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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The old school MST3K crew return to ripping bad movies a new one.

Being a longtime fan of the geek humor of Mystery Science Theater 3000, and having seen every episode except their UHF trial run, I never thought these talented people could be lured back to the world of making fun of bad movies.  Yet in recent years, Mike J. Nelson started up Rifftrax, often joined by the newer voices of Tom and Crow, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett, where they fill a downloadable track full of strange quips to be synced up with well known movies, both good and terrible (the movies, not the jokes).  They've also done a series of DVD releases under the Film Crew, that returns mostly to the MST3K format with host segments and truly terrible movies to poke fun of.

Now the original crew of the Satellite of Love have gotten back into the action under the optimistic label of Cinematic Titanic.  You've got your Joel "Robinson" Hodgson, "TV's" Frank Conniff, Trace "Crow with a dash of Forrester" Beaulieu, and the original smarmy voice of Tom Servo, Josh Weinstien.  Joining these originators is the always radiant Mary Jo Pehl.  Their first release has hit my mailbox in the form of the Oozing Skull, which is neither oozing nor particularly keen on skulls, aside from a few obviously fake skeletons in the closet.  It's the sort of movie that Ed Wood Jr. would have been embarrassed being associated with, even when decked out in a matching dress.  Seeing as this is a videogame related site, I wasn't going to comment on it, at least until the silhouette of Stephen Hawking rolled out during a typical mad scientist body switching scene, and delivered the following line:

"If this brain transplant works, I've got next."

If that doesn't rate a mention, I don't know what does.  So what's it like?  Well, imagine if you will one of the rock super groups like the Police or Led Zeppelin suddenly reunited long after their breakup and just started jamming together again.  None have lost their talent for off hand remarks and crazy quips, but the timing and the delivery has gotten a bit rusty, especially for those that hadn't done much of this sort of thing before.  There are no host segments.  No puppets on strings.  Instead, after a jazzy theme song they launch right into the movie, but there are occasional breaks where they pause the film for a few bizarre segments, taking advantage of their silhouette setup to throw in a few sight gags.  I still find myself wanting some bits at the beginning and the end to make it a little more than shadows razzing a bad movie, but it still brought a truckload of laughs.

So if you're curious, give a peek at their site, read a few blogs, watch the trailer, and even comment in their forum.  I hope their next release oozes along soon enough. 

Specifically, about the Wii version of Okami.

Christian Svensson responded like a person talking to other people today, putting him head and shoulders above most executives dealing with their company's fans.  Capcom forum-ites have been saying the same thing just about everyone else has about the Wii version of Okami, and the lack of confirmation on 480p 16:9 resolution.  Here's his response-

"A few points here… I get the issues, I really do, but people seem to be missing a few things.

We selected Ready at Dawn to do the port. These guys are all ex-Naughty Dog and ex-Blizzard, and they have already shipped their own titles that have ridiculously high review scores and sales (and have more on the way). Their attention to detail and technical prowess is among the best of any team I've ever worked with.

If we wanted a cheap and dirty port, I could have turned around and picked any one of 50 houses and gotten it done for less and perhaps more quickly. Clearly, that wasn't the approach we sought for a variety of reasons (for the fans, for the reputation of our company, for the potential of the product, etc.).

Lastly, if this were a quick cash in, let's face it, there's TONS of other products that had higher sales on other platforms we could have chosen to port, quickly and cheaply. Okami, as great as it was, wasn't a huge seller on PS2 such that it's quick and dirty port would be assured "sales success" on a new platform. We picked a huge game (read: expensive, especially on testing costs), with a ton of moving parts.

So, on the contrary, we have a lot to prove with this game and I know we, and RAD are up to the task. I apologize if I bristle at the accusation that this is a cheap port, but I do.

Given that the only port we've done to date was RE4, which has a 90+ gamerankings score and provided AMAZING value for the platform, has this really been Capcom's modus operendi such that this allegation should be leveled at us? Zack & Wiki is getting better reviews than just about anything you'll see this year on Wii, except possibly Galaxy. Shovelware is not what we do.

As I've said in prior interviews, we're getting the game up and running first. The game is enormous. If after we have everything working correctly, cleanly and as desired so as not to "break" the amazing experience that is Okami, we will worry about potential enhancements. As we are NOT at that point in the process yet, we are loathe to even mention any potential changes or enhancements for fear of disappointing the fans/media.

So for now, if you MUST assume the worst, assume that you will have an amazing 40-60 hour adventure that is one of gaming's most impressive pieces of art to play in fantastic new ways. If you want to hope for the best, well, perhaps we'll have more to say in a few months, but for now we're going to have to ask for your patience."

I could pick apart a few things in there, but for the most part I agree wholeheartedly, especially in tone.  A little bit "bristle"-y is just the way to be when everyone knows your business better than you.  I've had it up to here (picture my hand held way up high for proper effect) with bland "We strive to give our customers the best value possible, and hope they can appreciate our product in the intended fashion" answers.  I'd rather read any David Jaffe rant than yet another boring, inoffensive, and utterly forgettable interview that's been run through seventeen layers of public relations before I could read a pre-approved word.  Hell, Svensson's comments were pretty mild, it's just that they read relatively honestly.

PS2 Okami wasn't exactly a big-ticket item for Capcom.  The Wii port is hardly a gift to the fans from a generous and loving corporation, but I seriously doubt they're planning their yearly take around its earnings.  If wanted features can be put in as the budget allows, great.  If not, then all I ask is that it be as beautiful and fun as the PS2 original.

If Capcom and Ready At Dawn do have time for a tweak or two, though, might I suggest a difficulty option offering a challenge for someone above the age of 12?  I'd take that over all the hi-res ultra-polygon models in the world.