You can't imagine how flattered we were today to discover that the Daily Mail doesn't just read our little gaming site, they even like to sometimes "repurpose" our news.

Take for instance their story this evening headlined: Jewish groups slam violent 'blast-the-Nazis' Auschwitz uprising video game.

Under the tantalizing headline we found a surprisingly familiar group of quotes. Quotes from interviews we conducted with the Anti-Defamation League, interviews with the Simon Wiesenthal Center (though they spelled their center with a fancy misplaced R) and quotes from the game's developer saying things he says he didn't share with anyone else.

It even seems that some of McWhertor's writing style rubbed off on them, and why not, he's a great writer.

So thanks Daily Mail for making us feel important today. We needed that. And thanks to all you sites out there that love us AND credit us. We like that even more.

Jewish groups slam violent 'blast-the-Nazis' Auschwitz uprising video game [Daily Mail, Thanks to Wardrox for the heads up.]

The art of lying is the most fascinating thing.

Some people do it well, others are just plain bad. But it's rare that someone trained to detect an untruth can be completely fooled. That's because no matter how good a liar a person is, they almost always have a tell of some sort.

That's what has me so excited about the potential of Rockstar's upcoming crime game L.A. Noire. Thanks to some slick technology and some, hopefully, solid acting, Rockstar seems on the precipice of delivering the sort of game that will allow you to read the game's characters.

That means people like me, people who read way too much crime fiction, watch way too much crime television and movies, won't be able to rely on crime noire tropes and their extensive knowledge of crime cliche to pick apart a story and figure out who the criminal is.

Instead, we'll have to do what real detectives do: Find the clues, interview the suspects and try to see who is and who isn't lying.

That sounds like an absurd statement, but it's also the realized promise of interactive fiction. It could mean interaction that can shape the experience. Image a game that doesn't just spill out canned graphics and animation when hit a programmed trigger. A game that not only has a variety of reactions, but the technology to deliver those nuanced differences.

Sure, I don't know if that's exactly the direction Rockstar will be taking with their game. But looking at this video, it appears they could. The technology they are using allows them to capture every little detail of an actors face as they go through the part. That means the nervous facial ticks, the double eye blinks, the dry lips, all of that could in theory come across.

Much to our surprise, the recently discovered Mortal Kombat fighting stick doesn't come from MadCatz, the company behind the official sticks for a slew of Capcom fighting games. Instead they come from PDP, and the design firm says there's a very American reason for that.

"PDP has been working with WB and the dev team for quite a while to conceptualize a stick just for the new Mortal Kombat," Gerry Block, PDP senior product manager tells Kotaku. "MadCatz did some good work with the Tournament Edition (Street Fighter IV) sticks, but those are Japanese style sticks for a Japanese game. We thought it would be a lot of fun to respond with an American style stick for an American fighting franchise."

As jingoistic as that may sound, Block means that quite literally.

The Mortal Kombat arcade button layout used concave, not convex buttons, something that Block maintains is a cultural decision. The sticks themselves, he says, were baseball bat style, not lollipop style as found with Street Fighter. And the surface upon which the buttons and sticks were attached were angled for the U.S.-designed Mortal Kombat, versus flat for Japan's Street Fighter game.

All of this translates directly into the design of the Mortal Kombat fight stick PDP made, which comes as part of next year's $150 Mortal Kombat Tournament Edition. The stick also has some other interesting touches. The bottom of the stick is overlaid with memory foam wrapped in velvet, making it a bit more comfortable to play with on your lap. There are also little feet jutting from the sides of the stick that won't touch your lap while playing, but will prevent the stick from sliding around when it's on a table.

Finally the casing for the stick is easily opened with a latch, no screwdrivers needed. Inside, gamers will find the stick and buttons' Suzo Happ arcade components protected by a transparent housing. The case also has enough room in it to hold the game box and the cable for the stick. Unfortunately, it looks like you still need to get out the tools to actually tinker with the guts of the stick.

It sounds like there are some interesting additions in the stick's design, things I'd love to see move over to all sticks. I love the notion of not having to mess with tools to gain access to the components and the memory foam bottom sounds like a good design choice too.

Despite the roaring success of Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, a racing game that managed to yank me forcibly back into a genre a long lost interest in, I still don't anticipate the release of Shift 2 Unleashed.

The game sounds to me like a return to all of the things that pushed me away from the franchise, all of which can be summarized by one word: Realism. I'm not a fan of reality, that's why I play video games. The same goes doubly true for racers.

But I understand there is a deep interest by a massive audience for racing games that push the envelope on realism. I'm not quite sure yet where Shift 2 Unleashed is going to land.

The developers say the game will deliver authentic driver experience with 40 career events when it hits in the spring of 2011. The game is also said to be the perfect complement to Hot Pursuit, which screams don't buy it to me. But that's because I don't want a compliment, I just want more Hot Pursuit.

If you're unlike me, and are looking forward to a return to realistic racing in this franchise, then you probably will want to hear about the pre-order bonus which nets you three exclusive cars: the Nissan Silvia spec.R Aero (S15), the Alfa Romeo Giulietta QV, and the Lamborghini Murciélago LP640.

Now go look at these pictures.

Turtle Entertainment's holiday card has some excellent taste.

The PlayStation 3 gets Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 in 2011. Getting Mass Effect 1 as well would just be too ridiculous. But PS3 gamers will be able to speed through a short version of the 2007 game.

The January-launching PS3 version of Mass Effect 2 will include an interactive comic called Mass Effect Genesis. It doesn't just summarize the original Xbox 360 and PC-only Mass Effect from 2007, it simulates the experience of playing it. The comic allows gamers to make six key decisions from the original game and see their ramifications in Mass Effect 2.

The brief digital comic starts shortly after the playable introduction to Mass Effect 2 on the PS3. That introduction won't surprise Xbox 360 and PC players who have been able to experience it since the second Mass Effect game launched in January of this year, but let's not ruin things for Sony-only players. A PlayStation 3 gamer will start the game, pick a gender and look for their version of the series' hero Commander Shepard, will play the opening sequence and then reach the comic.

The comic recounts the main story of the first Mass Effect. It also exposes what I hadn't realized were the surprisingly few key decisions players made in the first game. Maybe the six choices do set up a lot of consequence, but it was odd for me, someone who spent well over 20 hours playing the first Mass Effect, to see that the actions I took could be presented in a brisk re-telling with a mere half-dozen narrative forks. Some forks involve who lives and who dies during Commander Shepard's quest to save the galaxy. One involves sex. There's some politics too.

Mix up your responses and you get more than 700 permutations, if I'm remembering my middle-school math correctly. That makes the six choices available feel not so slim a picking after all. It also presents PlayStation 3 owners with one of the only bragging points they can make to Xbox 360 and PC players who have a more than three-year advantage in Mass Effect experience: the PS3 player can re-play the comic at the beginning of Mass Effect 2 repeatedly with each new start of the game, crafting a new Mass Effect 1 history for Shepard in just a few minutes. The player can then see how any tweaks affect the story of Mass Effect 2. What if you made some pivotal decision pivot differently? It's easier to test on a PS3. You don't have to replay many hours of Mass Effect 1 and import the save file over.

I saw the comic at a Sony showcase for PlayStation 3 games in New York last week. I was also shown some mid-game action. The people showing the game say it looks better, that the graphics engine has been overhauled, but without an Xbox 360 running the game right next to the PS3, it's hard to say if and how much better things look. I was encouraged to look at the mesh on Shepard's uniform. You look at the mesh. Better lighting, they say. Better reflections.

The PS3 version of Mass Effect 2 will include all of the downloadable content released for the Xbox 360 version as well as reflect changes made in patches. A representative for the game's development studio, Bioware, said we can think of this version as what Bioware would release if they ever sold an ultimate version of Mass Effect 2.

The game will also support the Cerberus Network, which is Bioware and parent company EA's way to release free and paid downloadable content to Mass Effect 2. The Genesis Comic, in fact, is a Cerberus Network item, which probably means that it, like other freebies on the service, will only be freebies if you buy the game new. Otherwise you have to pay extra for the Network if you have buy a used copy of the game. Bioware plans to release more Cerberus Network content for all platforms in 2011.

Chances of Mass Effect 1 coming to the PlayStation 3 were always slim. Time was against it. The fact the Xbox 360 maker Microsoft published the game was against it. But in the history of humankind, comic books have often solved intractable problems, or something. So here's a comic, PS3 fans. That's your Mass Effect 1. Make your decisions, and make them again.

Mass Effect 2 is out for the PS3 in January; Mass Effect 3 is set for PS3, Xbox 360 and PC in the "holiday" season.

Yes, iPhone and iPad versions of both Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Mortal Kombat are now on sale from EA Mobile.

Better still Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is part of EA Games massive holiday iTunes sale, knocking the game's price down to a penny shy of a buck.

Here's a full list of all of the games that hit iTunes from EA Mobile today:

Scrabble Free
Battlefield: Bad Company 2
Game of Life
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3
Cause of Death iPhone
Cause of Death Free.

EA tells us that their sale includes more than 70 games, among them Need for Speed Hot Pursuit for iPad, Cause of Death for iPhone and SimCity Deluxe for iPad and Battlefield Bad Company 2.

Holiday greets, and an absurdly hard platformer level, from Platformance.

The Killzone 3 developers were inspired by many things, including a flea.

They've got a flea in their new first-person shooter. It is 280 meters tall and more of a walking tank with flea-like dimensions, including a big body, spindly legs, a forward-tilted tilted head and a look of no apparent kindness.

The flea in Killzone 3 is called the MAWLR. It's a massive enemy tank and was the centerpiece for what Herman Hulst, managing director for the Dutch studio Guerilla Games that is making the February 22 PlayStation 3 exclusive, wanted to show me about his upcoming game.

The MAWLR does make for a great talking point. It's the kind of object in a video game a lot of developers would like to brag about. It's a virtual 280 meters tall, Hulst said (that's more than 900 feet, my fellow Americans). It's got as much detail in it as an entire level of Killzone 2, which itself was an amazingly-detailed PlayStation 3 game.

OK. It's big. I think you can see that clearly. Screenshots like the ones we have here for the MAWLR sometimes look better than what's really in a game. That's true here, but do not doubt the impressiveness of the MAWLR. (Click any of the shots here to enlarge them and gawk more.)

Hulst played Killzone 3, fighting this MAWLR, while I talked to him. He was in a level of the game that is built around this monstrosity. You fight it on foot, shooting up at heating vents or something, making stuff explode as if you were trying to shoot the top off an angry, walking mountain from down at base camp. You fight it from cover. You fight it from the air when you get on an automatically-controlled floating platform and coast around this thing, blasting it until it's left as formidable a foe as a squashed flea.

Hulst fared well at Killzone 3 except for the moment when he discovered, while under heavy fire, that the pervious person playing the game had switched to a Call of Duty control scheme. He brought me back to an old Metal Gear Solid 4 bit of hype when he mentioned that one of the operating principles for conflicts in Killzone 3 is that there won't be anywhere safe to hide. The MAWLR was busting down the walls from where Hulst was firing. He had to keep running as he was gunning.

The chaos Hulst showed me seemed like the kind of chaos made for two. You can play the mission he showed me in co-op, but split-screen only, not online, he said. I think it might be more fun to see the MAWLR un-cut by a split-screen on my TV, though. It is an impressive sight, an Empire Strikes Back walker for this Killzone 3 that has already shown to have a good helping of snow.

Big as the MAWLR is, I couldn't help but notice that it was gray. Guerilla gets knocked for its color choices sometimes. The games in the series are so gray, so brown. "It's a gritty game," Hulst told me. He's seen the color criticisms of course. "We're not going to make a pastel-colored game because some people ask for it to be more colorful," he said as he moved into the aerial combat stage of the level. "At the same time, I think there was a need for more variety." He was gunning at this giant flea's head when I noticed how amazing the lighting was all around this giant walker. The lights beaming around it were mostly white and yellow, but they glowed with great brilliance. I complimented Hulst on that, noting of course, this was an impressive display of, well, white. He can't win.

When he said there would be more variety, I thought he might mean Killzone goes to the jungle this game. He didn't want to spoil, but promised me we'd see interesting locations. I asked him if he could at least confirm that the color green would make a big appearance in this game. "I'll put a green filter in just for you," he replied. Here I was, a journalism flea, annoying him.

The MAWLR fight is spectacular. It looks like it'll be heart-racing and spectacular like a good Call of Duty sequence, but grander and more sci-fi. I don't think the game will feel quite as linear as a CoD, though. Hulst said Killzone's enemies will be smarter in this game than they were in the past. The inability to feel safe thanks to more destruction and craftier enemies — some of whom can fly — is interesting, and would be a good way to keep the levels feeling unpredictable. But if I can know I get to fight a 280-meter flea, I don't mind being able to predict what's coming.

It was the summer of 1992 and Street Fighter II was the king of the still thriving U.S. arcades scene.

I had been running the Champions Arcade in Glen Burnie, Maryland's Marley Station Mall for maybe half a year, spending my evenings fixing broken machines, counting tickets and playing way too much on my employer's dime.

Over those six months I managed to assemble an impressive team of gamers as staff, guys who spent their work time earning cash to go buy the latest Nintendo carts and their off hours hustling Street Fighter matches for cash down at University of Maryland College Park or the shady bars on Baltimore's infamous Baltimore Street.

We hung out together inside and outside the arcade. I was the group's official bait when they went to play for cash. I sucked and still suck at Street Fighter, but they'd let me beat them match after match until a sizable crowd gathered and they managed to find folks willing to play for money. Then they'd come in and win all the cash they could.

It finally dawned on me one day that maybe it was worth doing something a bit more legitimate with Street Fighter: A tournament.

So I called up the local arcade cabinet reseller to get in touch with Capcom. I finally tracked someone down in California who seemed completely disinterested in the idea of a tournament for Street Fighter II. So I did it on my own.

It was strictly word of mouth. Because we all played Street Fighter II so much, our arcade's machines were some of the best maintained, so we often attracted players from around the state. They told their friends and by the night of the tournament our mall arcade was so packed you couldn't step inside it.

We held the tournament on a big screen machine, people crowding around the players as I announced the seeding. The audience sat on the ground, climbed up on top of other machines, some stacked up so high they broke the neon lights that ran around the wall nearly touching the ceiling.

The prize was a bag of tokens good at only our arcade, but that's not why they came. They came for the glory. The chance to prove they were the best. And they came from Delaware, from New York, New Jersey, from Pennsylvania.

The evening is a blur now, nearly 20 years later, all I remember of it is the deafening roar of the crowds as we made our way closer and closer to a final match. The noise was so concerning to mall management, that police showed up at one point. The winner is long lost to my memory.

What I do recall is that sense of acceptance. I've never before felt such a strong sense of belonging, of being in a place filled with people so like-minded, so similar, before or since. Arcades were special, a club house for gamers.

When I sometimes think back to the days before arcades fell, these are the moments I remember. No amount of online support, of voice chat, of video will ever replicate this experience.

Those of you who dismiss the death of arcades, or worse, dismiss what they stood for, never quite experienced that moment of gaming zen. And sadly, now you never will.

Above a scene from the 1992 Marley Station Street Fighter II Tournament.