God damn, I wish I was at PAX. Duke Nukem Forever is there, as his legions of my fellow geeks. I want to be basking in your musk and manipulating precious things with you. But I cannot. So I’m riding coat tails. Stephen Totilo over at Kotaku snapped a shit load of Duke Nukem Forever screens. They’re glorious. Hit the jump to check them out.

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Vanquish is silently sneaked up on my unsuspecting by gloriously gaping ass. Shit is coming stateside, washing up upon the shores of the Empire on October 19. But!, we’re getting a demo way before then. When, yo? The demo is droppin’ on PSN and XBL on August 31. That’s soon like woah.

I can’t wait to download the fucking demo, snort a couple of pixie sticks, punch myself in the groin, and scream in painful glee for the however-too-many-minutes-short demo this son of a bitch is going to be.

Duke Nukem Forever is something of a white whale in the gaming community. First announced in 1997, the shit was promised, and promised, and promised, and then promised again. Finally last year, twelve years later, the game was finally axed.

But oh shit! Maybe it wasn’t. And not only is it rumored to be back, but it’s purported that dope-ass Gearbox Software (Borderlands) could be runnin’ the gig now.

Kotaku:

There may be hope yet for the ludicrously long-in-the-making Duke Nukem Forever. Sources claiming to have knowledge of the situation tell Kotaku that Duke Nukem Forever development continues at a new home, Borderlands developer Gearbox Software.

The studio responsible for Brothers In Arms, Borderlands and Aliens: Colonial Marines is said to have picked up Duke Nukem Forever development where former studio 3D Realms left off, perhaps Duke’s best bet for eventual completion.

Duke Nukem Forever, according to sources who wished to remain anonymous, is now in the hands of Gearbox and is planned to be released under the studio’s name. Gearbox was outed as the developer of the apparently scrapped Duke Nukem spin-off Duke Begins earlier this year.

It would be one thing if the game was announced as “back on” – in the sense that I wouldn’t give a fuck. But if it’s truly back, and it’s being developed by a legitimately talented studio? Holy mung. It has the recipe for awesomeness and nostalgia that was once thought incalculable.

I keep forgetting that Vanquish is coming out this year. And that makes me a lesser person. Straight-up lesser. But then things drop like this new trailer, and not only do I remember it is arriving this year, but I remember the priapismatic pain everything about the game induces in me. Perhaps I keep forgetting that Mikami’s new lovechild is arriving out of some sort of survival-mechanism-fail-safe. Should I continue to remember, I would shut down, incapable of functioning at such a high level of excitement.

Hit the jump to check out the latest trailer. Believe.

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

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Evan King never stood a chance, that poor son of a bitch. The tragic part was as he lay vaporized in a pile of his own mush-guts, was that it was all for nothing. I stood over him, rummaging through his belongings looking for his motherfucking house key.

Fuggin’ nothing. Inconsequential bullshit to the point where I don’t even remember what was in those shitty wasteland pants. But it wasn’t his fucking house key, that’s for sure.

One self-particlized stupid son of a bitch, a town cowering in fear, and my karmic meter droppin’ like woah.

Shit had gone downhill quickly.

Let me fill you in.

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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.

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[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!”

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This dude is my new hero, a benchmark for modern culture, and an athlete of epic proportions.

via destructoid:

There’s a new gold standard for heroism in the world. A man was able to nab not one, but two Xbox 360s from a Beavercreek, Ohio Best Buy while carrying a diaper bag and a real live baby! I’m sorry, but that kind of brazen feat deserves a golf clap.

The mystery man, described as 6ft, 250 pounds and balding, grabbed two consoles and lefts with them under his arm while carrying the child. He then got into his Kia Spectre and sped off, allegedly without even securing the baby in its seat. Although on the surface this looks like bad parenting, we can’t rule out the fact that the baby was in on the scam, and possibly the brains of the operations.

Good damn damn and a golf clap to this man! The economy sucks! He’s probably unemployed, dismissed by The Man from wherever he works. How the fuck else is he going to be able to co-op on Xbox Live with his buddy from the same room when Halo: Reach drops? Tell me fucking how! It’s bad enough his old Xbox 360 fucking RROD’d and he couldn’t afford to ship it out for repairs.

This man is simply a product of our system. And I like him.

My final project for my summer course is finished. It’s been attached to an email. It’s been fired, an electronic missive, scattering across the digi-webs towards my professor’s inbox. And as soon it is received, it shall begin crushing the university’s bandwidth, daring to be downloaded. Enormous. Blathering. Finished.

A week’s worth of work. Thousands of words, a couple dozen pages. Diet Mountain Dew cans consumed into the infinity-range. Spent veins, spent cells, smiles abound.

Hey, it’s like, summer or something?

I’ll be bored and ready for class in two weeks.

Monday Morning Commute. Every Monday I’m going to detail the various things I’m either currently or will be watching, reading, playing, and listening to in the next seven days. It’s Monday. You’ve got a long week of school, work, or compulsive masturbation to get through. Tell me the arts that you’re indulging in, to stave off suicide.

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

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And a good god damn to you as well! What’s percolatin’? Crackalakin? Say word? Double word? Aiight, whatever. Enough bullshit. Put on your wastelander outfit, and let’s party.

The only gaming I’ve really been doing over the past couple of months, or maybe I guess, this year, is wastelanding and outer-spacing. I’m making up all sorts of   words here. Take your dictionary and burn it! Don’t conform to what the man tells you as far as proper grammar and spelling! Beware the brainwash clinic! You’re all doomed, we’re all doomed!

The amazing part is that one of the predominant reasons for my awful gaming schedule is the fact that almost all of my waking life is dedicated to either A) writing papers or B) worrying about writing papers. I have an inability to engage in things I enjoy if I am stressed, or worried about something.

Two important asides:

This doesn’t include masturbation, which is my refuge from anxiety. If I’m worried whatever, and I have something looming over me, I whip out das schlong and punish him. If you think I’m worried about writing another paper, you should ask him what’s up. He’s absolutely frazzled, beat red (pun!), and worse for the wear. I think I’m going to wear out whatever tubing and connections hold the thing together by the end of my Master’s Degree.

So when I can get some gaming in, I’m working through Fallout 3. I had the misfortune of playing through Fallout 3 last year way too fast, and so I’ve been spending all my time now trying to blast through everything before Fallout: New Vegas comes out.

Including the expansion packs.

Right now I’m rockin’ through Mothership Zeta, and I have to say it’s pretty much ass. If you took ass, and then you were like “Hmm, what’s analogous to this in the gaming world”…there’s be plenty of other examples. Whatever! Hey, but it just isn’t that good.

It’s almost as bad as BioWare DLC. Ohhhhhh shit, zing! And whatnot! I’m losing my mind. Can you tell that? Do the monsters have the teeth in their eyes!? The Microsoft Word processor beckons to me in my sleep. Ian, it says. Pump me full of verbs and run-on sentences! Semi-colon all over me!

But seriously though, I love me some Bethesda, and I love me some Fallout 3, but this expansion just really ain’t cuttin’ it. What can you do? I bought it for half-price back in the day when they had slashed all their DLC, and I guess I really don’t regret playing it.

Sort of.

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