Writers from The Simpsons, Futurama and Family Guy Working on Machinima Experiment

The following article is from kotaku.com.(Brian Crecente)
Originally posted on December 18, 2008.

Writers from 15 television sitcoms, including The Simpsons, Futurama and Family Guy, have signed on with Machinima.com to 15 original episodic comedy pilots for the online network using video games.

The Machinima Comedy Lab pilots will air on Machinima.Com, but no date was announced for the first pilot.

"Machinima.com lets us put our work in front of an audience that already knows and loves our style of writing and is embracing new forms of digital entertainment," said Bill Oakley, an Emmy-winning writer and past show runner of The Simpsons. "We get to do what we love the most—write and create fun content while Machinima.com handles all the production, marketing and distribution."

The Machinima Comedy Lab pilots will be created by top Hollywood writers, including:
— Chris Cluess: Mad TV, The Simpsons, Beggars and Choosers, Cheers, SCTV
— Bill Freiberger: Drawn Together, The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, The Simpsons
— Eric Horsted: Boondocks, Knights of Prosperity, Futurama, Home Improvement, Coach
— Ken Keeler: Futurama, The Simpsons, Wings, The Naked Truth, The Critic, The Late Show
— Stacie Lipp: King of Queens, Roseanne, Married With Children
— Christina Lynch: Wildfire, The Dead Zone, Unhappily Ever After
— Peggy Nicoll: WordGirl, Daria
— Bill Oakley: Mission Hill, The Simpsons, Futurama
— Max Pross & Tom Gammill: The Simpsons, Seinfeld, Monk, The Critic, Saturday Night Live, The Late Show
— Mike Rowe: Family Guy, Futurama, Comedy Central Roasts, The Jaime Kennedy Experiment
— Loren Segan: Wildfire, The Dead Zone, Spyder Games
— Patric M. Verrone: Futurama, Muppets Tonight!, The Simpsons, The Critic, Pinky and the Brain
— Maiya Williams: Mad TV, The PJs, The Wayans Bros., The Fresh Prince of Bel Air

"This is the future of comedy in new media - a fast and low cost way for writers to create shows that attract an existing audience," said Patric M. Verrone, an Emmy-winning writer and president of WGA West. "We're thrilled to break ground and forge a relationship that empowers independent production and gives writers both creative freedom and financial participation."

"As an emerging entertainment network, we're dedicated to bringing aboard top creative talent," said Allen DeBevoise, Machinima.com chairman and chief executive officer. "Machinima.com provides these writers with a new, evolving medium in which to reach the highly desired 18 to 34 male audience, showcase creativity and develop episodic pilots for multiple platforms."

Konami Confirms iPhone Metal Gear

The following article is from kotaku.com. (Luke Plunkett)
Originally posted on December 17, 2008.

The rumour looked pretty solid, but confirmation is always swell. The next Metal Gear game will indeed be on the iPhone, and it's called Metal Gear Solid Touch.
What's more, courtesy of Konami we now have some details on the game. It's an original title set in the MGS4 universe, and consists of 8 stages (with the promise of more to be made available later). It's obviously controlled via the touchpad (as opposed to the accelerometer), with a sniping screenshot looking a lot like the iPhone's zoom-in text editing setup.

MGS obsessives will be well catered for, with bonus points accrued through gameplay able to be traded in to unlock stuff like Metal Gear iPhone wallpapers.

It's due for a worldwide release in Spring 2009.

Hasbro Drops Scrabulous Lawsuit

The following article is from kotaku.com. (Mike Fahey)
Originally posted on December 16, 2008.

RJ Softwares, the creators of the popular Facebook game Scrabulous, can now rest easy as Hasbro drops the copyright infringement lawsuit they filed in order to protect their precious Scrabble.

The lawsuit came about after Hasbro's requests to Facebook to remove the Scrabble homage went unanswered back in January of this year. Days after the lawsuit hit, the creator's of Scrabulous removed the game themselves, replacing it soon after with a retooled version in the form of Wordscraper, removing the game's obvious Scrabble design influence.

While court documents didn't specify a reason for Hasbro's withdraw, it is most likely that the changes made did the trick. The massive popularity of their official Facebook Scrabble game probably helped. Now Facebook users can finally get back to worrying about more important things, like taking movie quizzes.

Resident Evil 5 Preview

The following article is from gamepro.com.
(Sid Shuman and Patrick Shaw)
Originally posted on December 15, 2008.

In this exclusive report, we detail the shocking shifts in gameplay, dissect vile new Resident Evil 5 enemies, including giant bats and bloodthirsty crocodiles, and engage in desperate shoot-outs in an oil refinery and a desolate mountain pass. And check out our new Resident Evil 5 Q&A and new Resident Evil 5 screens.

Resident Evil returns on March 13 with a nightmarish new strain of parasitic enemies to hack through, a frantic cooperative gameplay style, and a heavier emphasis on action. Capcom's undead-shooting series is known for its scares and its grim, isolated atmosphere, but Resident Evil 5 boosts the action quotient and turns up the lights to create a fast-paced horror game that's scary even when it's set in broad daylight. The game pits you against teeming masses of zombie-like aggressors, misshapen monsters, and other carriers of the mysterious Las Plagas infection that were last seen ravaging the spooky Spanish village from Resident Evil 4.

Heart of Darkness
After rising from the smoldering wreckage of the Umbrella Corporation facility at the conclusion of Resident Evil Code: Veronica, original RE veteran Chris Redfield now heads to Africa to battle more plague-carrying adversaries. As part of the BSAA, the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance, Redfield and new partner Sheva Alomar team up to investigate a new outbreak that sees its victims turned into mindless hosts for a prehistoric body-snatching parasite. Umbrella Corporation, the shadowy bio-tech conglomerate that pulled all the strings in the previous Resident Evil games, is no longer the villain du jour. But a new pharmaceutical firm called Tricell appears to be picking up where Umbrella's forbidden bio-weapons research left off, and the result is an outbreak of unprecedented size and virulence in a small village in eastern Africa. You won't have to wait long to find evidence of infection, either. Just minutes into the game you'll be forced to fend off an army of sprinting, snarling zombies, who will tear down a house, board by board, to reach you.

Social Anxiety
In a nod to blockbuster shooters such as Gears of War, Resident Evil 5 enables you and a friend to play through the full campaign storyline together, whether you link up online or in your living room using split screen. Before playing, both users enter a lobby menu where they can trade weapons and ammo, purchase new guns or upgrade existing ones, and stash gear in a persistent inventory. And if you want to tackle the game solo, no problemo: the computer will fill in for Sheva's role and does so quite capably. When the computer controls Sheva, she'll grab supplies on her own and automatically heal you if you're struggling. If you're in a micromanaging mood, you can also swap her behaviors between Assault and Cover, or signal for her to stop or go. Luckily, the computer is smart enough that you won't need to babysit.

Whether you're playing with the computer or a human, providing cover fire for your partner as you both fight off hordes of the infected is a reoccurring theme in Resident Evil 5's campaign. Co-op adds more than just a second trigger finger, though. With a little communication, two players can easily launch orchestrated attacks against some the game's behemoth bad guys. One player can lure a particularly tough enemy, for example, while the other player blasts away from behind. We saw some inventive scenarios that further exploited the two-player formula, one such action scene set deep inside a dimly lit mine shaft. Armed with a single bulky spotlight to illuminate the suffocating darkness, one player can guide the beam to illuminate onrushing enemies and enable the other player to pick them off one by one. Moments like these made us smile, and gave us several of the startling jolts that made the prior games so memorably creepy.

With Resident Evil 5 shifting gears to a more action-centric experience, some series loyalists will undoubtedly worry that the game has abandoned its tough-as-nails, bullet-counting ways in favor of wall-to-wall shoot-outs. It's true that Resident Evil 5 has adopted a brighter, more visual style than its predecessor, trading in the gloomy Euro villages for the smoldering light and heat of Africa. And because you'll almost always have Sheva watching your back, the sense of brooding isolation that haunted Resident Evil 4 fades into a low background hum. On the other hand, we found that the cooperative experiences jangled our nerves in some new and unexpected ways. The game ends if either Chris or Sheva dies, so your self-centered tendencies will naturally give way to genuine concern for your partner's safety. Seeing your buddy go down under a tangle of thrashing zombie limbs marks a palpable sense of fear and dread, and you'll find yourself in moments of genuine panic as you desperately try to locate and save your dying comrade before he or she bleeds out. Luckily, some helpful on-screen prompts will alert you to your partner's condition, but you won't want to stray far-death lurks around every corner.

Shoe Attack On President Already Turned Into A Crappy Flash Game

The following article is from kotaku.com. (Jim Reilly)
Originally posted on December 15, 2008.

As hilarious and .gif worthy the incident was yesterday that saw an Iraqi journalist chucking his shoes at President Bush, did we really need a flash game? Apparently so.

The company T-Enterprise must be quick with their flash programming (or they knew about the incident beforehand!), because in less than 24 hours they managed to churn out a game (albeit a crappy one) where you must defend the President from shoes being thrown his way.

"If you watch the video clip, the Secret Service don't move to protect the President until the second shoe has been thrown," said Sadi Chishti, managing director of T-Enterprise, the Glasgow-based company behind the computer game. "We're hoping the agents will use this game as a training aid for future footwear attacks on world leaders."

Rather than batting the shoes down with your arms or hands, though, the game makes you shoot the shoes, with a good chance at hitting the President. Game Politics noted that was probably by design. I have to be honest, the first time I played it I unloaded into the President thinking that was the objective. WHOOPS!

CLICK HERE to play the game!

Female Avatars Are Not Safe in Sony Home

The following article is from gizmodo.com. (Jack Loftus)
Originally posted on December 14, 2008.

Here's some uplifting video from the trainwreck Sony Home. In it, we see two female avatars being surrounded by male avatars doing little dances. Apparently this is happening all over the service. A lot.

This next video, however, is hilarious. Called a "Quincy," the act lures in desperate males, and then pulls te ol' bait and switch. Classic.

The 10 Most Disappointing Games of 2008

The following article is from blog.wired.com.
Originally posted on December 12, 2008.

The games below, chosen by the usual panel of Wired.com contributors, is in no way supposed to be a list of the worst games of 2008. Those are all for the Wii, cost $10, are about dogs and/or babies, and we wouldn't be caught dead playing them. No, these are the games that let us down the most this year. Most of them are actually good games. But they failed to live up to the hype, or didn't deliver on their promises. Perhaps we were just left wanting more. Either way, here are our Most Disappointing Games of the year.

10. Age of Conan (PC)
MMO fans tired of World of Warcraft had high hopes for this so-called WoW-killer. So it's too bad that its developer vastly overestimated its own capabilities. Though Conan had great ideas, like the innovative combat system, Funcom shipped the game months before it had ironed out the most glaring bugs or added enough content. Devotees who had spent months poring over every screenshot and snippet of information prior to release found the resulting product to be an utter mess. — Earnest Cavalli

9. Tom Clancy's EndWar (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC)
At demos and hands-on preview events, this looked like the most accessible and innovative real-time strategy game in years, one that could help the genre find a new audience on consoles. We loved the stripped-down interface, the nonstop action and the voice recognition system that let you bark orders into your headset and watch your troops respond instantly. The voice input system was near-flawless, but EndWar was plagued with the same age-old problems: balance issues, spotty AI, janky pathfinding and a weak single-player experience. Ironically, Civilization Revolution, a console strategy game that didn't set out to reinvent the wheel, ended up making a much bigger splash. — Chris Baker

8. Too Human (Xbox 360)
No game in 2008 had as much negative word-of-mouth as Silicon Knights' action RPG. On release, it neither owned the haters nor made prophets of the believers: Too Human turned out to be a flawed but enjoyable experience. The most disappointing part about it, though, was that it was over so soon. Perhaps designing a game as a trilogy isn't the best idea, when it means splitting a storyline into three parts and ending the first the very moment that the plot actually becomes interesting. — Chris Kohler

7. Stalker: Clear Sky (PC)
They say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but when we saw the trailers for Stalker: Clear Sky, we couldn't help but get excited about the haunting atmosphere, gorgeous visuals and the promise of improved AI. The finished product was quite pretty to look at, but suffered from a number of flaws that made sitting down and playing a chore. The first Stalker was interesting because you had to explore the world on your own, but Clear Sky's all-knowing GPS gadget killed that. And it was filled with even more bugs than the original — which kind of makes sense, since it's a prequel. — Nate Ralph

6. Mirror's Edge (Xbox 360, PS3)
For pure exhilaration, very few games in 2008 compared to the first-person parkour play mechanics of Mirror's Edge. Unfortunately, the same thing can be said about pure frustration. The shallow, unnecessary combat and obtuse level design meant that you died over and over (and over and over) again. DICE has created what could be a promising new genre, and we can't wait to play the expansion pack and inevitable sequel. But it would be irresponsible to celebrate their achievement without mentioning the glaring missteps that marred what otherwise would have been a contender for our Top 10 list. — Chris Baker

5. Dead Space (Xbox 360, PS3)
A gorgeous, seamless interface? "Strategic dismemberment"? Survival horror in space that (sort of) doesn't involve zombies? And a fantastic story penned with help from the esteemed Warren Ellis? Dead Space seemed like a guaranteed thrill ride. Alas, we've already seen Aliens, and played Doom, so it was more of a second go-round. The whack-a-mole combat is only barely propped up by a gimmick where leg-shots are the new headshots. The boss fights are inane and repetitive. And for the record, dimming the lights and slapping up bloody, gory wallpaper doesn't automatically make a game scary. — Nate Ralph

4. Prince of Persia (Xbox 360, PS3)
The Sands of Time was a masterpiece that ranks among the best videogames of the last decade, but its sequels were not. In some ways, this reboot got the acrobatic action series back on track: The graphics, music, and story are pitch-perfect. But the gameplay has been simplified and streamlined to the point that not only are players never challenged, they are rarely tasked with doing anything other than tapping a predetermined series of buttons to watch canned animations play out. What's even more disappointing is that so many gamers are unquestioningly lapping up this ample serving of style over substance; here's hoping the inevitable sequel is more balanced. — Chris Kohler

3. Mario Kart Wii (Wii)
When Nintendo revealed Wii, it was widely touted as nothing short of a revolution in the way we would experience games. True to form, Zelda: Twilight Princess and Super Mario Galaxy were both excellent updates that made good use of Wii's new features. But when it came time to take its go-kart racing game for another spin, Nintendo crashed into a tree. Not only does Mario Kart Wii completely fail to innovate in any meaningful way over earlier entries in the series, the awkward wheel peripheral that shipped with the title actually made gameplay more difficult. And the castrated battle mode was the airbag that failed to deploy. — Earnest Cavalli

2. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (Xbox 360, PS3)
LucasArts sunk a bunch of development time into the physics and animation engines that powered what was supposed to be the awesomest Star Wars game ever. Throwing Stormtroopers off cliffs and destroying environments using Force power was supposed to be like living the movie, but instead it was an utterly pedestrian action game. The brief glimpses of fun that it offered were drowned out by a host of poor design decisions, and the ridiculous Imperial Star Destroyer segment was the very last straw. — Chris Kohler

1. Spore (PC)
After years of unprecedented hype — no small amount of it coming from the pages of Wired magazine and Wired.com — Will Wright's evolution game Spore was something less than a Big Bang. While it was fascinating to observe how players created new creatures and shared them with the Sporepedia tool, the actual videogame at the core of all this user-generated content was disappointingly simple. The primordial soup of assorted gameplay tropes never did give birth to an evolved supergame. Spore may very well be remembered as introducing concepts that will change the way we play games, but that didn't make it fun. — Chris Kohler