Can't say the visuals in the trailer do much for me, and I've never really been a big fan of the House of the Dead series outside of the arcade versions, but I'm really digging the drive-in horror film vibe they've got going in the marketing. Not enough where I'd consider picking up the game, mind you, but I probably wouldn't mind watching you play it.

So. When can I come over?

Along with praising Grand Theft Auto IV for balanced combat, driving mechanics, and impressive writing, Schiesel also praises and pokes a few games and companies for their more obscure achievements. He awards Nintendo with "Best Explanation of Why Nintendo Hardly Needs Big Games Anymore" for The Wii, pointing out that widespread acceptance by non-gamers has allowed Nintendo to ignore core fans "For now." Left 4 Dead receives a much deserved "Best Zombies" award. He lists Spore as "Best Disappointment", while giving Molyneux a nod with "Best Vindication" for Fable II.

Of course it all comes down to the game of the year, and for Schiesel, that was GTA IV. Here's what he had to say:

G.T.A. IV came out in April, and for the rest of the year I kept waiting for some other new game to captivate and refuse to release me the way this masterpiece from Rockstar did. I’m still waiting. Beyond its formidable craft, apart from its well-balanced combat and driving mechanics, what impresses most about G.T.A. IV is its writing. It is one of the few games that even try to take on the real world in any adult way. (Of course, the game’s Liberty City setting is a parody of modern New York.) Penetrating through all the game’s gangster trappings is a hunger to engage with the idiocies, the contradictions and even some of the good things in modern America. After all, someone has to.

This is the moment where one of us stands up and starts a slow clap. You guys sort that out, and we'll join in shortly.

The Zombies Look Better Every Year [The New York Times]

I spoke with Dead Rising Wii producer Mino Nakai yesterday. Having read Amanda's less-than-glowing impressions of the game from last week, I asked whether the stuff told Capcom her - mainly that a new, improved build would be playable at TGS - checked out. Know what he said? He said no, aside from a few minor bug fixes, this was the same build, because the game was nearly done.

Oh boy.

This game is a complete waste of time.

The whole point of the first Dead Rising was that there was hundreds of zombies. Because they were slow, and stupid, and slow, it was the sheer weight of numbers that provided not only the challenge, but the enjoyment. Zombie survival fantasies don't involve evading/killing 2 zombies, they involve evading/killing thousands of them.

You know how many zombies I saw on-screen at one time? Six. Six zombies. And that's not in a room, or a store, that's across the massive concourse at the start of the game. Yet they still shamble. There's no urgency, there's no danger. There's no fun. To compensate, Capcom have added a few new enemies: killer poodles and killer parrots. They're vaguely ridiculous, and do very little to make up for the lack of more shambling corpses.

What's worse, the controls are woeful. To pick up a dropped item, you don't press a button. You press the Z button and the A button. They're on opposite sides of opposite controllers. It's stupid. The Wii Remote aiming controls are woefully twitchy. and to switch weapons you need to us the d-pad while aiming. Meaning you can't use the Wii Remote at that time, requiring you to aim with the nunchuk while reaching with your other hand. It's messy. It doesnt work.

Look, the game's not out yet. There's time to fix some of the more minor things (control setups, for example). And the graphics, in the game's defence, look pretty good, especially the cutscenes. But none of that matters when the Wii version is missing the only thing that made the 360 one worth playing.

http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/news/videogames/39/

So I spent a good part of the weekend putting together my sexy new computer, or rather, I spent a good part of the weekend trying to get my sexy new computer to work.

If you recall, I purchased all of the parts for my new PC piecemeal and did everything myself, which included wiring the case to the motherboard.

After several failed attempts to get the thing to power up, I realized I had misplugged the wires running to the case's front audio plugs.

Once I got the PC to boot-up, I couldn't get the thing to go into Windows XP.

I suspect this is because I'm using the two harddrives from my old PC and that the thing can't figure out all of the new specs, from CPU to memory and graphics card. So I think I'm going to have to reinstall the operating system. But before I do I wanted to run it by you, my reader-experts. What do you think?

Right now the Bios boots up fine, it seems to find everything fine, but when it goes to load windows, the screen just flashes and jumps back to the Bios boot-up screen. If I don't manually turn it off, it will do this forever. Brian Crecente

Ps. How do you like my tidy cabling system?

Engadget reports that all traces of the Phantom Game Console have been erased from the Infinium Labs website, breaking the hearts of the two people who actually believed the thing was genuine hardware.

Oh, Phantom. How many hours of derisive giggling have you selflessly given us (hey check out my awesome split infinitive)? And now you're gone. Dead and gone forever, leaving us with a far less entertaining business model to lambast.

Recently renamed Phantom Entertainment (probably to shed the constant vaporware references that plagued its former moniker), the company is now focused on marketing its wireless gaming Lapboard and so-called Phantom Game Service, which is the "first end-to-end on-demand game service delivering games to your living room" (guess they never heard of GameTap) — that is, if you happen to have an XP-powered PC situated in that particular room.

See? Just not as hilarious. I weep for the good old days, when driving by a LAN party and shouting "PHANTOM" out the window would result in Red Bull-geysering hilarity. Thanks, Nathaniel. Eliza Gauger

more here [Engadget]

Eye topography enthusiasts, look no further. The precision ocular cartography you seek is available now, in handheld form, and in addition to medical applications it supports and estimated 600 game titles and only uses 6 AA batteries per hour and a half of playtime.

This device is a special frame grabber with data analysis software based on a SEGA Nomad 16-bit game console. The whole design fits into the standard SEGA cartridge and can be used on any 16-bit SEGA game console like SEGA Genesis or SEGA Megadrive. SEGA Nomad was used for portable applications. The cartridge has video input connector and any standard CCD video camera can be plugged into it. For eye topography measurement a high resolution monochrome CCD camera must be used. In addition the special lenses must be attached to the camera to allow making images of the eye at a 2-3 cm distance. The camera is focused on the eye cornea surface and captures the image produced by the light circle source.

This is a very specific device necessary for eye surgery clinics only.

This mod was apparently a professional deal by one Sergei Skorobogatov for an ophthalmologic centre called "Prozrenie", presumably in Moscow. Thanks for the head's-up, Seddon, and everyone keep your eyelids pinned open for more medical uses of consoles.

And send them to me. ME. That bastard Florian is always stealing my posts. Eliza gauger

Explanatory site with more photos here [cl.cam.ac.uk/]