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Feminist Frequency blogger/video host Anita Sarkeesian is back with the second in her "Tropes vs. Women in Games" series, in which she analyzes sexist tropes in video games. The first video in the series looked back at the origins of the "Damsel in Distress" trope, focusing mostly on Nintendo games. The new video puts more recent games under the damsel-scope. Sarkeesian first gained national attention when she launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for the series and was subsequently subjected to a prolonged, intense online harassment campaign. That harassment inadvertently contributed to her massive Kickstarter success—her goal had been to raise $6,000 and she wound up with almost $160,000. Sarkeesian later explained to Kotaku how the extra money helped her increase the project's scope; that initially resulted in some delays, but she now appears to be full-steam ahead. Give it a watch.

Gamers are taking to Twitter to fight for their rights as consumers, and the gaming world seems to be paying attention. It started with a rumor. Following confirmation that the Xbox One will have some form of restriction on the way people can trade and borrow their games, GTTV's Geoff Keighley came out and said he'd heard that Sony is planning something similar for the PS4. This infuriated hardcore gamers, already fuming at the idea that they may not have full ownership over the Xbox One games they buy—would all next-gen games follow the same trend? One NeoGAFfer, Pete "famousmortimer" Dodd, decided to organize the mob. He started a thread on the major gaming message board asking people to hop on Twitter and send messages to executives at Sony, using the hashtag #PS4NoDRM. The message: "Hey Sony, we want to be able to buy, sell, and borrow our used games." Almost immediately, the campaign exploded. As of last night, one NeoGAFfer calculated that there were close to 14,000 tweets with the hashtag #PS4NoDRM The campaign has reached dozens of news sites including NBC News. Even now, people are tweeting messages with the hashtag in hopes of getting Sony's attention. "It's much larger than I ever imagined," Dodd told me this afternoon. "Honestly thought the post would go about 2 pages." As of right now, the NeoGAF thread has 105 pages and 467,690 pageviews. Sony has yet to officially respond to the surging campaign, but some executives have tweeted words of support. Tepid, generic words, but words nonetheless. "I know my colleagues might not appreciate me saying this," said Sony biz dev manager Shahid Kamal Ahmad, "but I’ve rather enjoyed being Twitter bombed by passionate fans recently." "Humbled by the outpouring of passionate PlayStation fans and their willingness to talk to us directly," said Sony producer Nick Accordino. "Please know that we hear you. <3" The strongest statement came from Sony's Adam Boyes, who responded to one Twitterer's criticism by supporting the fan campaign: "imho it's working pretty well, much better than a few letters would. We're seeing the message loudly, and it's immediate." We've reached out to Sony multiple times for comments on this campaign and the PS4's used game policy, but they have not responded. It's likely we won't hear anything official about their plans until E3, which unofficially begins on June 10, when publishers hold their big press conferences. Even if it's too late for Sony to change a thing, and even if publisher pressure has pinned the game industry's problems on the easy scapegoat of used games, convincing both Sony and Microsoft to hop on the bandwagon, it's encouraging to see gamers speaking up for their beliefs. And it's encouraging to see Sony acknowledging that they're listening. "It's easy to be cynical about these soulless corporations, but as I'm sure you know covering the industries... there are real people working there," Dodd said. "They don't like when the internet turns against them. They feel good when people like their work. They're human beings." So what happens if Sony suddenly announces that the PS4 will have heavy restrictions for used games? Riots, perhaps. "I'm sure the campaign will continue and turn quite angry," Dodd said. "At that point I would back away. I love games but rage isn't my thing." To contact the author of this post, write to jason@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter at @jasonschreier.

Crime is a constant feature of video games writing. Somewhere, someone is doing something illicit with them—sometimes comically stupid, sometimes tragic. Games and consoles are currency, objects of dispute, sometimes even weapons themselves. Kotaku's Police Blotter is here to round up the latest in games crime. He Sends a Laptop to the Hospital, You Send a Wii to the Morgue KEY WEST, Fla.—A Key West man is in jail following a hardware smashing dispute whose victims included a laptop, Kindle, a Wii and an Xbox, reports The Key West Citizen [paywall http://keysnews.com/]. Police say the disturbance began when the man, a cook, and his girlfriend started arguing over money (basically, that she was not earning any to pay their bills.) She said he broke her laptop. He said she trashed the Xbox (their description) Wii and Kindle in retaliation. He said he left to fetch police when she threatened to throw his bicycle from their balcony. She said he cut her with the glass from a broken bong "smoking pipe." The man is in jail on domestic battery charges. Come On and Take a Free Ride—and an Xbox HARMONY, N.Y.—A woman here, upon discovering someone in her home who wasn't supposed to be there, drove him home "because he did not have a ride," according to a cop report. While the two wre gone, a second man burglarized her house, taking "an Xbox, two Xbox games, and a CD," according to The Post-Journal of Jamestown, N.Y. The two men got $71 for the console at a local game store and spent the proceeds on heroin. Both are in jail. Do You Know the Way to Santa Fe LEXINGTON, S.C.—A guy needing money to get to New Mexico to "see his family," set about financing the voyage in an unorthodox way—by stealing an Xbox 360 hard drive from a Walmart and selling it at a GameStop. An employee saw the shoplifting from start to finish, including the part where the accused went over to the men's department and tore the drive loose from its packaging. He and an accomplice are in jail. Baby Dead in Reprisal Killing Over PlayStation Theft CHICAGO—A Chicago man is facing first-degree murder charges after a revenge shooting over a stolen PlayStation and drugs killed an infant as her diaper was being changed. Chicago police say Koman Willis went looking for Johnathan Watkins, the baby's father, after Watkins allegedly stole the console and drugs from the home of Willis' mother. Discovering Watkins in a parked car, he opened fire; inside Watkins was changing his daughter's diaper. He was wounded in the shooting, which happened in March. Willis, who had been wanted by police since then, surrendered on Saturday. [Chicago Sun-Times] Wii Remote Shoplifter Shot Dead After Police Struggle ARLINGTON, Texas—In January, police shot dead a man suspected of shoplifting a Wii remote from a target near Tarrant County College's Southeast Campus. Police in Grand Prairie, Texas, fought the release of documents related to the case. But an investigation says the suspect, 22-year-old Jordan Ross Hatcher, was a former Marine who physically overpowered two loss prevention officers at the Target and bloodied a Grand Prairie cop. Hatcher, says the report, continued to run even while being Tasered, snapping the devices wires. Later, on the college's campus, Hatcher apparently took hold of an officer's Taser and fearing for his life and others, an unnamed officer shot him multiple times in the chest. [The Collegian, Tarrant County College] Lots of strange things happen in the pages of your local newspaper or on the 6 o'clock news. If you see something, say something. To me, that is. I'd like to write it up. Remember: You need not reveal your identity. To contact the author of this post, write to owen@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @owengood.

There tends to be one thing missing from the all-too-easy media narratives that offer causal connections between video games and violent crimes and tragedies: the people who make and/or play games. Lawmakers and concerned non-gamers are usually the focus of a camera’s lens, justifiably so, but developers and fans don’t get that much screen time. That’s why this clip from the crowdfunded Video Games: the Movie is worth watching. The opinions expressed by people like Alison Haislip, Brian Fargo, Rob Pardo and Cliff Bleszinski probably won’t be surprising to your average console owner but they do add a dimension of commentary that more visible conversations of gaming content seem to lack.

After continuing reports on the decline on PC sales, a market research firm says tablets are about to dominate entirely.

ExZeus 2 blasts into the Store (causing some confusion), while Memorial Day's sales wind down and new freebies appear.

In a lengthy interview published Friday at Gamasutra, DayZ creator Dean Hall says that a handful of people are already playing an alpha of the standalone version of the game, and that the public alpha will begin in or around June. He says they'll follow Minecraft's example for allowing players to buy in for early access. He also talks about why he prefers Morrowind to Skyrim. Go check it out.

Once in a while, a Kickstarter project comes along that makes you want to drop everything and yell about it to anyone who might listen. This is one of those Kickstarters. John Szczepaniak, best known for his work profiling Japanese games and game developers at websites like Hardcore Gaming 101, is trying to raise £50,000 to write a book about Japanese game development stories we've never heard before. His goal: fly to Japan, hire an interpreter, and spend two or three months talking to just about every game developer he can. Then he'll transcribe, put it all together, and publish it next year. "I would treat this book as my full time job from July, all the way to April 2014," Szczepaniak told me in an e-mail today. "It's mainly a book of interviews, so the heavy lifting will be done in Japan. Writing the questions, conducting the interviews, and then transcribing during the down time." Check out the Kickstarter page for a sprinkling of some of the people he plans to interview. They've worked on an impressive list of games, from the well-known (Resident Evil) to the obscure (Dezaemon). And Szczepaniak says since launching the campaign yesterday, he's heard from even more interested parties. "Everything with this book I've planned for assumes the absolute worst case scenario," he said. "A super strong Yen, certain interpreters being unavailable, designers who I can't get in touch with, and a large volume of work handled entirely by myself. I can manage this with the current budget goal and time frame. If even a few things turn out better than I've planned for, and I get even a little assistance from friends, then this book will be even better than I imagined." Sounds fascinating, don't you think? There must be so many fascinating stories and tidbits surrounding Japanese games that have never made it to North America. Even today, we're still discovering secrets in the games we've played for decades. "It's like my friend Jeremy Blaustein says," Szczepaniak told me, "there's an entire lost generation of game developers who have never had the opportunity to talk about their games, despite the fact that we, in the rest of the world, have played and loved them for years."

Ubisoft's building five exclusive levels for the handheld version, too.

The great experiment came to an end of the weekend. Was it successful?

Daisuke Amaya and Studio Pixel's Gero Blaster isn't going to hop onto iPhones this month. The side-scroller starring a lovestruck frog was originally pinned for May, but with the month quickly depleting, Cave Story and Ikachan creator Amaya announced he's "decided to postpone it." While he didn't disclose a new release window, Amaya noted the delay isn't to overhaul the game, but to tweak it.

"Previously, I've remade my work a few times before its completion," Amaya said. "This time, however, is for improving it and not remaking it. I am now doing my best for the completion to make it a more fun and exciting game."

Gero Blaster stars Kaeru, a frog running-and-gunning to rescue his cat girlfriend. As for when this croak tale of interspecies love is likely to arrive, Amaya said he'll let fans know once he has an approximate idea.

Imagine yourself behind the wheel of a V12 monster, brimming with power and torque, throwing out a noise that would make Thor stand up and unironically slow-clap in admiration. You are waiting for the starting line's light to turn green, and your only mission in life is to pilot that tremendous craft beyond the limits of your own courage and, God willing, across the finish line.

Now imagine that, surrounding you on all sides, are 11 completely homicidal maniacs who want nothing more than to reach their respective vehicle's top speed and crash directly into you and/or anyone else around them. Despite your ability to partially rewind time, you are powerless to stop them and you will die. This is the madness that is Grid 2.

“I don’t want to put up with this shit anymore.” Susan O’Connor—a writer who’s worked on BioShock, Far Cry 2 and the new Tomb Raider—isn’t sure she wants to stay in video games anymore. Go read about where her head is at in this wide-ranging interview at The Gameological Society.

Here’s what’s going on Talk Among Yourselves, our reader-written blog: Doc Seuss has a plea for folks to understand sexism better to fight it better. Koda89 offers up reasons why you may not need a Wii U, PS4 or Xbox One anytime soon. And Zarynx runs down examples and opinions of music influenced by the 8-bit video game era. And you can always go join the voices talking about video games and life in TAY Classic and in the TAY: Open Forum.

Fuse reminds us that no matter where you are in the console cycle, helicopters are still a threat.

The shivering mass exposed at the summit of this week's charts is Resident Evil: Revelations. While last year's 3DS game debuted in sixth, its PS3, Xbox 360, Wii U, and PC port takes advantage of all its new platforms to knock Metro: Last Light off the top, and provide yet another new No. 1 in the UK.

Last Light continues to flicker in third, with charts mainstay FIFA 13 no doubt climbing to second thanks to some timely price promotion. It was a soccer-packed weekend in the UK, with the final of the Champions League taking place in Wembley, London. This led to a certain, spirited German fan dozing on the shoulder of a certain Joystiq editor on a certain early morning bus ride home. Repeatedly. And drippily.

Moving on, the other new entry in this week's top ten is Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D, which surpasses the Wii version's best-ever placement of seventh; the 3DS port debuts in fifth. Further down the charts, Activision's Fast and Furious: Showdown tie-in screeches into a debut position of 14th.

Or, more eloquently, Black Talons is an upcoming real-time tactics game for the PC. A real-time XCOM in another galaxy, if you will. You take your squad from mission to mission, planet to planet, training them up in the process, with the goal of taking down the evil government in the end. Clichéd, yes—but fun-looking.

Photoshop is a great and powerful tool. It can take ordinary pictures and make them spectacular... or make them horrible. In China, there are many people with awesome Photoshop skills, and those who don't have any ability usually ask people for help online. Sometimes these requests go wrong. Horribly wrong. Basically, this is what's going on: someone has a boring photo and posts it online. These posters ask Photoshop gurus to edit the photo to make it more interesting. Unfortunately for the original poster, sometimes internet commenters take the photos and run wild.In addition to the Photoshop requests that go wrong, Chinese netizens (like internet users everywhere) also like messing with photos posted by strangers. Sometimes, seemingly harmless photos get tweaked and edited to create hilarious images. Below are a round of some of the Photoshop mishaps found on the Chinese internet. These images were taken from PSyuan.net, a website dedicated to rounding up some of the better Photoshop request disasters found on the Chinese internet. Request: I'm looking for a girlfriend. Please Photoshop masters, make me more handsome!Response: How am I supposed to know what kind of girl you're after? Request: Please make the girls around me a bit more fun! Response: (in pictures) Request: Please make me more intimidating!Response: (in photos)Request: Can you Photoshop it so that we are together? Response: Request: Here are a few pictures (we picked one) of myself, can someone make them cool?Response: Request: Please remove this man next to me, otherwise I can't send this photo to my boyfriend!Response: Hmm, an ugly companion isn't good, let's give you handsome friend for your boyfriend to see! (The joke is that she's with notorious Hong Kong bad boy, Edison Chen)Request: Can you please make me more beautiful?Response: Resident EVIL! Request: Please add a handsome man to this photo! Thanks!Response: Request: Put me in a cooler location! Response: Request: We just graduated, please make this more interesting!Response:Request: Please make the guy jumping in the center more awesome! "More ridiculous" The funnier the better.Response:Request: Please make me cooler. The cooler the better!Response: Before: Please give me some protection! Please, nothing terrible! After:Here are some photos that are just being messed with!Before:After:Before:After:Before:After: Before:After: Photoshop request disasters in China have been a thing for a while now. In Chinese this trend was originally called "大神PS (Photoshop masters please help)", but over time, because of the humorous responses, it became "不要求大神PS (don't ask the masters for help)." Usually these requests are a bit shallow, as they involve making a photo more interesting or making a subject more "beautiful." Some of the earliest Photoshop request disasters date back to around 2008—some even earlier. It remains a popular topic with lots of threads dedicated to it, most recently on Sina Weibo. 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. Eric is Beijing based writer and all around FAT man. You can contact him @ FatAsianTechie@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @FatAsianTechie.

But nope. Case in point: a terrifying new gameplay trailer for Darkwood, the procedurally generated top-down survival horror game we showed you two months back. Incidentally, there's an Indiegogo campaign going on for the game, so if Darkwood seems like something you'd want to check out, have a look.

These things take ages to kill.

Insomniac's first multiplatform game in its post-Sony era comes in the form of Fuse, which used to be Overstrike, which used to be more humorous and stylized than the run-of-the-mill gritty, future-tech shooter it ultimately became. Fuse's bland art design and overall lack of personality are disappointing in the context of that initial reveal trailer, but under the hood it's still a generally well made third-person shooter with a clear emphasis on co-op and the imaginative weapons Insomniac is so good at dreaming up. But there are too few of those weapons, and a few too many irksome issues, to lift Fuse significantly above the many, many other cover-based shooters it's competing with.

The game casts you in the role of the four smartmouthed mercenary agents of Overstrike 9, who trot around the globe, hiding behind crates and shooting at faceless armored bad guys to satisfy the whims of their paying clients. In this case, you're hot on the trail of a for-profit terrorist outfit called Raven, who's in possession of the titular super-element, one of those pesky substances that behaves in whatever ways the plot--or the characters' unconventional weapons--need it to. Each of the characters have a single exotic "Xenotech" weapon taped to their arm. Group leader Dalton gets a "magshield" that you activate with the left trigger, which stops bullets and lets teammates shoot through it for extra damage. Naya has a warp rifle that lets you paint multiple targets and then set them all off in a really satisfying chain explosion. Jacob has the most broadly effective weapon with a crossbow that shoots a sort of energy dart that vaporizes enemies and is great for headshots. And redheaded Izzy has a rapid-fire rifle that crystalizes enemies for a few seconds when you pour shots into them, after which you can easily shatter them to pieces. These guys make limp little jabs at each other as the missions progress, but there's not a lot of life in the banter nor the storyline itself, the twists of which are easy to see coming a mile away.

You're free to play Fuse by yourself, during which you can quickly swap between characters to utilize their unique weapons and flank groups of enemies. For the first couple of missions, setting up warp chains or dropping a magshield to take cover behind is pretty interesting, but since each character is stuck with the same primary Xenotech weapon the entire game, the novelty wears off faster than it should. Each agent has a skill tree that you can put points into as you level up--and the way experience is doled out encourages you to use your weapons creatively, so you level faster--but the skill trees don't offer a meaningful level of customization. Instead, they really only offer you the choice between crit effects on your Xenotech weapons or increased damage on your regular ones, and aside from a few weapon-specific secondary abilities, each tree merely gives the same generic abilities to each agent.

Overstrike 9 has gotten a little too serious for its own good.

Certain aspects of playing alone turn out to be irritatingly cumbersome. Most of the time, switching to another character puts you in a compromised position where you're out of range of the action, standing straight up in the middle of a firefight, or facing a wall while a bunch of guys are shooting you in the back. The AI characters will occasionally get in your way, jump onto a turret you're trying to use, or fail to revive you when you're down. Distributing skill points requires you to manually switch to the character in question, dig through the layers of menus to get to the skill tree, then back all the way out to the action and perform the whole process over again. It's a case of a few little things that add up to a big annoyance after a while.

Worse than those quirks, I just ended up feeling bored by the stretches of the campaign that I played through by myself. Aside from a few rudimentary climbing sequences, the entire game is one long linear sequence of large combat-oriented rooms laid out with numerous cover points and walkways. Most encounters give you a chance to knock out a stealth kill or two before the bullets start flying, but the only real choice you have is which cover or walkway you want to return fire from, and what kind of gun you want to do it with. There's so little to the storyline and such a lackluster attempt at humor on the characters' part, the endless shooting at enemies who usually sponge a ton of damage started to wear thin for me about two missions before the game was over.

Fuse is substantially more entertaining with other people. Even though you don't have the freedom to switch around as much and enjoy all the characters' specific weaponry, playing with thinking human allies lets you actually set up intelligent combos and maneuvers that you can't pull off with the AI guys (though, aside from going for headshots with Jacob's crossbow, you're really just dumping bullets into enemies with the same old guns, sometimes through Dalton's shield). Many of the characters' unlockable secondary abilities become more satisfying to use in co-op as well. For instance, Izzy gets a throwable healing beacon that can resurrect downed allies. Playing solo, I tended to just throw that thing at my feet when the fighting got intense, but playing the tougher last couple of missions with friends, I got to feel like I was taking on a useful healing role by aiming the beacon at teammates who were down so I could bring them back remotely and get back to the fighting. Playing with a team actually lets you flank enemies, which is good since what feels like roughly half of Fuse's enemies--from riot shield-equipped infantry to big hulking robot suits with vulnerable fuel tanks on their backs--need to be shot from behind. Solo, it's hard to get those enemies to face anyone but the character you're playing, but in co-op you can actually sort of kite enemies around and draw their ire (or aggro, if you like) so others can get back there and do maximum damage.

If you're going to play Fuse, you definitely want to play it in co-op.

Playing with friends was so much more entertaining for me that I'd go as far as to say it's the only way you should play the Fuse campaign. I actually found three players to be a nice sweet spot, since you get plenty of intelligent tactical potential but can still swap around a bit if you need to take on a different role for some reason. Co-op doesn't fully alleviate the tedium that sets in as you dump round after round into the especially resilient enemies later in the game, but it's a heck of a lot more interesting than plowing through it all alone. If you want more Fuse afterward, you can replay individual chapters to keep building up your agents. I didn't finish any one character's skill tree by the end of the story mode, and only bought three of the the incredibly expensive team perks that increase your experience intake, give you more time before bleeding out, and so on. So there's still plenty of post-game leveling-up to do, if that's your thing. The most rigorous fighting is to be had in Echelon, a wave-based survival mode with rotating objectives that you certainly want four good players for if you're going to tackle it seriously. Bringing leveled-up characters into this mode is a must, and you'll earn a bunch more experience for playing it. But Echelon is tough enough that it also exposes some of the most annoying things about the game's enemies, like the cloaked ones that are hard to see in a firefight and will disable you the second they touch you.

Fuse's gameplay has some good ideas, but they don't carry enough weight in what's otherwise a shooter campaign the like of which you've almost certainly seen before. And it's hard not to think back to the exciting first trailer from two years ago, since many of the shipping game's most outlandish aspects would have been more at home in that highly stylized, wisecracking version that never got made. Fighting in an undersea base and a space station? An exotic Asian assassin who turns out to be someone's ex-girlfriend? A sneering Russian who shoots himself up with Fuse and grows 10 stories tall? It feels like the off-the-wall good ideas Insomniac had for that sillier game have survived, but those ideas are a bit uncomfortably at odds with the serious look and tone of the game as it is now. Fuse plays pretty well, but with smoother execution and a more cohesive identity, it would have an easier time standing out in a genre that, as this generation of consoles comes to a close, is wearing out its welcome more and more.

When the talented Lindsey Sterling is involved in a video, you can bet things are about to get serious. Having brought her own special brand of violin to previous clips like this one, here she's teaming up with musician William Joseph. Who is playing the piano in a flak jacket. If you've ever wanted to see classical music take the place of teabagging in the middle of a Halo firefight, well, now's your chance. You can check out a behind-the-scenes video below. Halo Medley - Firefight - Lindsey Stirling and William Joseph [YouTube]

The Last Son of Krypton mostly pummels evildoers in the face. Yes, there's the good ol' freeze breath and heat vision attacks but those tend to feel a bit impersonal. And Superman always pulls his punches with normal human bad guys. But, what if someone pissed him off so much that he didn't hold back? Well, according to this video by YouTube maestro FreddieW, it'd be newsworthy, to say the least.

If you're against the use of photoshop in cosplay photos, I can understand where you're coming from. But then, if there was no photoshop in cosplay photos, we wouldn't get amazing pictures like the one up top. Other highlights this week include, yes, more Final Fantasy, but also some BioShock Infinite, Doctor Who and, for old time's sake, some Morrigan from Darkstalkers. 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. Fancy Pants is Kotaku's weekly round-up of the best in video game cosplay (costume play), where fans dress up as their favourite characters. As seen on Zyaaa. As seen on Usagi-Tsukino-krv. As seen on ThelemaTherion. As seen on Evil-Uke-Sora. As seen on Its-Raining-Neon. As seen on DawnArts. As seen on S-Seith. As seen on Nebulaluben. As seen on Rei-Suzuki.

Compared to video game endings on the NES, the Super Nintendo stepped things up a bit. Thanks to the power of 16-bit, devs were able to do much more; ending cutscenes became longer and, similarly to arcade games, a lot of them showed us the best moments and characters of the game in looped sequences, and also put an end to the story with some spectacular pixel art. Let's open up the SNES' giant game library and see what games were the most successful in squeezing out the best looking, funniest and most memorable video game endings. Spoilers ahead!!! Contra III: The Alien Wars Super Mario World Earthworm Jim Gradius III E.V.O.: Search For Eden Final Fight 3 (Haggar's ending) Sunset Riders Knights of the Round Weaponlord Super Metroid Death and Return of Superman Mega Man X Top Gear 2 Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting Spider-Man & Venom: Maximum Carnage U.N. Squadron Earthbound Star Fox Shaq Fu Aladdin Actraiser 2 Final Fantasy VI The SNES had a massive library of games, with lot of other, great endings that are missing from our list. Storm the comments and post them with visual support! sources: VGMuseum, Cubex55 To contact the author of this post, write to gergovas@kotaku.com

Happy three-day weekend! Or, to those of you who don't live in America, happy Monday! Given that it's an Official Kotaku Holiday, we thought this might be a good time to revisit some old stories. So we've gone through the archives and dug up some some of our best pieces for your holiday reading pleasure. Today's theme: the people behind the games we play. For starters, check out Evan's brief piece about the best thing ex-Epic designer Cliff Bleszinski ever did, and the story of how Total Annihilation creator Chris Taylor helped save Mike's face. We've also got in-depth looks at some of the people behind companies like the small publisher Xseed, the RPG makers over at Obsidian, and the House of Persona, Atlus USA. Straight out of Japan, look behind some of the surprising ways 8-4 has altered games while localizing them for U.S. shores. And don't miss the story of designer Dylan Cuthbert and how he trained with Shigeru Miyamoto and other big names at Nintendo. Here's a fun look at what it's like for a Canadian developer to work with Nintendo on a game like Luigi's Mansion 2. For a broader perspective, check out Kirk's in-depth report from this year's Game Developers' Conference. And what about the dark side of game development? Reading angry employees bash game companies is always good for some entertainment. Finally, don't miss Fine Art, our regular look at the stellar work of video game artists across the world.

No d-pad. No buttons to mash. No virtual controls whatsoever. Frantic finger-swipes are the order of the day in Combo Crew, an homage to the ancient arcade beat-em ups of our forefathers. Those ancient games of yore gave us a goal — generally rescuing a kidnapped family member or significant other — and set us on a mission that spanned several side-scrolling stages. Our task was to mash buttons until everything on the screen was dead in order to move on to the next screen and mash buttons until everything was dead. The Game Bakers' Combo Crew keeps it simple. There is no kidnapping, just an invitation from a bad guy to join him for dinner atop a tower filled with floor-after-floor of enemies. There is no side-scrolling — each stage takes place on a single screen. And there is no button-mashing. Attacking an enemy is a swipe. Performing a charge attack is a swipe-and-hold. Countering enemy attacks is a well-timed tap, and combo attacks — and there are a ton of unlockable combo attacks across the game's four characters — are a simple matter of swiping with two fingers. Combo Crew is a very pretty game with a lot of character. It's also insanely repetitive, something we've grown to accept in our beat-em ups. The single room stages exacerbate the repetitiousness, but the ease of battling using the game's swipe controls counteracts it, giving the whole affair a "just one more level" compulsion. Or at least that's the case in the floor-climbing King of the Tower game mode. The game's other mode — Combo Crew Mode — sees the player fighting an endless tower of baddies to see how far they can get. The trick is players can recruit their friends to take over should their life get low. The friend will play through the level the player is stick on, with the player gaining their friends points as increased health. It's sort of a social survival mode, though the only means of adding friends seems to be through email, which is just awkward. Swiping is the new button-mashing, and it's a fine way to take out the trash in a tower filled with ne'er-do-wells. Combo Crew could very well be the definitive beat-em up of the mobile age of gaming. Combo Crew Genre: Beat-Em UpDeveloper: The Game BakersPlatform: iOSPrice: $1.99 Get Combo Crew in iTunes — Get Combo Crew in Google Play

This Halo insipred and -themed music video easily wins "the most Spartan costumes featured in a clip ever trophy," as a whole division of Spartans get into an intense firefight in an odd, but awesome setting with a piano in the centre. A pretty large-scale video for William Joseph and Lindsey Stirling's song—, must have been fun bouncing around the field and dodging all those imaginary rockets. Halo Medley - Firefight - Lindsey Stirling and William Joseph [YouTube] To contact the author of this post, write to gergovas@kotaku.com

Here’s what’s going on Talk Among Yourselves, our reader-written blog: It's been a great long weekend for TAY with tons of well-written provocative pieces. Among them: SloopyDrew calls for revolution against a top-down, overly constricted vision of gaming's future. GiantBoyDetective looks at more fictional video games from the insides of TV shows in his recurring Animation Infiltration feature. A piece about the game mechanic that makes DamonsRhee ragequit and the AniTAY round-up deserve your eyeballs, too. Finally, there's a defense by Cimeas of, get this, Fable III. Interesting timing now that the world knows what was inside Peter Molyneux's Curiosity cube. And you can always go join the voices talking about video games and life in TAY Classic and in the TAY: Open Forum.

About two years after The End came a memorable day: Mark unearthed an incredible stash. Coarse-knuckled and goose-prickling under a wan, strange sun, he hunched over a small old dumpster he found behind the old Winn Dixie, and pried away at it. It took some time, as the thing had corroded shut. The color and iron smell of rust was all in the creases of his palms by the time he got it open. Four whole, green-gleaming cases of Halo-branded Mountain Dew, untouched. Twenty still-unopened canisters of Gamer Snacks: Miniature corn puffs and the like, vacuum-sealed into ergonomic containers designed to be consumed one-handed. Mother lode. By the time he loaded up his beaten red wagon with the spectacular find, a cool, alien night had fallen. Night after The End was a strange and foreign time. Murmurs that sounded like the echoes of an unfamiliar civilization—the ghosts of rubbery vehicles stalking asphalt—seemed to ebb and sigh from far away. Mark passed no one as he dragged the wagon over graveled fields and split sidewalks. The wagon’s grinding and clunking was percussion for his aching muscles. In the park near his shelter a single child’s swing creaked. The red wagon had belonged to his daughter Lula, whom he’d lost in the great transition to the end. Who knew what nightmares played with his child now? He tried not to think of her in a place overwhelmed by glittery black mirrors, unknowable economies, and sleek, fast, nebulous Clouds. Don’t think about the Cloud, Mark told himself. His nape prickled. Despite the strain of his bent back, he hauled faster, his wagon full of desperate provisions shrieking behind him like a nightmarish pursuer. The endless sprawling lane wound its way past a dry river bed to a cul-de-sac dotted with the skeletons of dream houses. The looming moon transformed them starkly, weeping pale light through the empty window frames like eyes, lunar rectangles etched sharply into the landscape. There was little for the wind to stir, but Mark didn’t mind: it looked like a level of Zelda. He took care never to step in the pools of moonlight, keeping to the dark. There was little for the wind to stir, but Mark didn’t mind: it looked like a level of Zelda. His home was the only one in the district that had been finished, secured, before The End. Mark had seen to that. In those days he still spoke to his family; Carissa at the table nervous over the family paperwork, as he floated like a ghost powdered in drywall. They needed to finish their entertainment center, he told her then. She never understood. He’d shown her all the threads online, sent her all the articles. She never believed him, damn it. And now. And now. Covered in a tarpaulin, a long-slumbering speedboat sat in the driveway. He muscled his daughter’s wagon up the concrete stairs, fresh and pale as the day they were poured. As he entered the door, he trod unseeing on the word WELCOME that was stamped into the Astroturf of the mat. It was dark in the foyer. Since The End he’d had to do all of his own electrical work, because no one else could be trusted. The Internet was constantly on, the equivalent of a radio in wartime. Mark was an individualist. Mark knew that he and only he could achieve some measure of the ideal for his family, what little there was left to be had by anyone. They were wrong, dammit. They’d all been wrong. His heavy sigh echoed flatly against walls that still smelled of satiny chocolate Behr paint, mocking him. He left the wagon by the basement door, stashing a can of Dew and a cannister of Snacks in the utility pocket of his leather kilt, and followed the sound of light and noise deeper into the home he had built on the pure currency of ideals. He avoided bumping the credenza automatically, but was still in the habit of flipping the kitchen lightswitch as he passed through it, even though it no longer connected to anything. Vinyl and formica glittered impassively at him on his way to the Living Room. Living Room. A room for living. This was a place to go on living in, he thought. With fatigued relief he surveyed the plush sectional sofa arrayed before the strange glass apostrophe of a coffee table Carissa had once adored. Here, the CONSOLE loomed, the hearth of all Mark’s efforts since the end. The End had not touched this place, and this place alone. The CONSOLE was the centerpiece of the altar that dominated an entire great cavernous wall of the room. It sat like an omnipresent little sage beneath the broad black, chrome-accented Television. Mounted in the wall, the pores of speakers bookended the display. Little luminescent eyes of piercing blue and lime green winked on and off softly, a comforting rhythm, even though he could no longer remember the specific purpose of each. There were three remotes. As a failsafe only he now knew their intimate patterns: The power to the receiver, then the speakers, then the cable box. A program in progress jangled to life, an abrupt assault on his senses in the dark Living Room. High-volume blaring bells and whistles, the thunderous cheer of a crowd of people Mark would never meet. The program had the scratchy veneer, the tinny echo of something recorded in a prior age, well before The End. Mark was inches from the screen, now. A face quite like his came looming back, speaking urgent dialogue amid the surround-sound thundering of falling bombs, the rattle of gunfire. On the screen, a frenetic, victorious ding ding ding as a jocular announcer enjoined someone named Pete to COME ON DOWN, and on the screen the camera snapped to a person with PETE sketched on his sunny nametag. Pete had a delighted face. The contestant leapt to his feet, ran with fists in the air to a great revolving stage full of fabulous showcase prizes. A wood-paneled rec room full of consoles. A picture of a ski vacation. A speedboat. The contestants would have to guess the prizes, Mark recalled. Or bid to buy them. It was hard to discern. It didn’t matter. The prices didn’t matter. He already had his dream. He wasn’t here for the TV, anyway. The TV was never just a TV. Not since The End. Especially after The End. “On,” he told the CONSOLE, his voice sounding alien with disuse to his own ear. But it remembered him even still, and it blossomed awake like a geometric flower across his glassy frame of vision. This, this, this, he thought, pupils dilating, a game, a game, his broken-nailed and rust-knuckled fingers grasping for a sleek black wedge that sat in the middle of his wife’s once-beloved coffee table. His mouth felt suddenly dry, and he opened a can of Mountain Dew. It made an effervescent hiss. His fingers fitted easily over the black wedge’s twin vibrating triggers. His thumbs ticked its alphabet, the four-letter, omnidirectional vocabulary of The End. His body seemed to tumble forward on its own. “Mark,” the spectre of Carissa’s voice called from far away. Mark was inches from the screen, now. A face quite like his came looming back, speaking urgent dialogue amid the surround-sound thundering of falling bombs, the rattle of gunfire. Behind the couch, the rear speakers shuddered gently on their subterranean stalks. He clutched the controller. He pulled the trigger. He would fight The End here, if nowhere else. This was the only place he had agency over it. “Mark,” came the echo of Carissa again, as Mark’s disembodied arms within the screen, every fine hair visible on his virtual forearms, gripped his enemy. The impression of her voice was drowned by the guttural aspiration of an enemy combatant’s slit throat. He could almost feel the wash of gore over the arms that weren’t his. Almost there. Almost there. It’s almost real. “Dad,” came a child’s lilt. Two shadows fell on him from behind, or so it seemed. A trigger on the controller vibrated as he pulled it, an explosion of vibrant red washing over the room. Perfect, he whispered under his breath. The End never came, he thought to himself, it’s not over, it’s not over. “Dad! I want you to watch me race!” “Pause,” Mark replied, and the CONSOLE obeyed, the contorted faces of his enemies freezing on the screen. Lula plaintively held her tablet up, merry little cars bouncing on the screen to a gentle tune, awaiting a co-pilot. “Dad, I want to play,” she said. Carissa stood beside their child in her dressing gown, a figure like pale smoke swallowed by walls of hardware, looming ceilings, static-resistant dreams. “You’ve been promising to look at my mods for two weeks now. Will you just put that old thing down and come play?” “When this is over,” he said, jerking a crooked thumb at the Entertainment Altar, where the twisted wartime vista hung frozen and grotesque in the center of the Living Room like a macabre artwork. “It is over, Mark,” Carissa sighed, and she went back upstairs. Leigh Alexander is editor-at-large at Gamasutra, columnist at Edge and Vice Creator's Project, and contributes gaming and culture writing to Thought Catalog and Boing Boing, among others. Her work has appeared in Slate,NYLON, Wired and the AV Club, and she blogs at LeighAlexander.net.

Ryan and Jeff buckle in, close their eyes, and hit the gas as they jump back into this storied franchise.