“We want to assure our fans and affiliates that Atlus remains in operation and will continue, as always, to support our beloved community with the finest quality gaming experiences possible.”

Whew. Sounds like the so-called dissolution was more of a merger with parent company Index Holdings that left Atlus fully intact. I’d hate to think what would happen were they to actually close down, as I’ve heard some people took it rather badly.

Related posts:

1. Goodbye, My Love: Atlus Dissolved (UPDATE: Except Not!)
2. The Video Game Industry: Love It Or Hate It, It’s Here To Stay
3. BioWare Has Long-Term Plans for Mass Effect and Dragon Age, We Hope They Include Cross-Universe Liara/Morrigan Love Triangles

Whether you tend toward the light or dark side of the Force, BioWare’s Knights of the Old Republic II probably left you with questions. And, if you’ve been anxiously awaiting Star Wars: The Old Republic, you’ve probably been hoping the 300 year jump would shed light on some of those mysteries.

Lucky for us, the latest trailer for The Old Republic provides a little insight into some of our unanswered questions. Check the out the video past the break, I don’t want to spoil it for you.

Related posts:

1. The Old Republic’s Alderaan Surfaces, Its Beauty Cruel and Hopeless
2. Delicious Direct2Drive Download Deals Don’t Demand Deep Dinero Deposits
3. ELSPA Set To Provide PC Digital Download Sales Figures; Anti-PC Fanboys Impervious To Facts To Remain Unaffected

But, I love it as a whole. I’m sure I’m not the only one who dropped an extra $40 for the Starcraft II collector’s edition—money that I could have spent on a new pair of jeans or a used game (even if that would have unleashed the anti-piracy wrath of Jerry Holkins on me).

Like every form of entertainment, our pastime of choice has its quirks. Gamers and industry professionals alike take their stand on certain issues—a sign of a healthy industry if you ask me. But just how well is the video and computer game industry doing? As usual, I turned to the ESA to find out. Curious to see what I learned? Join me past the break for more.

As you probably could have guessed, the gaming industry has had a tremendous impact on the U.S. economy. The ESA’s Video Games in the 21^st Century: The 2010 Report provides a detailed look at the industry’s prosperity from 2005 to 2009. But I’ll spare you the 28-page report and give you a quick breakdown.

First, let’s take a look at the money. We all know video games sell, but since 2005, those sales have been on the incline, and because of it, the industry’s value added to the 2009 U.S. GDP reached $4.95 billion. In 2009, U.S. video game retail sales reached $10.5 billion, up from $7 billion in 2005. Even in the face of the recession in 2009, sales only dropped by $1.2 billion from 2008.

The industry employs more than 32,000 people in 34 states…According to the ESA, more than 120,000 U.S. jobs directly or indirectly depend on the gaming industry.

In fact, from 2005 to 2009, the industry achieved a real annual growth rate of 10.6 percent per year while the entire U.S. economy only grew 1.4 percent annually. This growth seems to be a pretty clear indicator of the acceptance of gaming as a viable entertainment industry—either that or we’re all just addicts that can’t wait to get our hands on our next fix.

Either way, we’re putting money back into the publishers’ pockets and feeding the machine. The beauty of it? The industry employs more than 32,000 people in 34 states, with an average annual compensation—wages, salaries, pensions, insurance—of $89,781. From 2005 to 2009, the annual employment growth rate was 8.65 percent, almost twice the 4.44 percent growth rate from 2002 to 2006. According to the ESA, more than 120,000 U.S. jobs directly or indirectly depend on the gaming industry.

The industry seems to be doing well and has only been a bit set back by the recession. Next time you buy a new game, feel free to pat yourself on the back for helping the more than 120,000 people whose jobs depend on gaming.

Related posts:

1. Does Video Game History Matter?
2. Steam Muscles Its Way To Over 25 Million Accounts
3. Playboy Launches Video Game Label

My point is, it’s time for you all to go play the recently released demo for Frictional’s Amnesia: The Dark Descent, because so far I’m loving it. A new game from the makers of Penumbra, Amnesia promises a piece of survival horror where light is scarce and every second is a battle against madness. In less dramatic terms, it’s a puzzle- and stealth-based adventure game with scarce resources and clever physics, making copious use of fog and shadows to unsettle both your character and you.

You’ll be taking the role of Daniel, a self-made amnesiac trapped in a maze-like castle and haunted by a malicious shadow. The enemies themselves stay mostly out of sight (because remember, if you can see them, they can see you), so you’ll spend the demo fighting a much more insidious enemy: Your own psyche. Daniel’s sanity is depleted both by staying in the dark and by witnessing unsettling events, like the fleshy mass that has begun to grow on the castle walls, and his mental state determines how well you’ll be able to control him, so you’ll be looking out not only for monsters but for candles, tinderboxes, and lantern oil. It’s very much like the opposite of Thief. Too little sanity, and Daniel lays down like an exhausted child, refusing to go any further until you’ve given him some light.

Amnesia will be released on September 8, and the demo is available for all operating systems (including Linux!) either through Steam or directly from their site at AmnesiaGame.com.

Related posts:

1. Civ V Demo Postponed To Release Day, Delaying Your Domination Of Ancient Civilizations With Gunships
2. New Doctor Who Adventure Game Available: American Mac Users Left Out In Cold, Dark Depths Of Space
3. Activision Reveals Full Guitar Hero: Warriors Of Rock Tracklist

Use the coupon code PAX to save $5 on a $15 or more order.

End of Summer Sale – 2 games on sale every day for 30 days.

D2D Turns 6! – A weekly offer every Wednesday of titles available for $6.  This weeks the games on offer are:

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
Jedi Knight Bundle
Achtung Panzer
Titan Quest Bundle
Defense Grid: The Awakening
Tropico 3
Tropico Reloaded
Football Manager 2010
Penumbra Collection

My personal picks would be KOTOR, Tropico 3 and Football Manager 2010.  The same deals apply to the UK and EU site at £6 and €6.

Related posts:

1. Madden NFL 11: Going Long And Deep
2. The Old Republic’s Alderaan Surfaces, Its Beauty Cruel and Hopeless
3. ELSPA Set To Provide PC Digital Download Sales Figures; Anti-PC Fanboys Impervious To Facts To Remain Unaffected

In psyching myself up to play Metroid: Other M, I came to the realization that my entire youth was a sham. It was a misspent haze of Mario, badminton, Gushers, Saved By The Bell, and Home Alone-inspired maps of ingenious ways to foil would-be intruders. There are some who would say I accomplished much. I blazed trails through the woods as secret pathways for discreet neighborhood travel. I penned a Broadway caliber play on the ins and outs of catching a Leprechaun. I toiled day and night through bloody fingertips to construct the K’Nex Big Ball Factory. I invented snowcream, and later discovered that almost the entire world had stolen my idea.

But it was all for naught. I never played a Metroid game.

I can’t say exactly why I never got my Samus on. The first one I ever tried was Metroid Prime on the Gamecube. I guess it’s because my parents never purchased the original for me, and none of my friends had it, so I had no occasion to play it. And because of this I never played Super Metroid either. Thanks to the Wii’s Virtual Console though, I have righted the wrongs of my childhood, and am on the road to forgiving my parents’ most blunderous of blunders.

Through preview coverage I learned that Metroid: Other M would be taking place almost directly after the events of Super Metroid. This seemed like a good enough reason to dive in. It also acted as something to bide the time before Nintendo’s latest dropped. I digitally plopped down my virtual $8, (actually $10 to get the necessary points, and now Nintendo has my other $2 sitting in stasis until I finally bite the bullet on a sweet DSi clock), and commenced Samus Aran’s exploration of quaint vacation hotspot Zebes.

My initial impression of Super Metroid was “Hey! Nintendo totally ripped off Shadow Complex!” After my brain reconstructed its sense of spacetime I realized that Shadow Complex could not have come first, because in 1994 Cliffy B was only just being conceived by Dane Cook and a wombat. It occurred to me that I was about to enjoy the direct inspiration of one of my favorite downloadable games.

This marvel of the animal kingdom loves Super Metroid

Super Metroid was an absolute joy to play. It holds up splendidly and almost feels like a game ahead of its time, as if it should be only now releasing. It’s structured in a way to allow ridiculous speedruns of under an hour, yet it took me over eight hours to complete my first time through. Like a good point-and-click adventure, Super Metroid is all about discovering the world and figuring out how to interact with it. I thought I had done and collected basically everything by the end credits, only to learn my completion rating was 67%. This game has a lot going on.

The beautiful thing is, and I guess this can be said of any other Metroid or Zelda game, that you will see so many things that are inaccessible, yet you know you will eventually get there. I began reasoning out in my head what possible ability would allow me to get atop the mile-high jagged cliffside, or cross the wide chasm with nothing but spikes along the bottom. In many cases what I thought would be the solution to these situations was completely wrong. The surprise of what some of these abilites afford is much of the fun, and by the end of the game you will feel like Samus is the most bodacious bounty hunter outside a Sarlacc’s stomach.

Super Metroid can be surprisingly difficult, especially considering the breadth of tutorials we undergo in modern games. The game offers no explanation of anything. It is up to the player to discover what and how different weapons and abilities are to be used. There were a number of occasions where I was certain I had broken the game by gaining early access to an area that I didn’t have the ability to escape from. How was I supposed to know there was a run button? Yes, I see the monkeys wall jumping up the shaft, and I would love nothing more than to do the same…but how? These questions and more drove me to the cusp of sanity and Super Metroid just laughed at me. “Silly Matt,” it said. “It’s so simple. You just run like the green ostrich and roman candle up to the ceiling. Just press the buttons, Matt. There are only 4,183,834 combinations of button presses on the SNES controller. Don’t tell me you need a…strategy guide“.

Jeff Goldblum tries to make Samus keep the baby

In the face of mockery I completed the adventure. I completely missed a great deal of missile packs, energy tanks, and even an entire ability, yet I was still allowed to beat the game (the X-Ray Scanner would have been very handy from the beginning). I’m left with a hunger to dive back in and find absolutely everything, as daunting as that is. The map system is only marginally helpful, putting a dot in a room if it has 1 or more hidden items, yet not removing the dot after the item has been collected.

In the end I’m very happy with the time I spent on Super Metroid. It is a classic that should never have been missed, yet I’m entirely glad that I did. Enjoying the adventure for the first time is a rapturous experience. If you have a Wii, $8, and as unfulfilling a childhood as I, you should download right away. This may even sway you to pick up Metroid: Other M.

I am at peace. I can die.

Wait, what? Zero Mission? BRB, Death.

Related posts:

1. Faux-Sho’: Metroid: Other M’s “M” Revealed To Be M
2. Late To The Party: Red Dead Redemption
3. Spawniplicity

Why is it that I embrace the advent of Mac gaming, and smile when people tell me “I’m a Mac?” The answer is simple. I’m not a slave.

Throughout my life I’ve been a die-hard PC user. My father introduced computers to our home when floppy-boot IBMs set you back $3,000 — Treasure Mountain!, Captain Comic, and Hero’s Quest were staples of my childhood. Since college, I’ve even been a PC evangelist, suggesting to friends and family that PCs offer great value compared to alternatives. Naturally, I’ve been tied intimately to the PC “ecosystem” as an avid PC gamer. I’ve custom built my last three PCs from individual components after feverish research. I’ve used Macs in the past, I’ve briefly owned an iPod, and in recent years I tend to avoid Apple products like the plague. I long ago abandoned iTunes for Winamp and Zune. Xbox 360 tends to be the preferred console of my free time. I loved Windows Vista. To any outsider I would appear to be the biggest Microsoft fanboy that ever lived (except, of course, for this guy). So why is it that I embrace the advent of Mac gaming, and smile when people tell me “I’m a Mac?” The answer is simple.

I’m not a slave.

“Fanboy” by Mike Reed

Framing Fanboyism

To make sure I don’t equivocate, let’s start by defining the critical term: Fanboy. (Note that there are also fangirls, but for purposes of brevity and clarity, I’ll simply use fanboy in this article.)  Urban Dictionary has two entries for “fanboy” that I particularly enjoy:

a. fanboy

A passionate fan of various elements of geek culture (e.g. sci-fi, comics, Star Wars, video games, anime, hobbits, Magic the Gathering, etc.), but who lets his passion override social graces.

At the mall I almost got mowed over by some Dragonball Z fanboy on his skateboard.

b. fanboy

1. A person who is completely loyal to a game or company [regardless] of if they suck or not.
2. A pathetic insult often used by fanboys themselves to try and put down people who don’t like whatever it is they like.

“If you don’t worship SEGA and send them all your money and pay $500 for the copy of Panzer Dragon I’m selling on ebay then your obviously a Sony fanboy even though I’ve never heard you mention a single thing about Sony the entire five minutes I’ve known you.” Said the SEGA Fanboy.

I like definition (a) because it suggests two essential things to understand about fanboys — that they are first and foremost passionate, which I believe is a critical component in the genesis of fanboyism (more on that soon), and because they are uncouth in the way they express their passion publicly (hence the derogatory nature of the term fanboy). I would argue the only shortcoming of this definition is the narrowness in scope; fanboys need not only be passionate fans of geek culture, they are found everywhere.

A fanboy passionately promotes and defends something, commonly an idea, product, or group, without regard for inquiry, truth, or civility.

Definition (b) interests me in a number of ways which will be revealed as this discussion progresses. First, let’s look at the heavy-handed claims made in (1): “A person who is completely loyal to a game or company” might be enough, but the author goes on to qualify that with “regardless of if [the game or company sucks] or not.” The second part of the sentence cements the fanboy’s  imperviousness to fact that is only implied in the first: A fanboy will stand their ground no matter what, even if the object of the fanboy’s affection, in fact, sucks.

Part (2) of the second definition highlights the usage aspect of the word, calling out the the paranoia associated with fanboyism and the absurdity of its application in discussion. The author suggests that a public charge of fanboyism is a mere deflection that degrades conversation, similar to the invocation of Nazi analogies (see: Godwin’s law).

With these thoughts in mind, here’s my working definition: A fanboy passionately promotes and defends something, commonly an idea, product, or group, without regard for inquiry, truth, or civility. Now let’s take a look at fanboys in action.

Anti-Apple fanboys accuse Apple customers of “drinking kool-aid.”

Drinking The Kool-Aid

So here’s an uncontroversial fact: The internet is a rampant hotbed of fanboyism. If you’ve spent more than ten minutes online in your life you’ve met a fanboy. They are literally everywhere. They hail from every corner of the Earth and come in all shapes, sizes, and creeds. That said, one war stands out to me above all others which I will use as the focal case of this discussion — the eternal conflict of Mac vs. PC.

As a die-hard technophile and gadget lover there is one particular battlefield in this war that I’m quite familiar with: Engadget’s comments. I’ve been an avid reader (and regular commenter) of the popular gadget blog for many years, and by now, I’m a veteran of keynotes, conferences, rumors, and reviews, and the discussions that form around them. Since being taken under the wing of Aol, and now under the leadership of Joshua Topolsky, Engadget’s readership has exploded. Unfortunately, the number of resident fanboys, trolls, and other miscreants have increased along with Engadget’s success.

Back in February, the comment situation got so bad, Engadget had to turn off discussion completely. The comment crisis was precipitated by a growing sentiment in a portion of the population (the editors will claim it was a microscopic yet vocal minority) that Engadget ran rampant with pro-Apple bias. People were downright nasty. The underlying reason for the battle has to do with the question of which gadget or platform is objectively better, and it’s something that presents itself persistently — people can’t seem to stop arguing about it. Of course, the question is never really posed explicitly, and you typically see spillover in completely unrelated territory (what the hell does the iPhone 4’s antenna design have to do with the Large Hadron Collider?).

Reasonable people — the ones that chime in from time to time — know that the answer to which platform is “better” is based completely on context and involves a number of subjective preferences that make the premise of the question silly to begin with.  There tends not to be a factually “correct” answer, not to mention the question is incomplete without also including the essential contextual component, for whom? But fanboys being what they are, the validity of another person’s preference is irrelevant to their mission of promoting their own interests while — as a delusional necessity — demeaning all others. For the people obsessively caught up in the “debate,” the game is zero-sum.

You’re wrong because you’re drinking the kool-aid, you can’t possibly have a valid preference of your own.

That’s the language of a slave.

“How am I not myself?” from I Heart Huckabees

The Slavery of Self Identity

Merriam-Webster defines slavery:

slavery, noun

1: drudgery, toil

2: submission to a dominating influence

If fanboys are slaves, they must fulfill these definitions in a meaningful way. Let’s start with (1). Here, slavery is defined as drudgery or toil, synonymic to something dull, fatiguing, or menial. I think I can argue quite uncontroversially that the product of a fanboy’s labor (and indeed, the process) matches the meaning of drudgery quite neatly; it is often irksome to the fanboy and their audience — admittedly, for separate reasons — and involves the rather uninspiring work of parroting off trivial claims or insults (e.g., Mac fanboys are by far the worst fanboys because only they throw girly tantrums). Toil is harder to apply because it is nearly antonymous; while fanboys certainly struggle and battle with one another, their effort cannot be uniformly categorized as laborious. (Many fanboys are bullshit artists, and spend little time investigating or backing up their preposterous claims).

The second definition of slavery is by far the most applicable, but the nuts and bolts behind it are perhaps more subtle and nuanced than the average fanboy would readily recognize. Slavery in the second case is “submission to a dominating influence.”  Let’s return to the working definition of fanboy:

A fanboy passionately promotes and defends something, commonly an idea, product, or group, without regard for inquiry, truth, or civility.

To determine whether or not the fanboy succumbs to dominant influences, we must dig deeper and figure out why fanboys passionately defend the things they do (so far we’ve only established that, for some reason, they do). The quick and dirty solution would be to cast fanboys off as immature, and leave it at that. Still, accepting that fanboys are immature leaves a lot to question (what is meant by immaturity?). Certainly there is some psychology involved here, some darkly operating machinations of the body, right?

I like myself?

Here’s the theory: The dominating influence in question is the self. When the fanboy irately and passionately defends their PC, or their PlayStation, or attacks someone for their choice in smartphone, they’re doing so as a direct defense of their own self identity. The reason for this, as explained in science and philosophy, is that people tend to incorporate their actions, objects, and circumstances into their total conception of self. (Disclosure: GamePro covered this theory in a recent article titled “The Psychology of Fanboyism,” which I came across while in the process of writing this piece.) What this means is that, much to the dismay of Tyler Durden, you are your car, you are the money in your wallet, and you are your operating system. (Okay, to be fair, he was saying that you shouldn’t be those things, but I’ll revisit that point later). If you think about this extension of personal identity for a moment, you may realize that there is personal truth to the theory — try to give a narrative of your own life, your own self-identity, without including the objects you posses or utilize on a daily basis (good luck). So let’s rephrase that definition of fanboy with this new framework:

A fanboy passionately promotes and defends their self, without regard for inquiry, truth, or civility.

In this form, the definition has two distinct parts, which don’t appear to be connected by necessity — since not all people disregard inquiry, truth, or civility, this latter portion may be the keystone of fanboyism (or, at least, the part that causes us to take note of fanboys). The first part of the sentence may also define fanboyism on it’s own — albeit a version with fewer teeth.

You might think I’ve done some sort of voodoo reductionism here, but really, we’re talking about something consistently and powerfully recognized by scientists, philosophers, and artists, as a ubiquitous trait of human beings: Self preservation. Some philosophical accounts of self-identity incorporate the need to self-preserve as integral to identity — negation of a person’s identity in any way constitutes a threat to the self. The concept really is not all that arcane when you apply it to our context here: If you’re a die-hard Windows fanboy, and someone tells you your platform of choice is inferior, and you personally identify with your PC, you’re not really just defending the PC, are you?

Additional evidence to the extended self-identity claim can be found if you consider how you relate to different objects based on importance. Fittingly, people aren’t passionate about things they have no reason to identify with — that Microsoft fanboy is not going to throw a fit if you insult a keyboard brand he’s never used. What we incorporate into our self-identity is not just that which we’re in proximity with, it’s that which we have the biggest stake in — that which we care about most passionately. You can easily extend this concept beyond gaming to areas like politics and religion to understand the breadth and depth of its application to our lives.

Now that we have a theory of why fanboys do the things they do, we can answer the question, are they subject to a dominant influence? Admittedly, after wading through the rather thick stuff of self-identity, the fanboy-as-slave issue may appear quite moot, but I believe it’s important both for purposes of understanding and future action, since, who wants to be a slave? If what is said about self-identity and self-preservation is true, the dominant influence for the fanboy (indeed, for most all of us), is the self. More specifically, the dominant influence is our perception of self, not simply our passive experience of self — we tend to hold ourselves to a certain account, fictional or truthful, in our own personal narratives. Fortunately, there are ways to develop the power to recognize and control our own narratives.

When we’re oblivious to our natural defenses, we’re held hostage to the things we incorporate as part of us.

Freedom

Any reduction of human behavior to mere psychology tends to make those of us that believe in a framework of free will very uncomfortable — it has not been my attempt to make such a reduction. On the contrary, it’s quite possible to change one’s way of behaving and thinking, and even to achieve a level of self-understanding that recognizes biases and attachments while maintaining personal preferences (a rich conception of maturity).

That kind of unreflective, reactionary behavior does not signify any level of sophistication or even social intelligence — by being completely wrapped up in one’s own sense of self, to defend one’s honor over an object like a computer, is to be a slave to one’s overextended identity.

So what’s the point of calling a fanboy a slave? For one thing, it’s a more accurate representation of what’s happening — most of the time fanboys aren’t arguing about facts or opinions, they’re just arguing. That kind of unreflective, reactionary behavior does not signify any level of sophistication or even social intelligence — by being completely wrapped up in one’s own sense of self, to reflexively defend one’s honor over an object like a computer, is to be a slave to one’s overextended identity. The point that many people (maybe even a majority of people) tend to be completely and irrevocably wrapped up in their own version of the good is not lost on me — to paraphrase Charles Taylor, having strongly qualified “horizons” is constitutive of human identity. That is to say, without having such a strong sense of self, passionately held, with high stakes, people would lose their balance in the world — for the most part, to have a firmly rooted standpoint is part and parcel of what it means to be a modern human being. The common illustration of this fact is the experience of “identity crisis,” which occurs when something someone previously believed in is twisted or rejected somehow, and they have to readjust their understanding of the world along with their identity (for example, if one were to discover that Apple is actually a secret subsidiary of Steve Ballmer’s evil empire).

So at least now, we have an understanding of why people cling so dearly to their beliefs, and why fanboys are so damn rabid. Of course, understanding the way something works says nothing about whether or not it should behave in that way, and as fanboys are typically destructive, hurtful, and irritating, we’d surely be better off without them.

Discussion

I smile now whenever someone tells me they’re “a Mac.” My friends have varying opinions on the matter of Mac vs. PC, with some fervently anti-Microsoft (for whatever reason), some pro-Apple (for whatever reason), and at least one who says “who cares, the world’s ending in 2012″ (incidentally, the last one might be the wisest of the bunch). The reason I smile is that, as long as someone has their needs fulfilled by the products they choose, even if their needs include being “stylish,” or whatever, buying something to make your life better shouldn’t be beholden to public approval unless it causes some sort of irresponsible harm. Furthermore, we should all be happy for others when they get the chance in life to feel more fulfilled. This point is surely trivial — it’s been thrown out by temperate discussion board vigilantes for what feels like centuries – but it’s still crucial to relay and practice time and time again. The fanboys don’t give up so easily.

It’s hard to formulate a single closing thought on a topic as broad as fanboyism — especially when I’ve sort of hinted that everyone is a fanboy to a certain degree — but the key takeaway is this: Self-imposed slavery can be overcome. Stopping fanboys doesn’t mean that we all have to hold hands and sing Kumbaya and not have any sort of rigorous discussion about things — as long as we try our best to remain reasonable and make our assumptions explicit, we can attempt to compare objective differences in the things we enjoy (cost, durability, and functionality are some categories with evidence-based benchmarks that come to mind). We don’t have to come to agreement, either. As long as we get what we need and want, at the end of the day, it really should not make a difference that Joe Fanboy doesn’t like any number of Steves (Jobs, Ballmer, you name it). When we get what we want, and products improve, we all win.

With that, I’ll leave you with this thought:

Don’t be stupid. All other gaming websites suck. This is the only one you should read.

No related posts.

Finally, we got our answer in the form of a new trailer with an introduction from Keiji Inafune, the creator of Mega Man. The video features short snippets of classic 2D, side scrolling, platforming action that we all know, love, and expect from the Blue Bomber; he climbs ladders, jumps over pits of spikes and bottomless death, and dispatches familiar enemies with his Mega Buster. Even better, the very end of the trailer confirms that Ryu from Street Fighter will be a playable character! Even though there are no hints as to what the title implies or what the story line could be, the trailer is enough to make me keep a close eye on this project.

Check the trailer after the break!

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1. Ghost Recon Future Soldier Live-Action Trailer Mixes Reconnaissance, Robots, and Raging Russians
2. Watch The Debut Trailer For Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
3. New Marvel Vs Capcom Gamplay Videos FTW

Roger Ebert, the famed film critic who once claimed that “video games can never be art,” has now decided to change his tune. In a recent blog post, and scattered throughout several dozen tweets, Ebert has revealed that, at the behest of the gaming community which has been diligently trolling the comments section of RogerEbert.com for months, he has started to give gaming a chance. Not only that, but he claims to have found himself “completely enthralled” by what he has seen.

So what was the culprit? Was it the influx of “arty/pretentious” indie platformers that have been hitting the Xbox Live Arcade, like 2008’s Braid, or this summer’s Limbo? Maybe it was one of the Xbox’s critically-acclaimed Triple-A titles, like Red Dead Redemption? In fact, Ebert’s metamorphosis actually took place at a recent Microsoft preview event, where the prolific newspaper columnist was specially invited to take part in an exclusive Halo: Reach multiplayer session.

Hit the read more link to see the rest of Ebert’s remarks.

“I’m done with film,” Ebert wrote in the blog post that will surely signify the end of professional film criticism, “just look at this summer, for every Inception we must have had two Marmadukes and a Last Airbender that I had sit through. Meanwhile on Xbox things are just looking better and better.” While Ebert feels that his new stance will most likely be unpopular with his readers and the friends he has made in the film criticism industry, he says he won’t let it bother him: “Those stuffy old bastards can do whatever they want. I worship at the church of John 117 now, and the Master Chief is the only friend I need.”

Ebert’s change of heart won’t be extended to all of gaming, however. He says he still has no patience for “that phone shit” or “that baby shit,” presumably referring to Apple’s App Store games and the Nintendo Wii, respectively. “And don’t get me started on those Sony Fanboys and their glorified DVD player,” Ebert continued, “that overpriced piece of crap doesn’t even have any games! What, Metal Gear Solid? I already said I was sick of watching movies. Heavy Rain? Yep, I’m still sick of watching movies. Killzone? I liked that one better when it was called Halo…and it was on Xbox!”

Although Ebert has now decided to close the door on his life in the film industry, Microsoft has seen fit to open a window for their newest, biggest fan by offering Ebert a position at Microsoft Game Studios as a “special consultant.” Ebert will be helping to develop an “Art Chip” that will be installed in all Xbox 360 units and will “upscale” all Xbox 360 games into timeless masterpieces, “much like the great paintings, novels, and poems,” Ebert explained. When asked about the comparisons likely to be drawn between the Art Chip and Sega Genesis’ infamous “Blast Processing,” Ebert claimed to be unfamiliar with the term, though he would confirm that the Art Chip will inexplicably make every game on Xbox 360 “way better than anything those nerds at Sony can come up with…more so than they already are, of course.”

Ebert is also encouraging his readers to send Xbox Live friend requests to his new Gamertag, “xX2ThumbsdOWNXx,” though he specifically asks for “no noobs.”

Related posts:

1. Xbox Live for Original Xbox Gets The Guillotine by April 15
2. Xbox Live Dies Today, Probably In Secret Cooperation With The IRS
3. Microsoft’s Great Purge: 1 Million Xbox Live Accounts Banned

If you have an iProduct, Epic Citadel is definitely worth a download; I’ve played around with it a little, and it’s a trip through a world that would look great even on your PC. The textures especially are dazzling, and the lighting is beautiful, although we have yet to see anything except architecture. As it is, the world EC presents is nice, but a little empty: No NPCs, and there’s no way yet to interact with the world besides walking through it.

We’ve got it on good authority, though, that Unreal has a lot more in store for us, including a fully developed Epic Citadel. In an interview with Gamasutra, Epic studio president Mike Capps talks about Epic’s vision for “core gamer games” on the iPad, as well as the demand for Unreal on iOS:

It kind of surprised us honestly, that we’d be talking to one of the big-tier publishers, I don’t need to say who, and they’re porting games and they’re making tens of millions of dollars making fantastic games on iPhone. We had no idea that business was growing so fast, and they were so excited to be taking existing IPs built on our engine over to the mobile space, so we were like, “Gosh, we really need to get on this right away.” That’s really how we’re looking at it.

While I’m not convinced that I’ll be giving up my PC for an iPad any time soon, I’m looking forward for the development of the iPad as a gaming platform. The one problem Unreal can’t solve? Interface:

The one thing we’re still working out is that your fingers are in the way of our beautiful game all the time. So if we can figure out a way to do mental interfaces, then we’ll be happy.

You heard the man, Apple. Bring on the ‘trodes!

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