Maybe it's a typo. Maybe it's that damn good. Batman Arkham City has received a "6 out of 5" from a reviewer at Unlikely Hero Limited. This, on the heels of another outlet scorching Uncharted 3 with a 9.9/10.

These are two copies of Battlefield 3 snapped at a Toys 'R Us according to the reader who sent them in. Poor, PC version; it didn't get to be in the group photo.

Battlefield 3 will officially be on sale next Tuesday, October 25.

There are many things I expect to see in a panel called "East Meets West, Art Direction for a Worldwide Audience." I expected to hear Isamu Kamikokuryo, the art director for Final Fantasy XIII-2 discuss how Japanese artists focus on creating new worlds, Norse mythology and its influence on the game, and drawing inspiration from Cuba for some of the beautifully rendered backgrounds. I expected to hear Jonathan Jacques-Bellêtete, the art director of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, talk about influences like Andrew Loomis and Metal Gear Solid. I had hoped for an interesting back and forth between the two designers on how technology influences artistic development as well as what happens to geographic differences in artistic influences in our increasingly connected worlds.

I did hear all of these things, but also something that pinged my feminist gamer radar.

In describing his influences, Jacques-Bellêtete mentioned he was heavily influenced by Metal Gear and Final Fantasy. Then he went into a two minute riff about "always trying to have very beautiful female characters," noting that these were characters he would want to sleep with. After making a semi-disparaging remark about female characters drawn in a North American style, he concludes "I'd rather have female characters from Final Fantasy or Soulcalibur to sleep with." This draws chuckles from the crowd.

And there it was, the truth about character design that so many players know but most designers wouldn't usually articulate: most of the egregiously sexist character designs are based on fuckability, rather than playability.

Drawing attractive characters isn't a crime. But it starts to become grating when characters are not only attractive, but hypersexualized and mostly defined by their appearance. Even when characters aren't hypersexualized, they can still be boring and flat in execution if there is more attention paid to animating her curves than the character herself.

But the model for art in our fandom communities is often sex appeal first, to the detriment of characters. Over in the comics world, Laura Hudson broke down the problems with the faux empowerment form of "liberated sexuality" that is so common in contemporary storylines:

Let's start with Catwoman. The writer and artist have decided that out of all possible introductions to the character of Selina Kyle, the moment we're going to meet her is going to be the one where she happens to be half-dressed and sporting bright red lingerie. That is in fact all we see of her for two pages: shots of her breasts. Most problematically, we are shown her breasts and her body over and over for two pages, but NOT her face. No joke, we get a very clear and detailed shot of her butt in black latex before we ever see her face looks like. Can't you show us the playful or confident look in her eye as she puts on her sexy costume? Because without that it's impossible to connect with the character on any other level than a boner, and I'm afraid I don't have one of those. [...]

[W]hat I keep coming back to is that superhero comics are nothing if not aspirational. They are full of heroes that inspire us to be better, to think more things are possible, to imagine a world where we can become something amazing. But this is what comics like this tell me about myself, as a lady: They tell me that I can be beautiful and powerful, but only if I wear as few clothes as possible. They tell me that I can have exciting adventures, as long as I have enormous breasts that I constantly contort to display to the people around me. They tell me I can be sexually adventurous and pursue my physical desires, as long as I do it in ways that feel inauthentic and contrived to appeal to men and kind of creep me out. When I look at these images, that is what I hear, and I don't think I even realized how much until this week.

In many ways, the constant barrage of this type of imagery (and characterization) is not unlike the sh*tty neighborhood I used to live in where every time I walked down the street, random people I didn't know shouted obscene comments about my body and told me they wanted to have sex with me. And you know, maybe a lot of those guys thought they were complimenting me. Maybe they thought I had tried to look pretty that day and they were telling me I had succeeded in that goal. Maybe they thought we were having a frank and sexually liberated exchange of ideas. I'm willing to be really, really generous and believe that's where they were coming from. But in the end, it doesn't matter that they didn't know it was creepy; it doesn't matter that they "didn't get it," because every single day I lived there they made me feel like less of a person.

That is how I feel when I read these comics.

As a gamer, full cosign. Two years ago, at my South by Southwest panel with N'Gai and Naomi, I talked about how in my 22 years of playing video games, I've been all kinds of characters: a Bandicoot, a Lombax, a pervert squirrel, James Bond, some dude addicted to painkillers, a few different folks hustling in the underworlds of Vice City, San Andreas, and Liberty City, Lego Batman, Joanna Dark, Laura Croft, Karin and crew, Tidus and crew, Sora and crew, and easily hundreds of other characters. But to play as a black woman, to inhabit and play as someone is similar to my real life identity? I've had five opportunities in twenty-two years. And that's if I count characters that are biracial, characters that appear in reflections, and one tan colored viera.

And, to add insult to injury, these characters are also undermined from the get go. My first introduction to Resident Evil‘s Sheva Alomar was an ass shot.

So, at question and answer time, the feminist gamer Goddesses shined down on me and allowed me to ask Jacques-Bellêtete about his comments. I wanted to know how the approach to female characters influences their design. Do designers put more thought into female lead characters, or are they illustrated in the same way as characters who are intended to be eye candy? How does that presentation impact their playability?

Jacques-Bellêtete immediately blurts out "I feel like you're trying to trick me," laughing apologetically to avoid stepping into a controversy landmine. He takes pains to explain that Deus Ex: Human Revolution has a female lead narrative designer. Mary DeMarle shaped the story in a way that created strong primary female characters, which makes for different themes. He acknowledge that I was "kinda right," in that there is a difference in the approach to design between main characters versus characters he termed "cannon fodder." He also noted that it is "such a cliche of our industry that women have big boobs" so most of his teams draw women with smaller chests – so much so the designers requested a big breasted character. But he ultimately agreed, "we broke the [usual character] mold a little bit because of the women in the lead."

My question was the final question accepted, since N'Gai Croal (who was moderating the panel) had one more surprise – he had asked Kamikokuryo and Jacques-Bellêtete to each interpret each other's work. So, Kamikokuryo drew Adam Jensen, and Jacques-Bellêtete drew Lightning. Jacques-Bellêtete's work was unveiled first – and lo and behold, it's a tit shot. For comparison's sake, here's what Lightening normally looks like versus Jacques-Bellêtete's interpretation.

(Interestingly, Kamikokuryo said Jacques-Bellêtete's work reminded him of Faye Valentine from Cowboy Bebop, and so he adjusted his work to have Adam Jensen share the same fate as Spike.)

Seeing the Jacques-Bellêtete's image after his explanation about how he interprets female characters was disappointing, to say the least. But it was not surprising, as this type of sexism is endemic to nerdy industries. In a medium where we are only limited by our imaginations, where we can dream up princes rebuilding the cosmos with Kamataris and shelve that fantasy next to dystopian futures, it's painful to see that kind of creativity doesn't extend to the majority of women in game worlds. No matter how creative we are, we still can't get past this base level sexism.

After the panel, I approached Isamu Kamikokuryo and asked him the same question I posed to Jacques-Bellêtete. I've been a fan of Final Fantasy for years, and a small part of that is due to the range of female characters that inhabit the world. According to Kamikokuryo, this was the first time he took on character design for the franchise. The same three artists have been doing the character designs from Final Fantasy VI to XIII. "So," he said through his translator, "We thought deeply about what we wanted to express with each character when designing."

Seriously, that's all we feminist fans really want to hear.

First wireless controls, then motion controls, then motion-tracking like the Xbox Kinect... sooner or later, someone's going to come up with a computer (and therefore a video game) that can be controlled entirely with our minds.

Well, turns out it may be "sooner"—a research scientist at the New York research lab the Wadsworth Center has demonstrated that not only can computers already understand basic language-related thoughts, people can shoot Doom demons… with their minds.

(Yes, I'm going to keep italicizing anything we can do with our minds through this article.)

As reported by Computerworld.com, Schalk showed a video with test subjects who had electrodes attached to their brains.

Schalk presented attendees a video showing how test subjects can control computer games through the use of electrodes attached to the surface of their brains. The test subjects were already wired for treatment of illnesses such as epilepsy.

In one demonstration in the video, a patient used thoughts to shoot monsters in the video game Doom. The patient used a joystick to move the gun back and forth but used his thoughts to cause the gun the shoot — accurately.

In another demonstration, Schalk showed how a computer can tell the difference between someone thinking the sounds, "Ah" or "Ooh."

A third demonstration a computer detecting the sound level of music a person was listening to and track it moment-by-moment.

As much as I make light of the science fictiony feel of being able to control a video game with my mind, this is some huge, fantastically interesting stuff.

One of the biggest things holding many people back from playing video games is the control-scheme—gamers spend many years mastering the 20-odd buttons on a 360 or PS3 controller, and it takes countless hours of practice before the bridge between our brains and the controller breaks down a bit and we feel truly connected to a game. Playing Dance Central 2, I've been struck by how immediate the game feels, since true to Microsoft's marketing buzzwords, my body really is the controller.

So imagine if a game allowed direct brain interaction! The mind boggles. This may only be the tip of the iceberg, but it most certainly is the start of something more intense and groundbreaking. For now, we'll just have to imagine the possibilities… with our minds.

Thought-Controlled Computers May Soon be a Reality [Computer World]

Fahey is somewhere over Colorado by now, I bet, winging his way to California and Blizzard's annual Blizzcon. The show kicks off tomorrow, are you going? Did you know we have a party this year? You should go and meet Kotaku's resident half-giant.

Super Mario has thrown fireballs for about three decades. In Super Mario 3D Land next month, he'll throw a boomerang in what Nintendo is saying is a tribute to The Legend of Zelda, a series that turns 25 this year.

Mario can throw a boomerang when he dons the Boomerang Suit, one of several power-ups in the portable Nintendo 3DS game, along with a Propellor Suit, a Raccoon Suit and maybe more.

Nintendo has also made a level in the game that's a throw-back to the top-down dungeons of the original Legend of Zelda. (We showed a glimpse of that in June.)

You can see plenty of new screenshots of Super Mario 3D Land in the gallery here. Just flip on through, and keep your eye out for more of the boomerang. The game will be out in North America on November 13.

Video games might be the key to fighting off some of the debilitating symptoms of Parkinson's Disease, according to research results released this week.

The pilot study, conducted by the UCSF School of Nursing and Red Hill Studios, helped more than half of the people with the disease who participated improve their balance, walking speed and stride length.

The computer games were created specifically to augment physical therapy designed at helping Parkinson's patients and were funded by a $900,000 federal grant. The team described the games as something similar to what you might see on the Wii or Xbox 360's Kinect. The games award points for matching or following specific movements and has multiple difficulty levels which can be customized to a particular patient's abilities.

"Each subject found his or her own gaming 'sweet spot' - the spot where the physical challenge was not too hard, not too easy, just right,'' said Bob Hone, creative director of Red Hill Studios and the lead Principal Investigator of the study. "And when subjects mastered one game level, they often moved on to harder levels for more beneficial effect. The subjects improved their games scores while improving their gait and balance.''

While the games do sound an awful lot like some off-the shelf titles already available for the PS3, Wii and Xbox 360, these games required patients to wear a custom sensor suit with nine tracking sensors. Red Hill, which developed the game, said that current game technology doesn't track movement at the resolution and accuracy that the system needs to be effective.

The three month trial tracked the stride length, gait velocity and balance of 20 people with moderate levels of Parkinson's disease.

"These initial studies show the promise of custom-designed physical therapy games promoting specific movements and gestures that can help patients get better,'' Dowling said. "Now that we have this preliminary positive result, we want to conduct a longer term clinical trial with more subjects to confirm these initial findings.''

After we ran our "Yes" Gut Check for Ace Combat: Assault Horizon, I noticed a lot of skepticism about the game. Is it really any good? It seems weird, and cold, and soulless.

Well, I've been playing off and on all week, and I'd just like to say that I personally am of a mind with "Michael Fahey, Fan of Air Combat in General." I like it a lot. In this developer diary-slash-advertisement, the team at Namco Bandai talks about reinventing the series to feel fresh, punchy, and relevant. I'm no die-hard Ace Combat fan, but even I have gathered that this game is a significant departure from what longtime players have come to expect.

47 billion shots fired, 2.2 billion regenerated health, 19 million lost dog tags, 1.5 billion kills. But Battlefield 3's raging beta wasn't just about those numbers, and a little sly marketing to boot, game developers DICE actually used the experience to tweak the way the game works online.

Posted on the Playstation blog today, the team says they made hundreds of changes and additions based on the experiences everyone had during the game's beta. Here's the four they decided to highlight:

Improved Squad Functionality
There will be improved squad functionality in the retail game (including but not limited to): the ability to create squads prior to launching into a game, sticking with your squad when joining a game and continuing together through future games (if team balance on the server allows it), inviting friends to a squad, and changing squads once in game.

More Accessible Settings Menu
The ability to modify your settings via the deploy screen has been added into the retail game.

Improved Kill Cam
In the Open Beta, the Kill Cam would sometimes behave erratically. This has been fixed for the launch of the retail game.

Netcode Optimization
The netcode is one of the many things that we tested as part of the Open Beta and it was not necessarily reflective of the final retail game. The DICE team appreciates, and has heard, the feedback you've provided and is further optimizing online play.

Beta Feedback: How You Helped Shape Battlefield 3's Multiplayer

[Playstation Blog]

I've been rolling and scrolling with a SteelSeries World of Warcraft MMO Gaming Mouse on and off since 2008, scoffing at the baby hands of visitors that complained my pointing device was just too big. Turns out they might have been onto something.

SteelSeries recently introduced the Legendary Edition of their World of Warcraft MMO gaming mouse, a streamlined version of the WoW-centric pointer that foregoes the sculpted design of its predecessors and looses a few buttons in exhange for a lower price point: $79.99 compared to $99.99 for its Cataclysm-themed big brother.

Along with the button loss and sleek design, the Legendary Edition gaming mouse is also a great deal smaller than the two models that came before it, making it perfect for people that don't have hands similar in size to my giant pumpkin juggling mitts.

Of course it's not the size of the mouse but the way you use it that matters.

Stripped from it's WoW-fan pleasing package and plugged into a convenient USB port, the Legendary Edition of the World of Warcraft MMO gaming mouse is nowhere near as impressive as the original model or last year's Cataclysm edition. Where those more costly models featured plastic sculpted to resemble plate armor or the metal scales of the dread dragon Deathwing, the main surface of the Legendary Edition is one smooth piece of plastic with orange lightning arcing across its surface. It looks like someone took a normal mouse and attached a sticker to the top of it, creating a rather cheap look I'm not used to seeing in a SteelSeries product.

Its gaudiness isn't aiding by the circular window on the palm rest, where LEDs capable of generating 16 million different colors are used to illuminate a rune-encircled World of Warcraft logo. Fiddling with the light's pulsing options and you get an effect not unlike the dice inside a Magic 8-Ball rising to the surface and then sinking, over and over again. On the previous model that logo felt like some sort of honor, signifying that these were special mice for a special people. The Legendary Edition has all the majesty of a neon bar sign.

But we don't buy our gaming mice for the looks, right? Right? Okay, some of us do, but when the laser hits the desktop, we're not worrying about what mouse looks like. It's about functionality and feel at that point, and SteelSeries has both of those elements covered quite nicely.

Once I adjusted to the mouse's smaller size the Legendary provided a comfortable enough ride for my clicking hand, the soft rubber finished sides make a lovely contrast to the slick plastic top. The eleven buttons—four on the left side, one on the right, and six on top—were all easily within my reach, and while developing an instinctual grasp of where each buttons was located took me a few days, it was definitely easier that figuring out the fourteen buttons of the earlier model.

The one sticking point, pun slightly intended, was the primary face buttons, AKA mouse 1 and mouse 2. Designed as an extension of the mouse's top shell, the left and right mouse buttons required a great deal more force to register a click than I am used to. This is both a negative and a positive; negative in that I'm used to more responsive buttons; positive because it's the only one of three mice on my desk that I don't start accidentally clicking when dozing off during a marathon gaming/writing session.

The real meat of the Legendary Edition gaming mouse is found in its World of Warcraft themed configuration utility, a toolbox for tailoring the pointing device to your specific character's needs. With more than 130 preset game commands ready to be transformed into custom macros and ten profile slots, even a novice player can easily up their game in a matter of minutes. Along with building macros (or creating them from scratch using WoW's in-game macro scripting language), the utility also allows users to adjust the sensitivity of the mouse (up to 3,200 counts per inch) and, of course, change the color of that stupid glowing circle. The three-button difference between this unit and the Cataclysm model didn't cause me any headaches, but then I'm an Arcane Mage, and we only need five buttons tops to be effective.

Though its reduced button count and sensible design make it suited for any pointing task put before it, the SteelSeries Legendary Edition gaming is a product aimed squarely at World of Warcraft players, in case the glowing logo wasn't enough of an indication. With so many veteran players complaining about how the game is slipping deeper and deeper into easy mode with each new patch, it makes sense they have an easy mode mouse to go along with it.

The Legendary Edition World of Warcraft gaming mouse is a nifty little device, packing most of the funtionality of its forebears into a smaller and sleeker form factor more suited for people with smaller manipulators at the end of their arms. With only $20 difference between this model and the much more striking Cataclysm unit, why not drop the extra dough on something truly legendary?

The SteelSeries World of Warcraft MMO Gaming: Legendary Edition is available now in the SteelSeries online shop for $79.99.

Unless your hands can't handle it.