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Ready Player One is Ernest Cline’s first novel, though it’s not his first foray into a nerdy niche topic. You may have seen the movie for which he wrote the screenplay, the veritable nerdfest Fanboys. Cline definitely has a penchant for this sort of thing – he has a vast store of knowledge of geek culture and a ridiculous ability to transform it into pure entertainment. Lightning strikes twice in this case, as his novel completely won me over.
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It’s another assorted grab bag of titles in this week’s Nintendo Download.
On the DSiWare Shop there’s… DotMan, a classic-style arcade racer, and Puzzle Rocks, a puzzle game featuring falling rocks.
On the 3DS eShop there’s… Golf, the early Game Boy game is now available on the handheld’s Virtual Console.
And on WiiWare there’s… Paint Splash, a painting program.
More information on all of these games can be found within the latest edition of the Nintendo Download weekly newsletter.
It’s yet another rainy day here in Philadelphia, and I’m drooling on my copy of Resistance 3 that I finally picked up. What better way to spend a rainy day than by killing chimera? I may even wear the necklace I got for pre-ordering it at GameStop. Hellz yeah!
Amazon’s Deal of the Day in video games today is Bejeweled Twist by PopCap Games. This Nintendo DS game is on sale for $12.99, and boasts five game modes – “Classic, Blitz, Challenge, Zen and the new 2-player, ad-hoc wireless.” If our editor John Scalzo doesn’t already own this, I’m sure he’s going to buy it today!
No gaming shirts today, but “Bluth Man Group” at Tee Fury is hilarious:
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Square Enix has launched a new teaser website in anticipation of this month’s Tokyo Game Show. The site, which bears the header A Brand New Title of Hell, offers players two columns of words. The columns include a variety of themed pairs such as “Boy or Girl,” “Light or Shadow” and “Angel or Devil.”
After entering the correct answer, “Die or Die,” the stone wall in the background slides apart to reveal a pack of miniature devils. Destroying the devils reveals the happy little fellow to your left. Looks a little bit like Skeletor. Or perhaps Shao Kahn.
It’s unlikely that skullface up there is either of those characters. Instead, he probably belongs to the Army Corps of Hell, a title that was trademarked by Square Enix last year.
We’ll probably find out more at this year’s Tokyo Game Show, which begins on September 15.
Atari has announced they’ll be reopening their acclaimed theme-park-management sim series on the 3DS next year as Roller Coaster Tycoon 3D. Developed by n-Space, Roller Coaster Tycoon 3D will bring back many of the franchise’s most popular feature while adding a story mode, touchscreen controls and coaster sharing through the 3DS’s wireless network.
Now, step right up as the barkers from Atari assault your ears with all the key features available in the first ever handheld version of Roller Coaster Tycoon:
Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and WaterTower Music have announced that Batman: Arkham City – The Album will be available on October 4, two weeks ahead of the game’s October 18 release date on the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360. The album will also be available digitally as a bonus download inlcuded with the Arkham City Collector’s Edition.
Featuring music “inspired by” the highly anticipated sequel, Batman: Arkham City – The Album will include new songs from Panic! At The Disco, Coheed and Cambria, Daughtry, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Serj Tankian and more.
Coheed and Cambria frontman Claudio Sanchez is very excited to bring his musical storytelling to Gotham City. “I write in a very conceptual format with the stories that surround Coheed and Cambria, but Batman has a much larger, defined history and rules that go along with it. My goal was to find universal themes from Batman’s existing history to help give the lyrics legs and dimension so that the song could live within that world,” Sanchez said.
The full track listing can be found after the break.
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This just in… Fox News is out of touch. Wait, that’s not exactly news. But it is funny. And moronic. But mostly funny.
On the September 3rd edition of Fox & Friends, host Clayton Morris and guest T.J. McCormack spoke about “green” games. Specifically about how they promote a “liberal agenda” of environmentalism and make kids “freak out.” Watch the video above to see for yourself.
If you’d rather not subject yourself to the latest media plot against video games, here’s what McCormack had to say about SimCity Societies (a game that came out in 2007 by the way) and its theme of respecting the environment:
“Kids with sweaty palms are freaking out that they’re going to kill a bunch of virtual polar bears. Virtual polar bears!”
McCormack later cites two browser games, McDonald’s: The Game (which is from 2006) and Fate of the World (a relatively recent 2010 game), as examples of “green” games that kids are playing and freaking out over. It should probably be noted that five year olds with sweaty palms aren’t playing these games. They’re methodical and deep strategy games that are typically played by adults. Yes Mr. McCormack, adults can play video games.
But you know what? Making fun of someone this stupid and out of touch isn’t even worth it. You win Fox News. Games promote the liberal agenda to little kids. It’s true. Especially games based on a major Fox property like Avatar.
A new study at Ontario’s Brock University has turned the old adage, “playing violent video games causes violence,” on its head. A paper published in the American Psychological Association’s journal Psychology of Violence entitled, “The Effect of Video Game Competition and Violence on Aggressive Behavior: Which Characteristic Has the Greatest Influence,” concluded that it was the competitive nature of a video game that led to aggressive behavior, and not the level of violence.
Researchers Paul Adachi and Teena Willoughby conducted two experiments. The first involved 42 test subjects playing either the violent action game Conan or the nonviolent racing game Fuel. Participants rated the games similar on competitiveness, difficulty, and pace of action, so the only difference was the level of violence. Test subjects’ post-gaming aggressiveness was measured by which of four hot sauces they would serve to another participant – the hotter the sauce, the more aggressive they were. (Yes, hot sauce – remember, they’re Canadians, so giving the test subjects guns, bazookas or nukes is a wee bit frowned upon.)
The researchers found no difference in aggressiveness between the two groups of gamers. They write, “The results suggest that the violent content alone was not sufficient to produce elevations in aggressive behavior compared with a nonviolent video game.”
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