I think I am done. I have been an avid gamer since I received my first system—the then-just-released NES—when I was six. From the moment I picked up the light gun and downed my first duck, I was hooked.

For nearly 30 years I have squashed anthropomorphic mushrooms, cleaved zombies, and eviscerated the avatars of faceless gamers from around the world. I have no interest in any of that now. Not after Friday.

I was in college during Columbine. I remember sitting in my dorm room watching kids, just a few years younger than me, running for their lives as police descended upon their high school. I remember thinking how nightmarish it must have been for all involved—then turning on my N64 for a round of GoldenEye with my hall-mates.

Unfortunately, less than 10 years later, I would witness that nightmare first hand here at Virginia Tech. I was a journalist for a local newspaper, and being familiar with the campus as a recent alum, I was sent to cover the reports of a shooting on campus. Little did I know what I was walking into.

I thought I was going in to report on a double homicide. Something along the lines of a domestic dispute. Truth be told, I wouldn't have even covered it had our primary reporter not been sick.

As I drove into the north end of campus (purely by happenstance, because I knew I could sneak my car into a lot and not be ticketed), I began to count the number of ambulances speeding away from campus—I stopped when I hit double digits. That is when I knew something horrible had happened.

Once on campus the silence—broken only by sirens and a pre-recorded safety alerts shouting from outdoor speakers—was haunting. First responders carrying victims. Students looking shell-shocked. A police officer nearly drew a gun on me because I couldn't get my press pass out in time and I was (apparently) somewhere I shouldn't have been.

What I remember most was how God-awful cold and windy it was that day. Wind so bad it felt like it could cut through you.

The horror of the day's events, as well as my personal connection with the campus, wrecked me emotionally. Before April 16, games were an escape for me. As someone with social anxiety disorder (nothing horrible, just requires a little Paxil and some fresh air), I have always felt more comfortable by myself, so video games have always been something I have turned to for better or worse.

But after the shooting, there was no escape for me. My feelings about what happened, what I saw, heard, had to report, would not leave me. They became a part of me. A part of my history.

I fell in love with this hobby from the moment I set foot on campus in 1997, and now that memory is scarred.

My final class, ever, at Tech was on 2nd floor of Norris Hall, where the massacre took place. Not to sound over dramatic, but it is like a better part of my teens and 20s died that day.

After that day, I went through a period, six months or so, where I hardly played anything. Slowly, my world returned to "normal," and eventually I was able to again enjoy the release my favorite hobby provided.

Unfortunately, there is no going back now. Not this time. Everything's different.

First of all, I'm 33, and the time I have to game has been drastically cut in recent years. Suddenly, the thought of staying up for some online exploits in Call of Duty falls a distant second to getting some much-needed sleep.

But second, and most importantly, is my almost-two-year-old son. The children killed in Newtown were only a few years older than him. 20 little kids, no different than my own, are gone. All because some very disturbed individual was doing his own, real life perversion of what we do online every day.

What those parents must have been feeling as they slowly realized their child would never be coming home paralyzes me with sadness. To think that could have been my son…

I don't want to explain to my son why daddy is shooting the guys on the television. Why that's okay, but when it happens in real life, people cry.

I have never played a violent game in front of him, but he already sees and hears and imitates more than I could ever realize (including, to my chagrin, some of my saltier language), so I don't want to have that conversation. Not yet.

Black Ops II has already been traded in. Assassin's Creed III will follow. Sniper Elite 2, which I have been itching to play since picking it up on Black Friday, interests me no longer.

I just don't want to do it anymore. I don't want to disassociate myself, saying it's just a game. I imagine that Cho disassociated himself from the horror he was committing just as we disassociate ourselves when we play "No Russian" on Call of Duty. Thankfully, most of us see the difference, but that doesn't make it any less uncomfortable.

Please understand that I am not, in any way shape or form, saying that violent video games had anything to do with this or any other tragedy which has become all too familiar. I have long held the belief that adults should be able to choose their entertainment of choice, and that parents should be allowed to make informed decisions when buying games for their child. Information, not censorship, has always been my opinion.

My decision to give up violent gaming is based upon self-preservation. No longer does a game provide an entertaining release. Instead it simply opens old wounds.

When my son reaches his late teens, I pray that he is able to find simple entertainment in whatever the newest iteration there is of Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed, and the like. Entertainment, and nothing more.

Jeremy Norman is a former newspaper editor currently working at his alma mater, Virginia Tech. Jeremy lives with his wife, son, and two dogs in Southwest Virginia.

At the end of this trailer for Final Fantasy IV—which is out today on iOS for the Square Enix-ish price of $16—there's a Very Special Teaser. Final Fantasy V! And more!

This is very cool, especially if they keep going through the years. While the first four Final Fantasy games have already been re-released seven thousand times each, I'd love to pick up some of the later Final Fantasys—like VI and IX—to play on my iPad. Of course, Final Fantasy V is the only confirmed entry right now, but that "and more" is alluring.

As for FFIV, well, I haven't tried the iOS version yet, and I don't know if I will, since I have to spend the next few weeks catching up on a whole bunch of GAME OF THE YEAR considerations. But it's a port of the 3D DS version, complete with a brand new uglyass font.

Also worth noting: Square's got a giant mobile sale going right now on more games than I can list here, but some of the prices are actually rather reasonable. $9 for Final Fantasy Tactics is a must-buy.

Maybe you're like me and never heard of 1980s arcade game Meteors. If you guessed that it was a clone of Asteroids, though, you'd be right. The coin-op arcade game stood at the center of a lawsuit aimed by Atari at competitor Amusement World.

Video game designer/scholar Ian Bogost runs down the impact of the court case in a blog post. Essentially, the landmark judicial decision ruled that Meteors didn't infringe on Asteroids because an idea can't be copyrighted. Amusement World won the lawsuit but was hit hard by financial repercussions and Meteors faded in the limbo of half-remembered games.

But Eric Holniker—son of Amusement World CEO Stephen Holniker—found one of a very few Meteors cabinets and powered up it this week. Watch the video and feast your eyes on a game that people haven't seen for more than two decades.

I have stared and poked at this image for more than an hour over the past two days. I touch it, a red card pops up and a buzzer sounds. I have no idea what to do here, and The Icarus Box isn't keen to tell me.

The Icarus Box is a puzzle/horror/mystery game for the iPad. The story revolves around a man discovering the history of his family after inheriting the family home, located a short walk away from the cliff that a large percentage of his forebears have thrown themselves off of. Armed with that knowledge I would have avoided the home altogether and just let the lawyers deal with selling it to another family of lemmings, but the main character here, concerned there might be something valuable lurking inside, decides to check it out first.

Much like The Room, The Icarus Box is a mystery game involving a puzzle box, only instead of a 3D view, each puzzle is presented as a full-screen affair of marred wood and gears. They call it steampunk—I suppose it fits.

The story unfolds through a series of documents, letters written or discovered by your character during his exploration. The faded imagery is enhanced by creepy audio cues—headphones and a dark room are in order here.

The puzzles, those that I managed to complete, were simple affairs littered with little scary surprises that it's best you experience for yourself.

And the ones I did not complete? The official app description boasts 95 "nearly impossible" puzzles. I am inclined to agree with the impossible bit. I've been banging my head against the one up top for what seems like an eternity. Then there's this one.

I touch the parchment area and electricity sparks. I try tracing symbols. I try touching the squares at the top. Eventually the red card appears, the buzzer sounds, and I fail.

Honestly I am not sure if I am even failing. The game's interface doesn't give me much in the way of clues. There's no help feature, outside of an option to ask Twitter.

It's driving me mad. Perhaps that's the point.

Developer Brick Singularity's co-founder Robert Hamm offered to help me with the puzzles in order to show me more of the game, but I declined. If I cannot beat this game on my own, then I cannot beat this game.

The Icarus Box has bested me. Even if I do manage to poke on through to the other side, I'll always know it kicked my ass.

The Icarus Box — $4.99 [iTunes]

As a general rule, you probably shouldn't grope people without their permission. But if you're going to grope people without their permission, you really shouldn't do it while wearing a Super Mario costume.

Damon Torres, a 34-year-old street performer who solicits money by wearing costumes and posing for pictures in New York City's Times Square, was arrested last night for groping women. As the AP reports, he grabbed a 58-year-old woman's thigh. Or, as the Daily News reports, he "touched her private parts," according to one security guard. Also he was dressed up as Mario.

Shortly after the incident, Torres was arrested. He was charged with assault and marijuana possession. Feel free to insert your own joke about mushrooms, princesses, Mario Party, or anything else you can think of.

Completely unrelated and inadvertently hilarious: this tweet by Nintendo of America, also from last night:

Whoops. Poor Mario.

There are dozens of places to purchase a custom gaming PC on the internet. Companies with colorful websites with flash-animated front pages and rotating images showing off their latest products in the best possible light. Then there's AVADirect, a custom PC builder on the outskirts of Cleveland with a website that looks like it was built a decade ago.

Had I been surfing the web for a custom PC for my own personal use, I might have passed AVADirect right on by. After working in web design for five years prior to my stint here at Kotaku, it's become an instinctual thing for me—the flashier the website, the better the product. After spending a month with an AVADirect Mini Gaming PC, I've realized that perhaps some companies are too busy making kick-ass computers to make pretty websites.

AVADirect makes a wide array of custom systems, from slim media machines to powerful gaming rigs; notebooks to all-in-ones. They build them from OEM and retail parts, test them extensively and send them to your door with little fanfare. The Mini Gaming PC I tested arrived on my doorstep in a brown cardboard box inside of another brown cardboard box. No giant wooden crates, no custom-made boxes; just "Here's your PC, go play." So I did.

AVADirect put together quite the hardware lineup for $2143 (configurations start at around $850). We've got one of NVIDIA's top-of-the line cards in the GeForce GTX 680, the Intel Core i7-3770K running at 3.9GHz, a super-speedy 240GB SSD with a 2TB storage drive. 8GB of Crucial Ballistix Tactical Tracer memory with glowing red LEDs—that's just luxury right there. I can see them glowing behind the grill of the Bitfenix Prodigy case, behind the blue light of the 200mm Cooler Master case fan.

The choice of case in particular is an inspired one. The Bitfenix Prodigy is an excellent mini-ITX chassis, compact while still capable of hosting five 3.5 inch hard disks. Speed screws abound, making getting inside the case a breeze, and the whole thing is suspended by handles that maximize shock absorption while giving the system a truly distinctive profile. Between the excellent airflow the case provides and the fans AVADirect has packed inside, this is one cool-running machine.

It's not a system bogged down by bloatware either. The machine arrived with utilities to operate the Blu-Ray burner (another luxury), a few diagnostic tools and—I find this incredibly cool—the crowd-sourced medical research utility Folding@Home preinstalled. Every PC needs to come with that last one.

Contrary to my early efforts in the field, building a custom PC is more than just assembling a random selection of parts and placing them into a box. It's a choreography of components, making sure that each complements the other bits in order to create a unified being that'll sit on your desk judging you for years.

The AVADirect Mini Gaming PC I tested is just such a being, humbling the benchmark games I offered up as sacrifice, be they running at medium settings...

...or with all the bells and whistles dialed up to 11. Metro 2033 continues its trend of being a complete dick at higher resolutions, which is probably why its publisher just filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

With plenty of power and room for expansion, the AVADirect Mini Gaming PC is a wonderful choice for a PC gamer looking for a small footprint gaming with enough power to run today's more demanding games and the ability to keep up should those demands get even more demanding, all at a highly competitive price point.

As for AVADirect itself, it stands as proof-positive that a flashy web presence has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of product you produce.

I leave you with the cool blue glow of the AVADirect Mini Gaming PC. It will be missed.

[Editor's note: Below follows our impressions of Sir Hammerlock's Big Game Hunt, which releases today. I played the add-on content roughly a month ago, finishing all the main quests and a handful of side quests. This article has also been updated with the new launch trailer.]

We're up to our third campaign add-on for September's wonderfully colorful and gun-filled Borderlands 2. Like the previous two DLCs that focused on one personality—Captain Scarlett followed by Mr. Torgue—Sir Hammerlock's Big Game Hunt leads you into various dangers thanks to one well-articulated individual: Sir Hammerlock.

What was meant to be your weekend shootout expedition with Hammerlock gets sidetracked by Hyperion's Professor Nakayama. See, he was a huge Handsome Jack supporter, and not too keen on the vault hunter(s) who defeated him. So before you can go hunt this new continent's biggest game, you'll have to stop the latest psycho Borderlands has introduced you to.

I've played a good chunk of Sir Hammerlock's Big Game Hunt, so I thought I'd share a few details before the newest content releases to the public. Here are some noteworthy highlights.

1. It's Actually Challenging

If you've already completed Borderlands 2's main game, the last two campaign DLCs might have felt like a breeze. They certainly did for me. But Gearbox took notice, and made Sir Hammerlock's Big Game Hunt a hell of a lot tougher. It'll be an actual challenge to fight through mobs of enemies. In fact, you'll have to be at least level 30 just to tackle the thing.

2. New Enemies. More Importantly: A New Enemy Behavior

The more appropriate difficulty scale is partly to do with new enemies, specifically one new enemy type. In Sir Hammerlock's Big Game Hunt, you'll be exploring a new continent—called Aegrus—full of mountains and swamps. But Aegrus doesn't just bring a new aesthetic appeal; it's riddled with new enemies, too.

The swampy greens and mountainous browns are overrun by savages. Savages are basically like bandits. They look like headdressed, tattooed, spear-and-shield-equipped bandits. They even evolve like bandits do when you don't kill them fast enough. Midgets still jump up behind you while squealing in that adorably terrifying way. You know the one.

But these tribes of savages doesn't behave exactly like bandits do. Because they've got a chief. Chiefs can heal their friends, themselves, and send out powerful attacks (fire or slag, for instance) to slash at your health bar.

Giving one enemy type this much power means one important difference for you: you'll have to focus all of your gunfire on this target first, unless you want to unload your clip into a bandit-style savage only to see his health bar reset thanks to these pesky witchdoctor-types. They'll buff their friends while debuffing you, which results in nasty effects like slowing you down.

Then there are big, flying things called Spores. They hover above you, dropping mini, kamikaze versions of themselves onto your head. Scaylions are Varkid-like, bug creatures. Together these new enemies make up what feels like a fresh Borderlands experience.

3. New Vehicle That You Can Paint With Lots Of Pretty Colors

I really wish I could tell you the new vehicle is the two-seater motorbike we saw in Mr. Torgue's Campaign of Carnage. And I really wish I didn't have to tell you that the actual new vehicle is a fanboat. The fanboat is all too similar to the sand skiff we saw in Captain Scarlett and Pirate's Booty. Sure, it maneuvers seamlessly between all possible directions within the 360 degree span quite a bit smoother than the sand skiff. And sure, its got a flamethrower and a corrosive acid launcher. But it still controls quite a bit like the sand skiff.

Oh, and there are lots of customization skins for the fanboat that enemies will drop.

4. New Raid Boss. Plus, Bonus!: New...Rare Creatures?

Voracidous is the name of the seraph guardian raid boss that will be the cause of your furrowed eyebrows when you get your hands on Big Game Hunt next month. He's a Stalker, but, fitting with the theme, you'll have to fend off against the Chief that controls him, too. Which, as you can imagine, means there will be other groups of enemies you'll have to deal with.

Then there's Dexidous who will be the cause of one very long, sleepless night fighting through wave after wave of enemies. This "rare" creature will only be summoned after you supply various totems across Aegrus with a hefty ton of precious Eridium. Kill this Drifter and you can pick up Hammerlock-themed (aka hunting-themed) weapons.

5. Loot, Loot, Loot!

Hammerlock/hunting-themed weaponry aside, I found a ton of new weapons to replace my previous favorites. I get attached to my guns, even in a game like Borderlands that encourages you to constantly swap them out for new, shiny ones. But it's hard to argue with the insanely powerful pistols and assault rifles this new DLC throws at you. Did I mention these insanely powerful weapons are also insanely plentiful? By the end of Big Game Hunt, you'll have opened many, many loot chests. More than your feeble little backpack can handle.

Sir Hammerlock's Big Game Hunt releases on January 15. It's covered in the Season Pass, or will be available individually for $9.99.

Dark Souls II, the sequel to the notoriously difficult action RPG, Dark Souls (which was a sequel to the phonetically tongue twisting Demon's Souls) has been announced for the PS3, the Xbox 360, and the PC. One of the more shocking announcements to fans of the previous games was that director Hidetaka Miyazaki would be stepping down and handing the director's chair to Tomohiro Shibuya. While Miyazaki will remain on board as supervisor, this has led many fans to worry if the sequel will remain at its core, true to its predecessors.

Both Miyazaki and Shibuya sat down for an interview with Japan's Weekly Famitsu to talk about Dark Souls 2. Miyazaki explained that his removal as director was a company decision, and while he did feel some sadness at the decision, he had no problems with it. As supervisor on the project, he would serve 2 functions, "First, and this is pretty much done, I'll be deciding the overall direction for Dark Souls 2." explained Miyazaki. "I'll also be informing the new team of what core mechanics should remain as a sequel to Dark Souls, as well as any problem points [in Dark Souls] that should be addressed."

As the new director for an already established popular series, Shibuya remarked that he is definitely feeling a lot of pressure. However, he has been given a lot of free space with which to develop the new game. "Dark Souls is a game with a lot of thought in the vision of its overall world, so it can be difficult at times to understand what Miyazaki is thinking—but since he's available for me to ask questions, we can put our interpretations together to help move forward." remarked Shibuya. "Miyazaki has a great deal of knowledge about fantasy, so it's quite a learning experience."

Demon's Souls and Dark Souls are notoriously unforgiving games with a rich dark atmosphere and overbearing sense of loneliness and foreboding. Addressing the concerns of fans that Dark Souls 2 might lose some of the things that made the previous games so appealing, Miyazaki assured that Dark Souls 2 would remain true to the series. "It's been announced as a sequel to Dark Souls, so there is definitely a core element that must be preserved." Miyazaki said. "The difficulty and sense of achievement, the action base, level design concept and so forth. But I feel that also means that aside from such core elements, the rest can be left to the director's discretion."

Looks like I'm still going to be getting my ass handed to me...

Dark Souls 2 currently has no release date.

衝撃発表！『DARK SOULS II（ダークソウルII）』緊急インタビューを敢行 [ファミ通.com]

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If something is popular enough, you'll inevitably find a movie version or spinoff of it. More often than not, it's because some executive is trying to make a quick buck by using the name value to bring people in to see whatever movie they're selling. While every now and then you'll find a diamond in the rough or a true gem, most of the time the movies feel forced, rushed, or unfaithful to the original material and the quality tends to suffer as a consequence. Shueisha, the publishers of Weekly Shonen Jump have produced multitudes of movies based on their popular IP. If a manga is popular enough, you can almost be sure there'll be an animated or live action movie of it. Or two. Or three…

So, the 12th and latest One Piece movie, One Piece Film: Z came out this past weekend. The movie made over 750 million yen on its first day, proving once again the extreme popularity of the One Piece series. Even so, numbers can be deceiving and even terrible movies can pull in millions of viewers if they're marketed right. I went to the theater with a pretty skeptical mind; I'd been somewhat burned with the one of previous movies, One Piece Film: Strong World. I was skeptical, but at the same time, I hoped that the movie would be good. Something that was, at the very least, not a pile of dung. What I got was something I totally was not expecting.
[*Note: This review contains minor spoilers.]

Good — The Villain

The story revolves around a former navy admiral who calls himself "Z" (pronounced "Zed") and his plot to rid the world of pirates and what happens when Luffy and crew cross his path.
The character of Z is, simply put, a sympathetic villain. This is a trope often used in stories, but rarely so successfully. The movie begins by showing you what Z has become, and then spends pretty much the entirety of the movie showing you how he became that way.
The backstory of Z is both dramatic and, more importantly, convincing. So much so that while you may not agree with his goals, you totally buy into it. The character is so well portrayed, that almost every other character, even the main cast, pales in comparison.

Good — Excellent Pacing

The movie does a superb job of never overdoing things. Action sequences explode on the screen and then wrap up and you're given a moment of humor and/or drama before moving on to the next moment of action or tension. Hints of the tragedy of Z are sprinkled throughout the film in such a manner that by the time you get the story of what actually happened to him, your expectations have been built up to a point where the reveal totally pays off.
The movie isn't without its traditional hiccups that are often seen in anime movies, but they generally don't overplay things and the general progression of the story feels much more organic.

Mixed — The Other Characters

Obviously, Z is not the only character. The movie has its array of secondary characters, albeit a much smaller collection than previous films, who take part in the story. Some as enemies, some as allies, some as neutral observers. This ends up being a bit of a mixed bag on the whole. Some of the characters have their own plot lines that connect nicely with the original story. However, most of the characters wind up as foils to build on the character of Z. Even Z's own followers end up completely underdeveloped as a result.

Bad — Too Many Loose Ends

By the climax of the movie, you, the viewer, feel heavily invested in the story. The stakes are high and the conflict involved is one where no one will be walking away unscathed. But when the dust settles, and you sit back and contemplate what you've seen, a lot of things remain unresolved. Character arcs and other plot points are either forcibly cleaned up or remain dangling here and there. It feels a bit like they focused so much on developing the character of Z, that everything else ended up being secondary.

Final Thoughts

Overall, One Piece Film: Z was immensely satisfying. It wasn't a prefect movie, but as Shonen Jump anime films go, it was the best one I've ever seen. While most other movies have a tendency to buckle under the limitations of being a stand-alone movie, (i.e. they have to end exactly how they started) Z seemed to make the most such limitations and genuinely feels like it is part of the main series.
Personally, I feel what they had was good enough that they could have taken what was a single dense stand-alone movie and made it into a two-part masterpiece to further develop other characters and satisfying tie everything up.
Personal ideas aside, the movie is definitely well worth seeing for any fan of the series.

One Piece Film: Z is currently in theaters in Japan.

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Freshness Burger is a Japanese burger chain. They make good burgers! "Organic & natural" is the Freshness motto. But with these new burger wrappers, it should be something else.

In the past, Freshness Burger has wrapped its burgers in unusual designs, such as Jack-o'-lanterns. These latest wrappers are highly unusual.

"The hell is this, it's scary," blurted out one commenter on 2ch, Japan's largest bulletin board. "Yep, this is unsettling."

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Freshness Burgers: Madness & Nightmares.

フレッシュネスバーガーの包み紙きめえええええｗｗｗｗｗ [琉速]<a

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