MUST WATCH: Amazing Live-Action Short Film Based on ‘Portal’

Por­tal: No Escape is a live-action short film based on the game Por­tal and I promise you it is AMAZING!  It was directed by Dan Tra­cht­en­berg , a Los Ange­les film­maker who, hon­estly, I had never heard of until this project, but will be sure to fol­low closely from now on.

The film is about seven min­utes long, and chron­i­cles the expe­ri­ence of Chell (played by Danielle Rayne ) as she wakes up in a bleak,  unknown, pre­sum­ably Aper­ture Science-controlled facil­ity and what she does from there.   Por­tal  fans will rec­og­nize all the famil­iar props, includ­ing the blue and orange por­tals, the Por­tal Gun, even a glimpse of the Com­pan­ion Cube toward the end!

(I won’t spoil any­thing, but the end­ing was really well done.)

Watch Por­tal: No Escape:

New ‘Asylum’ Trailer — Welcome to Hanwell Mental Institute

Asy­lum is the upcom­ing first-person hor­ror adven­ture title from from the cre­ator of Scratches, that to this day, I still con­sider the scari­est game I have ever played. Last year when I heard Sen­scape had a new game in the works, it imme­di­ately went to the top of my Most Wanted list.  Because I already do enough of it on Twit­ter & my favorite adven­ture game forums, I will spare you the copi­ous amounts of gush­ing I am capa­ble of doing when it comes to Sen­scape and just get straight to the point:

There’s a new Asy­lum trailer out that includes actual game­play footage. Check out this dis­turb­ing new glimpse into Han­well Men­tal Institute:

Indie Games Radar: To the Moon, Owlboy, EDGE

Indie Games Radar is a pre­view of new and upcom­ing inde­pen­dent games that I’m really excited about.

Some really inter­est­ing picks this week:   To the Moon is a seri­ous JRPG-style game that explores death and regret; ver­ti­cal plat­former Owl­boy is a soar­ing adven­ture with gor­geous 2D graph­ics, and the award-winning iOS game EDGE finally gets a Steam release.

To the Moon

Devel­oper: Free­bird Games
Plat­form: PC
Release Date: Fall 2011

To the Moon is an RPG/adventure game about two doc­tors tra­vers­ing through the mem­o­ries of a dying man to ful­fill his last wish.  There exists a tech­nol­ogy that allows doc­tors to weave arti­fi­cial mem­o­ries, such that a patient can request attempts to alter their mind and wake up with mem­o­ries of things that didn’t actu­ally hap­pen.  This par­tic­u­lar story fol­lows Dr. Ros­a­lene and Dr. Watts’ attempt to ful­fill the dream of an elderly man, Johnny, whose dying wish is to go the moon.  With each step back in time, a new frag­ment of Johnny’s curi­ous past is revealed.  And as the two doc­tors piece together the puz­zled events that spanned a life­time, they seek to find out just why the frail old man chose his dying wish to be what it is.

Owlboy

Devel­oper: D-Pad Stu­dio
Plat­form: PC, XBLA (& Steam?)
Release Date: Demo Avail­able August 12, 2011

Owl­boy is a ver­ti­cal platform-adventure game.  You play as Otus, a young Owl, who sets out on an adven­ture when his vil­lage is attacked by sky pirates.  Fea­ture a deep sto­ry­line, emotion-based dia­logue, open envi­ron­ments, mas­sive dungeons…oh yeah, and gold­fish with tophats!

EDGE

Devel­oper: Mobigame
Plat­form: iOS, Steam
Release Date: August 11, 2011 (Steam)

EDGE , the award-winning, retro-styled plat­form game pre­vi­ously only avail­able on iOS is now com­ing to Steam !

‘His Adventure’ is a Cute, Hand-Drawn iOS Game Developed by 17-Year-Old

Meet Oliver Pezzini.  He’s an iOS devel­oper with two mobile games to his credit, and pres­i­dent of his own game com­pany, Pezzini Games .  He’s also only 17 years old.

This Thurs­day Pezzini will be releas­ing his lat­est cre­ation, His Adven­ture , a ridicu­lously cute touch-driven plat­form game for iOS devices.  The object of the game is to use touch com­mands to guide “Him” (intrigu­ingly, the main char­ac­ter doesn’t seem to have a name) to “his” home through 70+ chal­leng­ing lev­els of sharp, spin­ning saws, mov­ing plat­forms, and other dan­gers to reach the goal, all while col­lect­ing as many stars as pos­si­ble.  With built-in leader­boards, you can even com­pete against your friends to see who can col­lect the most stars.  The game’s light, whim­si­cal music is another high­light, and seems to be a per­fect match for the adorable hand-drawn visu­als that recall the doo­dles you used to sketch in the mar­gins of your math homework.

Here, have a look & listen:

“I have always been inter­ested in gam­ing like most teenagers but unlike most was also intrigued by the devel­op­ment and the­ory behind the design­ing process of games,” Pezzini states on his web­site.  “After watch­ing many videos and read­ing arti­cles on the sub­ject I decided to invest in an Apple devel­oper account and get some expe­ri­ence first hand.”

Sadly, I don’t have an iPhone or and iPod Touch, so I won’t be able to play His Adven­ture any­time soon.  But I can’t help but be impressed (a lit­tle inspired, even) by what Pezzini has already achieved at such an early age, and what is clearly just the begin­ning of this young man’s success.

I mean, how many video games did your lazy ass develop when you were in high school?

Our First Look at ‘The Witness’ — Upcoming Adventure Game from the Creator of ‘Braid’

Jonathan Blow, cre­ator of the award-winning, hugely suc­cess­ful indie game Braid , today unveiled pre­views of his upcom­ing game The Wit­ness, a 3D puzzle/adventure game.

Kotaku is already hail­ing it a modern-day Myst .  Indeed, the com­par­isons to Myst seem well-justified.  Set on a mys­te­ri­ous, unin­hab­ited island, the player assumes the role of The Wit­ness, a silent pro­tag­o­nist who roams about the island in search of—well, what exactly, we don’t know yet.  The game­play seems to be an inter­est­ing mix of first-person explo­ration and labyrinth-like puz­zle solv­ing in the form of  locked “key” pan­els that grow increas­ingly more com­plex and open paths to new areas of explo­ration as the game progresses .

But Jonathan Blow is quick to point out that there’s much more to the game than sim­ple puzzle-solving.   The Wit­ness is about ” [using] the senses as a gate­way to under­stand­ing the uni­verse,” he says.  Any­one already famil­iar with Braid will know that Jonathan’s games have much more in store than meets the eye.

Here are some beautiful-looking screen­shots (image cred­its: Kotaku) :

I wasn’t all that inter­ested when I first heard about The Wit­ness , but after see­ing these screen­shots and some actual game­play footage, I am really get­ting excited about it now.  Kotaku had me at “modern-day Myst .”  As a huge fan of adven­ture games, I’m thrilled we’re expe­ri­enc­ing an adven­ture game revival era of sorts.  Unfor­tu­nately, we’ll prob­a­bly have to wait at least a year for this one;  The Wit­ness won’t be released until some­time in 2012 for PC and consoles.

(Update: The Wit­ness totally just usurped Jour­ney on my Most Wanted list.)

Retro Blast: The Power Glove Instruction Manual from 1989

Over the week­end, my boyfriend was at his parent’s house dig­ging through some boxes of old junk in the base­ment when he unearthed some­thing that could prac­ti­cally be con­sid­ered an archae­o­log­i­cal dis­cov­ery by gamer’s stan­dards: the orig­i­nal Power Glove Instruc­tion Man­ual from 1989!  And in almost per­fect condition!

As soon as I got over my imme­di­ate jeal­ousy that he owned the Power Glove as a kid and I didn’t, I began to won­der if it might be worth anything—not nec­es­sar­ily in terms of money, but worth the infor­ma­tion and nos­tal­gia.  After all, only 100,000 Power Gloves were sold in the U.S, and how many of them still have the instruc­tion man­ual intact?  Although I’ve played with a Power Glove before (and was thor­oughly dis­ap­pointed by the expe­ri­ence), I can’t recall ever hav­ing seen an orig­i­nal instruc­tion man­ual.  So I did a few Google searches to see what was out there.

To my sur­prise, I couldn’t find a com­plete scan of the man­ual; only this  text ver­sion , and a few scanned images of ran­dom pages.  And that’s really too bad, because the Power Glove man­ual is a ver­i­ta­ble gold­mine of lulz.

I knew what I had to do. ( Skip Ahead to Down­load )

Lucas is a Lie

Just from a casual glance through the thirty-five page instruc­tion man­ual (yes, thirty-fucking-five pages!) it is read­ily appar­ent how com­pli­cated the Power Glove is to use.  Can you imag­ine giv­ing this thing to an excited lit­tle kid and then wit­ness­ing their sheer dis­ap­point­ment when they couldn’t get it to work because GOD DAMMIT you have to pro­gram it first using a series of com­pli­cated ges­tures and button-pressing sequences.  And if it still didn’t work (which it inevitably didn’t) you were encour­aged to call a 1–900 Mat­tel num­ber for “assis­tance” and charged $1.50 for the first minute, $.75 for each addi­tional minute.

In real­ity, this “new dimen­sion of game­play” the man­ual describes is a far cry away from those rad moves Lucas showed off in The Wiz­ard. I guess that’s why Mat­tel felt it was nec­es­sary to dumb things down for the kiddies.

Enter “Glove Mas­ter” and “Lit­tle Digit”

Meet “Glove Mas­ter” and “Lit­tle Digit”, a pair of white, non-threatening, casually-dressed car­toon char­ac­ters who exist solely to explain away the com­plex­i­ties of oper­at­ing the Power Glove with help­ful illus­tra­tions and what can best be described as church pam­phlet humor.

But are “G.M.” and “L.D.” (as they like to call each other) all that they seem??  Look a lit­tle closer and you’ll see that Lit­tle Digit, a naive boy of about ten, has a habit of get­ting him­self into some ques­tion­able sit­u­a­tions with Glove Mas­ter, an older gen­tle­man who refuses to take his jacket and sun­glasses off even though they are both clearly indoors:

What the hell is the “Sens­ing Zone” and what is Glove Mas­ter doing with his hands hid­den behind the TV?  Also, appar­ently Glove Mas­ter likes to com­mu­ni­cate via his crotch:

Didn’t I say it was a gold­mine?  For an amus­ing if slightly creepy snap­shot of video gam­ing life in 1989, I highly rec­om­mend you read the whole thing, which was painstak­ingly scanned and PDF’d by yours truly.

Download

You can down­load the full scan (PDF for­mat) from Rapid­Share here:

Nin­tendo Power Glove Instruc­tion Man­ual — 1989 (PDF)

You’re wel­come, Internet!

Underrated Adventure Game ‘The Neverhood’ Coming Soon to Mobile Phones?

The Nev­er­hood is prob­a­bly one of the most under­rated PC games of all time.  A col­lab­o­ra­tion between the biggest names in Hol­ly­wood and the soft­ware industry—Stephen Spiel­berg, Bill Gates, to name a few—The Nev­er­hood was an adventure-style game with a unique blend of clay ani­ma­tion, point-and-click game­play, and a beau­ti­ful score com­posed by Terry Scott Tay­lor.  Released back in 1996, it was the first prod­uct from then recently-launched Dream­works Inter­ac­tive, which later become a divi­sion of EA.  Although a com­mer­cial fail­ure at the time (it only sold about 42,000 copies), The Nev­er­hood was praised by crit­ics and fans alike and con­tin­ues to live on in many gamer’s fond memories.

Today I was really excited to learn that the orig­i­nal devel­op­ers of the game are cur­rently in nego­ti­a­tions for exclu­sive rights to re-release the game on mod­ern mobile plat­forms, includ­ing iPhone and Android.

Whether you’re a fan of the orig­i­nal game or just hear­ing about it for the first time, be sure to check out their Face­book and Twit­ter to fol­low their progress and show your support!

To make The Nev­er­hood, game devel­op­ers used 3.5 tons of clay and over 50,000 frames of animation.

Ridiculous Video Game Storage Solutions

We gamers tend to have a lot of plas­tic things lay­ing around:  con­soles, con­trollers, periph­er­als such as head­sets, mics, and adapters, add-ons, acces­sories, includ­ing large, bulky items like Rock Band gui­tars and Wii Sports attach­ments, cords, mis­cel­la­neous odds and ends, and the games them­selves; some with cases, some with­out.  We have large accu­mu­la­tions of stuff ; most of it mis­matched, unat­trac­tive and awkwardly-shaped.

Gamers have so much stuff , in fact, that a whole sub-industry has sprung up around us to accom­mo­date all of our crap:  video game stor­age!  Did you know that “Game Stor­age” is one of the fastest-growing prod­uct cat­e­gories among fur­ni­ture man­u­fac­tur­ers?  Or that there are entire com­pa­nies and   blogs ded­i­cated to video game stor­age?  When it comes to keep­ing our gam­ing col­lec­tions and gear neatly stowed away, there seem to be no lim­its to the amount of avail­able prod­ucts to choose from, which range from taste­ful, furniture-like solu­tions to cheap, gaudy, and overly-specific wastes of money.

Here’s a humor­ous look at some of the most ridicu­lous “solu­tions” that some of these com­pa­nies are try­ing to sell you:

Wii Tower Gam­ing Station

Despite being large enough to count as stand­alone fur­ni­ture, this “offi­cially licensed” thing only holds 16 Wii games and 4 Wiimotes (or 2 Wiimotes and 2 Nunchucks). At 47% of the pur­chase price of a new Wii, the Wii Tower Gam­ing Sta­tion can be yours for a mere $70 at Wal­mart.  But hey, it looks like a Wii!

Nin­tendo DS Ele­ment Tray

I haven’t quite fig­ured out who Level Up Gear’s  Nin­tendo DS Ele­ment Tray is meant for.  Most of us who carry around our DS—a portable gam­ing handheld—keep it in some kind of case meant for, you know, porta­bil­ity.  I keep mine in my mes­sen­ger bag and pretty much always have it with me.  So what exactly is the point of this thing?  Do we really need cuphold­ers for extra sty­luses?  Also, how are you sup­posed to pick this thing up by its han­dle with­out all your loose games falling off?

Playsta­tion Ver­sus Game Tray

Another gem from Level Up Gear, this piece of plas­tic with a Playsta­tion logo slapped on it is sup­posed to be some kind of caddy for your PS3 con­trollers (or PS2 con­trollers, as their web­site so help­fully points out). Care­ful not to let any extra plas­tic go to waste, the Playsta­tion Ver­sus Game Tray also comes equipped with four awkwardly-positioned slots for hold­ing games; I guess there’s only room enough for the ones you play most often.

Video Game Stor­age System™

Note the trade­mark sym­bol.  I guess Game On wasn’t clever enough to come up with a unique prod­uct name, so they opted for the super generic sure-to-be-SEO-friendly ” Video Game Stor­age Sys­tem ” to describe what is essen­tially a plas­tic box with some hooks stuck to the sides.  While I can appre­ci­ate the sim­plic­ity of the design, what’s so insult­ing about this one is that it costs $60.  Really?  And for that price, this “sys­tem” doesn’t even have ade­quate air­flow or a way to hide your cables if you’re sup­posed to mount this thing on a wall.  For a good laugh, I rec­om­mend check­ing out their prod­uct demon­stra­tion video.

Step 2 Deluxe Video Center

Just look­ing at the Step 2 Deluxe Video Cen­ter pisses me off for some rea­son.  Maybe it’s the fact that it only fits 20″ tele­vi­sions, that it’s made entirely of plas­tic, or that the poor stock pho­tog­ra­phy sub­jects who can’t pos­si­bly both be play­ing a single-player FPS at the same time—but nice try!  For the $150 price tag, you could go out and buy a real piece of furniture.

System-Specific Game Disc Stands

Do we really need to have game disc hold­ers that match each console—especially ones that only hold 12 games? Ever heard of a shelf?

Who is buy­ing this stuff??

Indie Games Radar: TRAUMA, Vessel, Atom Zombie Smasher

Indie Games Radar is a pre­view of new and upcom­ing inde­pen­dent games that I’m really excited about.

TRAUMA

Devel­oper: Krys­t­ian Majew­ski
Plat­form: PC, browser-based
Release Date: End of August 2011?

” TRAUMA tells a story of a young woman, who sur­vives a car acci­dent. Recov­er­ing at the hos­pi­tal, she has dreams that shed light on dif­fer­ent aspects of her iden­tity — such as the way she deals with the loss of her par­ents. TRAUMA lets you expe­ri­ence those dreams in an inter­ac­tive way, rem­i­nis­cent of Point-and-Click Adven­ture Games. It builds upon this estab­lished for­mula by intro­duc­ing a gesture-based inter­face, real-time 3D tech­nol­ogy for dynamic level lay­outs, unique pho­to­graphic visu­als and a level design phi­los­o­phy that focuses on cre­at­ing a rich expe­ri­ence rather than an elab­o­rate puz­zle chal­lenge. Com­bined with the uncon­ven­tional story, it is aimed to be a com­pact and deep game for a lit­er­ate and mature audience.”

Vessel

Devel­oper: Strange Loop Games
Plat­form: PC & Con­sole
Release Date: TBD

” Ves­sel is a 2d action and puz­zle game played in a phys­i­cally sim­u­lated world, built on a physics and fluid engine fea­tur­ing the unique abil­ity to sim­u­late char­ac­ters com­posed entirely of fluid.

Ark­wright, inven­tor of the world famous Fluro (mechanized-fluid automa­ton) is on a quest to fin­ish his next great inven­tion – The Device – that will alter exis­tence in unimag­in­able ways.

Travel to dif­fer­ent indus­trial sites that use Arkwright’s Fluro inven­tion to run their machin­ery. The Fluros, thought to be life­less machines, are some­how devel­op­ing minds of their own, mutat­ing into new forms and run­ning amok. It is up to Ark­wright to under­stand (and exploit) these strange evo­lu­tions, and apply what has emerged in the field back to his lab work at home. Gather these evolved Fluros and machin­ery and bring them back to Arkwright’s lab to fin­ish his grand invention.

Explore phys­i­cally mod­eled worlds, solve puz­zles by con­trol­ling fluid and machines, and har­ness the power of the mys­te­ri­ous ‘Fluro’ crea­tures that pop­u­late the land.”

Atom Zom­bie Smasher

Devel­oper: Blendo Games
Plat­form: PC
Release Date: Avail­able Now

“The only thing pre­vent­ing the zom­bie apoc­a­lypse is…90 mil­lion tons of nuclear warheads…and you.”   Atom Zom­bie Smasher is a zom­biepoca­lypse game that com­bines real-time strat­egy with clas­sic tower defense.

Is Sony’s “Welcome Back” Package Enough to Make You Forgive Them?

Unless you have been liv­ing under a rock for the past month, you know that Sony has been bat­tling a series of gigan­tic secu­rity breaches, affect­ing more than 100 mil­lion users.  The large-scale hack attacks were respon­si­ble for the month-long down­time of the Playsta­tion Net­work and the theft of a stag­ger­ing amount of PSN users’ per­sonal and finan­cial data from across the globe.  Even as Sony rebuilds its infra­struc­ture and slowly gets back on its feet, addi­tional attacks and new secu­rity issues con­tinue to cause fur­ther delays.  For now, at least, the Playsta­tion Net­work is back online and mil­lions of gamers are recov­er­ing from withdraw.

This week, Sony pro­vided details on its blog for the Playsta­tion Net­work and Qri­oc­ity Cus­tomer Appre­ci­a­tion Pro­gram, oth­er­wise known as Sony’s “wel­come back” (read: “please love us again”)  pack­age.  If you have a PSN account, here’s what you will get:

All PlaySta­tion Net­work cus­tomers can select two PS3 games from the fol­low­ing list. The games will be avail­able for 30 days shortly after PlaySta­tion Store is restored and can be kept for­ever.

• Dead Nation
• inFA­MOUS
• Lit­tleBig­Planet
• Super Star­dust HD
• Wipe­out HD + Fury

For PSP own­ers, you will be eli­gi­ble to down­load two PSP games from the fol­low­ing list. The games will be avail­able for 30 days shortly after PlaySta­tion Store is restored and can be kept for­ever.

• Lit­tleBig­Planet (PSP)
• Mod­Na­tion Rac­ers
• Pur­suit Force
• Kil­l­zone Lib­er­a­tion

• A selec­tion of “On Us” rental movie titles will be avail­able to PlaySta­tion Net­work cus­tomers over one week­end, where Video Ser­vice is avail­able. Those titles will be announced soon.
• 30 days free PlaySta­tion Plus mem­ber­ship for non PlaySta­tion Plus sub­scribers.
• Exist­ing PlaySta­tion Plus sub­scribers will receive an addi­tional 60 days of free sub­scrip­tion.
• Exist­ing Music Unlim­ited Pre­mium Trial sub­scrip­tion mem­bers will receive an addi­tional 30 days of free pre­mium sub­scrip­tion.
• Addi­tional 30 days + time lost for exist­ing mem­bers of Music Unlim­ited Premium/Basic sub­scrip­tion free of charge for exist­ing Premium/Basic mem­bers.
• To wel­come users Home, PlaySta­tion Home will be offer­ing 100 free vir­tual items. Addi­tional free con­tent will be released soon, includ­ing the next addi­tion to the Home Man­sion per­sonal space, and Ooblag’s Alien Casino, an exclu­sive game.

Per­son­ally, I would have liked a longer list of games to choose from, although I under­stand that it’s up to the par­tic­i­pat­ing pub­lish­ers who con­tributed to this pack­age.  I’m going to go with Infa­mous and Super Star­dust HD myself, which are two games I’ve been want­ing to play.  But I do feel sorry for the Sony gamers who have already pur­chased every game on this list, as there’s quite a few of them out there.  It was bound to hap­pen with all of these titles being so pop­u­lar.  The rest of the free­bies on this list seem pretty lack­lus­ter to me.

What do you think? Is Sony doing enough to buy back your affection?

How To Clean Up Pre-owned Games and Make Them Look (Almost) New

Being a gamer is an expen­sive hobby. There’s always a ton of new games to buy, new sys­tems, DLC, periph­er­als,  acces­sories, sub­scrip­tions…  To help keep costs down, I try to buy pre-owned games when I can—especially the titles that have been on my radar for a while, but I never quite got around to play­ing.  When GameStop is run­ning a “Buy One, Get One” or “Buy Two, Get One” pro­mo­tion, I’m usu­ally all over it.   (By the way, don’t you just hate the term “pre-owned”?)

If you don’t mind own­ing games sec­ond­hand, you can get some good deals this way.  Unfor­tu­nately, buy­ing used also means your game’s case and paper insert are likely to be cov­ered in mul­ti­ple lay­ers of price tags, stick­ers and gunky residue. It’s enough to make the col­lec­tor in me twitch.

Here’s how you can clean up your pre-owned games and make them look (almost) new.

What You’ll Need:

• A bot­tle of Goo Gone
• Roll of paper towels
• A plas­tic scraper tool, or your fin­ger­nail (if it’s long and sturdy enough)

Before

Here’s some “before” pic­tures of Lit­tle Big Planet , one of the used games I started with:

There was even a sticker on the game’s paper insert.  GameStop is espe­cially guilty of putting stick­ers here, which really pisses me off.  But that’s OK; we can take care of it.

Step 1: First, wrap a paper towel around your index fin­ger and wet it with a few squirts of Goo Gone. (It’s safe for skin con­tact, and even has a pleas­ant lemon-fresh scent!)

Step 2: Apply the moist­ened paper towel directly to the sticker.  Press down hard all over the sticker to make the Goo Gone pen­e­trate the lay­ers of paper; usu­ally there’s a glossy top layer and a thin, fuzzy back­ing (which is the crap that leaves the most residue).

For extremely stub­born residue, you might need to pour Goo Gone directly on the sticker, com­pletely sat­u­rat­ing it:

Step 3: Gen­tly peel away the  sticker with your fin­ger­nail or plas­tic scraper tool.  I would rec­om­mend NOT using a razor blade, which could acci­den­tally pierce right through the plas­tic case.  Rub the edges until you can slip your fin­ger­nail or scraper under­neath, then slowly and gen­tly scrape until the sticker comes off; if you’re lucky, in one piece.

Step 4: You’ll most likely have a fine layer of sticky gunk left behind on the case when after remov­ing the sticker, like this:

Dampen another paper towel with more Goo Gone and rub it all over the sticky sur­face.  The Goo Gone will remove all the tiny bits of crap.  Keep pol­ish­ing the plas­tic with the moist­ened paper towel until the sur­face is smooth and shiny.

Step 5: If there are stick­ers on your game’s cover insert (the hor­ror!), you’ll need to remove it from the plas­tic case.

Step 6: This part is tricky, and much harder than remov­ing stick­ers on the plas­tic case because you won’t be able to use Goo Gone, which could dam­age the paper.  With your fin­ger­nail or scraper, slowly and gen­tly scrape at the edges of the sticker until it starts to “roll up” under your nail or scraper edge.  Work from the edges toward the cen­ter of the sticker, rolling it up bit by bit until you can peel it away.

The cover inserts are pretty glossy, so usu­ally the sticker will come off clean, as long as you’re careful…it’s just an annoy­ingly slow process.  Put the cover insert back inside of the plas­tic case when it’s clean.

After

Ta-da! When you’re all fin­ished, you should have a rel­a­tively new-looking game before you:

Of course, there’s a cou­ple of things you can do while you’re shop­ping to avoid sticker frus­tra­tion and buy the newest-looking games pos­si­ble. Here are some tips:

• Closely inspect the games before you buy them. Is the cover insert torn? Are there scratches or frayed edges on the plas­tic cover?  Try to find the newest-looking copy you can.  At GameStop, the game box you pull of the shelf is the one you’re tak­ing home.
• If a game doesn’t have a cover or book­let (or both), don’t buy it. There’s usu­ally mul­ti­ple copies of the same game float­ing around, some with and some with­out all the pack­ag­ing.  And retard­edly, they’re usu­ally the same price no mat­ter what con­di­tion they’re in.
• Test-peel the stick­ers while you’re still in the store to see if they seem like they’ll come off cleanly. Avoid the boxes with mul­ti­ple lay­ers of sticker build-up and go for the ones that look like they haven’t been sit­ting on the shelves for months on end.

Yes, I real­ize this all seems a bit anal-retentive, but when you love your games as much as I do and enjoy show­ing off your col­lec­tion, it’s worth tak­ing the extra time to make ‘em look shiny and new.  And who doesn’t love shiny things?

Guy Turns an Old Game Boy into a Musical Instrument

There are lots of clever ways to upcy­cle an old Game Boy. But THIS is prob­a­bly one of the most cre­ative ones I’ve ever seen.

Check out Sebas­t­ian Bender’s awe­some orig­i­nal Game Boy music video, where repet­i­tive but­ton mash­ing, head­phone feed­back, and car­tridge throw­ing some­how mag­i­cally cre­ates awe­some music.

He sure can play the shit out of those bat­tery springs!

Dead Island Has One of the Best Game Trailers I’ve Ever Seen

Have you seen the new trailer for Dead Island , the upcom­ing sur­vival horror/zombie FPS? It is truly a thing of beauty.

Nat­u­rally, com­par­isons to LOST and The Walk­ing Dead are already being drawn. Is it gim­micky (and also a tad uno­rig­i­nal)? Per­haps. But there’s no deny­ing that it’s a great look­ing trailer, and it cer­tainly gets the job done. Peo­ple who have never heard of this game are gush­ing all over it on Twitter.

At this point, it prob­a­bly doesn’t even mat­ter whether or not the game turns out to be good. This trailer just con­vinced me I need this game—I’m sure I’m not alone. In fact, I’m going to add it to my list .

No offi­cial word yet on the game’s release date, in case you were wondering.

Should I Buy PlayStation Move or Xbox Kinect?

Playsta­tion Move or Xbox Kinect?

I’ve yet to jump on the motion con­trol band­wagon, nei­ther hav­ing the money nor the inter­est level to jus­tify pur­chas­ing yet another video game  periph­eral at the time they were released.  It didn’t help mat­ters that both of them hit stores right before the hol­i­days, and I had already set my sights on other things I actu­ally needed (LOL adult respon­si­bil­i­ties!).  Plus, I wasn’t too impressed with the lineup of launch titles, which mostly seemed to be aimed at the Wii market.

I’m not one to rush out and buy expen­sive things with­out care­ful plan­ning and research (unless I like, really, really want some­thing and can’t con­trol myself…which I admit hap­pens every now and then).  So as usual, I took the “wait and see” approach for both Move and Kinect, fig­ur­ing I’d just wait ’till the hype died down and the reviews from real gamers  started rolling in before mak­ing a decision.

Now that a few months have gone by and I’ve had time to make a list of the games I plan to buy this year , I’m won­der­ing if I should be includ­ing Move or Kinect (or both!) games on my list as well.

I’d really like to hear from actual Move and Kinect own­ers.  Bonus points if you own both sys­tems and can make an hon­est rec­om­men­da­tion; fan­boys need not apply.  If the answer is “they’re both great, and you should buy both,” well that’s some­thing I’d like to know, too.

The 2011 Video Games I’m Most Looking Forward To

Some years just plain suck for video games; when there’s hardly any inter­est­ing new titles to look for­ward to, and the hype sur­round­ing big releases turns out to be more excit­ing than the actual game.  2011 is not going to be one of those years .

At the begin­ning of every year, I like to make a list of all the upcom­ing games I want to play and HOLY SHIT  this year is going to be awe­some (not to men­tion expen­sive).  Here’s what I’m look­ing for­ward to the most (as in, I will go out of my way to get these games on release day), in order of release date:

Dragon Age II

Release Date: March 8, 2011
Platform(s): PC, PlaySta­tion 3, Xbox 360

Set in the same world of Thedas, this sequel to Dragon Age: Ori­gins takes place in a dif­fer­ent region of the map called the Free Marches.  Play­ers take on the role of Hawke, a sur­vivor of the Blight and Cham­pion of Kirk­wall who rises to power through­out the game, which spans a decade.  One really inter­est­ing fea­ture is that the player can import data from Dragon Age: Ori­gins which will reflect choices that the player made in the orig­i­nal game.  One of the major things play­ers com­plained about in Ori­gins were the graph­ics.  So far, screen­shots have promised to be a major improvement.

Black Mir­ror 3: Final Fear

Release Date: April 12, 2011
Platform(s): PC

The third and final chap­ter of the The Black Mir­ror point-and-click adven­ture hor­ror series for PC picks up where the sec­ond game ends. Play­ers return as pro­tag­o­nist Dar­ren Michaels, who is haunted by the generations-old curse that runs through his bloodline.

Red Johnson’s Chronicles

Release Date: TBA, Spring 2011
Platform(s): PlaySta­tion 3

This PS3 exclu­sive promises to be a cross between the CSI and P rofes­sor Lay­ton titles in terms of game­play, with beau­ti­ful, styl­is­tic graph­ics that take full advan­tage of the PS3 hard­ware. You play as Red, a pri­vate eye inves­ti­gat­ing a high pro­file mur­der in a gritty, urban set­ting akin to New York City. This may turn out to be the most adventure-ish adven­ture game yet for PS3!

Por­tal 2

Release Date: April 18, 2011
Platform(s): PC, PlaySta­tion 3, Xbox 360

Por­tal was the sur­prise hit of 2007, and fans of the orig­i­nal game have been clam­or­ing for a sequel ever since.  In Por­tal 2, play­ers return to the Aper­ture Sci­ence facil­ity to find it dilap­i­dated and will again face rig­or­ous phys­i­cal tests as we help to rebuild.  We can expect the same inno­v­a­tive style of physics-based puz­zle game­play that made the orig­i­nal so great.

L.A. Noire

Release Date: May 17, 2011
Platform(s): PlaySta­tion 3, Xbox 360

Set in a very real­is­tic 1947 Los Ange­les cre­ated as a visual homage to 1940s noir films, L.A. Noire will have play­ers solv­ing mur­der mys­ter­ies in an open-ended, sand­box style envi­ron­ment.  Rock­star promises to deliver “a vio­lent crime thriller that blends breath­tak­ing action with true detec­tive work to deliver an unprece­dented inter­ac­tive expe­ri­ence.”  If this game turns out to be any­where near as good as Red Dead Redemp­tion , I think we can safely put it in the run­ning for Game of the Year.

ICO / Shadow of the Colos­sus HD Collection

Release Date: Q1/Q2 2011
Platform(s): PlaySta­tion 3

Orig­i­nally released on PlaySta­tion 2, ICO and its spir­i­tual suc­ces­sor Shadow of the Colos­sus are con­sid­ered to be two of the most impor­tant games in terms of artis­tic expres­sion and emo­tional response.  Fans of the orig­i­nals as well as new play­ers who want to expe­ri­ence these jour­neys for the first time will be treated to a high-definition remake for the PS3 that will also sup­port 3D.

The Last Guardian

Release Date: Q4 2011
Platform(s): PlaySta­tion 3

The newest Team ICO title that fans of ICO and Shadow of the Colos­sus are eagerly await­ing, The Last Guardian will share the same styl­is­tic, the­matic, and game­play ele­ments of its predecessors.

Alice: Mad­ness Returns

Release Date: Q4 2011
Platform(s): PC, PlaySta­tion 3, Xbox 360

If you were a fan of Amer­i­can McGee’s crit­i­cally acclaimed Alice game for PC, no doubt that this upcom­ing sequel—also designed by Amer­i­can McGee—is on your radar.  Tak­ing place 11 years after the events in the first game, Alice relo­cates from Rut­ledge Asy­lum to the care of a psy­chi­a­trist in Lon­don where she con­tin­ues to strug­gle with real­ity, slips back into mad­ness and returns a Won­der­land over­rid­den with evil.

Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception

Release Date: Novem­ber 1, 2011
Platform(s): Playsta­tion 3

I con­sider Uncharted and its first sequel two of the best games I have ever played—and I have played a lot of games.  I can’t even begin to imag­ine how devel­oper Naughty Dog will be able to top itself with this third install­ment.  The game is set pri­mar­ily against the arid, desert back­drop of  the Ara­bian Penin­sula as pro­tag­o­nist Nathan Drake goes in search of the leg­endary lost city, Iram of the Pil­lars.  The story will focus heav­ily on the friend­ship between Drake and his men­tor and fre­quent trav­el­ing com­pan­ion Vic­tor Sullivan.

Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Release Date: Novem­ber 11, 2011
Platform(s): PC, PlaySta­tion 3, Xbox 360

Tak­ing place two-hundred years after the events of Elder Scrolls IV: Obliv­ion (which, btw, if you haven’t played it, shame on you),  Skyrim returns play­ers to Tam­riel, which has erupted into civil war. Play­ers take on the role of the last-surviving Dovahkiin (trans­la­tion: “Drag­onborn”) to save the world from Alduin, god of destruc­tion.   As in pre­vi­ous Elder Scrolls games, I expect an adven­ture of epic pro­por­tions.  The lat­est issue of Game­In­former has a GORGEOUS 10-page spread pre­view of this game, and it looks absolutely stunning.

I Am Alive

Release Date: TBA, 2011
Platform(s): PC, PlaySta­tion 3, Xbox 360, Nin­tendo Wii

A new, orig­i­nal (read: non-sequel) title that I’m really excited about.  A major earth­quake has destroyed Chicago and sep­a­rated it from the main­land.  Your goal is to sur­vive the apocalyptic-like sur­round­ings by for­ag­ing for food and water, and ward­ing off enemies—other human beings who threaten your own sur­vival.  Oh yeah, and you’re also try­ing to find and res­cue your miss­ing girl­friend, too.  The game has been in devel­op­ment since 2005 and suf­fered numer­ous set­backs, but is planned to be released some­time this year.

The Leg­end of Zelda: Sky­ward Sword

Release Date: TBA, 2011
Platform(s): Nin­tendo Wii

2011 is a pretty piti­ful year for Wii games, with not many new titles on the hori­zon.  But a new Zelda game, typ­i­cally her­alded by Zelda fans like the sec­ond com­ing, could make up for it. (Though I’m keep­ing my expec­ta­tions in check due to the dis­ap­point­ment that was Metroid: Other M .)

Dia­blo III

Release Date: TBA, 2011
Platform(s): PC

Bliz­zard has yet to announce a release date for its much-anticipated hack & slash sequel, but most fans of Bliz­zard games are accus­tomed to wait­ing. I just hope not for too much longer!

Child of Eden

Release Date: TBA, 2011
Platform(s): PlaySta­tion 3, Xbox 360

Remem­ber the shoot­ing game Rez ?  (And how amaz­ing it was?)  Devel­oper Tet­suya Mizuguchi, the man who gave us Rez, returns with a new game sim­i­lar in con­cept and game­play.  Like Rez, the game­play will be a har­monic fusion of sound, vision and touch as play­ers rhyth­mi­cally shoot at var­i­ous tar­gets that pro­duce melodic sounds when destroyed.  I can’t wait to expe­ri­ence it in glo­ri­ous HD on my 60″ Mitsubishi.

Dead Island

Release Date: TBA, 2011
Platform(s): PC, PlaySta­tion 3, Xbox 360

When I first heard about Dead Island —a zom­bie sur­vival hor­ror FPS set on a deserted island—I dis­missed it as just another zom­bie game. But that was before I saw this trailer .

What games are you really look­ing for­ward to this year?

CircBoard Makes Typing on Game Consoles Faster, Less Annoying

From the “Why Hasn’t Any­body Thought of this Before?” department…

Typ­ing on video game con­soles is usu­ally a huge pain in the ass. Cir­cboard is a new on-screen key­board con­cept that wants to make your life eas­ier. Typ­i­cally, on-screen key­boards, like one 360 or PS3, try to emu­late a QWERTY key­board, and the process of “typ­ing” involves a lot of visual hunt and peck. And it’s slooooooooow.

Watch the Cir­cBoard Demo:

CircBoard’s con­cept is sim­ple, yet bril­liant. I like that its devel­op­ers adapted typ­ing to gam­ing, not the other way around. CircBoard’s method of typ­ing is more native to how con­trollers func­tion, and seems like it would be easy to learn. I could see typ­ing with Cir­cBoard eas­ily becom­ing sec­ond nature—like which spell com­bi­na­tions I cast in Oblivion.

Why not just buy a USB key­board, you say? Well, for one thing, I’d pre­fer not to have extra gam­ing periph­er­als clut­ter­ing up my liv­ing room. Two, I’m a fan of things that just work , and Cir­cBoard seems like an ele­gant solu­tion to a com­mon annoy­ance. It would make YouTube surf­ing from my couch a hel­luva lot easier.

I hope one day soon to see a solu­tion like Cir­cBoard on my next-gen console!

Why ‘Reality is Broken’ Is a Must-Read for Every Gamer

And now for some­thing com­pletely different…

If you con­sider your­self a gamer in any capac­ity, you have prob­a­bly not gone through life with­out some­one telling you, at some point, that video games are waste of time, or you have no life, and other insult­ing mis­con­cep­tions that non-gamers often spew at us.

In her new book, Real­ity is Bro­ken , vision­ary game designer Jane McGo­ni­gal hopes to change such attitudes.

Let’s be hon­est: Video games typ­i­cally get a bad rap.  Blood, sex, vio­lence, gore, moms seduc­ing 13-year-old boys on Xbox Live, the boy who shot his par­ents for tak­ing away Halo… Sen­sa­tional head­lines about video games tend to over­shadow the medium itself.

But what about all the pos­i­tive ways in which games influ­ence our lives?  Beyond basic read­ing com­pre­hen­sion and hand-eye coor­di­na­tion, video games can teach us how to set and achieve goals, adapt to new sit­u­a­tions, learn from our mis­takes, help and influ­ence oth­ers, and even how to be an effec­tive team member.

For the mil­lions of Amer­i­can gamers (over 174 mil­lion, to be more pre­cise) who already real­ize these ben­e­fits, Real­ity is Bro­ken is a refresh­ing and encour­ag­ing study of how video games improve our lives and the rea­sons why we need them.  Jane McGo­ni­gal advo­cates that video games are so omnipresent today because they are able to ful­fill basic human needs that we are oth­er­wise lack­ing in our mod­ern lives.  In short, “real­ity is bro­ken” and McGo­ni­gal believes video games are the “fix.”

“Draw­ing on pos­i­tive psy­chol­ogy, cog­ni­tive sci­ence, and soci­ol­ogy, Real­ity Is Bro­ken uncov­ers how game design­ers have hit on core truths about what makes us happy and uti­lized these dis­cov­er­iesto aston­ish­ing effect in vir­tual envi­ron­ments. Videogames con­sis­tently pro­vide the exhil­a­rat­ing rewards, stim­u­lat­ing chal­lenges, and epic vic­to­ries that are so often lack­ing in the real world. But why, McGo­ni­gal asks, should we use the power of games for escapist enter­tain­ment alone? Her research sug­gests that gamers are expert prob­lem solvers and col­lab­o­ra­tors because they reg­u­larly coop­er­ate with other play­ers to over­come daunt­ing vir­tual chal­lenges, and she helped pio­neer a fast-growing genre of games that aims to turn game­play to socially pos­i­tive ends.”

No mat­ter what kind of gamer you are, from the week­night WoW raider to the casual DS gamer—even non-gamer—you will find your­self inspired by the views Jane presents in her book, and per­haps even in awe at all the inno­v­a­tive, ground­break­ing ways that game design­ers through­out the world are using their tal­ents for the greater good.

Book Giveaway!

Would you like to win a copy of Real­ity is Bro­ken? Cour­tesy of The Pen­guin Press and TLC Book Tours, one hard­cover copy of the book will be given away to one of my read­ers in the U.S. or Canada.  If you’d like to enter to win, sim­ply leave a com­ment below using your email address.  I will ran­domly select a win­ner on Fri­day, Jan­u­ary 28 and will con­tact you fur­ther by email.

Good luck!

‘From Bedrooms to Billions’ is a New Documentary about the Evolution of Video Games

From Bed­rooms to Bil­lions is a new doc­u­men­tary by inde­pen­dent film­mak­ers Anthony and Nicola Caulfield ( Night­fall Films ) about the hum­ble begin­nings of video games, and how pas­sion­ate gamers have trans­formed them into a bil­lion dol­lar industry.

Here’s the trailer (which, very appro­pri­ately, is set to Pin­ball Wizard):

As some­one who was prac­ti­cally born with a joy­stick in hand, I am very much look­ing for­ward to see­ing this film.  From the press release:

‘From Bed­rooms to Bil­lions’ is a film about the remark­able story of how a small num­ber of indi­vid­u­als from around the world made up of enthu­si­asts, hob­by­ists, school kids, bed­room coders and entre­pre­neurs, whose vision and cre­ativ­ity pio­neered in shap­ing the bil­lion dol­lar games indus­try which today, dom­i­nates the mod­ern enter­tain­ment land­scape.

Fun stats time!

• Video games is the num­ber one enter­tain­ment industry
• Over 70% of the world’s pop­u­la­tion plays video games
• By 2011, the world­wide gam­ing mar­ket will be worth $48.9 billion

The film is set to release in Autumn 2011.

What games will you be playing this Thanksgiving?

Every year, besides the excuse to feast myself into a turkey coma, I look for­ward to Thanks­giv­ing because of the four glo­ri­ous days off I get to devote to gaming.

Here’s what’s on my gam­ing agenda this year:

World of War­craft (“Cat­a­clysm Lite”)

Ear­lier than expected, patch 4.0.3a went live yes­ter­day and with it came the pre-Cataclysm sun­der­ing of the world we know as Aze­roth.  Deathwing’s erup­tion from Deep­holm has shat­tered the land and most zones have been for­ever altered.  I’m call­ing the patch “Cat­a­clysm Lite” because it’s the last major patch before the expan­sion , and some new con­tent is avail­able now, whether you intended to buy the expan­sion or not.  There are so many changes to digest, it’s a bit over­whelm­ing.  I plan to spend time get­ting acquainted with the new Aze­roth and gear­ing up for Cat­a­clysm release day.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

I’m sure I’m the last PS3 owner in the world to play this game, being well aware of how amaz­ing it’s sup­posed to be and the fact that it’s on many people’s “Top Games of All Time” list.  I got it as a birth­day gift a few months ago and just haven’t had the time to start play­ing.  I finally unwrapped the plas­tic the other night and played through five chap­ters straight; com­pletely hooked.  So far, it’s every bit as awe­some as Uncharted: Drake’s For­tune which remains one of the best game­play expe­ri­ences I’ve ever had.  (And it sure looks incred­i­ble on my 60″ HDTV.) I can’t wait to see more.

UPDATE: Just beat the game 11/28/10. Amaz­ing­ness con­firmed!

Pro­fes­sor Lay­ton and the Unwound Future

I love games that you can pick up and put down any­where but still have enough of a story to keep you play­ing until it ends.   Pro­fes­sor Lay­ton and the Unwound Future fits the bill per­fectly.  For me, the Pro­fes­sor Lay­ton games are a DS sta­ple and are the per­fect “go to”  when you’re in between other games.  The puz­zles are addic­tive and the game­play is casual and relaxing–the per­fect game to curl up on the couch with after stuff­ing your­self full of turkey.

What games will you be play­ing this Thanksgiving?

Adventure Games…on YouTube?

YouTube might be one of the last places you expect to see an inter­ac­tive adven­ture game, but some very clever and cre­ative peo­ple have made it pos­si­ble by exploit­ing YouTube’s anno­ta­tions fea­ture .  The anno­ta­tions are pop-ups that pro­vide the viewer with a choice (for exam­ple, “Run” or “Hide”) and con­tain links to other videos that carry out the desired action.  With some carefully-planned logic and edit­ing, anno­ta­tions makes it pos­si­ble to cre­ate adventure-style games for YouTube that hark back to inter­ac­tive FMVs and Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books. Cool, huh?

There’s not many out there, but here’s a hum­ble col­lec­tion of the YouTube adven­ture games I know of:

The Time Machine

This game is a pro­duc­tion of film­mak­ers  Chad, Matt & Rob , a com­edy troupe from L.A. who have sev­eral film projects in the works. The Time Machine is cred­ited as being an inter­ac­tive adven­ture that is the “first of its type” on YouTube. If you enjoy  The Time Machine , be sure to also check out their other inter­ac­tive adven­tures on YouTube:  The Birth­day Party ‚  The Mur­der , and also the trailer for  The Trea­sure Hunt , which is com­ing soon.

Edit­ing the Dead

An inter­ac­tive adven­ture based on George Romero’s orig­i­nal 1968 film  Night of the Liv­ing Dead that uses actual movie clips (the movie in in pub­lic domain, in case you are won­der­ing how this game avoids copy­right infringe­ment).  Can you sur­vive the zom­bie apocalypse?

Deliver Me to Hell

OBJECTIVE: Help Steve get across the city to deliver his pizza with­out being KILLED by the zom­bies.

This one’s actu­ally a glo­ri­fied adver­tise­ment for New Zealand pizza chain Hell Pizza , but its so well done and enter­tain­ing that you’ll for­give the self-promotion. (You might also find your­self wish­ing for a Hell Pizza near you.)

Do you know of any other YouTube adven­ture games? Please share in the com­ments and I’ll add them to this list.