New Skyrim DLC releases today. We'll have impressions up for you in just a short while, but in the meantime you might want to know how to actually access the content yourself.

Game Front is here to the rescue, explaining everything you need to know in the video above.

Look, it's already pretty clear that the folks at IO Interactive like a particularly adolescent style of joke-making, what with the closet-humping and all. But the latest effort at promoting the Square Enix published game invites you to fling their poor taste at your Facebook friends. It's pretty tacky.

As spotted on Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Hire Hitman is a site that hooks into your Facebook profile and lets you aim the series' lethal protagonist at your social network buddies. Not too bad so far, right? The icky stuff comes when you pick the reason you want Agent 47 to kill your friends' identifiable traits. In the drop down menu, nestled in with other rude observations, the selections include small genitals for men or small breasts for women. Classy, no?

Completing the selections generates a video that has the data you input popping up on Agent 47's laptop and pictures from your target's photo albums flit on-screen to represent flashes of their life passing before their eyes as they die.

Maybe you really like Hitman and want to get your friends to play it. Fine. But, it doesn't really seem like insulting them with bullying language is the way to go about it. And, sure, the defense might be that you and/or Square Enix are having a laugh in the spirit of their game. But the person on the receiving end might not be laughing at all.

Update: As of this writing, the Hire Hitman site appears to have been pulled down by Square Enix and previously generated hits redirect to the main Hitman homepage.

Update 2: Square Enix has sent along a statement that apologizes for their Hitman Facebook app:

Earlier today we launched an app based around Hitman: Absolution that allowed you to place virtual hits on your Facebook friends. Those hits would only be viewable by the recipient, and could only be sent to people who were confirmed friends.

We were wide of the mark with the app, and following feedback from the community we decided the best thing to do was remove it completely and quickly. This we've now done.

We're sorry for any offense caused by this.

A crazy mix of arcade and defense gameplay with a sweet sense of style, Digital Harmony's Dragons Vs. Unicorns is available for free in the iTunes App Store today. It's not as cool as Dragons Vs. Unicrons, but it'll do nicely.

From the snapping noise a Wii U game case makes to the menu music, this Wii U song by YouTube user jimmy incorporates a whole bunch of sounds the Wii U can make. And the result is great.

But it does kind of get awkward in the middle there.

You're a young woman, crash-landed on an uncharted island in the south pacific. You're wounded, it's pouring rain; there are wolves everywhere. Your shipmates are scattered to the wind, and you're starving to death. There are scores of people already inhabiting the island, evil men who are hunting you and your friends for some unknown, deadly purpose.

You are so hosed.

Oh, but also, your name happens to be Lara Croft, so that probably improves your chances somewhat.

That's the setup for Crystal Dynamics' much-discussed, much-anticipated reboot of Tomb Raider, due out in early March of 2013. Last week I headed down to Crystal Dynamics' headquarters to play through the first two acts—a couple hours, taking my time—of the game. It's a striking location: Crystal Dynamics' offices are located in a shiny, futuristic office park situated near a marina at the end of a long, mostly-empty causeway outside of Redwood City. It feels like something out of Demolition Man grafted onto something out of Dexter.

But what am I saying? You don't care about office parks. You care about Tomb Raider. Here's what I picked up from my time with the game. In addition to playing the demo, I spoke for a while with creative director Noah Hughes, who was able to shed some light on a few things I was wondering about.

If you're looking for my elevator-pitch summary, here goes: "It's like a grittier, semi-open-world Uncharted starring a young woman. The writing's good. It's pretty fun."

• The parts that I played started with the initial crash, as well as Lara's abduction and eventual escape from the terrifying cavern. To see that in action, check out this video from E3 2011. After that, I played through the next few sections of the Island, hunting for food and taking shelter before re-connecting with several of Lara's crew members, helping her mentor Roth get medical aid, and fighting my way through an enemy base to the top of a radio tower to send a distress call.
• The story of the first two chapters provided a solid arc—it wasn't all terror and distress in the dark. Hughes came back to this again and again: It was important, he thought, that people get a sense of how this story has a real arc. So while it may begin grim and horrifying, even by the end of the second act, Lara had grown a ton, and risen to every challenge put in front of her. It didn't feel contrived, it felt believable, and it made me like her as a character. If the rest of the game can keep up that momentum and arc, this story could really be something.
• The game uses Lara's video camera to do flashbacks to fill in backstory. In one I saw, her friend Sam is interviewing her in their dorm room, explaining Lara's genius for books and history. Another showed the expedition's celebrity figurehead Whitmanon the deck of their ship, grumbling over the reality-show style stuff he was resorting to in lieu of any real discovery.

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• In the story, Lara a theory about tracking down Yamata—she has a theory that no one else in her party will believe. Especially not Whitman, the ponce. Lara wants everyone in the group to go to the Dragon's Triangle, and convinces the salty leader Roth to take them there. He clearly likes Lara and so he backs her play. So in a sense, this is all her fault.
• On to game stuff. There's an experience point system, and Lara earns them for doing just about everything. XP can be used to buy skills.
• Skills are broken into three categories, each of which can be mastered as you purchase skills with XP. "Survivor" is about climbing, exploring and, well, surviving—these skills give Lara higher damage tolerance, the ability to get more gear upon looting, faster climbing, and the like. "Hunter" skills are about using weapons, actually, and not hunting animals—they grant abilities like quickly shooting pistols point-blank and using an arrow to stab an enemy up-close, Legolas style. "Brawler" skills center around fighting, letting you throw dirt in your enemies' eyes and dodge attacks.
• You spend XP in base camps—you can't just upgrade anytime you'd like. In camp, Lara cooks and eats food, recharges, and spends her skill points. The camps are really like waypoints, as well—they're scattered pretty liberally throughout the map, and you can fast-travel to any you've been to if you want to go back and get collectibles.
• There are, of course, also collectibles in the game—these take the form of collectible relics, like past Tomb Raider games. There look to be 20 to 30 of these, and they're scattered about the world. There are also documents to collect. It seems like some documents are found, but others turn up through the story, like the pages from Lara's journal. In the documents page, the writer of each document will it aloud. Lara reads her own journal entries out loud each time you arrive at camp, which is a neat bit of streamlining.

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• The first relic I found was "a traditional Noh mask" that represented "a hateful woman in the guise of a demon." Perhaps these natives have issues with ladies…
• All of Lara's gear can be upgraded using salvage gathered from around the island and looted off of dead enemies. The bow won't be a boring bow for long—you can add fire, napalm and explosive arrows to it, among other upgrades.
• The game features a bow and arrow that feels good—hold left trigger to aim, raise tension with the right trigger. Hold it too long, and your aim will waver until Lara has to release the shot. (There's a skill to increase the amount of time she can hold.)
• Like Assassin's Creed and Far Cry 3, Tomb Raider features a hunting system, where you must stalk and take down prey in the woods. It was unclear to me how much you'll get out of killing multiple animals, though.
• The comes close to showing Lara skinning a deer, but then cuts away. So, yet another game that doesn't really want to show what skinning an animal really looks like.
• Tomb Raider has a cinematic camera much like Uncharted—as Lara runs through the woods, the camera bobs and weaves, tracking her movement like a cameraman would. It gives the game a rolling, physical feel.
• The game has a smart workaround to the problem of an invasive HUD—you press LB to see your objective marker, but once it fades, it's faded for good. Other than that, there's nothing on screen but Lara and the world around her. It's not exactly Arkham City's detective mode, but it's a good way to remind yourself of waypoints and get a hint in puzzles if you're stuck. Are you seeing this, Far Cry 3

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• Weirdly, the opening levels have quivers of arrows lying all over the place. Sort of breaks the illusion, but I guess you have to get arrows somehow.
• At one point shortly after escaping, I met up with Lara's friend Sam (short for Samantha), who had met a dude named Mathias. He was so obviously evil I'm surprised he doesn't have horns. Of course, Lara doesn't suspect him. Alas. She fell asleep and when she woke up, Sam and Mathias were both gone. I fear for Sam, you guys.
• The game has something of a "Hub" design, where parts of the map are semi-open and have collectibles and side-objectives strewn throughout. I went through two hubs all told; Hughes told me that players will be able to return to hubs and will find them somewhat changed, either the time of day and weather will be different, or Lara will look different or have great that allows her to access places she couldn't before. In that way, there's a bit of Metroidvania to Tomb Raider.
• One new piece of gear for Tomb Raider is Lara's climbing axe—by the middle of the second act, she's got a climbing axe that she can use to pick her way up certain rock faces. It's cool, and adds a lateral feel to some of the puzzles and environments. And of course, you can also use it to wail on dudes.
• It sounds like in addition to her climbing axe, Lara will get her rope from past games. "We always try to give you new gear," said Hughes, "and wherever possible, allow it to affect combat and environment traversal. The rope has traversal and combat uses. We try to give the player a variety of progression, some of them are keys to the areas."
• Bad dudes are on the island as well, and they speak with appropriately foreign bad dude accents. German, from the sound of it. After finding another of her party members, Lara gets captured, along with some of her crew, and her hands are tied behind her back. The evil Germans appear to be rounding up shipwreck survivors as part of their usual routine. BUT, Lara managed to slip away, and at this point, it was time to sneak past them. Get spotted, and you'll get an arrow to the neck.

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• The sexually-charged assault scene that became so controversial after E3 remains. As Lara's sneaking away, she's caught by a specific dude who had originally tied her hands. He leers at her and touches her neck and her waist, before she fights back and brutally kills him. Playing the sequence, in context, I didn't find it needless or offensive. However, it is really intense, and I could easily imagine it upsetting anyone who has been the victim of a sexual assault. It's likely the most intense, fraught moment in the entire game. It's the first time Lara ever kills someone, and she's driven to do it in a really intense way. She knees the guy in the gut, then bites off his ear, fights with him for his gun, and blows his brains out. It's a primal scene, and a close call. Afterwards, she's kneeling in the rain, and cries out: "Oh, god." It's not treated lightly, but it didn't really feel exploitative. Its inclusion still merits debate, but in context it feels like an honest treatment of the subject matter. What's the difference between sexually charged assault, sexual assault, and rape? I can't say. To me, the scene felt somewhere between the first two options on that spectrum.
• Of course, like 30 minutes later, she's clearing out whole rooms full of dudes without batting an eye. So, there's that.

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• Back to gameplay. You'll be sneaking a lot in Tomb Raider, and stealth is contextual—Lara crouches behind "waist-high walls" when she gets close enough. The stealth system doesn't feel nearly as robust as in any of the stealth games that were released this fall, but it gets the job done. I had a hard time taking out more than a few guys without getting spotted, except in one sequence where they were clearly arranged so I could take them all down in order. It feels more or less like the stealth sequences in Uncharted 2 and 3, for better or for worse.
• Once it's time to start fighting, things quickly begin to feel even more Unchartedey. Combat is tricky—it feels entirely different from past Tomb Raider games, with an emphasis on cover and taking down enemies at long range. You won't be doing any backflips while shooting. Aiming is a bit floaty, and the game doesn't quite feel designed to be played as a shooter. That said, I hadn't really upgraded at all, so that could have something to do with it. But if I had to call it, I'd say Tomb Raider will succeed more on its story, puzzles and exploration than it will on its gunplay.

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• The weather effects are quite lovely—the camera makes itself known again as wind-blown raindrops cover it in water. Later, the setting sun glares above white-topped mountains. Crystal Dynamics has learned a thing or two about framing from Naughty Dog, and are working the Xbox 360 for all its worth.
• Lara gets on the horn to Roth after killing five dudes. "It's scary how easy it was," she says. When she despairs, he reminds her that she'll be okay, because she's a Croft. "I don't think I'm that kind of Croft." I sort of think she is, but we'll see.
• The game has actual tombs that you raid. Whoda thunk it? These are side-mission puzzle rooms that open up on the map as you go. I did the game's first one, which involved a fairly simple weight/counterweight pulley puzzle. It's nice to see that the game will feature this kind of thing, given that Crystal Dynamics has proven so adept at puzzle design in the past.

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• At the end of each side-tomb, you'll find a big chest that Lara will open. "Tomb Raided," says the pop-up. I asked Hughes if there had been any internal debate with this tongue-in-cheek joke. "We are still having discussions," he said. "Most of the game takes itself so seriously, and there's a certain charm to it, but it is off-tone."
• The side-tombs will allow for lots of good puzzles, but Hughes said they probably won't match the scale of the sweeping puzzles in Underworld. (Bummer!) "We try to challenge the player appropriately, but the scale is often not as grand. It's not so much that that was unliked, it's that we did, from a pacing perspective, we tried to let you spend an hour on something if you want, but we tried not to make you spend too much time on any one thing. If the player wants to progress, there is something new ever 20 minutes or so."

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• Everything I saw was grounded in reality—human opponents, an real-feeling island to navigate. But past Tomb Raider games have always featured an Indiana Jones-like dash of the supernatural. (To a ruinous extreme in later games in the series.) Will this game have supernatural junk? Hughes was cagey, but hinted that it would. "We try to emphasize the concept of believability over realism. So to answer the question directly, we explore deeper into the mysteries of the island as you'd expect. And as you'd sort of also expect, with the tone being set, that we'd also do it in a believable and grounded way. But that's different than realism, right? There's an aspect of a Tomb Raider story that sort of is that impossible adventure, and we try to deliver that."
• Hughes said that the PC version of Tomb Raider shouldn't disappoint. "When I ship a game that people feel doesn't maximize their hardware, that's disappointing. We look at them as a big part of our audience, it's probably true with any game, but with a lot of Tomb Raider fans enjoyed the original game on PC."
• I hit a stone wall when asking about multiplayer. Given how great the co-op puzzles in Guardian of Light were, I was wondering if Crystal Dynamics had ever entertained the idea of some sort of co-op for Tomb Raider. But, PR stepped in and (nicely) shut the line of questioning down, so I got no word on possible multiplayer.
• In the scene at the end of the demo, Lara climbs a radio tower, the metal ladder giving way as she makes her way to dizzying heights, snow and wind blowing as a radiant sun sets. It set off every single Uncharted 2 alarm in my brain. Not saying it's a bad thing, just saying.
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  My overall impression of Tomb Raider was positive. The game looks lovely, the performances are strong, the puzzles seem smart, provided they ramp up in difficulty to the extent that hardcore series fans like me want. The combat is a bit floaty and stealth is weird, but as long as those two things aren't the main focus of the game, it should still be fine. Moreover, Crystal Dynamics looks to be succeeding in its goal of re-creating a more human Lara Croft; the opening hours play like a gritty but surprisingly believable origin story. I'll have more specific thoughts about Lara's evolution later on today or tomorrow (Hughes and I chatted quite a bit about how Crystal Dynamics has approached her character), and more on Tomb Raider later this week.

  
  

With Cut the Rope and Cut the Rope Experiments, UK developer ZeptoLab created a pair of the most popular games on any mobile platform, along with one of the most beloved mobile mascots, the candy-munching OmNom. If anything can build on that success, it's pudding.

Due out later this month, Pudding Monsters looks to be a game about sticking pudding creatures together in order to form larger, more powerful ones, with the ultimate aim being to save your friend from being devoured by the fridge owner. So it's more of a pudding rebellion than just me sitting about in my pajamas eating a large tub of chocolate pudding. Mildly disappointing, but I'll live.

Eventually the monsters will leave the fridge, striking out into the world at large in a way that's incredibly un-pudding-like. They'll discover new species of pudding creatures, including a green slime monster that leaves a trail behind it as it moves, perhaps a homage to Kroger's Jelly Belly Very Cherry pudding, which does the same thing despite being red.

I can only imagine the pressure ZeptoLab is feeling right now, introducing its first new property since the one that's been downloaded more than 250 million times and launched a merchandising frenzy. Pudding Monsters probably won't unseat Om Nom from his candy throne, but if it's tasty enough it could be deemed worthy of his presence.

Ubisoft's two big holiday releases don't just share numerals and second words starting with "cr". They also both begin, bizarrely, with almost exactly the same quote.

Yes, of all the books, movies, TV shows and historical figures that are out there for developers to lift quotes from, both Far Cry 3 and Assassin's Creed III begin with the following line from Lewis Carroll's classic Alice's Adventures in Wonderland:

In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.

You can see it in action above. In Assassin's Creed, Shaun says it as you're about to open the door to the temple in the game's intro sequence, while in Far Cry 3, it's the first thing you see when you fire up a new singleplayer campaign. Both make sense given their individual context, I guess, even if Shaun's selection feels a little forced and Far Cry 3's intro cuts next to bros downing brews on the beach. And yet...

The games share almost nothing thematically or aesthetically. In fact, about the only things they've got in common are those listed in the opening paragraph. Oh, and... this quote. Sure, it might be some strange branding exercise, but it's more likely both teams thought they were being very clever, then had an "oh shit" moment when checking out the end product of their labelmates. What are the odds!

E.X. Troopers is a spin-off title to Capcom's Lost Planet series—though it may not seem like it at first glance.

Unlike the realistic graphical style of the main series of games, E.X. Troopers is presented entirely in a manga-esque style. The game's cutscenes even come complete with panel frames and written onomatopoeic sound effects. The gameplay, on the other hand, stays mainly in the realm of the third person shooter. You start a mission, head out with your A.I.-controlled partners and capture points, defeat monsters, and collect rare items.

Aside from normal missions, there are also occasional giant robot battles and even a few rail shooting sections.

Outside of the missions, the game plays much more along the lines of an RPG. You move around your military academy base, talking with other students, doing character quests, or upgrading weapons and armor.

E.X. Troopers also sports a coop mode that gradually unlocks as you progress through the main game, giving you additional opportunities to level up and gain rare items.

To see the PS3 version of the game in action, check out the video above.

E.X. Troopers was released in Japan on November 22, 2012, for the PlayStation 3 and Nintendo 3DS. There are no plans for an international release.

You know in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, when Lt. Price and Cpt. MacMillan wear those "ghillie suits"? The camo outfits look like they're wearing grass and foliage. Those come in handy while sneaking about the Russian wilderness. They're less handy when in urban jungle known as Tokyo. Or are they?

Japanese site Rocket News sent one of its reporters out on the street all ghillied up, staying low and moving slowly. Sure, when he's strolling down the street, the dude's pretty easy to find. But what about when he's hiding? Or getting Starbucks? Or taking an elevator?

In the above gallery, see if you can see, well, him. Answers included in case you get stuck. Ha, like that'll happen.

スタバ初心者なのでギリースーツを着て買いに行ってみた [@rocketnews24 via ロケットニュース]

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"This guy is like totally reading a dirty magazine on the train," the high school student's tweet read. Accompanying the tweet was a photo a man, his legs pressed close as he read a magazine. The tweet, and the visible photo of his face set off a flurry of comments online in Japan. This man was not guilty, complained some net users. And they attempted to prove it. Then, they went too far.

The magazine in the man's hands might not be an adult magazine. 2ch commenters seem to have proved that the mag is Kindai Mahjong, which isn't pornography. This is the same mahjong magazine in which pro-gamer Daigo Umehara's manga appears. Excite News reports that the high school girl who tweeted the photo perhaps saw the dating advertisements on the mag's back and confused the publication with a porno rag.

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Besides tracking down the magazine's street date, here's how it was "proven" that this was an issue of Kindai Mahjong and not an adult publication:

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Some on 2ch felt that the schoolgirl's tweet was defamatory. It probably was. What if his boss saw it? His co-workers? He's done nothing wrong, it seems.

Since the photo brought so much attention to this man, 2ch began to snoop about her Twitter. On her page and her friends', 2ch found proof, much of it photographic, of what looked like underage drinking, smoking, and cheating in school—as well as shoplifting. In Japan, Twitter users who do things—legal or illegal—which end up coming back and biting them in the ass are called "bakattaa" (バカッター). It's a word play on "Twitter" and the Japanese for "stupid", which is "baka" (馬鹿 or バカ). Much of what was discovered seemed like that; however, it also seemed like dumb stuff kids do that's a normal part of growing up.

Further snooping turned up the teen's name, her high school, and where her part time job was.

"Aren't you all going overboard? lulz" asked one commenter on 2ch. It was like the teen was running for political office, and 2ch was finding out every single secret (and truth) they could on her, saying it was payback for "violating the right to use someone's likeness". (In Japan, there are laws about privacy that cross over into taking photos without someone's permission.) Yet, the thread was clearly violating this schoolgirl's privacy in perhaps a far more probing and even frightening way.

During all of this, the teen deleted her Twitter account and is probably steering clear of the internet. Excite News, one of Japan's biggest news sites, recounted the incident just days ago, so this isn't exactly something one can escape—especially with her photos and tweets saved somewhere online.

The internet is a powerful being. Sometimes it helps clear the wrongly accused. Sometimes itself does the accusing, rightly or wrongly.

女子高生「電車内なのに真顔でエロ本よんでる人がいる^ ^」 [Excite News]

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