You say you want more sidekick characters in your Uncharted 2: Among Thieves online multiplayer? How about three Sullivans, two Chloes, and an Elena?

The Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Sidekick Skins pack answers players desperate need for more sidekick action, with multiple skins for three of Drake's best buddies, plus Dillon and Mac from the original Uncharted. Will you play as UDF Sullivan, Winter Sullivan, or Borneo Sullivan? Do you prefer Chloe in her heist outfit, or in her Borneo duds?

There's only one Elena, but it's Wetsuit Elena, and frankly that's all the Elena I could ask for.

The Sidekick Skins pack drops on August 17 on the PlayStation Network for $2.99, the same date and price as the Uncharted 2: Among Thieves dynamic theme, featuring Nathan Drake trudging endlessly through the snowy mountains of your television set.

August 17th: New UNCHARTED 2 Multiplayer Skins and Dynamic Theme [PlayStation Blog]

From the man who brought you the bearded faces of gaming's most beloved characters comes this look at some manly faces covered in macho mustaches... and one bereft of his.

My favorite of the much has to be Donkey Kong sporting not only a magnificent handlebar mustach, but also a crazy pompadour. Who's your stylist?

Check out the rest over on David Stonecipher's site.

Gaming with mustached stars [Examiner.com]

This dynamic new login screen will greet Global Agenda players this afternoon, heralding the completion of the Sandstorm update, bringing sweeping changes to the game's Agency-Vs.-Agency PVP. Want to see the login screen that didn't make the cut?

Today developer Hi-Rez Studios finally completes the Sandstorm game update for Global Agenda that started rolling out in June, transforming the face of the now free-to-play MMO.

While today's update brings many smaller changes to the game's systems, from removing consumables in PvP to cleaning up maps and tweaking weapon stats, the main focus is the game's persistent Agency-Vs.-Agency battles. Season lengths have been changed to two weeks, zone open times have been modified, and Agencies will no longer be able to dictate when their facilities are open for attack, with rotating hours of production taking the place of player choice.

With such a strong focus on fighting against other agencies, perhaps this unapproved login screen concept we acquired would have better represented the direction Global Agenda is going in.

On second thought, that might be sending the wrong message.

The Global Agenda servers should be up around 3PM Eastern time today. In the meantime, check out the patch notes for a list of changes to expect when the game comes back online.

They walk among us—average citizens who don capes and masks at night to battle evil-doers. They call themselves Real Life Superheroes, and they are, of course, deeply nerdy.

A visit to the World Superhero Registry - the apparent home of this movement on the web - reveals images of adult men and women in full-on superhero garb with invented monikers like "Death's Head Moth", "Master Legend" and "Dark Guardian". Their mission? To rid the city of crime and help those in need. Honorable goals, but they seem to be most successful at taking themselves waayyy too seriously and confusing the hell out of the criminals they encounter.

Dark Guardian, for example - whose only superpower seems to be his heavy Staten Island accent - records an encounter where he attempts to chase a hulking drug dealer out of Washington Square Park. When it is revealed that Dark Guardian isn't actually a cop nor does he possess any sort of legal authority to tell the guy to move, things get kinddaaaa awkward. It's like he's just come to the stunned realization that he can't shoot laser beams out of his eyes, and the drug dealer, towering over Dark Guardian, feels too bad for him to even bother roughing him up.

Dark Guardian Chases Drug Dealers Out of Washington Square Park

Then there's Shadow Hare, a 21-year-old whose intimidating Venom-style getup is belied by some B-roll footage of our hero flouncing down a fire escape. Such is the problem for real life superheroes: life is just a little too real sometimes to pull off wearing tights.

The Shadowhare

"Citizen Prime" spent $4,000 on his custom body armor suit - and spends most of the time wearing it doing common household chores like watering the lawn and vacuuming. He lives in a pretty quiet neighborhood, which reveals itself to be another obstacle for our real life superheroes.

Citizen Prime

But life isn't always so cushy for our real life superheroes. "Master Legend" demonstrates his Iron Fist, for use when drastic measures need to be taken (against defenseless load-bearing walls):

Local news anchors, of course, love these sort of stories because they get to do the reports in that bemused, sing-songy tone that lets us know that this is a story about "colorful local oddballs" who shouldn't be "taken too seriously":

It's sad and hilarious and kind of touching. I suppose they're heroes, in a way. They're not exactly rescuing people from burning buildings... but they are wearing capes. And that's gotta count for something, right?

Yesterday Disney debuted its latest virtual world, Disney-Pixar World of Cars Online, with parental controls so strict I couldn't number my car 69 for some odd reason.

Create a car with eyeballs and drive yourself to distraction in the family-friendly browser-based online game based on Pixar's award winning movie. Use the mouse to maneuver your car around Radiator Springs, racing against other players, customizing your character, or helping the redneck truck tip over tractors.

You can even build your own yard. I'm assuming that if your character dies, they put you up on cinderblocks in front of it. That's just a guess though.

"Our goal with World of Cars Online is to provide a creative and social environment where kids can have fun and use their imaginations in new ways," says Lane Merrifield, executive vice president of Disney Online Studios. "Our teams worked tirelessly to ensure World of Cars Online authentically represents the characters and storylines that kids and families have come to know and love from the movies, and we're looking forward to hearing what ‘Cars' fans think of it."

As with any kid-centric online game, Disney has gone great lengths to make sure the environment is safe for children. There's a Speed Chat option that only allows players to communicate using predetermined words and phrases, keeping everything on the up=and=up, as well as the aforementioned number blocking. You can be number 59, or number 79, but the 60's stop at 8. Nice catch!

If you're interested in turning yourself or your child into a freakish talking race car, head over to The World of Cars Online and sign-up for free. A $5.95 a month subscription is required to access additional features.

If you can have this much fun with Call of Duty: Black Ops' remote-controlled vehicle in-game, imagine how much fun you'll have with the real version included in the game's newly-revealed Prestige Edition.

What young boy hasn't imagined strapping explosives to a remote-controlled car to take out his imagined enemies? Of course now we're much older and wiser, and are more likely to try and rig the camera in the real-life RC-XD to point upwards for reasons I don't need to elaborate here.

We grow up so fast, don't we?

Atari and Eden Games today delayed Test Drive Unlimited 2 until an early 2011 release to allow further multiplayer development. The Beta too is delayed.

Today is day one of QuakeCon in Dallas, Texas. The main event should be the show's keynote address, which kicks off at 2:00pm in Dallas, which is 1pm Kotaku Time (aka MT). We'll be liveblogging it.

Last year's keynote featured news about Quake Live, Xbox Live Arcade and iPhone releases from id software, more news about id's Rage and even a tease that, at this year's show, we'll find something out about Doom 4. We'll find out if that's the case shortly.

Tomorrow, I will be hosting a panel at QuakeCon as well as continuing to cover the show and games on display.

QuakeCon is, in some respects, a massive bring-your-own-computer LAN party for fans of first-person shooters. The show celebrates the games of id Software and has also become a venue for id's game announcements. Last year's purchase of id by Zenimax made id a sister company of Bethesda Softworks, the studio and publisher behind the recent Fallout and Elder Scrolls game.

I expect to be seeing id's Rage and the Bethesda-published Brink and Hunted: The Demon's Forge.

Full disclosure: Because we are moderating a panel, Kotaku's travel and lodging for QuakeCon 2010 was paid by Bethesda Softworks.

Imagine finishing a video game like Mass Effect and then having a personalized comic book generated featuring the decisions and tactics you used while playing. Apple has already imagined it, and they've got the patent application to prove it.

Apple Insider directs us to U.S. Patent Application number 20100203970, titled "Automatically Generating a Book Describing a User's Videogame Performance." Filed by Apple in February of last year, the patent application outlines a method for taking your experiences in a video game, from the way you dispatch your enemies to the amount of time you spend working on a particular puzzle, and uses that data to generate a comic book, eBook, or regular old book, filled with your personal gameplay experience.

The system could take screenshots during key points in the game, integrating them into the finished work as illustrations, incorporating pregenerated text and images where applicable.

Once the game is finished and the book has been generated, Apple lays out several plans for distributing the work, sending an eBook to a device, directly to the user, or using a service to print physical copies of the book, sending them to the user and friends.

The patent application isn't limited to Apple devices either. Consoles from all three manufacturers are mentioned, along with various handheld devices. It's the sort of system that a developer could integrate into its games, possibly using an Apple service to handle final product generation and distribution.

Feel free to check out the link below if you'd like to get into the technical details and specifics of the patent application.

I read a lot of video game-related comic books, and the experience generally leaves me slightly empty inside. While concepts from the games represented shine through, my experience does not. My personal adventure is an echo of whatever story the comic book writer chooses to focus on.

To have my personal experience preserved in physical form would be amazing. Imagine how fulfilling it would be to have a stack of comic books sitting near your entertainment center, a physical chronicle of your time spent gaming. All of those 'remember when' moments, set to paper, ready to be shared with whoever might care.

I think Apple is really onto something here.

Automatically Generating A Book Describing a User's Videogame Performance [U.S. Patent Office via Apple Insider]

Due out this November, the special edition of Call of Duty: Black Ops will include a tiny remote control "video surveillance vehicle" inspired by the game's multiplayer.

The remote control vehicle, inspired by the RC-XD found in the game's multiplayer, has a range of about 200 feet and a fully-functioning remote camera that transmits both color video and audio. The car will only come with the yet-to-be-officially-priced Prestige Edition of the game, which also comes with all of the extras included with the Hardened Edition.

The Hardened Edition includes a custom Black Ops limited edition medal, exclusive Black Ops Avatar outfit (for either Live or Home), as well as four playable cooperative maps.

Both editions will be coming to the PS3 and Xbox 360 when the game ships on Nov. 9. No official price has been announced for either edition, but GameStop lists the Prestige Edition for $150 and the Hardened Edition for $80.

No word on who is manufacturing the vehicle, but since the night vision rig looked an awful lot like it was made by toy maker EyeClops, and toy maker Spy Gear also makes a video camera-sporting truck, I suspect it could be a toy company.