On February 7 at the Dernier Bar Avant la Fin du Monde in Paris, France, EA and Geek-Art will be putting on a show to promote Dead Space 3. Because when I think co-op space shooting in the dark, I think of Paris, and paintings.
For those of us nowhere near the city of love, you'll be able to buy prints from Geek-Art's online store. One of the pieces up for viewing (and sale) is Caroline, by Aussie artist Benjamin Guy, who you may recognise from his other large paintings featuring small children wearing giant pop culture helmets.
Reader Brandon passed this video along yesterday, which he helped make, wondering if we'd ever seen it. I had to say "no", which tore me up inside, because it is absolutely perfect.
Sadly ineligible from winning a Saxxy award due to its use of copyright material, that won't stop it winning hearts here today, because if there's one thing Team Fortress 2 needs more than less hats, it's more Queen.
Cult game, attractive (and scantily-clad) protagonist, you'd have bet the house on someone coming out with an official Lollipop Chainsaw figure. And, eventually, someone has. Though they really shouldn't have bothered.
Unknown Japanese company World Scope, perhaps explaining why they're unknown, are behind this official Juliet Starling piece that looks like something you'd expect with a Happy Meal (which it's not, it's a 1/8 scale figure).
Bogdan Gabelko is a 3D artist who has worked for companies like Crytek. You may have seen his work before, like the Cammy piece we featured in 2011.
He's now working at Blizzard. Lucky dog.
You can see more of Bogdan's work at his CGHub and DeviantArt pages.
To see the larger pics in all their glory (or, if they're big enough, so you can save them as wallpaper), right-click on them below and select "open in new tab".
Fine Art is a celebration of the work of video game artists, showcasing the best of both their professional and personal portfolios. If you're in the business and have some concept, environment, promotional or character art you'd like to share, drop us a line!
If you've got the room (and love for Star Wars) to spare, Major League Mods are selling these custom Xbox 360 consoles that stick one of Microsoft's machines inside a model of R2-D2.
It's not cheap—like, it's $1300 ($1000 if you provide the Xbox)—but hey, console centrepiece showcases don't come cheap.
For something a little cheaper, may I suggest this NES version, which "only" costs $500?
Combining the hipster appeal of an original Game Boy with the practicality of, well, a ton of other Nintendo systems, the Gameboo is a hacked handheld that lets users play games—via emulation—from platforms like the Game Boy Advance, SNES, NES, Neo Geo and of course the Game Boy itself.
While the case is original, almost everything else is new or modified, including the addition of extra buttons, use of a 2.8" colour screen, 4GB of internal memory, TV-out ports, an MP3 player and rechargeable lithium ion battery.
So, yeah, the greatest handheld video game system of all time.
There's an exhaustive progress build thread below.
If you like beautiful things, you're probably getting ready to sit down and play Level-5 and Studio Ghibli's Ni No Kuni. Before you fire that baby up for the first time, though, you have a very important thing to decide.
What language you'll be playing the game in.
I know Chris and especially Jason have both spoken highly of the game's English vocal track, which is one of the best ever assembled for a game, especially one of this scope. So if you simply cannot abide reading subtitles, and want to enjoy the game in a language that for readers of this site is likely their first, you'll be fine.
But just for a moment, let me try and sell you on the other option. The game lets you play in its "native" Japanese. While this is a staple for hardcore anime and foreign cinema buffs, in games, it can often be a take-it-or-leave-it thing, because when you're dealing with sci-fi worlds and characters whose mouths move like mailboxes, it doesn't make much of a difference.
It does, at least for me, with Ni No Kuni. And it's entirely to do with Stuidio Ghibli's involvement. I prefer watching Ghibli movies in Japanese because, well, they're Japanese movies. As good as Disney's dubs have gotten (and as amazing as the original Princess Mononoke track was), I don't think there's any substitute for enjoying a piece of work as it was originally created. That's just me. Of course it helps that the Japanese cast is as talented as the English one. Indeed, it's right up there with the likes of the Yakuza series.
There's also the technical considerations. Between the lavish hand-animated cutscenes and in-game sequences rendered to look like animated cutscenes, there's a lot of cinema here, and the characters' mouths are moving. Moving in time with the Japanese vocal track. It's not something you'd notice all the time, as those moments are few and far between, but when you do hit them, you notice it.
Finally, there's the matter of genre. This is a JRPG. You'll be reading mountains of text anyway, your eyes permanently trained on the lower third of the screen. If you're going to reading 90% of the conversations in the game, it won't kill you to read the other 10%!
If you just can't do subtitles, that's cool, you'll still have fun! But some folks like the option—which is why it's there—so for them, you'll have to choose wisely. Because flipping between languages isn't as easy as in other games; language "packs" have to be installed off the Blu-Ray, which takes time, needs to be done from the main menu and requires a game restart, so once you make your decision, you'll likely be sticking with it, at least for large chunks of the game.
The image above is of a French soldier currently on active duty in Mali. He's wearing a mask that looks like the one a character from Call of Duty wears. This is, somehow, cause for enough indignation that the French military and government have opened an investigation into what they call "unacceptable" behaviour.
Wow.
The entire controversy appears to stem from the fact the mask makes the guy look like Ghost (pictured below), a character from the Modern Warfare sub-series of Call of Duty games, whose first game was released in 2007. The association people (and some elements of the the French press) have made between the soldier and a character in an "ultra-violent video game" is apparently being seen as something distasteful.
At a press conference earlier this week, reports AFP, French Colonel Thierry Burkhard said the wearing of the mask was "unacceptable behaviour", and that it was "not representative of the action that brought France to Mali to help". French authorities are now trying to identify the soldier, presumably so they can reprimand/make a scapegoat out of him.
Well Col. Burkhard, and everyone who took note of only the observation and whose knee jerked instantly in response, you might want to investigate the mask before investigating the man.
For one, you've got to feel for this particular guy, since skull masks (or balaclavas, which is actually what Ghost is wearing) are incredibly common in armed forces across the world, especially the US. American soldiers have been wearing them, and have been having their pictures taken in them, for years. This isn't one guy acting alone, it's an established "fashion" amongst soldiers worldwide.
Which leads us to perhaps the more important point: the mask was not invented by Call of Duty, or its developers Infinity Ward. Indeed, its presence in the game was inspired by the mask's use by soldiers in real life, as it's been worn by US troops—who first took to it as a fashionable alternative from regular gear (it began life as a designer ski mask) at the beginning of the Iraq War—for almost a decade now, long before development ever began on the Modern Warfare series.
It was even in Hollywood movies before it was in Call of Duty, with 2005's Harsh Times (left) featuring a scene in which Christian Bale is sporting a "skull mask" almost identical to the one "Ghost"—and now this French soldier—wears.
In short, the mask is in Call of Duty because it's associated with real soldiers, not the other way around. If the French are saying it's somehow representative of a video game, it makes no more sense than saying bad tracksuits are only around because of Grand Theft Auto IV. And if they're just upset over the fact the guy is wearing a decorative mask, when he's a soldier fighting a war in which people are going to be killed, then the fact they're worried about this shows their PR priorities are entirely broken.
Could this particular soldier have been influenced by the game? Maybe. I'm sure the prevalence of such headwear has increased since the release of the first Modern Warfare game in 2007. But it's silly for the French to assume, or take some upset commentator's word for it, that this is some kind of video game homage without even knowing who the soldier is (his identity remains a mystery), let alone his reasons for wearing it.
The photographer at the heart of the controversy, AFP's Issouf Sanogo, is "surprised" by the resulting media storm.
"A helicopter was coming in to land and churning up tremendous dust clouds", he told AFP. "Instinctively, all the soldiers grabbed their scarfs to avoid getting a mouthful of sand. It was evening, and rays of sunlight were pushing through the trees and into the dust clouds. It was a lovely light. I spotted this soldier wearing a strange scarf and took the photo. At the time, nothing about the scene seemed especially unusual or shocking. The soldier wasn't posing and there was nothing staged about the image. He was just standing there, protecting his face from the dust, waiting for the chopper to land. No one tried to stop me shooting the picture."
Damn. Look at what the human body is capable of. Even if you don't like sports, it's difficult to watch this music video by Hadouken! and not feel awed by what folks can accomplish. My favorite, however, is the less bombastic, though more cute, baby 'climbing' down the stairs.
How are you guys today? Feel free to discuss sports, Hadouken!, or just about anything else in this open post or in the Talk Amongst Yourselves forum.
The Half-Life 2 Cinematic Mod has been around forever, and in that time has proven fairly divisive. Sure, it adds some lovely effects to the game, but it also makes so many changes that some feel it loses a little of Valve's original vision for City 17 and its surrounding countryside. The "improved" character models are a particular bone of contention.
I could never get past the latter, with almost everyone in the mod looking like a Baywatch reject, but if all you care about are environmental effects and the crusade to make a game that's nearly ten years old look brand new, you might want to watch the new video below and see how far the mod has progressed since its inception back in 2005.
If you can meet its surprisingly hefty specs (at least for the full range of effects, considering the game's age), you can download the mod below.
On February 7 at the Dernier Bar Avant la Fin du Monde in Paris, France, EA and Geek-Art will be putting on a show to promote Dead Space 3. Because when I think co-op space shooting in the dark, I think of Paris, and paintings.
If you've got the room (and love for Star Wars) to spare, Major League Mods are selling these custom Xbox 360 consoles that stick one of Microsoft's machines inside a model of R2-D2.
At a press conference earlier this week, reports 
