Hail, ye Nintendo faithful! New hardware has appeared and, loyal folk that you are, the Wii U now rests in your home. It's still early in the new console's lifecycle but that doesn't mean there aren't games that will make your latest pledge of fealty to the House of Mario feel worthwhile. Check out the list below for the two-screen offerings that make the Wii U shine.

Assassin's Creed III

We reviewed Assassin's Creed III favorably on other platforms, but be warned that Ubisoft's massive adventure is probably 2012's most divisive blockbuster game. It concludes the storyline of Desmond Miles, the guy in 2012 who has been entering a device called the Animus since the first Assassin's Creed game in order to re-live the memories of his assassin ancestors. ACIII, which is technically the fifth console AC game, has Desmond and the player experiencing the exploits of a half-British/half-Native-American man named Connor who, though deeply conflicted, joins the assassin's guild in the American colonies at the time of the Revolution. This is a game about assassinating and running across rooftops, about sneaking, about commanding your own warship, about climbing trees, hunting bears, meeting Paul Revere, fighting alongside George Washington and, oh yeah, there's also a deep competitive multiplayer mode. The knock, by some, is that the game is all rough edges, a bit buggy and that Connor and colonial America aren't as wonderful to experience as Ezio and the Renaissance-era Italy of the first two games he starred in, Assassin's Creed II and AC: Brotherhood. This Wii U edition doesn't add much, though having a bigger map on the GamePad than the small one on the corner of the screen is nice.

A Good Match for: Fans of complicated history, as ACIII runs toward, not away, from the contradictions and complications of America's birth.

Not for Those Who Want: A polished experience. ACIII is a harkening back to the rough-draft era of the first Assassin's Creed, albeit with way more things to do. Frequent online patches are improving the game, gradually.

Here's how it looks in action.

Purchase from: Amazon | Wal-Mart | Best Buy | GameStop

Call of Duty: Black Ops II

Why would anyone get an FPS game with an intensely hardcore fanbase on a Nintendo console? Because this Call of Duty sacrifices much less on the Wii U. Its looks stand up to other iterations of the Treyarch sequel and the two-screen design of the Wii offers up some perks that you won't get on other platforms.

A Good Match for: Folks who love getting killstreaks in co-op. With one person on the TV and another using the GamePad screen, you and a buddy can tackle other players online while sharing the same couch.

Not for Those Who Want: Well-populated servers. Compared to its PC, PS3 and Xbos 360 brethren, the Wii U version of Black Ops II feels like a ghost town.

Here's how it looks in action.

Purchase from: Amazon | Wal-Mart | Best Buy | GameStop

Little Inferno

It's an interactive fireplace that challenges you to burn various things. And it has an emotional storyline. Ok? Please trust us! It's from the World of Goo people and it's… really best if you go in knowing nothing more than that.

A Good Match for: People who don't want the norm. There's never been an interactive fireplace video game that has an emotional storyline before. There probably won't be one again. You play this, you get your indie cred boosted as a bonus.

Not for Those Who Want: A traditional video game. You've got to like weird stuff and not be bothered that this isn't a shooter, a platformer, a racer, a sports game, a fighting game or anything else. Plus you have to not mind possible criticisms of the gaming medium, because that just might be what Little Inferno is really about.

Here's how it looks in action.

Purchase from: The Wii U's eShop. It's download-only.

Mass Effect 3

The conclusion to BioWare's sci-fi epic might have let down a few fans with its controversial ending, but it's still a solid shooter/RPG that works well on the Wii U. You can hotkey special biotic abilities to the touchscreen on your tablet controller, so you can fling aliens around with the tap of
a finger. You can also use the GamePad as a map as you try to save Earth from the Reapers.

A Good Match for: People who don't own an Xbox 360 or PS3.

Not for Those Who Want: A perfect frame rate. The Wii
U version of Mass Effect 3 occasionally looks less than perfect.

Here's how it looks in action.

Purchase from: The Wii U eShop or Amazon | Wal-Mart | Best Buy | GameStop.

Mighty Switch Force: Hyper Drive Edition

Raise your tolerance for puns and take control of Patricia Wagon, a crimefigher who has to capture escaped convicts in this throwback sidescroller that is a little bit of a shooter and a lot of puzzle-platformer. Officer Wagon has the useful ability of rendering blocks in and out of existence, which turns each timed level into a clever, puzzling quest of figuring out how to jump, climb or otherwise get around to nab the escaped bad girls. This Wii U version of the game includes difficult remixes of the original 3DS game's levels and can be played on a TV or on the Wii U GamePad.

A Good Match for: People who consider the Super Nintendo gaming's apex.

Not for Those Who Want: Their games free of cute-girls-in-trouble anime shtick.

Here's how it looks in action.

Purchase from: The Wii U's eShop. It's download-only

New Super Mario Bros U

The first-ever high-definition Mario game is also warm,
familiar, and consistently fun. You might not be surprised too often while jumping your way through the single-player campaign, but stomping on Goombas really never gets old. Plus, the Wii U's tablet controller allows for some surprisingly enjoyable multiplayer twists.

A Good Match for: People who like to game while watching TV. If you're playing single-player, you can play all of New Super Mario Bros. U on the GamePad controller.

Not for Those Who Want: Something new. Something that changes up the standard Mario formula we've been following for so long.

Here's how it looks in action.

Purchase from: Purchase from: The Wii U eShop or Amazon | Wal-Mart | Best Buy | GameStop.

Nintendo Land

It's a dozen games in one and most of them are good. Nintendo Land is sort of the Wii U's version of Wii Sports, except that its games are more substantial and… not as simply, purely brilliant as the bowling and tennis in that famous Wii launch game. Half of Nintendo Land's diverse games are made to be played solo, three are multiplayer-only and three can be played solo or with friends. All 12 show different, interesting ways the Wii U GamePad can be used to control games. The stars of the bundle are the surprisingly deep co-op Zelda adventure, the graphically-shocking Pikmin missions, the lovely Balloon Trip iPad-like game and the crowd-pleasing party favorites: Mario Chase and Luigi's Ghost Mansion.

A Good Match for: Nintendo buffs, since the game is presented as a Nintendo-themed theme park and reward players with all sort of Nintendo-themed unlockable décor. Nintendo Land also serves as a great instruction manual for the Wii U's features, too.

Not for Those Who Want: One focused game (this ain't that) or one game as perfectly tuned for people of any age or type as Wii Sports tennis (Nintendo Land's Mario Chase comes closest).

Here's how it looks in action.

Purchase from: Amazon | Wal-Mart | Best Buy | GameStop

Scribblenauts Unlimited

The Wii U version of Scribblenauts Unlimited presents all the crazy mad-libs puzzle-solving of 5th Cell's charming game in hi-def. That alone is a reason to cheer. But Unlimited also lets players in on Maxwell's back story and offers up clever multiplayer features to boot. Combine all those elements with the fact that a TV-centric Scribblenauts makes for a laugh-out-loud experience and you may have the best version of an already good game.

A Good Match for: Wannabe comic-book creators. This version of Scribblenauts has the Object Editor, with lets players craft their own unique mashed-up creations—like a winged zebra—and share them with other players, who can then tweak them even more. If someone else's twisted imagination has thought of a weirdo lifeform, then you can revel in using it.

Not for Those Who Want: Variety. More words and more creativity mean that many of the game's puzzles will feel really lightweight and repetitive.

Here's how it looks in action.

Purchase from: Amazon | Wal-Mart | Best Buy | GameStop

Trine 2: Director's Cut

Trine games are side-scrollers that are made to impress you with 1) their amazing fantasy-world graphics, 2) their in-world physics systems and 3) the diversity of gameplay you get in switching from playing as a melee warrior, a sneaky thief and a mage who can render objects into existence. You can play solo or three-player co-op, and the Wii U version incudes the game's Goblin Menace expansion.

A Good Match for: Graphics gawkers. This game is beautiful and—bonus—is the rare Wii U launch game that outshines its Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions (but maybe not the PC one).

Not for Those Who Want: To play Mario, Mighty Switch Force, the upcoming Rayman Legends or any of the other side-scrollers already cropping up on Wii U. There are a lot to choose from.

Here's how it looks in action.

Purchase from: The Wii U's eShop. It's download-only

ZombiU

The best third-party game on the Wii U takes a hackneyed scenario and puts it in a locale where it feels a bit more unexpected. While ZombiU's undead apocalypse does feel fresher because of its London setting, it's really the chain-link single-player campaign and asymmetrical multiplayer that make it shine. There's something morbidly apropos about having to find and loot the walking corpse of the character you previously controlled—to keep use of the best gear after you die—while playing solo. And facing off against others in the game's asymmetrical multiplayer battles makes controlling the bad guys more fun than being the hero.

A Good Match for: Passive-aggressive survival horror fans. The atmosphere is dark and desperate in ZombiU and every bullet counts. Holding the Wii U gamepad up to use as a scanner isn't just a new-hardware gimmick. It's a crucial mechanic that reveals zombie placements and where weapons and items might be. And if you're stuck on a particular sequence, a hint from another player might be your salvation. Or a trick to doom you to yet another death.

Not for Those Who Want: Meaningful relationships with playable characters. Other than "Zombies! Holy crap! Don't die!", the avatars you'll control in ZombiU single-player don't get much in the way of backstory and motivation.

Here's how it looks in action.

Purchase from: Amazon | Wal-Mart | Best Buy | GameStop

The most important thing right now is that games don't make people violent. That's what needs to be said. The scientifically-sound research that supports that mostly has it covered.

As an artist, though, I don't think we can honestly say we don't wish to affect people's behavior with the art we make—or that it doesn't happen, miraculously.

Art that tickles the soul into manifesting outward change feels, by some degree, more successful than that which mostly just passes through like a tasty dinner.

I don't think artists are accountable for the reactions people have to their art, but I also believe, maybe a little fascistically, that there are readings and responses that just are better and more grounded than others. I also reject the full abdication of authorship, however intentionally one may try.

I don't think it's art's responsibility to condone good behavior.

I do think that, when we engage in this passionate act of communication—this crazy, vulnerable, often futile attempt to organically incite a shared awareness in someone else—we don't think to ourselves, "I really hope they don't act on any of the thoughts/feelings/self-reflection I've inspired in them." There's a real line there. Science says so. Understanding that line is what's key right now. But the rush to distance ourselves shouldn't be taken to extremes. I don't think we want to relinquish that potential level of impact video games can have in all cases—just some. If we rejected games' potential to affect people's thinking and behavior, the entire Games for Change conference would be a sad farce. I don't think it is.

So along with—or, really, after—the supremely important discussions of mental health infrastructure and gun control… after we acknowledge that games can't drive someone all the way to violence and figure out what role they really play in the mind (dangerously-perturbed or not), after we explore and exhort modern, responsible, pro-active parenting….after all that, can we talk some more about games literacy, in a society-wide sense?

Can we work hard(er) to promote the understanding and discussion of these feelings we give and get in games? Can we make some more games that deserve and stand up to those sophisticated reads of those feelings?

What if, instead of putting more guns in schools and blaming a culture-wide consumption of games, we embrace that consumption of games and teach, or at least model, in schools, a healthy and constructive relationship with games?

Through 8th grade I went to a school that banned games (and film and TV) for a bunch of outdated, well-meaning reasons. The saddest part about it is that my school's philosophy was more dedicated to treasuring and igniting a child's curiosity and love of learning than any I've since encountered. It destroys me that, for all of my school's depth of care and desire to reach children on their level, it relinquished an opportunity to cultivate and shepherd a thoughtful, profound relationship with new art forms.

I would like for that to please be a thing. I think it could be good. The other side of the lie—the idea that "we have absolutely super totally nothing to do with that [horrible] thing"—is a thrilling opportunity to say, "we have so much to do with these other [amazing] things."

Sarah Elmaleh is a voiceover artist and actor. Her voice work includes roles for Wadjet Eye Games, The Fullbright Company, and 17-Bit, and her writing has appeared in Kill Screen and Gamer Melodico.

This piece originally ran on Facebook and is republished here with the permission of its author.

Murraythis breaks out the Source Filmmaker to bring the internet a very Team Fortress Christmas.

Such great animation, and the Scout was the perfect choice to play the Christmas Eve sneak. He's such a dick.

Night Before Christmas... [YouTube]

As a writer, it's my job to put things together, to construct a narrative out of disparate pieces. As human beings who try to make sense of the world, we all do that unconsciously: when everything is a story, the world makes sense.

The stories don't help sometimes. Hell, the stories go away sometimes. In their place comes a void, a puncture in our ability to reason and understand why things happen the way they do.

You might notice this phenomenon after a death, after a tragedy—they all seem kind of senseless when put under scrutiny, huh? The Columbines, the Virginia Techs, the Sandy Hooks.

So right now, I have only pieces. Memories of things I'm afraid to talk about—maybe the timing isn't right, or maybe it would make me sound unhinged.

They're recollections of things, sometimes games I know for certain go together somehow, amount to a small piece of some puzzle that's supposed to help me understand where violence and death fit in my life.

"No more Power Ranger games. No more video games, period," my mother lamented."They're not good for you."

The SNES and the accompanying Power Ranger game had been a Christmas present when I was about six. But one night I pulled a butter knife on my mother, demanding whatever it is a child demands at that age. Who knows? And just like that, the console went away as easily as it had appeared.

Thinking back, I couldn't have meant to hurt her. I couldn't have. That would be ridiculous. Games don't have that effect on people.

Right?

Well, if we want to be technical, that SNES was my first console. But if asked, if prompted to talk about my early gaming days, I don't mention it. It didn't exist.

My first console was the Gamecube. Wholesome little thing, adorable handle and everything. I wanted to be Mario. Mario defeats things, he doesn't kill them. It's good, clean fun.

I agonized over that Gamecube, in the way a kid that finally learns the value of money does. I spent over a year saving up for the console, saving up every last nickel I could.

With my family, violence is there even when it's not there—maybe at a party I make out the lyrics to a popular song that goes: "hit your woman with a club, put her in her place," booming overhead. I'll try to ignore it, only to notice the dancing—my sister, my cousin, my mother all in tune—and I'll need to excuse myself before I get angry.

Sometimes it's there as a historical record, something for everyone else to see. The women in my family tend to have a number of visible scars across their bodies, scars we never talk about.

Sometimes it'll be a threat—maybe you should settle down before I make you settle down sort of thing. Maybe it's noticing a belt starting to unbuckle from the corner of my eye.

Then the women stop the shenanigans. But sometimes this looming thing finally arrives, finally finds a release. One of the moments that refuses to leave my head is one that happened over a decade ago.

I am laying in bed with my eyes closed, pretending to be asleep. This is what you do when my stepfather is drunk, you try to get out of the way. We try to avoid this situation as much as possible, my mother and I, by making sure we never stay too long at a social event and that he's not around alcohol much. But every so often, he'll pull a fast one and get drunk anyway.

When he's drunk, something snaps. Something goes wrong. The meekness and niceties fade away, and are replaced by anger, sometimes by rampage. Nothing in the house is safe.

From under the covers, I can see that he's playing my Gamecube. But he can't stop losing his matches in Mortal Kombat. That's the game he turns to when he feels agitated. His favorite parts are the fatalities, they go farther than other fighting games dare to.

As the night goes on, he's getting more and more visibly frustrated, until eventually he stands up. Then I notice he's not playing anymore.

He makes his way to the Gamecube, rips it off the TV, and sets it down on the table. I hear him fumble through his power tools, trying to pick out the best one for the job.

I know what he's about to do. I know what he's about to do but I can't move and I don't dare open my eyes. I just hope that he can't hear me crying.

He always apologizes after things like these the next day, always tries to make things right by repurchasing whatever he destroyed. But I never played the new Gamecube he bought. The new one wasn't mine and I felt sick looking at it.

A few years later I'd stop with all the wholesomeness and Nintendo, instead opting to purchase a 360. It's on this 360 that I learned how to play shooters—I started out with the ridiculous ones like Gears of War, but eventually moved my way to 'realistic' shooters like Battlefield.

I adored them. They tapped into something that I couldn't explain, couldn't name. What I did know was that I wanted to share this interest with my significant other, in the way you want to share everything with someone you love. But he wasn't having it.

"I fucking hate it when you play that thing," my then-boyfriend once growled.
"But it's so good! Look at how realistic it is."
"... realistic. Right."
"Yes—like, listen to the way I play. Listen! I'm giving out orders and moving like I'm a squad. It's all very—"
"What, fun? You think this is fun?"
"—tactical."
"I just can't stand the sound of bullets. I can't stand all the shooting. I don't understand how you like that shit."

Sure, we were in conflict with some of the countries in the games, and sure, maybe with games like Medal of Honor, there was the possibility we were playing as the type of groups highlighted in Wikileaks for committing war crimes, but I still thought he was being completely absurd. A well-rounded human being should be able to understand when something is just entertainment. Jesus christ, come on!

Thinking back on it now, it seems stupid to imply that someone being sensitive about this stuff is in the wrong—like the only way to live is with cynical fortitude. Rationality dictates these things are obviously divorced, our entertainment and our reality, so can we stop talking about it already?

Like we shouldn't be phased by something that's supposed to be uncomfortable. Even now, I keep going back to it: was there something wrong with him or was there something wrong with me?

It stuck with me, that conversation. It got under my skin. After we had it, I noticed how games were often hours and hours and hours of killing endless mobs of men that often looked exactly the same. Why does every room and level have a bunch of shit to kill no matter what it is I'm playing? And why can't I just turn my brain off like I used to; what's wrong? Why can't I just aim and shoot?

Games became exasperating for a long time after that.

The girl in indie platformer They Bleed Pixels starts off looking so innocent. Just a precious little kid, you know? All it took to change that was one book; one evil, corrupting book and suddenly she's transformed into this terrifying creature with claws for hands.

Much of the game focuses on what you can do with those claws. You juggle your enemies with them, you throw them into spikes and gears and chain combos where you lacerate them into pieces.

You do this because if you don't, then the game is much harder. Every kill, every combo fills a meter that lets you put down a checkpoint. The game is basically the Dark Souls of platformers, and my being awful at video games, I need those checkpoints. I don't want my inevitable death to catapult me back to the start of the game. I need to be creative in how I kill for my benefit.

It's ugly. Stylized and therefore detached, but ugly if you really think about it. And it feels so, so good to play.

I hate how often this is true no matter what I'm playing. And now we've got the situation of having games become self-aware about it, kind of going 'you like this, don't you, you sick bastard'—there is Hotline Miami, Bulletstorm, a few others.

I feel like these games implicitely ask me if I like it, and I can't help but answer "yes, yes I do." At the same time... I don't know if this is me absolving myself of responsibility, but I like the way Andrew Vanden Bossche puts it:

Game: "You pulled the trigger. You are holding the gun."

You: "You gave me the gun. You ordered me to pull the trigger."

I've shot a gun before. I must have been 10, maybe 12. I was in El Salvador.

"We can shoot these cans," my uncle offered. "Or, we can aim for the lizards crawling about the jungle."

Cans seemed boring to me versus a living creature. The humane thing seemed boring to me. What?

But the moment that revisits me about that trip to El Salvador isn't learning how to shoot a gun. It's a different memory.

My family is largely composed of farmers who own horses, chickens, cattle—that sort of thing. In those years, we'd visit El Salvador often as a group, which meant that we needed enough food to feed dozens of people.

We needed to kill one of our cows to do that. We all know where the meat comes from, but you know how the saying goes, right? Don't want to actually see how the hamburger is made?

I can't remember what I felt when I watched my grandfather pick up his machete and bring it down hard on the cow's neck. What I do remember is the horror of seeing the meat pile up—there was a lot of it, sure, but... sometimes, some parts of the cow will pulsate well after the cow is dead, even if it's completely detached from the skeleton.

Like the thing is giving one last reminder that it was alive once, damnit. Don't you dare forget it.

I kill people nearly every day via controller, but I don't actually know death. Not really. I'm 22. I've never known anyone who has died—personally, I mean. I'm afraid there's a critical gap in my experience because of this, or that when it finally does happen, I'll react worse to it than one is ‘supposed' to. Whatever that means.

I live in a crystalline place right now. Death mostly exists on a pixellated plane. You don't have to deal with a dead body here, they often simply disappear into a level. Poof.

But I have nightmares about death sometimes. I have nightmares of what would happen if so and so who is important to me died, if I wake up one day and finally, finally, it happened—someone is gone.

Just like that, gone.

I'm not sure if I feel uneasy or excited to talk about why I love multiplayer games. Maybe both. I could frame this love any which way I wanted, I could make this sound less 'bad,' but this is how I articulate what I like about them: there are people on the other end.

People who don't want to lose die. People who are trying their best, out of competitiveness, to survive. Playing against an AI, you can tell—there's no will to live, not really. The movement is too precise, too measured, acting out scripts of logic of what to do under pressure.

A person will be creative. They will fumble. Your interaction with them will be messy and haphazard in a very human way. And best of all, I can practically taste the tension, the fear that comes when someone is closing down on you, about to kill you in a game. I imagine their heart racing madly, because that's what happens to me when under pressure. It's exhilarating to think about.

Managing to overcome an aggressor in a situation like that to me is like saying, "no, I want to live. I want to live. You're not taking this from me."

Ultimately, you might have a good kill/death ratio at the end of a match. But what does it mean if all your lives were laughably short? The one that kills and lives the most, that person is the one that gets to gloat at the end.

There is a reason I don't talk about this much.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

David Vigil has stomach cancer. He's been fighting it for a while now, but without health insurance, the 24-year-old is having a hard time paying for the medical procedures he needs to battle his disease.

So he's turning to the Internet.

Vigil, who runs a company called Vigilante Leather (and whose Uncharted-themed work has been featured on Kotaku), is hoping to raise $60,000 on IndieGogo. The funding campaign ends tonight.

"I've done my research and I've seen how these fundraisers have worked out for people in need and I can only pray that this can help me in my time of need," Vigil writes. "How things are going I know I had to face my fear and ask for help and I'm doing just that."

It's like a Christmas tree, but cooler. Designed by Carlos Leituga, this tree takes the original, arcade Donkey Kong game and morphs it a little. I never realized how perfect that level is for a tree until now.

It's on like Holiday Kong [Carlos Leituga via Save Room Mini Bar]

It's Christmas morning and there are presents under the tree. You'd been pining away at that Super Nintendo for months. You start tearing away like a mad fiend at the wrapping paper and what do you find but...

"Oh wow...A ColecoVision."
"It was the one you wanted, right?"
"Sure Dad, sure."

We've all been there in some small way at one time or another.

That kid above? That's me on my birthday. Age 9, I think? Look at how happy I look getting that crappy Tiger Handheld version of Sonic 2! Look at the bliss on my face! I was jazzed to have that thing, until I actually played it and realized it was kind of a piece of garbage.

No matter how humble you are, we all know that feeling. So in the spirit of the holidays, we here at Kotaku invite you to share your stories of triumph and heartbreak in the discussions below.

(PS: Love ya Mom and Dad. Happy Holidays and thanks for all the amazing gaming memories.)

Will the next PlayStation have more of a casual focus than its predecessor?

One person claiming to be a former senior manager at Sony seems to think so, posting in a Glassdoor review of the company that he doesn't think Sony's next-gen system, codenamed Orbis, will do very well:

Take this with a healthy grain of salt, as you might for any anonymous "former employee" review. But, as pointed out by Kotaku columnist Superannuation, who discovered the review, this sort of casual focus would seem to align with the Orbis sketches we reported earlier this year.

While not the best Final Fantasy game of all-time (in my reality that's IX), Final Fantasy IV was one of the first role-playing games to feature a deep, character-driven plot and introduced the world to the Active Time Battle system, adding an element of urgency to pressing one button over and over again. That's at least $16 worth of value right there.

Matrix Software's 2007 remake for the Nintendo DS is prettier than ever on the retina screen of the iPhone and iPad (doesn't look too shabby on the mini either). Those pixelated 3D textures take on a certain charm when blown up to size, and the novelty of hearing Cecil and Cain exchanging dialogue with actual voices never fades.

Players get an epic tale of good versus not-so-good wrapped around an endless string of turn-based battles interspersed with exploration and equipment upgrades.

What that will cost them is $15.99, which is definitely on the more expensive end of the iOS game spectrum, but considering the cheapest price I can find for a used copy of the DS version—$14.99, not counting shipping—it's a fair price. And hey, Square Enix finally released a universal Final Fantasy game. That's progress!

If it seems like a bit of a cop out, picking a proven game from an at-the-time proven publisher for today's Gaming App of the Day, then consider this—it's Christmas Eve, and I need to make buffalo chicken dip. Of course it's a cop out, but it's also a damn fine choice.

Final Fantasy IV — $15.99 [iTunes]

Lazlow Jones co-wrote the radio scripts for all the Grand Theft Auto games (save Chinatown Wars, of course) going back to III, and appears as a radio personality in all of the games. He also, evidently, has all of the master copies of the recordings. In his home. Which is on Long Island. Or, well, a barrier island off Long Island.

Ordinarily this isn't much of a problem. but it was as Hurricane Sandy came barreling in late October, and Long Island was whomped particularly bad by the stormacane, or whatever it was at that stage. In a visit to the Opie & Anthony Show last week, where Lazlow's a regular guest, he related what his priorities were as the storm came barreling in.

1. Get the GTA III master recording.
2. Get the GTA: Vice City master recording.
3. Get the GTA: San Andreas master recording.
4. You get the idea.

"My studio is on the ground floor," he said on the show. "That's where GTA 3, Vice City, San Andreas, all those masters like the full recordings with Axl Rose and everything. I mean, all this stuff," he said. "I started freaking out and grabbing, just boxes of masters and putting it up on the second floor. Cause I was like 'I'm not going to let this stuff get ruined.'"

Asked if he was storing the recordings elsewhere, Lazlow said he'd learned he shouldn't "keep a lot of amazing masters from some epic video games on the ground floor near a sand bar."

If you're curious if he said anything about Grand Theft Auto V, he did, but only to say the game was due in the coming spring.

GTA master audio tapes almost lost during Superstorm Sandy [Original Gamer]