Mega Man Legends 3 Canceled

I'm sure this had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the guy championing its development for the last forever or so left the company in disgust with its ridiculous demands. Totally.

But honestly? This is probably for the best. A Mega Man Legends 3 without any input from the guy who poured his heart into it probably wouldn't have been worth the wait anyway. That said, it's still quite the dick move to give people that small shred of hope, only to snatch it away again. It certainly won't damage their bottom line, but they've certainly run out of goodwill from me.

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~A.H.

Mass Effect 3: James Vega

Meet Mass Effect 3's newest squad mate. In a game universe with dozens of interesting alien species that would have made fucking awesome team-mates, they give us a white guy with a douchey faux-hawk who does a lot of crunches.

Way to break the mold, Bioware.

Don't we already have Kaiden to be the boring whitie no one puts in their squad or talks to or looks at if it can be at all avoided? Do we really need another one of those? And what if you PLAY as a Commander Shepard who's a boring white guy? Well then that's half of your team being a poor man's recreation of EVERY OTHER VIDEO GAME EVER MADE.

Classic Friday: "The Game I Want"

 Damn it.

Okay, here's your Classic FriSaturday, my personal dream video game project that will be waiting for me if Heaven is real and God doesn't mind all of the masturbation:

Trends

I remember one time I was at a friend's house, and we played Halo 2 online. We joined a custom game where they were playing by rules they made up. It was called "Zombie". I don't know if it started there, or was carried over from a different game. It was based on honour rules. If you died by the enemy's hand, you had to manually switch over to the enemy's team, and now must face your former comrades. Like how after you've been bitten by a zombie, you become a part of the same mindless horde that took you down.

People liked this enough for it to be a built-in game mode in Perfect Dark Zero and Halo 3. No more having to go in and change teams by hand.

Then Gears of War 2 had the "Horde" mode, where victory is impossible and the only real goal is to see how long you can last against waves of increasingly dangerous opposition. The end is inevitable, the goal being to see how long you can cheat death. People liked this enough, so Left 4 Dead put in "Survival" mode, and Halo gave us "Firefight".

Then games like Dark Void gave us Jetpacks(although they were around during the Duke Nukem and Tribes times, they were out of vogue until recently.) We liked those, so now they're back apparently.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent

One of the folks behind "Amnesia: The Dark Descent" explains the perilous road from pitching an idea to selling a completed product. He mentions Super Mario 64 as an inspiration for his horror project. Yeah.

We tend to take releases for granted, and it's a tiny miracle that any video game that isn't a guaranteed thing like Halo or Mario gets released, but Thomas Grip explains just what a nail-biting photo-finish some games turn out to be. These guys were on the precipice of closing up shop more than once, and were saved seemingly only by the occasional Steam sale. Because of this, they were able to release a game that was about atmosphere and dread instead of killstreaks.

It also means we got videos like this.

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~A.H.

Movie Bob: Dark Matter

There are a few people whose opinions I don't always agree with, but who otherwise represent stable pillars in a sea of undulating childishness. People who would rather wait a while to let their thoughts take form, instead of racing to be the first to say something stupid. People that I sometimes look to for guidance on certain issues I feel unprepared to deal with. People whose opinions are more valuable than mine. People like Roger Ebert, Shamus Young and Pitchfork. And people like Bob Chipman.

So what happened to Bob?

Extra Credits: A Shoulder To Lean On

Allison Theus, the artist for the show Extra Credits needs shoulder surgery badly. James Portnow, the writer of the three-pronged weekly effort put up a place to give donations. Because her insurance wouldn't cover it under a "pre-existing condition", they needed about $15,000. As of this writing, they have...

Wait WHAT???