Quick. Name your favourite video game voice-over artist. If it's not Nolan North, it's most likely...that guy who played..that guy. Or that lady who was that woman in that one series I really like.

It's sad that so few of these talented artists are recognised for their work, so I figured today I'd shine the spotlight on a man who is not only one of the most accomplished veterans of the trade, he's a man who, with his incredible work on Telltale's The Walking Dead, is so hot right now.

Dave Fennoy began his career in voice-over work over twenty years ago, and has appeared as prominent characters in everything from the Metal Gear Solid series to World of Warcraft to Bayonetta.

Some of his more recent (and prominent) roles include Valve's DOTA 2, where he voices six heroes, and perhaps best of all his turn as StarCraft 2's Gabriel Tosh, who even looked like Fennoy, courtesy of his long dreads.

He's outdone pretty much all of that this year, though, with his performance as Lee Everett, the star of the first season of The Walking Dead. Helped out by some great writing from guys like Sean Vanaman and Gary Whitta, Fennoy has given Lee a depth of character that embarrasses more big-budget games, and is one of the biggest reasons the episodic series has come out of nowhere to be one of the best experiences of the year.

My favourite role of his, though, might be the time he had to step into the shoes of Billy Dee Williams, and play Lando Calrissian in Lucasarts' 1999 X-Wing Alliance. He of course couldn't quite nail Williams' perpetual state of surprise, but I remember even at the time thinking he still did one hell of a job.

Games aren't all he's done, though. Far from it. If you've ever used Hulu, for example, you may recognise Fennoy as the "voice" of the service. He's also done commercial voice-over work for clients like Toyota, KFC and McDonalds, while Ben 10 fans may recognise him as the badass alien Tetrax Shard.

If you're interested in checking out more of Dave's work, head to his personal site, where he's got clips from interviews he's done explaining the art of his craft. You should also check out the reels put together by his fellow voice-over artist Adam Harrington (like the Walking Dead one just above).

The upcoming standalone version of DayZ, currently a mod for military sim ArmA II, won't look too different from the original. As you'll see from these screenshots, the first released for the project.

There's no people. No zombies. No buses. Just empty buildings, which look a lot like those already found in the game, albeit maybe a little better furnished.

In a nice touch, it's explained that not only are these in-progress shots, but they're taken on "normal" graphics settings, so those with more powerful systems can expect something a little crisper.

It's probably a good way to ease people into the game, truth be told! Don't get their hopes up. Just gently remind them that, hey, this is mostly going to be the same thing you're playing now, only a lot less janky. We hope.

Interior work in progress screenshots taken from inside DayZ standalone [DayZ]

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Even I, a person who has never seen Simon & Simon a single time, got a kick out of this incredibly elaborate shot-for-shot remake of the opening credits.

Created as a goof for Adult Swim, it stars Paul Rudd, Mad Men's Jon Hamm and Parks & Recreation's Adam Scott, and, well… it's kind of hard to describe. Just watch it.

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If you want to marvel at just how in-depth the re-creation was, check out this side-by-side video. And for the full backstory of the making-of, read this interview at Vulture.

Epic events like this don't happen all the time. It's understandable that you'd have questions. For example: How did a bizarre joke like this ever even happen? Hopefully these videos will answer some of them.

Were you a big fan of Simon & Simon? Would you watch a remake starring Jon Hamm and Adam Scott? (Correct answer: I would watch pretty much anything starring Jon Hamm and Adam Scott.) And more to the point: How's it going? What games are you playing?

Feel free to talk legendary TV events, or whatever else, here or over in the Talk Amongst Yourselves forum. Have good chatting, y'all.

(Via Laughing Squid)

With Halo 4 not out until the first week of November, the fact people are playing it now—and getting banned from Xbox Live for doing so—all but confirms the suspicion that copies of the game have been leaked.

According to a report on MCV, Xbox Live users found playing the game are being given permanent bans from the service, Microsoft rightly figuring that if you're playing the game early, you've got hold of a pirated copy (press and other industry types with early copies are put on exemption lists). And that if you're playing a pirated copy, you've also got a modded Xbox 360. Giving the company plenty of grounds to act swiftly and judiciously with the banhammer.

You can see the notice below. It's of course a standard notice, one the company sends out whenever a game leaks and people are caught playing it early, but it's not often a game this important gets out this early.

Microsoft perma-banning Halo 4 pirates [MCV]

In a season of outstanding PC ports, each new game has begun to arrive accompanied by the same question: Will this one kick ass on PC, as well?

Arkane's Dishonored is fantastic. It's also rooted in what some would call a holy triumvirate of of PC gaming: Deus Ex, Thief and Half-Life 2. It stands to reason, then, that the people making it wouldn't skimp on the PC features.

And, unsurprisingly, they haven't, and the PC version is terrific. That said, what is surprising here is the the console version matches the PC for almost every feature, and feels more "PC-ish" than most other games. The PC version itself isn't superior in some room-clearing, floor-mopping way; I played through the entire game on Xbox 360 before starting on PC, and found the game to be thrilling, deep, complex, nuanced.

That said, if you're planning to pick up the game and have your choice of platforms, the PC is still the way to go. Here's why:

Mouse Precision

Some of Dishonored's abilities, notably the quick-teleport "Blink" ability, just work better with the precision granted with a mouse. Aiming your blinks can feel a bit lugubrious and imprecise with a controller, particularly when under duress. There are few more enjoyable moves than to warp to behind an attacking enemy and then slit his throat, but with a controller, I too-often warped right into my assailant. With a mouse, I feel much more in command of my blinks.

Quick Power Select

Picking up from the precision of the mouse, the keyboard also gives a welcome degree of control when compared to the controller. Again, that's not to say the controller implementation is bad, just that the keyboard is better. If you've grown comfortable with all of Corvo's many deadly moves, switching between them using the number keys on a keyboard allows you to quickly chain combo moves in a way that the console's radial dial, no matter how elegant its construction, could.

Lean-to

I've already extolled the merits of leaning in games, specifically voicing my pleasure that the lean had returned to Dishonored . And while the implementation on the controller—hold "Y" and then move the thumbstick—is quite smart and works well once you get the hang of it, it's still no match for the Q and E keys on the keyboard.

Thief and Deus Ex players will be right at home playing Dishonored, and when I play using a keyboard I find myself leaning much more than I did while using a controller. A lean should be a natural extension of your movement, and without dedicated buttons, there's no way to make it perfectly smooth.

Quick Save, Quicker Load

This might be the biggest difference, for me—I'm playing the game on hard, and as a result get spotted more and die more. It's a real boon that the PC version has a dedicated quicksave button. I appreciated being able to save at any point on the Xbox 360 version, but navigating a few menus would necessarily remove me from the action. Particularly with a game like Dishonored, repurposing the "back" button to trigger a quicksave would have been fantastic.

Better still, the PC version has scary fast load times, usually a matter of a couple of seconds. (I'm playing on a fairly run-of-the mill, non-SSD hard drive.) It's not the kind of thing you'd even notice unless you'd already sunk a dozen hours into the console version—suddenly, quickly saving, trying something, dying, and reloading takes about 20 fewer seconds each time. That adds up.

I Like The Way You Move

Dishonored has lovely visuals, but not because of a high polygon count or detailed textures—the game derives its visual splendor almost entirely from Viktor Antonov's art design. Dishonored does look better on PC running at true 1080p than it does on the Xbox—my graphics card's superior antialiasing, in particular, strengthens the lines and clarifies the draw distance. But really, the game ha a softness to the big ol' Unreal-engine textures that makes everything look soft and warm, and both PC and console versions have it. Like Borderlands 2, Dishonored isn't a game that needs eye-cuttingly sharp textures to look good.

Where the PC surpasses the console version is in clarity of motion—the framerate and the animations. This game looks fabulous running at 60 frames per second, particularly once action heats up. I'm not sure by what alchemy Arkane managed to design such a fluid and enjoyable first-person swashbuckling system, but I'm loving how much clearer the action looks now that I can see it running at a more consistent, higher framerate. (Luke brings up something worth mentioning here—sometimes, the PC version can hang on scenes as it loads them, starting with the opening camera-cut in the first menu. This actually happened to me as well, when I was using an AMD card. I recently upgraded to a GeForce, and it's gone away, but still worth noting.) The quick stabs, the brutal, matter-of-fact decapitations, even the hilariously varied expressions on enemies' faces, all come across much more clearly at a high framerate. On console, action felt more chaotic and jumbled—part of this, surely, is because I'm just better at the game now than I was when I played on console, but the framerate factors as well. The PC version lets you really see Dishonored moving at its best.

None of this is to say that the console versions of the game are lacking—whichever version you pick, you'll be getting a hell of a good game. But if you've got the option and want to see Dishonored at its best, opt for PC.

Guild Wars, the first game, didn't offer a whole array of character races for players to choose from. Players were always human, even while free to play with variations on appearance. And it seems that Guild Wars players who got used to their looks have brought that bias with them into Guild Wars 2.

GW2, unlike its predecessor, offers five unique character races: the Charr, Asura, Norn, and Slyvari in addition to Humans. Many players, however, appear not to be giving any of the newcomers much of a chance. Earlier today, Guild Wars 2 writer Peter Fries tweeted in disappointment, "GW2 race popularity makes me sad. People avoiding charr & asura are missing the strongest story stuff in our game, IMO."

He added a graph, taken from an earlier post on the economy:

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The graph, on the lower left in the image above, shows the distribution of characters by race. In order, from left to right, the bars indicate Norn, Charr, Asura, Sylvari, and Humans. (The other graphs show a breakdown by character gender, character class, and crafting profession.) While the graph lacks any numbers, it's clear that Humans far outnumber any other player character race. Fries added, in follow-up tweets, that the disparity has only grown larger in the month since the infographic was made.

Players of MMORPGs do have a known bias toward creating attractive human (or very human-like) characters. Researcher Nick Yee, who studies World of Warcraft player behavior in depth, found in 2005 that Human and Night Elf were far and away the most popular character races in WoW, and a later look at the game in 2010 found that Human, Night Elf, and Blood Elf remained handily at the top. Data gathered from an in-game census mod finds the same pattern.

For a team that takes the effort to create five distinct cultures, with story and art for each, it's no doubt disappointing to find players so heavily concentrated in just the one. As a player whose main is a Human Thief (with characters of the other four races all lagging under level 10), I'm totally part of the problem. But it's nothing against my fearsome Charr, or my ridiculous and clever Asura. I just really like hanging out in Divinity's Reach.

Actually, the full name of this game is Dudebro™ - My Shit Is Fucked Up So I Got to Shoot/Slice You II: It's Straight-Up Dawg Time.

Yes.

It's a PC game that's been in development for some time by some folks from NeoGAF as well as Grimoire Assembly Forge. It's a parody of all the dudebro mess we see in modern shooters, and based on this trailer, it looks darned funny. Best of all, it will feature Jon St. John, the same voice actor who played Duke Nukem. (No, really!)

Dudebro has no announced release date, but I sure will be playing it when (and if) it actually comes out.

DudeBro Debut Trailer [NeoGAF via Joystiq]

Dishonored spoilers follow in video.

Ok ok, I know earlier today I said I love to play games stealthy. And then I showed you guys a video of Corvo showing the guards of Dunwall who makes the decisions around here. Forceful decisions. Ones that result in many deaths.

But this sequence of deaths might be even more exciting than the last. Once you rack up enough powers, you can combine them to delightful results, like the one you see in kekkoSoNicSyNdIcAtE's video above.

I still play Dishonored stealthy, but every once in a while I'll allow myself to go all murderous just because it's too fun not to.

Dishonored super attacco poteri combinati [YouTube, thanks Cactuscat222!]

Does anyone represent the trials and tribulations of the modern day nerd quite as much as Dr. Horrible? He wants what we all want: to build a fairer, more just and equitable society. To be recognized and valued for his gifts and contributions to the world at large. To get through the day without being tormented by the anti-intellectual bullies that seem to get all the glory for somebody else's hard work. For the courage to talk to the cute girl he sees at the laundromat but can't quite bring himself to talk to.

Of course, he also wants to join the Evil League of Evil, take over the planet and use his dictatorship to sweep the old order into the dustbin of history, crush his nemesis Captain Hammer underneath his boot-heel and damn near got his crush run over by a car during a robbery-gone-bad… but hey, what're a few details between friends?

For all of his super-villain ambition, Dr. Horrible is the sort of character we can empathize with and relate to. Every nerd can understand his resentment toward and anger with the world that doesn't seem to understand or respect him. We have all felt the urge to get back at the jocks and bullies who hog the spotlight for no better reason than that they happened to be at the right place at the right time. We all know the frustration of desperately wanting the person we like to notice us if we could only muster up the courage or find the right words to say, and the pain from when it all goes wrong.

There's a lot to learn from the not-so-good Doctor.

You Need To Be Self-Validating

From the very get-go, Dr. Horrible wants us to know that he believes the world is almost irredeemably corrupt; in fact, it's so far beyond redemption that the only way to save it is to burn down the existing power structure – cut off the head of the rotting fish, as it were – and to start over with a new ruler. A benevolent dictator who would usher in a new world order, one that's more just, more fair…

Which, when you translate for Buffy-speak and a certain level of deliberate obfuscation means that Billy really wants a world that acknowledges him for the cool guy he knows he is deep down and the rest of the world just doesn't see or recognize. Instead it's assholes like Captain Hammer, with the muscles and the cool hair who get all the glory, all of the attention and, critically, all of the women.

Dr. Horrible is almost defined by his need to have others validate him, whether it's by getting official super-villain status from the Evil League of Evil, having the world recognize his genius or even just have Penny validate his coolness by preferring Billy with his hidden layer and unassuming gifts rather than tools like Captain Hammer who seem cool but have all of the depth of a mud-puddle.

The problem is that Billy has lost his locus of control by letting his self-worth be defined by others instead of believing in his own value. He's looking for others to tell him he's cool. And that's part of what holds him back. It's why he can't muster up the courage to talk to Penny. It's why he's a half-baked super-villain. He lets his need for the approval and validation of others dominate his thinking.

And yet, all he can come up with are what might be considered nuisance crimes. He's robbing banks and performing car heists, not holding cities for ransom or demanding millions of dollars in exchange for not dropping a viral mutagen into the municipal the water supply. The fact that Bad Horse and the Evil League of Evil demand that he commit a murder to prove his villain bona-fides¹ freaks him the flying fuck out. He's not villain material, so why isn't he taking the straight life or even trying his hand at being a super-hero?

Because he wants the "respect" and edginess that comes with being a supervillain. He doesn't just want to change the world, he wants to rule it. He wants the world to acknowledge that he's superior to them and that they were wrong to treat him the way they do. He craves the approval of others to fill the hole that he feels in his life. The problem of course, is that this hole will never be filled… even when he has everything he wants.

Girls Don't Like Assholes

The central conflict in Dr. Horrible revolves around Penny. Dr. Horrible loves Penny. Penny, on the other hand, is dating Captain Hammer… who is only dating her because he knows it hurts Dr. Horrible.

But this is the way of the world, isn't it? After all, he's a jerk jock and we all know women love assholes so what's the point? This is just the natural order of things.

Except it isn't. In fact, Penny's pretty clearly interested in her laundro-mate² Billy. By the middle of Act 2, she's already having second thoughts about the guy she's dating, even dropping some pretty sizable hints that she's unhappy with him and may be looking for someone who actually cares about her. By all rights, her fling with Hammer would have been fairly short-lived except for… well, y'know.

The attraction to Hammer isn't that difficult to parse. To start with, there's the fact that he "saved" Penny's life.

PENNY:

My heart is beating like a drum

Must be, must be in shock

Assuming I'm not loving you to death

HAMMER/PENNY:

So please give me a sec to catch my breath

Her heart's racing, she's short of breath, her body is shaking… considering that she just damn near got taken out by a car, it's understandable that she's freaked out, no? Except that the physical symptoms of fear – adrenaline surges, racing heart beat, dry mouth – are almost identical to the physical symptoms of sexual desire. Captain Hammer is taking advantage of a condition known as misattribution of arousal; her brain is thinking "Hey, I'm terrified but why? OK, there's this big hot guy right here… maybe I'm not terrified, I'm just really turned on. That makes sense!"

And there's a lot to like about Captain Hammer, at least superficially. He's handsome. He's smooth. He has almost infinite belief in his own self-worth and he has certainty and self-assuredness that can be magnetic. But deep down… he's got nothing to suggest the possibility of a long-term relationship or even a relationship that manages to last longer than sleeping together once.

I mean, c'mon. He doesn't even get to do the weird stuff.

It's not surprising that Penny starts dating the Captain. She's lived a life mostly defined by disappointment and now there's this guy who seems to be in a position to make her dreams come true. She's overwhelmed by the celebrity, lifestyle and the fact that he's making her biggest goal – building the new shelter – a reality. And yet… she's not happy with him. She's trying to rationalize staying with him because…well, everyone seems to think she should and real life isn't a fairy tale with happy endings.

Assholes, y'see, may be able to attract the girl, but they can't keep them… because they don't have anything to offer beyond the very superficial. So he's good looking… and? He's not confident, he's arrogant and self-obsessed. He's not helping her out of compassion or a belief in her cause, he's doing it to fuck with Dr. Horrible and to make himself look good. He can't even make it a third of the way through a speech about helping the homeless without making it all about how awesome he is. He's shallow, vain, only cares about himself and he doesn't really know a damn thing about what makes Penny tick.

Billy, on the other hand, gets her. He's no Captain Hammer but he's no slouch in the looks department. He's quiet, but he's got intensity. They have a lot of similar goals and dreams in life. He has ambition. He has drive. He has passion and he clearly cares about her.

If only Billy had made a move.

Nice Guys Finish Last

Y'see, Billy made the classic mistake: he was so afraid of rejection that he let it paralyze him into inaction. Instead of walking up to her and saying "Hey, you know what, it's crazy I see you here twice a week and we've never said ‘hello'. I'm Billy…" he freezes, trying to find the "perfect words" to make her fall in love with him. Like many guys, he got hung up on the opener – literally the least important thing about talking to her. All he really needed to do was find a pretext for a conversation. Anything is better than silence.

The problem is that he who hesitates, loses. If you don't make your move, somebody else is going to make theirs.

And for somebody determined to join the Evil League of Evil, Billy is a little too nice. He's the classic Nice Guy lamenting the fact that the woman he loves is in love with a jerk and doesn't see what an awesome person he is. Instead of making his play for Penny or even just admitting to her that he likes her, he sits and sulks in the Friend Zone, even as she's giving him the sign that she's waiting for him to make his move.

But Doctor Horrible is a little too wrapped up in his need to get back at Captain Hammer at this point to recognize that. And as a result… he misses his best chance at getting what he really wanted.

Be Careful What You Wish For

Let's be real here: we all know that Dr. Horrible isn't a villain. The only person who refuses to see that is… well, Dr. Horrible. He doesn't even want to be a villain, not really. It's just that he thinks it's his ticket to everything he believes he wants and he can't seem to let go.

Look at his stated goals: he believes that there needs to be drastic social change. He wants fame. He wants fortune³ He wants glory and adulation. And he wants Penny.

On a practical level, this would be far easier to achieve in a legal manner. He's a legitimate scientific genius who has figured out a way to stop time and teleport solid matter. Licensing that tech would put him in the same scientific pantheon as Hawking or Einstein and bring him riches beyond dreams of avarice. The level of influence he would have would be more than enough to influence society and bring about the new world he dreams about… not to mention building Penny's homeless center with what would amount to pocket change for him.

Unfortunately he's so caught up in the idea that he needs to be a supervillain – that he can force the world to make amends for everything that's happened to him that he misses out on what's most important to him. He ends up with everything he thinks he ever wanted: the fear of the city, status as a super-villain, even humiliating Captain Hammer… and it doesn't mean a thing.

A little less time focused on elaborate revenge fantasies, less time worried about getting the approval of others or defining himself as a dork and a loser and he might have had it all – the riches, the fame and the girl.

Harris O'Malley provides geek dating advice at his blog Paging Dr. NerdLove, the Dr. NerdLove podcast and The Good Men Project. He's also a member of The League of Extremely Ordinary Gentlemen. He can be found dispensing snark and advice on Facebook and Twitter @DrNerdLove.

Dr. NerdLove is not really a doctor.

Republished with permission.

Via tipster Andrew M., here's a Tristam light show chock full o' legendary items. Brought to you by the latest Diablo III patch.