The campaign trailer for Halo: Reach dropped yesterday, and I’m not impressed. Not, one, lick! And here’s the thing, I can’t really imagine anyone being impressed by it. I’ve read reviews of it from people that read something like “…I’ve never been a Halo fan, but this really made me interested.”

Really?

C’mon now. It’s as unimpressive visually as every other Halo game has been since the second one. And equally uninspired. It’s a bunch of dickbags in enormous armor staring off into space and doing other equally un-engaging things. If you’re  Master Douche Fanboy, then I can see being excited by it. But if you’re on the fence, or furthermore, you don’t dig the franchise? I see no reason why this trailer would swing you.

Countless games have had sexier and more cinematic trailers cut. Now, I’m not saying that a sexy trailer equals a great game, but I am saying that if you weren’t convinced about Reach, I have no idea how a trailer that is made to look like dogshit by just about every trailer I’ve seen lately from a Call of Duty game, or Borderlands, of name a Gears of War, will persuade you.

Me? I’ve always been “eh” about Halo. I play the titles because they’re usually enjoyable for the duration, but I’ve never understood the Rampant Fapping that takes place, and I certainly see nothing special about this trailer. It didn’t dissuade me from buying it, but it certainly didn’t knock my socks off.

Want to be the judge? Hit the jump and check out the trailer.

Oh, Hideo Kojima. Only you, of all people, would somehow end up on the internet shirtless. I don’t know if the Patriots put you up to it, of it you were just trying to infiltrate some panties – while obviously reading something by Murakami, Descartes, or General Patton or something. But these pictures are so win that it hurts.

Kudos do you, good sir.

Hell fuck to the yeah, I’m excited for Ms. Aran’s latest foray into the Metroidverse. A universe populated by giant blobs of brain-sucking jelly and a pretty sweet suit that always, it seems, breaks down immediately when faced with a crisis. The latest trailer shows off some of the cinematic flair that Team Ninja is bringing to the franchise, and god dammit, we’re all the better for it.

Hit the trailer, and get ready. Buckle up your space-pants or something.

Source: Mad Gear Solid / Click To Enlarge

[pixelation | weekly gaming & life column every wednesday or uh thursday]

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I picked up and played through the XBLA game Limbo yesterday. I had heard so much god damn fawning about it, watched a video about it and deemed it dope, and had tons of expectations. I paid way too much, stared at the download bar, and booted the son of a bitch up.

I was bored within moments.

Aesthetically, the game was everything you want in some indie game to fawn over. Dark and brooding? Word. Lack of UI which is totally innovated (except not really)? Word. Simplistic visuals? Word. It was a paint by numbers indie game. And everyone seemed to love it. But me.

What the fuck was going on?

It was during my aggravation at having to push around blocks and listening to the (not really) beautiful swirling ambient music that I had a moment of clarity. A thunderous strike of denouement. I play games like a fucking buzzsaw. Perhaps Limbo is generic and boring (I think it is), but more than likely it couldn’t have been further from my preferred type of game. As a caffeinated mess, I twitch whilst holding the controller. I run into everything. I want to smash through walls and rip people apart.

I said, “Perhaps this isn’t your type of game!”

I need constant motion.

I don’t know when I got this way, perhaps as I evolved into a caffeine addict strung out on website refreshes, compulsively milling newsfeeds for content worth posting here. Movement is necessary. Movement is essential. Trying to fuck around with electromagnetic switches in the middle of some dimly lit purgatory?

Or something?

No thanks.

I’ll pass, kthnx.

I was disappointed in myself.

I mean, who doesn’t want to champion the beautiful work of indie bliss? Who doesn’t want to applaud something for trying something new, who doesn’t want to say “see, games don’t have to cost 3-zillion republic credits to succeed!”

But.

But maybe!

Maybe Limbo really isn’t that special. What’s so good about it? Is it the atmosphere? Perhaps. Is that what everyone is feeling? Yeah, you can see the guy’s eyes, but nothing else! It’s dim and dank! But are we as gamers so desperate to champion the indie that we’re ignoring the fact that maybe a lot of them aren’t that good?

Or is it me?

I still don’t know.

I know that I don’t need enormous blockbuster visuals and a gajillion polygons at the screen at the same time to be content. I’ll take platforming any day of the week. Stick a big blob of pixels on a screen and command me to leap from moving platform to moving platform and I’m in Heaven. Seventh Heaven, even! Valhalla! With jacked Thor and Mjolnir and Loki (preferably in female form.) And so I resent the notion that I simply need to be wowed through modern wizardy to be entertained.

It ain’t that.

But what I do need is something more than a cut-and-dry indie staple. This game feels like the equivalent of That Indie Flick. That is so sophisticated because it’s different. Yeah man, you have your emotionally turbulent male who dresses well. He has a complicated but quirky family who is simultaneously endearing and problematic. He meets a girl. Someone plays The Shins. They talk on the subway or something.

Yawn.

Yawn.com

And listen man, before you charge me with not liking slow or indie movies, I do. Just not ones that star that guy where the dialogue takes place over acoustic guitars and a sentimental lead singer.

I think what I’m trying to say is that Limbo is mediocre, but even if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t have enjoyed it. We simply weren’t compatible. She wanted to just stand there and marvel in the idea of flicking levers for twenty minutes. Me? I was screaming at the top of my lungs over the spaghetti and meatballs about how fucking great the nineteen free refills were. Thumbs buzzing. Tunnel vision. Ready to jump, leap, destroy.

I don’t do mundane. But even if I did, I don’t think I would have enjoyed Limbo.

The original Mortal Kombat fatalities goes papercraft in this Youtube video. I love the fact that these classic deaths are still firmly entrenched in the cultural consciousness of my generation, and talented people are finding new ways of representing these beautiful impressions of paper-bound mortality.

Hit the jump and watch some glorious paper deaths.

BioWare has announced the next Mass Effect 2 DLC: Lair of the Shadow Broker, dropping uh, sometime. Apparently the DLC takes place in response to a bunch of hogwash bullshit that took place during Mass Effect 2 that we never saw. But was in a comic book.

Uh?

Isn’t like, some of this essential narrative information?

via kotaku:

After Shepard died in the beginning of Mass Effect 2, his blue-skinned friend Liara T’Soni fought a desperate battle to recover his body from the mysterious Shadow Broker. Now it’s time to settle the score.

Detailed in the Mass Effect 2 comic book series from Dark Horse, Liara went through hell to recover Commander Shepard’s remains from the mysterious information broker known as the Shadow Broker, delivering them to Cerberus, where our hero was eventually reconstituted.

Good god damn. I hate it when important plot points are used as selling points for various cross-merchandising. I would have liked to thank Miss Sexy Blue Skin for her efforts when I met her in one of my nineteen playthroughs of Mass Effect 2 for, you know, capturing my body and bringing it to get revived. Only fuggin’ Bioware didn’t let me know of this, because I didn’t read a comic.

Whatever.

In this DLC, you’ll be teaming up with Liara to storm the Shadow Broker and lay some whup down on his ass. Good. This douche has been a serious pain in Shepard’s ass since he double-crossed Tali back in the original. Let’s do this.

Thor is bringing Nordic Thunder to Marvel Vs Capcom 3, and Amaterasu from Okami is rollin’ up with him. It makes smart fuggin’ sense for Marvel. With the Thor movie dropping next year, they’ve upped his comic book titles to something like as seventyjillionteen. A video game presence is only going to help. And as far as Amaterasu? Gotta put in some genital-scrubbin’ cult favorites.

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I dig. Hit the jump for their character artwork.

San Diego Comic Con is going to break my back with newsworthy updates. Revealed today in Marvel Vs Capcom 3 were Chun Li, Dr. Doom, Super Skrull, and Trish from Devil May Cry. What an eclectic lot of studs and studettes. Though I have to say, I doubt anyone will come close to the awesomeness that is Deadpool and his 4th-Wall breaking super move.

Hit the jump to see their character artwork.

We know it was coming. We had heard the rumblings that Microsoft’s retarded Kinect was going to cost $150. That’s one-hundred and fifty Junior Bacon Cheeseburgers, but now it’s official.

via kotaku:

Microsoft’s Kinect add-on for the Xbox 360 will be $150 and come with a copy of Kinect Adventures when the motion controller hits stores in November, the company said today. Kinect games will sell for $50 each.

Oh goody! The Kinect games – which are tantamount to pantomiming like an asshole, will be ten bucks less than regular 360 games. That’s still fifty Junior Bacon Cheeseburgers to look like a tool.*

*Yes, I’ll still probably be buying this piece of shit. As always, I am part of the problem.