For many, spending $1200 on their entire PC would be a bit much. Spending $1200 on just the case? That's crazy talk.
Yet if you can afford it...and I know some people out there can...well, there's a case for you on the market, and it looks great. Like something that should be sitting under a panel on the Normandy, not beneath some guy's desk.
It's the Murderbox II, the follow-up to a case we showed you last year. Its creators use words like "bespoke" and "discerning" as though this were a Swiss watch or a top-shelf Mercedes, and really, considering the price and the build quality, I guess this pretty much gaming's equivalent.
It's made almost entirely out of raw aluminium that's mechanically etched and then anodized, while construction is assembled by hand.
Only 499 will be made. If one of you 499 ever actually buy one, don't send us photos of how amazing it looks, it'll just upset me.
Those reading this on something encrusted with diamonds can seriously contemplate ordering one here.
It may not be my favourite game of all time, but Sierra's classic Quest For Glory II certainly comes close. It's not the funniest game, or the most enjoyable, but it's part of a series in which the player's sense of place in a living world was almost absolute.
A lot of the things people love about, say, Skyrim - a day-night cycle, NPCs moving around with a daily schedule, improving your traits through action instead of assignment - they all could be found in the Quest for Glory games, which were made decades ago.
So you can understand why I, and a lot of other adventure game fans, are excited by the news that Cory and Lori Cole, Quest for Glory's creators, are getting back into the business.
They're planning to make a five-game series called Hero-U, set in a Hogwarts-like school for magicians. I don't need to hear anything else. I just need to know where to start leaving my favourite frytakemymoney.gif.
For his work on novels like War of the Worlds and The Island of Doctor Moreau, British author HG Wells is rightly lauded as a visionary.
What often gets lost amongst the applause for his ideas on science fiction, though, is another area he was a pioneer: the field of tabletop wargaming. Which, at least as far as we know it today, was basically invented by Wells while he and a friend were...playing with children's toys.
Before we continue, let's get this straight: Wells did not invent the idea of using abstract rules to simulate the events of a battle. Prussian officers in the 19th century were trained on complex military board games called Kriegsspiel (literally "War Games"), while there are many other examples throughout history of using the basic ideas of war either as a primitive simulation tool or, in the case of chess, a game.
But what Wells did was invent the concept of the recreational wargame, the kind of experience you find today in things like Warhammer, games which are bought and enjoyed by the wider population, not just military professionals.
Sitting around after dinner one night with his friend Jerome K. Jerome, the pair began firing a toy cannon at toy soldiers, eventually making an impromptu competitive game out of it. Convinced that with some rules and a little more variety he could make a structured experience of it, Wells - an admirer of Kriegsspiel as a concept - decided to write what would become known as "Little Wars".
The game was based around two concepts: that units and terrain would be represented by miniaturised models (or at least something lying around that resembled a hill or horse), and that the movement and interaction between the game's units would be determined by a relatively simple set of rules.
Attempts to simulate the game that evening were, however, ruined by "a great rustle and chattering of lady visitors. They regarded the objects upon the floor with the empty disdain of their sex for all imaginative things."
Testing his rules another day with another pal, "a very dear friend, a man too ill for long excursions or vigorous sports", the pair "got two forces of toy soldiers, set out a lumpish Encyclopaedic land upon the carpet, and began to play".
Problems became instantly apparent. "The soldiers did not stand well on an ordinary carpet", Wells writes, "the Encyclopedia made clumsy cliff-like 'cover', and more particularly the room in which the game had its beginnings was subject to the invasion of callers, alien souls, trampling skirt-swishers, chatterers, creatures unfavourably impressed by the spectacle of two middle-aged men playing with "toy soldiers" on the floor, and very heated and excited about it."
The penny dropped when Wells and his friend decided to improve matters by drawing upon "childhood model-building experience", ditching everyday objects in favour of spending time building adorable little miniature towns. With actual buildings to use and the pieces now resting on large wooden board, Wells had nailed down what was needed to make his idea really work.
Little Wars was first published in 1913. Its full name may well be the greatest title ever devised for a book written in the English language.
Little Wars: a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books.
Wow. Enjoyable and progressive. Relatively, at least. His lengthier description of the game's target market reads, "'LITTLE WARS' is the game of kings-for players in an inferior social position. It can be played by boys of every age from twelve to one hundred and fifty-and even later if the limbs remain sufficiently supple-by girls of the better sort, and by a few rare and gifted women."
The game was a success, managing to take Kriegsspiel's core concept of simulating warfare but stripping it of its sterile, arcane ruleset. It brought the art of recreating war, in an organised, competitive manner, to the masses. The use of toy soldiers as units no doubt helped as well.
Wells even believed that Little Wars' approach to conflict simulation, while designed for the everyman (and intelligent sort of everygirl), was a more accurate representation of war than the more serious, complex Kriegsspiel, which was a "dull and unsatisfactory exercise, lacking in realism, in stir and the unexpected".
It's not hard tracing the legacy of Little Wars. Small units, fake landscapes, rules for movement and firing...all recreational wargames, Warhammer included (and all the video games based on similar rulesets) can trace their ancestry to Wells' idea, that the deadly art of war could be simulated not with stacks of restrictions and boring conditions, but with some painted soldiers and simple rules.
If you're at all interested, Little Wars is still being reprinted and played today; you can even read the whole thing online, which I'd recommend. It's not everyday you get to read about the origins of tabletop wargames and see the term "trampling skirt-swishers".
Total Recall is a look back at the history of video games through their characters, franchises, developers and trends. You'll find Total Recall stories every Tue-Fri between 1am -2am Eastern.
If you're up for getting a sneak peek at some of the first few NPCs and low-level bosses you'll meet in Borderlands 2, hit the video above. The game is now officially available on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC, so you may want to save every morsel of surprise and gorgeous art for when you've actually got your hands on it. I can feel that.
But if you're totally cool with peeking, you'll get to see the introductory cinematic for individual characters, meshed together here by our own video expert Chris Person. It features the delightful cel-shaded art and quirky characteristics you might remember from the first Borderlands, complete with funky names and funny one-liners.
But, Patricia Tannis, you are truly insane. For not being a lover of bacon. Mmm bacon.
Have you ever been unable to get yourself out of an abusive relationship? Borderlands 2 kicked my ass, lit me on fire, took all my money and I still keep coming back for more.
Three years ago Gearbox made a game called Borderlands. It was a colorful, cel-shaded first-person shooter with a few RPG-like qualities that let you build one of four characters in a way you wanted.
(They were all great, but my particular favorites included the sniper with a pet bird who he could send on attacks and a magically-inclined redhead who I built to blast through enemies with fire.)
Now Borderlands is back, sporting the same cel-shaded style and boasting even more loot and even more enemies. Gearbox practically invented a new number (it's in the bazillions) just to account for all the guns you can find on the planet Pandora. Fire-pistols, corrosive-SMGs, slag (a smokey purple effect) shotguns, shocking-sniper rifles. You use whatever your trigger-happy heart desires against enemies big and midget. Some of said enemies attack you with their own elemental effects. A muscular goliath will vomit up corrosive acid on you. Or a spiderant will attack with slag. Feisty robots will burn you with flamethrowers. The combinations are wild. And damn dangerous.
Forget the bandits, bugs and mechanical things trying to kill you as you walk through the open world of Pandora. The main threat in Borderlands 2 is a handsome man named Jack. Handsome Jack, if you will. The unjustly rich Hyperion corporation president is also a complete asshole. Though he's had statues of himself built in cities and propaganda posters glued on the walls, there's no denying his tyranny. The citizens of hub city Sanctuary—hiding in the one safe haven they have left—certainly don't deny it. They've been ripped off and taken advantage of by Hyperion more times than a rakk has eaten a skag. His greed is limitless, and now Handsome Jack is after dark, alien power hidden in a Vault. That's where you come in, filling the role of a vault hunter and mercenary yet again.
The ending of the first Borderlands was...anti-climatic, let's just say. It left a confusing hole in the long journey you spent to get there. Beautifully, Borderlands 2's story not only compensates directly for that emptiness—smartly tying up loose ends—but it's also a lot more complex than the first game's story.
WHY: Borderlands 2 is a charming, funny, hell of a cooperative game with lots of style and personality that you can spend hours with.
Borderlands 2
Developer: Gearbox Platforms: Xbox 360 (Played), PlayStation 3, PC Releases: September 18
Type of game: First-person shooter/RPG hybrid
What I played: 50ish hours to finish the main campaign, and a large chunk of side quests, as well as some dabbling in New Game +.
My Two Favorite Things
So many powerful guns to shoot so many creative enemies.
Charming, funny personality in everything from the names of quests and NPCs to the actual dialogue. And the story is much better this time around.
My Two Least-Favorite Things
Getting snagged on invisible and visible corners. There are a lot of things you can bump into.
Borderlands 2 is too encouraging of a cooperative experience by its difficulty. Especially considering how tough enemies are, but how little ammunition you are supplied with.
Made-to-Order-Back-of-Box-Quotes
"I need more friends. So I can play more Borderlands 2. This is important. Please and thank you." —Tina Amini, Kotaku.com
"I'm saddened that fireball-throwing pistols are not a real thing that I can have. I'd keep it under my pillow and sing it lullabies."—Tina Amini, Kotaku.com
I laughed a lot in Borderlands 1. I giggled at the names of bosses and my eyes sparkled at shiny new weapons. I enjoyed listening to dialogue from all the personalities of non-player characters, showing off their paranoia or charismatic banter.
But my heart never dropped in Borderlands 1. I was never shocked or appalled by something I just witnessed in the progression of the story. I felt all those things on my second run through Pandora. It caught me completely off guard in the best way, even if I'm still upset by the things that happened. The story in Borderlands 2 occasionally gets serious, dark even, and it was something I felt and believed rather than just listened to. I have never been so invested in Pandora and its citizens until this sequel.
Non-player characters still have that twisted humor edge that you'll recognize from the first title. All your favorites—Claptrap, Scooter, Patricia Tannis, Mad Moxxi—and some new ones—Tiny Tina, Ellie—and even the four vault hunters we played as in the first Borderlands add to the character of the sequel. They all have personal vendettas and agendas they need your help to carry out. They'll all leave their mark on Pandora in some way. And they'll all be fundamental to your mission in taking down Handsome Jack.
Enemies are just as awkwardly lovable as the NPCs. Bandits will cry out things like "I almost paid off my mortgage!" when you kill them. How often do you find a game that makes you chuckle mid-battle? In the midst of being circled by threshers who can warp you into their range or crystalisks who can spit out explosive crystals at you, there's always something to appreciate or be impressed by.
Some decisions about combat confused me, though. While pursuing certain quest lines imperative to the main story, you'll begin a long sequence through the one zone it's contained in. These range from snowy battlegrounds filled with mechs to bandit camps filled with tattooed psychos. These treks last for awhile. Typically they'll start off with a health and ammo vending machine so you can load up before you run into enemies.
But Borderlands 2 is a difficult game with fickle enemies. They're hell-bent on living. One ammo vendor just won't cut it, especially when enemies tend to drop more money than they do ammunition. And if you're playing with friends, you can count those random loot boxes to be split at least 50/50 if not by up to a quarter. Unless you're *that* person who runs up to loot every box before anyone else can get to it.
I found myself without ammunition all too often while working my way through Borderlands 2's long quest lines. Enemies are tough; they require a lot of bullets shoved into their faces before they'll go down. And they go down fighting. Robots will charge at you to explode with EMP power, which often took down my shields and dropped me close to death. Or they drag their half damaged bodies across the platform to you, even throwing grenades with their good arm. Survival is tough on Pandora since Handsome Jack took charge. His Hyperion-powered mechs and bounty-hunting bandits won't make it easy for you.
I figured out that playing as the new siren, Maya, was not the best choice to power-solo through Borderlands 2. Granted, the new skill trees—separated into three main trees—are so varied from one another that my Maya may be completely different than another player's Maya. I chose to be a more destructive Maya, dealing heavier damage and adding elemental effects to her strikes, but only after I tried her as more of a healing character. She still never felt too equipped to defend herself against the large waves of enemies Borderlands 2 constantly throws at you. Waves even mix with each other, sometimes to your detriment, but luckily sometimes to your benefit as you watch bandits kill off bullymongs.
But even when I played co-op, with fellow game journalists who chose the more independent commando or gunzerker, they found conserving ammunition to be just as much of an issue. It was next to impossible.
So I tried making the run all the way back to the start of the level to use all the cash I picked up on some direly needed ammunition. Some levels were so long, though, that enemies would start to respawn as I made my way back. It felt a little bit like torture. You could say it's part of the challenge, that respawning enemies test your ability to complete missions under a timed pressure. If you feel that way, all the better. Because Borderlands 2 will have that pressure looming over your head. Take too long to finish off a wave of enemies, and they'll be spawning behind you before you know it.
This kind of brutality on the player makes one thing crystal clear about Borderlands 2: it's very much meant to be a co-op game. Especially when considering the siren, whose action ability is to suspend enemies in the air, it's obvious that a lot of the game was made with the cooperative experience in mind.
The commando's turrets make that class probably the most ideal for a solo experience, but power in numbers is heavily emphasized here. You'll certainly be facing off against an overwhelming swarm of enemies at once, so you might as well come packing. The swarms sometimes feel endless. Having a friend or three at your back can mean the difference between getting through a quest in an hour or getting through the same quest in 20 minutes. Even with skill points spent towards increased critical hit percentage, deadeye aim and some wildass smartbomb talent, it's still preferable to play with friends to get through it all.
Playing Borderlands 2 at its most ideal setting—namely, with friends—is still a challenge. Especially in later levels, you'll often find yourself pressed up against a wall with so much chaos in front of you that your head will spin. And that's a good thing, when you know you have friends to hold the fort while you run back from the last checkpoint.
Borderlands 2 is best played at the slowest pace possible. Explore. Try out all the mission board quests. Look around for yellow exclamation points as you drive through the map to pick up even more quests. Do each one. The variety in quests is refreshing, especially thinking back to side quests in Borderlands that often felt stale and monotonous. In Borderlands 2 side quests will take you to meet new quirky characters, learn more about Handsome Jack and his reign of terror, or learn more about the vault and Pandora and the original four vault hunters. There's a lot to learn out there in your second pass through Pandora. There's a lot of fun, funny new story arcs to experience, too.
The only downside to having a ton of fun side quests is that there's no way to easily track them. There's the standard method of organization that groups quests that are a part of the same area together on a list, but you can't toggle through them easily on the map. You'll have to manually cycle through them, clicking on new ones and then switching back to the map to see where you need to go. An indicator of a nearby quest on your way to your intended one seems like an easy addition. But really it's just a minor nuisance. Just ask that one friend you always make drive to keep you on track with quests. I'm sure they'll oblige (I always do, and I always like driving, too).
I want to tell you about the new weapons. Weapons whose reticles will focus—and thereby increasing your accuracy with it—the more you shoot. Weapons you throw at enemies for extra damage instead of just reloading the proper (read: boring) way. Weapons that have fire, corrosive, shock, and slag damage that you'll use against enemies that can wield that same damage against you. In fact, the game practically necessitates that you seek out those weapons with extra elemental effects, either for splash or continuation damage, or because they work well against an enemy's armor type.
I want to tell you about how stylish the game is, and about how much personality it has. Every time you die and Hyperion resurrects you, you'll get a snide, wiseass remark from the machine in question. Whoever you choose to play as will make comments about their fighting prowess mid-battle or mumble about what weapon to choose when you find new loot. Characters have funky costumes and flair like they did in Borderlands 1, but you see a lot more of that in the sequel. You can even make your own character look absolutely fabulous.
But there's really only one thing that you need to know about Borderlands 2. It's a tough, stylish, emotional ride through everything that made Borderlands 1 such a great game. Pick three friends, span the character classes, and get to killing. You won't be disappointed.
Video contains some spoilers.
If you're up for getting a sneak peek at some of the first few NPCs and low-level bosses you'll meet in Borderlands 2, hit the video above. More »
Disney's upcoming animated movie Wreck-It Ralph features cameos from all sorts of existing video game characters, from M. Bison to Altered Beast's Neff. Yet there's one character conspicuous by his absence.
Mario.
The biggest video game character on the planet will not be in the flick, and before you go thinking that's just a licensing thing, know that his arch-enemy Bowser will be there.
So why does the bad guy make the cut and not the good guy?
"The hard thing was, we were trying to work out the right way to use a character like Mario", producer Clark Spencer told Total Film. "It had to be organic to the film, we didn't want to just paste him in there. For Bowser, it made perfect sense for him to be a member of the Bad Anon group. For Mario himself we couldn't think of the right way to incorporate him into the film, and so we didn't do it."
That's not to say companies like Nintendo didn't have a say in the film. They had a lot of say.
"The games companies were very specific - there's a scene in which Bowser drinks a cup of coffee, and they were very specific about how Bowser would drink coffee", Spencer says. He later adds "We had a scene where we wanted the rings to come out of Sonic, and SEGA said the only way that happens is if he falls over, and we didn't have him fall over in the scene, so we actually went back and re-animated it."
You'd think I would be sick of all these weird GTAIV mod videos, but nope. Not when they've got giraffes in them.
Where the rest of the internet is fascinated by either tits or cats, it's the noble giraffe that's closest to our hearts. So videos of giraffes tearing up Liberty City in stolen cars? They are things of wonder.
It's a long video, but stick with it. It gets more wonderful the longer it goes on.
This new image of the new RoboCop comes via ComingSoon.net—looks pretty cool, and actually kind of like a suit of armor from Mass Effect.
It's worth taking into account that this suit could just be a placeholder for some special effects, since it wouldn't be a remake of a beloved 80's Sci-Fi movie without a metric fuckton of CGI ladled on everything like marmalade.
But who knows, maybe this really is what RoboCop will look like in the new film. The teasers do seem to suggest that the dude'll be darkly colored now, instead of silver.
Do you even care? Has it finally gotten to the point that you're out of remake-anger and have just acquiesced to the fact that they're going to remake literally everything from the 80's and make it worse? Can we already begin to dread the inevitable crappy video game tie-in? Is there any chance that a new RoboCop will actually be good?
Feel free to discuss that, or anything else you like, here or over in the Talk Amongst Yourselves forum. It's a big week for video games—hope you're having as much fun as we are.
If you've ever been to Hollywood, you've seen them: the low-rent "cosplayers" wandering around the Walk of Fame, stopping constantly for photos with those not put off by their often shabby outfits.
These types are the focus of a collection by LA photographer Nicholas Silberfaden, who wanted to use them as a way to highlight the social and economic slide he feels the country is experiencing at the moment. So he photographed them looking sad.
Japanese LEGO builder Akiyuki makes complex machines out of plastic bricks and pieces. Which kind of doesn't prepare you for what you're about to see.
He's combined all sorts of arms, swingy-things and other devices into this enormous Great Ball Contraption, a sort of Rube Goldberg machine for robots. And balls.
There are 17 individual machines from beginning to end. An 18th might be needed just to get my jaw off the floor.
For many, spending $1200 on their entire PC would be a bit much. Spending $1200 on just the case? That's crazy talk.
It may not be my favourite game of all time, but Sierra's classic Quest For Glory II certainly comes close. It's not the funniest game, or the most enjoyable, but it's part of a series in which the player's sense of place in a living world was almost absolute.
For his work on novels like War of the Worlds and The Island of Doctor Moreau, British author HG Wells is rightly lauded as a visionary.
Disney's 
If you've ever been to Hollywood, you've seen them: the low-rent "cosplayers" wandering around the Walk of Fame, stopping constantly for photos with those not put off by their often shabby outfits.
