PAX 2010 I hardly knew thee.

Images taken from GamrFeed (why they're missing the second e I don't know, or care).

Spend all that time preparing your outfit, then don't bother standing up to pose. Good work retards.

Steroid-free Guile prepares to battle his next opponent: a light breeze.

This is what happens when you mix drugs with cartoon network.

Many yes, a thousand times yes.

Right: Cosplayer posing. Left: Captain Fabulous

IT TIME SNOO SNOO!!!

Papa Smurf, Dorkacus, and Booger boy

The girl on the left is so perky I think I got diabetes.

Commander Sweatpits!!

Disinterested androgynous Asian cosplayer will bore you to death.

Wild SNORLAX uses MOLEST.

This guy came dressed as failure.

"Bring me wenches or bring me death!"

"..... I choose death!"

Transgender slave cosplay + Enthusiastic moron photobomber.

I cast a +4 Petrification spell on my penis.

Mario must have the bluest balls in the Mushroom Kingdom.

"DERP FINEAL FANTASSIE!"

Ever since Half Life came out hipster college students think they can just don a white coat and be Gordon Freeman. Wankers the lot of them.

An alternative Dalek cosplay, but to me it looks like she's dressed as a kitchen, and therefore should be in herself. Paradox?

SUPER VIRGIN BROTHERS!

Fucking smashing, what's with the half-mo creeper behind him?

A surefire hit with the ladies is to cosplay as a 13 year old.

Rosie O'Donnell made an appearance.

Baron Majestic and the puzzling headwear.

This man is wearing a skirt. That is all.

Sammy chews it! YOU SHOULD TOO!

I'm sitting here at my grandmother's house watching “Home Cooked” or something to that effect, with the winner of the first season of masterchef as the host, my wife is yelling at the TV for some reason, apparently she hates this woman to death despite never watching an episode of MasterChef.

I'm pretty sus about this show. She's using too many 'Glad' products, which tells me they're the main sponsor. The entire show plays like an extended informercial for Glad with some recipes thrown in.

Everything on TV these days is about making as much money as possible. Product placement and sponsorship crap means that programs are less about what the content is and more about what products they pitch us in the ad break. The same thing has been happening in our video games too.

I remember playing Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, the best game in the series (I haven't played Conviction yet), and in one cut scene I noticed there was a packet of Air Waves gum next to a radio. The packet was in a corner and I accepted it as subtle advertising. I mean, why wouldn't a person put their gum next to a radio? But later in the game Sam is boarding a helicopter on his next mission to kill a political figure in true Tom Clancy fashion when he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a packet of cool refreshing soothing Airwaves Gum! That minty tastes lasts for hours! BUY IT NOW YOU WANT AIRWAVES GUM SAM FISHER CHEWS IT

AND SAM FISHER KILLS PEOPLE

SAM FISHER WILL KILL YOU IF YOU DON'T BUY AIRWAVES GUM

HE WILL FIND YOU

AND HE WILL RAPE YOU

AIR

WAVES

GUM

.. so he pops a minty capsule into his mouth and some guy in the copter shoots him a smile in recognition. The inclusion of the product in the cut scene is bad enough, but to have the main character directly interact with the product is inexcusable. But the clincher for me was that knowing smile the guy gave him. That split second smile made that entire sequence a full blown commercial. I half expected Sam to turn to him and say.

“Say there, would you care for some Airwaves gum?!”

“AIRWAVES GUM!! BLOW ME DOWN AND FUCK MY MOTHER! I FUCKING LOVE AIRWAVES GUM!”

Then both characters turn to the screen.

“Airwaves Gum, buy it and chew the FUCK OUT OF IT YOU MINDLESS CONSUMER WHORE”

Unfortunately Airwaves Gum isn't sold in Australia, so when I raced to the store with a wad of bills in one hand and my dick in the other I was disappointed....

.. and promptly arrested for indecent exposure.

Pre-order Your Next Disappointment Here.

I have a bone to pick with the current state of video games. My internet BFF Remy made an excellent article about the current generation of consoles already but I'm after a different shade of red in their blood. I'm talking about the trend in video game marketing, specifically the use of exclusive offers and deals brought forward by the big chains in an effort to gain a foothold in the cut throat world of retail gaming.

I really couldn't tell you when it all began, though I'll venture a guess it was with the generation before this one. Xbox and Playstation 2 were dominating the market after Nintendo dropped the ball with their fantastic Gamecube which I will love to death but no-one else on the planet seems to agree with me. Strategy guides were no longer small books that covered many games at once, but were massive encyclopedias of information all about a single game. They had walkthroughs, cheats, behind the scenes information, stories, lists, stats... I could go on. They were a fantastic read and a great marketing tool, as when they were thrown in with the game as a package to the key demographic, usually that demographic would go to school / work the next day with the book in tow, and spread the word about the game through that form of covert advertising.

The retail chains began to sell “collectors editions” of games that came with this guide, and maybe a poster or two, then there were “game of the year editions” that added very little, maybe packaged some expansion packs with the game if it were a PC port onto Xbox (see: Morrowind). This was all well and good, as you didn't need the collectors or limited editions to enjoy the full gaming experience.

With this current generation however, things are starting to change. Collectors editions are serious business, gone are the days of a single game with a small bonus, you now have a game that comes with a behind the scenes dvd, a soundtrack, a poster, a book about some kind of crap, an action figure, night vision goggles, all in a custom box. And you HAVE to have it.

The only time I came close to buying a collectors pack was when Arkham Asylum came out with a Batarang, but when I ordered it the employee at my EB games store was kind enough to tell me the Batarang was a plastic piece of shit and looked nothing like the one in the catalog. He them pulled this hunk of plastic out from behind the desk to prove he was “no foolies”.

Again, you don't need all this shit to enjoy the full experience, they market the fuck out of it so you think you do, but in all honesty, you're never going to watch that behind the scenes DVD, and you'll play the soundtrack once in your car. So the industry stepped it up again.

Today it's quite common for games to include actual in-game items that are exclusive to certain retail chains, you don't need to buy the collectors pack any more, all you need to do is pre-order the game and you'll get your rare golden AK47 or alternative costume. Now I see this image and it scares me.

An extra hour of gameplay? The bonus quests are probably non-crucial, but the problem is where will it stop? When will it get to the point where you have to buy 2 copies of the game for all 3 systems from different retailers to enjoy the full gaming experience? They've done this before with additional features, like the Ada Wong level on the PS2 port of Resident Evil 4, and the Joker fight stages in the PS3 Arkham Asylum, these may be afterthoughts to grab attention, but when will we see the day where a large chunk of the story in a game is “Best Buy Exclusive”? It will be a sad day in the gaming world when the retailers decide on what content we're able to access. But the way things are going it's only a matter of time until you're shelling out 400 dollars for the Ultra-sex-mega-edition of Call of Duty XXIV with in-game naked stripper mode exclusive to EB Games, packaged inside a working combat shotgun dildo and optional happy ending massage by a trained masseuse when you pre-order the game.

It's supposed to be about the games, not the knickknacks they tack on them.

The internet vs Ms Quinn

The new screens for the upcoming Batman game Arkham City have been out for a little over 24 hours, and the internet has once again reared it's ugly head from the depths. This time the beef with everyone is the new outfit for Harley Quinn.

The direction she has taken with her clothing has apparently struck a nerve with the hardcore Batman fans the world around, and they're demanding the blood of the character designers of this new game, and the hatred is split into two factions: people who want Harley back in her nurse outfit from the first game Arkham Asylum, and people who want Harley in her original classic costume from the cartoon and comics.

In Arkham Asylum Harley Quinn donned a rather sexually appealing nurses outfit with a skirt just long enough to cover her assets. That of course didn't stop the most dedicated of us using Batman's crouch and zoom abilities to try to sneak a quick peek at her underpants (or hopefully lack thereof) as she pranced back and forth behind an electric field taunting Batman towards the start of the game. She even briefly talked about her 'new uniform' in her first appearance.

When the game was released I don't remember anyone having an outcry of her nurse's outfit, despite it being a completely new look for her. They accepted this Harley as traditional Harley in a different costume, one themed towards the medical environment she was in. But this group of people can't comprehend now that she's moved into the city that a nurse's outfit doesn't really fit in any more. Maybe because briefly in the teaser trailer she still wore it and they've accepted it rigidly in their minds that a new costume is incomprehensible, or maybe they have a thing against the more industrial gothic look of her new gear. But watching the trailer and looking at the screens her new look fits in perfectly with the new surroundings and dark undertones of this game series.

Then there are the people who rabidly scream down the walls that Harley should be in her classic jester hat and one piece suit costume, with a giant mallet and oversized pistol to boot I'm sure... this won't work, as much as I like Harley's original look, it just does not fit in with the style of the game. Standing among tattooed heavies that look so grimy you can practically smell them, if she were to rock up all clean and colourful and slapstick she would be nothing but a novelty in the game. In the screenshot at the top of this article not only does she fit in, but she looks way more authoritative than usual, instead of a bumbling fool in love she has some power and influence behind her. Which I feel would be a nice progression for her.

And speaking of tattoos, many people have pointed out that Harley isn't the type to have tattoos, how would they know? What is their basis behind this argument? To me it sounds perfectly normal for an obsessed girl to tattoo the name and face of her object of affection onto their body. And hell, it might not even be a real tattoo. Did you think about that?

If people should be upset about anything it's Two Face. One of the better villains out there in the Batman universe, Harvey Dent's face wasn't the only thing that was scarred by the acid thrown at him in a courtroom (or elaborate trap set up by Heath Ledger), he became a man with no moral sense of right and wrong, leaving everything up to chance.

Note that when I say his face was scarred, that's it. Just his face. But in these new screenshots you can clearly see the entire left side of his body is a purple mess, which to me, isn't right. But in saying that, there's really nothing different about the character himself (I hope). I'm just nitpicking because I'm a huge Batman nerd. And that's exactly what these Harley Quinn people are doing. They're nitpicking.

The game is still a year off the release date, and we're yet to see any of the characters in action. A picture can say a thousand words, but judging the game on them alone is a waste of everyone's time.

Games, and where they need improvement.

The video game industry is a fantastic and wondrous beast, but it does have its flaws. Bad voice acting, inane archaic functions, and people fucking with what should be a set template for controller schemes are just a few of the annoyances we put up with.

Sure there is a governing body that controls the rating system in terms of what game is suited for what age group, but there is no watchdog group that targets games for shitty practices that need to be stomped out. If said group existed, I would hope that they deal with the following issues in games we play today.

Instant Text Scrolling.

When a game has voice I'm more inclined to sit through a cut scene and listen to the conversations, so long as the voice acting is fine (see below). But if there is no voice and only text the last thing I want to do is read everything at the same pace as the voice. I'm quite sure that everyone in the world that can read, does so at a much faster rate than they talk. So why do games feel they have to drag out the text in a slow typing style animation? What the fuck is wrong with instant text? I would kill for instant text, with the option to press 'A' when I'm done reading.

Some games do this but they hardly do it right. And if the game has the ability to do instant text as well as slow scrolling text, the scrolling will ALWAYS be the default. I do not know a single person who will choose slow scrolling text over instant. It puts this sense of limitation on me from the get go and usually is the defining factor in when I choose to never play that game again. Here's a little scenario:

I'm lying in bed and I feel I want to play a few minutes of that game I've been enjoying before I go to sleep, I grab my DS, I turn it on, and sit through 2 minutes of scrolling text. I WILL turn that game off and probably have such a bad taste in my mouth every time I consider playing it I'll remember the feeling of frustration I had and will respond with a resounding "meh". And the game will sit in my DS for a month unplayed. By the time I go back to it I'll forget what part I'm up to and either restart, or won't bother.

Another thing that gets on my nerves are games that DO have instant text, but force you to wait a few seconds before skipping to the next part. Games like Phoenix Wright that have associated animations with the text and you always have to wait for the animation to be done. But the problem is that game uses the same 4 animations for each character CONSTANTLY. Every time I see that old judge shaking his head slowly I groan. Sure the time isn't long but it builds up, and slowly chips away at your patience until you explode in a fit of gamer rage. Oh look, Godot is drinking coffee for the 700th time today.. wait wait wait.. oh I see, he spit it out. AGAIN.

Voice Acting

Look, if you're going to shell out money for voice acting, hire someone who is at least capable of doing it without sounding like a 'text to speech' program. Is it that fucking hard? Games with shitty voice acting must not know they have shitty voice acting. They use long winded cut scenes that make me want to kill myself, and they almost always include a female character with a voice 2 octaves higher than a screeching cat. It's disgusting.

I went to school with a guy who ridiculed me for playing games that still used text instead of voice. To this day I still don't know why. Out of all the games I've played over the years the number of them with good voice acting pales in comparison to the bad. It seems like bad actors are a staple of the video gaming industry and it's one of the many things that put a halt to it being recognised as nothing more than "cheap entertainment" in the eyes of the fuckers who don't play them (I'm looking at you Roger Egbert, when you die I will not mourn).

I do look fondly back on games like Resident Evil when voice acting was a new novelty and laugh at how bad they were, but come on, that was over 10 years ago. We've improved graphics beyond our wildest dreams in that time yet we're still at the mercy of a 6 dollar per hour D-list celebrity? Fuck off.

But the voices aren't always at fault, which brings me to

Writing

Any story, in any medium, needs to be well written to grab the attention of the reader. But a lot of video games gloss over an engaging story by trying to distract us with the game play.

I'm going to say this now, Fighters don't need a story. The worst part about any fighter is the shitty cut scene when you start playing a character, and the shitty cut scene when you finish playing a character. You've made a game that has muscle toned men and women with massive breasts, fuck using a story, just have a cut scene of her jumping about. Dead or Alive nearly does this right with its female characters, but if you're going to make your girls look like that, who are you kidding? Throw them in a skimpy outfit and be done with it.

Fighters are fighters. You chose your character, then you go on your way. From that moment on you don't give a flying fuck if your fighter has a troubled past, or is the brother of another fighter. All you care about is using the right combination of cheap kick moves to corner your opponent and make him throw his controller into a wall.

This method can be put to use in any genre of game (well... NEARLY any genre). If your story is shit, don't use it. Why spend thousands of dollars hiring game writers when your game doesn't need it.

Example: Super Mario Brothers. Story: Save princess

That's it. One of the greatest and beloved games ever to exist, and the entirety of the story can be summed up in two words. Even the latest versions of game are essentially the same story. Except Super Mario Sunshine, which is probably why I never finished it.

And that's a fun game. A story is great if it itself is great, but shitty writing is unforgivable. Some games don't need a story. Don't try to force one where it isn't needed. I can't stress enough how bad stories in fighters are, nobody gives a fuck about the inner workings off their character. Chances are you only chose said character because you know a combination of moves that allow you to win against most people with as little skill as possible.

Cut Scenes

I want to skip cut scenes, and I want the option in a menu to go back to previously seen cut scenes. Some games have cut scenes that take up to 10 minutes, and most of the time you can't pause them at all. You can either skip them, or just have to let them play. So if I have to be called away from my console for some reason I'm fucked. I have to shut off the game and re-watch the entire cut scene again, because that will be the only time in that play through that I'll be able to.

It's not that fucking hard, all the game devs need to do is link the call function to a menu to grab a viewed cut scene, hell even a fast forward, pause and rewind function wouldn't be hard to code as most long cut scenes are pre-rendered anyway, a 2 second youtube clip of a dog on fire has more functionality than your 60 million dollar game. There's something wrong there.

And on the other hand, I play games a few times through, and the last thing I want is to have to sit through an unskippable cut scene that I can lip sync to because I've seen it so much.

I'm not asking for the world here, I'm asking for a little bit of control.

Saving and Pausing

I want to save everywhere, I don't expect to save in mid battle in an RPG, nor mid fight or mid race in fighting and racing games. But I do expect to be able to save everywhere else. Save points are an outdated function that need to be purged. This will benefit users immensely but will also be a point winner for the partners/children/parents of users. Instead of responding with "hang on I gotta find a save point", you can reply instead with a more suitable "yep, this race has about 3 more laps in it". 3 laps in a race tells the person you'll be between 2-6 minutes, but sometimes finding a save point, especially with a cut scene in between that you can't skip (see above), you could be waiting for up to 20 minutes. And that's going to piss people off.

Some games don't let you pause properly either, instead interpreting the press oflisten to the conversations, sal button to pause) as a "skip forward" button, making you miss a cut scene, or an important line of text.

The Start button should always pause the game no matter what, in fact, if every game had the START = PAUSE ability and within that pause screen was a save option, that would be one of the greatest improvements in the history of gaming.

Confusing controller scheme and lack of choice

Some people like inverted controls and camera, others don't. What I hate is coming across a game that doesn't give me a choice to switch from their default option. You want to know how hard it is to switch controller inversion in code? It's not. The code is already there for left and right, up and down, just fucking swap the functions to the opposite direction.

I also want to customize my controller scheme, gamers get used to a certain layout in game genres. R trigger = shoot/accelerate/strong punch. What we don't like is some new game from a narrow minded company who bring out a shooter where shoot is X/Green, and the R trigger makes the character duck or something. That will frustrate the fuck out of anybody. I don't know what goes through the minds of these people when they bring out these games.

Any developer that binds "Up" to "jump", needs to be castrated. Back in the NES days when you only had 2 buttons some games couldn't help but use Up for jump, but now controllers have so many buttons they're running out of ideas of what to assign them to. And people still make Up = Jump.

Artificially prolonging the game play

Although I'm not affected by this as much, I have a friend who hates it, so it's making the list.

You're playing a game that involves RPG elements. Be it an RPG itself, or a platformer with a levelling system. At some point in the game you're going to hit a wall. You'll be pitted against a boss that rips your head off and shits down your neck every time you blink at him. And the only way you can overcome him is to gain levels.

Not just a few levels either, you'll have to level up at least 10 times AND equip the best rarest gear you can find AND max out your skill points AND have every enchant/potion/aura at the ready AND have a "how to kill buttfuck insane boss" walk through printed out at your side. Now THAT is cheap.

Something is wrong in the mechanics of the game where you hit walls like these, they should really give you enough challenges that level you naturally before the final battle so when you do confront the big bad guy, you at least give him a run for his money. Sure you might need to tweak your skills and gear, but having to spend another 6 hours levelling up just to tackle him? It sucks the fun out of the game for people. The natural flow of the game is halted and you're forced to give yourself a training montage while you grind the night away.

What I'm asking for in all these issues is not much at all, but games companies continue to churn out shit that makes the industry cry.

We need regulation and consistency.

We won't get it.