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Mass Effect’s Meanest Ass-Kicker Comes Alive
To help give their Mass Effect cosplay a little more professional edge, the team at Crabcat Industries commissioned master craftsman Neil Tambini to make this Garrus mask. It’s terrifying. In an awesome way. Not only did Tambini (who helped design many of the monsters for the Jurassic Park ride at Universal Studios) get the vigilante’s…
By Luke Plunkett Published September 26, 2011 -
Microsoft Thinking About Windows Phone “Control Pads”
A patent filing made public last week (but first filed in 2010) shows that Microsoft is at least thinking about making its Windows line of mobile phones a little easier to game on. The patent is for a mobile phone that looks like Sony’s Xperia Play, with a slide-out design. Interestingly, the patent is focusing…
By Luke Plunkett Published September 26, 2011 -
Middle Earth Is no Place for Americans
I like where Warner Bros. is going with Lord of the Rings: War In the North. It’s got the polish of the movie games with a new story that should give it some breathing room. But that narration… There are places American voices in a fictional setting are appropriate. On starships, for example. But there’s…
By Luke Plunkett Published September 26, 2011 -
The Strangest Video Game Show We’ve Seen This Month
Someone thought it would be a good idea to stick cult film director Tommy Wiseau, the man behind 2003’s abysmal/awesome The Room, in front of a camera to play video games The results are about what you’d expect. The man does little but spend six minutes bewildered by the latest Mortal Kombat game. It’s like…
By Luke Plunkett Published September 26, 2011 -
And the iPhone Games Keep Looking Better, and Better, and Better
Gears of War may not be available on Apple’s iOS devices, but you can get what looks to be the next best thing with Shadowgun While the Gears similarities are everywhere (especially in the design of your character’s suit), as is often the case with iPhone games it can be excused when it looks this…
By Luke Plunkett Published September 26, 2011 -
The Virtual Boy as an Instrument of Public Nuisance
The Virtual Boy may have traumatised Nintendo all those years ago, but these days, it seems all it’s good for is comedic self-harm. Get me on any other day and this “entry level Jackass” stuff is both old and tiresome, as all it does is score cheap laughs off some poor worker’s clean-up job after…
By Luke Plunkett Published September 26, 2011 -
Retro Ghost Recon Looks More Like the Syndicate Remake of our Dreams
The video’s title and characters say “Ghost Recon”. But the style on show screams “the Syndicate game people actually wanted“. Continuing their release of videos previously seen only by those attending Ubisoft’s E3 press conference, animation house Ludi Factory has shared this “retro” Ghost Recon clip. “It’s a tribute to Syndicate”, the video’s description says,…
By Luke Plunkett Published September 26, 2011 -
A Giant Jeff Bridges Action Figure Appears
Hong Kong collectible company Hot Toys has once again hit it out of the park with this meticulously-detailed figure of Jeff Bridges as he appeared in the first Iron Man flick. Obadiah Stane, or in this suit known as IRON MONGER, may not have won the day in the movie, but he’s winning my heart…
By Luke Plunkett Published September 26, 2011 -
CultureTotal Recall
The Delightful Home-Made Maps of the Zork Series
Zork is one of the oldest adventure game franchises there is. The series is so old, in fact, that aside from a few rare instances you can only play the games using, and seeing, text. No graphics, no icons, no heads-up display, nothing. So how did you get around? How did you use a map?…
By Luke Plunkett Published September 26, 2011 -
New World Order
The BRIC group of nations – that’s Brazil, Russia, India and China – have never looked cuter than in this pixel art. | by Dave Wilson Dark Souls: My First 24 Hours in Hell I’m now 24 hours into Dark Souls, the successor to 2009’s brilliant and challenging role-playing game Demon’s Souls. I have, of…
By Luke Plunkett Published September 23, 2011 -
An Xbox, a PlayStation and Batman Walk Into a Bar…
Actually, it’s not a bar. It’s a Chinese market, where this abomination hails from, bringing together the very worst in Xbox, PlayStation and ill-advised superhero movie sequels. Called the Battman, there’s something that looks a lot like an Xbox, only it’s in a hideous “Christmas Tree” colour scheme. There are also two controllers that look…
By Luke Plunkett Published September 23, 2011 -
Culture
We may Never Play the Aliens RPG, but we can Look at its Concept Art
There once was a time Obsidian was making an RPG based on the Aliens universe. That game has since been cancelled, but today we’re looking at some art done for the project by Charles Lee. We’ll also be looking at some of his other stuff, as he’s also recently been involved in the production of…
By Luke Plunkett Published September 23, 2011 -
Play the Layton RPG, From Some guys who Made Mother 3
Nintendo studio Brownie Brown helped make Mother 3. It also, quietly, made a Professor Layton role-playing game, available only in the Japanese and American versions of DS game Professor Layton and The Last Specter It’s called Professor Layton’s London Life, and while it was a “mere” unlockable in the Japanese version, in the US edition…
By Luke Plunkett Published September 23, 2011 -
Let Mr. Zelda Walk you Through Zelda’s Most Notorious Dungeon
The earlier Zelda games were tough, but ask most people on the street what the toughest dungeon in the entire series is and they’ll probably say it’s Ocarina of Time’s Water Temple. Even over a decade on, it still hurts to say it out loud. Water Temple Ungh. I never thought it was that hard…
By Luke Plunkett Published September 23, 2011 -
Don’t Blame Team Ninja for Metroid: Other M’s Story
The latest Metroid game, Other M, took some…liberties with the universe’s story, and what it did to hero Samus in particular didn’t go down too well. Many people blame the game’s developers, Team Ninja for this, but that’s not very fair. You need to blame someone from Nintendo instead. Something Team Ninja is only too…
By Luke Plunkett Published September 23, 2011 -
Remember, Electronic Arts Won’t let you Sue Them, Either
While Sony’s new “don’t sue us” terms of service are terrible, let’s not focus just on Sony. Other companies are now free to do the same thing One example: Electronic Arts. If you scroll down to the bottom of EA’s most recent terms of service, which includes both accounts made for the publisher’s online services…
By Luke Plunkett Published September 23, 2011 -
This Looks Like the Worst (and yet Best) Game On Kinect
You might watch this trailer for Michael Phelps: Push the Limit on Kinect and wince. At the awful acting, the uncomfortable hand gestures, at the sight of a man in speedos bending over more than once. You might then, and this is entirely reasonable, decide never to watch it again. But then you’d be missing…
By Luke Plunkett Published September 23, 2011 -
Uncharted Once had “Elements of Tolkien” In it (wha?)
Uncharted, Naughty Dog and Sony’s sexier, more contemporary take on Romancing the Stone, was at one stage a little more Romancing the Grail/Maiden/Orcs, according to a former developer. Speaking with NowGamer, ex-Naught Dog environment modeller Don Poole reveals “We were talking about a more ‘realistic’ game in terms of how it was modelled and rendered…
By Luke Plunkett Published September 23, 2011 -
Deus Ex Mod Removes “Gold” Filter, Game Suddenly Looks Even Better
Deus Ex: Human Revolution’s “gold” filter may be a visual trademark, but it also affects the way you see the game world. A new mod for the PC version removes this (and makes a few other changes), and boy, do things look different. The ENBSeries mod for the game, made by the same community responsible…
By Luke Plunkett Published September 23, 2011
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