You've seen spaceships land a million times, but rarely has it ever looked as pretty as it does in this clip from upcoming sci-fi flick Prometheus.

NBC News in Rhode Island is reporting that Curt Schilling's Rhode Island-based game development house 38 Studios is meeting with Governor Lincoln Chafee to resolve "issues" with the state.

This comes after the state of Rhode Island loaned 38 Studios $75 Million to relocate from Massachusetts. According to the NBC report, if 38 defaults on the loan, it will leave Rhode Island taxpayers on the hook for the money.

38 Studios has only released one game, the fantasy RPG Kingdoms of Amalur earlier this year. It seems likely that Amalur's lackluster sales are responsible for any financial woes the studio may be facing.

Kotaku has contacted 38 Studios and will update if and when we hear back.

Chafee: State, 38 Studios in discussions [NBC News]

(Hat-tip to John for the heads-up.)

The ongoing legal feud between publishers Activision and former employees Jason West and Vince Zampella, the creators of the Call of Duty franchise, took an interesting turn today when Activision coughed up over $40 million.

Note that this is not part of any settlement; according to Polygon, it's the result of Activision doing a little homework on the case before it actually goes to trial, and deciding that instead of taking a whole bunch of former Infinity Ward employees to court, they'd be focusing their legal crosshairs on just West and Zampella.

Becaue of this, the $42 million paid by Activision constituted bonus payments owed to other former IW staffers, now at the pair's new studio Respawn, payments which had previously been withheld.

Activision pays $42m to former Infinity Ward devs, not a settlement [Polygon]

The free-to-play model has been taking hold in the west. More and more games are being designed around letting people play to their heart's content, then monetizing the game in other ways once players are invested in the game.

Writer/roustabout/troublemaker Michael Thomsen has written a scathing critique of free-to-play gaming titled "Will Work for Fun." In it, he argues that the trend towards free-to-play is redefining gaming and turning the act of play into a perverse sort of labor, one which players agree to pay to undertake.

Dispiriting as they may be, it is very difficult to argue with Thomsen's assertions about the nature of free-to-play. He breaks it down thusly:

The original Super Mario Bros. defined the console blockbuster with more than 40 million copies sold worldwide. After going free-to-play, Angry Birds has been downloaded over 700 million times (though some versions are still sold for 99 cents). The scope and stakes of videogame commerce have irrevocably changed, and, in a way, the value of the medium has degraded as a result. Designers are no longer selling games to people who want to buy them, they are selling their audiences to advertisers. Worse yet, they are using them as an interactive form of muzak, creating a lively backdrop against which the small percentage of people willing to spend money on new quests or in-game trinkets will feel more likely to spend.

I told you it was bleak!

After that, Thomsen gets into murkier territory, describing games as "the experience of being ruled," insofar as the "best" video game players are the ones who have mastered the rules they were given.

That is certainly one way to look at it, but I don't agree with his assertion that rule-sets necessarily negate "true play," which he defines as, in its purest form, "a creative act negotiated between two people without intermediary."

After all, rule structures do allow for play, and sometimes even encourage it—for example, not all jazz can be free jazz. There's a huge amount of freedom to be found inside the framework of a composition, just as avant-garde composers like John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen discovered in the mid-20th century.

For a more accessible counter-example, take sports—there are rules to sports, accepted frameworks, and still play is possible. I'm not certain I'd say that unconstrained imagination is necessarily a fundamental aspect of play. Then again, that's not exactly what Thomsen is saying—he's sure to be clear that he's talking about play in its purest form. And in that sense, pure improvisation and play are untethered by rules. Which raises the question of whether play is enhanced by structure, and... well, that's a can of worms that can remain closed for now.

But Thompson's opening barrage against free-to-play hits sharply and resonates. The implications of the free-to-play revolution are far-reaching and, when viewed for what they are, can be troubling indeed.

Will Work For Fun [Kill Screen]

Video game rental service GameFly takes one hell of a shot at video game retailer GameStop in this new commercial.

If you've ever tried trading games into GameStop, you've probably said something like "$9 cannot be your real offer" too. You probably didn't trash the store, though. Please don't trash stores.

GameFly Commercial - You're Welcome 05082012 [YouTube via NeoGAF]

Just when he thought he could lose his tragic past in a booze and pill-addled haze, Rockstar Games drags Max Payne out of retirement for a third series of unfortunate events. If I were him, I'd go after them first.

Luckily I am not Max Payne. My family is still, for the most part, alive. Going from bald to a full head of hair is no longer an option. And the only pills I take on a regular basis are less about helping me forget all of my troubles and more about making sure grass and pollen doesn't kill me while I'm not looking. My life would make a horrible video game.

May Payne's life, on the other hand, seems to have made a pretty good one. Hopefully none of the assembled video game reviewers scored Rockstar's latest because they identified with the main character.

Edge Magazine
When Max Payne switches from a two-handed weapon to the handgun in his holster, he doesn't reach behind his back to plant the larger gun firmly on the adhesive outer surface of his jacket. It doesn't vanish inside the TARDIS-like confines of his pockets either, sent to that mysterious alternate dimension called the inventory screen. Instead, he loosely dangles the weapon by his side, while getting to business with the pistol in the other hand. You'd think this would make reloading tricky, but Payne has a system. He tucks the big gun in the crook of his arm, grabs and inserts a clip into his pistol with his freed hand, and lets the larger gun fall back into his grip.

The first time you see this, it's a delight, the smooth animation showcasing Payne's efficient weapon-handling skills, while also throwing down the gauntlet to games that think details such as the practicalities of juggling a videogame arsenal don't, or shouldn't, matter. By the fourth reload, it already looks more canned, but by then the statement of intent has been made.[assocaite]

Giant Bomb
Even for Max, a lot of time has passed since Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne, to the point that the dramatic, traumatic events of the first two games are little more than old scar tissue now. Having long since ruined anything worth ruining in New York with booze and pills, Max has retreated from his own life and taken up reluctant employment as a personal bodyguard for the wealthy, powerful, and treacherous Branco family in São Paulo, Brazil. For as comfortably as Max and his black jacket fit into the shadows of New York's underworld, he's a stranger in a strange land here. His leathery American frame sticks out like a sore thumb in the washed-out sunlight of both São Paulo's rich playgrounds of privilege and its rusted favelas, which he fumbles through with as little grasp on the local language as to why he's really in São Paulo. Max has never been a particularly sunny soul, but here he regards his idle rich clients with about as much simmering contempt as he does for his own half-drunk, careless ineptitude as family members get kidnapped and his bad situation continues to find new ways to get worse.

Rockstar has never been particularly shy about its specific influences, which are often cinematic in origin. With Max Payne 3, the setting, character situations, and overall look of the game make comparisons to the Tony Scott movie Man on Fire inevitable, and apt, though there are strains of director Michael Mann's slick latter-day crime dramas in there as well, all of it spiked with a spare synthesizer score and shocking moments of extreme violence. Though it's not couched in the caricatured satire of GTAIV or the bleak revisionist period trappings of Red Dead, that same authorial voice still rings like a gunshot.

Joystiq
The shooting is a revelation. It's so good it evokes a worrisome existential crisis: Yes, it's another eight-to-ten hours of killing everyone in the world, but what if this is, and will always be, what games are best at? Max Payne 3 nearly makes you roll over in defeat, knowing that Rockstar has harnessed impeccable technology to make people die real good.

It's a simple process served up with peerless presentation. You enter one side of the room and the henchmen, who rarely differentiate in their plan of attack, dutifully show up to be blown away. As a grizzled grump who reeks of alcohol and sweat, your movements are rugged but reliable – and you can forget about the frantic momentum of Vanquish, or the nimbleness of Drake in Uncharted. Max is an expert at falling down with style.

Telegraph
As a rule, Max Payne 3 is dutifully considerate to its players, considering its brutal difficulty. As well as seeing to it you don't get too stuck in a rut, the game offers varying degrees of aim assist and difficulty levels to tailor the challenge to your needs. Meanwhile, small things like the briefest flicker of your crosshair when you register a kill offer an excellent level of feedback, essential when in the midst of a chaotic firefight. So it's strange that Max Payne 3's most glaring flaws are so counter-intuitive to that. Checkpointing is infuriatingly mean at points, asking you to replay large, difficult chunks of areas to progress. It's faintly wearying at times, particularly when the game is tough enough as it is. It also has the odd habit of switching your assault rifle or shotgun for a pistol following a cutscene, and considering the cutscenes tend to bleed fabulously into action, that split-second to swap to a more powerful weapon can be damaging.

It's also something of a shame that the game's best bits tend to be closer to the beginning. The opening two acts are stuffed full of spectacular set pieces: Max using a sniper rifle to cover his ally as he sprints unarmed through the bleachers of Sao Paulo's football stadium; using an enemy as a surfboard as he smashes through the window of a nightclub's VIP lounge to the dancefloor below, picking off bad guys under the neon lights; a rain-swept infiltration to a dockyard at night that leads to an astonishing speedboat chase. It's a game full of highlights, but it's a little too front loaded. As the story reaches its denouement, the levels become harder and more stuffed with enemies. It can become a little gruelling, exacerbated by the staccato nature of reloading checkpoints. Still, there are some stunning moments right up until the end, and that raw excitement of the shooting endears across the game's campaign.

Game Informer
Max Payne may not seem like a franchise that lends itself well to multiplayer, but Rockstar has found a way to keep Bullet Time alive and well for deathmatching purposes, and uses it to anchor a robust offering of competitive modes.

Deathmatch and team deathmatch prove to be fun, grinder-like experiences with average lives lasting for 20 to 30 seconds. Becoming Max or Raul Passos (an old colleague of Max's) in Payne Killer mode delivers that "how many foes can I down before I fall" thrill. This mode starts with a standoff between all of the players in the match. The first player to land a kill becomes Max. The player that was killed becomes Raul. These two characters are more powerful than the others and must work together to earn as many points as they can before they are taken out. The player that takes out one of these characters takes ­their ­role.

The coolest multiplayer mode offered is Gang Wars. This mode pits two teams against each other and incorporates story threads from the campaign to shape the five rounds. How a round ends dictates what the next objective will be, a design that keeps the battles fresh.

G4TV
Max Payne 3 is a technological tour de force that will have you screaming "Dear lord!" more times than midnight mass. The performances are top notch, the action plays out with unrivaled fluidity, and the multiplayer is deep and rewarding. Silly distractions aside, Max Payne 3 is an action lover's wet dream that also happens to employ some of the slickest direction and transitional trickery this side of a David Fincher box set. Lock and load. It's bullet time...time.

Kotaku
Noir isn't about heroism, you see. It's about failures and foibles and the innermost demons lurking inside human nature that some unlucky slobs just can't outrun. Horrible, horrible things happen in Max Payne 3, many of them because of the title character's superhuman ability to fuck things up. Things that made me gasp out loud and avert my eyes. But this game isn't a fuck-up. In fact, it's anything but. If you get Max Payne 3, you'll see how good it feels to have your stomach heave with this anti-hero's signature brand of self-loathing and cunning. And then go online and see just how you manage the balance of caution and carelessness with thousands of people trying to do the same. Welcome home, Max. It's good to see you again, you poor bastard.

And here we have what looks like the box art for Halo 4, as assembled by NeoGAFer spawn031. An email from Microsoft went out with fragments of this image, titled "Your piece of the Halo 4 puzzle." Each email came with a bit of this image, which spawn031 assembled and monsterfracas shared.

Hey, now. That is actually some cool-ass box art. Check out the full image below.

Halo 4 Box Art [NeoGAF]

(Thanks, Andrew!)

I love a good Game of Thrones joke as much as the next guy. But this one, made by Twitter user iScoff, really does take the cake. The Twitter-cake. The cake of tweets.

He somehow manages take commonly mocked topics like Twitter's character-limit and penchant for encouraging us to share our wretchedness (which our own Stephen Totilo explored just last week) and combine them with a humorous critique of both the quality and content of Game of Thrones.

All with 19 characters to spare.

This iScoff character is pretty funny for a Pomeranian.

(Thanks for the heads-up, Elliot.)

The parents of American citizen Amir Hekmati haven't heard much about their son in March, when the Iranian government overturned the accused spy's death sentence and ordered a retrial. He presumably remains imprisoned in Iran.

Hekmati's parents recently recorded this video, trying to humanize their son and weeping for his return. There's nothing happy here; just the sad stress of parents terrified for their son. It's a reminder that Hekmati's fate remains in the hands of the Iranian government.

Hekmati's parents and the U.S. government have denied that Hekmati was a spy. The Iranian government, however, has even labeled work Hekmati did to help develop software for war video game company Kuma Games as proof that he was trying to help topple the Iranian regime.

First interview with the Family [FreeAmir.org]

Speak Up doesn't have to be about video games, especially when a commenter as famous as fake Tony Danza comes out against a shining example of America colors on a comic book character.

So what with The Avengers in theaters and all that it's sparked conversation about the rest of the movies, and one thing I've noticed is that a lot of people liked Captain America more than Thor.

Why? I found Captain America horrible. Not only is Captain America a rather appalling character, wrapped in jingoistic patriotism that makes me want to vomit (I'm under the impression he's got more depth in the comic, but just the idea of a character called "Captain *Country*" is almost physically disgusting it's so bad.), but the movie just wasn't very good in my opinion. None of the characters were rather likable except, maybe, the doctor who gave him the serum and Stark (Who was a real let down considering how good Robert's Tony is), the pacing was horrible, and just generally it wasn't very compelling. Oh look, the Nazi's are dabbling in secret and forbidden sciences/occult, I haven't seen that story since.... Hellboy 1?

I could go on, but anyway:

Why do people like the Captain America movie?

For the record, I'm not trying to be condescending, I'm honestly curious what you see in it.