“My faith in the gaming industry has officially been destroyed. Fuck the industry, and fuck the indie knockoffs that think they’re producing art. Video games aren’t even close to being ‘art’ until someone can prove to me that they can outdo movies, images and novels.”

That was a comment sourced from an artists journal on [SITE REDACTED]. It was in response to dissatisfaction with Bioshock’s ending, a disappointment I share. But the writer goes on to condemn games as an entire MEDIUM over this slight, and that… well…
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At Nintendo’s press conference in Tokyo today, they announced a new handheld to be sold alongside the DSi – the DSi LL.

The DSi LL has a larger screen – 4.2 inches over the original 3.2 inch screen – which essentially almost doubles the viewable screen area of the DSi. Nintendo are gearing this new version of the DSi for customers who are looking to use the system for web browsing or media, as the larger screen area means larger fonts can be used for webpages and the like. However, the resolution has not changed form the original DSi, so this size increase doesn’t necessarily make things look any better, but it would definitely make things easier to see!

Personally, I think it’s time I started looking into picking up a DSi finally. I think I’d really enjoy that larger screen as my eyes get tired easily with my DS Lite’s tiny images.

Well the Borderlands LAN was some kind of success. It was an absolute blast, although two things happened differently to how we planned them.

1) As I mentione before, it didn’t run the entire time because one guy got sleepy.

2) From what I can see from our progress, at level 30 and playing for something like 15 hours, we are nowhere near close to finished with the game. It is far more huge than I even slightly imagined.

I’ll be talking more about this with Mix at the end of the week, so be sure to check back and listen to the update this weekend!

One more.

One more quest. One more gun locker. One more shop update.

“One more” never really means “one more” on the world of Pandora, a world where every nook and cranny might hide something amazing.

If Borderlands has managed to prove anything, it’s that Gearbox understands how to build a loot system. They lure you in with the promise of millions of randomly generated weapons, and they snap the trap close the first time you open a gun locker and find something truly rare. Maybe you snagged a pistol that sets enemies aflame. Maybe it was a shield that sets off a shock burst when depleted. Whatever the prize, you’ve unwittingly entered the REAL game of Borderlands… and your life is no longer your own.

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Sometimes the best mods are mods of mods that already exist… mods….

Do you like puzzle games? Do you like survival themed games? Do you love guns? Do you love crowbars? Do you love squashing your friends beneath giant stone blocks to the sound of Russian folk music? Then this particular map for the Half Life 2 mod Zombie Master, which is essentially a mod for Zombie Master itself may be just the bout of insanity you are looking for! Whilst today’s feature may be short and sweet, it’s completely worth the subject matter. Full write-up after the cut.

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So PS3 Informer (don’t click that you’ll just encourage them!) posted their one-word review of Uncharted 2, which was simply “QTE”.

Now we here at Fall Damage have been longstanding opponents of Quick Time Events (note that’s 3 words ) in all their trappings. However to say this is in any way shape or form a major factor in Uncharted 2 is stretching the truth. This author can only remember 2 or 3 encounters that required QTE’s of any kind. And even these were the most forgivable types of QTE’s imaginable.
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For the most part, I enjoy morality systems in games. Despite what our podcast hosts think about them, I like the choices it gives in how you can play a particular game, however transparent those choices may actually be for achieving the final goal. My one grating problem that I do have with these systems, however, is when choices are completely black and white, good/evil decisions for choices that are obviously a lot more deep than just choosing which side of the fence you are on. Even games with typically well done morality systems fall into this awful trap, and some do it especially badly. Here’s one such tale of woe from the Capital Wasteland.

SPOILER ALERT! If you are planning on playing the Fallout 3 DLC The Pitt at all, or do not want to have anything about it spoiled for you, DO NOT READ THIS NEXT SEGMENT. SPOILER ALERT!

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Why aren’t there more games where you play as the Predator?

Sure, there is the fantastic Aliens vs Predator games, and possibly a few other random games where you play as The Predator in some fashion, but I want to know why there are zero to none which just feature you as a single, invisible hunter, stalking your prey and then mercilessly offing them. It gives you a great feeling of superiority, knowing that they can just tell you’re nearby, ready to strike at any moment, but they never see that final moment coming. I’m sure many people feel the same about this, but there is even a surprising lack of mods that utilise this idea, and an even greater lack of them that do it well. The hilariously fun Half Life 2 mod, The Hidden: Source, is one such shining example of a mod that does it remarkably well. Full write-up after the cut.

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Speed kills coming down the mountain
Speed kills coming down the street
Speed kills with presence of mind and
Speed kills if you know what I mean
- “The People That We Love,” by Bush

I was not a Sonic fan.

Allow me to quantify this. The only Sega system I have ever owned was a Game Gear, though I’ve been lucky enough to live in a household that had a Dreamcast and have played it extensively. When I was growing up, I was a Nintendo kid: early on, the NES and SNES of my cousin Mark was bequeathed upon me following his death, beginning my lifelong obsession with all things gaming.

Even now, that SNES (though utterly nonfunctional from years of possibly abusive overuse) remains a treasured possession.  It currently occupies a space on one of the end-tables by my bed; a bizarre conversation piece serving as testament to my wasted youth.  But lacking the resources to have both the dominant systems of the era, I got dragged by circumstance into that first and most bitter of the console wars: Sega vs. Nintendo, Genesis vs. SNES, and perhaps most importantly, Sonic vs. Mario. While history paints the outcome as quite apparent, and perhaps inevitable given Sega’s constant fumbles(the abysmal Sega CD, the unjustly maligned Saturn, and the rightfully mourned Dreamcast), at the time it seemed a very real possibility that the Blue Blur would crush the world’s favorite Italian stereotype into the ground.

I never had an interest in checking to see if the grass really was greener on the other side. Despite my love of all things furry, Sonic simply didn’t seem interesting to my young mind. Hell, I didn’t even care that much about Mario, to be frank: I’ve never even owned a copy of Super Mario World. As far as I was concerned, Nintendo’s flagship character was(and to my mind, remains) Kirby. The console war was something I thought about only vaguely: my side had been picked by chance, and I was kind of okay with whatever happened as long as I got to keep playing. At some point in my teen years I picked up Sonic Adventure for my Gamecube and found it a fun diversion, but nothing warranting the hype: I simply couldn’t see why people cared about a hyperactive ground mammal with a bad dye-job.

Ironically, it would take one of the biggest disasters in console history to make me see why people cared about Sonic, and to make me care as well.
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What would you do for a million dollars?

That’s a pretty hard question for me to answer, and I’m fairly sure I’m not allowed to go into the details of the kind of things I would do here. HEGI and his small group, however, have decided to make a kick-ass survival horror mod for Unreal Tournament 3 for Epic Games’ Make Something Unreal Contest. Full write-up after the cut.

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