The Kübler-Ross model of grief proposed in the 1969 book Death and Dying is actually a theory about dealing with death and terminal disease, both of which are way worse than just calling it quits with your special someone.

But breakups – even the mature, amicable kind where you know even before you split that you're going to be better off – still suck and sometimes you've got to let yourself go through the five stages in no particular order just to adjust.

1) Denial – Lord of the Rings: Conquest – "This can't be happening to me."
Here's a game that's very good at denying that anything is wrong. It's got a blockbuster movie license behind it, a dream team in development and publishing and the gameplay is based on the Star Wars: Battlefront series. Conquest had it all… so how could anything be wrong?

Even after reality set in for everybody else when the reviews came out, the the game kept right on denying with a big, fat downloadable content pack.

But no matter how many big-name characters are included from the book, sometimes you just have to face facts and move on.

2) Anger – Prototype – "It's not fair!"
Life isn't fair – particularly when it gives you body-morphing, people-absorbing powers that send the whole US Government after you as a terrorist. But there's no time to be sad when they send in the helicopters and the tanks. Sometimes you just have to get mad and Prototype is the game to do it with.

Between flinging pedestrians into helicopters and elbow-dropping tanks, you'll get rid of a lot of bad feelings and find healthy ways to entertain those revenge fantasies about your ex. Way better than boiling bunnies.

3) Bargaining – The Sims 3 – "Just one more, hour, minute, whatever… please, just one more!"
It's natural to feel like you could make things right if you just had a little more time or could do something with the departing loved one just one more time. But the reality is, no matter how many "just one more" times you get, there's always going to be more – more you want to do, more you want to say, more skills you need to raise before you can get that next job promotion.

In The Sims 3, you'll never run out of "just one more" things to do – one more trip to the mausoleum, one more Try for Baby, one more hour toward earning lifetime achievement points so you can buy the steel bladder perk. Maybe, eventually, it'll hit you that no matter what kind of deals you make inside your head, no matter how many ingredients you get for the Ambrosia recipe, sometimes it's just time to stop.

4) Depression – Bionic Commando – "I can't go on… it's just too sad."
It's okay to be bummed when a long-term relationship ends. It's even more okay if the relationship ended against your wishes.

*Spoilers* It's especially okay to be bummed if the relationship ended against your wishes and your loved one winds up embedded in your arm. *End Spoilers*

Just sit back and ride out the angst with a good, long play through of a game that truly gets it when it comes to being sad.

5) Acceptance – Street Fighter IV – "You can't fight it. Just take it."
The final stage of grief is sometimes the longest one coming – maybe even 12 years in coming. But as this game demonstrates, when this stage of grief finally arrives, it has improved graphics, flashier combos and is generally a better experience than you thought to hope for. Sure, everything feels a bit different and maybe you miss the way things were. But Street Fighter has moved on – why shouldn't you?

The bottom line is we all have different ways of coping with loss. Some are more effective than others, just like some games really are better than others. Whatever you choose to do to handle your feelings in the wake of a breakup, just make sure you're taking care of yourself.

And make sure you're playing on your own Xbox Live account because you cannot recover Gamerscore points earned on an account you shared with your ex.

There is no way EA would let a licensed game near the chopping block — not if a little-known new IP like Dead Space could be canceled first to free up resources.

"Dead Space doesn't have much stuff in it compared to what we thought we were going to make," Art Director Ian Milham explained. "We thought, let's not get fancy with the art direction. Our risk tolerance was pretty maxed out from the start."

For his panel on "Creating Horror and Immersion with the Art of Dead Space (which could be canceled any minute)," Milham discussed the myriad things stolen inspirations that led to EA's only horror title ever created (at least until Dead Space 2 comes out).

A big one was David Fincher films. Milham explained that the colors in movies like Se7en and Fight Club "feel hopeless and decayed – while still varying up the color so you don't have the next-gen brown that everybody gets raked over the coals for."

Colors like Fincher's are consistent within one frame — but varied throughout the whole project, which is definitely what happens in Dead Space. Go back and play the Leviathan boss fight again and you'll see what Milham was talking about: it starts out blue and warms to red as the boss comes closer and closer toward Isaac.

Next up was Gothic architecture for the actual innards of the Planet Cracker ship, Ishimura. I won't bore you with specifics, but if you think to yourself "Gee, the inside of this place looks like a rib cage," there's a reason for that. Bonus if you can find circles with ribbing on them — Milham is fond of those.

Lastly, Dead Space drew from dentists offices to create the lighting concept for the game. The point of that, said Milham, was both to cut down on the troubles of deferred lighting and to make the player feel constantly uncomfortable. "You sort of feel interrogated," he said, showing a slide of a room dotted with dentist lights. "A lot of our lighting is on arms like that. We wanted no indirect light."

The result, along with a lot more borrowing from Sci-Fi Horror classics like Alien, was this:

Not everything in the game was cribbed, to be fair — sometimes the things that we saw are the direct result of the dev team applying some of Kojima's problem-solving skills. For example, the game was never meant to include heads-up displays, maps, or helpful terminals that tell you where to go. Everything has to be communicated visually — from Isaac's health bar to whether or not a door is open.

The art team rose to the challenge, coming up with the Japanese subway-style signs above doors and a landmark system using the lurid advertisement posters throughout the ship. The result is something that looks a like like other stuff, but still scares you just the same. Even anachronistic things like fire extinguishers (which you'd think would have evolved a little in a hundred years) were choices made by the art team that drew you into the world and made it truly scary when you finally saw an alien.

But you wanna know what's really scary? The they might have canceled Dead Space to make this.

So upon seeing the rather substantial downloadable content pack announced today - which adds a number of the biggest/baddest heroes and villains from the books/movies, along with some new levels - we can't help but wonder whether this is the kind of stuff that should have been included on the disc, instead of nickel-and-dimed out a month after release?

Who knows. Just saying, it may have padded out the original product and made it slightly more tolerable, instead of hitting a digital marketplace and trying to appeal to customers who have long since abandoned the troubled game.

Those sticking with it, though, will be thrilled to see that this pack includes three new playable heroes (Arwen, Boromir and Gothmog) as well as two new levels (Amon Hen & Battle of the Last Alliance). The pack will be out this Thursday, and will cost 800 MS Points/$10.

Lord of the Rings: Conquest DLC Revealed [IGN]

From the game's official forums:

System Requirements
===================

Lord of Lord of The Rings: Conquest™ requires at least the following:

FOR WINDOWS XP SP2 or Windows Vista
* 2.4 GHz Core Duo processor or equivalent
* 1 GB RAM
* A 256 MB Video Card, with support for Pixel Shader 3.0 - nvidia 7800 or equivelent
* The latest version of DirectX 9.0c
* A DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card
* At least 6 GB of hard drive space for installation.

See? Quite doable.

Though strangely, you can't test it out just yet. While console owners already have a demo to play around with, there's no love for the PC crowd, meaning you'll have to wait a few more weeks til the game's release to see whether Pandemic can - unlike the Battlefront ports - actually make this one look like a PC game.

Lord of the Rings: Conquest PC System Requirements [Pandemic, via Big Download]

Out for the PlayStation 3 for a good week and a half now, the Lord of the Rings: Conquest demo is now available on the Xbox 360, allowing players to try out the Star Wars: Battlefront style gameplay in Tolkien's fantastical world of Hobbits and Orcs. It's a multiplayer demo, but since this is a Middle Earth game I'm sure they'll keep the racial epitaphs strictly in-character.

The 1.25GB download is available right now, giving players plenty to do over the remainder of the long holiday weekend. Enjoy!

Demo: Lord of the Rings: Conquest™ Multiplayer Demo [Xbox Live's Major Nelson]

Pandemic's attempt at Battlefrontin' the LOTR franchise, The Lord of The Rings: Conquest, is looking rather pleasing. I suppose it shouldn't be too surprising that bits of this trailer look so cinematic - much of the third film was essentially a really well done cut scene, after all.

Notable features here: 1) it does look a bit odd seeing Middle Earth wizards actually doing magic of the fingerzappy death ray variety 2) That Ent looks a lot more like a really angry pot plant than I remember from the films.

“Players will finally be able to fight through Middle-earth along the front lines of good or evil,” says Josh Resnick, co-founder and general manager at Pandemic Studios. “And what ‘The Lord of the Rings’ fan hasn’t fantasized about joining Sauron’s army to slay Hobbits?”

Slay...Hobbits? *lower lip quivers* You can't slay Hobbits! They are the source of innocence and wonderment in the world! You folks might wanna just jump to the press release. I'm about to anime cry and you don't want to get caught in the ensuing flood.

Prepare to Choose the Path of Good or Evil With Pandemic Studios The Lord of the Rings: Conquest

The Highly Anticipated The Lord of the Rings: Conquest Storms Retailers January 2009

LOS ANGELES—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Pandemic™ Studios, a division of Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS) announced today that The Lord of the Rings: Conquest™ for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system, PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system, PC and Nintendo DS™ platforms, will ship January 9, 2009 internationally and January 13, 2009 in the U.S.

In a partnership with New Line Cinema and The Saul Zaentz Company, The Lord of the Rings: Conquest is an action-packed game created by the same Pandemic Studios team behind the best-selling Star Wars Battlefront™ and Star Wars Battlefront™ II titles. Set in “The Lord of the Rings” universe of J.R.R. Tolkien as depicted by the Academy Award®-winning films, players will finally fight the entirety of these epic battles any way they want. In addition to crusading as the heroic forces of good, for the first time ever in a ‘The Lord of the Rings’ action title they’ll conquer Middle-earth while playing as the legions of Sauron’s evil army, including Cave-trolls, Oliphaunts, the Balrog and Sauron himself.

“We have been working hard to create a ‘The Lords of the Rings’ experience like no other,” says Andrew Goldman, Pandemic Studios co-founder and general manager. “And we are excited to finally confirm the launch of The Lord of the Rings: Conquest to ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and Star Wars Battlefront fans alike.”

“Players will finally be able to fight through Middle-earth along the frontlines of good or evil,” says Josh Resnick, co-founder and general manager at Pandemic Studios. “And what ‘The Lord of the Rings’ fan hasn’t fantasized about joining Sauron’s army to slay Hobbits?”

Fans of The Lord of the Rings universe can also participate in a Battle for the Ring community program. The social network offers activities for members to virtually fight against good or evil and earn temporary ownership of the Ring.

For more information about the Battle for the Ring program and The Lord of the Rings: Conquest game, please visit: http://www.pandemicstudios.com/conquest.

Hit the jump for hazy, disjointed hands-on impressions for Infinite Undisovery, Animal Crossing: City Folk, Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, Damnation, Rise of the Argonauts, Lord of the Rings: Conquest, and Mirror’s Edge.

I literally got no more than 10 minutes with each title in the Exhibition Hall and with the exception of The Conduit, I didn’t get to chat up the demo-keepers for the usual details a journalist needs to report on her games. But since most of these titles are coming out soon, already have demos available or were previewed at E3 and Leipzig only a week or so ago, 10 minutes is really all you need to get to know a game for yourself, if you’ve been following it in the news.

Above: Tabletop... meh.

I bee lined for Infinite Undiscovery first thing, since it’ll be the first thing I buy in that list of games. This action JRPG is the closest replacement Square Enix has offered me to replace Kingdom Hearts, and while I could deal with the lack of Disney, I’m not sure I could deal with the art design. Like Lost Odyssey, everything was proportional and colors were muted for a more realistic-looking experience – to me, it seemed ugly, but we were only playing in two areas that weren’t very well-lit (caves and stuff). The combat served me well enough – button mashing is what I expect when someone says “action” RPG. I sort of liked that you could be strategic when it came to setting up your primary party and your secondary party, and even a third party to have in reserve – but then I realized all of these characters were onscreen with me as I ran off to locate hidden energy crystals. Talk about crowded! At least Goofy and Donald weren’t so far up Sora’s ass, you couldn’t see the boss.

Despite not being able to see the demo boss, I took him out in short order (the save featured over-leveled characters, huzzah!) and gave up the controller to the girl in line behind me.

Above: You catch more bees with honey... and more gamers with food.

Then it was on to Animal Crossing: City Folk, but that was only because the line for Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World was longer. Animal Crossing: City Folk looked like it was directly imported from the GameCube Animal Crossing, with a larger town area to run around in and different NPCs. I was the most fugly-looking little boy with a beanie and I spent most of my time in the demo, running around and trying to find my house so I could empty my pockets. Failing that, I just settled for dropping cherries, fossils and decorative end tables to make enough room in my inventory to put my watering can away.

Then the line for Symphonia abruptly got shorter, so I made my move. However, the guy ahead of me got his hands on the controls and played Dawn of the New World for a solid 23 minutes straight. Other people gathered around me, fidgeting, wondering when this guy would give it up – but nobody wanted to be the asshole who asked for a turn. So I watched him play and marveled that he couldn’t seem to get the motion controls to work. How hard could it be to point the cursor at the flower and press A to trigger the flower bridge? He kept getting attacked from behind as he struggled, and most of the battles he spent mashing on the artes button to send his character into aerial attacks. Dude didn’t even bother to change his elements the way Nintendo Power says you’re supposed to…

Finally, I got my turn and wandered around the world map, trying to trigger the flower bridges. But the motion controls sucked and I found myself piddling around just as much as the guy ahead of me had. The only difference was I gave up after only 10 minutes instead of making the poor bastards behind me wait another half hour.

In disgust, I wandered over towards the back of the Exhibition Hall, maybe to get another look at the Pink Godzilla store, but I got turned around and wound up getting my hands on Damnation – since there wasn’t a line. I’d read a little bit about the game and knew that it was supposed to be this big, open-world adventure that featured acrobatic-type stunts and stuff. But I hadn’t read anything about cowboys, so I was surprised to see myself playing as one – gun slinging some far-off enemy I couldn’t figure out how to target (yeah, yeah, I don’t do shooters, so kill me). A small cluster of 12-year-olds formed behind me and one of them told me to use my “spirit vision” to target the sniper I was having trouble hitting. When I couldn’t figure out how to do it, I handed over the controller and watched to see what he would do – but I’d left him in a bad place and the sniper took him out three seconds later.

Above: Mountain of Pink Godzillas!

I wandered away before the demo level restarted and found myself staring at Rise of the Argonauts. And my only question is: how have I not heard of this game before? I’m totally down with mythology and I even suffered through God of War and God of War II just because I get a fangirl’s thrill of watching Zeus interact with Hera (it’s like the original soap opera). The game is still in early days yet, so the graphics were a bit chunky and the frame-rate was crap – but it played pretty well as far as movement. The environments were rich with detail and the cartoon-ish style of the characters totally worked for me; so I was really loath to give up the controller after only 10 minutes. But I didn’t want to be a dick and there were a lot more games to play.

Later, I felt bad because I realized I hadn’t actually experienced any combat in Rise of the Argonauts – I just ran around a hallway and made slaves open doors for me. But when I went back for a second bite at the apple, the line had suddenly swelled to ten people (I guess that E3 Game of the Year Nominee sticker above the demo table got some attention). However, it turned out man friend had played through the demo from the start and he filled me in on what I missed later.

Apparently, this game is ultra-violent between light attacks and execution moves. “Like Ninja Gaiden II?” I asked. “No,” he said. “Like Conan – except all the animations are canned.” He totally dug the big ass mace, the big ass shield, the big ass spear and the smaller-ass sword. You can switch weapons in the middle of the combo, so if you start out hacking someone with a sword, you can finish by pulling out the mace and caving in a guy’s skull. “It’s a pretty big deal,” said man friend. The combos didn’t feel really fluid to him, but we agreed that that had more to do with the game being in early development stages as opposed to the game potentially sucking.

Oddly enough, man friend was sold on the deep-looking advancement system. I had Googled the game for info about the god-based affiliations, but he was talking about aspects related to astronomy. Whatever that means. I don’t care, because I’m totally going to get this game just based on my 10 minutes with it – never mind man friend’s experience.

Next up was Lord of the Rings: Conquest – and that’s only because Mirror’s Edge had a line out to next week. My man friend volunteered to start waiting while I wandered off, and the closest console available was where I wound up. There wasn’t much of a wait to play Conquest – I assume because everyone’s already seen it. Even I’d already seen it at EA’s last Showcase event; and not much has changed between then and now – it’s still a Star Wars: Battlefront-style of action game where you can get by with button mashing. It’s pretty, though.

Man friend stood on tiptoe and waved me over to him. I dashed, thinking he’d gotten his chance at Mirror’s Edge, but it turned out he just wanted to vent. Some Parkour expert had cut ahead of everyone in line and was being given the royal treatment by the demo handler. The guy right behind Parkour dude got a consolation shirt, but the rest of the the jilted line-waiters had to suffer.

“It’s because of his shoes,” I consoled my man friend, staring at the funky-toed footwear the Parkour guy was sporting. It certainly wasn’t because this guy was good with games – he died like half a dozen times. To be fair, the demo level started you off with a pretty serious jump and if you botched it, down you went. But after that, he was getting shot because he wasn’t running up stairs fast enough to get away and he kept over-balancing on the part where you’ve got to walk across a cable stretched between buildings.

“Why is everything red?” Parkour guy demanded. Clearly, he hadn’t read up on the game… Then the PS3 overheated and I thought he’d give up and go away. But the demo handler – anxious to please – restarted the demo for him and ran through the level to get back to the point where he’d left off.

I checked my watch. It’d been more than half an hour with just this one guy!

Finally, he finished the level and the line moved up. At long last, we got our turn with the game and I let man friend take it since he’d been a dear about waiting in line. Man friend says the controls were a lot simpler than he thought they’d be. He was really impressed by the sense of moment and speed – the faster you went, the better it felt. And the combat was very minimal, which fit in with the rest of the game. He disarmed at least three guys and stole their guns – but “it didn’t feel right” so he threw each firearm away and kept running. He also didn’t really use the “bullet time” feature because it made the free-running feel less fluid (even if it did make disarm moves look cooler). The little touches impressed him the most – the multiple paths through environments, the way Faith touched the wall before rounding corners. I thought it was kind of dumb that you had to punch open doors, but he didn’t seem to mind.

My favorite part? The dot they added to the middle of the screen to reduce motion sickness. Seriously – a life-saver.

Man friend finished the level in 10 minutes and I pried him away from the console, stressing my etiquette about not taking too much time. I felt like I had been pretty efficient with the whole day, but when I check my watch again, I realized three hours had gone by and I hadn’t even seen half the games on the floor.

And that’s why I’m glad Crecente had his magic yellow badge and that I had three friends with me at the convention. Because there is no way one PAX-goer could ever do it this year all without some way to cut in line or some way to be in four places at once.

Stupid Parkour guy…*mutter, mutter*

Pandemic's upcoming Lord of the Rings: Conquest? Oh, it's so pushing my buttons. All of them. Now that I know some more on the project, well, those buttons are being mashed to within an inch of their worthless, plastic little lives. According to lead designer Sean Soucy, not only will the game feature the epic battles from the movie timeline, but also some other, more intriguing set pieces, such as the Battle of the Last Alliance and even the razing of the Shire. Really. Soucy also sheds some light on the game's "vehicles" and weapons, saying that "Horses, wargs, playable trolls and ents, catapults, siege towers and battering rams" are just "some" of the gear you'll be able to command in the game. So great. Conquest is due in the Fall.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the Game [Crispy Gamer]

The game, under development by Pandemic Studios, will give gamers a chance to fight some of Tolkein's greatest battles as either the good guys or the bad when it hits this fall.

“We’ll freely admit that we’re rabid fans of The Lord of the Rings fantasy,” says Josh Resnick, co-founder and general manager at Pandemic Studios. “Our experience creating massive, rich, action-packed games means that The Lord of the Rings: Conquest will give fans exactly what they want: full control of the blade, bow and magic to fight its epic battles any way they want – even if they choose to play from the evil side.”

Hit the jump for the official press release.

PANDEMIC STUDIOS ANNOUNCES DEVELOPMENT OF THE LORD OF THE RINGS: CONQUEST
‘Conquest’ Grants Players Freedom to Fight Epic ‘Rings’ Battles Any Way Desired

LOS ANGELES, Calif., May 8, 2008 – Pandemic™ Studios, an award-winning developer of blockbuster video games, is proud to announce the development of The Lord of the Rings: Conquest™ for the Xbox 360™ video game and entertainment system, PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system, PC and Nintendo DS™ platforms. Pandemic Studios is a division of Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS).

In a partnership with New Line Cinema, The Lord of the Rings: Conquest is an action-packed game created by the same Pandemic Studios team behind the best-selling Star Wars Battlefront™ and Star Wars Battlefront™ II titles. Set in “The Lord of the Rings” universe of J.R.R. Tolkien as depicted by the Academy Award®-winning films, players will finally fight the entirety of these epic battles any way they want. In addition to crusading as the heroic forces of good, for the first time ever in a ‘The Lord of the Rings’ action title they’ll conquer Middle-earth while playing as the legions of Sauron’s evil army, including Cave-trolls, Oliphaunts, the Balrog and Sauron himself. The game is set for a global release in fall 2008.

“Our Pandemic Studios creative teams have years of expertise bringing giant battlefields to life,” says Andrew Goldman, Pandemic Studios co-founder and general manager. “We’ve always wanted to harness our experience in a fantasy universe with warriors, archers, mages and castle sieges. Of course, there is truly no better fantasy world to recreate than the enormity of ‘The Lord of the Rings’ realm.”

“We’ll freely admit that we’re rabid fans of The Lord of the Rings fantasy,” says Josh Resnick, co-founder and general manager at Pandemic Studios. “Our experience creating massive, rich, action-packed games means that The Lord of the Rings: Conquest will give fans exactly what they want: full control of the blade, bow and magic to fight its epic battles any way they want – even if they choose to play from the evil side.”

“We are thrilled to be working with Pandemic Studios on this game,” commented David Imhoff, Senior EVP of Worldwide Licensing & Merchandising for New Line Cinema. “They bring not only their incredible technical and creative abilities but also a great passion for The Lord of the Rings.”

The world premiere of game footage and the first trailer for The Lord of the Rings: Conquest will premiere exclusively on Spike TV’s GameTrailers TV with Geoff Keighley on Friday, June 20.

This announcement reveals the third blockbuster video game project in the works at Pandemic Studios’ Los Angeles-based headquarters alongside the upcoming Mercenaries 2: World in Flames™ and Saboteur™, both in development for the Xbox 360™, PLAYSTATION®3 and PC platforms. For more information on The Lord of the Rings: Conquest, please visit: http://www.pandemicstudios.com/conquest.

There'll be two singleplayer campaigns to play through, one presumably "good", the other based on a scenario where Sauron actually gets his hands on the One Ring. As for multiplayer, while there'll be 150 characters on-screen, it'll support only 16 players online at any time, though it will also feature four-player co-op play, including - awesomely - four-player splitscreen co-op on the same console. Game's due sometime in the fall, and will be hitting the 360, PS3 and PC.

I was originally a little sceptical about this whole thing, but 150 guys duking it out on a battlefield (ie sections of Helm's Deep) might - if they can get the level design right - totally nail that LotR "big battle" feel.

UPDATE - Pandemic got in touch with us this morning to let us know that despite the original IGN piece reporting the game would support 8-player online multiplayer, it will in fact support 16. Which should be much more to your liking.

The Lord of the Rings: Conquest Announced [IGN]