Prototype Opening Cinematic Seems Vaguely Familiar

.html Here’s the rundown for the opening cinematic to Prototype: Zombies, check; faceless soldiers that look like combine/Helghast, check; antihero in a hood who poses like Altair, check; gratuitous babe in garters and stockings, check. Here again, we bitch about sequels, and then snark the new IP. But of the motifs in this thing, it’s…

Another Rushmore — Console Only

About a month back everyone argued the concept of a theoretical gaming Mt. Rushmore. A man who ran a store in Battle Creek, Mich., soon wrote me to say he’d commissioned just such a work. NewAge Arcade (a gaming store, but no longer operational) had this mural, depicting four characters singularly identifiable with each of…

Punch-Out!! Documentary Ad Walks the Dog

Mac is back, sweeping up smack packs in this documentary-style ad that may seem inspired, but is definitely brilliant. Doc’s aphorisms aren’t any more decipherable in live action, sorry to say. He also mispronounces correctly pronounces the hell out of Pissin’ Hurricane Piston Hondo. I missed the memo on that one. But is anyone else…

One Week Left Get in to Uncharted Beta, Cheaply

So, pre-ordering inFamous gets you in the Uncharted: Among Thieves multiplayer beta. Don’t want to do that? Be a Qore subscriber, or sign up before Friday. A few readers sent us a note that SCEA sent out recently, congratulating them on signing up for Qore and giving them their multiplayer beta code (which is good…

Pokémon Gold, Silver Debut Footage from Japan

Full disclosure: I do not speak or read Japanese, and I don’t know a thing about Pokémon. Commenters, I’m looking to you to provide context. Here is 16 seconds of gameplay from Heart Gold and Soul Silver which, if you are in my position, is two characters in a top-down adventure game walking in a…

Just What You’ve Always Wanted: a Playboy MMO

Actually, “Playboy Manager” wants to be called a MCOG (Massively Casual Online Game). I’ll call it a FaPS. It arrives this summer and is free and browser-based, so you can play it one-handed. In Playboy Manager, you’ll play a talent agent managing the careers of Playboy’s hottest (and nudest) up and coming models. The objective…

Dragon Age Origins is, Apparently, the ‘New Shit’

BioWare’s official Dragon Age twitter announced this new trailer – “Violence” – which sets all sorts of slashing and steeling and sexing to the sonorous crooning of Marilyn Manson’s “This is the New Shit.” Doesn’t look like much, if any gameplay in the trailer – and the dialogue doesn’t seem matched in the closeups. BioWare’s…

LinkedIn Profile Says Dead Space 2 Underway?

Pratik Patel, technical director for Electronic Arts updated his page on LinkedIn (like Facebook, just more corporate!) to include “Dead Space 2/Project ETA.” A sequel’s hardly surprising, but the fact it’s underway might be news. Superannuation (or Superogatory, its tumblr URL), which devotes itself to monitoring this sort of thing, found the update and noted…

Army Game Protester Did It for the Kids

Last week, GamePolitics brought you the live coverage of a demonstration against the Army Experience Center, a video game recruiting expo in Philadelphia. Seven were arrested. One has now written about it, and why. Elaine Brower breaks down the group’s disagreement and explains the march. Its intent was to deliver a “private criminal complaint,” to…

Duke Nukem Forever Gameplay Footage

This clip is currently being hosted on the site of a now-former 3D Realms employee (though it can no longer be accessed publicly). It’s full of, supposedly, Duke Nukem Forever gameplay footage. You’ll see many of the same enemies from that concept art that surfaced the other day, so it certainly looks legit. It also…

SF Flowchart: All Roads Lead to Shoryuken

This incredibly deep flowchart nails the entire spectrum of decision-making Ken presents to 98.7 percent of those who play Street Fighter – especially jump backwards-Hadouken! Of course the best part is, no, you never learn anything. Even if you do manage to land the jumping kick to a shoryuken, it was probably just dumb luck…

Gears Screenwriter Wants the Rock

Chris Morgan just finished the Gears screenplay and knows who’d be a perfect Marcus Fenix. “A really f’ing good actor” who can blend silent toughness with humanity. AKA Dwayne ‘The Rock” Johnson! Talking (again) to the MTV Movies Blog, Morgan calls The Rock “a genuine actor. Not only can he play the tough guy, but…

Gametap Partners Up with Microsoft

Age of Empires 2, Fable: The Lost Chapters and Mech Warrior 4 are on the way to the game portal GameTap, following an agreement reached with Microsoft Game Studios, announced last week. The full catalog was not specified in the GameTap news release of Thursday. GameTap said only that its users “will have access to…

Scout-Chop: You’re Gonna Love His Ball

YouTube user CastingOutTheSelf mined the Scout soundfile and came up with, lo and behold, a dead-ringer script for everyone’s favorite hooker-beating pitchman. How the hell did we go a week before seeing this? So very well played. But wait, there’s more! Hang on for the testimonials at the end. Audio possibly NSFW. Just more proof…

When they were changing Origin Systems to an official online only EA studio, the name everyone at Origin wanted was: Electronic Arts Texas Multi-player Entertainment

PlayStation Home Offers Affordable Housing

What’s more affordable than free, anyway? Beginning Thursday (May 14) you can get some new digs in PlayStation Home if you’re tired of the standard-issue harborside apartment. “Chamber Apartment” is free, but only for a week. After that, you can expect to cough up some dough. The new pad features fantasy-inspired architecture, and a courtyard…

Eidos: Sequels, and Sequels to Sequels

Eidos’ Ian Livingstone, recently named Wookiee Life President or Square Enix Proconsul or something, gave a kitchen-sink interview in which sequels for nearly every major Eidos IP were tipped, teased or confirmed. Speaking to Gaming Indians, Livingstone says IO Interactive is working on a new Hitman title; Kane and Lynch 2 has a hoped-for release…

Mod Makes L4D Survival into Versus Mode

Playing survival mode as special infected kind of defeats the purpose, IMHO. But some guys at Left 4 Dead mods say they’ll drop configs for that soon – if Valve doesn’t spoil the fun first In the video above, posted Wednesday, you see human controlled infected, plus 8 bots versus human survivors, playing on The…

Sackboy is the Law

No, that’s not fan art. Media Molecule’s announced that stickers and costumes for Judge Dredd – and others from the 2000 AD comic universe – will arrive May 28. Much as I’d like to flesh that out, that is all the information contained in a movie poster Media Molecule put up on its site sometime…

Weekend Coupons: A Bad Mutha

Perhaps because of Mother’s Day, there seem to be few sales bonanzas and so there ain’t much to talk about this weekend. Especially since Steam’s big weekend sale is for Universe at War: Earth Assault. Nothing against this RTS, which comes from Petroglyph, and they do that genre right. But I can tell it’s a…