With SimCity's launch debacle entering its third day and the game remaining inoperable for many people, EA is shifting its tone and promising a resolution, but with no time or date for the fix.

"We are aggressively undergoing maintenance on the servers and adding capacity to meet demand," read a statement posted to the game's official Facebook page last night. "Performance will fluctuate during this process. Our fans are important to us, and we thank you for your continued patience."

A note on the message boards of EA's SimCity studio Maxis indicates that servers are being added over the next two days, presumably referring to Thursday and Friday.

These are more grave statements than the one the company was using Tuesday, back when SimCity's always-online requirement and troubled servers seemed to be barring players from playing the new city-building game less consistently. The Tuesday statement: "Due to the high demand for SimCity, Origin has experienced some delays that have impacted a small percentage of users. The team has been working non-stop to resolve. We are also making changes to prevent further issues, and we're confident that the Origin service will be stable for our International SimCity launches later this week."

Since Tuesday, EA has pulled the servers offline, promised resolutions on the game's launch page, but still not managed to keep the game up and running. That SimCity Facebook page is covered in the rants of angry fans, some of which I shared on Twitter last night:

While SimCity has traditionally been a single-player game, the default mode of the new SimCity automatically connects a player's city to those of a handful of other players, setting up trade and transit between cities. Residents from one city shop or work or go to college in a neighbor's city. Players can buy power from each other or coordinate on massive "great works". Even the game's solo, private sandbox mode requires an online connection, which many critics see as EA's attempt to bake anti-piracy digital rights management (DRM) into the game, even as EA designers have maintained that the always-online requirement is more of a design choice that persistently connects fans to a global SimCity marketplace and to new game-wide challenges.

Kotaku writers, myself included, have struggled to get access to the game, despite trying to log in at all hours of the day. I was last able to play at 8:00am ET on Wednesday morning and have run into server alerts that blocked me ever since. Our Mike Fahey, who has been laboring to review the game, says he briefly got access to the game this morning. He and I both were able to access the game on EA's private servers this past weekend without much trouble and played on public servers on launch day with few hitches.

The game's current problems echo those of Blizzard's Diablo III, which launched last May to days of errors that seemed to arise from its always-online requirements. Back then I was given a demo of the game by EA producer Kip Katserelis and asked him what they were doing to not have Diablo's problems strike SimCIty as well. He said:

"We've got experience from Spore and Darkspore," Katserelis said, citing other recent Maxis games. "EA is an on online company. We're definitely watching what's going on at Blizzard, and we're putting in backstops and checks to try to prevent those kind of things from happening."

Last night, as those very problems were striking his game, "Maxis_MD " (presumably Katserelis) posted a comment on the game's message boards:

This has been an exciting and challenging week for the team here at Maxis, the culmination years of planning and development. We have been overwhelmed by the outpouring of support and enthusiasm from our fans which has made it even more upsetting for us that technical issues have become more prominent in the last 24 hours. We are hitting a number of problems with our server architecture which has seen players encountering bugs and long wait times to enter servers. This is, obviously, not the situation we wanted for our launch week and we want you to know that we are putting everything we have at resolving these issues.

What we are doing is deploying more servers over the coming two days which will alleviate many of the ongoing issues. We are also paying close attention to all the bug reports we are receiving from our fans. We've already pushed several updates in the last few days. Our live ops team is working 24/7 to resolve issues and ensure that bug fixes roll into the game as quickly as possible.

While the ongoing issues are troubling, we can also see that players are really enjoying the game. In a single 24 hour period, there were more than 38 million buildings plopped down, nearly 7 and a half million kilometers of roads laid down, 18+ million fires started and (my favorite fact) over 40 million pipes filled up with poop.

This team has put everything into this game and won't stop until things are smooth. We ask our fans to be patient as our team works diligently to fix the issues. We share your passion for SimCity and thank you for your support and understanding.

Rough times. We asked a SimCity rep a day ago if any of these problems will alter the game's online requirement and to explain how in the world this happened. If or when they respond, we'll let you know.

Sony announced the PlayStation 4 last month to much fanfare and a complete lack of an actual console. The stone has been cast and now we get to see the ripples. Japanese gaming magazine, Weekly Famitsu conducted a questionnaire between February 22nd and February 26th, where they asked Japanese game fans for their thoughts and opinions on Sony's upcoming console. The questionnaire consisted of 4 questions. Here's what was asked, and a roundup of reader responses:

1. What were your initial impressions of the PS4?
"Developers are saying it's easy to program for so it looks like there'll be a lot of games." Responded a 36 year-old office worker. Of those who responded, roughly half said they were anticipating or highly anticipating the PS4 right out the gate. Some remained reserved, however, voicing concern at the overt focus on the overseas market or the fact that the console would not be compatible with PS3 game discs. A good portion also remained on the fence due to lack of intricate details.

2. What functions or services are you interested in?
Graphics were definitely the biggest point of interest for gamers, and the PS4 does not look to disappoint. Interestingly, however, more than the other additional features, people seemed to be looking forward to the decreased load time thanks to the Suspend Mode that maintains game progress in a low-power mode. This seems to indicate an overall present dissatisfaction having to go through the startup process to load a game in progress each time you power up a machine.

3. What upcoming game titles are you interested in?
Even though nothing of a new game was shown at the February 20th announcement, most Japanese gamers are faithfully expectant of Square Enix's upcoming new Final Fantasy game that will hopefully be officially announced at E3 this year.

4. What upcoming announcements are you looking forward to?
The pricetag. Or, more accurately, "how hard our wallets are going to be hit" was on the minds of most responders. And with good reason. The original 60GB PS3 shook Japanese buyers down for a hefty ¥59,980 (US$638.49) when it first came out. Sony has remained tight-lipped about the price of the PS4, but hopefully it won't be as costly.
Among people who responded with "other" were the following opinions:
"It looks like there will be a lot more network services, but I'd like to know just how much of them will be available for free. I'd like things that were free for the PS3, like online play, to remain that way." (28 year-old office worker)
"Won't cloud services suffer from network congestion depending on the game genre? I don't understand why they don't just make the PS4 backwards compatible with the PS3." (39 year-old office worker)

ファミ通.com [ファミ通.com]

There's nothing wrong with social games, m'kay? Social games are fine. But maybe it's time to ditch that moniker. According to Takehiro Ando, a mobile game producer at Square Enix, recently did a post on Famitsu titled "Sayonara Social Games", that might not be a bad idea.

Social games are suffering from some bad PR. "It was often the case that the emphasis wasn't on how to make a game better, but rather, how to get money from customers," Ando wrote. As previously noted, social games in Japan used a game system that was kind of like gambling. The backlash caused social game companies to phase out controversial "complete gacha" elements in their games.

Thus, the word "social game" in Japan has come to mean card based games that people spend lots of money on in hopes of getting rare digital cards. That's not a very good image.

"This year, what we are going to do is push ourselves to find various new, fun things," explains Ando. Therefore instead of focusing on "social", Ando points out that the goal is "Fun games that run on smartphones."

The game producer also points out something else that's very interesting: A recent game that has the some of the best social aspects is Animal Crossing: New Leaf, but nobody calls it a social game.

"That's why, if a social game is interesting, I think it's good as a game," said Ando, adding it would be good if there was even a new way of referring to them. The example that Ando gives is that in Japan, the word "game center" had a bad image. And that's when game companies started opening "amusement centers", which conjured a very different and much better impression.

At the bottom of the article, Ando points out that this year, Japanese game companies will release big titles one after another. And he goes on to mention how prominent game designers are selected smartphone games as a platform.

"Because, increasingly, I've also had the chance to talk to many hardcore game creators about smartphone games," Ando writes, "the age of smartphones blossoming into video games is coming at last."

スクエニプロデューサー安藤武博氏のブログ"スマゲ★革命 シーズン2"第一回　「さようなら、ソーシャルゲーム。」 [ファミ通 via ゲーム情報！ゲームのはなし]

Error Code 105-3102. That's apparently what some Japanese users have been running into when trying to access Nintendo's e-shop on their Wii U. Not just the e-shop, but as prolific youtube video poster MEGUMIbernadette (who previously posted a video on the long load times of the Wii U) demonstrates in her video, attempting to update the Wii U firmware results in the same error.

According to Nintendo, the problem is apparently caused by a program inside the Wii U which will need to be patched. This is a bit of a problem for Nintendo (to put it lightly) as they just started beta testing for the Wii U version of Dragon Quest X Online yesterday and the error in question prevents access by not letting users download the beta. One of the perks of picking up the more expensive premium edition of the Wii U was that it included an exclusive registration form for the beta test, so to run into this error kind of puts wrench in the gears for all involved.

Nintendo is currently investigating the error in question and has addressed it on their support page. According to Nintendo, the error has also been confirmed when using Wii Points to purchase a voucher for the Wii U version of Dragon Quest X Online. A patch is scheduled to be released by this weekend.

Launch stumbles are something of a norm in the gaming industry. While this error is a fairly serious issue for Nintendo, the silver lining is that this is the beta test and not the official launch. Hopefully they'll be able to fix the problem in due haste, or as MEGUMIbernadette says in her video, "Our Iwacchi (a cutesy nickname for Nintendo president, Satoru Iwata) will fix it for us!" Please do, Mr. Iwata. Directly.

[WiiU]ドラクエ10ベータ初日！エラーコード105-3102が出て遊べない！[DQ10] [YouTube]

お客様へのお知らせ [任天堂ホームページ]

In Japan, it's become a rite of passage. For years now, the country's youth have piled into sticker picture machines at their local arcades and snapped photos with friends. But times change, and so do trends. As the years go by, sticker picture companies must keep pace.

That's led to some unflattering photos.

Almost a decade ago, the trend was pale skin. So, sticker picture companies rolled out machines that could brighten your complexion. Then, the thing was big eyes, so likewise, sticker picture companies had machines outfitted with face recognition software that would make your peepers appear larger.

And now? Now, young Japanese women want longer legs. This is a trend originally fueled in part by the long-limbed Korean pop groups like Girl's Generation—something Kotaku first mentioned earlier this year.

Sticker pictures aren't just the Japanese equivalent of photo booths. The point of them is to look better than in real life, and thus, to meet this latest trend, sticker pictures that can make your legs appear long began appearing. One machine, Kirei Navi 2, even offers the ability to select from their different leg lengths! The way the software works is to "stretch" the image at the top and the bottom. Hardly sophisticated, but it's serviceable.

In Japan, among male and females, the reaction to these sticker pics has ranged from "amazing" to "what the..." Even the folks who posed for the pictures are surprised by the results, with photos giving ridiculously long legs or even causing people to appear malnourished! Have a look for yourself.

Here's a comparison that shows just how much the software can alter the length of your legs.




See how the girl's head looks unnaturally large? That's because anything in the top of the frame is stretched.




Likewise, anything at the bottom of the frame is elongated.

And here are some pics of the past sticker picture software that gave people larger, totally unnatural eyes.

I thought this one was my favorite.

Until, I saw this.

ロング？ みいぽよ(クキプロ)
ぷりくら プリクラ JK 面白い おもしろ 我ながらきも(笑) [プリ画像]
エヴァンゲリオン劇場版・破、面白かったッス！！ [ＹＥＳ！プリクラ王子]
このプリクラくっそワロタwwwwwwwwwwwww [スコール]
またDQNプリクラ仕入れちゃったwwwwwwwww [あじゃじゃしたー]
怖いプリクラみつけたwwwwwwwwww [おにぎり]
今のプリクラってすごいよね [しーちゃん]
てか今のプリクラは足も細く映るからすごいよね〜！ [Twipple]
最近のプリクラ関連事情で驚いたことランキング [Girls Channel]
最近のプリ機おかしい ほんとにおかしい [@miyon_miyon]
プリクラの全身って足めっちゃ細くなるじゃん？ [@goookmgya]
うちらプリクラ撮ってて結構盛る為に真剣すぎて [Crooz]
Navi 2 [Photozou]
カッコイイ女を目指したい！ [Duras]
「Teens Report」 3 プリクラ [alluring life]

Hello, everyone! This is Scott. Scott Oellkers. He's the president of Domino's Pizza Japan, and he's here to totally weird you out.

If you don't know who Hatsune Miku is, Scott will tell you all about the virtual idol—and tell you about how Domino's Pizza is teaming up with Miku for a new iTunes app that allows you to order pizza, Miku style.

What's more, once you get your order, the pizza box can be turned into a virtual AR stage. You can also take photos with the digital singer.

It's not unusual for a company in Japan to team up with Hatsune Miku. Heck, Google had her star in TV commercials. No biggie.

But the whole ordeal, starring real-life Domino's exec Scott Oellkers, is rather strange! It's not unheard of for English speaking people to appear in Japanese ads. Likewise, no biggie. But a real exec? Only speaking English? For a Hatsune Miku, pizza ordering app? For Japan? Bwah?

"Pervert CEO," wrote one commenter on 2ch, Japan's largest bulletin board. "It's good that this president is in such high spirits", wrote another. "Why the hell is this old foreign dude talking, but this is Japan only?" asked yet another. One other sites, some wrote how the app seems cool, but this is a crappy pitch.

See elsewhere in Asia, Scott Oellkers has a track record—a highly successful one. But people in Japan have no idea about that or who the hell this guy is. That's perhaps why this whole thing seems really, really odd.

When he was an exec at Domino's Taiwan, Oellkers was a celebrity. He appeared in all (or nearly all) the Taiwanese Domino's commercials, speaking Chinese. And when he wasn't doing that, he was showing up on talks shows and being interviewed in it. So there was an obvious cultural connection that doesn't quite exist when Scott is speaking English in Japanese commercials. It's jarring, and some Japanese people aren't quite sure what the hell is going on. Heck, some English speakers aren't sure, either.

All this being said, many in Japan do like the digital Miku that appears in the app, are baffled that there isn't an Android version, and really like pizza. Mmmm pizza.

It's been over two years since we saw the design for the first one, but Indonesian artist machine56's amazing line of Dead Space hoodies and shirts are now finally ready to order, direct from the artist.

You'll find ordering info below, as well as a full catalogue containing other pieces, some Dead Space-related, others less so. Those RIG and Ishimura hoodies are just the best.

5060 X DS3 PREORDER [machine56]

Describing something as "addictive" is often innocuous, even if the word can have wildly different meanings. Saying that nutella is addictive is not the same thing as saying that a drug is addictive, for example. One of those is meant as a compliment, the other...not so much.

When we're talking about games, describing them as addictive is how many of us laud compelling design decisions that make it difficult to stop playing.

When I say that Call of Duty is addictive, for example, what I'm really talking about is how thrilling twitch-based shooting is, and how remarkable the game is at providing constant adrenaline rushes. That also explains why it often sounds like we're describing a drug: you can't get enough of it, and in some way, that feels seductive.

The most recent example of our obsession with the word would have to be SimCity, a franchise that is known for being addictive.

"I've been playing SimCity since late last week, and, like every previous version, I've found it to be unyieldingly addictive," writes Slate.

"If addiction is a freight train, then SimCity is the roaring locomotive pulling you into the night," writes Polygon.

We know what they mean, right? "Addictive" means it's a good game—because that's what we mean when we say something makes us lose track of time, when something refuses to let us go.

I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that conflation. For one, we are celebrating compulsion. Sorry, that's gross.

Furthermore, defaulting to the word is too easy. What about not being able to put a game down is good, exactly? The clincher isn't that you weren't able to put the game down. That's merely the effect of a worthwhile design choice.

Something isn't worthwhile because you can't stop doing it, after all. What's good about Hotline Miami for example is that the levels resemble short puzzles, the music puts you in the zone and, similarly to Call of Duty, the quick pace is invigorating. You might die in a few seconds. Or, you might kill everything in your path. You play to find out.

The inability to put the game down? Hardly the thing that makes Hotline Miami worth playing. Though in this specific case, if we did talk about the game in the context of it feeling like a drug, that would be thematically congruent with the game as a whole.

Further, knowing that games are often engineered with the explicit purpose of being "addictive" feels uncomfortable. Because let's not mince words here, game developers like it when we can't put their games down—and that's not just limited to developers who make Skinner-box-like social games.

The more you play, the more you might buy. Welcome to the world of games-as-services, DLC and microtransactions. Addictive is a business imperative more than anything now, and it's one that we've embraced with open arms.

When we like to measure a game's worth in relation to how many hours of playtime it can give us, our approval isn't surprising. The more hours a game allows us to sink into it, the better. That hour-to-dollar ratio has got to be just right, else it's easier to feel that a game has cheated you. Which is stupid, because time and time again short games prove they can be worth your money.

And what of the ethics of an addictive game? I suspect most people would, without hesitation, say that a developer should not be held accountable for the unhealthy habits a player forms...while ignoring that it's likely a game was built with the explicit purpose of being too compelling to put down. To what degree can we absolve developers of their own potential responsibility over the works that they create? I don't think the answer is as clear-cut as some would assume.

Regardless, something curious happens now that I've realized too many games try to dominate my time. I play lots of multiplayer games, and these are titles that I've put in an absurd number of hours into—often, because they're designed so that that happens.

Endless levels—everything has an effing level. You have a level. Sometimes your gun has a level. There are typically weekly/daily challenges, and sometimes even those challenges have levels. There's also always a new map pack on the horizon. Double/Triple XP weekends. Cosmetic unlocks.

Let's not forget the most absurd part of this all: sometimes, we'll willingly erase all of that progress with "prestiging." All of these come together as if to say, "Play some more, why don't you?"

No, I think not. More and more often, likely in the wee hours of the night after a gaming binge, I'll look up in a daze from my screen. I'll put my controller down.

I'll look at whatever game I'm playing and go, you know what? I'm not interested in a game that wants to monopolize my time. I don't want a game that is equally as enjoyable on the thousandth hour as it is in the hundredth.

Screw the addictive games. Note that I'm not saying "screw the good games;" of course I want good games. But I think I'd rather play a game that is okay with letting me play other games, a game that feels enough confidence in itself and respects me enough let me have a life outside of that specific game.

We should want more games that know how to package what they need to communicate to us in a sensible number of hours, not games that make it hard to ever let go.

The oldest memory I have is of catching a baseball. Coming from a sports fan, this may sound like treacly, lump-in-your-throat stuff, but it's true. I was three years old. My father was mowing one side of our front lawn, I was standing in the other, and I underhanded a pop fly into the air. It hung up there forever and I got dizzy trying to follow it. When the ball smacked into my hands, I had no idea how I'd caught it.

Thirty-seven years later, I'm sitting on a suede easy chair recreating that moment in MLB 13 The Show. Not necessarily in a good way, either. Don't get me wrong, The Show's latest release still places it in the top echelon of sports gaming. But its improvements are mostly subtle, which is to be expected of an annual sports release near the end of a console life cycle, especially one made by a company that just announced the next piece of hardware. Some of its more overt changes are head-scratching, if not off-putting.

Let's start with Road to the Show, a very popular career mode that indulges your superstar fantasy, and a bulletproof feature every year since its introduction. MLB 13 The Show introduces a new camera perspective for both hitting and fielding, but I'm not sure what it adds to the experience. If you hit or catch a lot of fly balls, prepare to spend a lot of time staring up.

In fielding, you're now following the flight of a fly ball, visually, as you respond to an onscreen icon telling you where to move your player. For high pop flies, even to the warning track, there's almost no way where to judge where you are in the field—that's why there's a warning track, after all, the crunch of clay under your cleats lets you know, hey, you're close to the wall. Not that single-player fielding was a breeze in MLB 12 The Show—taking good routes to corral a shot in the gap is a little easier in MLB 13 thanks to the new onscreen indicator. But in Road to the Show, the new fielding view makes a high fly ball—especially one in which you have to range back—an adventure. This, plus the continued lack of a fielding minigame to acclimate yourself to these responsibilities—your only means of learning is to go out there in a live performance—means your debut month is going to be filled with needless mistakes that a professional ballplayer, of any caliber, simply wouldn't make.

In batting, you will also follow the flight of the ball, with it centered on your screen (unless you hold a shoulder button to keep your eyes on a base coach). Longtime fans know why a ballclub's comp seats are directly behind home plate—they offer the poorest perspective on the flight of the ball. In Denver I'd go to Rockies games and laugh at the minivan crowd from Douglas County sitting behind home, shouting at anything hit in the air. In The Show, I've hit towering flies that I thought for sure were over a fielder's head, only to see one trotting in to pull it down. I've chopped them to the opposite field, expecting to be caught out, and seen the ball sail into the corner or even over the fence—which has its own consequence as effective baserunning always requires thinking a step ahead.

WHY: When the history of the PS3 is written, MLB The Show will be recognized as the console's most consistently excellent title.

---

MLB 13 The Show

Developer: San Diego Studio
Platforms: PS3, PS Vita (reviewed on PS3)
Release Date: March 5

Type of game: Sports simulation.

What I played: Two rookie campaigns in Road to the Show (pitcher and hitter) and an entire postseason. Four games played online day of release.

My Two Favorite Things

• Hitting is easier, which reduces stress offline, and makes online play much more enjoyable.
• Just a beautiful game, richly illustrating one of the best sports fantasies money can buy.

My Two Least-Favorite Things

• Some changes to Road to the Show presentation seem needless and invasive.
• Despite a new "Beginner" mode, you're still on your own learning essential acts like baserunning (team) and fielding (Road to the Show).

Made-to-Order Back-of-Box Quotes

• "Still the finest in the field."
  -Owen Good, Kotaku.com
• "Brings back the terror of tracking down a towering fly ball in Little League."
  -Owen Good.
• "This is a game for all America. A game for boys and for men."
  -Ernie Harwell.

The new camera view is a mandate of a more personalized focus in Road to the Show, not that last year's was, really, wanting for intimacy. Before the game, the commentary booth will remark specifically on your career, the milestones you reach, and the expectations set before you. (If you miss a promotion to AAA or the majors, they'll bring it up.) RTTS, which for many is the only mode they will play in the game (it is for me), removes the player from the broadcast presentation and depicts him more in the mode of playing the game. In some areas, the execution is fantastic. Your base coach yells situation-specific instructions at you. Infield chatter is authentic to the ball-strike count and number of outs. It's more than window-dressing, it's actionable information.

During a game in MLB 13's Road to the Show, however, the regular broadcast audio is gone. You only hear commentary after the end of a meaningful play. Yes, I know real baseball players don't hear what the guys in the booth are saying as they play. But every 12-year-old who fantasizes about hitting a game winning home run also mimics the radio call as he does so. The inclusion of TV audio—or a camera view of your hit—doesn't shatter immersion. What does is the distracting whoosh noise you get as you either enter or leave your player's head to hear on-field sounds or a deliberately tinny broadcast commentary. In many cases, the audio doesn't kick in soon enough, and is cut off mid-sentence when you return to play. It even slows the game down relative to MLB 12 The Show's RTTS.

If you're a veteran player 10 seasons into an RTTS career under MLB 12 The Show, you already know how to hit in this game, and probably won't feel much of an urge to start all over again in MLB 13 on Day One. That's for a single mode of play, however, and my disappointments in The Show are almost entirely limited to it. There still is palpable improvement in two critical areas elsewhere in the game: Its online play, and in hitting.

Online play has long been a bugaboo for The Show, especially for a game so dependent on timing (or defeating it, as a pitcher). In the online games played I played opening night, I've never had the feeling that my hitting was thrown off by input lag. I doubt The Show rewrote its codebase and hit it perfectly on the first try; it's more likely that opening the hitting window—the time in which you can make effective contact on the ball—helped move online play into a more enjoyable state. The flipside is, playing casually, you're going to see a lot of slugfests. While shooting the bull with a friend, we traded eight-run innings. That said, the huge totals were totally the fault of my lack of attention. The home runs I hit (or surrendered) came in authentic situations, and swinging for the fences on every pitch with Jason Heyward still got me five strikeouts with him in a game.

In offline play, experienced Show players may find themselves bumping hitting difficulty up to All-Star or higher soon into their Franchise or RTTS careers. Hits are very easy to come by at lower difficulties, but that's fine with me. In past iterations of The Show, I played a lot of station-to-station baseball, grateful for any hit or one-run advantage. The opening of the hitting timing window means you don't have to approach every situation with a man on base like it's your last. You can stand in there, be selective, and wait for the pitch you prefer to hit.

There's a new fielding system as well, something called "Button Accuracy" which combines a throwing meter (for accuracy of the throw) with how hard you jam on the button of the base you're going to. It takes some getting used to, and in my first few games I was pulling a lot of guys off the bag with what should be routine throws. Still, Button Accuracy does make the business of scooping out ground balls and turning double plays into more of a deterministic exercise than past versions of The Show (or other baseball games, in general.) It gives worthy attention to fielding, the second-most unloved phase of the game (next to baserunning). But if you don't prefer it, The Show lets you employ older control methods.

That is, somewhat secretly, the greatest strength to this series: The endless customization of the controls and the means that offers to challenge your true strengths (mine is pitching) while minimizing your weaknesses (fielding and baserunning). No other game offers this level of assistance without making you feel like you're cheating or ignoring a critical phase of play. To this, Sony's San Diego Studio added a "Beginner Mode" that I've already sampled, and anyone with more than a year's history on The Show won't need to spend much time with it. It's not so much a tutorial as it is a difficulty (or lack thereof) setting, applicable to any game mode. It only trains you up in pitching and hitting however; this is a game that could seriously use instruction in baserunning and fielding, acts that are taken for granted but mystifying to a newcomer once the ball is in play.

As always, MLB The Show is one of the most beautiful video games—sports or otherwise—period. NBA 2K is a close rival in the genre, but even it has quirks—in the way tank-top jerseys hang, for example—and is a sport played inside an enclosed arena. The Show presents a game principally in outdoor lighting with impeccable quality throughout. There isn't a flat or unnaturally low-contrast surface on any part of the screen, even during a night game. The crowd, one of the atmospheric features everyone loves to bring up when discussing next generation hardware, is alive, interesting and distinct. You really see it in the game's postseason presentation, which you can jump to in a new tournament mode without having to wade or sim through an entire Franchise season. When I ponder how the next console generation could possibly make a game's graphics more stunning, MLB 13 The Show on the PlayStation 3 is the first thing I think of, because Christ almighty, no other sports video game, every year, is this good looking.

Yes, a lot of MLB 13 The Show's quality is banked on the excellence that preceded it. It's no bold leap forward, which should be expected as we come to the close of this console generation. Its peers in the sports genre—FIFA, NHL and NBA 2K—likewise took few risks in their most recent releases. These are the supermodels of sports video gaming: visually stunning, impeccably manicured, desired by the public and envied by their peers, and if they have recognizable flaws or grating annoyances, they're overwhelmed by beauty and sophistication.

But I'm struck by how I can still fall in love every year with a game so dependent on such repetitive acts spread out over a 162-game season. I will always, always love watching the cleanup hitter pivot slightly, check his swing, and see my 1-2 slider drift across the plate like an extinction-level asteroid in a near-earth trajectory. Every sports video game has its moments. In MLB The Show, they are memories.

"I had a rough night, and I hate the fuckin' Eagles, man."

That line from The Big Lebowski is one of my favorites from a movie chock-full of amazing lines. It was the first time Hollywood told me that as it turns out, it's okay that I find The Eagles super annoying. Hey, The Dude feels the same way!

Er, anyway, what were we talking about? Oh, right. Today is The Big Lebowski's 15th anniversary, and now that you feel good and super-old, you can listen to this chiptune reimagining of the film's music by Chipocrite, also known as Paul Weinstein.

The whole thing was arranged for a single Game Boy using Little Sound DJ. My favorite track is "Just Dropped In," since, well, of course it is. Check the album out at Bandcamp but be be careful, man, there's a beverage here.