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James McTeigue must be an interesting man to talk video games with, seeing as he's had experience both directing movies (V For Vendetta) and working in the games business. So it's nice reading this interview with him on GI.biz, where amongst talk of video game movies and video games based on movies, he offers a tip for the game developers of the world. Many of whom might scoff - he's coming at the situation from the point of view of a guy who works mostly in a medium with a controlled, linear narrative - but then, a fresh pair of eyes can also give you the best advice. And I like his advice, because it's got nothing to do with staff counts, or art design, or difficulty levels. It's about what's put in front of the player's face. "...there has to be a master of the ship at some point. The master of the ship has to guide you like you do in a film or like you do in a game, so that what I'm going to expose you to is worthwhile", he says. "Like anyone who's been in the gaming industry, you absolutely know that you will not please all of the people all of the time." "The reason I bring that up is that I think as the maker of the game you ultimately have to decide for the gamer a little bit", he adds. "You can't cover every option, you can't make the interior of every store, because what's the point if you have ten million people playing the game and only two want to go inside the shop? It doesn't make any sense. Just guide 'em; it doesn't mean that you can't do it sometimes, but make it worthwhile, make it integral to the story, make it part of the thing that you need to do. Just don't get bogged down in the minutiae of that, hoping that someone will go in there sometime." Like I said, not everyone will agree. For some, that attention to detail is what turns a decorated virtual corridor into a world. But maybe he's right; if it took X amount of people to make all that fluff, could their time and effort have been better spent making the meat of the game better? Games need more direction, says filmmaker James McTeigue [GI.biz]

Manuel Kerssemakers, Jeppe Tuxen, Julian Togelius and Georgios Yannakakis have done something cool. They've created a computer program that does Nintendo's job. Sort of. For their 2012 paper called A procedural procedural level generator generator, blogged today by Gamasutra, they built a system that's able to randomly generate levels for Infinite Mario Bros., the Mario tribute developed by Minecraft creator Marcus "Notch" Persson. The way they've designed the program to build the levels is fascinating, creating limits on the number of certain items while encouraging enemies to spawn, I guess, sensibly. Yeah, I know, procedurally-generated stuff exists everywhere these days, but there's something fantastic about seeing it applied to the classics like this. Their efforts are underpinning a community who have taken their program and modified it to build their own levels. You can try it out yourself here. A procedural procedural level generator generator [Paper, via Gamasutra]

Vitaly Bulgarov works at Blizzard, on the company's world-renowned cinematics team. But we're not here today to look at art for Blizzard games, or indeed for their fancy trailers and cutscenes. Instead, we're looking at an amazing collection Bulgarov recently put together called the "Black Phoenix Project". Teaming up with photographer Maria Skotnikova, the challenge was to create ten original mech designs in ten days, and render them straight into gorgeous 3D. No 2D sketches to help make things easer, no days off. The results are...well, see for yourself. There are game developers (and movie studios) who would murder for their art teams to come up with mech designs this good. For someone to have come up with them off the top of his head, and get them looking this good within a 24-hour period in his spare time, just seems unfair. You can see more of Vitaly's work, including plenty more images of the mechs below, at his personal site. To see the larger pics in all their glory (or, if they’re big enough, so you can save them as wallpaper), click on the “expand” button in the bottom-right corner. Fine Art is a celebration of the work of video game artists, showcasing the best of both their professional and personal portfolios. If you're in the business and have some concept, environment, promotional or character art you'd like to share, drop us a line!

Whoops. A Hong Kong Starbucks made one customer unhappy after totally screwing up a first name. Imagine that! A Starbucks spelling fail? Impossible. On the Hong Kong Starbucks' Facebook page (via HongWrong), a customer posted an image of the fail, writing: This is my sister's cuppa [SIC] from your HKU branch. Fancy your staff not being able to spell an American name like Virginia. Forgiving she has been with every misspelled cup. Her cup was once 'Virgin'. Every Starbucks experience for her has been coupled with fear and anticipation. But THIS is just UNACCEPTABLE. Starbucks HK, you have to buck up or just not spell your customer's name anyway. It is a derogatory attitude even if it is unintentional. What do you have to say about this? On Facebook, the comment has been liked over a thousand times. Some are calling the photo a fake, while others think it's unfair to expect Hong Kong's non-American staff to be able to spell American names. Starbucks is a global corporation! If real, I doubt this was done to be mean. Well, I sure hope it wasn't. This isn't the first "Vagina" Starbucks spell fail—heck, there's even a whole Tumblr of assorted name fails. It is the first fail I can recall that has made a customer angry enough to turn the situation into some sort of vaguely international issue. While it's unfortunate that the customer had such an unpleasant experience, I think the one takeaway is that even though going to Starbucks filled her sister with "fear and anticipation", she continued to patron Starbucks. Is the coffee is that good? In case you missed it, here is Kotaku's round up of cool and interesting looking Starbucks across Asia. This is my sister's cuppa from your HKU branch [Facebook via HongWrong] Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.

Patrick's back from Iceland with three solid hours of Bjork stories.

If you hadn't gathered yet, from it being a Suda game and including "gigolo missions," the upcoming Killer is Dead features scantily-clad ladies, as does this possibly NSFW video. While the North American release window is still "Summer 2013," Europe and Japan received upgrades to August.

Obliterate what you once thought of the Ninja Turtles by watching this gross, NSFW exploration of what 'scientifically accurate Ninja Turtles' would be like. Truly, Animation Domination High Def has a twisted mind. I had no idea real turtles were so...unpleasant. Eww. SCIENTIFICALLY ACCURATE NINJA TURTLES | ADHD [Animation Domination High Def]

Dream Jumpers, a Kickstarter project developed by a group of designers with experience on games like Mass Effect and Fez, looks pretty neat. They want $15,000 to make a co-op hack-n-slash for iOS, PC, Android, and Mac.

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon— the neon and fuchsia drenched stand alone expansion for Far Cry 3 — is out today for the Playstation Network. We'll have a review of it later today, but in the meantime, here's seven minutes of me playing the game just to give you a taste of what it's like in action.

In an interview, Nintendo's Hiro Yamada suggests that we may see Retro Studios' long-awaited Wii U exclusive "in the not so distant future."

Zakn is just one of the many EVE Online players who traveled to Iceland for its annual gathering. More than 1,400 from around the world come to spend only a few days together. We traveled to the source for answers.

Turn your brain off and let Far Cry 3's standalone expansion Blood Dragon bathe you in neon and take you away to a decade long past. Are you thinking about it? No, wrong! What did we say? Brain = off. We called Blood Dragon a "hilarious, accessible dollop of nostalgia, coated in the mechanics that made Far Cry 3 great" in our review.

• Eurogamer (90/100): "I still don't really know what Blood Dragon is, or how it relates to Far Cry 3, but more to the point: I don't care. If only more blockbusters had this much fun with their legacy."
• Game Informer (85/100): "Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon has the potential to alienate people with its crass sense of humor and repetitive one-liners. But if you long for an era when smart-mouthed badasses were more concerned with making things go boom than catering to social sensitivities, Rex Power Colt is your man, and Blood Dragon is your game."
• GameSpot (85/100): "You don't have to love the decade of Rubik's Cubes and Pac-Man Fever to get a kick out of Blood Dragon. But if you do, then all the better: this action-packed shooter will strike all the right synth-pop power chords."
• Edge (70/100): "This isn't Far Cry 3 at its best mechanically, but it's definitely the game at its most charismatic. Because as a bunch of well-worn VHS tapes at Ubisoft Montreal undoubtedly prove, the '80s knew how to do personality."
• Destructoid (70/100): "I'd rather have Blood Dragon exist as it does than not exist at all. A game this delightfully stupid can only make the world a better place, and I sincerely hope this isn't the last we see of Rex Colt."

Tom and Tony Cannon know about building communities. Specifically, communities where people compete in games in which characters pummel each other sensless. Now they want to make a game where avatars live together in (relative) harmony. But they say that Stonehearth—the city-building game that they’re trying to fund via a just-launched Kickstarter campaign—isn’t all that far removed from Street Fighter. Seriously. Maybe you don’t know their names. You almost certainly know of what they’ve done, though. Heard of EVO, the world-renowned fighting game tournament? They started it with their friends. Ever visited Shoryuken, the leading website for fans of that genre? It’s another brainchild of theirs. Remember when all of a sudden playing a fighting game online wasn’t a horribly laggy experience? The Cannon-created GGPO middleware was to thank for that. But, you should really listen to Seth Killian, developer at Sony Santa Monica and a legendary fighting games icon in his own right talk about the Cannon Bros. and what they’ve accomplished: I've known Tom for 20 years and he's become one of my best friends. I met Tony after Tom, but they are a pretty amazing pair (and I refer to them together because they are identical twins, and have always worked together at the same companies and lived close together). In the fighting game world, they are not unknowns, and are universally recognized as founding fathers. They organized the first large-scale fighting game tournaments (in 1996), went on to found fighting game supersite shoryuken.com (1999), and then created EVO (2001), which grew into the global leader with no investors, no marketing, and no PR (it may actually be the largest open gaming competition in the world—I don't know of anyone apart from EVO in the wide world of eSports running multi-thousand entrant live tournaments—the logistics and equipment are felt to be prohibitive). Not only did it sustain (and even grow) the fighting genre through the dark pre-SFIV days, along the way they've managed to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to various charities, started college scholarships (including a new one at New York University’s Game Center), and pioneered an expansive indie section of the event. The indie section of EVO is free to developers, to inspire attendees not just to greatness as players, but also to create their own games and find their way into the wider industry (from which Divekick emerged to recent notoriety). 2006. Arcades were disappearing. New fighting games were not coming out. Even ports of older fighters that did have online play were so laggy that they were virtually unplayable. Disappointed with the situation, Tony Cannon decided to solve the problem that had eluded major studios himself. He created a piece of online middleware called GGPO (short for "Good Game, Peace Out") for free, compatible with emulated games on PC (which are legal so long as the player owns a legit copy of the game as well). Rather than taking the previously standard brute force approach of peer-to-peer packets, by understanding the core of fighting games deeply, Tony was able to hide online latency within what are called "fixed frames" within the game, doing subtle one-frame fast forwards or rewinds of your game state to keep both players in sync with a centralized clock, and preserving the all-important feel of immediacy and allowing players' carefully honed muscle memory to actually work consistently. Usually you have to relearn your timing for slower online speeds, and even that's not really a solution as connection speeds are variable, so you have to learn many multiples of things and then gauge the speed you're actually playing at for each connection. Even when this works at all, it still sucks. GGPO however was an instant hit with players worldwide, who boggled at their arcade-like game quality even with opponents across the country or around the world. Home-brewed but technologically sophisticated, GGPO became so popular that it was eventually licensed and implemented by traditional game developers, including Iron Galaxy, Skullgirls, and even Capcom itself. The technology alone is such a big deal to the hardcore players that it's even called out in promotional game trailers, and had fans making their own "GGPO" t-shirts—not something you usually see with an arcane piece of technical middleware. That brings us to today: About 1.5 years ago, they both quit excellent jobs as senior software engineers at Silicon Valley darling VMWare to pursue their dream of making their own game, Stonehearth. It's a voxel-based game that combines the sandbox gameplay of old D&D modules with the infinite extensibility and creative possibilities of Minecraft-style games, all built on an engine they made themselves, and is frankly pretty rad. One hell of an endorsement, no? But, if you’re like me and wondering why the twin siblings’ first game isn’t about building meter and super-moves, then you should read the answers to the questions I sent them below: Kotaku: Why make a game so far away—conceptually, anyway—from what you presumably know best? Tony: The best advice we got when starting out was, “make the game you want to play.” Stonehearth is the game that I’d most love to play right now. The games I love the most are the ones that love you back: the more time and thoughtfulness you invest in them, the more rewarding they are to play. It’s why I’m so into fighting games, and I love games which have deep strategic or tactical systems like Civilization and Starcraft. I also read a lot of science fiction and fantasy when I was young and played my fair share of Dungeons and Dragons. I loved the SSI gold-box series of games, and read every Boatmurdered update with glee. Stonehearth has deep, tactical gameplay systems, but is primarily a game of telling the story of growing your city from a few settlers to a thriving civilization. "We’re placing a strong emphasis on modding so that people can put their own ideas in the game like new items, creatures, or whole adventures and share them with everyone in the Stonehearth community." We’re placing a strong emphasis on modding so that people can put their own ideas in the game like new items, creatures, or whole adventures and share them with everyone in the Stonehearth community. In a perfect world, this means the story of your city never has to end. There will always be new challenges, new quests, new items, new classes: more of everything for you to explore in the game. Tom: Basically as we get older and slower, we’re sort of returning to the games of our childhoods, before fighting games blew up when we were in high school. Kotaku: What drove you to become programmers? Tony: When we were little we got completely hooked on the Atari 2600 we got for Christmas. We would spend hours playing Combat, Asteroids, and Adventure, or take turns trying to best each other on Yar’s Revenge. I knew right from then that I wanted to learn to make my own video game. The Atari 800 XL came out when I was like 11 or 12. I begged my parents for months and was lucky enough to get one and a Basic Language cartridge for Christmas. From there it was just trying to figure out how to program using the glossy language syntax cheat sheet that came in the box. There were these magazines you could buy which had hundreds of lines of basic code you could type in to make these little trivial games. I spent hours typing these in, figuring out how they worked, and tweaking them to make them better. This was incredibly tedious, especially since we didn’t have any kind of storage device, so everything was lost when we turned off the computer. It was still awesome, though. After that, I was completely hooked. Tom says: "This is from around 1994. I'm on the far left. The kid in glasses next to me is Derek Daniels, lead combat designer on the original God of War." Tom: It took me a while longer to figure things out. For a long time, I wanted to be an artist. It wasn’t until I got to college and started taking Computer Science classes that I seriously considered it as a career. Having a background in art helped me a lot as a software developer before turning to games. I could work on the product top to bottom, from the interface design down to the actual code. It’s been helpful when writing the game too. I do all the art, but I don’t have to rely on anyone else for support. If I need a tool, I just write it. Kotaku: When did you realize you could fix latency problems with GGPO? Tony: It was around 2006. I hadn’t really thought about it much before then, because it just seemed like such a theoretical problem without much practical application. Most people played fighting in either the arcade or on consoles, and those weren’t really attached to a network. The Dreamcast modem and XBand were there, but not really mainstream. By the time Street Fighter II ‘HF for the XBox 360 came out, broadband was really starting to catch on, and I seriously started thinking if there was a way to do better. It was pretty clear that waiting for packets to arrive before updating the game was a losing strategy: no games with good networking (primarily first-person shooters) actually did that. They used client-side prediction to display the players' actions right away, while updates from other players arrived later from a master server. I wanted to replicate that experience, without the need for a master server and without requiring a complete rewrite of a the game designed for local-only play. The rest fell into place over the next year of hacking up FinalBurn Alpha in my spare time. Tom says: "Evo 2002. Notice the arcade machines in the background! This was our last arcade-based tournament." Kotaku: EVO has become one of the biggest video game institutions in the world now, with year-round qualifying tournaments around the world and scholarships. What’s surprised you the most about how it’s transformed over the years? Tom: The most surprising part is just how big and crazy it has gotten while still being fueled by the fans. EVO isn’t anyone’s full time job. The only way we can do it is by getting a ton of support from the fighting game scene at large. "EVO isn’t anyone’s full time job. The only way we can do it is by getting a ton of support from the fighting game scene at large." As we all mature in our professional lives, players have brought their industry skills to bear on improving EVO. We get professional quality support for things like motion graphics and video production at a 98% to 100% discount because the work is done by fighting game fans that just want to see the scene grow. A screenshot of what the Shoryuken website looked like in 2005 Tony: EVO has always been an event organized by players and for fans and players. Our goal is to run the best tournament we can to find the best fighting game player in the world. The fact that it’s grown to become the largest fighting game tournament in the world is a testament to the passion of the community of people who just love these games. Kotaku: What’s been the hardest thing about shifting from game playing to game-making? Tony: Actually, the biggest shift has been from my day job as a technical lead in an enterprise virtualization company to an indie game developer. In enterprise software, things are much more measurable: the problems and economics of the problem space is fairly well understood. As a game developer, I still have really hard technical challenges to solve, but the end-result also has to be super fun, or what’s the point? It’s also been a big shift from working on a team of over 100 developers to one with just two: me and Tom. We’ve both done small startups before, but none quite this small! It’s super different and exciting to be building something we’re passionate about from the ground up. Tom: The hardest shift for me has been to understand that things take time. Looking at my game as a player, I can see all the things wrong with it that I need to fix. But each fix takes time; usually more time than you originally thought. It’s easy to get impatient. As a player, you’re delivered the game and it’s mostly take it or leave it. As a developer, if you don’t like something, you just fix it. But, you have to deal with the fact that time is finite and learn to prioritize your work. Kotaku: Why would a hardcore fighting-game fan want to check out Stonehearth? Are there design ideas from your favorite fighting games that can work inside a sandbox-style RPG? Tony: We are borrowing the notion of big, meaningful choices. Most fighting game characters have clear and different paths to victory. Zangief wants to get close to you and land his throws. Dhalsim wants to keep you as far away as possible. But, there’s no character that is both Zangief and Dhalsim (except silly boss characters like Seth). You can only be one or the other. We want Stonehearth to have that same sense of strong choice. To be strong in one area, you’re going to have to give something else up. If you want to be the biggest kid on the block with a strong army, then you’re going to expose a weakness elsewhere, maybe in the stability of your food supply. "We are borrowing the notion of big, meaningful choices. We want Stonehearth to have that same sense of strong choice. To be strong in one area, you’re going to have to give something else up." Tom: Other than that, Stonehearth is a game about discovering and mastering new systems, which is personally my favorite part of a fighting game. In Stonehearth game systems like construction, combat, and farming are all basically interrelated mini-games with their rules. I think anyone who enjoys exploring complex systems, including fighting game players, will get a kick out of Stonehearth.

Gameloft's Iron Man 3 endless flyer might not be the hardcore game superhero fans wanted, but is it at least a polished time-killer?

Details on Apple's next mobile OS are slim, but Cupertino is supposedly interested in getting into the driver seat.

It's easier to answer these questions after getting a haircut. Less weight on the head making you want to lie down.

In one of the more unusual interviews I've seen for a new, licensed sports game, the producer of Mike Vick: GameTime, on iOS, asked that his real name not be used. Might being associated with Vick, the NFL quarterback who did federal time for running a dogfighting operation, have something to do with that? "Not at all," said "Josh," of KBJGames, to me, in an email. "I love Vick." The problem is GameTime is a side gig; he is a consultant in his daytime job and "Josh" says he doesn't want his main client to "even slightly question if I am spending time on personal projects while at work." Though "Josh" said his employer knows of his work, their client is large enough that I suspect it may have a problem with even a tangential association to Vick. "Josh," in his interview today with VentureBeat, describes being hounded by anti-Vick forces on Facebook and in iTunes reviews of the game. Vick himself canceled a book tour this spring because of death threats. Vick did 23 months in Leavenworth after pleading guilty in 2007 to his role in a dogfighting operation and admitting to the brutal executions of losing animals he trained for it. Even if he was a finalist in the Madden NFL 12 cover contest, there still is a lot of bad will out there, and probably always will be. If there's anyone who is willing to put his real name on this work, it's Damian Griffin, an iOS developer who made Pocket Passer, which I reviewed a couple years ago. Some of Pocket Passer's gameplay is incorporated into Mike Vick: GameTime, though it also features running plays and controls. The game currently is free on iOS, with pay-to-upgrade in-app purchases. Mike Vick: GameTime has the endorsement of its namesake, and other celebrity Tweeters were brought in to hype it. But the man who made it all happen is, for now, unwilling to go public. How a studio ignored the hate to make Mike Vick: GameTime [VentureBeat]

He's come to whup Batman's ass. For like a really long time, too.

The dark, scanline-laden look of Blood Dragon really goes a long way.

Far Cry 3 was a great game, even if its story and characters were pretty lame. Taking over outposts by stealthily cutting alarms, hunting animals, or climbing towers provided terrific distractions from the main plot. So the idea of a standalone Far Cry 3 offshoot that offers more chances to get into some of this specific type of open world mischief is pretty appealing. Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon isn't just more Far Cry 3, though. It's Far Cry 3 taped onto a VHS tape, then duped over to another VHS tape with the commercials cut out, then copied for your friends at school and played on a filthy VCR that's been playing illicit tapes taken from the "steamy" section of the local rental store. This '80s action movie twist on the Far Cry 3 mechanics has a killer aesthetic, but it flinches a little too often, resulting an a game that oscillates between dumb B-movie tropes and a self-awareness that prevents the look and tone from working as well as it should.

Blood Dragon takes place in the far-flung future of 2007, where cybersoldiers are the norm. You play as a Mark IV model named Rex Power Colt, and you're sent to an island to stop your former commander, who is harvesting blood from large dragons and plans to launch missiles and infect the world with... whatever it is that the blood from those dragons actually causes. The details of the story are largely irrelevant; it's the style of this retro-futuristic 2007 that matters. The whole game has a dark (almost too dark, at times), muddy look that's being filtered through Colt's cyber-eyes, giving the entire game scanlines. There's a small handful of main story missions to play through, and plenty of side stuff, too. Some of it, like taking over outposts, comes in from the main Far Cry 3, but nothing comes in untouched.

Capturing outposts in Blood Dragon is a little different. The basics of eliminating all the enemies and trying to avoid alarms are still in place, but each base is surrounded by huge energy shields that keep the blood dragons out. If you like, you can sneak into the center of an outpost and lower those shields, letting you watch as the huge, mostly-flightless creatures make their way in and start stomping the computer-voiced enemy troops. Once that's done, of course, you'll still have to deal with the dragon by either killing it or tricking it into leaving the base, which automatically raises the shields again. You can lure the dragons around by throwing cyberhearts, which are looted off of the bodies of your humanoid enemies. It's like the rock throwing system in Far Cry 3, which also shows up in Blood Dragon, but for some dumb reason you're throwing 20-sided dice instead of rocks.

There are tons of robot-voiced enemies to gun down and you'll want to steal their cyberhearts once you're done.

That starts to illustrate the disconnect between Blood Dragon's '80s action movie style and its self-awareness. The game starts with a sour note by putting you through a tutorial that's too cute for its own good, forcing you to stand still and go through the basics while your character, voiced by Michael Biehn (though at times his delivery is a little more Michael Rooker), curses up a storm because he just wants to go kill stuff. All of the loading screen tool-tips try to be self-aware, too. It's like the game can't decide if it wants to lean all the way into its Commando and RoboCop references or hang back and comment on the action like the game is trying to be "above it." It's disappointing, because there are funny moments in both cases, but the whole thing would have been stronger if the writers could have just committed to nailing one or the other.

Other side missions let you rescue hostages or go hunting. Completing these tasks unlock the ability to buy weapon attachments, like explosive rounds for your sniper rifle or a silencer for your pistol. You'll also gain experience points and level up, but unlike Far Cry 3, you can't spend points on a skill tree. The skills--most of which are lifted right out of the main game--are unlocked in a set order. Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon isn't an especially long game, but if you attempt to wring every last bit out of the side missions and start hunting for collectibles, there's certainly more to it than the average digital release. It also has a fantastic soundtrack that fits with the retro-futuristic action perfectly.

There are outposts to overtake and just enough side missions to keep you going.

By building on a strong base game, Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon brings in a lot of the best moments from its predecessor. Stalking around and silently grabbing an enemy, then dragging his body out of sight is still pretty fun. Chaining together stealth kills and tossing ninja stars at distant enemies (which replaces the "stealth kill one enemy then use his gun to shoot someone else" animation from the original game) is rad. So Blood Dragon works. It also has enough completely ridiculous moments--especially near the end of the game--to make its boneheaded action movie tone work. It's just a shame that this love letter to the sorts of movies you'd catch on Showtime at 2PM on Wednesday in 1988 gets cut with so many winks and nods. Played straight, it'd be a funnier game, but like the core game upon which it is based, Blood Dragon is still great fun.

It's not exactly representative of what it's like to actually play the game, but it definitely evokes the spirit of players' insane adventures.

Capcom's Puzzle Fighter comes to the Store (sort of), Star Wars Pinball is on sale and free sniping action in today's ASU.

How do you explain to someone why being a nerd is awesome? Well, here's Will Wheaton's moving take, delivered during a talk at the Calgary Comic & Entertainment expo—where Jennifer Black asked the actor, writer, and starship sidekick to break down why being a nerd is so awesome for her recently born daughter. Wil Wheaton - Why it's awesome to be a nerd [Jennifer Black via Laughing Squid]

A couple of design notes for regular readers: 1) Clicking the arrow next to our logo will now get you to our sister sites more quickly. 2) Clicking the other arrow up there will give you a list of our 10 most popular stories. You may have figured this out already!

There's no way the girl being asked to prom in this video could have said no. Ash Ketchum—or, ok, a high schooler dressed up as Ash—commanding the attention of the entire cafeteria, complete with an announcement, a Pokéball and cheesy poetry? No way she could have said no. I wish my high school prom proposal was anywhere near as eventful as this. It was more like my girl (space) friend and I looked at each other and were like, "Yeah, ok, let's go together." Breaking high school social rules everywhere! (baushaus24 via Geekologie)

If Talisman Prologue is any indication of how the full version of the classic fantasy board game will pan out, then fans are in for a real treat when Talisman Digital Edition launches this summer. Until then, they can re-learn the ropes in this single-player boot camp. The board game Talisman ate up a great deal of my time and money in the late 80s - early 90s. The core game is a race to the center of the board to retrieve an artifact called the Crown of Command. Players take on the role of one of a number of fantasy archetypes, each with their own special skills and statistics. The board is littered with special events, cards are drawn, encounters are resolved through dice, items are bought — it's more complicated than checkers, but not quite Risk. What Talisman Prologue does is give players a board, ten characters to choose from (most of which must be unlocked) and a series of quests to complete on the board. It's still Talisman, with its gold and curses and followers and random battles, but instead of getting to the center of the board you're charged with taking out a group of bandits, or obtaining weapons — tasks easily completed by a single player. There are times the game's multiplayer-based mechanics falter — losing a turn hardly makes a difference when you're the only person playing, and being forced to drop your followers and equipment isn't so terrible when there's no one else to pick them up. Prologue is a little clumsy that way. But Prologue is, of course, a prologue — a taste of things to come. Once the quests are complete, players will have an excellent grasp of the game mechanics coming in the full multiplayer version this summer for mobile and PC. Talisman Prologue isn't the most faithful digital translation of a fantasy board game ever made, but it certainly suggestions that one's on the way. Talisman Prologue Genre: Board GameDeveloper: Thumbstar GamesPlatform: iOS, AndroidPrice: $4.99 Get Talisman Prologue in iTunes — Get Talisman Prologue on Google Play Also available for PC

Jeff heads back to the island, but this time it's CYBER MADNESS...and Blood Dragons, they are there too.

A hillbilly drug dealer of some note, Trevor's also got a few... issues to sort out.

Wearied by the hustle and bustle of gangsta life, Franklin is looking for a new direction.

Michael's got family, wealth, and just about everything you could want in life. Except, of course, actual happiness.

Double the max counts, half the price. A gaming mouse will up your game and your enjoyment of your favorite titles, but it's also an easy thing to put off buying. At $30, this SteelSeries Sensei is squarely in the impulse purchase category. Yes, it says Call of Duty on it, but as far as branding goes this is pretty tame, and you could easily cover up the text if it bothers you. If you're a fan of Call of Duty, even better. The unbranded version sells for $60 or more, so check out Gizmodo's blip about this mouse and snag it from Amazon while this price lasts. [Amazon] Looking for the latest Moneysaver roundup? Here you go. This is a Moneysaver One-Shot, a post focusing on a single deal, sale, or category. Join us every weekday at 2:15pm EST for the full Moneysaver roundup, brought to you by the Commerce Team. We're here to bring Kotaku readers the best gaming deals available, and to be clear, we also make money if you buy. We want your feedback.