In 2002 NVIDIA released "Dawn", a high-end DirectX 9 tech demo featuring a beautiful forest fairy that captured the hearts and minds of PC gamers all over the world. That mystical creature looks even more gorgeous ten years later.

The original "Dawn" tech demo was a revolution in PC graphics, the first time a character as lifelike as the titular fairy had been rendered in real time. To this day no video game has featured a character quite as detailed.

I have to admit, I was more than a little smitten by the virtual creation. Not only for her looks, but also for what she represented: the massive leaps video game graphics were making every year. I purchased a video card just to run that original demo. I had her as my desktop wallpaper. I constantly watched the video of her and her sister Dusk performing Evanescence's "Bring Me to Life", just to watch them render slowly.

And now we have "A New Dawn".

What's changed? For starters, the original tech demo didn't have a background to speak of, just a six-sided box with Dawn trapped inside. The original environment utilized a mere 7,000 triangles to render the box and the tree limb Dawn cavorted upon; the lush forest in "A New Dawn" clocks in at four million at its peak.

Then there's Dawn's hair. In the original, which still impresses to this day, her head was home to 1,700 strands of hair. Now she boasts 40,000 tessellated strands of physically animated hair. That's more hair than I have on my head (technically so is 1,700).

Anyone can download "A New Dawn" right now, manipulate the scene, change the time of day, or simply marvel at Dawn's skin oil reflectance maps. Just make sure you've got the real ultimate power under your hood.

Requirements:
GPU: GTX 670 or 680 (GTX 670 SLI, GTX 680 SLI, or GTX 690 recommended for Ultra mode)
CPU: 2.5GHz Dual-Core or higher
System Memory: 4GB
Disk Space: 2GB
Operating System: Windows 7 or Windows Vista

Falling in love all over again. Stupid fairies.

We're going to call this kid Reilly. He's 17 but has been infuriating gamers on Xbox Live since he was in the fourth grade. He doesn't just like to beat you at games online, he likes to, in his words, terrorize you. He likes to curse at you, toss in some uglier language. You fill in the blanks.

He's one of them. He's one of the kids that makes Xbox Live gaming the thing we know it is—the thing that never shows up in the official commercials for the Xbox experience. And now, because maybe you've never had a chance to do this, you can ask him anything you want. And he's here to answer, starting at 1pm ET.

You know, you could ask: "Why do you make online gaming so unpleasant?" That sort of thing.

Let's see how this goes, shall we?

Ask your questions below.

The official video game for The Dark Knight Rises costs $7, looks amazing on my iPad, is a bit of a mess and is one of the most important video games of the year.

It's also not as good as the movie. Not even close...and that's even if you didn't think that highly of the movie.

The Dark Knight Rises game is, really, an astounding mediocrity. It's an open-world Batman game that plays like a poor man's Batman: Arkham City, the critically acclaimed $60 open-world Batman game of last year. This poor man's version is maybe only a quarter as good as Arkham City, but it's also little more than a 10th of the cost. What's astounding is that, for this cheap, on this machine, it runs. (See the video we shot of it, above.)

The game runs pretty well as it tosses the player into Bane-controlled Gotham after very crudely rushing through the first-half of the movie in its opening chapter. As Batman, we will take missions from Commissioner Gordon and other do-gooders as we repel Bane's forces in Gotham. We will defeat Bane by beating up one gang of bad guys at a time and by defusing a lot of bombs. We can punch guys, grab them with a grappling hook and counter-punch them. We can toss Batarangs, grapple to rooftops and Bat-glide across the city. We can ride vehicles and upgrade Batman's gear. We can do all this even though the game sometimes glitches (bad guys get stuck running in place behind half-walls). We can do this even though sometimes two mission-givers talk over each other. We can do this even though no one ever opens their mouth when they speak their lines and try in vain to sound like the movie's actors. We can do these Batman things even though our thumbs will sometimes slip and hit the wrong virtual buttons on the iPad's screen and even though the game follows the plot of the movie about as faithfully as your friend's Facebook timeline follows the actual events of his life.

This is, in other words, a 2012 version of the so-so officially-licensed movie game that our ancestors had to pay full price for back in the Super Nintendo and PlayStation eras. This is a passable game released in order to officially glom onto the release of a movie. The shock here is that it's been done for $7 and that, the iPad/iPhone/Android's lack of buttons notwithstanding, it's a shockingly attractive and substantial multi-chapter game. It brings to mind the aphorism that there are no bad video games, just bad price-points. For $7 you can pretend to be Batman with imitation-Hans-Zimmer music playing as you glide through a large open city? Sure.

But if mediocre Official Games of the Movies take root on the iPad, iPhone and Android, what's a PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 console good for anyway? Actual good games? Oh, but the gap is closing. The quality of iOS and Android games is catching up. Makers of consoles—makers of the machines on which there is no official Dark Knight Rises video game—the pressure is on. And owners of iPads, iPhones and Android, for $7, there's a good enough game here. Have fun. And don't laugh too hard at how the game mangles the plot of the movie.

The Dark Knight Rises [$6.99, iTunes]

The Dark Knight Rises [$6.99, Android]

Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima will show off his new Fox Engine on August 30, he said in an interview posted on the PlayStation blog today.

The Fox Engine, which Kojima and his team have been developing since the release of Metal Gear Solid 4 in 2008, will run the next Metal Gear Solid game. Although we've gotten a glimpse at some screenshots teasing Konami's new technology, we haven't seen it in action. Yet.

"The Fox Engine is nearly finished, but the only way to be sure it works is to create a game at the same time and improve the engine with our tools as we go along," Kojima said. "Originally we were going to do this for Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, but a lot happened along the way and instead it is being made with the engine they have at Platinum Games."

When Kojima first announced the Fox Engine last year, he said he planned to use it for multiplatform games—a contrast to the PlayStation 3-exclusive Metal Gear Solid 4.

"Production studios in Japan are nearly extinct, a fact that we have recognized for nearly 10 years, and although the Fox Engine is not finished we are ready to show what it can do… on August 30th in Japan to be more specific."

Hideo Kojima Reflects on 25 Years of Metal Gear [PlayStation Blog]

Even if you're not an avid StarCraft II fan, you still might enjoy this montage of the competitive game's greatest moments, all compiled from high-level tournaments in which professional StarCraft II players compete for cash and glory.

The last moment is the best, but the whole video is pretty damn great.

I made a video - SC2 Epic Moments Of All Time [Team Liquid]

Aveline—heroine of Assassin's Creed Liberation for the PlayStation Vita—isn't that different from the other characters of Ubisoft's historical action series . Like Altair and Ezio, she's an Assassin, a near-mystical stealth warrior with abilities that let her be unseen whenever she wants. But one thing about her stands out compared to those two.

The idea of Aveline intrigues me because she's a black woman, one who happens in the leading role of a major video game. During previews of two upcoming Assassin's Creed games last week, I saw glimpses of black people in Ubisoft Montreal's fictional vision of the American past. When you take the grand sweep of American history into account, it's only relative recently that people of African descent could walk where they pleased. Slavery and the Jim Crow laws that followed made it so that entire zones of society were off-limits to black people. What you have, then, in Aveline is a character that would stand out in the extreme in 1786.

But I like that. I'm glad Ubisoft are putting black people in their made-up past. Race, gender and historical circumstances aside, Aveline isn't any more preposterous than Altair or Ezio. Signor Auditore came from money, became a member of a secret society, rubbed elbows with Da Vinci and invaded the Vatican. Things like that weren't exactly everyday occurrences in Renaissance Italy.

The Assassin's Creed games have always been interested in the intersections of peoples from centuries past. You got the sense that rich and poor, foreign and native were all walking down the streets of Jerusalem in Assassin's Creed 1 and in the various Italian cities in the three games featuring Ezio Auditore. Travelers from far-off lands can be quest-givers, sending you to exotic locales in search of forbidden knowledge. These are games that have felt cosmopolitan and the setting of colonial America gives them new populations to explore. The North American continent was a new world compared to the centuries-old histories of France, Germany and other European countries. Part of that newness came in the form of African slaves and the customs they brought with them. If the subtext to Assassin's Creed franchise is that amazing things happen when cultures combine, then Aveline's very existence is in line with that theme.

According to the Ubisoft Montreal developer showing Liberation, the game's bi-racial heroine has a father who was a French merchant and a mother who was a freed slave. When I asked whether Aveline's father had owned her mother, the developer demurred at answering the question. He made it seems like he might be giving away a plot point if he told me what I wanted to know. I had two reactions to that. The first was to respect the sanctity of whatever mandates he might be working under, with regards to revealing details about the game.

The second was more complicated. In a game set in an era where chattel slavery was still happening, such a thing would be commonplace. You need look no further than Thomas Jefferson's relationship with Sally Hemmings for a model of such a dynamic. Could you really get across the complexities of interracial relationships in a portable video game, though?

I also wondered if Aveline's wanton killing of her mostly male enemies could be explained away by her role-playing as a man. Her breeches and tricorner outfit could certainly imply that. Nope was the answer to that question. In fact, she's also going to be walking New Orleans in ladies' fashion of the time, seen in the screen captures above.

After I'd asked these questions, I sat with my thoughts for a while and remembered that what it meant to be a black person in 1786 was radically different than what it means to be one now. It's easy to project my previously documented desires onto Aveline and the other black characters that might show up in Liberation. That's because characters like Aveline are diamond-rare in video games. No matter how the finished Assassin's Creed Liberation turns out, she's already valuable.

Hironobu Sakaguchi is a big surfer. He also makes video games. Party Wave is Sakaguchi bringing his love for both together. But is the result a party? Or a bust?

Going into Party Wave, I only had one thing in mind: T&C Surf Designs is the greatest surfing game I've ever played—or rather, it sure as heck was in summer 1988. That was my watermark. And you know what? Party Wave is pretty darn fun.

The object is to ride waves, avoid sea life, and to get a bunch of surfers to pull off tricks without wiping out. The wave riding took some getting used so to get maximum points and pull off tricks. The game didn't seem as responsive at first, but that was probably a timing issue on my part. After I got that down, I had fun.

I like Party Wave. I like the mere concept of Party Wave. I like it even more when I think this is the follow up to Sakaguchi's brilliant Last Story and that this iOS surfing game is from the guy who gave us Final Fantasy.

It's always nice when people can combine the things they love—nicer when they do it well. If only I could play Party Wave, while wearing oversized Jams and a T&C shirt...

Party Wave [iTunes, $1.99]

The motion tracking dance game that made Kinect seem so interesting turns three-games-old this fall, as Harmonix announces an October 16 release date for Dance Central 3, the only game to combine "Ice, Ice Baby", the Macarena and time travel.

At this point I might pick up Dance Central 3 just to ironically listen to its soundtrack in the background while I work. The October 16 release date announcement (October 19 in Europe) for the body rhythm game comes with a handful of newly announced tracks, many of which already have me humming and tapping my foot despite myself.

Just look at these:

• 2NE1 – "I Am The Best (Original Version)"
• Alice Deejay – "Better Off Alone"
• Backstreet Boys – "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)"
• J.J. Fad – "Supersonic"
• Lil Jon & The East Side Boyz ft. Ying Yang Twins – "Get Low"
• LMFAO – "Sexy And I Know It"
• Los Del Rio – "Macarena (Bayside Boys Mix)"
• Maroon 5 ft. Christina Aguilera – "Moves Like Jagger"
• Vanilla Ice – "Ice Ice Baby"
• Vicki Sue Robinson – "Turn The Beat Around"
• Village People – "Y.M.C.A."

If I could dance, these would be the songs I'd dance to.

The release date announcement also comes with a new developer diary showing off Harmonix's tattoos. I love you, Harmonix. When Kotaku eventually fires me for gross incompetence, I shall come work for you. I have the tats.

It's the last full week of July. Things are only going to get hotter from here. Keep your cool, everyone. Go on and talk about the games you're playing, loving and hating. Head over to Talk Amongst Yourselves, the place where we gather on a daily basis to discuss all things video game and existential. Go to the TAY forum at this link and do what you've always done: share your thoughts and opinions on the things you're passionate about.

I saw The Dark Knight Rises this weekend, and while I thought it was absolutely wonderful, there was one thing that kept distracting me: the villain, Bane, sounds exactly like Diablo mainstay Deckard Cain. Deckard Bane, if you will.

Here's proof. Above: Deckard Cain saying his catchphrase, "Stay a while and listen."

Below: one of Bane's speeches in The Dark Knight Rises.

(Spoilers from The Dark Knight Rises follow.)

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Hear the resemblance? Stay a while, and I WILL BREAK YOU.