I like keeping it real with ya’ll. When I’m running on raw emotion, I’ll admit it. And so for full disclosure, I’ve bought both of the games I’m about to discuss.

The very same day that I report that Arkham Asylum has sold TWO MILLION ZOMG copies, EA CEO admits that Madden sales are dropping:

Via Kotaku:

Madden NFL 10 leads the NPD Group’s top ten with 928,000 units sold on the Xbox 360. That’s a drop from last year’s cool million. And while Madden sales were up year-over-year on the PlayStation 3, the game suffered on the PlayStation 2 and Wii, with the sports game moving less than half of what it did on the PS2 from the same period last year.

All told, Madden NFL 10 managed to move 1.9 million copies across all platforms in August, down from the 2.2 million-plus Madden NFL 09 managed last year.

Now listen, that’s still an insane amount of copies. But I’ve always looked at Madden as something primarily for frat boys and jocks. And not cool frat boys and cool jocks. There, I covered myself. So to see it getting outsold by a comic book character‘s video game makes me swell with glee. It’s juvenile, but I cackled a little bit to myself. Sorry EA! Sorry your recycled money-machine that really doesn’t change much every year isn’t printing out the cash like it usually does.

C’est la vie, blowhards!

Arkham Asylum sells two million copies in two weeks. Good god damn! Pay attention, gaming companies! Usually comic book/movie video games eat raw ass. Tons of it. Gobble them out. And maybe the titles, while craptacular will sell to a few mouth-breathing fans and diehards. But spend some time on a comic book game, and what happens? Shit blows up! Arkham Asylum is one of the highest rated games of the year. It’s selling a million copies a week. And more importantly, Eidos has just established a franchise. Churn out crap, and maybe you’ll trick people into buying a title. But blow their god damn heads off, and you’ve gotten repeat customers.

Seriously, anything that follows this game up will be automatically bought by many, including me, because it’s the sequel to Arkham Asylum.

It’s simple, you can churn out slop and hope some tardholes pick it up. Or you can be the rare company that doesn’t rush out a comic book or video game movie, and reap the rewards.

If you know me, you know that I buy all multi-platform games for my 360. Why? Because I’m a douchebag, duh! Just kidding about the d-bag part. But seriously, why? Because they’re better. Apparently European Microsoft Czar Chris Lewis agrees with me! Go figure!

Via Destructoid:

We have a great journey through to Christmas,” boasts Lewis. “There are key titles that are exclusives but also great cross-platform titles that will just work better on Xbox Live. And in terms of content and networking, we have more content partnerships for Xbox Live.

Countless friends of mine want to punch me in the face. Listen, I’ll break it down for you. And here’s a caveat and please don’t disregard this: I’m buying Final Fantasy XIII on the PS3, and should policy and quality shift, I will flow with it. I’m not a blind fanboy. Click the jump for my reasonings.

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Left 4 Dead was dope as hell. Valve announced they were going to release a sequel. L4D fans rejoiced, right? Well, most of us. But then there’s always the dillholes of the gaming community. They grumbled that it was being shoved out, blah blah blah, too quickly, blah blah, I am angry nerd gamer, play with semen crust on my fingers. They even wrote a manifesto. They’re turds.

Valve, who sweats awesomeness flew two of these absolute vaginal discharges out to play the game. Yes, Valve paid for two haters to come check out L4D2, and show them how fucking insipid they are. And are you surprised to learn that these two angry nerds and their manifesto (LOL) quickly gave way to the truth? Even they now realize L4D2 is going to be super-ballin’-time:

Via Destructoid:

“Things seemed balanced and ‘tight’ and did not feel like a rushed job. While we were visiting their offices we personally witnessed what can only be called a small army of artists, coders, mappers hard at work, which explains the rapid transformations in artwork that we’ve all seen,” grovel the turncoat boycotters, known by the impressive handles of Walking_Target and Agent of Chaos.

“What we can say with confidence is that the quality of gameplay in Left 4 Dead 2 is not in question; and it will only get better.”

Most nerds are just neglected buttheads who have so much time on their hands they’ll write manifestos and boycott games out of misplaced angst. That, or write a blog. Or both. They love hating because they hate not being loved. Or something.

If I knew that hating crap would let me play and experience it early, I’d hate a lot more. For the record, POWERS THAT BE WINK WINK, this is a list of things I hate and need to be persuaded about:

Mass Effect 2, Final Fantasy XIII, Bayonetta, Uncharted 2, Avatar, Star Wars Episode XII, the last season of LOST, American currency, and time travel. So please change my mind about these awful, awful things.

It’s already been announced that Ninja Gaiden 2 Sigma is going to feature boobs you can shake with your Sixaxis controller. In the following clip, NG2’s producer Yosuke Hayashi teaches nerds in a Spain just how to handle those breasts. I wish someone had taught me how to handle boobs when I was a fat little kid. The first time I saw a pair of bare breasts I freaked out and launched at them like I was Bilbo in Rivendell from Fellowship. ROARRRR and then I just drooled on them a lot. Check out the video after the jump.

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When the Earth was created, there was the PS3. Now there’s the Ps3 Slim. Soon, it looks like there’s going to be the 250gb Ps3 Slim. And even after that, apparently there’s going to be another god damn version of a Ps3 with 3D hardware integrated into it. Strap on your googles, assholes, and get ready to shake your Sony Wiimoteshock at fluttering butterflies or some shit:

Via Kotaku:

According to a Sony rep speaking with Cnet, “over the following two or three years” Sony will begin installing hardware inside the PS3 that will enable the console to display games in 3D.

Fuckkkkkkk. God dammit Sony, come on. I bought your piece of crap PS3 back in 2006 when there were no titles for it, because I’m a hardcore asshole. I just needed it. You prey on people like me. But god dammit, don’t make me buy another console. If your lame-assed 3D plans only become some sort of auxiliary option, that’s fine, whatever. Be a fruit cake. But if I can’t play God of War and Clank 3 because I don’t have the appropriate version of PS3 I’m going to lose my god damn mind.

3D gaming? Fucking come on. This isn’t Universal Studios. I’m a crotchety old man, I cry foul. All the causal d-bags who have propelled a glorified peripheral (the Wii) to insane installed bases will probably straight up ejaculate at the prospect.

To you, I say, catch PAX-Nerd-Flu.

“Video Game Innovation Day“? Finally a vacuous political term I can fucking dig! Take it away Deval!

Now, Therefore, I, Deval L. Patrick, Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, do hereby proclaim September 9th, 2009 to be,

Video Game Innovation Day

And urge all the citizens of the Commonwealth to take cognizance of this event and participate fittingly in its observance

Fuck yeah! You’ll find me doing something different today! Like uh, sitting in my cave, playing video games. Fuck.

I like Halo. You may not like Halo. But I think any decent human being with a penchant for nerdery can agree the commercial below is amazing. It’s painful to watch, because it makes what I find to be a laughable universe into something utterly gorgeous. Watch this trailer, see District 9, and contemplate how awesome a Peter Jackson-produced Halo movie could have actually been. Check it out after the jump.

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The Dreamcast has turned ten! Wait? What? Holy good god shit. Where did the last decade go? Wasn’t I just hooking up my Dreamcast and playing Tony Hawk on it for fifteen hours straight? I turn around for like, four seconds, to grab another Pepsi and a decade passes?

Jesus Christ, I must have gray hairs on my balls.

I was pretty stoked on the Dreamcast. To the point that I ended up getting a Japanese one for Christmas of ’98. Way to go parents, and you wonder why I’m a freeloading asshole, totally enabling me and shit.

I remember that Christmas morning, unwrapping the fuck out of my presents to see them sitting there for me: a Dreamcast, and a copy of Sonic Adventure. Language barriers? Get thee to a nunnery, I don’t want to hear about any language barriers!

Isn’t Sonic a universal language? The golden little hoops symbols of light, which we, as idealized innocent little creatures chase endlessly? Isn’t that what life really is, honestly?

Naw, probably not, huh. Kick a hooker and buy some crack!

Anyways.

I can’t roll off the countless hours my friends and I sat in front of Sonic Adventure, rocking the shit out of Dr. Robotnik. It was like that douchebag’s skull was designed for a spiky hedgehog to dance upon it. A Christmas break spent plowing through level after level. Mowing down shitty fast food and playing Primus and Dream Theater too loud. Life was good.

We even played through all the bullshit levels. With Amy Rose and Big the Cat and shit. I’m not sure why cracked out member of SONIC TEAM thought to himself or herself, “Let’s put a fishing game into Sonic”, but they should kick themselves squarely. But we had to. Why? We needed to get Super Sonic, fucking duh!

So there we were. Navigating shitty Amy Rose levels in Japanese, just so we could get to go all Super Saiyan and shit. Of course we did, of course we were victorious.

Sonic Adventure wasn’t the only game that got heavy rotation on my Dreamcast. I shit you not; I probably played my Dreamcast twice as much as I’ve played my Wii or my Gamecube.

Jesus Christ did I burn through hours in Phantasy Star Online. An online RPG, made by Sega, running through my 56k modem. Brilliant. I can still remember the phone wire running awkwardly across my entire room, underneath my beef geek legs and beanbag (not the nut sac variety, for once) and into the console. I think it actually ran better than Battle.net, which isn’t saying much for the time. It was addictive as fuck, and it’s yet another reason I put on like sixty pounds my senior year of high school. If you can think of a better way of spending the month of February than blasting Helloween and swinging swords through dragons and shit, I’m soliciting recommendations.

I’ve got like…at least fifty or so Februaries to go, I could use the tips.

And then there was the Great American Tony Hawk Challenge in the summer of 2000. In the summer of 2000, teenage boredom combined with raw adolescent competition to give way to the biggest measuring of E-Peens I’ve been a part of. Every friend I knew somehow had come across a Dreamcast, and a copy of Tony Hawk.

As an aside, do you remember when Tony Hawk was a must-have? That shit used to be tight. I remember just falling slowly out of love with the series, but goddamn did those first few games hook me.

For reasons I can’t even remember, the challenge was simple: If you can get the highest score on the first level in Tony Hawk, you’re a superior human being. I’m not really sure why it was the first level. It was just understood by all of us. God dammit, it has to be the first level! It’s obvious! You fool!

It was a raging competition that had been born out of the fires of our Crazy Taxi obsession. My dreams were filled with power sliding for hours while picking up douchebags to go to the Gap and shit. That was just the training ground for this electronic cock-measuring extravaganza. Crazy chaining combos, as my friends and I one-upped one another. You better not fucking restart your turn while I’m browsing Square Gamer! I will fucking stab you!

Who won? I have no idea. At some point, it eventually faded into the white noise of life. Left behind in turn for some other obsession. A new game, a new something. We probably picked up drinking, which cut seriously into our gaming time. For…like a week. And then it was gaming again. Losing the brain cells we probably forgot what we were playing and opted for something else.

So I ain’t got nothing but love for the Dreamcast. An underappreciated little system that was shelved too early in lieu of the titanic Playstation 2. But I’m going to remember it forever as the home of Crazy Taxi, Sonic Adventure, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Seaman, Sega Marine Fishing, Tony Hawk, Soulcalibur, Dead or Alive, Phantasy Star Online and on and on and on.

Happy tenth birthday Dreamcast, you beautiful piece of shit.

Simply put, Michael Jackson refuses to die. Here he is, sneaking into Final Fantasy XIII. What’s that you said, that’s not MJ? Well, okay. According the the “truth”,

Via Kotaku:

It’s already been confirmed that Sazh was a father – details were scant, however. Here is a first look at his son, who is named “Dodge” and also has an afro.

Sorry guys, can’t trick me. This is Michael Jackson if I’ve ever seen him. Looking all human again. Michael Jackson is like Jean Grey or some shit, reviving from the ashes. Actually, he probably just equipped a Final Attack+Phoenix materia before he passed. Welcome back, little man!