Look, I know there's a very vocal segment of our readership that doesn't appreciate the warmth and humor of My Little Pony. What if we changed them to something else? Something a bit more... Final Fantastic?
What, those obviously aren't ponies. That was the problem, right? Cute animals outside of the context of a video game are insidious and possibly evil! Well these are cute animals from a video game. Not only a video game, but one of the most beloved role-playing game franchises of all time.
That's why I picked up a pair of $11 shirts featuring the colorful work of artist Kari Fry, self-professed video game lover. It certainly had nothing to do with the My Little Pony collection my wife-creature and I do not have, or the fact that the artist included not only the Mane 6, but fan-favorite Derpy as well.
See? That's not Spike the Dragon, whose breath magically transports correspondence between Twilight Sparkle and Princess Celestia. I do not even know who those people are. That's a Moogle, from Final Fantasy, possibly one of those mail Moogles.
This is definitely not a My Little Pony shirts. It's a Final Fantasy shirt, and it's only on sale through the end of the day. Who could possibly pass this up? No pony could.
With just five short days before Blizzard's diabloical threequel hits store shelves, Amazon declares Diablo III the most preordered PC game in the online retailer's history, surpassing StarCraft II and World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. Blizzard must hate itself right now.
Have you seen the amazing debut gameplay trailer for Assassin's Creed III? It debuted today. Watch it clean. And then watch it up top, with commentary from me.
I saw most of the footage used in the trailer during a lengthy gameplay demo a couple of months ago. I wrote about it, but very much wanted you to see the game in action. Now that you can I'll talk you through what you're seeing and pause a few times to point out some of the things you might miss during your first viewing.
Enjoy.
And if you want us to do a commentary track for more video game trailers, please let me know.
Yessss. As of today, you can buy all five classic Quest for Glory adventure/RPGs from GOG.com for ten bucks. Worth it if only to hear one of Jennifer Hale's early game voiceover performances.
In yet another evolution of Xbox rumor, The Verge reports today that Microsoft's game console will be adding full web-browsing functionality with a special version of their Internet Explorer software.
The article claims that users won't need to have the Kinect motion-sensing accessory to use the modified browser, but the software's been tuned to work with gestural input. This version of IE will also reportedly use the Bing voice recognition search to initiate searches and deliver webpages.
This rumor has the ring of truth since it's a conceptual extension of the same thinking that brought Bing to the Xbox 360. Integration of social networks like Twitter and Facebook has existed on the 360 for a while now, but there's been a conspicuous lack of robust web-browsing on the home console. The Vergesuccessfully outed the existence of the $99 subsidized Xbox 360, so they may be on the money here as well.
The slipped-up posting from the European online retailer ShopTo, seen here via google cache, seems to back that up. The posted (presumably European) release date is October 26th—if accurate, that means that we'll get to spend this fall guiding Frodo, Sam and the gang through a LEGO-fied version of Middle Earth.
Update: A reader has sent in this picture taken from a Toys 'R Us, depicting the ad on the back of the LEGO Mines of Moria set. Seems to confirm that yep, we're getting a LEGO LotR Game:
It was almost four years ago that we first saw that incredible trailer for Black Mesa: Source, which looked like a full update of Valve's classic PC game Half-Life. It truly was incredible—hell, I rewatched that trailer just now and I still feel incredulous about it. It basically looks like the first game redone with the graphics, animations and visual effects of Half-Life 2.
I like Valve's official Half-Life: Source, but it sure doesn't look anything like what the folks behind Black Mesa: Source were showing.
That trailer, however, aired back in 2008. Since then, it's never quite been entirely clear the state of the project—and it certainly hasn't come out.
Over at Rock, Paper Shotgun, reporter/superhero alter-ego Nathan Grayson's got a great two-partinterview with Carlos Montero, the project lead of Black Mesa: Source.
Talking with Montero at length, a picture begins to emerge: a picture of a talented team that perhaps bit off more than they could chew, overpromised early, and then realized that what they were attempting was much, much more difficult than they'd even guessed.
As Montero points out, Black Mesa: Source can't actually be a straight-up port, since that is illegal—instead, it's become a full-fledged remake, featuring over 2,000 custom models, 2,000 choreographed scenes and over 6,500 lines of dialogue, by Montero's reckoning.
"We have always wanted Black Mesa to be Valve-quality," Montero tells RPS. "Turns out that is very tough to do from every angle of development. Imagine that!"
I shudder to think of the challenges presented by doing this—it's like trying to recreate a symphony not just by transcribing and re-writing the parts, but by re-making every instrumental performance one by one. No, you know what? It's much, much harder than that. It's like doing a shot-for-shot remake of The Godfather, but first you have to build the cameras Coppola used from spare parts. Then, you have to build the actors in a lab.
Montero says that they made a mistake by overpromising early, by hyping people up with that incredible trailer. "If I could go back in time and prevent us from releasing the media and hyping up the public the way that we did," he says, "I would. In the end, all of that hurt us more than helped us."
He's quick to assure people, however, that they are still working on the project, and they haven't turned their back on anyone. They've just learned not to promise release dates or overhype their product. Here's Montero:
This hasn't been about polish for polish's sake; it's been about learning all there is to know about how to make great games, and using it to make a great game. There aren't any shortcuts there. We just had to learn by doing, by making mistakes, by screwing things up and starting them over again. Sometimes along the way we have learned things that fundamentally changed our way of thinking, and sometimes we have gone back and fundamentally changed parts of the game to reflect that.
So no, I don't think it is tempting to over-polish at all. We are all eager to get the game out. We are dying to get this game out and show everyone what we've been working on, but we aren't so eager that we would sacrifice our values and what we believe will make this game great. We aren't going to put out something that isn't good enough for us.
Hmm, that actually sounds a bit like another game developer I can think of… maybe Montero's team has more in common with Valve than even they know.
And when, pray, will this incredibly ambitious project finally come to some sort of playable fruition? Montero will only go so far as to say "soon-ish."
Hey, it's more than we've got to go on with Half-Life 3.
The trailer for the next Arkham City DLC harley Quinn's Revenge starts out about how you'd expect—with lots of hot (or, "hot") close-ups of our favorite ICP groupie Harley Quinn walking slowly away from the camera.
It then shows the new style she'll presumably be rocking in the downloadable add-on. I like what you've done with your hair, Harley! Also, Batman's in it for like 1.3 seconds.
As Evan already reported, the add-on will feature a chunk of new single-player content that will let players take on the role of Batman and Robin in a quest to shut the gates of Arkham City forever.
Seriously though, I've recently been playing Arkham City's wicked-fun/challenging new game+, and I'm looking forward to getting more story missions to play in the game. The DLC will be included in the "game of the year" edition of Arkham City on May 29th, and as DLC on May 30th.
It appears that Microsoft will not give full refunds to people who purchased the Xbox 360 version of Minecraft, even when they can't use the game's biggest new feature.
Yesterday, Kotaku reported that in order to use Minecraft's local multi-player mode, you need to have a high-definition television. In response to Kotaku's request for comment, Microsoft verified that, saying "in game prompts alert players of the HD requirements for split-screen multiplayer."
In other words, you won't know about this requirement until you actually play the game. There is no warning or other indication on Xbox Live's marketplace that might suggest you need a high-definition TV to use Minecraft's split-screen (although you can see a warning if you play the demo).
This a problem for a number of gamers, including Kotaku reader Andrew King, who bought the Xbox version of Minecraft expecting to play it with his wife and friends. He says he can't afford a brand new television, and that he had absolutely no clue a high-definition TV was required. And now he says Microsoft won't give him a refund.
"They're telling me that they cannot give me a refund over the item (as I still have the license, the game works fine, etc, etc)," King said in an e-mail. "They told me that they haven't given a refund to anybody else (even though other people on the Minecraft forums have said they've managed to get a refund), so they can't give me one... If they'd advertised it like that, I would not have bought the game."
Indeed, some gamers have claimed they received full refunds for their copies of the game. But when Kotaku called Microsoft customer support today to see if we could get a refund, they told us it would depend on a number of factors, including which customer service representative was handling the case, and that at most we would get only a portion of our Microsoft Points back.
Right now, the in-game warning looks like this:
And here's the Minecraft listing on Xbox Live:
It's ambiguous. And it's something that Microsoft should change or clarify as soon as possible. I've reached out to Microsoft again to see if they have any plans to make the requirement clear or give refunds to misled gamers. I'll update should they choose to respond.
It appears that Microsoft will not give full refunds to people who purchased the Xbox 360 version of Minecraft, even when they can't use the game's biggest new feature.
Yesterday, Kotaku reported that in order to use Minecraft's local multi-player mode, you need to have a high-definition television. In response to Kotaku's request for comment, Microsoft verified that, saying "in game prompts alert players of the HD requirements for split-screen multiplayer."
In other words, you won't know about this requirement until you actually play the game. There is no warning or other indication on Xbox Live's marketplace that might suggest you need a high-definition TV to use Minecraft's split-screen (although you can see a warning if you play the demo).
This a problem for a number of gamers, including Kotaku reader Andrew King, who bought the Xbox version of Minecraft expecting to play it with his wife and friends. He says he can't afford a brand new television, and that he had absolutely no clue a high-definition TV was required. And now he says Microsoft won't give him a refund.
"They're telling me that they cannot give me a refund over the item (as I still have the license, the game works fine, etc, etc)," King said in an e-mail. "They told me that they haven't given a refund to anybody else (even though other people on the Minecraft forums have said they've managed to get a refund), so they can't give me one... If they'd advertised it like that, I would not have bought the game."
Indeed, some gamers have claimed they received full refunds for their copies of the game. But when Kotaku called Microsoft customer support today to see if we could get a refund, they told us it would depend on a number of factors, including which customer service representative was handling the case, and that at most we would get only a portion of our Microsoft Points back.
Right now, the in-game warning looks like this:
And here's the Minecraft listing on Xbox Live:
It's ambiguous. And it's something that Microsoft should change or clarify as soon as possible. I've reached out to Microsoft again to see if they have any plans to make the requirement clear or give refunds to misled gamers. I'll update should they choose to respond.
Look, I know there's a very vocal segment of our readership that doesn't appreciate the warmth and humor of My Little Pony. What if we changed them to something else? Something a bit more... Final Fantastic?
![Sounds Like We're Getting a LEGO: Lord of the Rings Game [UPDATE]](http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/17m7wciczu9wrjpg/medium.jpg "Sounds Like We're Getting a LEGO: Lord of the Rings Game [UPDATE]")
MCV is reporting that they've ![Sounds Like We're Getting a LEGO: Lord of the Rings Game [UPDATE]](http://img.gawkerassets.com/post/9/2012/05/photowatermarked.jpg "Sounds Like We're Getting a LEGO: Lord of the Rings Game [UPDATE]")
