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.

Welcome To The Future! Where you’ll be snorting stem cells to fix your Alzheimer’s:

Via New Scientist:

STEM cells show promise for treating a range of neurological conditions, including Parkinson’s, strokes and Alzheimer’s, but it is tricky getting them into the brain. Perhaps inhaling stem cells might be the answer – if mice are anything to go by.

Other options all have their drawbacks. Drilling through the skull and injecting the stem cells is painful and carries some risks. You can also inject them into the bloodstream but only a fraction reach their target due to the blood-brain barrier.

The nose, however, might be a viable alternative. In the upper reaches of the nasal cavity lies the cribriform plate, a bony roof that separates the nose from the brain. It is perforated with pin-size holes, which are plugged with nerve fibres and other connective tissue. Since proteins, bacteria and viruses can enter the brain this way, Lusine Danielyan at the University Hospital of Tübingen in Germany, and her colleagues, wondered if stem cells would also migrate into the brain through the cribriform plate.

To test their idea, they dripped a suspension of fluorescently labelled stem cells into the noses of mice. The mice snorted them high into their noses, and the cells migrated through the cribriform plate. Then they travelled either into the olfactory bulb – the part of the brain that detects and deciphers odours – or into the cerebrospinal fluid lining the skull, migrating across the brain. The stem cells then moved deeper into the brain.

Hold on Nana! We got your ass, just uh, snort these cells.

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.

Keep Reading »

Pepsibones has been vociferously arguing that the Disney acquisition of Marvel could actually be super disco breakin’ and shit. He proposes that the deep-pockets that have picked up Marvel could actually benefit fans. How so, you ask? Well, if comic books are in fact dropping and dropping in sales, they may be willing to eat the cost moreso than if Marvel was alone. Why would they be willing to do that?

It’s easy.

Marvel and DC have long since been using their comic books as thinktanks for movie ideas, t-shirts, theme parks, et cetera. In other words, they’re a the testing ground for more lucrative propositions. And if Disney is willing to eat the cost on this comic book R&D, they should do us a favor as well.

Drop the cost of comic books. If they’re capable of eating cost, why not make the average comic book cheaper? Them shits are currently bordering on $3.99. If they were halved in price, being the sucker I am, I’d be more inclined to pick up some of the slop out there. Like the fifteen Avengers titles.

Pepsibones isn’t alone in his sentiment, Rich Johnston at Bleeding Cool reported that Disney may be thinking the same thing internally in a good article:

Via Bleeding Cool:

However, what if Disney was preemptive? What if Disney want to do something that makes a big impact on the comics business. It may make less money, it may cost them in instant revenue, but it also may reignite the kind of buzz that will help the slew of Marvel and Marvel-related films and merchandise.

What if the comics, rather than creeping towards the $3.99 price, suddenly dropped. To $1.99. Across the board.   Sales would rocket, market share would sour, other publishers would be squeezed off the shelves, plastic rings or no plastic rings,   comics revenue would fall. But buzz would increase, increase, increase.

C’mon Disney. Do all of us Marvel zealots a solid and drop the price. We know you can afford it, you gobble up companies like I eat slices of pizza. Careless and with no regard for the ramifications.

I’m suffering severe BSG withdrawal. No, seriously. I’m watching the series again not only with my heterosexual lifemate, but also my girlfriend. Thankfully, I got something new to look forward to. Battlestar Galactica: The Plan, the movie directed by Billy Adama himself has received a DVD street date. On October 27, 2009 you’ll be able to receive this next hit of BSG crack, on Blu Ray and DVD.

This movie seems pretty ballin’, since it depicts the initial total obliteration of human kind through the eyes of the Cylons. Sweet. Honestly though, it could just be Colonel Tigh taking a crap while Adama couches him through his conspitation and I’d be excited.

Also, it’s weird, since the movie hasn’t been dated for its showing on Sci-Fi (do you really think I’m going to call it SyFy?), and yet it’s received a DVD release date. Whatever, I ain’t hating. I need this shit. You need this shit! So say we frakin’ all!

[Thanks to Oh Mars for the heads-up on this]

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.

Keep Reading »

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.

Sleeping easy? Well, I wouldn’t! Not while god damn mice are moving god damn objects with their god damn brains:

Via New Scientist:

Kevin Warwick and Ben Whalley at the University of Reading, UK, have already used rat brain cells to control a simple wheeled robot

Some 300,000 rat neurons grown in a nutrient broth and producing spikes of electrical activity were connected to the output of the robot’s distance sensors. The neurons proved capable of steering the robot around a small enclosure.

But don’t fucking worry! With the forthcoming Rodent Uprising, apparently we’ll be able to use our own futuristic mind powers. FUCK YOU JEAN GREY, I’M AWESOME NOW:

To make the system a better model of human disease, a culture of human neurons will be connected to the robot once the current work with rat cells is completed. This will be the first instance of human cells being used to control a robot.

Doesn’t anyone watch Terminator? Or Blade Runner? Or Battlestar Galactica? Or The Matrix? Or Pinky and the Brain? This shit is going to end in tears.

“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.