While it may be fun to design rude creatures, EA doesn’t want them on their servers.

The Spore Creature Creator came out on June 14, give or take a day, and the first thing people did was start designing genital monsters of their very own. Ambulatory penises are the most common, but more creative beasties ranging from Goatse-saurus to creatures that look like copulating people, animals, or a bizarre combination of the two (and probably plants as well) have been popping up all over. Spore Creature Creator is completely freeform, an unrestricted toy to design just about anything your twisted, pervy mind can come up with. It was only a matter of time before the wonderful anything-goes anarchy began to be reigned in.

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Or at least its promotional artwork.

The SITE Intelligence Group mine terrorist message boards daily for evidence of terrorist activities, and they find all sorts of interesting things. One of those things was the above image from Fallout 3, which sadly lacks a man, faithful doggy companion by his side, pumping hot lead into the twisted nuclear zombie survivors that make life in the postapocalyptic age such a tricky prospect. Apparently, Al Qaeda are so confused and misguided that they believe a nuclear-ravaged Washington DC doesn’t need anything else, and I’m willing to bet the message board was filled with obnoxiously short posts best summarized as “Dude, awesome! (smiley face)”.

It’s worth noting that, contrary to initial reports, the SITE Intelligence Agency didn’t believe this was a commissioned piece demonstrating “the feasibility of nuclear strikes against the US and Britain.” While terrorists in general can be depressingly effective, they tend to work low-tech and aren’t widely known for their ability to generate high-end computer renderings. Their ability to appropriate images for their own (sometimes bizarrely amusing) ends is, however, somewhat better documented. Just ask Bert.

The future of the feature is obvious, and console gaming needs to embrace it.

It's been a long time since the days of the Doom wad, when obscure tools were required to make maps and only the truly dedicated could create something worth playing.  Level design tools have come a long way since then, and now anyone with creativity and a bit of perseverance can play game designer.  While the distribution methods on the PC side of things have evolved nicely, with the clear leader in the field being Trackmania's incredible community website, consoles…  Hmm…  How to put this kindly…

Level distribution on consoles sucks syphilitic goat wang.  That's the polite, sugar-coated version.

N+ had its online level distribution yanked by Microsoft at the very last second.  Boom Blox lets you share your levels with friends, putting Nintendo in the unique position of being smarter about the ways their online infrastructure is used than Microsoft.  Echochrome is even better, automatically uploading a handful of user-created levels every week or so in addition to allowing users to trade.  Taking things a step farther, Blast Works: Build, Trade, Destroy will allow players to upload their levels to BlastWorksDepot.com to share with the world, and Little Big Planet will do roughly the same thing a few months afterwards.  Now we're talking!

Tangent-  Part of the reason given for Microsoft pulling the plug on N+ level sharing was fear of rude words and genital-shaped creations polluting the minds of America's youth and upsetting their lawyer-happy parents.  While I have no doubt that there will be more than a few giant penis bosses to download for Blast Works, Nintendo is still showing themselves to be less afraid of the shenanigans their users get up to than its more "mature" competitors. -End Tangent

Creating things can be a lot of fun, although I'll admit I'm not particularly good at it.  There's not much point, though, if you can't share what you've made with other people, and so far it's been very difficult to do on consoles.  The PC world has been dealing with the content for years without any problem, and in the age of memory sticks, USB drives, and web browsers built right into the system it's time for the console world to follow suit.  Every game with a level editor needs to have a web site where users can upload, trade, and rate their levels, from now on.  It's being fixed, slowly, but two games working to build an online community around shared content barely qualifies as a nice start.

This blog article should be recognized as the sole opinion of the editor and does not necessarily reflect GotNext's official position on the subject.

MADD wants GTA IV labeled AO because of the drunk driving, but is perfectly fine with the rest of the content.

Apologies for yet another Grand Theft Auto IV article, but it seems to be generating all the headlines this week.

There's been a lot of talk from the mainstream media about GTAIV, most of it of the informed quality one would expect.  It's easily ignored, seeing as there are only so many hours in the day and there are things that matter to deal with, but MADD went above and beyond the call of duty to get a response.  This is copied and pasted from their media page-

"Each year nearly 13,500 people die in drunk driving crashes and another half a million are injured in alcohol-related traffic crashes. This is why MADD is extremely disappointed by the decision of the manufacturers of the game Grand Theft Auto IV to include a game module where players can drive drunk. Drunk driving is not a game and it is not a joke. Drunk driving is a choice, a violent crime and it is also 100 percent preventable. MADD is calling on the Entertainment Software Ratings Board to reclassify Grand Theft Auto IV as an Adults Only game, a step up from the current rating of Mature and for the manufacturer to consider a stop in distribution – if not out of responsibility to society then out of respect for the millions of victims/survivors of drunk driving."

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Now this is how you fix a mistake.

Okami is one of the prettiest games available, but the Wii version shipped with a blemish right on the front cover.  By Amaterasu's mouth you can plainly see an IGN watermark, complete with compass and logo.  Even worse, a quick scan at my local Gamestop the other day showed that the preview box art had it on there too, meaning there was plenty of time to catch and fix this error.  Oops!

It was a silly error, and Capcom is manning up to it with free replacement covers for all.  Head on over to Capcom's website to snag one of three different covers for your game, free for the asking and no receipt necessary.  One is the original art and back cover copy without that pesky watermark or unsightly Play Magazine score, but the other two are full wraparound art without even a Wii logo to mar them.  Prettify your Wii copy or replace the original PS2 cover, they're system agnostic.

While you're indulging in appreciation for Okami's amazing style, it's worth dropping in to Okami Art for a look around.  The art book they're promoting is pretty tempting.