Now that that’s out of the way, let me take some time to have a little heart-to-heart with the developers. That multiplayer chatter? Never going to happen. What you gave us was a bunch of game-centric chatter coming from the mouths of level-headed, mature gamers having a great time just playing Killzone 2. The thing is, that never happens! Where are all of the squeaky-voiced pre-teens yelling into their headsets about my mom, their penis, and “a good time last night”, huh? There isn’t even a single random act of teabagging in that whole video! Guerilla, I can see that you’ve got what could be a fantastic game on your hands, but don’t tease us with some kind of FPS utopia that the rest of the internet won’t ever be able to find and destroy, one shred of decency at a time.

How ironic! Since demand has suddenly raced beyond supply, Microsoft Japan has been forced to put out an official statement:

お客様各位

平素より Xbox 360® をご愛顧いただきまして、誠にありがとうございます。

現在、Xbox 360 本体の品切れにより、多くのお取扱店で Xbox 360 本体をご購入いただけない状況が発生しております。これは、弊社の販売予測を超えた多くのお客様に Xbox 360 本体をお買い求めいただいた結果発生したもので、ご購入を検討いただいておりますお客様ならびに販売店の皆様、パートナーの皆様には多大なご迷惑をおかけしておりますことを深くお詫び申し上げます。

只今マイクロソフトでは、 Xbox 360 本体の生産を鋭意行っており、スタンダードモデルにつきましては次回 9 月の出荷を予定しております。なお、エリートおよびアーケードモデルにつきましては順次出荷を行ってまいります。商品の入荷まで、今しばらくお待ちいただきますようお願い申し上げます。
今後とも Xbox 360 製品およびサービスをご愛顧いただけますようよろしくお願い申し上げます。

マイクロソフト株式会社
ホーム&エンターテイメント事業本部

You heard it straight from the horse’s mouth, people: Microsoft rove you rong time, one dorrar.

Seriously, though. Apparently Bandai Namco’s Tales of Vesperia is to the 360 as Monster Hunter Freedom 2 is to the PSP. I have to admit, I did not see this one coming. What the statement really says is that MS Japan apologizes for not meeting demand and that they’ll be shipping out more as soon as they can.

Note to self: use above image as often as possible.

Have you ever noticed something new about a thing you’ve looked at a thousand times before? In my 20 years of gaming, I’ve encountered a few such items that I’d like to share with you, my adoring fans.
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I found this when I was playing about 15 minutes ago. I’ve since figured out that the word they were looking for was actually “tarred,” but this just unforgivable.

I am truly disturbed…

The above video (and the two following the jump) make it seem so easy to accomplish anything with the Dragon Ball Z KAMEHAMEHA! attack, from stapling, stamping, and talking on the phone in an office, to seducing women, to kicking people straight in the nuts. The videos made it seems like shouting (or whispering) “KAMEHAMEHA!” was the perfect addition to any task, so I decided to try the technique on my keyboard for writing this post. Unfortunately, this was all I managed to get:

slfd jlykbar0 k]ll fs; kvl,gabpwmt=, ekaslk[pav md,gjpp98576pvn f

Maybe I didn’t say it right or something.
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I’ll give you a minute, because that image likely made your head-spin as much as it did mine.

It seems that Mortal Kombat Online recently received this teaser image from “a source within Midway” that seems to subtly indicate that a Mortal Kombat vs. DC fighting game is on the way. According to the folks over at MKO, the game is officially titled Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe which is great because if it were only superheroes, Jimmy Olsen couldn’t get a piece of the action. While the image looks real enough, this should be taken with a grain of salt until Midway makes an official announcement.

I don’t really know how this makes me feel. On the one hand, that image is a gateway to a world of sweet possibilities, each more nerdy and violent than the last. On the other hand, DC likely wouldn’t have beacons of civility and justice such as Superman getting torn apart in the kind of brutal ways that the MK series is known for. On the other, other hand (I had a rough time in middle school with the three hands and all), how could it get any better than Justice League Task Force?

[UPDATE: It's official. Check out the announcement trailer here.]

As the release of Grand Theft Auto IV nears, we’re seeing even more controversy involving the series and its violence. Both politicians and the media seem to blame the series for being one of the causes of violence in America, but this time, the complaint is coming from inside of a prison.

Inmate Jonathan Lee Riches filed a request for a restraining order on April 9, against Take-Two and Rockstar. The order was filed because the game apparently “put [him] in prison.” Riches was incarcerated for wire fraud.

In his claim (which can be seen above), Riches stated:

“Defendants contributed to Plaintiff committing identity theft. Defendant’s games show sex, drugs and violence which offends me. Defendants put me in prison. I face imminent danger from violent inmates who played Grand Theft Auto who will knock me out and take my gold Jesus cross.”

GameSpot seems to have also found out that Riches is suing Activision and Atari as well for making games that are a threat to his safety in prison.

Thomas Ballard of Delhi, LA was celebrating his leet gaming skills one minute, then being served a search warrant the next. It seems that Ballard tried to call a friend after a gaming session, touting he had “killed them all”. The problem was that instead of reaching his friend, Thomas dialed a wrong number. The person who he reached took the statements in a different context, and proceeded to call the authorities. It didn’t take the cops long to show up to his residence, where they searched for possible bodies and then arrested Ballard for a previous unrelated warrant.

Now, the details are still sparse on this case, but lets make one thing clear. Gamers, if you are going to call someone to talk about video games, make sure they know what you’re talking about. Some people may be too concerned about the fact that you got a “triple kill” to properly congratulate you.

[Via The News Star]

It’s not hard to see that I love playing shit games. A ton of my reviews on MEGATONik have all been extremely bland titles. Hell, even the boxart on most of the titles are enough to tell you to stay away. Why do I review these games? The answer is plain and simple: I love bad games. It’s as appealing to me as the grindhouse film genre. I enjoy laughing at terrible plots, generic names, and pointless tasks. Superman 64 may have been utter shit to you, but in my eyes, it was a pile of gold.

Some of you may think I just have poor taste in games, while some may also share my love. I know several readers out there have seen games at their local GameStop and dismissed them because of their title or boxart. People like me purchase them. I see something that looks like total ass and I buy it. I find more comedy in these budget games than most huge titles.

I know there are people out there who would like to know about the games that sites like IGN and GameSpot don’t review. Licensed Nickelodeon games, odd Japanese games that have been translated into English and forgotten about, Barbie titles; whatever crap you can think of, I’ll write about it.

This is why I’m presenting a new weekly article written by yours truly. The Garbage Collector will be a weekly article about bad, uninteresting, and/or extremely cheap titles that you’ve probably seen or heard about, but ignored. Brace yourself as I dig into the massive shitpile I call my game collection and pull out bargain bin nightmares.

Read on for the first game for me to babble about, Mobile Light Force 2.

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It seems that Brian Crecente, executive editor of Kotaku, keeps strange bedfellows. Well, maybe not bedfellows, but certainly strange penpals, most noticeably anti-gaming activist Jack Thompson. It seems in their most recent exchange of emails, Jack…I’m really not sure how to put this…Jack Thompson achieved a moment of clarity.

Crecente and Thompson were discussing the recent Mass Effect/Cooper Lawrence affair, in which Ms. Lawrence slandered Mass Effect with misinformation on Fox News. When Brian brought it up, Jack replied “I don’t see any problem with it. The guy who shot his mouth off about it had no idea what the Hell he was talking about.” The full transcript is after the jump.

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Not only does the Halo series promote violence, but now it’s starting a new trend with school kids: teabagging. The Asbury Park Press reports that in Point Pleasant Beach, kids are teabagging each other outside of school grounds.

The report states:

A group of boys has been involved in bullying others, and officials said their actions have included physical attacks, taunting and sexually harassing victims by making their crotches touch other boys’ heads while fully clothed — something apparently inspired by the Halo video game series, in which players can perform a posturing move over a defeated enemy.

Jane Chmielewski said her son, a seventh-grader, was assaulted by a pack of boys who then sexually harassed him. However, since that incident took place outside school grounds, district officials said they were not able to investigate the situation or punish those involved.

Jane Chmielewski’s son was apparently approached by 10 boys, put in a headlock, and teabagged. He was also recorded with a cell phone camera. Before this incident happened, another altercation occurred, in which the boy was thrown to the ground, kneed, and got a garbage can placed over his head.

Schools classify this as sexual harassment, and that this new teabagging trend is most likely inspired by the Halo series. The Board of Education has introduced a new policy that allows them to punish students bullying outside of school grounds. The punishments range from verbal warning, to expulsion.

Chances are, if you’re a gamer, you have at least one reason to hate, or at the very least dislike, Uwe Boll. The man has done everything from making horrible movies based on games such as Bloodrayne, House of the Dead, and Alone in the Dark, to beating up film critics, and now he’s done even more to give us a reason to scorn him.

Recently Boll was on Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld on Fox News, and he had some pretty condemning remarks about our favorite hobby. In an attempt to defend his terrible movies, he had this to say:

“A lot of video games have no story. I did the movie House of the Dead and got bashed and I said, what were you expecting, Schindler’s List? …I don’t know what they were expecting if you make a movie based on an ego shooter where you kill ninety minutes of people non-stop.”

Ugh. Here we have a man who takes all of his “inspiration” (and I use the word very lightly) from games, and then turns around and slaps them in the face. I am becoming more and more convinced that Uwe Boll is not only a failure at making movies, but just completely a failure at life. When you can’t defend your works without resorting to petty excuses and mudslinging, then you should probably quit what you’re doing.

Via CVG

TMZ has just reported that Heath Ledger has been found dead in his Soho, NY apartment.  Ledger, who stars as The Joker in the newest Batman movie: The Dark Knight was discovered in his bed by his housekeeper at 3:35 PM EST today.  No other details have been released as of yet.  According to CNN, it was most likely an overdose of sleeping pills found near his body.

I don’t know about you guys, but this seriously bummed me out for the rest of the day.

[Via TMZ]

Ever since their arrival in the 80’s, video games have been parent’s and the media’s favorite scapegoat for a number of problems. From Jack Thompson to Hilary Rodham Clinton, politicians have made attacking video games, quite literally, their day jobs. But never before have I seen such unbridled hate as Janice Turner, writer for The Times, who recently wrote an article attacking all things fun and enjoyable, but most scathingly video games.

“…I refuse to buy [my kids] portable gaming consoles, Xboxes, GameCubes, PS2s. These are Satan’s Sudoku, crack cocaine of the brain. Even the crappiest cartoon or lamest soap teaches a child about character, plot, drama, humour, life. Playing videogames, children are mentally imprisoned, wired into their evil creators’ brains.“

First off, this bitch knows nothing about video games, as witnessed by calling PS2’s and the others “portable”. That’s the heaviest damn portable gaming system I’ve ever played. Furthermore, the fact that she thinks that Days of Our Lives has more plot than a game such as Portal or Mass Effect proves to me without a doubt that this lady (and I use the term loosely) is completely ignorant about her subject matter. I can just picture this woman as the mom from The Waterboy, and God do I pity her children.

Via Times Online