EA hasn't been shy about blatantly saying that they're going to extend their big games across as many platforms as possible. The recent example Mass Effect Infiltrator on iOS—which links back to the console game via the mega-publisher's Origin online service—shows how EA probably wants this kind of thing to work in the future. An example of how they don't want things to work? Look no further than Dragon Age: Legends.

Now, the tie-in to BioWare fantasy RPG series wasn't a bad game. Stephen Totilo quite liked it. But Legends—which was designed by Soren Johnson, who left EA for a new gig at Zynga—failed to attract the quantities of rabid users that juggernauts Farmville and Adventure World enjoy. Not enough people are playing Dragon Age: legends and that means that it's going to be shut down in less than a month, according to AOL's Games.com:

The game's store has already been turned off, stopping all purchases of Crowns within the game, and a sale has started on all items in the store if you happen to still care enough to spend any of the Crowns you may have purchased previously. On June 18, the game will then be shut down entirely on both Facebook and Google+ Games.

The lesson here may be that the crossover between social gamers and AAA players isn't as robust as once thought. Or maybe the games that try to lure one type of player into another type of game need to have lower expectations about what kind of user base they're going to wind up attracting.

Dragon Age: Legends will be no more on June 18 [Games.com]

Welcome to Kotaku's official forum, known affectionately as Talk Amongst Yourselves. This is the place where we gather on a daily basis to discuss all things video game and existential. Want to talk about new games, old games, games that aren't even out yet? Knock yourselves out!

We had Kirby helping out Angry Impoverished Dude last week and this time another Nintendo character crashes the "Rich and Poor" painting. Yoshi's prehensile tongue reveals Smug Well-Off Gentleman's embarrassing baldness for all the world to see, thanks to TAYpic maestro The_Real_Pan1da7. That's what he gets for hogging all the baked goods.

You can do funny things with pictures, right? Want everyone on this fine web forum to see? Here's what you do. Post your masterpieces in the #TAYpics thread. Don't forget to keep your image in a 16x9 ratio if you want a slice of Talk Amongst Yourselves glory. Grab the base image here. Don't forget to keep your image in a 16x9 ratio if you want a slice of TAY glory. The best ones will be featured in future installments of Talk Amongst Yourselves.

Plagued with disconnects and shot through with lag, the May 15 launch of Diablo III had players and press alike railing against the always-online nature of the latest entry in the genre-defining action role-playing series. While not entirely unexpected, those unfortunate events punctuated the problems with requiring constant external server access for a single-player game.

And I was right there with everyone else, cursing Blizzard for imposing its online agenda on players. How dare they take an experience I've always been able to enjoy offline and force me to bow to the whims of external technology? It's unconscionable! It's intolerable!

It's quite brilliant.

Diablo III is a mouse drive-action game that sees the player take on the role of one of five characters tasked with saving the world from being overrun by the forces of evil. Humanity cowers in the shadow of ever-growing darkness, their only hope for salvation a player more engaged with collecting magical equipment and earning experience points than any noble quest.

As I type this I have the game sitting idle on my laptop, suspenseful orchestral music somehow managing to please despite being trapped in the tinny prison of portable PC speakers. My level 34 Demon Hunter stares out from the screen, resplendent in her hard-earned metal armor and high heels. Her steely gaze is fixed on me, but I'm not staring back.

I'm watching the bottom left corner of the screen. The achievements earned by people on my friend list scroll by. When an accolade I don't recognize appears I click on it.

BlueIce just defeated one of the game's tougher boss fights in Nightmare Mode.

I played a few levels with BlueIce earlier in his Nightmare career, and while I've not been able to continue that particular crusade, I find pride in the knowledge that my one-time companion has made it that far — I'm proud of a player who I shared a mere fraction of my overall Diablo III experience with.

It's as if I'm playing vicariously through the other player, a video game voyeur experiencing pleasures I'm not currently able to indulge in through a third-party.

This is what the Battle.net 2.0 experience was meant to be. In 2009, when Blizzard first revealed that the single-player and multiplayer experience would be tied together via an infrastructure that drew inspiration from both Microsoft's Xbox Live service and the sheer joy of playing games with friends by your side, I was skeptical. I knew it would cause the sort of problems we experienced during the Diablo III launch. Hell, Blizzard knew it would as well, but by being uncompromising in its vision the developer has created a platform that makes even not actively playing a social experience.

TyGO just reached level 20 in hardcore mode. Yes!

Less unwavering has been Blizzard's vision for Diablo III as a whole. Since the game's announcement in 2008, the developer has regularly rolled out features and figures that wound up not applying to the final game. From the collectible Rune System that would work alongside expansive skill trees and customization, resulting in some 2.8 trillion character builds, to the arena combat system that wasn't ready for the retail release. As recently as January of this year, Blizzard was still revising the game's core systems. For a company that prides itself on not realizing games until they are perfect, these constant changes and last-minute revisions didn't inspire much confidence.

While features I was rather fond of have been lost forever, I'm not reviewing the game that might-have-been. This is about that Diablo III that is.

Fortunately, that Diablo III is as supremely satisfying as its predecessors.

One of the key features of the Diablo franchise and something I look for in any Diablo clone that comes along is the tactile essence of the click-based combat. Diablo III excels in this area, bringing the full force of 12 years of advances in PC sound and effect to bear. Every attack, be it a swing of the axe or a fiery beam of pure magic, solidly impacts its intended target. The slick animations and sounds unite in a communion of sensory excellence.

It's a transformative experience; as I leap into the middle of a dozen creatures, swinging my weapon in a wide arc, I grit my teeth with savage glee. To the outside observer I am clicking incessantly and cursing intermittently. Inside the game space Blizzard has crafted I become something completely different.

And that leads us to another hallmark of the franchise: a wide selection of diverse characters. Diablo III's lineup features a grand mix of melee, magic and mayhem. Each of the five unique classes requires a different style of play. The Barbarian charges into the fray with little regard for safety or sanity. The Wizard keeps his distance, weaving a deadly display of light and power to decimate enemy ranks. The Monk weaves in and out of combat like a ghost. The Demon Hunter leads enemies on a merry chase along a trap-laden path, peppering them with arrows at every opportunity.

And the Witch Doctor? The Witch Doctor tosses jars of live spiders. I don't care what the circumstances are; that is never acceptable.

Of course that's only how I played those classes. With six skill categories each with multiple assignable abilities, each of those modifiable by six unlockable power-enhancing runes, players have ample opportunities to tailor Diablo III's classes to their own play style. One of the joys of playing the game online with strangers is discovering new ways to capitalize on available skills. One player's useless ability (the Demon Hunter's grenades, for instance) is a mainstay of another player's arsenal. There might not be 2.8 trillion builds, but there are enough to keep things fresh for years to come.

The progression system has definitely been streamlined and simplified. Having played the previous entries in the series I must admit I'm disappointed at the lack of stat points and skill trees — stats increase automatically, and skill unlocks are all level-based now. At the same time I find myself grateful that some of the more complex decisions have been taken out of my hands, leaving them free to crush the life out of countless enemies on the way to the game's ultimate battle.

The story of Diablo III is relatively simple as well, but that's to be expected in a game that's title is also the name of its main antagonist. Telegraphed twists and turns lead the player through four chapters, culminating in a showdown in one of the two places a game focusing on the battle between heaven and hell can culminate. There's lore to be uncovered and unrelated side-quests to stumble upon, but for the most part Diablo III's story is far from its most compelling feature.

Some features of the game have been simplified to the point of stupidity. Replacing the need to purchase identify scrolls to uncover the secrets of rare and powerful weapons with a simple right-click mechanic begs the question of why Blizzard included unidentified items in the game at all. Similarly, Town Portal scrolls have been replaced with a Town Portal spell, a five-second cast that takes you back to town at any given point, removing the need for inventory management and a great deal of the previous games' tension. As long as you can get five seconds away from the enemy, you can warp home.

The end result is a game that's a bit on the easy side, especially for players who have followed the series for any extended period of time. Even transitioning to Nightmare Mode the challenge is only a modest one; any player who's made it that far should have enough of a grasp on their character to handle anything the game throws at them.

There is salvation from this lack of tension and terror in Hardcore Mode. In Hardcore Mode you create a character and play the game normally, only when you die, your character dies for good. There is no resurrection; no salvation. The higher your level, the more deliciously suspenseful the game becomes. When your screen flashes red, indicating extremely low heath, your heart pounds, your palms sweat; it's a glorious experience.

And you know what adds to the experience in a perverse way? It's knowing that at any moment your latency could drop into the red and you could be killed by lag.

And so we come back to that controversial always-online experience. Again, I understand the pain of people locked out of the game during the rocky launch. I felt that same fury.

Kenn just acquired Wirt's Cowbell! I still need to get that.

However, Diablo has never been a purely single-player experience. The original game was about a solo player clicking his or her way through a dungeon to overcome ultimate evil. Despite some structural changes, the second and third games in the series deliver more of the same. In fact, as I attempted to play through Diablo III solo, I found myself getting bored. The combat is exciting and impactful, but I couldn't shake the feeling that I was simply going through the motions in order to see the credits roll; that every encounter was just an obstacle in my way to seeing the credits roll.

It wasn't until I embraced the online social aspects of Diablo III that the game truly captured my heart. This is a game that's meant to be shared, whether it be in party filled with strangers working embroiled in a chaotic fight against the ridiculous amount of enemies the game throws at full parties of four players, to simply watching the achievements roll by, following the exploits of your friends from afar.

The inconvenience of server issues will pass; the only problem I've had over the past three days was a hiccup on the part of my cable internet provider. What won't pass, unless one lets it, is the disappointment of the solo player. To that player this is a well-crafted if repetitive dungeon crawler with an unfair restriction that could potentially compromise their enjoyment.

Play in a few public matches or get together with some friends, however, and Diablo III becomes a magical, transcendent and wonderfully social experience, well-worth the frustrations of its early days.

You'll finally get your chance to snuggle up to the deadly Xenomorphs of the Aliens film franchise when Aliens: Colonial Marines hits consoles and PCs early next year. The release date for Wii U version of Colonial Marines will be announced sometime in the future.

Published by Sega, the Gearbox-developed title will let players assume the roles of space-faring human soldiers as a first-person-shooter style experience or the xenomorphs in third-person style stalking gameplay. The game will become an official part of the sci-fi franchise's lore and Kotaku's recent interview with Gearbox's Randy Pitchford shows that the dev studio is taking the opportunity to add to the Aliens mythos very seriously.

The action-packed brand of high-stakes robbery delivered by Overkill Software's Payday: The Heist might just be pulling off its next job in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.

Early this morning, an official statement from Overkill game director Ulf Andersson revealed that the Swedish development team will be working on an "in-depth collaboration" with Valve:

"As perceptive gamers will have noticed, several hints have recently been dropped into PAYDAY The Heist, which has led to various rumors. We are excited to be able to confirm that an in-depth collaboration between OVERKILL and Valve is currently in production.

We are working on a very cool blend of PAYDAY and Left 4 Dead. I am sure it is so exciting that it will have some players check into the hospital before we are done."

It was recently announced that dev studio Starbreeze—makers of this year's Syndicate reboot and the Chronicles of Riddick games—would be acquiring Overkill in a bid to grow their intellectual property portfolio. Originally a PlayStation Network exclusive, Payday is also now available on Steam. Payday debuted on the PlayStation Network and then became available on Steam soon thereafter. No word on when we might expect to see the first look at a Payday/L4D crossover but zombies vs. Bank Thieves… that could actually be fun.

OVERKILL announces co-operative initiative between PAYDAY: The Heist and Left 4 Dead! [via Reddit]

It looks like the creators of Angry Birds, Rovio, isn't satisfied with only one nest for their avian children. Not only are they planning on building an Angry Birds theme park in Finland, they are working on multiple roosts in China.

Reported by the China Daily in Shanghai, Rovio's Mighty Eagle Peter Vesterbacka says that the activity parks would be different from traditional theme parks. According to Vesterbacka, the plan is to engage the people.

"The activity parks are not like theme parks where people stand for two hours and ride for 10 minutes," said Vesterbacka. "We want our fans to be part of the game."

Vesterbacka told the China Daily that parks would come in various sizes and might even just be neighborhood parks.

"It is very important to understand that our plan is not to build those massive theme parks. We will have many activity parks around cities in China," added Vesterbacka.

China is a huge growth market for Rovio, and according to Vesterbacka, Rovio is investing in China.

Angry Birds get active offline in China [China Daily]

Doodling away at his desk, a skinny and unassuming young man, Li Feng, ponders how to draw a political cartoon regarding missile defense shields. Li, 32, is a graphic artist for a media company in Beijing and he attributes his choice of career to his upbringing, an upbringing in China, with video games.

"When many people think of China, they often think of young Chinese dressed in communist Mao suits with army caps," said Li. "That wasn't the case when I was growing up."

One of the many common misconceptions about China is that kids in the 1980s and 90s didn't have Super Mario or Sonic the Hedgehog, but all of that is false. Many young people from that generation grew up playing the same games that people in Japan and the States played, and their gaming pasts have influenced what they do now.

"We had video games like I would assume people elsewhere did," Li told Kotaku.

Growing up in the 1980s in Shanxi province, Li who recalls playing hours upon hours of Contra on what he called the "Hong Baiji （红白机)". What Li calls the "Hong Baiji" is in reality the Nintendo Famicom.

"Some of my fondest memories growing up was me and my friends playing on the Hong Baiji," said Li. "It was 700 or 800RMB, at the time it was considered expensive, my parents wouldn't buy me one but I had friends who had one."

Li recalls that his parents were not very supportive of him playing video games, but that despite their apprehension to his hobbies, they did not bar him from playing like some of his peers. Li, it seems, was not alone.

Indy game designer Hu Ming, 31, who is currently working on his first independent game, also remembers fondly of the Hong Bai Ji. Growing up in Liaoning province, Hu recalls going to "arcades" to play on the PlayStation to get his gaming fix. Hu also recalls fondly playing on the Famicom. Despite not owning one himself, he would visit his uncle's house to play with his cousins.

At the time Hu says, computers weren't popular or powerful enough for gaming and most of the gaming entertainment was had in arcades. However, the legal arcade phase in China was short lived as the government closed many arcades and banned home consoles in the year 2000.

While the console ban did change the way Hu played games, he says that he still had a lot of fun growing up, playing handheld games that had Tetris to eventually playing Ages of Empires on PC.

"Eventually because systems were expensive, arcades were diminishing, I moved onto computer games," said Hu. "Some of my favorite games at the time were Ages of Empires and WarCraft."

Also from Liaoning province, Zhao, a friend of Hu, also works in the video game industry. Zhao works in sales for a Chinese iOS game developer. "At that time, the majority of us were introduced to all the game consoles," said Zhao "If you wanted one or the other there was a definitely a way to get one."

Zhao admits that some of the games he played growing up were pirated copies but he also says that he played both legally purchased and pirated games. As he got older Zhao also said that he started moving towards PC games, he says that the console and arcade ban did not force him to move to PC. He currently owns an un-hacked Xbox 360 playing legitimate games.

Even with this diet of console gaming, Zhao personally believes that the reason why online games took off in China was not solely because of the banning of console games, but instead the Chinese mentality towards games.

"People started looking at games as a means to quick cash, the Chinese developers didn't have the concept that games are more than just money makers," said Zhao. "In my opinion, I want to make games that have meaning, not something that is shallow. I want to make games like the games I grew up playing." And that desire is, like the games Zhao grew up on, hardly unique to China.

Lollipop Chainsaw has two image characters: Jessica Nigri for the West and Mayu Kawamoto for Japan. Kawamoto is a black belt in karate, but Nigri has, I guess, a black belt in revealing cosplay.

This weekend in Tokyo geek district Akihabara, both Juliets appeared alongside game designer Goichi Suda to promote the title and pose for pictures. Silly pictures.

You'd think two image characters were created so one of them didn't have to travel across the Pacific to appear at events. You'd think.

「LOLLIPOP CHAINSAW」全国体験キャラバンが秋葉原で開催。須田剛一氏にWジュリエット，安田善巳氏も出演したイベントをレポート [4Gamer]
「LOLLIPOP CHAINSAWプレミアムグッズ プレゼント大会 in AKIBA」 フォトセッション特集 [Moeyo.com]
2012年5月19日（土）に東京の秋葉原で開催された"『ロリポップチェーンソー』プレミアムグッズ プレゼント大会 in AKIBA"のリポートをお届けする。 [Famitsu]

Shogi. It's typically called "Japanese chess". And like chess, it's a board game of strategy—and smarts. To get good, you must spend years playing and studying.

Polish college student Karolina Styczynska did that on the internet after reading a manga.

The 20 year-old Styczynska first discovered shogi about four years ago while reading a ninja manga Naruto. One of the characters was playing the ancient board game. Intrigued, she studied up on the game and began playing online and reaching the shogi rank of 4-dan.

Recently, she was invited to play a 3-dan pro, female player Sachiko Takamure. Styczynska defeated Takamure, making her the first foreign amatuer to beat a shogi pro.

During the tournament, Styczynska lost to Ryoko Chiba, a female 4-dan player and, thus, did not advance to the next round. Blame bad jutsu.

One of the great things about Japanese manga and anime is that they open up a new world. For Styczynska, it was shogi.

Read here for more about Naruto and shogi.

Polish amateur first to beat professional shogi player [Asahi]

According to Japanese news reports, a 40 year-old bureaucrat from the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, was recently arrested for groping on Tokyo's Chuo Line.

Between Mitaka Station and Yotsuya Station, the bureaucrat put his right hand on the crotch of another 40-something year-old male and apparently groped the passenger repeatedly for 30 minutes. The victim works for Japan's National Police Agency. When the men finally got off the train, the victim and several other passengers had the accused groper arrested.

警察庁男性技官に…厚労省職員を"痴漢"で逮捕 [TV Asahi]