Dead Space was one of those titles that sort of snuck up on me, very appropriate for a survival horror game.

Before taking up a controller for any length of time, I was sort of impressed with its look, but I hadn't yet been introduced to some of the game's interesting gameplay designs. Things like strategic dismemberment and the lack of a HUD and the true zero gravity sections of the game. All three combine to make Dead Space both more immersive and otherworldly.

In Dead Space you will play as Issac Clarke, a space engineer responding to a distress call from a "Planet Cracker." In the game's reality, these giant spaceships tear apart dead planets to extract ore. In the case of this particular ship, the planet they were raping wasn't so dead. Soon after boarding the ship, and realizing that most everyone onboard is dead, Clarke is separated from the rest of his team.

From the get go the game nails the look it needs to pull off a space thriller. Things are sterile, dark and otherworldly. Event the design of Clarke's outfit, a blend of deep sea diving suite and steam punk welder's mask, is fantastic. The lack of a HUD helps put you more into the game, making you pay more attention to the little noises and signs of what's going on around you.

The weapons, the weapons are fantastical as the multi-limbed, mutli-headed creatures your face. Dead Space leans heavily on the limited ammo feature found in almost all horror survival games, but than adds a twist. To kill the monstrosities you face you can go ahead and empty a clip into one, and maybe kill it, or you can carefully, and systematically blow off it's head and limbs. You do this by selecting the correct weapon, often one that fires multiple lasers or shots, and lining up the laser sights with the weaving limbs.

My first deep look at the game had me playing through a level of the ship's hydroponics lab. Creatures scuttled and ambled toward me from around corners and out of plants. Some burst from the bellies of dead humans. I lased, shot and burned them all. Other creatures produced toxic gases, slowly killing me until I could find and destroy them. All of the things I took on were wholly unique creations to this game. The creature design, I found, is just amazing.

After making my way through the hydroponics lab, a developer skipped me to a boss battle. In it I had to deal with some patches of zero gravity. My boots, automatically magnetized, allowed me to stick to the floor. To move I would just look at an area that had metal and jump to it, floating crazily to my goal and than latching on.

The boss itself was nested in a giant circular room, its tendrils hidden in ooze. To defeat it I had to run around the walls of the moving room and deal out damage, methodically, taking down the creature one tendril at a time.

I think Dead Space's blend of deep space horror and tactical combat is going to resonate both with hardcore fans of the thriller genre and those more reluctant in the past to dip into it.

UPDATED: Planet Xbox 360 just pointed us to their screenshot, and it's convincing. (Above).

Ever want to roundhouse punch EA Sports honcho/former Xbox chief Peter Moore in the jaw? Astoundingly, word is you can do just that in Face Breaker, coming out Sept. 5. ButtonMasher reports thusly:

While previewing Face Breaker at the EA booth it was mentioned that Peter Moore’s face had been scanned and entered into the game using the boxer editor. The face, which is creepily accurate, can be attached to any of the bodies and manipulated. Peter asserts that he suits a more chiseled look but the demonstration featured him as a blue monkey.

From talking with them more about the addition to the game it seems that his face will be included in the retail build of the game and will more than likely be an unlockable character.

That's a pretty shrewd move. Not sure how many sales it will do on that feature alone, but I'll put it in my GameFly queue.

Here's what the rest of the game will look like, btw.

Break Peter Moore's Face [Button Masher, thanks reader Paul K.]

Screenshot of Peter Moore in Face Breaker [Planet Xbox 360]

[Because the comments before the update might seem confusing out of context, here's the original shitty shoop I did to illustrate this - OSG]

• Sliders are borked. The CPU sliders do nothing. Human sliders affect both CPU and human. Level playing field!
• Online dynasty mode is borked. It sometimes simulates games that have been played by humans.
• Super-sim is borked: Using it to fast-forward through a blowout can add many more plays than would actually happen in the football game, and produce extremely lopsided final scores.
• Kick returns are borked.
• The new player speed model is causing huge problems with pursuit angles by CPU-controlled players.

I have the game but I have not played it intensively enough to discover these issues. But if these issues are on the level and, worse, if some gameplay mechanics are not patchable, then it's an almost unforgivable shame. Especially regarding sliders — how can something like that get through QA? How can the super-sim glitch go unnoticed?

And that's to say nothing of the rosters fiasco, for which EA says a patch is coming soon. The roster editing community is equal parts anxious and furious. Two for-profit sellers have put out files that they say are workable, but there is a good chance EA's patch could invalidate any file that predates it, screwing both the sellers and anyone who bought it.

While not Madden, I've always felt NCAA Football was in many ways a better game, because of the deeper catalog of teams and the richer offseason activity of recruiting. But on the next-gen titles it's been a wipeout, starting with versions that had fewer features than the Xbox and PS2 versions, and today still have nowhere near the level of cinematic detail that made it such an immersive game. Following that with a game that has this many bugs is, for devotees of the series, frustrating to no end.

NCAA 09 Plagued with Bugs [AOL Fanhouse]

What first struck me about the game was just how pretty it is. Mirror's Edge using the Unreal Engine but it does so to create something so unfamiliar, a first-person perspective in a bright, crisp world. Matching the simple aesthetic, the games controls are very straight forward. Granted I only had a chance to run and interact with the environment, so I'm not sure how combat will hold up.

The thing about this game is that it creates the sort of environment that makes you strive for perfection. You can run through section of the city pretty much anyway you want. I could, for instance, while tearing across one roof section, run between the slanted solar panels, and around the raised roof in the center of the building. In fact, there was no incentive for me to do anything else. I suppose it was a little slower to take the mundane route, but there was no score involved, no bad guys chasing me.

Despite that I ended up circling back three times to do it the parkour way, to leap from roof to roof, scale a fence, roll on my landing and use the momentum to quicken my run up a solar panel and leap to the raised building. It was the sort of feeling, I bet, that skateboarders or skiiers get. You want to do a trick and you want to do it just right.

If the brief snippet of the game is any indication of the rest of the title, than I can see myself playing and replaying levels until I land my runs, my leaps, my rolls just right. And I'll do it for the sheer joy of pulling it off. That's what all games should deliver.

But it was totally an accident, he swears. Riccitiello played BioShock in two sections, first on a long plane trip to London and then finished it on his way to Singapore — "which will prove I'm a slow gamer," he said. Having just gotten a new computer from Apple, he found himself switching back and forth between it and Windows.

"The problem was... the key for saving the little girls didn't work," said Riccitiello. "My keys were wrong, and I needed to go online to figure out how to re-map the keys on my own while I was in the game. I'd already harvested six by the time I landed in Heathrow."

"When they turn into slugs, I was a little horrified. I flew to Singapore, finished harvesting and then re-played it."

So first EA's boss ate the souls of innocents due to some major mistakes, and then he went back over it to do things the kinder, gentler way? Art imitates life, perhaps?

Incidentally, Riccitiello has also played Portal 2, and said we're in for major awesome: "It took my breath away."

Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello bears no resemblance in person to Darth Vader. I was a little bit surprised.

"People have asked me many times how EA is going to be loved by this particular audience," said Riccitiello, when I told him about the popularity of anti-EA sentiment I often see from the readers. I asked him if he's ever read Kotaku comments, and in fact, Riccitiello was ready right away to recall one of his favorites.

"'Hating EA is so last year,'" he quoted immediately.

The company's pride is its label structure, which EA says provides individual autonomy to the studios under its purview. But better to acquire well-functioning and talented external studios and let them self-govern, Riccitiello maintains, than to attempt to meet high production volumes from a centralized locus of control.

"I think we might have learned that the hard way," he said.

EA is still building its way back from a loss of face in the gaming audience, after aggressive studio control led to quality lapses. But Riccitiello says the company's most definitely on its way, as he spoke to me alongside EA's packed E3 booth show where there were quite a few standout titles, like Spore or Mirror's Edge.

"There's a noticeable shift in quality and innovation playing its way through," Riccitiello said. "We had a tough transition, made a lot of falls, but right now, look around this tiny little booth. It's hard to pick a loser off the wall."

Riccitiello said it will take time before the change efforts over which he presided since he rejoined EA a little over a year ago begin to gain appreciation in the audience. "If you were to look at the [comments] on Kotaku a year ago, I think you'd have probably read [a ratio of] 90-10 anti-EA venom. Six months ago, it's 70-30... and right now, what I see on Kotaku is 50-50, if not leaning toward EA."

"At the same time, I read something else they'll say is, 'I don't like EA, but I really like Maxis, DICE, Black Box, Criterion...' at a certain point, they named all of our children, but they don't like the family."

EA will earn its way back in the eyes of the gaming audience, said Riccitiello, "not through PR or advertising, but through better games and doing the right things. There will be a shift... but it won't happen overnight."

"If I were not working at EA, or didn't know EA as well as I do, I'd still have a little bit of a 'wait and see,' or 'prove it to me.' It's hard not to. But it's also hard to square the fact that Will Wright calls us home. John Carmack, Gabe Newell... Lucy Bradshaw on the Spore team... these folks could be at any developer or head of production for most any publisher, and they're here because they're happy to be here."

"I'm not sure they were happy three years ago," said Riccitiello, "But frankly, if you were there [then]... I think you'd be able to see something different about EA [now]."

Check out our four -part interview to hear the three talk about the deal, id's new engine and new game, the future of Doom and other interesting tidbits.

Joystiq noticed that James Wan, the director of the "Saw" series of horror flicks, was credited on GameTrailers as the director of this clip. Interestingly, he's not mentioned at all in the credits. But it does give us a definitive date for the game's release: Oct. 21. So you'll have 10 full days before Halloween to get all sorts of scary cosplay ideas.

Saw Director Takes a Stab at Dead Space with 'Loved Ones' Trailer[Joystiq]

"ParticleMan simulates gravitational attraction between particles in a cloud. This system was used to study such gravitational dynamics as orbits, nebula formation, star formation and particle streams from sources like pulsars and black holes," says the official site.

ParticleMan has the following elements:

• Particles — point masses which interact with each other
• Gravity Wells — fixed point masses which attract or repel particles(depending on magnitude, which can be negative), but do not move or change mass without user input
• Particle Guns — sources that spit particles out at a given angle and velocity
• Gravity Wells and Particle Guns may only be placed on the green grid in the z=0 plane.
• The Iso Surface — an isosurface geometry object derived from the positions and masses (which act as field strengths) of the particles.

By toying with the physics controls you can create different kinds of gravitational simulations. Set fusion rate to high, you can simulate the birth of stars in a collapsing nebula. Low fusion rates can simulate the interaction between stars in a galaxy.

ParticleMan is an .exe, so Mac gamers (like myself) are SOL. But if you've always wanted to make stars, and not in the American Idol sense, here's a nice weekend time-waster.

Spore Protoypes [Spore.com, big thanks to reader Bryce]

IGN: Flock Preview[IGN]

The nugget of info was couched in a broader report about the run-up to the 20th anniversary of the seminal sports simulation. Huge hat tip to reader Max for spotting and pointing it out to us.

Quoth Reuters:

Under the deal, "Rock Band" will feature music from the "Madden 09" soundtrack in its weekly downloadable songs update, a handful at a time, over several weeks, with each song carrying the "Madden" brand. Additionally, each soundtrack song will be available for sale via iTunes as part of a special "Madden" playlist.

Max provided a handy-dandy track list reminder (below), noting that two songs already are available as Rock Band DLC: "Inside the Fire" by Disturbed, and "Hammerhead" by The Offspring. The soundtrack:

Airbourne - Stand Up For Rock ‘N Roll
Busta Rhymes feat. Linkin Park - We Made It
Disturbed - Inside The Fire
Franz Ferdinand - Lucid Dreams
From First To Last - Worlds Away
Gym Class Heroes - I’m Home
Hollywood Undead - Undead
In Flames - The Mirror’s Truth
Innerpartysystem - Don’t Stop
Izza Kizza - Millionaire
K’NAAN - ABC’s
Kardinal Offishall feat. Lindo P - Burnt
Kidz In The Hall - Blackout
KOVAS - Wax On, Wax Off
Mindless Self Indulgence - Never Wanted To Dance
Rev Theory - Hell Yeah
Senses Fail - Wolves At The Door
Shinedown - Devour
The All-American Rejects - The Real World (Demo)
The Fashion - Like Knives
The Offspring - Hammerhead
Trivium - Into The Mouth Of…We March
Tyga - Diamond Life
Underoath - Desperate Times, Desperate Measures
Wale feat. Southeast Slim - Breakdown
Young Dre The Truth feat. Good Charlotte - Workin’

Madden Football Marks 20 Years With New Offerings [Reuters]

The full Spore, as we've talked about in detail before, is broken down into five phases which allow you to take a single-cell organism and run it all the way up the evolutionary ladder to a space-exploring civilization.

My concern, after watching the Spore demonstration in Leipzig last year, was that the game wouldn't live up to the spectacular creation tools that are so integral to Spore. I worried that it may be more of a series of toys strung together than a full-blown game.

My time with the game managed to ease some of those concerns.

I decided to start Spore as you should, at the cellular level, controlling an organism floating aimlessly in a sea of life.

This stage of the game, which took me about 20 minutes to play through, felt an awful lot like flow. In it I moved my organism around avoiding larger critters and eating smaller ones. I also tried to find bits of meteorites to gobble up which would give me evolutionary abilities.

After enough attacks or gathering enough bits of rock I earned the DNA I needed to add on new bits to me creature. Initially I gave him a set of pincers for attacking, later I added a bulb that produced poison when he was attacked and extra limbs for faster swimming.

The game, like flow, took place among layers of a 2D environment in an almost through-the-microscope point of view. As I grew I floated up the layers towards the surface of the pool. Eventually, I was able to evolve and make it to land.

This initially cell level, while short, was quite fun to play.

Once I made it to land, I was asked to modify my creature with a set of legs. Oblivious to the placement of his mouth, which pointed straight down, and his eyes, which pointed straight out, I accidentally misplaced my unfortunate creature's legs. When he took to land, I saw that his mouth jutted out straight down from his rounded torso. Imagine my surprise when my little mistake attacked his first creature with a series of short, angry squats... That's right, my new lifeform had to teabag people to kill them. Oh the humanity.

After getting over the initial shock of what I had just created, I spent an inordinate amount of time running around teabagging other unsuspecting creatures to death. You'd be surprised just how much time you can burn playing a game that allows you to kill things in that particular manner. I tried my best to get Wright's attention, to show him my creature, but I suspect he wanted nothing to do with it.

In this second phase you spend most of you time hunting for smaller creatures to complete quests of a sort and earn DNA and body parts. Again, fun to play, though a bit short lived.

The next stage, which I didn't test out, is the Tribe stage which has you controlling an entire tribe of your creatures, issuing commands to them and evolving their technology. It's in this stage that you can create some pretty amazing buildings. I saw a collection of them and was blown away with what you can do. For instance, a factory made to look like a turn-of-the-century detective in an alley with trashcans nearby, the building's smoke coming out of the detective's pipe. Or a city building made to look like a young couple sitting on a park bench. It was pretty spectacular stuff.

The game's final phase is space exploration, which I managed to tinker with for a few minutes. Long enough, at least, to see that space ships can also take any form, like a jumping Mario.

My time with the game was painfully shorty, enough to tantalize and perhaps put some fears to rest. Is it worth the price, likely, will it be the next Sims? Too early to tell.

Earlier in the day Wright told us that Spore was a way for him to "convey interesting concepts in fun ways" a game of an entire universe, something that makes a game editor a toy and becomes a "creativity amplifier."

With more than 1 million creatures already created with Spore's Creature Creator, and Wright expecting the number of creatures to exceed the population of Earth by launch time, I think it's fair to say Wright nailed what he was going for.

Clearly, there is very little probative value to this post, I just wanted to write the word DIKTAD (the name of a toy chest they sell). Three years ago my friend Ryan (Flying Squirrel, to those in the know), who now writes for the Sacramento Bee, went to IKEA with me to help me trick out my former shithole (rented for $1095 a month. Housing bubble? What is this you speak of? Rent is a rock solid investment that only appreciates.) We came around the corner and saw DIKTAD and that instantly became our new term of abuse for each other, like "Heat Stick" and "Grandma's Tongue." And now I bequeath it to you. Please call each other that in the comments.

The Sims 2 IKEA Home Stuff Trailer [Simprograms]

Hit the jump for a look at more.

Wii-monster [Spore Thanks, Stephen!]

Hammer & Sickle
Drop the hammer into this cool cocktail.

The Kirov
The pride of Russian, stirred with crimson juice.

Red October
A refreshing rum cocktail with a hint of cherry.

Lenin's Tomb
A nonalcoholic punch for our moderate comrades.

I stuck to the beer.

But I was a bit worried about how the game would make sure virtual boarders weren't slowly moving off the balance board's sweet spot. Scooting was a problem I noticed while playing Wii Fit. The more into a game I got, the more intense it was the more I tended to scoot around on the board over time. After ten minutes or so of intense gaming I'd notice the game wasn't responding right because my feet were no longer centered.

The devs told me that that is a concern of theirs as well. So much so that they're actually looking into the possibility of shipping the game with some sort of form that snaps onto the balance board to give it more of a skateboard look and feel. More importantly, this skateboard frame would help gamers realize when they were scooting off the board's center spot without having to look down, and potential facing into a virtual curb.

Sounds like a fantastic idea to me. [Image Credit]

Hasbro Family Game Night will include Wii-friendly versions of Connect Four, Sorry, Boggle, Yahtzee, Battleship and Sorry Sliders.

The games are all played on a table in the Hasbro Family Game Night living room, which can be decorated with unlockable themes and items.

I had a chance to check out two of the games during the presentation.

In Connect Four you use your Remote to drop red or black checkers into plastic columns as you try to line-up four of the checkers before the other player does. While you can play with standard rules, the developers also came up with a twist that gives random checkers special power ups, like the ability to lock the other player from dropping checker in a column, or blowing up surrounding pieces.

Sorry Sliders, a new board game soon to be released in toy stores by Hasbro, players swing the remote to slide small Sorry pieces down the board. The object is to try and get the piece to stop as close to the center of the board as possible. Each player takes turns, trying to both slide their pieces into position and knock their opponents pieces away. Each round ends with players using the scored points to move their pieces to home.

I'm not sure if I can see a family gathering around a television to play classic board games, but Hasbro Family Game Night certainly has some potential and, at least initially, seems fun.

The game, created for 7 to 11-year-olds, may sound childish, but it looks to have the right mix of art-style, sense of fun and graphic muscle power to be a potential hit on the portable.

I sat down with the game for a short demonstration last week with UK's EA Bright Light studio. The devs told me that the game will push the DS to it's technical limits with scenes that boast a minimum of 2,000 polygons.

The stylus-driven game is broken down into a number of themed-worlds, each with it's own team of Zubo that you can befriend through tasks and mini-games to add to your team of three. All said there will be 55 different Zubo in the game and all of them will have unique attacks during combat.

Combat is performed through an elite-beat-esque rhythm game that has you first choosing your attack and then either carrying it out or failing by tapping the sliding across the screen with the stylus.

The demo I saw, while fun to look at, was in a setting to loud to really hear the music, and it's the music and how it syncs up with the on-screen action that can make or break this sort of game. The art-style, though, will certainly play with the age group, and even adult fans of plastic figures.

Talking to a gathering of journalists last week, Valve's Gabe Newell talked up the company's upcoming co-op survival horror shooter.

The game is based on four movies each of which gamers play through as survivors trying to escape an army of the undead. The game will also support an infected versus survivor mode and a split-screen cooperative mode.

In Left 4 Dead gamers live out a horror movie, but to do that the game has to be able to react to the situation, Newell said. The developers managed to do that by having the game procedurally generate character performance, pacing, lighting and music.

This means that depending on how you play and how those with you play the game plays out differently every time/

For instance, Newell showed us a situation where the four survivors of the game barely make it to a gas station near a safe room. The characters, all near death, are confronted by a small number of zombies which slowly appear out of pockets of shadow.

When shown a second time, with the players in much better shape, with more ammo, the zombies stream out of the four corners of the screen coming at the players from all sides until one of the group blows up the nearby gas station, sending it's roof first floating up on a ball of flame and then crashing down among the walking dead.

"The director is a bunch of AI," Newell said. "It sets the stage for climaxes, the pacing. It writes script for your character, creates the drama around you."

I experienced this first hand when playing through a level of the game first hand. Lured away from my group by a zombie, when I ran to find them again I found myself facing the city of zombies by myself and quickly killed. It was a classic "Don't go in there" moment for me.

Newell says that's the brilliance of the game .

"The game is going to play different every time," he said.

"Strategic dismemberment?" Counterproductive headshots? And bodyshots? I'm ready to call Dead Space the No. 1 and No. 2 game of its genre* — because it looks like it'll both piss me off and scare the shit out of me. It also looks like you get to relearn all you know about third-person shooting just for one title.

(*Note to EA, that's not a testimonial. Don't lift it out of context pls. Kthx.)

New Dead Space Trailer Advises Strategic Dismemberment [PS3Fanboy, video hosted by IGN]

Fresh off a sendup of Metal Gear come two more amusing trailers flacking Battlefield: Bad Company. One (above) cracks on Gears of War's haunting "Mad World" campaign. The second (below, after the jump) goes after Rainbow Six.

Despite all that has gone on with this game in the past, I kinda do want to see what this one is all about. It gets really enervating playing tactical shooters that faithful adhere to painstaking rules of engagement, when all you want to do is huck a grenade and wade into the firefight. Whether indulging that release is enough to sustain an entire game, I dunno, but I at least wanna see it.

"This is supposed to be a stealth mission!"
"Why?"

You have no idea how many times I have had that same conversation with a game.

Battlefield: Bad Company Trailers Parody Gears of War, Rainbow Six [Joystiq, and thanks to Mike for the YouTube links yesterday.]

Interestingly, I'm in Washington D.C. for the weekend — normally we publish a little BART jaunt away from S.F. So if someone up that way can pop in and ask Will what, specifically, will get you banned for making Sporeporn beasts in Spore Creature Creator, I'd be obliged. Use as many clinical terms as possible, like, is an apparent glans by itsef banworthy, or must it also be attached to a shaftlike appendage? Also use "frenulum" and "taint."

The official EA release with who/what/when details is after the jump.

Who: Industry Icon Will Wright, the Chief Designer from Maxis, an EA studio. Wright’s games are some of the most popular and acclaimed titles of all time, including SimCity and the mega-hit The Sims, which recently celebrated 100 million units sold.

What: Wright will provide a public demo of his latest project, the hotly anticipated game Spore. One of the most ambitious games ever made, Spore gives players their own personal universe in a box. Create and evolve life, establish tribes, build civilizations, sculpt entire worlds and explore a universe filled with creations made by other gamers. Spore gives players a wealth of creative tools to customize nearly every aspect of their universe: creatures, vehicles, buildings, and even UFOs.

Where: The Apple Store
One Stockton Street
San Francisco, CA 94108
415-392-0202

"In addition to his creative output, Neil distinguished himself as a team leader," said Brown of his colleague's career, which saw young overseeing titles like Majestic, The Sims 2 and Boom Blox. "In particular, he stepped in to rally the development teams and lead a turnaround at EA Los Angeles."

All of Neil's former teammates are looking forward to see what he accomplishes in his new endeavor, Brown said.

"Neil has all the tools he needs to be a successful entrepreneur: great creative instigator, great communicator, and great leadership skills."

We've contacted Young himself for comment and await reply.

It really came home for me when we were in Munich for our global marketing meeting and we took over the Hard Rock Café for the night and had a Rock Band competition... There were a hundred of us and it was like a real rock concert. It was a blast. I stood back and I thought that this was an incredible cultural phenomenon... The crowd were going wild, but all we were doing was playing on toy guitars, toy drums and singing badly into a microphone. Now the beer might have had something to do with it, I don’t know, but it was a great social thing. And I said, ‘Boy, this product is going to change the way we think about games.’

Boy was he right! Rock Band also changed the ways game execs can embarrass themselves at E3 press conferences.

Peter Moore Interview [CVG via videogaming247] [Pic]

BUSTED! "Boobalicious" Banned! [GamesRadar]

After watching this video of character Spin beating the brains out of a square-jawed, muscle-bound opponent, I'm a bit psyched.

FaceBreaker enters ring Sept. 5 [GameSpot]

It used to be...All Metacritics were higher once upon a time because it was ten professionals rating them. Now, sort of anybody with a pen can rate them and it ends up with a bit of a wider track some times.

Uh, John? Think you got your Metacritics and your GameRankings mixed up. But hey, that's a simple mistake for the head of one of the industry's biggest companies to make. Totally understandable. What's a little less understandable is how he continues.

EA doesn't usually get the benefit of the cult - 'everybody has to rate it a hundred' thing going on - that happens sometimes even when they may not, based on the review, have played more than the first fifteen minutes of the game. But that's a separate issue

Poor John. Poor EA! Silly reviewers, not unanimously agreeing that any of EA's titles are of the calibre of something like Mario Galaxy or GTA IV. What a terrible, unprofessional oversight.

EA doesn't usually get benefit of the "cult" says CEO [GI.biz]

If you're hankering for some Spore fruit fucker action right now, you can always grab the demo, which leaked early. It contains 1/4 the content, but that's 1/4 more than you're getting right now.

The stand-alone creator is a pretty straight-forward game. Launching it up brings you to a screen that lets you either create or load your own critters.

Once you drop into the creation mode you're presented with a floating blob of flesh, elongated at either end with stumpy tail-like or neck-like appendages. When you hover your cursor over the blob it becomes slightly transparent, exposing the vertebrae buried inside. An arrow appears over either stump as well. To shape your creature's body you tug on the arrows to stretch out the skin along an ever-extending backbone. You can also tug at the vertebrae to try and curve the spine and shape of the body.

Once you've shaped your body you can drop on arms, legs, mouths, eyes, noses, ears, hands, feet and other little appendages, like wings. Each of these can be twisted, stretched and moved about on the fly.

Initially the need for a backbone and the pre-set selection of body parts feels very limiting, but over time I found that I can create lots of things with a little creativity including spiders, snakes, cats, I even tried to create a Fruit Fucker... and almost succeeded. The one thing I can't seem to create is a human, I think the biggest issue there is that you can't add a separate head and instead have to rely on planing mouth, eyes, ears and such on the top of a knobby outgrowth of the spinal column. That's not a deal break at all though for me.

As you create your creature different icons give you a break down of its special abilities, like attacks and speed. Another button shows how complicated your critter is. If it gets too complicated you can't add any more parts. So no 100 mouthed balls of flesh.

Once completed you can paint the creature by either selecting among three pages of pre-set paint jobs or by painting the creature in three phases, still using pre-set stencils. The fact that you can choose just about any color and that you can control three different overlays of color makes customization pretty easy, though doing something really specific, like a black band over Fruit Fucker's eyes, is impossible.

Is it worth $10? Maybe, it is tons of fun to play around with, but I'm not sure if I'd want to shell out cash to get early hands-on time with something that will come built-in to a game I'm planning on buying. Then again it's only $10 and it's TONS of fun. Actually a little addictive.

Oh and the rough draft of that organic Fruit Fucker up there, I suspect that's what FF might look like in meat space. I also suspect this particular Fruit Fucker would be just as happy to have his way with human chest cavities as the odd orange.

Update: I just checked in with EA on the whole price thing. Here's the deal. You can get a trial version of the Creature Creator, which contains about a quarter of the creature parts, for free. If you do buy the creator for $10 you get a $5 rebate toward the full Spore game good at Target and Amazon.

Update 2: See him in motion!

We’re never satisfied. There’s always more we can do. It’s what we love about our business. I hate to sound like a cheerleader, but the facts are the facts. And I don’t expect them to change any time soon. We’re hitting this season in terms of quality and innovation stronger than we ever have at EA SPORTS. If I’m wrong, you’ll see me sporting a new tattoo - maybe a competitor’s logo?

No, no more tattoos. Please, Peter. Elsewhere in his corporate locker room peptalk, Moore talks about the bright future FIFA and NHL have and hints at a new "groundbreaking feature" for NBA LIVE to be announced at E3.

Not Resting [Peter Moore Blog via videogaming247]

The publisher handed out 50 or so copies of the Spore Creature Creator to a bunch of celebrities (and me) and asked them to create a single, marvelous creature. This eclectic selection of creatures will then be posted on an Electronic Arts site for people to vote on next week. The winner gets $15,000 donated to the charity of his or her choice.

I've been able to cobble together a short list of some of the folks I'm competing against:

Stan Lee
Richard Branson
David Lynch
Ellijah Wood
Kevin Rose
Mark Cuban
Curt Schilling
Kent Nichols
Robert Scoble
Veronica Belmont
Carlos Santana
Bijou Phillips
Flight of the Conchords

Good thing none of these people are rich, powerful or creative... man I'm screwed. Maybe I should take the low road and create a giant penis creature? Neah, it's too much fun making abominations to God.

Gamers sue EA over football exclusivity [GameSpot]

Electronic Arts wants to buy Take-Two, we all know that. And Take-Two is playing hard to get, slightly souring EA's advances. In fact, we've heard the only reason that Electronic Arts is still pushing deals at Take-Two left and right is because they want to get their Federal Trade Commission approval for the deal.

With that in hand, EA can walk from the table and return when it makes more since for everyone involved and, in theory, they wouldn't have to go through the FTC approval process again. Thing is, Take-Two now isn't playing nice with the FTC either.

In an early morning update today, Take-Two notified investors, hangers-on and attentive journalists, that the U.S. District Court of DC is ordering the company to explain why they won't comply with the FTC.

Take-Two says that they have been cooperating fully with the FTC in regards to their review of Electronic Arts' offer.

The Company has already provided enormous quantities of data and access to key executives, and has offered to provide the FTC staff with additional documents and information. Nevertheless, the Company believes the FTC’s subpoena and CID are unnecessarily broad and would entail unacceptable additional expense to the Company. To limit the inordinate expense and labor that the FTC’s demand would entail, the Company has sought to obtain reasonable limits on the scope of the information sought.

The court has ordered a hearing on June 24 to determine if Take-Two is required to comply. If Take-Two can't come to some sort of agreement with the FTC prior to the hearing they say they plan to fight the commission's request.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but earlier reports pegged the price tag at about $30 million. EA hasn't said what it plans to do with the social network - through Rupture, they gain an infrastructure to use, but not much of an existing user base.

Earlier reports had also suggested that the deal would make Fanning, as well as his co-founder Jon Baudanza, employees of EA. Mariam Sughayer of EA's corporate communications declined to comment on this or other details of the transaction, but told Kotaku that the company will announce more details in the weeks ahead.

Full press release follows the jump:

EA Acquires ThreeSF
REDWOOD CITY, Calif.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS) today announced it has acquired ThreeSF, Inc., a social network for gamers. Financial terms were not disclosed. More information about EA’s plans for ThreeSF will be available in the weeks ahead.

About Electronic Arts

Electronic Arts Inc. (EA), headquartered in Redwood City, California, is the world's leading interactive entertainment software company. Founded in 1982, the Company develops, publishes, and distributes interactive software worldwide for video game systems, personal computers, cellular handsets and the Internet. Electronic Arts markets its products under four brand names: EA SPORTSTM, EATM, EA SPORTS Freestyle TM and POGOTM. In fiscal 2008, EA posted GAAP net revenue of $3.67 billion and had 27 titles that sold more than one million copies. EA's homepage and online game site is www.ea.com. More information about EA's products and full text of press releases can be found on the Internet at http://info.ea.com.

EA, EA SPORTS, EA SPORTS Freestyle and POGO are trademarks or registered trademarks of Electronic Arts Inc. in the U.S and/or other countries.

Instead, EA says Florin will work on "various of the Company's global strategic and transformative initiatives." The move appears to shift his focus from day-to-day publishing operations to longer-term strategies around North America and European markets.

The Korean mobile developer and publisher is best known for their mobile role-playing game Heroes Lore.

“This acquisition is a major milestone in growing our mobile business in Asia,” said Barry Cottle, Senior Vice President and General Manager EA Mobile. “Hands-On Mobile Korea brings us a great leadership team, proven studio talent, and outstanding carrier and OEM handset manufacturer relationships.”

While mobile gaming and it's plethora of platforms continues to fail to substantially tap it's mammoth market, it must be heartening for that industry to see a company as large as EA show such interest.

Deal Will Strengthen the Presence of EA Mobile in Asia and Expand its Development and Publishing Teams as the Global Mobile Leader

Seoul, Korea/Redwood City, CA, – Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS) today announced that it had agreed to acquire the assets of Hands-On Mobile Korea, a leading Korean mobile developer and publisher, best known for its mobile role-playing game, Heroes Lore. Upon completion of the acquisition, the former Hands-On Mobile Korea team will become EA Mobile Korea and will play a strategic role in the EA Mobile™ Asia development and publishing growth plans. The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to be completed by the end of this fiscal quarter. Hands-On Mobile Korea is a subsidiary of parent company Hands-On Mobile™, based in the United States.

“This acquisition is a major milestone in growing our mobile business in Asia,” said Barry Cottle, Senior Vice President and General Manager EA Mobile. “Hands-On Mobile Korea brings us a great leadership team, proven studio talent, and outstanding carrier and OEM handset manufacturer relationships.”

“We are excited about joining EA Mobile and its mission to bring to market some of the world’s most innovative, cutting-edge and commercially proven mobile games and applications,” said Gilbert Kim, CEO of Hands-On Mobile Korea, who will become head of EA Mobile, Korea Division. “Korea is one of the most ubiquitous entertainment markets in the world, and we look forward to continually pushing the edge with our partners here to enrich the mobile user experience across all aspects of daily life.”

Following completion of the acquisition, Hands-On Mobile Korea will continue to be managed by Gilbert Kim as head of the EA Mobile, Korea division. The studio will remain in Korea with growth planned for both the development and publishing teams, and will work within the management structure of the EA Mobile Asia Publishing organization.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. EA does not expect the acquisition to impact the company’s fiscal year 2009 financial guidance.

Moore was quick to point out that it wasn't Electronic Arts that asked for the exclusive deal, but rather the NFL which was seeking a single licensee. He said that EA feels that licensing remains an important part of adding realism to their sports titles and that he can't imagine a time when they wouldn't seek them.

Specifically, the weakness that EA faces when trying to deliver the same experience to the flood of new gamers brought into the fold by Nintendo's casual-centric Wii.

Moore said after speaking with focus groups who called their Wii sports titles a "joke" or the outcome of "spoiling a good game", they realized their approach to the Wii had to change.

"We weren't delivering the experience," he said. "We have to make it a little more approachable to allow them to get in early and quickly.

"We can't port content down to the Wii, we need to start building for the Wii from the ground up, that's what we are doing this year."

Specifically, they are doing that with their new All-Play brand which will bring Tiger Woods, NCAA, FIFA, NBA and Madden all to the Wii in versions built specifically for the console. Instead of trying to describe how that will be different, Moore booted up a Wii debug unit to show off how the alpha version of All-Play Madden will look and feel.

The idea with the All-Play games is to take a familiar brand, like Madden and make them "fun, stimulating, easy" Moore said, pointing out how All-Play Madden doesn't have "graphic intensity" but does give gamers a simple experience.

On first blush, the most noticeable change to the fabled franchise was the user interface. Cutting down on the slew of information-heavy, packed menus, the All-Star menu during play offered just three choices: Top picks, Madden's pick (which included a picture of Madden Mii) and all plays. Selecting one of the large buttons bring up a couple of options which can be quickly scrolled through.

It appeared that during Moore's time playing defense for us he controlled his player with the nunchuk's thumbstick and swatted the remote to play defense, either knocking the ball out of the air or tackling.

"There are no timeouts, no huddles, not a lot of penalties or interference plays," he said.

Next Moore showed us Five-On-Five mode which cuts down on the number of players on the field and features big-head players. Pausing the game while playing offense, Moore outlined the course a receiver was going to take in real-time by pointing to the field with his remote and clicking on a button. Each click created a waypoint. On several plays Moore used two or three waypoints when creating his play on the fly. After starting the game back up, the player ran his play.

"The idea is to make games a little more simple," he said.

Something, that from our brief time watching the game, Electronic Arts appears to have done.

Moore said EA plans to also market their All-Play titles differently, using less intense box art and different commercials.

When asked, Moore said that just because All-Play is meant to be an easier experience, it doesn't mean that the game can't still innovate.

"Innovation could come through more intuitive use of the Wii remote," he said, theorizing: "Can i get the Wii remote in 2010 to feel speed and have the ball react to it? That's just blue sky stuff, but that's some of the things you might see."

"We are still looking at ways we can replicate the experience without it being too difficult."

You would have to build something very console centric from the get-go. I think probably the best chance of someone doing something like that is Nintendo — doing something crazy that no one expects.

Perhaps Barnett has confused "crazy" with "correct," but hey, who knows? Nintendo's surprised us before.
MMO Future [CVG]

EA Sports' Peter Moore [Gamesindustry.biz]