Good thing Bayonetta's "torture moves" - which summon all sorts of unpleasant mechanisms to more artfully render a foe's demise than mere boots or bullets - can't be turned around on the player. At least, I think they can't.

The new basement tool allows The Sims 3 players to create underground structures up to four levels deep, and EA has plenty of new tomb objects in store in order to help facilitate the joy of exploration. Objects like the Fogger, which hides unexplored areas from the player's view, or hidden stairways, which help facilitate secret passages. Other important objects include that old staple the floor switch, and traps that shoot fire, steam, electricity, or darts. This is going to be so much fun. Toss in a couple Saw-inspired face bear traps and I'll be in heaven.

Check out the rather large list of tomb objects EA released today below, and start planning out your tomb so you can get building when the expansion arrives on November 17th.

And yes, I am already planning my underground Sim torture chamber, but don't you dare judge me, or you'll be right there with them.

Here is some of the dozens of Tomb Objects and Object Updates:

Tomb Object (Fogger): The tomb object is the cornerstone of tomb building and will often be placed in every room of the tomb. The Tomb Object is what creates the "fog" that hides non-explored rooms from the player. This lets you create a sense of discovery and suspense as your Sims explore new tombs. The "fog" will recede from a room when a player enters the room through a door, descends stairs into the room, enters a room that is connected to a fogged room with an arch, or if a Sim "Looks Through" a window that looks into a fogged room. Adding or Removing fog is also a potential Activated Behavior.

Floor Switch: The floor switch is a classic adventure game object. It is a small, 1 tile floor object on which Sims can stand or push statues. Stepping On and Off the switch are both Triggers that can connect to Activated behaviors. Floor Switches can also be set to Appear or Disappear.

Wall and Floor Trap: The traps are two different objects that can be placed on the wall or floor. These can be set to shoot fire, darts, steam, or electricity on unsuspecting Sims. They can have a variety of states, including hidden and dormant, armed and visible, hidden and armed, or hidden and firing. Each of these states can be activated by Sims walking over them or as an Activated Behavior. Traps can light Sims on fire or knock them out. However, there are multiple ways to handle traps. Sims can disarm them by tinkering with them, or push statues upon them to disarm. Water will disarm a fire trap, which makes a great puzzle element when paired with the steam trap…which creates water! Sims can walk with immunity through a fire trap when soaked. Experiment and come up with your own puzzles!

Dive Well: Dive Wells are one of the most exciting Tomb Objects. Sims can use them to become Soaked, which makes them immune to fire, or to put themselves out when already on fire. A Hidden Switch can be set at the bottom of dive wells as a Trigger. You can always place treasures at the bottom. Another fun element is that you can set the color of the water in the dive well, so fire tombs can have blood red water, whereas a tomb with a poison theme can have murky green water. Dive Wells are most fun when they are set up as portals. Dive Wells set as Portals will connect to each other. Sims will go to the bottom, and then emerge from the closest dive well on the same floor. It's also possible to designate a Dive Well as an Uber Dive Well. Here, you designate a name so that you can define the precise point of origin and exit – even across multiple lots in the world. This lets you create one-of-a-kind entrances to island tombs and other inaccessible areas.

Treasure Chest: The biggest reason to explore anything is to find treasure at the end. Treasure Chests let you fill your tomb creations with various treasures, keys, garbage, or whatever you can imagine. Opening and Inserting a Keystone a treasure chest are also Triggers that can set Activated Behaviors.

Sarcophagus: The Sarcophagus can act as a large, ornate treasure chest, a place to hide, a place to sleep, and even a place to WooHoo. Most exciting, however, is its ability to spawn mummies. Mummies will patrol tombs in search of unsuspecting Sims to pummel and *gasp* curse! Mummies provide an element of danger and the unexpected to any tomb.

Torch Lever: The torch lever, like the Floor Switch, is an object for Sims to pull on to trigger Activated Behaviors. Some can be set to active, whereas others can be dummies, forcing players to carefully examine their surroundings. It's possible to define the colors of the torch light, which allows Tomb Designers to provide hints and clues on how to complete puzzles. Or, to simply set the ambience of a tomb!

Pushable Statues: Pushable Statues are another classic adventure game element. They can be pushed on top of traps to disarm them, or cleverly pushed through a maze to unveil a formerly blocked path. Their most common use is to be paired with a floor switch. Floor Switch triggers can be set so that they activate something when a Sim is on them, but deactivate as soon as a Sim steps off of them. This means a Sim must push a statue on top of them in order to keep the floor switch depressed. Pushable Statues can be set to be secretly pushable (they require inspection), visibly pushable (no inspection needed), or not pushable at all.

Hidden Stairways: Stairways from The Sims 3 can be set to Hidden now. This is an Activated Behavior, so that a Trigger can now Hide or Unhide the stairs. Hidden Stairways are a great way to surprise players. Just when it seems there's no way out, pulling a switch reveals a stairway!

Of course, the game doesn't call it torture. I think the term they use is "extreme interrogation tactics." But when is something "interrogation" over "torture?" Is it just how badly you beat somebody up, or does it matter what you're trying to get out of the person/NPC?

In Brink, this is what happens: you're playing as a military operative in a futuristic setting. During a firefight, you sneak behind enemy lines and happen upon an injured rebel writhing on the ground. An option pops up, prompting you to press X to interrogate the guy and it looks like if you select it, your character pulls out an iPhone-iish device. Your character then shocks the heck out of the guy until he screams, "Okay! I'll talk!" Then your objective screen updates and a new icon appears on the map.

In the grand scheme of violence in video games, it's not graphic. It's actually similar to what happens to Snake in the first Metal Gear Solid when Revolver Ocelot has him strapped spread-eagle style and shocks him (as the player, you press buttons to Resist or Submit — Submitting kills Meryl and I couldn't hit that button fast enough). The difference in Brink is that my character is doing it to someone else. So on a gut level, I don't want to call it torture because I'm the "good guy," right?

But then there's the Punisher game with interactive torture. That's torture because I think the game goes so far as to call it so, but as a player I'm comfortable with it because I'm playing as the Punisher. Yeah, he fights for justice, but he's not what people would call a "good" guy. So it's okay for me as a player to play as him torturing somebody because that's what the Punisher would do — never mind what I would do. Besides, they were probably bad people who deserved it anyway.

Now think about Red Faction: Guerrilla where you're playing on the side of a rebel faction. Like Brink, it's a wartime situation and gaining information is crucial to the success of missions. In one scene, explored by Stephen Totilo, an NPC sidekick "interrogates" somebody for said information. With knives. Is that torture? If you're not sure, apply the same line of questioning to Killzone 2 when Rico gets a little "extreme" when interrogating an enemy.

To confuse you even more on the subject of torture, think about situations where it's not about information — it's about control. For example, there's the Grand Theft Auto: Vice City mission, Death Row and the Ransom mission in Grand Theft Auto IV. In both cases, somebody is deliberately hurting someone else for revenge or just because they're violent by nature. That's really easy to spot as torture — but at the same time, in GTAIV, you're playing as Niko, the guy that hits a woman tied to a chair and then takes a picture of her. You don't really want to call that torture, do you? It's easier just to play it down as no big deal or write it off because it's not an interactive part of the game — so "you" didn't torture anybody.

Lastly, let's talk about torture being inflicted on you, the player. In these cases, you probably wouldn't think of what you're going through as "torture," (unless it's a Saw game), but by definition, a game is deliberately inflicting suffering on you. Example: Missile Command. The game is about mutually assured destruction in the Cold War era, but at the same time, it's a psychological exercise that tortures the player: by design, you cannot "win" Missile Command. Sure, a lot of early arcade games were un-winnable — but by forcing the player to realize that no matter how good you are at the game, no matter how many quarters you sink into it, you cannot save six cities from a nuclear holocaust, the game is deliberately messing with you. A more obvious example of mental anguish inflicted on the player would be Fable II — because it's not just that your character is being electrocuted, it's that you're losing all of that XP you gathered and racking up evilness (which is torture to a goody-two-shoes gamer like me).

So what's really going on in Brink? When I zap the guy with my iPhone-looking device, am I committing torture or just "extreme" interrogation? I didn't see an option to just question the guy before shocking him. I'm not sure if there were other ways to get the information that the subject had. I do know that if the game actually called it "torture," I'd be way less inclined to play as that class of character. For me, that would be the worst kind of torture: role-playing as a character that I want to play as benevolent, and then being forced to do something I'm not okay with because the game has other ideas about where the line between torture and interrogation lies.

P.S. You want the line clearly drawn? Check this game out.

Image Cred — GTAIV
Image Cred — The Punisher
Image Cred — Fable II
Image Cred — MGS

Bartle has taken the time to address the main points raised - even the downright dickish ones - some of which came from commenters in this very organ.

"Rather than attempt to answer all 140+ comments on Kotaku et al," says Bartle, "here are a few things to note (in no particular order)"

- It turns out you didn't actually need to do the quest to access Coldarra (where the Nexus is). People on my server who played in the beta thought you did, and were issuing LFGs saying you had to know the flight path to get there. OK, so I was misinformed there. It doesn't alter the thrust of my argument, though.

- I know WoW is not real life. I know the Geneva Convention doesn't apply there. No real-life laws apply there. Blizzard could put a quest to rape characters in there: real life anti-rape laws wouldn't apply. Nevertheless, a lot of people would be very disturbed by such a quest. Likewise, not everyone is OK with torture. This is the case in real life, too: yes, killing is worse than torture, but that doesn't mean that if you kill people then torture is fine. Evidence: the aforesaid Geneva Convention.

- When I signed up to play WoW I knew it had fireballs, so I expected killing. I knew it had rogues, so I expected thieving. I had to wait until the second expansion to find out it had gratuitous torture. This does not fall within the parameters of what I was expecting. It's as if you were reading the new book 8 of the Harry Potter series and Harry turns to drugs and uses his magic powers for sport to blind people. JKR can put that kind of stuff in her books if she likes, freedom of speech being what it is and all, but it's shattered your expectations. I wasn't expecting consequence-free torture quests in WoW. Getting one was a shock.

- Strangely, I had noticed WoW was "just a game". For the many players who seem to think that this means anything goes, I guess you're really hoping Blizzard will be putting in some child sex quests in the next expansion. After all, no children are being hurt, it's just pixels on a screen, and if you get XP then why not?

For more of Bartle's response, check out the link below.

Tortuous Replies... [You Haven't Lived via Wonderland links]

Specifically, he is less than impressed with "The Art of Persuasion" a quest that requires you to use a Neural Needler to extract information from an imprisoned sorcerer. Torture, in other words.

"I'm not at all happy with this," Bartle wrote on his blog, "I was expecting for there to be some way to tell the guy who gave you the quest that no, actually I don't want to torture a prisoner, but there didn't seem to be any way to do that."

"Unless there's some kind of awful consequence further down the line, it would seem that Blizzard's designers are OK with breaking the Geneva convention."

Torture [YouHaventLived]

“It has been a wild and exciting ride for us at D3Publisher to watch Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords progress from a unique release on handheld platforms to one of the most beloved puzzle game franchises of today, raising demand from gamers everywhere to be able to play it on their platform of choice,” said Yoji Takenaka, President and Chief Executive Officer of North America and Europe, D3Publisher.

Gah! I just want to hug this man and punch him at the same time, but not as much as Crecente, who actually contacted both companies and harassed them about making the port. Thanks, Brian. Look for Puzzle Quest to hit the iPhone and iPod Touch later this fall, at which point I will begin spending all my time in the bathroom.

TransGaming Launches Into iPhone Marketplace with Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords

Toronto, Canada,– September 29, 2008 – TransGaming Inc. (TSX-V: TNG), announces the company’s expansion into the development of applications for Apple’s portable devices commencing with Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords® from D3Publisher for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords has been honored with numerous awards and accolades including the prestigious Best Downloadable Game award at the11th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards. The title is a natural fit for Apple’s mobile devices and, coupled with TransGaming’s industry experience and technology, will impart a user experience that is being fully customized for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords for the iPhone and iPod Touch portable devices builds on an existing relationship between TransGaming and D3Publisher. “The iPhone and iPod Touch are natural extensions to TransGaming’s existing Mac business and we are focused on bringing only the highest quality content to these devices. Puzzle Quest is an outstanding franchise and we have no doubt this game will have incredible appeal to a broad range of gamers”, commented Vikas Gupta, CEO & President of TransGaming. “We have established a leadership position in bringing top tier games to Mac and we are now setting our sights on the Apple mobile market opportunity.”

“It has been a wild and exciting ride for us at D3Publisher to watch Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords progress from a unique release on handheld platforms to one of the most beloved puzzle game franchises of today, raising demand from gamers everywhere to be able to play it on their platform of choice,” said Yoji Takenaka, President and Chief Executive Officer of North America and Europe, D3Publisher. “After making the rounds on consoles, PC and Mac, we are thrilled to have TransGaming bringing it back to a handheld device, and not just any handheld, but the iPhone—a platform that D3Publisher looks forward to utilizing to reach a whole new group of gamers with this title and many more to come.”

Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords offers players a unique combination of classic RPG elements and fun puzzle mechanics. Designed specifically to entertain both casual and hardcore gamers Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords incorporates strategy, role-playing elements and a persistent storyline in a puzzle board setting that is sure to deliver an immersive gaming experience.

Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords is rated “E 10+” (Everyone 10 and older—suggestive themes) for most platforms by the ESRB and is rated “RP” (Rating Pending) for iPhone. The game was originally developed by Infinite Interactive Pty. Ltd. and published by D3Publisher, Inc. The game is being customized for iPhone by TransGaming Inc. and will be available for purchase on the iTunes App Store this fall.

How do celebrate ten years of Pokemon? With an orchestra, that's now. Club Nintendo sends word of a classic concert that features wall-to-wall Pokemon tunes. The event strikes up a tune in Tokyo at the MIELPARQUE on October 28th, at Well City in Kitakyushu City on November 5th, the Hyogo Performing Arts Center in Nishinomiya on November 12th and the Well City in Sapporo on December 10th. Considering my deep, bitter hate for all things Poke, I've tried to have an open mind about this, but passively being forced to listen to Pokemon DVDs my kid watching everyday, several times a day, I'm miffed (and slightly pissed). Somebody please explain what the appeal is here. Brian Ashcraft

Postscript: If the concert is anything like this, I will so go.

Listen To Pikachu [Club Nintendo, Thanks Josh!]