To: Ash
From: Crecente

Tomorrow I'm off to San Francisco for a day or two. Haven't been there in a bit, kinda starting to miss the place. I'll still be checking in over the next day or two. Just from the field. I've got quite a backlog of writing to do, so the flight should help me cut down on that a bit. Too bad I can't play a console on the plane.

What you missed:
Former Assassin's Creed Boss Explains His Move to THQ
Treyarch Explains The Call of Duty Jeep Wrangler Due Out Next Month
Guest Editorial: A First Amendment Call to Arms
The Real Reason Reach Fell
We're Giving Away Four Classic Editions of Goldeneye, Want One?
Sign up for the Kotaku Newsletter, Win an iPad
Review: The Shoot
Frankenreview: Medal Of Honor

We were kind of hoping today's Kinect plug on Oprah would mean she'd be piloting a virtual raft with her body, but the episode's YOU GET A KINECT! YOU GET A KINECT! YOU GET A KINECT! finale is even better.

Oprah's typical studio audience is, to put it politely, not exactly a core Xbox demographic—but from their reaction you would think George Clooney walked out on stage engulfed in flames with some sort of cupcake-firing bazooka. FREE STUFF! FOR FREEEE!

Delivering another "Eff you!" to the Man, this time to His accepted-as-norm pricing schemes, Super Meat Boy's creators have revealed that they'll launch their arcade platformer already on sale, then raise the price of the Xbox Live Arcade game later.

It might just be crazy enough to work. See, Team Meat's plan is to drop the original 1200 Microsoft Points price point to just 800 MSP at launch, slashing a cool five bucks from the cost of owning Super Meat Boy at launch. If you're sick of the $15 USD price of your XBLA games, this early Christmas gift is for you.

Super Meat Boy arrives on XBLA on October 20. For ten bucks.

A Gift to the fans! [Team Meat]

Tier 1 operators go up against their toughest foes ever in this Medal of Honor Frankenreview: The assembled video game critics, otherwise known as the Appraising Force (ApFor).

Does Medal of Honor have what it takes to make millions of Call of Duty fans turn their heads? Can we still call them Taliban even though EA didn't stand by their bad men? Is two developers really better than one? These questions and more answered in the Medal of Honor Frankenreview. Cue Linkin Park music.

Giant Bomb

While Medal of Honor is the latest in a long and venerable franchise, it's not likely to remind you much of the older games in the series. This installment moves things up to the modern era, putting you in the boots of American soldiers stationed in Afghanistan. Though the setting may sound a bit edgy, in practice Medal of Honor offers a brief campaign with little story and a smattering of technical issues that range from annoying to decidedly disappointing. It also delivers a multiplayer component that feels like it's desperately trying to split the difference between Modern Warfare 2 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2. There are flashes of excitement peppered across the game's modes, but it's hard to get too excited about any of that when it's been done better elsewhere.

Game Informer

The single-player campaign isn't bad, but it hardly feels inspired. If you've played any of the modern-day military shooters, you've experienced most of Medal of Honor's set pieces – a helicopter-based rail shooter segment, a section where you paint targets for air support, and other levels where you and your bearded buddy sneak through camps as snipers. Medal of Honor's campaign lacks the excitement that would help it stand tall against the considerable competition. Character animations are gimpy, weapons feel slightly underpowered, and the AI is downright suicidal. This works to your advantage when enemies show a complete disregard for cover, rolling out of safety to stake out firing positions in the open.

Planet Xbox 360

The real purpose of the campaign isn't to provide an action packed thrill-a-minute experience, though it is but rather to open the window into the lives of the men who are on the front lines of this war, the ones who have sacrificed their lives at home in order to protect the country they love. A brothers-in-arms story takes shape though the 6-7 hour experience, as you shift story perspectives between the different characters, which all link together in some way as their paths intersect. As they interact with each other, you move from one character to the other and it makes for great pacing as there is hardly a let up in the action or story telling. The story is also broken up with a variety of things to do and accomplish, as you don't just run and gun the whole time, but rather you are rewarded with a few gems through out the game. At the end of Medal of Honor's story, I was feeling the same thing I did when I first saw Black Hawk Down, empathy.

Eurogamer

Medal of Honor's campaign isn't a technical marvel either. Danger Close went for Unreal Engine 3 to tell the main story, and it seems ill-suited to the long draw distances and proposed detail levels, frequently diving well below the 30fps baseline and popping in textures on the console versions . . . DICE's vaunted multiplayer, however, uses the Frostbite engine from Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and looks much better throughout. There are five game modes - team deathmatch, capture-and-hold, two asymmetrical assault set-ups (one fast, one slow) and a "Hardcore" mode where expected crutches like ammo pick-ups and regenerating health are either removed completely or heavily regulated - and it's set over eight well-designed and varied maps.

Gaming Trend

Multiplayer is always a balancing act. Too many weapons and players will simply skip out on the bulk of them. Too few and players will hone in on the lack of variety. Well, there is plenty of variety to go around in multiplayer this time. After dropping into multiplayer you can either play with friends or via quickplay. You can select from several different modes other than the "Any Game" mode which drops into any active game near you. Combat Mission allows players to fight through a campaign of five objectives against insurgent fighters, Team Assault which is essentially team Deathmatch, Sector Control is a domination mode asking players to capture and hold flags for score, Objective Raid asks players to defend two objectives against insurgent saboteurs, and finally Hardcore mode which is the aforementioned Team Assault, Sector Control, and Objective Raid but with Hardcore settings enabled. This means you'll heal less, take more damage, and it'll take a far more precise shot to take down your foes.

Kotaku

Medal of Honor's campaign is a short, though taut experience with engaging level design, deft pacing and surprising audio and visual touches. Online, the game maintains most of what makes the campaign sing, but doesn't quite deliver the number of options modern day shooter fans may expect. Despite the hoopla over modern settings and the inclusion of enemy Taliban, there are no deep messages in Medal of Honor beyond one of the effectiveness of the U.S. military in the Middle East.
The Frankenreview deserves a medal of honor for being so sadly neglected.

Four minutes, two teams, and no respawns. That's the basic description of Medal of Honor's new Clean Sweep mode, available on November 2 as a free download for the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, unless you bought the game used.

Clean Sweep is a quick and dirty online mode for Medal of Honor in which two teams compete to kill each other. The catch? Neither team respawns, so when you're dead, you're dead. It's the sort of mode in which heroes are made. As long as one player on your team survives, there's still hope.

The new mode goes live on November 2, packaged with two new maps - Bagram Hangar and Khyber Caves - and redesigned versions of the existing Diwagal Camp and Kabul City Ruins. And it's free, as long as you have an Online Pass.

Part of EA's continuing efforts to lessen the impact the used game market has on its bottom line, the Online Pass is a special code only available in new copies of Medal of Honor. If someone loses that code or buys the game used, a replacement can be purchased from inside the game for $9.99.

So basically what owners of used copies of Medal of Honor have to ask themselves is if this new multiplayer mode worth the $9.99? Well is it?

Raphael Phillips, the graphic artist behind the adorable Mega Man Lego mashup back in September is back, presenting his blocky take on Mega Man's Robot Masters.

Ben from The 8-Bit Cubist passes along these lovely images, and I like them much more than the original set. Raphael's first collection was indeed impressive, but let's face it: Once you create one Lego Mega Man, making the rest is just a matter of recoloring the same model. Phillips mixes things up in his second collection of Lego Mega Man renders by featuring the evil Robot Masters from the games themselves.

Hit up the 8-Bit Cubist link below for more Mega Man goodness.

Mega Man Lego Collection: The Bosses by Raphael Phillips [The 8-Bit Cubist]

Publisher THQ will be the undisputed publisher of games bearing the Ultimate Fighting Championship brand until 2018, the company announced today, further highlighting plans to bring UFC mixed martial arts games to everything.

THQ and Zuffa Inc., the sports promotion company credited with legitimizing the UFC, announced their extended partnership today, noting that they plan to bring MMA games to more platforms, specifically social and mobile platforms, including iPhone and iPad.

Two UFC Undisputed games have been released by THQ, with plans to release UFC Trainer, a martial arts fitness and fighting game, sometime in 2011.

The publisher said earlier this year that it may extend the development cycle of UFC Undisputed games, shying away from annual releases in favor of 15- to 21-month-long windows between releases. Sales of its most recent release, UFC Undisputed 2010, were blamed for some of the publisher's less than impressive earnings.

The Playstation 3's drop into motion gaming had a surprising side effect: More on-rails light gun games. The Shoot is one of two PlayStation Move games hitting just this week.

Instead of going for realism, The Shoot blends the aesthetics of old carnival shooting galleries with the addictive nature of arcade classics like Hogan's Alley. The one- or two-player game includes five locations, each with four levels, and a number of unlockables and challenges. You can play it without the fancy shooting attachment that turns your Move controller into a gun, but where's the fun in that?

Ideal Player

Fans of light gun games who don't mind trading the typically dead-on, lightning fast reaction of a true light gun game for the ability to play at home without the need for quarters. People who enjoy casual gaming with friends. This is a great party title.

Why You Should Care

The Playstation Move still hasn't really delivered a single game that makes the controller a must buy. So every new title is worth checking out if you own the add-on. Also, The Shoot—along with Namco's Time Crisis: Razing Storm—gives us our first chance to check out how Sony's motion controller handles light gun-style games in the home.

Is The Shoot just a shooting gallery? Essentially, yes. The premise behind the game is that you're an action star in a movie and you need to shoot as many enemies as possible to keep the director happy. Get him angry enough by missing or getting hurt and you'll have to do a retake. Do enough retakes and you're kicked out of the movie. The premise and the way it is presented through the use of wobbly wooden enemies and fragile props is what makes the game so much fun to shoot your way through.

The Playstation Move Shooting Attachment will run you an extra $20. But it's worth it.

How is this different than something like Hogan's Alley? Like Hogan's Alley, the bad guys and occasional good guys are depicted as flat wooden cut-outs that float, swing or wobble their way toward you on tracks and wires. But the presentation is well beyond anything Nintendo's classic arcade shooter could have delivered. And the five different movie themes add a lot to the experience.

What are the movies? The game opens up in a Western with cowboys and miners for you to gun down as you work your way through the prop town. There is also a robot-themed movie, a gangster movie, an underwater setting and, by far the best, a monster flick.

What's so great about the monster movie? Zombies. Yes, I know that's become a popular gaming trope, but these zombies are made of wood and very cleverly designed. Shoot them anywhere but the head and you won't stop the cut-out from its ambling attack. I've even missed enough shots to face a disembodied zombie head on the end of a wooden stick. The boss of this final movie is also the best.

What about those moves you can perform in the game? Right, an important distinction. Your bonus modifier goes up as you hit targets without any missed shots. Hit enough in a row and you start to unlock special moves. The game has three of them. You can slow down time by spinning around while holding the gun. You can clear the screen of enemies by shooting straight down at the ground and you can activate a sort of sub-machine gun mode by shooting straight up. Keep in mind you have to earn these power-ups, but using them is the only way you can rack up the scores needed to unlock new movies.

Is the plastic gun worth buying for the game? You don't need to, but you're probably going to want to because it helps quite a bit in recapturing the feel of playing those old light gun games. Unfortunately, the controls themselves don't help. While I enjoyed my time playing through and replaying through the game to unlock new movies, there was always a slight delay in the cross hair, making me feel like I was playing Hogan's Alley dipped in molasses.

Five movies, four levels, in a light gun game? That sounds short. It is short. Each movie took me about 30 minutes to complete. If you're doing the math you might think that means only two hours of gameplay. But you'd be wrong. All of the movies' levels are packed with Easter eggs and ways to rack up a higher score, making re-playability not just fun, but a must. The Shoot isn't the sort of game you play through and put away, it's the sort of game you play to perfection.

The Shoot In Action

The Bottom Line

The Shoot is the sort of quick and easy take on shooters that the PS3 has long lacked. The fun visuals, clever enemy design and trio of power-ups combine to make this particular light gun game fun to play without weighing it down with unnecessary depth, story or clutter. But The Shoot's sometimes sluggish controls becomes an annoyance as players get past the initial discovery of the levels and try to master the game.

The Shoot was developed by Cohort Studios and published by Sony Computer Entertainment America for the PlayStation 3, released on October 19. Retails for USD $39.99, requires Move controller and PlayStation Eye camera. It works with the PS3 Move Shooting attachment, which isn't required. A copy of the game and the attachment was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played through the career mode, collected puzzle pieces, tried out score attack.

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Players of NCSoft's Aion can now use their iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad to stay connected to Atreia on the go, thanks to the Aion Exchange, now available for purchase in the iTunes App Store.

NCsoft is really pushing mobile connectivity in its games lately, first with the reveal of Guild Wars 2's connected features and now with the Aion Exchange. Available now for $1.99, the Aion Exchange allows players to keep track of their characters' items and equipment, track pricing trends in the game's Broker, keep track of stuff they'd like to buy, and monitor their own auctions, with push notifications letting them know when something's been sold.

"The economy within the world of Aion is wonderfully complex and deep and we've found that our fans are always looking for ways to better their interactions and experiences within the game. Aion Exchange is for them," said Chris Hager, producer for Aion, NCsoft West. "Aion Exchange is our first step in offering valuable and profound ways for our community to connect with our games when away from their computers. The applications current offering gives players added insight when buying and selling of in-game items – hint: buy low/sell high."

My favorite feature in the new app is the searchable item database, containing detailed information about every single item in the game. Now I can gawk at all the pretty items I will never own due to real-world time constraints.

The Aion Exchange [iTunes]