However, if you're one of those few people who isn't playing GTA4, you can enjoy your shiny new medic achievements / weapons and new map for Team Fortress 2. It's out now. Just restart Steam.

Also, if you're one of the like two people who haven't picked up TF2 yet, TF2 is free this weekend starting this Friday at noon PDT. So hop on Steam now and get it preloaded so you'll be ready to go on Friday.

. . but we'll probably still be playing GTA4.

We don't know when it'll be out, or even if it'll be coming stateside, but we do know that you'll be playing as Edgeworth with Dick Gumshoe as your sidekick. Also from the screenshots in this week's Famitsu we can discern that there'll be an even further expanded investigation portion, where you'll be actually walking around crimescenes looking for clues.

We don't yet know if you'll be required to completely botch the case so the charming underdog defense attorney can completely own you in court, but hey, Edgeworth can't suck that much, can he?

Famitsu Article, Page 1
Famitsu Article, Page 2

You might want to sit down.

Here's the good news: It's actually finally being released! For reals this time! Also you get nine "exclusive" songs, though you might only actually care about one or two.

And the bad news. . well . . damn, where do you even start? The date they've set is 23 MAY 2008, a smooth 6 months after the North American release. Why'd it take so long? Who knows. Probably the stand-by excuse of "TRANSLATING THINGS IS HARD!", but it probably also has something to do with Licensing Hell.

Then there's bundles & prices. Unlike the US release where you had options of "Everything" or "Just the game", Europe gets to pick from a ton of crap. There's an "Instruments" set which just has all the controllers, there's drum and guitars sold separately, and there's just the game.

And then the real fuck-you from EA: the pricing.
Instruments Bundle - GBP 129.99 / EUR 169
Wireless Guitars - GBP 59.99 / EUR 79.99
Drum Kits - GBP 69.99 / EUR 89.99
Game-only - GBP 49.99 / EUR 69.99

This might not have sounded too bad back when the dollar was, you know, actually worth something, but look at the conversion now: 180 GBP is about 360 USD, over twice what the whole shebang retails for over here.

No firm dates or prices are set yet for the PS2 or Wii versions, the best we've been told is that they'll be out "later this summer", which in EA-speak could mean pretty much anything.

Source: Eurogamer

7 SEP 2008

From the press release:

"The wait is almost over," said Maxis Chief Designer Will Wright. "We're in our final stages of testing and polish with Spore, and the team at Maxis can't wait to see the cosmos of content created by the community later this year."

EA says they've got a simultaneous release lined up, targeting PC, Mac, DS and Cellphone platforms. Well, now that we've got a date, the only questions left are "Will it really get released on time?" and "Will it remotely meet expectations?" Hopefully both answers end up being yes, but with a game that's been so frequently delayed it's tough to have high hopes at this point.

Apart from being ported to the PC where, you know, you might not experience as much terrible texture pop-up, the announcement over at VoodooExtreme mentions the following updates, which I assume were made solely to piss me off, as they fix my main complaints with the game:

• Optimized controls designed specifically for the PC.
• High resolution visuals – Mass Effect for the PC features highly detailed textures, characters and environments.
• Fully customizable controls – PC gamers can re-map the control scheme any way they like.
• Run & Gun Control – Players can assign biotic powers or skills to ‘hot keys’ allowing them to play Mass Effect with a heavier focus on action.
• New decryption mini-game.
• New inventory screen GUI and functionality – The enhanced inventory system makes it easier for players to equip and modify their weapons and armor.

So lets look at that list a bit more in-depth:

1) Better prettier pretties (and probably less popup). Hopefully the PC will be able to handle the U3 engine better than the 360. It sucked - a lot - to walk into a building and have everyone skinned in super ultra low-res shit because the 360 just couldn't keep up. It really distracted from the fact that otherwise the game was beautiful.

2) Better controls. The radial menu was neat, but it mean that without pausing the action you couldn't switch what power you were using. The 360 just plain didn't have enough buttons, and now that's not a problem.

3) New Decryption mini-game. Anything (seriously, anything) will be better than the "press this button when we tell you to" crap that was in the 360 release. Mass Effect had the hands-down worst unlock/hack/disarm/decrypt/etc minigame I've ever seen in any RPG ever. With stuff like the pipe-dreams clone from Bioshock out there, "LOL PRES BUTAN WIN OMNIGEL" was just pathetic.

4) New Inventory UI. To go along with the completely inexcusable decryption minigame, the inventory UI was also one of the worst in the history of videogames. Major problems? No sane sorting of any matter, lag (Yes, lag. I'm not joking. It would lag between selecting each item because it had to load and skin what the item looked like, even though it was effectively just a crate.), cryptic submenus, a hard-limit on how many items you can hold, no collapsing of items (Shit, guys. Final Fantasy has had this forever. Why do my sixteen Rail Extension XVII's have to each take up their own slot?), I could complain about it for a long-ass time. Since you couldn't - for instance - sort by type, it was incredibly hard to tell what lame stuff you should be selling. And since modding stuff was hidden in a sub-sub-menu, I've heard reports of people making it through the entire game without doing any modding because they simply couldn't figure out how.

No word on if the PC release will include the content from the March DLC, but it probably will, since the content is pretty much in the can right now, and it wouldn't make sense for them to release it as a separate expansion.

I will wait a moment for that to sink in.

Got it? Alright. As for why it got delayed, well, it's our good old friend and favourite whipping boy the PS3. Back in August when the delay was announced, the justification was "technological problems", and in a recent interview with MTV Games, Rockstar dev Jeronimo Barrera clarified that, stating "It's really no surprise to anybody that the PS3 was definitely a contributing factor to that." He goes on to explain that it's all cool now, but still. Delays.

But hey, who cares about delays? Game's going to be out in three months.

Right, Take 2? Right? Please? No takebacks this time.

A few weeks ago Andy picked up the Nintendo Wii Zapper and was - as we assume many people were - completely dismayed by the fact that it wasn't compatible with Resident Evil 4. The problem stems from the fact that the zapper and all other third-party gun-type attachments for the Wii Remote all depend on either a mechanical switch that presses the B button, or on opening a hole for you to be able to press the B button on your own. That's all fine and well for games like Link's Crossbow Training, but RE4 uses the A button as "shoot" and the B button as "draw weapon".

So, of course, Andy took things into his own hands, got himself a toy electronic gun, and started soldering.

The result was the RE4 Gun, a wonderful ugly mash-up of a toy gun and Wii Remote, which can work just as well for A-Trigger and B-Trigger games.

Interested? Check out the detailed post-mortem he wrote up over here: Hardware Hacking for a Better Wii Zapper.

It's all presently on sale.

The whole set will run you $53.99.

$53.99

What's that? You only care about GTA? You're crazy for not wanting Max Payne and Max Payne 2, but fine, that'll be $26.95.

If you were asleep or something for the past decade, you need to buy this. Badly. And how lucky for you, it's ridiculously cheap.

Sale ends next Friday, then they all go up 10%.

Valve has two options to fill the Weighted-Companion-Cube-Shaped void in your life: Full-size plush (6" cube) or Fuzzy-dice-sized (4" cubes).

They've got other new stuff, too, like some new Aperture Labs Propaganda Posters and an Aperture Labs Mug.

Then there's the older stuff. If you haven't seen it, it's new to you! A few weeks back they released three lithograph prints, a set of Aperture Labs Holiday Cards, a Portal shirt, and Aperture Labs parking tags.

They also had some super neato Team Fortress 2 posters, but unfortunately it looks like those sold out. Damn. But hey, to replace one thing going away, they brought back headcrab plushes and headcrab hats. That's a good enough replacement for me.

So, get out of here! Go buy! Buy! Buy! Buy! If you hit over $50 you get free shipping!

So . . . it looks like we're down to three omni-platform super-developer/publishers now. In one corner we have EA, the only company allowed to make sports games, and who will be making sports games with tiny little incremental upgrades every year until the end of time. They also have a stranglehold on the cross-promotional branded shovelware market, and have lately been bolstering their army of developers by buying-up companies like Bioware/Pandemic.

In the next corner we have the newly-formed Activision Blizzard. Activision on their own is already in the middle of a record season thanks to Guitar Hero 3, Call of Duty 4 and Tony Hawk 39, and as for Blizzard, well, Blizzard is always in the middle of a record season thanks to having the MMO industry by the balls. Normally when a company I like (such as Blizzard) gets gobbled up in a large merger like this I get worried, but in this case I'm not concerned at all. I'm pretty sure everyone involved knows Blizzard knows full well how to make mountains of cash without any intervention from whoever their corporate masters are this week. Furthermore, I'm rather sure everyone involved knows not to try and mess with Blizzard's practices.

In the last corner we've got Ubisoft. . . . but really, in light of this merger, Ubisoft is looking kinda weak. I mean, they've only got a tiny fraction of the licenses either EA or Activision Blizzard have rights to, and have only 3 or 4 studios compared to the jillions EA and Activision Blizzard have.

I'd watch your back, Ubisoft. Looks like you might be next.