Can touchscreen controls ever replace—or even closely match—control input from a gamepad or keyboard and mouse? This demonstration of Valve's Portal and Microsoft Flight Simulator played on Microsoft's experimental Surface platform offers hope that it might.

Building on Mark Micire's DREAM (Dynamically Resizing Ergonomic and Multi-touch) Controller, University of Massachusetts Lowell Robotics Lab student Eric McCann hacked together an on-screen joystick driver that makes touch-based controls feasible for flight sims and first-person shooters. A perfect replacement? Not exactly. Even at double the playback speed, it's clear that Surface controls could easily be outperformed by more familiar interfaces.

But hardly shabby for a week's worth of adapting the already impressive DREAM Controller's touchscreen-based interface. Cooler still is that the DREAM interface dynamically re-sizes itself to a user's hands and can be moved anywhere on the Surface's screen.

The UMass Lowell Robotics Lab folks are teasing "more fun to come" that's likely StarCraft related on their YouTube channel. Can't wait to see what they come up with next.

Joystick Emulation using the DREAM Controller on the Microsoft Surface [YouTube - thanks, Justin!]

It's a shame Lee Camara isn't making any more of these replica Team Fortress 2 weapons, because I would not just buy one, I would buy 18, and enough coloured jumpsuits to go around.

As an artist, all were made on commission for various cosplayers and Team Fortress 2 fans. Such a tease, that we got to see these four, and not a sniper rifle or medi-gun.

[Props By Fev]

Meet the Heavy and ignore, for a minute his massive weight loss instead listening to his monologue about his gun, his wonderful, wonderful to-scale gun.

Thanks to reader and cosplayer Logan Birch and a very special shout out to Sasha.

You may think that both Portal and Left 4 Dead are recent games, developed for contemporary game machines. Nope. Both are actually remakes of games from the 1980s!

Or, that's what these great fake ads would have you believe, which get both the hammy acting and grainy VHS-o-rama effect down perfectly.

Retro Game Ad Discovery [Gamervision]

Custom-made Portal shelf art, spied by reader martinf1 via Bob's House of Video Games.

Whether you're seriously low on ammo or just want to make someone's life completely miserable, there's nothing quite like bringing a hammer, crowbar, or chainsaw to a gun fight. Here are some of our favorite gun alternatives.

Over the years, melee weapons in first-person shooters have transformed. They started off as a way to add an element of tension to the early, single-player shooters, giving players something else to worry about than the enemy. You didn't want to take on the hordes of hell with only your fist...well, not at first.

With the rise of multiplayer, the melee weapon slowly changed from an instrument of desperation into a tool of humiliation. There's nothing quite as humbling as having your killing spree ended by a guy sneaking up behind you with a knife. The pain comes not only from the blade, but also from knowing that someone got the drop on you, and your mad skills didn't save you.

Here are several of our favorite humiliation tools, in no particular order.

Half Life's Crowbar

Okay, I lied about the no particular order bit, at least in this one case. The crowbar is almost as much the star of the Half Life franchise as Gordon Freeman himself. In a way it's a reflection of Freeman. Both have applications that have nothing to do with combat and therefore should, technically, have no place on a battlefield. Yet again and again they show up together. It just goes to show that the right man and tool in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world.

The Chronicle of Riddick's Ulaks

Riddick wasn't a big fan of guns in the two live-action movies that inspired the two video games from Starbreeze Studios, so once you get your hands on his signature weapon, the cruelly-curved ulaks, it's as if everything suddenly comes together. So central are these weapons to Riddick's universe that finding them unlocks an achievement in the Xbox 360 version of The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena.

I actually own a pair of these in real-life, and can attest to the fact that they feel incredibly nice in your hands.

Unreal's Impact Hammer

You've got to love multi-purpose tools. The impact hammer is a pneumatic mining device. It can be an extremely deadly weapon. It can deflect incoming projectiles. It can make you jump higher. I'm sure if the inhabitants of the Unreal universe took some time away from killing each other to do a little research, they'd find it adds two to three inches to the penis.

Team Fortress 2's Baseball Bat

Team Fortress 2 contains a plethora of lovely melee weapons, from the Engineer's wrench to the Medic's bone saw. There's just something supremely satisfying about running about hitting other people in the head with a baseball bat. Maybe it's that satisfying metal clunking noise, or the fact that most of us have at one point or another held a baseball bat in our hands, and can relate to how it feels.

Or maybe we're just being completely arbitrary.

Gears of War's Chainsaw

The Lancer's chainsaw attachment nearly didn't make the list, mainly because it's attached to a gun. Then I spent an hour watching videos of Doom's chainsaw compared to the Lancer's chainsaw, and decided that the main reason I liked it was because it's attached to a gun. It's a chainsaw, on a gun.

And then I remembered I was compiling this list mostly on my own, and the only guidelines I really had to follow were my own, so the Lancer's chainsaw stays in the picture.

Doom 3's Berserker-Powered Fists

Fists are generally the weakest possible melee weapon in a first-person shooter. Doom 3 changed all of that by making the berserker-powered fist capable of smashing through all but the toughest enemies with a single punch. And if you feel like pointing out other games that have featured powered-up punches, note that none of them were accompanied by an ear-piercing infernal screaming that actually made you want to punch things as hard and fast as humanly possible.

Halo 3's Gravity Hammer

Blah, blah, blah Energy Sword. Yes the Energy Sword is impressive and powerful, but can it knock a rocket back at the person firing it like a baseball? Can it propel a Mongoose all the way across a multiplayer map? Can it make you believe a fully-armored boy can fly?

No, it can't. That's why the Gravity Hammer is our great Halo melee love. Stop - hammer time.

Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast's Lightsaber

It's a lightsaber.

You need more?

It's a lightsaber you can throw, and it comes back to you. Luke Plunkett informs me that with a cheat, it lops off limbs in the process. I'd pay $60 for a game that only featured that particular game mechanic.

And there's our list. Now it's time for you to tell us what we missed, even though we specified that this is a list of some of our favorite first-person shooter melee weapons.

Go on and hit us with your best shot.

Internet funny man David Thorne received an abnormally hefty gas bill earlier this month. He blames two portals, a PlayStation 3 and Prince Adam of Eternia.

Or, he does in this email conversation with the surprisingly up-front Allison Hayes from Aussie gas provider AGL, who first provided Thorne with days of fun before he finished up and shared that fun with the internet.

From: David Thorne
Date: Monday 16 August 2010 8.12pm
To: sales@agl.com.au
Subject: Ref. 28941739

Dear Sir/Madam,

I have just received an account for the amount of $766.05. Up until this moment, my accounts have, on average, been around the one hundred and sixty dollar mark and I doubt the Holtzman field portal experiments I am conducting in my spare room would account for this discrepancy.

Please correct this error immediately by typing in my reference number, clicking on the alarmingly large number, and moving the decimal point to the left. I don't care how many places.

Regards, David.

From: Allison Hayes
Date: Tuesday 17 August 2010 9.26am
To: David Thorne
Subject: Re: Ref. 28941739

Hello David

I have checked your account and the amount of $766.05 correctly corresponds with your usage of 3262 kWh peak and 1982 kWh off peak for the indicated supply period. I dont know what portal experiments are but perhaps it is why you are using more electricity than previously. Please call our toll free number on 1300 133 245 should you have any further enquiries about your account.

Sincerely, Allison Hayes

That's just the start. She may come across as both stubborn and a little dim, but you have to appreciate Allison's honesty. That and the fact she's a human being, which is more than I can say for most other forms of customer service we have to deal with these days.

Grab a cup of tea and head below for the full thing

[27b/6, thanks Ben!]

The hilarious, universally acclaimed "Meet the Team" shorts for Team Fortress 2 are more than fan service or game promotion. Valve founder Gabe Newell says they're experiments in movie-making, because the studio would prefer to do a Half-Life movie itself.

Speaking to PC Gamer, Newell says Hollywood bombarded Valve with story pitches for a Half-Life movie, not long after the first game shipped in 1998. "Their stories were just so bad. I mean, brutally, the worst," Newell said. "Not understanding what made the game a good game, or what made the property an interesting thing for people to be a fan of."

Newell said the team reached a consensus to not sign a movie deal, because the only way it would be don right was if it made the film itself. "And I was like, ‘Make it ourselves? Well that's impossible,'" Newell said. "But the Team Fortress 2 thing, the Meet The Team shorts, is us trying to explore that."

It's a leap from animated, comedic shorts to a feature-length science-fiction drama, so at this rate, it's more likely that Half-Life: The Movie doesn't get made. But good on Newell and company for staying committed to seeing something done right, if it's done at all.

"As a [World of Warcraft] player, I would much rather that the WoW team made the movie, right?" Newell said. "I like Sam Raimi, I've been a fan ever since Evil Dead came out, but I would rather see Blizzard making the movie. We think that customers are like, ‘OK, we're kind of sick and tired of the way you guys are slicing and dicing the experience of being a fan of Harry Potter, or Half-Life, or The Incredibles, and you need to fix it.' And the people that fix it will be rewarded, and the people that don't will be on the rubbish heap of history, or whatever the phrase is."

Valve Want To Make The Half-Life Movie Themselves [PC Gamer]

The Knights of the Round Table song is one of the highlights of the film The Holy Grail. It's now also the highlight of your weekend, Team Fortress 2 fans.

In the same week that Python's Holy Hand Grenades turned up in the game, Unlimited Productions have released this homage to Grail's medieval ditty, replicating the choreography if not in location, then definitely in spirit.

You can see the actual song below, in case you wanted to compare the two.

[thanks Valk!]

Telltale, the team behind the new Sam & Max and Monkey Island series, have a new game on the way. One that's teasing a crossover of epic proportions.

What could it all mean? We'll find out this Thursday, according to the trailer. Feel free to sound off with your wildest dreams and wishes below!