement at his CES keynote swan song, the Seattle Times' Brier Dudley predicts in a column today.

While I'm not totally on-board with his prediction for Gates' 360 announcements at CES this weekend, I agree with the main thrust. Dudley believes that after doing some inevitable crowing Gates will wow the crowds with an announcement that Microsoft is preparing to license the 360 platform to select consumer electronic companies.

In particular, Microsoft could work with Toshiba to develop a digital video recorder with a hard-drive, high-definition HD-DVD drive and Xbox gaming capabilities. They're already allied against Sony and other backers of the Blu-ray DVD format, and Toshiba could help Xbox finally penetrate the Japanese market.

Microsoft could also make a splash by announcing plans to give the Xbox 360 an internal HD-DVD drive, putting it on par with Sony's PlayStation 3 that has a built-in Blu-ray drive.

Kotaku reader/Gamestop employee Sean let us know today that his employer has begun the pre-ordering process for Konami's PlayStation 3 system seller Metal Gear Solid 4, starting today. The retailer has targeted June 17 of 2008 as the game's ship date, near the end of the second quarter release Konami and Kojima Productions promised us on Halloween. While Gamestop has been known to apply impossible release dates to products without a definitive date and Konami itself hasn't officially announced such a specific timeframe, this one is looking largely legit.

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots [Gamestop - thanks, Sean!]

It has been quite a year both in gaming and here at Kotaku. We've grown by leaps and/or bounds and grown both as a news gathering site and a community. Last week I posted a list of the most commented stories on Kotaku, today I bring you the most read stories on the site. Not surprisingly there are some parallels, even less surprisingly the number two spot was owned by two women playing Wii Sports Topless. Classy.

1. Minesweeper: The Movie
2. Wii, Ladies, No Shirts
3. New WoW Ads Recruit Mr. T and Shatner
4. Sony Blackballs Kotaku (UPDATED)
5. Watch 3000 Barrels Fall Down In Crysis

Hit the jump for the rest of the top... 21?

Major Nelson: All Hands on Deck Working on Live Problem

Just pinged Larry "Major Nelson" Hyrb to see what the status was of his baby, Xbox Live. The Xbox 360's network has been suffering sporadic issues since the holidays and it seems that a solid solution continues to elude the team.

He told me a bit earlier today that they are all over the Live issues, "we have had all hands on deck." He also pointed out that he's now using Twitter to keep readers of his site up-to-date on the current status of repairs.

26 minutes ago: Even though things are working, the teams are still hard at work to ensure things stay that way! 2 hours ago: I think I need to take e to lunch today. 2 hours ago: BTW: Account Recovery is working much better now. Give it a try. 2 hours ago: No, installing 'fatter pipes' won't have helped the issues we were having. 2 hours ago: Getting a lot of messages from people telling me LIVE Is working well for them. Great to hear. 2 hours ago: No, most of the staff is not away for the Holiday. They are right here, working on any issues.

Hopefully we'll hear that the repairs and fixes have been shored up soon. It will be interesting to hear what actually caused the problems. I suspect the influx of new accounts over the holidays didn't help.

Major Nelson

Microsoft: We're Investigating the Recon Armor Hack

Skyluss, a member of pro-gaming Team vBi, reported over the weekend that his Xbox Live account has been hacked... again. Apparently the hacker was a little envious of the Recon Armor Bungie had bestowed upon Skyluss and decided to take it for a spin him or herself.

The Halo 3 gamer writes in the vBi forums that he thinks this latest hack wasn't a product of social hacking (i.e. sweet-talking a password out of a stupid customer support person) but a genuine security flaw in Microsoft's Live service.

Skyluss says he's changed the passwords on his account three times in the past month so he's sure it's not an issue of someone having his password. Whether it is a security flaw in the system or an issue with customer support the bottom line is that there is a problem, one that I hope Microsoft is on top of.

I emailed XBL Director Larry Hryb to see if Skyluss high-profile account problems are being investigated, as the gamer was told after receiving a whole lot of run around and not a lot of answers. Hyrb told me that their security team has indeed launched an investigation and that he has been in touch with the gamer personally.

My Gift, My Curse [Team VBI, thanks Christopher]

Calling It: The Xbox 360 Won 2007

2007 has been a crazy awesome year for gamers. While during years gone by we've all fallen prey to too much hype and not enough...what's that word again...fun, the most unexpected part of 2007 was that it lived up to our unreasonably high expectations.

So hit the jump for our Frankenreview, victory lap 2007 edition. We pulled reviewers' top rated games* from Game Rankings to relive some of our best moments from the year.

Note, on repeat games, we picked the higher ranking platform.

Man Uses Live to Stalk, Threatens Rape

A New York man was arrested Friday after allegedly stalking and threatening to rape two Spokane girls he met while playing a Halo game on Xbox Live, KHQ reports.

Joshua R. Stetar was arrested Friday in Spokane, Washington after the man drove 40 hours straight to the city and started texting and driving by the house of the 15-year-old girl and her sister, police said.

Police say Stetar met the girl in 2006 in "Halo" using Live and that he had sent packages and flowers to the parent's home, but they were always returned. He also allegedly text messaged the girl hundreds of times and finally drove to the town.

What Are You Looking Forward To In 2008?

If 2007 was anything, it was the year of the payoff. The hardware we invested our money into and the games we invested our hopes into finally returned with plenty of interest on the investments (OK, there was Transformers, Lair...look, this is a positive piece, ok?).

But even with plenty of hours worth of '07 AAA gaming left to play, I can already feel a postpartumesque depression on the way. I remember when Assassin's Creed was just an E3 demo hidden in the confines of insta-offices, and Mass Effect just a pile of screenshots saved in one of my "special time" folders.

So before I tear up over a mental montage of these games growing from infants to fine young men, I'm killing the sentimentality and returning to the lust/infatuation phase of gaming. What are you most looking forward to playing in 2008? (One answer apiece in the comments please...let's keep this interesting. Oh, and if you are a Kotaku reader, consider this assignment mandatory.)

Me? Fallout 3. You?

[image]

Wales Businessman Screws Gamers

Angry UK shoppers are on the hunt for a Cardiff, South Wales after he failed to deliver a slew of Wii in time for Christmas, ic Wales reports.

It sounds like the customers were left high and dry after ordering some of the Nintendo consoles and a bunch of Playstation 2 games through a Cardiff-based internet site called Bizits.co.uk. This is the sort of thing that is bound to happen, I suspect, when people order one of the hot holiday items.

How do private sellers stack up for you guys? Has anyone here ordered video games or consoles through eBay or their ilk?

No sign of internet conman [ic Wales]