The Smartest & Dumbest Things Activision Did in 2012

The year is winding down and, if we simply asked Activision boss Bobby Kotick what the smartest thing Activision did was this year, he might say it was the making of gobs of money. Yes, Activision is doing fairly well Activision did well in 2012 by being conservative. That’s not quite the same as playing…

This Is What Our Favorite Pokémon Looked Like Before Their Final Designs

I love looking at the early stages of a a creative work I’ve experienced in its finalized form. You get a glimpse of what-almost-was, what-could-have-been, and sometimes the thank-god-that-didn’t-happen. Bulbapedia has a fascinating page on prototype Pokemon and prototype trainers, as well as some Pokemon that just plain never made it into a Pokemon game.…

The first episode of Telltale’s The Walking Dead is currently free on iOS. Our advice: Play on iPad over iPhone.

FoxNews: Gun industry wants to couple 2nd Amendment talk w/scrutiny of “games that teach young kids how to shoot heads.”

Steam will now send you an email if a game on your wishlist goes on sale. Thanks!

Woodcutting Simulators Have Never Been Quite This Realistic

Numerous vehicles and cranes! Diverse tasks! You’ve never seen wood cutting simulated like this before. It’s Woodcutter Simulator 2013!!! Coming to Woodcutter Simulator stores near you.

Can We Talk About The Joy Of Violence Without Sounding Like Complete Psychopaths?

In a fit of frustration over Hotline Miami and the way gamers discuss violent games, I ended up talking to game critic/provocateur Cara Ellison. She adores Hotline Miami, you see. Originally I meant to consult her about a different article, but our conversation was much more interesting than what I wrote. So we’re publishing our…

Nuketown, Wake Island, De_Dust2 And Other Awesome Maps Recreated In Far Cry 3

Bless map editors. They make wonderful things possible—wonderful things that normally couldn’t exist. MP1st brings our attention to Youtube user ShadowZack, who took it upon himself to recreate a few famous maps in Far Cry 3. These maps hail from franchises like Call of Duty, Battlefield and Counter-Strike. The one above is Nuketown. Here are…

Previously exclusive to Tegra devices, Zen Pinball HD is now available on Google Play for non-Tegra Android devices.

Thieves Steal 7,000 Wii U Consoles In Daring Warehouse Heist

Look out, Danny Ocean, you’ve got some competition: Last night, in a daring warehouse heist near Seattle’s SeaTac airport, thieves made off with 7,000 Nintendo Wii U consoles. Yes, you read that right: Seven thousand As reported by ABC News, the heist occurred during last night’s storm. The thieves rolled into SeaTac’s Seattle Air Cargo…

Slow Motion, Live Action Dubstep Fruit Ninja 

From YouTube video creator Scott Winn, creator of the famous kittens flying in slow motion video, comes the ultimate realization of the world’s most popular fruit-slicing mini-game. Somebody get me a sword. Fruit Ninja in Real Life to Dubstep [YouTube]

The Case Of The Made-Up BioWare Interview

Sometimes people tell lies on the Internet. That’s no news if you’ve spent any time on a computer, where finding the truth is no simple task. Pranksters on the web make things up all the time. But last week, we saw something rather uncommon even for the Internet’s standards: an interview with BioWare that was…

Three Comics Filled With God-Like Relationships This Week

If you’re here in the Panel Discussion programming block, you might be a lapsed comics reader, trying to find a way back to the JLA Satellite. Or you might someone killing time until you pick up your weekly Wednesday pull list. Or maybe you’ve said goodbye to dozens of longboxes to embrace the promise of…

True Marvel Heroes Tales of a Level 15 Hawkguy

The Avengers’ Hawkeye (lovingly referred to by comic scribe Matt Fraction as Hawkguy) gets a lot of flak from fans and movie-goers for being the guy with the bow and arrow trying to keep up with the equivalent of spandex-wearing gods, but I’ll pit my level 15 Hawkeye against your level 1 Hulk any day.…

This Is the Worst Comic Book I Read All Year

Professionally made comics simply shouldn’t be this bad. I certainly read more amateurish work in 2012, from a storytelling standpoint. And other comics had events transpire that I strongly disagreed with, like Avengers vs X-Men. But the bad taste that Justice League #13 left me with lingers even now, months after it came out. The…

Here’s a Dinosaur-Riding MMO You Can Play in Your Browser Right Now

Why are you sitting on your ass reading a website when you could be sitting on a dinosaur while wearing a cowboy hat and shooting lasers? Why do I even have to ask a question like this? Dino Storm is a free-to-play browser-based massively mutliplayer online role-playing game in which thousands of players wander about…

Fans Rage Over War Z‘s Misleading Steam Description, But Devs Say ‘93% Of Our Customers Like The Game’

The pitchforks are out. Gamers are furious with the developers of The War Z, a game that seems to have made it to Steam without many of the features that developers have promised for it. Right now, an item on the front page of Reddit that accuses The War Z‘s developers of “blatantly [lying] about…

The Terrible Splendor Of Star Wars: The Old Republic‘s Support-Line Hold Music

The Star Wars orchestra is telling me I’m about about to go on an epic adventure. But I’m not. I’m at my desk, on hold. This morning, I had the realization that every MMO player dreads: My long-since lapsed Star Wars: The Old Republic account had actually been active since I set up a “free”…

Former WCW promoter Eric Bischoff now owns half of online gaming/gambling company MX Gaming. Cue the NWO run-in.

2012 Was Like Skyrim, But With Games

It’s December. A whole year has gone by—a whole year without Skyrim. And yet it’s obvious to me—to everyone—that we are in deep Skyrim withdrawal. It’s the only way I can explain why commenters if not reviewers all over the web judge new games by gauging how much like Skyrim it is. Hence Far Cry…