You Choo-choo-choose The Demon’s Souls Valentine’s Day Special Event [Atlus]

Atlus is gearing up for another World Tendency event for the PlayStation 3 role-playing game Demon’s Souls just like it did for Halloween and the Christmas season. Since this one’s for Valentine’s Day , what will Atlus do? Whatever you choose. While Halloween was appropriately Black World Tendency and Christmas was White World Tendency, Atlus is letting players decide whether their February 14 is black or white. Feeling gloomy? Vote black. Feeling loved? You know what, vote black anyway. We just had a Pure White world and I could stand to kill some Primeval Demons in my new game+ playthrough. You can vote below, then spend your Valentine’s Day with the winning tendency and the lovely Maiden In Black in just over a week. It’s going to be so romantic! Demon’s Souls Valentine’s Tendency Event [Official Site - thanks, Colin!]

Link:
You Choo-choo-choose The Demon’s Souls Valentine’s Day Special Event [Atlus]

So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish [Goodbye]

After nearly a year and half of being Kotaku’s San Francisco Correspondent and default token girl*, it’s time for me to say goodbye. GamePro is whisking me away to that fabled land of print journalism I’ve heard so much about. I can easily say that my time here has been well spent. Kotaku taught me more than Stanford University’s graduate program in journalism ever did and gave me the chance to write about things I really care about. You know, instead of just boobs, Japanese role-playing games and scandals. Not that I mind writing about those things — actually when you combine all three, it can be pretty fun — but the world of video games is a lot larger than that. That’s part of why I went to Stanford; to convince them that this is a subject that deserves the attention of journalism, and yes, being a games journalist is compatible with being a “real” journalist. *After Leigh Alexander and Maggie Greene moved on, that is. Here are some of the things I’m most proud of: Knocked Up: A Look At Pregnancy in Video Games — I’d been pitching this feature idea for years to different publications, but Kotaku was the only outfit that let me run with it. I still find the topic fascinating and I still go out of my way to play games that let you get pregnant in some fashion. It’s very much my “thing.” Pieces of You: Rebuilding Myself on Consoles — Breakups suck, but my work at Kotaku got me through a really nasty one. I still can’t believe Stephen Totilo let me keep the Jewel song title in the headline. Kotaku’s Super Huge Pumpkin Patch (Parts One , Two , Three and Four ) — I’m a sucker for crafts projects and I find that there’s no other video game blog on the Internet that makes room to post stuff like this as well as shoes, cakes, video game wedding stuff, etc. It took me three hours on Halloween weekend to upload all those images, but it was worth it. Girls Night With The Most Male Game Of 2009 — Yes, it pissed people off. Yes, I got death threats. But what’s most important to me is that this article got people talking. I’m still amazed when I skim through the comments at some of the genuinely thoughtful discourse that goes on in there. Hope to see more of it where I’m going. And I still hope to see women in Modern Warfare 3. My Master’s Project, “Writing About Video Games: Journalism, Criticism and Mainstream Media” — I can’t let the full copy of this 7000-word beast see the light of day yet because in my mind, it’s still not “done.” While working on it, I got the chance to interview Totilo before he jumped ship for Kotaku, N’Gai Croal as he was leaving Newsweek , Seth Schiesel from the New York Times , Jamin Brophy-Warren of the Wall Street Journal and Georgia Tech Associate Professor Ian Bogost — it was an all star cast. Kotaku made that possible by giving me access to these heavy-hitters and its articles make up about a quarter of my source list. Here’s a tiny sample of my conclusion: Time will tell if Schiesel and Brophy-Warren’s editors care enough about video games to move their coverage into a more prominent place either in the print edition or in the online arts and entertainment section. If that happens, maybe their stories with replace the “point and giggle” stories in mainstream media. Time will tell if a vocabulary for talking about games emerges that are integrated into pop culture the way words and phrases like “Western” and “tear-jerker” can describe a movie to an audience that hasn’t seen it. If that doesn’t happen, words and phrases like “gameplay” or “free-look” and “sandbox” used in the reviews that most games journalism produces will remain impenetrable jargon specific to video games hobbyist magazines. Time might also make room for games journalism to grow up a little bit more, to develop into something that can be understood all 228 million American adults instead of just the 114 million who play them. Well, that about does it for me. Take care of yourselves and take care of each other. Have a happy, safe, New Year! Image Cred

Continue reading here:
So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish [Goodbye]

Can The West Cosplay With The Best Of Them? [Feature]

There is a stereotype — an unfair stereotype — that Westerners cannot cosplay. “A Japanese friend of mine told me very casually, in a totally matter-of-fact kind of way, that the difference between Japanese and American cosplay is as clear as moeru and naeru ,” says Patrick Galbraith, author of The Otaku Encycolpedia , University of Tokyo PhD candidate and cosplaying Akihabara tour guide. “Moeru” means “to bud”, while “naeru”is an antonym and means “to wilt”.” “My friend said that when he sees a Japanese cosplayer, the response is moeru, and when he sees a non-Japanese cosplayer,” continues Galbraith, “the response is naeru. He didn’t mean any harm, but this is a pretty damn racist statement.” It is a sentiment shared by Westerners, too, believing that Japanese cosplay is superior, placing it on a pedestal. The history of cosplay is intertwined with the West — it was not developed in a vacuum! The word cosplay was coined by journalist Nobuyuki Takahashi and first appeared in print in an article he wrote in a June 1983 article in the magazine “My Anime.”" Takahashi shortened the word to “cosplay” after hearing that “costume play” was not actually an English word. A direct Japanese translation of masquerade, with its aristocratic nuances, would not suffice. “Costume” and “play,”" both borrowed words in Japanese, became “cosplay,” In the early 1980s, attendees at doujin manga show Comic Market, or Comiket, began drawing pictures of their favorite manga and anime characters on their shirts. This evolved into a handful of individuals dressing up as actual characters. While Japanese fandom was trying to find its footing in expressing itself, its American counterparts had been dressed up at science fiction conventions for decades. Takahashi was surprised to see Trekkies in full Star Trek gear at the 1984 Worldcon (The World Science Fiction Convention) in Los Angeles. Takahashi hoped that the trend would catch on in his native Japan, and now had the newly minted term he needed to sell it. Geek culture is largely universal. The idea of dressing as one’s favorite characters — whether that be from Star Trek or Mobile Suit Gundam — has undeniable appeal. “Cosplay” is Japanese for “costume play” — individuals dressing up in costume. In Japan, it is not restricted to video game, manga or anime characters, but can encompass dressing in all sorts of outfits: maid, nurse, schoolgirl, etc. The term is a shortened form of borrowed English, yet cosplay is viewed as something uniquely for and by the Japanese. In the West, dressing up in costumes has a myriad of meanings — all different. There is a rich and long history of masquerade in European aristocracy, which was centuries later appropriated by the sci-fi expos as “costume contests” with participants dressing up as characters from domestic movies or TV shows. The West gave birth to Halloween, a holiday in which children don typically monster costumes. Finally, there is cosplay. For Japanese, the appeal of dressing up like anime, manga or game characters is understandable. “We see these characters all the time on TV,” says multimedia artist Julie Watai, who also does modeling under the name Ai Amano . “And because of that, we view them in the same category as pop stars or actors.” But, unlike the popular thespian or rock star, it is not possible to actually meet these characters. They exist in video games, on television screens and in the pages of manga. Dressing up as those characters gives them a chance to, not meet that character, but to become one with that character in a sense. “Not everyone likes these characters in Japan,” Watai notes. “But they can dress up as maids or other cute costumes that are sold in Japan.” For the Japanese, dressing up and having fun is cosplay. “It seems that costumes inspired by anime, manga, video games, light novel, figures and so on have come to be called cosplay in the United States,” says Galbraith. In Japan, however, Galbraith notes that it would be considered cosplay to dress up as Jack Sparrow or a Stormtrooper. Cosplay could even be considered dressing up as a policeman or a nurse. Americans have separated cosplay with earlier costume costume-wearing traditions (masquerade and Halloween) by East and West — “cosplay” is a Japanese word, so it, for Westerners, encapsulates Japanese popular culture. When the word was re-imported into the West from Japan, it was assumed that the origin was completely Japanese and associated with video games, anime and manga by default. “In all fairness, I don’t think this is really a misappropriation of the word,” notes Galbraith. Almost no one in the United States used the word cosplay, or probably even knew it, before the arrival of Japanese culture.” Thus, the connection in the minds of Westerners between cosplay and Japanese popular culture is natural and makes sense. What does not make sense is the notion that cosplay is exclusively Japanese or that Japanese cosplayers are intrinsically better at cosplaying than their Western counterparts. It’s not that one is better than the other, they’re just different. “A lot of times, American cosplayers are just having fun with it, which is fine,” says Patrick Macias , editor of mag Otaku USA . “But in Japan, where the otaku spirit runs deep, I get the sense that you can’t be as casual about your fandom, so there’s a sort of perfectionist streak that runs through the cosplay community there.” That means, far less goofing off, Macias continues, or you don’t really see silliness like dressing up as a giant Death Note book. The Japanese seriousness has even given birth to a chain store dealing in cosplay costumes called Cospa .” “In America, there’s no dedicated chain of cosplay stores like Cospa where you can walk in and buy professionally made costumes or accessories,” adds Macias. Those who didn’t get a gold star in arts-and-crafts can find the goods they need online. Those that can’t must make their costumes. “So Western fans tend be more DIY and crafty, which I think is good.” These homemade crafts can lead to spectacularly amazing cosplays or amazingly horrid — that’s part of the charm. “I notice a lot of people tend to focus on cosplayers who have just started out or tend to pick out unflattering photos of Western cosplayers,” says American cosplayer HezaChan , who has been cosplaying for 9 years and has made 30 different costumes. “There are just as many “bad” Japanese cosplayers and unflattering photos of Japanese cosplayers.” And while the number of “bad” cosplayers could very well be the same, the number of bad Western cosplayers is proportionate to the number of bad Japanese ones. The reason for the higher number of bad Western cosplayer pics isn’t necessarily the cosplayers’ fault, but rather, the subculture surrounding it. In Japan, the kamekozo (“camera kids”) act as PR machines for popular cosplayers, creating a grassroots idol culture. Kamekozo typically specialize in the best cosplays and largely focus on female cosplayers. These images are uploaded onto popular cosplay and even otaku news sites. This Japan-cosplays-better-than-the-West is hardly a sentiment shared by all. “Online I’ve seen literally tons of great cosplays from Westerners!” gushes Watai. “Westerners are much better at cosplaying characters designed with an American or European style than Asians are. They can actually look like the physical embodiment of those characters.” But many game or anime characters exist in a cultural netherworld, being designed out of a hodgepodge of features and motifs, looking “Western” to the Japanese and looking “Japanese” to Westerners. “Japanese cosplayers routinely voice their jealously of Western cosplayers who have features like green eyes or blonde hair — all the things they have to work hard to make a part of their costume, these foreigners were born with!” says Macias. “Meanwhile, Western cosplayers will sometimes don black wigs and contacts to look more ‘Asian.”” For the nearly the past thirty years, cosplay has been a conversation between 3D and 2D, between East and West and reality and image. It started out in the West under a different name and was appropriated by the Japanese and then reintroduced back to the West. There is no group of people that is stereotypically “better” at cosplay. And the act itself is deeper than Photoshopped images or cleverly staged stage shows — it offers insight into the very fabric of our cultures, what makes us different and what makes us the same. [Bottom photo Rhys Berresford] [ Pic ]

Read more from the original source:
Can The West Cosplay With The Best Of Them? [Feature]

Can The West Cosplay With The Best Of Them? [Feature]

There is a stereotype — an unfair stereotype — that Westerners cannot cosplay. “A Japanese friend of mine told me very casually, in a totally matter-of-fact kind of way, that the difference between Japanese and American cosplay is as clear as moeru and naeru ,” says Patrick Galbraith, author of The Otaku Encycolpedia , University of Tokyo PhD candidate and cosplaying Akihabara tour guide. “Moeru” means “to bud”, while “naeru”is an antonym and means “to wilt”.” “My friend said that when he sees a Japanese cosplayer, the response is moeru, and when he sees a non-Japanese cosplayer,” continues Galbraith, “the response is naeru. He didn’t mean any harm, but this is a pretty damn racist statement.” It is a sentiment shared by Westerners, too, believing that Japanese cosplay is superior, placing it on a pedestal. The history of cosplay is intertwined with the West — it was not developed in a vacuum! The word cosplay was coined by journalist Nobuyuki Takahashi and first appeared in print in an article he wrote in a June 1983 article in the magazine “My Anime.”" Takahashi shortened the word to “cosplay” after hearing that “costume play” was not actually an English word. A direct Japanese translation of masquerade, with its aristocratic nuances, would not suffice. “Costume” and “play,”" both borrowed words in Japanese, became “cosplay,” In the early 1980s, attendees at doujin manga show Comic Market, or Comiket, began drawing pictures of their favorite manga and anime characters on their shirts. This evolved into a handful of individuals dressing up as actual characters. While Japanese fandom was trying to find its footing in expressing itself, its American counterparts had been dressed up at science fiction conventions for decades. Takahashi was surprised to see Trekkies in full Star Trek gear at the 1984 Worldcon (The World Science Fiction Convention) in Los Angeles. Takahashi hoped that the trend would catch on in his native Japan, and now had the newly minted term he needed to sell it. Geek culture is largely universal. The idea of dressing as one’s favorite characters — whether that be from Star Trek or Mobile Suit Gundam — has undeniable appeal. “Cosplay” is Japanese for “costume play” — individuals dressing up in costume. In Japan, it is not restricted to video game, manga or anime characters, but can encompass dressing in all sorts of outfits: maid, nurse, schoolgirl, etc. The term is a shortened form of borrowed English, yet cosplay is viewed as something uniquely for and by the Japanese. In the West, dressing up in costumes has a myriad of meanings — all different. There is a rich and long history of masquerade in European aristocracy, which was centuries later appropriated by the sci-fi expos as “costume contests” with participants dressing up as characters from domestic movies or TV shows. The West gave birth to Halloween, a holiday in which children don typically monster costumes. Finally, there is cosplay. For Japanese, the appeal of dressing up like anime, manga or game characters is understandable. “We see these characters all the time on TV,” says multimedia artist Julie Watai, who also does modeling under the name Ai Amano . “And because of that, we view them in the same category as pop stars or actors.” But, unlike the popular thespian or rock star, it is not possible to actually meet these characters. They exist in video games, on television screens and in the pages of manga. Dressing up as those characters gives them a chance to, not meet that character, but to become one with that character in a sense. “Not everyone likes these characters in Japan,” Watai notes. “But they can dress up as maids or other cute costumes that are sold in Japan.” For the Japanese, dressing up and having fun is cosplay. “It seems that costumes inspired by anime, manga, video games, light novel, figures and so on have come to be called cosplay in the United States,” says Galbraith. In Japan, however, Galbraith notes that it would be considered cosplay to dress up as Jack Sparrow or a Stormtrooper. Cosplay could even be considered dressing up as a policeman or a nurse. Americans have separated cosplay with earlier costume costume-wearing traditions (masquerade and Halloween) by East and West — “cosplay” is a Japanese word, so it, for Westerners, encapsulates Japanese popular culture. When the word was re-imported into the West from Japan, it was assumed that the origin was completely Japanese and associated with video games, anime and manga by default. “In all fairness, I don’t think this is really a misappropriation of the word,” notes Galbraith. Almost no one in the United States used the word cosplay, or probably even knew it, before the arrival of Japanese culture.” Thus, the connection in the minds of Westerners between cosplay and Japanese popular culture is natural and makes sense. What does not make sense is the notion that cosplay is exclusively Japanese or that Japanese cosplayers are intrinsically better at cosplaying than their Western counterparts. It’s not that one is better than the other, they’re just different. “A lot of times, American cosplayers are just having fun with it, which is fine,” says Patrick Macias , editor of mag Otaku USA . “But in Japan, where the otaku spirit runs deep, I get the sense that you can’t be as casual about your fandom, so there’s a sort of perfectionist streak that runs through the cosplay community there.” That means, far less goofing off, Macias continues, or you don’t really see silliness like dressing up as a giant Death Note book. The Japanese seriousness has even given birth to a chain store dealing in cosplay costumes called Cospa .” “In America, there’s no dedicated chain of cosplay stores like Cospa where you can walk in and buy professionally made costumes or accessories,” adds Macias. Those who didn’t get a gold star in arts-and-crafts can find the goods they need online. Those that can’t must make their costumes. “So Western fans tend be more DIY and crafty, which I think is good.” These homemade crafts can lead to spectacularly amazing cosplays or amazingly horrid — that’s part of the charm. “I notice a lot of people tend to focus on cosplayers who have just started out or tend to pick out unflattering photos of Western cosplayers,” says American cosplayer HezaChan , who has been cosplaying for 9 years and has made 30 different costumes. “There are just as many “bad” Japanese cosplayers and unflattering photos of Japanese cosplayers.” And while the number of “bad” cosplayers could very well be the same, the number of bad Western cosplayers is proportionate to the number of bad Japanese ones. The reason for the higher number of bad Western cosplayer pics isn’t necessarily the cosplayers’ fault, but rather, the subculture surrounding it. In Japan, the kamekozo (“camera kids”) act as PR machines for popular cosplayers, creating a grassroots idol culture. Kamekozo typically specialize in the best cosplays and largely focus on female cosplayers. These images are uploaded onto popular cosplay and even otaku news sites. This Japan-cosplays-better-than-the-West is hardly a sentiment shared by all. “Online I’ve seen literally tons of great cosplays from Westerners!” gushes Watai. “Westerners are much better at cosplaying characters designed with an American or European style than Asians are. They can actually look like the physical embodiment of those characters.” But many game or anime characters exist in a cultural netherworld, being designed out of a hodgepodge of features and motifs, looking “Western” to the Japanese and looking “Japanese” to Westerners. “Japanese cosplayers routinely voice their jealously of Western cosplayers who have features like green eyes or blonde hair — all the things they have to work hard to make a part of their costume, these foreigners were born with!” says Macias. “Meanwhile, Western cosplayers will sometimes don black wigs and contacts to look more ‘Asian.”” For the nearly the past thirty years, cosplay has been a conversation between 3D and 2D, between East and West and reality and image. It started out in the West under a different name and was appropriated by the Japanese and then reintroduced back to the West. There is no group of people that is stereotypically “better” at cosplay. And the act itself is deeper than Photoshopped images or cleverly staged stage shows — it offers insight into the very fabric of our cultures, what makes us different and what makes us the same. [Bottom photo Rhys Berresford] [ Pic ]

Continued here:
Can The West Cosplay With The Best Of Them? [Feature]

Two Million Borderlands, 33 Games And One Mystery Title [Take Two Interactive]

Announcing no release date changes but allowing for some speculation about an unannounced 2010 game, Grand Theft Auto publisher Take Two Interactive held its last investors’ conference call of the calendar year. And Borderlands, it reiterated, is a franchise. The purpose of the call was to announce Take Two’s financial performance in the final quarter of its 2009 fiscal year, ending on Halloween. For that quarter, the company reported a revenue loss of $22 million off of earnings of $343 million. More than half of the company’s revenue came from the Xbox 360, compared to a little over a fifth for the PlayStation 3 and five percent for the Wii. For gamers, the highlight may have been the announcement that Borderlands has sold more than two million copies. In a press release accompanying the money news, Take Two affirmed the game’s future, using the word “franchise” that usually suggests sequels are coming: “Borderlands from 2K Games has now sold over 2 million units worldwide and has established itself as a key franchise for Take-Two, for which the Company has long-term publishing rights.” ( They’ve been saying this a lot .) The publisher has 33 games in development, chief financial officer Lainie Goldstein said, compared to about 36 in the past year. Her count would include both announced games such as the widely-publicized BioShock 2 and Max Payne 3 as well as lower-profile but significant developments such as a version of Civilization tailored for Facebook and Spec Ops: The Line, which debuted during the Spike Video Game Awards this past weekend. Goldstein said on the call that Take Two had unannounced “smaller titles” planned for its next fiscal year, ending on Halloween 2010 as well as an unannounced title for the August-October quarter. She gave no indication as to what that unannounced game would be, though her placement of it outside the “smaller titles” context and within the quarter Take Two often releases its biggest games raises the chance she was talking about a major game. Company chairman Strauss Zelnick dodged a question about when the next Grand Theft Auto would be released, saying the publisher has not announced any new iterations. He also shot down an analyst’s suggestion that Take Two should skip making baseball games next year in order to stop the $30-35-million losses projected due to the company’s contract with Major League Baseball. “The projected losses are significant,” he said. “W’ere taking them seriously… they wouldn’t be further mitigated by not putting out a release.”

More here:
Two Million Borderlands, 33 Games And One Mystery Title [Take Two Interactive]

Final Fantasy XIII Launch Day With Our Man In Tokyo [PS3]

[Note: Kotaku columnist Tim Rogers bought Final Fantasy XIII in Japan just hours ago. We asked him for launch coverage. He has delivered, with panache and hands-on impressions.] Five months and seven days ago, Square-Enix unleashed Dragon Quest IX unto the Japanese people, and it was a lukewarm kind of good. Five months and seven days after that day, it is today, and Square-Enix is set to release Final Fantasy XIII unto the public. Japan lacks what the rest of the civilized world would call institutionalized criticism. The companies responsible for distributing, say, films, are also in charge of the magazines that, in other countries, would print critical reviews of films. No one ever says anything bad, or even constructive, about a film in Japan. They hardly ever do it about games. You get Weekly Famitsu giving out numbers. They plop in a couple of template sentences with the numbers. Everyone knows, by now, that you can pay a whole bunch of money to Famitsu , and they’ll make up a big spread, spewing whatever marketing copy you want them to. The impression to the general public is that these guys are really excited about your game. Recently, there’s been bad juju afoot in most corners of the Japanese entertainment industry. Two minutes staring at the labyrinthine public bulletin board websites, and you get a thick taste of unrest. Earlier this year, user “reviews” of Dragon Quest IX started disappearing from Amazon.co.jp. The people smelled conspiracy. Of course, on the anonymous internet, nothing is certain, though more than enough people possess the theory that game publishers have started kindly asking Amazon.co.jp to delete certain comments that might otherwise keep a consumer from purchasing an item. Eventually, Amazon Japan ditched the concept of the pre-release “hype” review. They opened up message boards linked to specific product pages. In these message boards, people expressed discontent for things like the outrageous prices of DVDs (they charge around $100 for two episodes of some shitty animated TV series), or the outrageous prices of games, or their outrage that they dare to put a number in the title of Dragon Quest IX , when it’s obviously some kind of side-story , like, it’s on a portable system , for god’s sake. Amazon Japan has now taken to fiercely moderating the message boards. In the face of this, the rabble on 2ch.net, Japan’s largest public web-place, have only grown fiercer in their contempt re: the slightest misgivings in any facet of entertainment media. In other words, I have been lolling like a leprechaun with a jagged dagger in his back, all week, while reading this Final Fantasy XIII pre-release hatred threads. One user posts his homemade list of the reasons Final Fantasy XIII definitely won’t sell a million copies : The TV commercial is boring; it has no impact FF12 sucked The staff are the team who made FF10-2 Sakaguchi, Amano, and Uematsu, the three pillars of the Final Fantasy franchise, are not involved at all The status screen shows only “attack” and “magic attack” You can only use one character in battle Bahamut looks stupid The hero is a girl Not enough people have PS3s Why are all the summon monsters transformers? Now, even Cid is a metrosexual I lol at these reasons not because I agree: I lol because this is the way things are. It’s not impossible to find people who are genuinely excited about Final Fantasy XIII : just look at some blogs or the user communities on Mixi, Japan’s biggest social network site. Out in the open, the typical computer-using obsessive-compulsive’s opinion would seem to be that the game is going to bomb: the game is going to blow: the game is going to suck: and so on. I was there , at the Final Fantasy XII launch. I’ve been over this before! A hundred-some people lined up in the decent weather. This was years ago. It was at the Tsutaya in Shibuya, which contains the busiest Starbucks in the world. There, the only size is tall, and it’s the price of a grande. They do not have time to listen to your insipid little special order requests! Square-Enix has been holding their launch events there since Final Fantasy X . They’re holding one again today. I’m not there. I’ll get into that in a minute. A minute later: The Final Fantasy XII launch was a nightmare. And I don’t mean it was terrible, or some people died; I mean it was like one of those medium-hot nightmares, where you’ve lost something and you don’t know what it is, just that you have to find it, or you’re going to wet the bed. I tried to talk to the first guy in line. He would not speak to me. He was shivering like with electrocution. An hour later, he was up at the podium with pre-Imperial Hot Yoichi Wada, president of Square-Enix. They call this a “photo op.” Japanese marketing is so stuck in the 1950s. Seriously, they still drive trucks around your neighborhood telling you that a new furniture store’s opened up five hundred meters away. So there’s the president of a big corporation, shaking hands with some kid. Reporters lean in to get a quip. Wada says, “We humbly thank you for your many long years of devout customertude,” and so on and so on. Then they lean the microphone in over at the kid, and he says, eyes on his shoes: “Please remake Final Fantasy VII for the PlayStation 3 Thank You” and quickly shuffles off. I literally shuddered — figuratively . The kid knew nothing about Final Fantasy XII , because he hadn’t played it yet (and Square-Enix had been tight-lipped about details for months before the release. He knew nothing about XII , and 1. He was buying it anyway 2. He was dead convinced it couldn’t be as good as Final Fantasy VII . So this is Christmas, and what have we— Final Fantasy XIII ? Final Fantasy XIII , I am sure, is a fan-fearing attempt by Square-Enix to squeeze out every bit of hyper-love possible. It’s a real bottoms-up adventure. Each character is designed to be someone you’d want to write a fanfic about, or dress up as at your weekly Halloween party. What the hell is it about? I’m a massive fan-jerk myself; I’ve read all the marketing literature, and I can’t tell what in the flaming hellfire the game is supposed to be about. Guys with hats? Girls with hair? Dragons that turn into battletanks? Ice fairies that turn into motorcycles? It certainly has: a cute girl, a tough girl, a cute and tough girl, a bunch of hot guys, a little kid with a voice that seems six years too old for his height, convoluted and half-hideous, half-gorgeous flying machines, and lots of CG cut-scenes. The “final trailer” for the game cuts immediately from a turgid montage of stilted one-liners like “I fight for revenge” “Let’s do this!” “Oh no, we’re in danger!” and “I will never forget you” to battle scenes wherein three characters stand a three-pointer’s distance from a monster as tall as an HDTV screen; a flash and blur stains the screen, and yes: everyone and everything is flying. These three characters gang-bang the shit out of this jalopy of a monster. Numbers just flying out of all sides of this reluctantly airborne, lopsided, unthinkably twirling beast. Do I want to play this game? I don’t know. I think I do. I tell myself that I can enjoy it as a piece of schlock-art. I will slowly and deeply familiarize myself with the copious plot holes big enough to fly a T-rex through, so that I can craft conversation-topical memes about them, generating future lols with my Gamer Buddies (who, come to think of it, don’t exist). I don’t dare deny the distinct possibility that haircuts and flying motorcycles are the only things that Square thinks we want to see, that the game has an affecting story beneath all the glitz. A Famitsu reviewer recently gave the game a nine out of ten and mentioned that the story is “linear until about halfway through.” Maybe “linear” means “derivative”? Who the hell knows. What I’m doing, here — at six in the morning, twelve hours before my flight to America to enjoy my first American Christmas in many years — is lowering my expectations, so that I can hopefully be pleasantly surprised. I am sure I am not alone. Well, maybe. However, one thing is for sure. I realized this while covering the Dragon Quest IX launch: I am legally an adult. No one tells me when to go to bed, and no one tells me when to wake up! I can eat ice cream whenever I want! And I can decide that I am not boarding a packed rush-hour train to film pornographic videos of people lined up in the frozen cold. I am curious, I will admit, to see if the first person lined up to buy Final Fantasy XIII at the Tsutaya in Shibuya will harness the opportunity to ask Yoichi Wada to remake Final Fantasy VII for the PlayStation 3, because that would be philosophically hilarious. (Here, I postulate that Final Fantasy XIII is also made from the ground up in the interest of at least preventing the first buyer from mentioning Final Fantasy VII remake possibilities.) So, in short, I say no ! No, I will not go snap pictures of people waiting in line! This is the future! Microsoft are cutting triangular slivers out of the insides of our DVD cases in the name of saving money on packaging. They are acclimating us to The Future: they’ll keep taking plastic out of the package until the package disappears, until Everything is Digital. I welcome our digital future! I say, no more lining up in the cold! We have Amazon! We have 7-Eleven’s reserve system! I have reserved Final Fantasy XIII at my local 7-Eleven, located just 30-some seconds’ walking distance from my front door. What I am going to do is — well, I am going to straighten my hair (I wouldn’t be caught with zero HP buying a Final Fantasy game with a tangled rat’s nest perched atop my head), and then I am going to walk to the 7-Eleven, and see what Square’s 1 million preorders looks like from the comfort of my own neighborhood. I hope to catch a glimpse of the first person purchasing the game from my local 7-eleven. This is going to be some Geraldo Rivera opening Al Capone’s vault-type shit. For those who didn’t watch the videos: I safely obtained the game. Now that I have the game home, it is time for a video which fetishistically details the unboxing and first insertion into my PlayStation 3. I will also let you experience the first five minutes of Final Fantasy XIII as I myself experience them. It’s like a liveblog, only with videos, and delayed by maybe an hour or two! Let’s-a-go! Immediately after my digital camera died on that last video, I got into a fight with a single lonely soldier. My hero whacked him over the head with her sword just as my other dude slammed him with his whatever. A cloud of numbers obscured his body for an instant. The soldier was dead before he could even look at us cross-eyed. A ranking screen flashes up. Numbers ticked, the sound of a pachinko machine on a good day: one by one, five stars filled up and glowed gold on my nice-sized HDTV. Five stars. Gold stars. “PERFECT,” the game said, in not nearly so many words. I pressed the circle button once, and I’m perfect. Don’t that just say it all. And then a screen comes up informing me of the items obtained: nothing. Down in the bottom-right corner, a circle button icon, and two letters: “OK.” My entire HDTV is rented out in the name of telling me, via a giant vacant spreadsheet, that I didn’t get any items. Reminds me of my first job (it didn’t end well). So, impressions based on the first twenty minutes: The cut-scenes are well-directed. The camera floats in a way that feels organic. The sound is of excellent mix pedigree. The music is delicious, layered, complex, and yet crisp. The atmosphere, at this shallow depth, exudes a sense of a game that might actually have a destination. Though yeah, it starts with trains and resistance operatives with guns, raging against a city of machines. We’ve got an aloof cool-person with a sword and a comic relief sidekick. We’ve seen a baby chocobo pop out of an afro maybe six times already. He’s called the little bird “Dad” precisely once. I am going to play this game, hopefully getting to the point of lost interest. I will be pleasantly surprised if I get on my airplane in eight hours literally burning to know what happens next in the story. Either way, I have Zelda on my DS. Hey, look, you and me both are going to have to wait to play more Final Fantasy XIII . Maybe you have Zelda , too. You know, March isn’t very far away! You guys can do it! —- Thanks for reading this. I hope to blow through this game in a couple of days when back in the States and come back at you guys with a larger-than-life review-like not-exactly-a-review article kind of thing. It’s the least I can do for you, the good people of the world!

More here:
Final Fantasy XIII Launch Day With Our Man In Tokyo [PS3]

Resident Evil 5 Alternative Costumes Are Shameless [Clips]

Two new Resident Evil 5 Mercenaries Reunion gameplay clips showing off Chris and Sheva’s alternate costumes in the upcoming Alternative Edition DLC display a ridiculous amount of bare skin. And Sheva’s is pretty revealing too. Actually the costumes aren’t too shabby, though Chris could use a messier hair style to go with the warrior look and I pretty much got my fill of naughty Red Riding Hood costumes during Halloween this year. What bothers me the most is that my first thought upon seeing these two clips was, “That’s not going to provide enough protection against a horde of zombie-like mutants.” There is something wrong in my head.

Continue reading here:
Resident Evil 5 Alternative Costumes Are Shameless [Clips]

The PlayStation Portable Buyer’s Guide [Shopping Gift Guide]

The Playstation Portable got a fun, new little brother this year in the form of the slide-n-go, download-only PSPgo. The PSPgo launched on Oct. 1, kicking off an impressive glut of download-only games on the Playstation Store. It also marked Sony’s promised push for new, triple-A games for the Playstation Portable including MotorStorm, LittleBigPlanet and Assassin’s Creed titles. Take a gander at some of the big games that hit the PSP this year. What titles would you recommend as a gift? Fieldrunners Price: $6.99 Genre : Tower Defense Subject Matter: The popular iPhone Tower Defense game brought to the Playstation Portable. Value: This was one of my favorite downloadable minis when the PSPgo launched. It’s a great port of the original. Buy it for fans of tower defense titles. Read the Full Review G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra Price: $29.99 Rating: Teen Genre : Action Subject Matter: A arcade-style shooter loosely based on the live-action G.I. Joe movie. Value: G.I. Joe is a movie tie-in strangely reminiscent of Konami’s Contra series. One or two players take control of their favorite Joes from the movie and take on Cobra across multiple levels of run-and-gun action. There are a few unlockables catering to fans of the old cartoon series, but other than that this is strictly a movie-lover’s affair. Buy it for : Really, really big fans of the G.I. Joe live-action movie. Read the Full Review Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars Price: $39.99 Rating: Mature Genre: Open world action-adventure Subject Matter: Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars is a 3D, top-down adventure, putting players in the shoes of Huang Lee, a spoiled son of a Chinese gangster. The typical Grand Theft Auto rise to power through sex, drugs, violence and bad driving flows over the course of the game. Value: There’s a lengthy story to be told, with Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars throwing in plenty of side missions and mini-games to keep the player interested. Buy it for: PSP owners looking for a chunky, fun-to-pay adventure. Read the Full Preview Gran Turismo Price: $39.99 Rating: Everyone Genre: Driving Simulation Subject Matter: Gran Turismo offers players over 800 cars to purchase, customize and race on more than 35 tracks in a realistic setting, testing their driving skills with real-world physics. Value: Gran Turismo offers nearly limitless replayability, thanks to the numerous cars, tracks and Driving Challenges stuffed in to the game. Long time Gran Turismo fans may be turned of by the lack of a Career Mode and Leaderboards, but this is a solid pick up and play racer. Buy it for: The car-obsessed portable gamer who prefers a passenger seat in the real-world. Read the Full Review Half-Minute Hero Price: $29.95 Rating: E10+ Genre: Across four mode: Hyper-speed role-playing game / hyper-speed scrolling shoot-em-up / hyper-speed real-time strategy game / hyper-speed top-down dungeon-crawler Subject Matter: A winning send-up to the genres and technology of 16-bit Japanese-made games, there’s actually a lengthy adventure here that spans eras and tells the comedic/dramatic tale of heroes who repeatedly face the challenge of saving the world in 30 seconds. Value: High, as the game offers short-session bites of play that combine into a lengthy adventure that has none of the brevity suggested by the game’s title. Buy it for: RPG fans, fans of the Super Nintendo era, and fans who are looking for something original and smart on the PSP. Read the Full Review LocoRoco Midnight Carnival Price: $14.99 Rating: Everyone Genre : Platformer Subject Matter: The LocoRocos are up past their bedtime and rolling and bouncing their way through a Halloween carnival-style levels. Value: The stages might be short, but they are hard . A more satisfying (and less stressful) gaming experience was found in some of the mini-games. Buy it for : Gamers looking for a challenge who get music stuck in their heads easily. Read the Full Review MotorStorm: Arctic Edge Price: $39.99 Rating: Teen Genre : Racing Subject Matter: MotorStorm: Arctic Edge is an over-the-top, semi-open world off-road racer. Buy it for : fans of arcade race games who spend a bit of time commuting or can’t afford a Playstation 3. Value: With 12 maps, two directions to race them on, multiple courses and vehicle types, MotorStorm Arctic Edge is packed with content. Online play rounds out the experience giving you a chance to test your skills against five other players at a time. Read the Full Review PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe Price: $19.99 Rating: Teen Genre : Tower defense Subject Matter: Classic tower defense mechanics and gameplay mixed with delicious PixelJunk aesthetics. Buy it for : fans of the original Playstation 3 title, tower defense games or developer Q Games. Value: Featuring new maps, enemies and towers, this is worth the cash. Read the Full preview PSPgo Price: $249 Rating: NA Genre: Hardware Subject Matter: Sony’s latest portable platform ditches the need for a UMD drive and instead gives you a 16GB harddrive and the ability to download all of the games directly to the system. Value: At $249, the portable platform is quite pricey, coming in at the cost of several home consoles. Buy it for: anyone interested in being able to load up their portable with movies, TV shows, pictures, music and games without having to carry a single disc around with them. Read the Full Review PSPgo Traveler Case Price: $19.99 Rating: NA Genre: NA Subject Matter: This fauxe leather case protects and beautifies your PSPgo. Value: For just under $20, this is a heck of a deal. Buy it for: PSPgo owners looking to protect or upgrade the look of their portable. Read the Full Review Rock Band Unplugged> /strong> Price: $19.99 Rating: Teen Genre: Rhythm game Subject Matter: Harmonix’ insanely popular Rock Band on the go. Value: For just under $20 you get a full-fledged World Tour and about 40 tracks. You also get the ability to download new tracks to your PSP. Buy it for: fans of rhythm games, Rock Band and good music. Read the Full Review Shin Megami Tensei: Persona Price: $39.99 Rating: Teen Genre : RPG Subject Matter: A remake of the original Persona for the PlayStation. Value: A more faithful translation of the original Japanese Persona has never been seen in North America, making Persona PSP the definitive first entry in a series that’s been enjoying increased popularity these past few years. Buy it for : Any Japanese RPG fan. Read the Full Review Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron Price: $29.99 Rating: Teen Genre : Adventure Subject Matter: You are X-2, a Jedi clone out to help the Rebels take down the Empire and stop your brother X-1 before it’s too late. Value: Elite Squadron mixes gameplay, story and clips from the Star Wars films as it tells the story of X-2. The real replay value comes with the game’s online multiplayer. Buy it for : Star Wars fans or those looking for a PSP multiplayer experience. Read the Full Review

Visit link:
The PlayStation Portable Buyer’s Guide [Shopping Gift Guide]

LocoRoco Midnight Carnival Review: Up All Night [Review]

Sony brings LocoRoco back to the PSP with a new game play interface and a late night look in LocoRoco: Midnight Carnival . The mischievous Bui Bui have interrupted the LocoRoco’s slumber and sent them into a midnight maze. While the previous LocoRoco games had players roll and bounce, the new mechanic in Midnight Carnival is boing — a type of super jump that can be strung together as combos as the LocoRoco boing off walls and out of the midnight carnival. But is it worth staying up for LocoRoco: Midnight Carnival? Loved Presentation: Like its predecessors, LocoRoco: Midnight Carnival is a visual treat. The Halloween look is a feast for the eyes, and Sony’s Japan Studio has really outdone themselves with the crisp lines and smooth frame rates. The game’s artistic flare is a pleasing take on a familiar look. Music: A close second behind the way the game looks is the way it sounds. The music, while not as annoyingly catchy as the first game, is, well, annoyingly catchy — but in a good way! LocoRoco has always been a fine example of showing off the PSP’s strengths (visual and audio) and Midnight Carnival once again proves why. Bui Bui Crane: Midnight Carnival has a couple of mini-games, and this one is a doozy. It’s a crane game where the object is to snag LocoRocos. The catch? The LocoRocos are afraid of the crane and try to move out of the way, causing them to bunch up in the corner. A clever homage to arcade crane games and endlessly entertaining. Hated Difficulty Curve: The game starts off pleasantly enough, and then suddenly gets nasty and mean. LocoRoco: Midnight Carnival? More like Nightmare Carnival. The stages are short and should take a couple of minutes to finish — yet, I found myself playing some stages for upwards of thirty minutes to an hour, dying over and over and over again. It feels like the difficulty was increased to pad out the game length. Boing: Hate it, hate it, hate it. Bring back rolling and regular bounce. The controls didn’t feel exactly precise, making some of the jump combinations players are expected to do seem unreasonable — if not horribly sadistic, at times. The screen rotating mechanic is not fast, but the boing mechanic is, making for gameplay that doesn’t quite seem to fit together. Midnight Carnival is an interesting experiment for Sony’s Japan Studio — it tried out some new things, some worked and some did not. But, let’s go back to the LocoRoco games we know and love: You know, the ones which let players actually relax while playing them and even crack a smile, instead of hair-pulling frustration. For those who like to be challenged or want to try their hand at a hard platformer, may we recommend LocoRoco: Midnight Carnival. For those who want to play a LocoRoco game, may we recommend LocoRoco or LocoRoco 2. LocoRoco: Midnight Carnival was developed by Sony’s Japan Studio and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PSP on October 29. Retails for $14.99 USD on the PSP and PSN. A digital copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played game to completion.

Excerpt from:
LocoRoco Midnight Carnival Review: Up All Night [Review]

Cute Alert: Team Fortress 2 Babies [Tf2]

I was actually in the US for Halloween this year. And found something out: it’s not about pumpkins and scary things. It’s about parents dressing their kids up in stuff they , not the kids, like. Not that we’re complaining! No, not when it’s Team Fortress 2 . It doesn’t matter this poor girl has no idea what she’s being made to repeat. She’s having a ball, and our cold, dead hearts are going to run a little warmer today. “MEEEDICCC!” A TF2 inspired Halloween. *Pic HEAVY* [Craftster, via Dtoid ] [Sponsored] National Geographic Channel – Expedition Week Search for the Amazon Headshrinkers Sunday 9P e/p They say that shrinking heads is no longer practiced. We’re going to ask the experts. Premieres Sunday at 9P e/p on Nat Geo. Learn more at www.natgeotv.com/expeditionweek

Next Page »