25. Dark Sector
Set in the crumbling infrastructure of a fictional Soviet-bloc country in the near future, the game’s main character is a man named Hayden Tenno, a morally ambivalent clean-up man employed by the CIA. He suffers from a real-life disease called congenital analgia that does not allow him to feel pain. On a mission he is exposed to a biological compound which mutates his right arm, giving him the ability to spontaneously grow a three-bladed throwable weapon. During the course of the game, Hayden encounters others that have been similarly mutated by the compound. However, the mutation process is painful to the point that its victims go mad. Hayden’s congenital analgia inadvertently protects him from this aspect of the mutation. [Trailer]

24. LEGO Indiana Jones / LEGO Batman
The games will allow players to control the iconic characters in humorous renditions of their adventures. They are expected to feature the same drop in/out co-operative play mode as seen in the Lego Star Wars video games. [Trailer]

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Ben “yahtzee” Croshaw’s website, Fully Ramblomatic.com, states that “If Bruce Campbell were a website, he’d be this one”. It takes balls to actually publicize such a bold statement. Fortunately for him, he’s got a pair… and it’s filled with awesome.

He’s best known for making a couple of hilarious video game reviews on YouTube. They’re composed of simple animations and his brilliant, fast, non-stop ramblings. This led to him being hired by The Escapist Magazine to release new episodes every Wednesday.

Here’s every episode so far:

• The Darkness Demo
• Fable: The Lost Chapters
• Zero Punctuation
• Heavenly Sword and Other Stuff
• Psychonauts
• Console Rundown

Having played the Heavenly Sword demo last night* made that episode even funnier. Plus, his views on the video game industry are as dead-on as Adam Sessler’s. And his praise of classic adventure games and Beyond Good & Evil made me extra happy.

* Heavenly Sword looks like a Ferrari with amazing cornering to anyone looking at it. To someone playing, it feels like a go-cart on rails.

As I was going through a drive deleting old files, I stumbled upon this little gem of Internet goodness: Punk-o-matic. It’s a flash game with pre-recorded punk riffs and beats that you can arrange into your own punk song. It definitely shows off Marco Arsenault’s talent as both a punk artist and Flash programmer. You can also save your creations or share them as a code.

I played with this a lot around early 2004 and actually finished a song. Just press the “Load” button and copy/paste this code into the space:

--------9-681--81--81--81---8868869---878786-80---1-884-78769---
-------------------------7-7-7-7-2---2---2---2---2---2-8---8---2
---0---2-8-c----6c------------------------8-a---a-----0---1---3-
4-5-6-88-88-a---01023-5-7-7-7-6-a----9a------------------------

If you have any Punk-o-matic codes feel free to post them in the comments. Alternatively you can tell me how much I suck.

Since the good ol’ days of Team Fortress Classic my favorite kinds of online gaming are objective-based. Whether it’s capturing a flag or a base, I find it more satisfying to win as a team than having a deadly 8-year-old on my side. The skirmish mode on Halo 2, as you might expect, once consumed most of my Xbox Live time. Lately, though, it’s not as fun.

The cause: Masterbunjee.

Of course, blaming him/her for the problem is like attributing global warming to the Hummer. But that gas-guzzler isn’t helping, is it? The real problem is quitters: People who are teamed up with you on a match but quit during the game when the team is loosing. Since the launch of the game this problem has only gotten progressively worse. And of all the game modes, I believe skirmish has suffered the most.

When I decided to write this I realized I needed a picture to go with the piece. So I went to my Xbox with a camera to see if I could take a snap of a player list with quitters on it. That didn’t prove difficult. We had quitters on all three games.

The problem is obvious and it is clearly hurting Halo 2. What can be done? Not much at this point, but maybe Halo 3 can be spared the same fate before it goes gold.

Here’s my solution for Bungie: Separate those players that have a dropped connection from those that quit by manually leaving the game or by disconnecting their Xbox. Assign a worse category to the ones that quit when their team is full and be more forgiving to the ones that quit when one or more team members are missing. Then tag the bastards after enough offenses.

What can be done to them once tagged? Reprimand them? Ban them? No. Just match them together.

When tagged quitters go into matchmaking, just assign them to games with other quitters. The same principle can be applied to others, like teammate killers or superjumpers (I know it’s technically legal, but come on).

I wouldn’t be surprised if Bungie is already working on something like this, but in case they aren’t I hope this helps. One less group of assholes to deal with on Xbox Live should be an improvement.

Now, does anybody have any ideas on how to hunt down racist 12-year-olds?

UPDATE (8.4.07)

Here’s an interesting counterpoint from FuckBungie.Net.

The MK by José Emroca Flores