The ultimate paramilitary crossover continues in the fifth(!) chapter of Modern War Gear Solid, which has already merged the worlds of Metal Gear Solid, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Halo into one ridiculously amusing soup.

In the latest (and final?) episode, things reach even more ludicrous heights as Ghost battles Kotickovitch, Snake evolves the cardboard box and the light sabers finally come out. Is this the end of the universe-bending parody series?!

If you missed the Modern War Gear Solid at any point, head over to Beatdown Boogie's YouTube page to catch up or just wait for the inevitable DVD.

In the age of smartphones, MP3 players, tablet PCs, and high-quality handheld gaming devices, people need all the electricity they can get their hands on, even if they have to strap it onto their bodies to carry it around.

Now there's an idea...

And where there are nifty gadget ideas, online retailer ThinkGeek is generally not far behind. From the company that brought us My First Bacon and Canned Unicorn Meat comes the Universal Wrist Gadget Charger, a bulky black rubber portable device charger for gadget hounds not afraid to wear their geek at the very edge of their sleeves.

The Basics

The Universal Wrist Gadget Charger is a thick rubber bracelet that hides a powerful secret: A rechargeable rechargeable 5.5 volt, 1,500mAH lithium ion battery. Once charged via USB cable the bracelet can be connected to countless power-hungry electronic devices. A series of four lights on the bracelet indicate how much charge remains. The package includes connectors for the iPhone, Nintendo DS Lite, 3DS, and Sony PSP, Nokia (I and II), LG, Samsung i900, and Sony Ericsson phones, plus a mini USB connector to handle just about everything else.

What We Liked:

A Little Bit Cyberpunk: When there's a blocky hunk of rubber wrapped around your wrist glowing with the light of four LEDs, and a coiled wire snaking from its interface port to your gaming system, smart phone, or MP3 player, you can't help but feel just the tiniest bit like you come from the future, and a rather cool future at that.

Playing with Power: The Universal Wrist Gadget Charger does what it's supposed to do, providing enough extra juice to keep your phone alive when it should be dead, or keep your game going until you get to the next save point. How much power you gain is highly dependent on how much power your device sucks up, however. After a full bracelet charge my dead Nintendo DS Lite played for nearly two hours. My LG Quantum Windows Phone 7 gained a quarter bar of battery life from a full charge, while the much greedier Nintendo 3DS (with networking turned off) ran for a half hour off of the bracelet and died minutes after the final charge LED blinked off. It's in the way that you use it.

What We Didn't Like

Uncomfortable as Charged: As many a fetish model will tell you, black rubber might look sexy, but it doesn't breathe very well. Beneath the thick bracelet my admittedly gigantic wrist was sweating on even the coolest of days. The underside tends to heat up slightly when actively charging, which only adds to the discomfort. This is not a device I would wear every day.

The Bottom Line:

From a purely gaming standpoint, the Universal Wrist Gadget Charger's value depends on how you plan on using it. With the latest gaming technology from Nintendo sucking down power like nobody's business, picking up one of these expecting to significantly prolong your 3DS play time is a losing proposition.

Still, 30 minutes is 30 minutes, and when you take into consideration all of the other devices the bracelet works with it could be a worthy addition to your gadget collection, as long as you can stay cool when the rubber meets your wrist.

The Universal Wrist Gadget Charger was designed and manufactured by ThinkGeek. Released in March 2011. Retails for $39.99. A unit was given to us by the manufacturer for review purposes.

The Universal Wrist Gadget Charger comes packed with easy-to-lose pieces of plastic. Keep a baggy handy.

My wrist is absolutely huge.

With my Universal Wrist Gadget Charger and my Windows Phone 7, I am cyberpunk.

Turn off the lights, and my wrist glows.

The video game sequel to the extraordinary Batman: Arkham Asylum won't be released until October, but starting today a new comic, Batman: Arkham City, is bridging the two Arkham games' gap. That compelled me to rush to the comics shop to find out what's next in this saga.

If you've been following the pre-release coverage of that upcoming Arkham City game, the plot of today's first issue won't be a surprise. But you, like me, might spot some clues and this version of the Batman world and the upcoming game.

The comic is set a year after Arkham Asylum. Quincy Sharp, formerly the warden of Arkham Asylum is now mayor of Gotham City, though he's taking orders from an obscured malevolent psychiatrist (already revealed outside the comic as Hugo Strange). In the first issue Sharp begins rallying the city with his idea of a Gotham without costumed heroes or villains. Batman, meanwhile, spends the issue trying to track two new villains, a brother-sister duo known as T&T. Something important blows up and, by issue's end, we learn of the plans for the creation of something called Arkham City.

The comic, like the games, is written by Paul Dini, so it's reasonable to assume there will be strong thematic and narrative continuity through the five-issue comics series and into the game. With that in mind, what to make of the following?

The Joker, demoralized after his battle with Batman at the end of Arkham Asylum—during which he pumped himself up on the video game's version of steroids, a drug called Titan- is depressed.

Pro-Batman reporter Vicki Vale makes one of the saga's rare references to other costumed heroes. Dossiers in the first game said Robin exists in this Bat-universe, though he's yet to be seen. The new game prominently features Catwoman, but is she what Vale would call an ally? Hmm....

The aforementioned drug Titan is still in play in the comic, a disappointment for those Arkham Asylum gamers (me!) who were tired of battling drugged-up bruisers well before the game stopped trotting them out.

And then there's this... new Batman power? In the first game, we could make Batman climb to a perch and then drop down on bad guys. But what if the soles of his feet were explosive? Don't tell me that would blow his feet off. This is Batman we're talking about, and this sure looks like a viable new Bat-power to me.

The first issue of Batman: Arkham City is in stores now. The next one will be out on June 8.

A combined ten million Xbox 360 and PC kills in two weeks has unlocked Assault Mode for Section 8: Prejudice, in which two teams take turns trying to secure all Control Points on a map. Go play.

A former U.S. Navy F-18 fighter pilot is suing Sony, Bethesda and Zenimax claiming that the Playstation 3 version of Oblivion: The Elder Scrolls IV gave him a grand mal seizure, breaking his shoulder and permanently grounding him.

In the suit, John Ryan McLaughlin says that on March 28, 2010 he was playing the game on the PS3 when he experienced a grand mal seizure, the first in his life. The seizure was so severe he broke a bone in his shoulder, and injured his ribs, according to the suit. He was later diagnosed with a seizure disorder, something he blames directly on the game

McLaughlin also claims that the seizures resulted in the United States Navy taking away his flight privileges as an F-18 pilot.

Reached Wednesday, Bethesda declined to comment about the litigation.

Pilot Claims 'Oblivion' Video Game Gave Him Grand Mal Seizures [Courthouse News Service]

Back in April, I was standing in a Miami beach-front hotel talking to people from Capcom, the games publisher that invited people like me to check out their new games. (We paid our own way, if you care). I joked that they could up the ante and do their event in Dubai next year. Too expensive, they laughed.

Not too expensive for Capcom's sometimes-rival Namco, I guess.

Namco's been holding an event in the world's most luxurious city this week. We're not there, though we're catching the news that's been trickling out.

The main accommodations are the Madinat Jumeirah resort. One could say that the place is impressive.

I was hoping that games reporters who went out there had captured some of the local flavor, but so far, the best I've found is an upside-down video of a nice hotel room.

Google isn't above killing a little productivity to prove the power of its web browser. The search engine king has released a special free browser-based version of Rovio's avian-flinging sensation Angry Birds on the Chrome Web Store, just to prove it can be done.

Announced earlier today at the Google I/O Conference in San Francisco, the new browser-based version of Angry Birds is a testament to how far Google's Chrome browser has come in a short time. According to Sundar Pichai, Google's senior vice president of Chrome, Angry Birds in a web browser wouldn't have been possible a year ago. With a graphics rendering speed ten-times-faster than earlier versions, today's Chrome can make it happen.

As can, incidentally, today's version of Safari. Today's version of Firefox, on the other hand, was a bust. No one uses Internet Explorer anymore, so we didn't even bother.

The free version of Angry Birds features the game's first level, Poached Eggs, along with a set of exclusive Chrome-themed levels. You can install it now via the Chrome Web Store. It runs rather nicely, and as an added bonus, remains cached for offline play.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got pigs to kill.

Angry Birds flutters over to Chrome [VentureBeat]

Rock, Paper, Shotgun's Quintin Smith recently got a chance to play ten hours' worth of Eidos Montreal's latest cyberpunk thriller, Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Rather than exhaustively regurgitating every minute, instead he shares the thoughts playing the game put into his head. Thoughts like, "I am SUCH a badass. Watch this!"

Oh admit it, you've had similar thoughts while playing through your favorite game. I know I have. So what if that game was Pokémon Black, it still counts.

It just counts even more in the case of Deus Ex 3.

Crucially, you never feel weak. In the first Deus Ex, if you were a sneaky type and got caught, or you were a murderous type and took a lot of damage in a fight, there was a sense of failure. Human Revolution gives the sneaky guy tools to correct being located from his very first mission (punching that enemy who just walked into your hiding spot, or activating your camoflage to make your escape), and by swapping numerical health for regenerating health, the murderous type can no longer make mistakes. Now, it's just a fantastic ride.

See? It's the thinking man's Deus Ex 3 preview. The thoughts might not be particularly deep ("These cutscenes are making me want to take my keyboard and smash my monitor like a piñata"), but whose thoughts are when they're enjoying an eagerly anticipated title?

Hit up the link to read Quintin's thoughts on the preview's characters ("Wow, I actually care about these people"), settings ("Seriously? I have to break into another industrial estate?"), final boss fight ("Seriously?"), and more.

Ten Things You'll Think Playing Deus Ex 3 [Rock, Paper, Shotgun]

Or maybe it's for you, Demon's Souls diehards or those ravenously anticipating the challenge of Dark Souls. What it is, assuredly, is a strong motivator for pre-ordering Dark Souls for the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360.

Namco Bandai announced today that Dark Souls would get a limited release collector's edition bundled with stuff, including a "limited edition art book containing premium illustrations of characters and environments from the game, a mini-strategy guidebook, behind-the-scenes videos from the development studio detailing various stages of game concept, design and building, and the game's soundtrack for digital download." It's the mini-strategy guidebook I'm most interested in, given Dark Souls' brand of challenge.

All those bonuses will be included at the standard edition price—$59.99 USD—in a "custom-designed metal case" as long as you pre-order. I'd anticipate limited quantities on the collector's edition, so don't be shy if you dig soul collecting.

Reps tell Kotaku that Namco Bandai will also be releasing tutorial videos for Dark Souls to help players better understand its unforgiving combat and unique rules. How they'll distribute those videos, we're not yet sure.

Dark Souls is coming to PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 this October in North America.

Look, everyone needs a hobby. I like to read, and stare solemnly out my window. It's good to stay active! But this Russian fellow has a particularly engaging pastime: hunting down Moscow's rat population and blowing them to rodent hell.

Gennady, whose last name is a mystery because he is a covert rat sniper, used to be a duck hunter. But what fun is shooting ducks? They're a pleasant species—delicious, sure, but no threat to mankind. Plus they fly, and that's tricky. Rats, on the other hand, are nigh-universally despised creatures. They caused the Black Plague! They have fangs and weird little eyes! Their tails are gross! The solution? If you're Gennady, wield a $3,400 pneumatic sniper rifle, line up a laser-sighted headshot, and get Cossack on their furry asses.

Sure, Moscow probably has a rat population in the millions. But that won't stop Gennady. So, if you're a Moscow rat and you're reading this, your days are numbered. Also, congratulations on reading a website, that's quite impressive. Wait—if you can read, that means you have human intelligence—Gennady, stop—! [English Russia]