The LA Times, being one with the gaming community (and needing to publish a “Best Of…” list of some sort) just popped out this fucking thing. In the article, they decide to do the Lord’s Work™ and try to theorize the best video game in the world using their favorite things from games from recent[ish] times. Of course, this grand science is accompanied by a photo gallery that features screen shots of the games to which they refer.

Having been a scientist myself I decided to go through their gallery and comments to piece together their perfect game. If I am right (which I am unfortunately cursed to be the majority of the time), they want to make a portable, simple, original, war-time horror sandbox-button masher, with great cut scenes filled with wonder, multiplayer AND co-op, legos, puzzles, racing, with Smash Brothers controls.

The people over at Game Politics are reporting on this hilarious story. It appears that every 30GB Zune on the planet decided to start acting up around midnight last night, stuttering, stammering and crashing for the next two hours until finally rebooting and error-coding its user into a standstill.

Although I can’t speak for the rest of the MWN, I personally find this jaw-droppingly funny. I don’t mean to sound like an asshole or anything, but with their previous consumer electronics history this is definitely not good news for Microsoft. 

And for some reason that’s funny. What?

Anyway, if you are one of these lucky Zune owners who didn’t hold out for the 80GB (which is alive and kicking), then stayed tuned. I don’t know about you, but I just can’t wait to see what kind of damage control they pull out of their asses.

Source: Game Politics, Gizmodo

*Yes, all 14 of them.

I finally bit. In mid December UK gaming retailer Gamestation offered Sonic Unleashed at half price for one week only as part of their Christmas sale. So the price was only £20. I had money and I’d actually heard good things about Sonic’s latest adventure. I’d also heard some bad things but at £20 I was thinking that It’s probably worth it at half it’s normal price just to experience these high points I’d been told about. So I bought it and sat down ready for at least half of a good time. And for the first hour or two it was fun. I couldn’t believe it. But that fun eventually died out and revealed just how bad a game Sonic Unleashed is. Hit the jump for the review/why I won’t be buying a Sonic game ever again.

Are you getting tired of all the rampant terrorism and giant serpents that are busily running about the Eastern continent? Are you fed up with life in the largely militaristic town of Junon? Or maybe you just can’t take another minute studying the life of the planet with all of the other tree-hugging inhabitants of Cosmo Canyon…well then fair traveler, do I have the perfect place for you!

Golden Saucer®!!!

Many of us men growing up didn’t have the quintessential male role-models that our parents had growing up. I know my old man grew up in a time where men were of the type that you see personified in every World War II story. Back when men came home from work to have their wives service them while drinking a Gin Martini from a highball glass. There wasn’t any of this gender crisis that guys in Gen X and Gen Y had to grow up with.

If you look at the definition of a Generation-X or Generation-Y child, you get a different definition depending on where you look it up. I tend to see myself as an amalgamation of the 2 different subsets, from both but neither at the same time. It is our generation that inherited the hero worshipping ways of our parents.

Little did they know, it would cause such an identity crisis for the nation or that it would bring countless people together from multiple regions of the globe.

For those of you that know me, I am a huge fan of the noir genre of films and books.  Granted, I haven’t watched as many films as my good friend king3vbo, but whenever a new release comes out that gives that dark, 20’s, 30’s or 40’s feel with a good monologues, I’m all for it.  Hence, I loved Frank Miller’s Sin City.  The setting, the dialogue, the art, everything about that movie I loved.  So of course when I heard that Frank was directing a new movie adapted from a similar style of comic book, I was interested.  Enter The Spirit.  It looked enough like Sin City to draw me in and to drag a friend with me.  My impressions?  Hit the link to find out.

Hello readers and welcome to a new segment I call Friday PSAs, simply because I couldn’t think of anything else. What is this you ask? Well every Friday I will post 3 new PSAs (pubic service announcements) and give my opinions on them. What are PSAs? Well they’re advertisements usually made by the government or a company  under it that aim to inform us on the dangers of normal life, the most popular kind of PSAs being about illegal drugs and bad driving habits. So anyway, let us move on to our first PSA. (warning: PSAs can be pretty graphic or disturbing so these might not be for the fain of heart.

This is always the worst day of the year for me. Even as a child, I hated December 24th with a passion that would rival pirate vs. ninja. There’s no logical explanation for it, I just hate the fact that by this time of the month, there have been things sitting under the Xmas tree just waiting for me to open them.

Xmas is one of those holidays that drives me insane, first off we’re supposed to be celebrating the birth of the world’s savior (according to the Christians), while at the same time lying to our children and condoning idol worship in the form of Santa Claus. We do all of this in the name of rampant consumerism, which I personally don’t see as a bad thing…I happen to love getting presents. I just hope that one day we can call this faux religious/pagan holiday what it really is “spend money on others day”.

There’s this strange duality of being that comes out in me at this time of year that just makes me question my own humanity. I try to give to charity when I possibly can, but I’m also a selfish bastard; I love getting presents, yet I moan when I have to buy them for other people; I enjoy the thrill of opening the unknown presents under the tree, but I almost always attempt to spoil the surprise by shaking and squeezing the package or by using logic to deduce what it could possibly be from the giver.

Whether you be a Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Shinto, Buddhist, Christian, or an Atheist like me, MediaWhoreNetwork would like to wish you all a Happy Holidays…now do me proud and go have a few eggnogs, get drunk, then ruin the holiday for everyone around you because Crom knows that you only get a few chances during the year to do so.

Every year, the market is flooded with a selection of Christmas films and specials. While most of them are just as entertaining as a paint drying convention, there are a few that stick out. Christmas on Mars is one of those gems.

Lets face it, the Christmas tunes hit the radio before the turkey hits the table. Everyone wants to make a buck off of the most commercial holiday out there. There are thousands of Christmas songs, millions if you include the rabbit-like producing of cover songs. After two months of Christmas music, you can understand why suicide rates are so high around this holiday.

Narrowing the list down to only 10 entries was no easy task, but after many strong glasses of egg nog I present you with the ten most cringe-worthy Christmas songs.

Ok, it’s not the first time in my life that I’ve heard rumors about me being a butt-pirate, but when a piece of web-based software (that’s only supposed to help me decide what movies would be a good fit for me) supposes that I am not heterosexual, I start to question it myself.

I think that this all started when I rated Brokeback Mountain a 5 star movie. It had to be that. I mean, I can understand where Netflix would think such a thing…I lettered in drama in high school, was never much of an athletic person, didn’t date much, and I really really enjoy musicals. Sure, I can see that myself that I might be a BIT light in the loafers, but how the hell does Netflix know?

This makes me want to find the creator of Netflix and give him such a slap!

So last Friday, Capcom gave Japan an early Christmas present by releasing a demo for the highly anticipated Resident Evil 5, which is due out in March of next year. The only problem was that you needed a Japanese account and a gold membership for said account.

Thanks to the Internet, I easily found out how to get that Japanese gold account and before I knew it, I was downloading the demo. One thing to note is that this was before the idea of burning the demo to a CD came out. Also, this demo is in English, so it’s strange why Capcom hasn’t released this demo already.

Left 4 Dead is a pretty awesome game and I’m sure that many of my fellow whores would agree. It also happens to be a great tribute to the general zombie apocalypse genre, if said genre exists and it easily feels like you’re playing a part in one of Romero’s movies. I also enjoyed reading Popa’s article on his GoW casting call and that article inspired me to make one of my own. So divide by zero and you get a “what if” scenario. What if Valve were a films studio and L4D was one of their new blockbusters?

If you recognize the character in the picture above, you already know what our topic for the show is. Then again, if all you see is a guy wearing an obviously fake set of facial hair and holding a knife you might think we’re doing a show on just that, you’d be wrong! Let me throw a hint your direction…what does Satan having sex with Saddam Hussein, cannibals, barbers who kill their patients, and sweet transvestites from transsexual Transylvania have in common? Yup, they’re all subjects that are covered in the sweetest of mediums, the musical!

As well as being a great developer in their own right, Valve is also lucky to have one of the biggest modding communities on the internet. Some mods can be small things, or other may be big projects like this. I’m sure that you’ve already heard about Black Mesa: Source, but if you haven’t, here’s what the project is about. Also make sure to watch the trailer above.