AJ Glasser

Lay Off The Sequels Says Harvest Moon Head Man

Harvest Moon creator Yasuhiro Wada says “the games industry worldwide is in danger if we keep making sequels,” just weeks before the 19th installment of Harvest Moon hits PSPs in Japan. Speaking to Eurogamer Italy, Wada went on to say that consumers are bored by sequels and excited by variety. That may or may not…

Five Uses For This Wrath of the Lich King Art Book

The Cinematic Art of World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King is an art book any WoW fan would be proud to have in their home. Here are some fashionable suggestions about what to do with it when you get it. Cinematic Art provides a very pretty look at the behind-the-scenes development of WoW’s…

Slew of Home Updates On the Way

A patch, some clothes and Watchmen-themed costumes are out for Home this week. Street Fighter, SOCOM, Uncharted and Siren stuff is on the way. The patch fixes a problem with Game Launching, which caused crashes when you opened the list of game sessions available and then tried to launch one. Most of the clothes are…

Cops Say Man Used Video Game Store To Molest Victims

Leland Beasley, owner of independent games store Gamestation Sector 19, was indicted today on two counts of first-degree child molestation, five counts of first-degree statutory sodomy, two counts of third-degree assault and attempted statutory sodomy. These charges come almost two months after a January 6 molestation charge filed against the St. Louis storeowner. That case…

Watchmen $20 Price Tag – Yep, That’s “Quite a Bit More Than” $10

Watchmen: The End is Nigh is set to hit Xbox Live, PSN and Steam next week ahead of the film’s premier, but so far only the Steam release has a definite price. A while back, we talked with Warner Bros. about pricing for End is Nigh. At the time, they responded with “It’ll be quite…

The Sims 3 Preview: Smooth Criminal

Of all the career paths the Sims franchise ever offered, the criminal career track was the most morally unambiguous with the least amount of consequences… until now. Now, you can go to jail while working the criminal career path. Now, you can steal things from your friends’ and neighbors’ houses. Now is when The Sims…

The Sims 3’s Occult Connection, Plus New Screens

Ghosts push aside alien abductions, werewolf infections and nightclubbing vampires to become the sole element of the occult in The Sims 3. There’s always something supernatural in every Sims game. From werewolf babies in the Sims 2 Pets expansion all the way back to alien abductions in The Sims (which did not result in pregnancy),…

Jack Thompson Still Has A Career (Apparently)

The Business and Labor Committee of the Utah House of Representatives passed a law authored by ex-Miami-attorney, Jack Thompson. I guess you can still have a career after being disbarred. The bill, H.B. 353, changes Utah’s existing Truth in Advertising law to impose fines of up to $2,000 on retailers and movie theaters that violate…

How To Unlock Akuma And Gouken

Who needs GameFAQs when Capcom is kind enough to blog exactly how to unlock the toughest characters in Street Fighter IV? Akuma sounds easy enough — you just have to be “perfect” — but Gouken is anything but straightforward. First you have to unlock him, which requires two lengthy steps; then you actually have to…

Codemasters Swag Report

Last Thursday’s Codemasters event had some major pluses and minuses. I’m counting Overlord II as a plus – and all three times the speakers blew out as minuses. The big drag, though, was the shortage of Nerf guns. Codemasters had ordered them special for the event and apparently, only 2/3 of their shipment showed up…

Jumpgate: Eve on Fast Forward

Massively Mutiplayer Online games seem suited to space, which is probably why Eve Online is still around after all these years. Still, Eve is a very particular kind of MMO. The generous would say “thinking man’s,” which is a nice way of saying it bores you to tears. Hard to imagine that space firefights with…

Damnation: Forget Playing the Game, I Just Like Saying It

Damnation is looking nothing like the buggy, crash-prone demo I saw at the Penny Arcade Expo last summer – thank goodness, too; the release date is right around the corner. First impressions can be rather damning (lol, pun). When I first saw the game back in August, there was only one firefight that you could…

Overlord Does the DS

Overlord: Minions for the DS reminds me of a certain game where you have four different-colored playable characters that you guide with a stylus to work together to solve puzzles. Any guesses? If you said The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures, you’re wrong. The developer drew inspiration for Minions from an old Blizzard game…

Overlord Wii Lacks Wee

Overlord: Dark Legend had me at sombrero-wearing minions, but I was still worried. I was worried there for a second because it’s a Wii game, so surely they had to tone down the humor a little. I was even more worried to hear that Dark Legend is scheduled to hit the Wii the same day…

What’s New in Overlord II

Brace yourself: Overlord wasn’t a great game. It was a good game—and it had a good idea—but style choices and control options and myriad technical flaws kept it from being the best evil experience ever. Overlord II aims to change that in two major ways. First, the technical flaws are being aggressively addressed by the…

Harmonix, MTV Games Give $50,000 plus 650 Rock Band Bundles to Sick Kids

The Starlight Foundation has been using gaming as part of their charity operation for years — but it looks like they’ve struck it big with a Harmonix/MTV Games partnership and a hefty donation. Fifty-thousand dollars is described as a “generous minimum donation” by Starlight, but they’ve got to be thrilled about the 650 Rock Band…

See a Slew of Persona PSP Vids

Boy, St. Hermelin High is a lot more lightning-y now than it was back in 1996 — I guess that’s the power of the redrawn cinema in action. Siliconera dug up these four vids from YouTube for your viewing pleasure. The first contains the aforementioned lightning and a glowing child. The rest are long, drawn-out…

World of Warcraft Can Save The Environment?

Stanford Professor Byron Reeves thinks World of Warcraft can be harnessed as an energy-saving tool by attaching Smart Meter readings to gameplay goals. Smart Meters monitor the electricity in a household and feed that information to power companies. By uploading it to WoW instead, Reeves thinks the game could become a tool to encourage environmental…

Madden Monopoly Case: Trial By Video Game

The Madden Monopoly case could come down to trial by video game, rather than jury. Pecover vs. Electronic Arts is set to go to trial on September 14th in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, according to GamePolitics. At issue is whether or not EA has a monopoly after securing an exclusive EA-NFL-NFLPA deal that…

Tales of the World 2 Gets Soulcalibur Costumes

Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology isn’t just pulling stuff from the plethora of Tales games anymore. Behold these images of Taki and Mitsurugi costumes. Siliconera is reporting that the costumes are free downloads for the second Tales title to grace the PSP. You can download them from the PlayStation Store; and they must mean…