GU Comics has some exclusive Vanguard screenshots up. Bearing in mind that they “are to show gameplay moreso than pretty images and are lacking polish, finished anims, etc.” and that I'm a bitter and jaded MMOG player, the gameplay looks depressingly unoriginal.

Can we stop making fantasy-themed MMOGs now?

“Telltale is releasing a series of point-and-click adventure games based on each of the "Bone" chapters over the Internet on their Web site, http://www.telltalegames.com. Despite being only 50 megabyte downloads, the games will feature a full voice cast with dialogue taken directly from the original word balloons.”

Comic Book Resources - CBR News - The Comic Wire

Bone was one of the best comic books around... I'm not sure what kind of game they're going to get out of it, but I'm downloading this trailer at the moment.

“Take a sneak peek at the video game adaptation of Bone in this trailer.”

Bone Media Index for PC at GameSpot

EVE, the reasonably successful sci-fi space MMOG, was going in the local Gamestation for £5 a while back, so I picked it up. I'd heard they'd added some new stuff to the game recently and I was a huge Elite player as a kid, and a multiplayer version thereof could be cool.

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As I recall, in the “official” Grand Theft Auto 3, you were able to blow the heads off random passersby, causing a fountain a blood to spurt out. In that one or Vice City, you could blow individual limbs off the public too - leading to a one-legged man hopping around, blood spurting out, until he fell over and died. You could take a baseball bat to an old man and repeatedly beat him as he lay on the ground, the blood pooling under his lifeless body. You could pick up prostitutes from the street, drive to a secluded area and watch the car rock a bit before your health went up - then run over them to get your money back. All this quite rightly resulted in the game being given a Mature rating - 17 in the US, 18 in the UK.

But heaven forfend you put in a hidden mini-game featuring consensual sex between consenting adults... That would really be beyond the pale.

“The industry group that sets ratings for video games is probing whether hidden features within the blockbuster title "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" allows players to make their characters engage in simulated explicit sex acts.

[...]

If the investigation were to lead to a rating change from M (Mature 17 ) to AO (Adult Only), it could limit sales from major retail outlets.”

Games ratings board probing Grand Theft Auto:SA - Yahoo! News

Additional: Grauniad Gamesblog, Lum the Broken and Ubiq.

Just competed Psychonauts

Xfire has me down for 16 hours played, but I didn't have it running today because the intarweb was broken, so stick another seven hours on top of that for nearly an entire day-worth of fun. An excellent, inventive and well done little all-in-all.

The format - whereby young psychic Raz has to entire the brains of various people to solve their problems - allows for an interesting range of levels, such as the Milkman Conspiracy where you need to find disguises to get past the “disguised” assassins or the Lungfishopolis level where you take the part of a Godzilla-like monster stamping through a city (and some classic lines from the inhabitants: “he's immune to bullets... and love...” . The stuff common to every level is nicely done too, with figments of imagination floating around, mental cobwebs to clear and, my favourite by a longshot, the emotional baggage to sort out.

Hopefully it sold enough for the sequel they left the ending open for.

I was going to mention my dip back in to AC2 with Legions but, apart from the comments on the graphics (he probably hadn't installed the high-detail stuff), this is close to what I would have said, sadly.

“All these niggling flaws will weigh far too heavily on a new player's mind, and render AC2: Legions rather obsolete in the face of competition from more modern and accomplished titles. So, whilst the additions Legions provides to the core game are commendable enough, and indicative of Turbine's attentiveness to their long-term customers, Legions' appeal will most likely be confined to those customers. The difficulty curve is far too steep to play solo, and with its diminishing popularity, new players are going to find it very difficult to find other people of equivalent level to party up with.”

Pro-G - Prodigious Gaming: Asheron's Call 2: Legions Review