Highly personal in tone and style, New Game Journalism is meant to shake up the way games are reported. Out is the traditional write up of a game's graphics and interface. In is an anecdote that somehow explains the software. The concept sounds slightly arty farty, but we're hip to the NGJ. Our own Brian Crecente described the movement as "Hemmingway on games."

Action Trip has NGJ piece before there was even a word coined for it. Penned by a 13 year-old, it's a recently "rediscovered" write-up of "Duke Nukem Forever."

The gameplay has one new thing, you can lean around corners, which is like what I do when I play with my nerf guns in the house. This is a good touch, and I bet that most games will use it in the future. By the way, use God mode and stuff, it makes it a whole lot more fun than dieing all the time. No one could ever beat this game without cheats ever. That s why all games have cheats. Dumbasses!

Not exactly "The Old Man and the Sea," but insightful nonetheless.

Teen Game Rant [Action Trip]

Jane Pinckard, the founder of Game Girl Advance, was recently hired on as 1Up's new News Editor. Great call!

It's good to see that ZD Net is looking at buffing up their news section and I can't think of a better person to do what they have in mind. Congrats Jane.

Check out her blog for a run down on what 1Up expects of her and what she hopes to do.

a new news [1Up]

As president of Sony Computer Entertainment Kutaragi has pushed the company into the video game industry and helped its products to be the amazing successes that they are.

As of late, his achievements seem to have gone to his head, causing him to spout impossible exaggerations about the PS2 and PS3.

He's also taken up shit-talking Microsoft as if he were posting on a messageboard.

Here are a sample of my favorite Kutaragi quotes. See if you can guess which two are my lunacy, not his.

• "Beating us for a short moment is like accidentally winning a point from a Shihan (Karate master), and Microsoft is still not a black belt. Just like with their operating systems, they might come out with something good around the third generation of their release."
• "I believe we made the most beautiful thing in the world. Nobody would criticize a renowned architect's blueprint that the position of a gate is wrong. It's the same as that."
• "Microsoft shoots for the moon. Sony shoots for the sun."
• "With the PS3, our intentions have been to create a machine with supercomputer calculation capabilities for home entertainment."
• PS3 is "for consumers to think to themselves 'I will work more hours to buy one'. We want people to feel that they want it, irrespective of anything else."
• "The PS3 will instill discipline in our children and adults alike. Everyone will know discipline."
• "Microsoft is trailing behind us, but they are not a threat. They are good at improving [on products], but we will be advancing to the next level with revolutionary technology."
• "We're not going to equip [the PS3 with] a HDD by default, because no matter how much [capacity] we put in it, it won't be enough."

Answers after the jump.

"Microsoft shoots for the moon. Sony shoots for the sun." and "The PS3 will instill discipline in our children and adults alike. Everyone will know discipline." were the fakes.

Thanks for playing along with my lame sense of humor!

The Kraziness of Ken Kutaragi

-SM

According to 1UP's review, many similarities in the plot and the gameplay can be drawn to Katamari's predecessor. New additions include a cooperative two-player mode, as well as some competitive two-player levels. Screenshots and a video are also posted.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to spend the rest of my day transfixed by this video, silently counting down the seconds until the game's stateside release.

We Love Katamari Preview

-SM

The Dallas Morning News re-reviewed the Playstation Portable as a multimedia device in a baffling and incongruous article Monday.

Victor Godinez starts his piece by calling the portable a remarkably versatile video and music player and later likens the process to load media onto the PSP to juggling flaming knives while riding a unicycle through a minefield.

OK... so you either want to run out and buy or stay the hell away from the PSP if you are interested in using it as a video and music player.

Nothing like clarity to attract regular readers, though I suppose I shouldn t be the one pointing any fingers, toes, or other stubby bits.

From TV to PSP [Dallas Morning News]

I did like RAM Raider's rant about deadlines and reviews. It left a little to be desired in way of follow-through, but raises some good points. Chief among them: Some reviewers don't spend much time with a game before they actually review it. Let's hope RR outlives the burn-out stage of blogging and the site matures into something worth a daily read.

Ed's Note: Well someone's running scared. The RAM Raider site, up only hours ago, has turned itself off. I suppose even anonymity isn't enough for some.

The RAM Raider [Blog]

The Gamer's Quarter magazine is a collaborative project between dedicated gamers who do not just play games, but experience them. Rather than sitting in a lonely room plowing through a game just to attach a few numbers and witty quote for the box art, we play the games we want and write about how and why they attach themselves to our hearts and minds in a way that no other form of media is capable of. It is our intent to publish honest, provocative, and entertaining writing which reflects our belief that video games can be more than mere vehicles for entertainment, but also creative, meaningful works.

I love and hate NGJ as much as the next guy, but come on—what the hell's the difference between a vehicle of entertainment and a creative, meaningful work?

I suppose I'm gonna have to read through their stuff and figure out whether it rocks or sucks. So much fodder, so little time.

Gamer's Quarter [GQ, thanks GQ staff]

I'm constantly surprised that a fringe lawyer with a seemingly unstable grasp on reality can get such play in today's market. I suppose it's mostly because the world of today's major media is made up mostly of older man who know little or nothing about video games and are willing to buy into the allegation that they are the devil's tool.

I was a little surprised to see Lowenstein make the show, since I've always heard that he refuses to take the stage with Thompson for fear of legitimatizing his lost money-seeking cause.

On a brighter note, Thomson sent a rather oblique threat to me the other day. Granted you'd really have to read into it to see it that way, but he does so love to sue. I'm going to go out on a branch here and assume he wasn't asking who my attorney was because he wanted to offer his ummm, abilities. I emailed him back asking why, but he backed down. I'm chalking it up as a failed attempt on his part to silence me and other games of my opinion.

For the record Jack, you can't take away a person's freedom of speech, not in music, not in video games and not on this site.

Can A video Game Lead to Murder? [60 Minutes]

...is the latest and greatest in hand held hardware that offers a while new dynamic to handheld media...

...You can buy currently up to a 1G-memory stick but that would easily run $150 to $300 definitely a cost productive venture unlike the iPods and Archos of the present day where they come stock with at least 20 to 40Gigs of onboard storage.

I don t know which is worse, the fact that two drunken monkeys could cobble together a better sentence then these two or the fact that they apparently think it s funny that their column so miserably failed what few readers they must have.

GameCore Mailbag Blast-O-Rama [CBS News]

The bottom line? Let us put this one out of its misery quickly. Good graphics? Nope. Good audio? No way. Good gameplay? Gimme a break. Lots of fun? Sure, as long as you are NOT playing it, at least very long. Replay value? Nada. You add all of these facts together and what do you get? One "sucky" game. Hey, sometimes you just gotta tell it like it is. It earns one and a half GiN Gems, and believe me, that is being extremely nice. Sure, Japan might embrace this quirky title, but U.S. gamers are probably just going to call it extremely lame.

I could go on about the slipshod writing, the obnoxious just-between-you-and-me tone or the fact that Jenkins idiotically claims at one point that it is his duty as a reviewer to be UN-biased, but I won t. Instead I ll leave you with this gem of a tagline about Jenkins:

Jevon Jenkins enjoys all types of games, especially those where the programmer's imagination is evident. He can be reached at : jevon64@hotmail.com.

Lost in Translation [Game Industry News, thanks packratshow]

so I have this cool new writing gig [Wil Wheaton dot NET]

The inaugural Onion gaming piece, an interview with The Sims Will Wright and Atari s Howard Scott Warshaw, isn t exactly cutting edge. Heck, even RedAssedBaboon had an interview with Wright on the creation of the Sims franchise.

Will Wright and Howard Scott Warshaw [The Onion]

Rating Video Games Not a Perfect System [Boston Globe]

Most of you have editorial staffs that are dominated by angry young men that are poorly trained and represent a narrow and anarchistic element of the world's population. They have a negative attitude and are looking for what is wrong with something, instead of looking for what is right and who might like it.

It reminds me of boys at junior high school dance. With their fragile egos, they stay on the sideline and say the band sucks, the girls are ugly, and that those brave enough to dance are lousy dancers. Your reviewers have no idea how to make a great game. None of them have ever made one. But they sure have fun telling us in a nasty tone how inferior we are to them.

The Misery Editors Have to Endure [Game Drool]

French Video Game Makers Fear Their Grasp Is Slipping [IHT]

The Best Games You Haven t Played [Wired News]

The Year in Games [Salon, as written by other people]

Freedom is Overrated [Game-Brains]

Picture a 13-year-old girl sitting at her computer, watching her miniature read a book. The girl sits quietly. The Sim sits quietly. Pages turn with a rustle. The plates on the floor buzz with flies. The need to pee is getting urgent on both sides of the screen. What is happening? Nothing and everything. When my Sim reads a book, sunk in an illusory inwardness, a bit of code flipping the pages of another bit of code, I imagine for her an imaginary life, and imagining this, my world brightens, and I think I can feel what it is like to be real.

Life In A Glass House [The Village Voice]

Spike commentary [Video Game Ombudsman]