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Somewhere out there there's a super-sized working PS4 controller that Sony created during the development of Knack according to Mark Cerny. Wild guess: the super-sized controller influenced the PS4's new trigger design, based on what Cerny says in the video below.

Deus Ex: The Fall has debuted one day early, Plants vs. Zombies 2 is on sale (in some countries) and more in today's ASU.

Friends and colleagues of Giant Bomb's Ryan Davis remember the man in this week's new episode of the podcast that Davis so capably hosted for years, the Giant Bombcast. For those hoping to do something in Davis' memory, the GB crew plans to release a memorial T-shirt, with the profits from the sale of those shirts going to Davis' wife. Details to come.

One of our pals at Gizmodo believes he knows why people still pirate games, movies, music—you name it. Read his argument. And/or tell us here why you think people pirate. Other than for the peglegs, of course.

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon now grants players the option to hit the reset button on the garrisons found across the island. Ubisoft announced today that a patch for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC will add the "Garrison Reset" option to FC3: Blood Dragon, similar to the "Outpost Reset" option already found in the regular game, FC3: Rich Kids of Instagram.

The option allows players to wash away their violent sins and experience a baptism of blood in every camp again without having to restart the entire game.

If you've yet to try out the hit standalone expansion, which has sold more than a half-million copies, allow our neon-glowing review to highlight it as a summer treat.

Morning Star is a huge gamble. It's an interstellar FPS for mobile devices built by a crack team of geek-industry experts at Industrial Toys, all hoping to break stigmas of handheld, hardcore gaming.

Morning Star Alpha, the tie-in graphic novel for the game, is an even bigger risk. Add-on apps for games have earned the reputation of being rushed, shallow and of poor quality, and most players don't take these digital comics seriously, no matter how fanatical about the series they may be. Convincing people to play a new shooter on their iPhones is one thing - getting them to read a digital comic about that game is another world of salesmanship.

So far, Morning Star Alpha has three things working in its favor: It's free, it offers a new way of reading on-screen comics, and it comes from an all-star team, written by award-winning sci-fi author John Scalzi, drawn by Marvel and DC artist Mike Choi, and overseen by Halo creator Alex Seropian.

And a fourth thing - it looks really cool.

Researchers at the University of Queensland in Australia gathered 64 students together and had them each play either a violent or non-violent game. Then the researchers pretended to drop their pens to see what would happen. Researchers have so much fun. So the 64 students were each tasked with playing 20 minutes of one of four games: Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty: Black Ops, World of Zoo and Portal 2. Once finished, they were asked to fill out a short survey about their experience with the game they played. The researchers would then leave the room in a rush, pretending to drop their pens on the way out. The idea was to determine if playing violent video games affected a person's tendency to be helpful. They did not. “This suggests that the effect of violent video games on behavior might be small and that public concern ought to be minimal,” said Morgan Tear, a PhD student at the university and the lead author of a study recently published in the journal PLOS One. Because pens, and science. Even though this particular study comes out on the pro-gaming side of the violence question, I've gotten to the point now, after decades of this stuff, where I read these things for light entertainment and not much else. My skeptical side looks at these results and wonders if they represent violent video game players or people asked to fill out surveys in general. There'd have to be another survey to figure that out. I'm sure researchers are already on the case. Violent Video Games Don't Make Us Less Caring [Time]

The road to EVO, this weekend's massive fighting game tournament, appears to be paved with the good intentions of others. Three different cases have popped up of strangers and/or surprise sponsors swooping in to ensure that some desperate gamers can attend the Las Vegas event. One case, covered by the Penny Arcade Report's Andrew Groen, involves Simon “Popi” Gutierrez, the possible world's best in Super Street Fighter IV. The Swedish player had a problem, Groen wrote earlier this week: "Champion or not, he was still a broke 20-something with little hope of affording the thousands of dollars required to travel from Sweden to Las Vegas to compete at EVO." And yet with just a handful of days to go, Gutierrez secured sponsorship from organizers of the Dreamhack event and Rockstar Energy Drink to get him out there. Sommeling: "Our thoughts at first were that we were screwed and had to sleep on the streets of Orlando." Sponsorships are common in competitive gaming, so, happy as that story is, it's not quite as unusual as the one that Dutch gamers LLL.MBR and LLL.Momi are living through. These guys flew out to Orlando to compete in the CEO fighting game tournament at the end of June but then, through some miscommunications and missed flights, found themselves stranded in the U.S. "Our thoughts at first were that we were screwed and had to sleep on the streets of Orlando," LLL.MBR, real name Roy Sommeling, told Kotaku. That's when help arrived. Instead of sleeping on the streets of Orlando, the Dutch gamers got put up in a room by CEO organizer Alex Jebailey. Their manager suggested they either get a new flight back to Amsterdam or find housing in the U.S. and stick it out until EVO. They chose the latter. They credit fighting gamer SherryJenix with putting the word out on Twitter that they needed somewhere between Orlando and Las Vegas to crash, and they credit a group of fighting gamers in Utah—the 801—for giving them places to stay. "We (the 801) had already befriended these fine folks at Canada Cup 2012, and CEO 2013," Utah-based fighting gamer HadoukenMD told me. "After seeing their tweets, we immediately retweeted them offering a place in Utah to live before EVO. Specifically, Dana stated she would drive them from Utah to Vegas for EVO. Lucas picked them up from the airport and they crashed there for 2 days. Later on, they would crash at my place for the next 5 days. I got them beds, clean sheets, groceries, clothes, took them out to dinner,and bought 3 different xbox to ps3 converters as EVO is PS3 only (Momi uses xbox pad). It has been great times to play against the best Akuma and Fei Long from Europe; we had 6 setups at my house and even the OG Utah SF4 players came to play." Things have worked out pretty well: Took @MomiSF and @MBR_TheFighting from Europe to their first 4th of July firework show #'Murica pic.twitter.com/mh2n73uRDR — Gustavo Romero (@801_Gustavo) July 5, 2013 "The USA FGC has been so kind to us," Sommeling told me. "We weren't expecting this muchhospitality, to be honest." They'll be competing in Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition 2012 at the tournament and will be flying back to Amsterdam after EVO, their hotel and return flight paid for by their sponsor, LowLandLions. The best kindness-of-others road to EVO story might have turned out to be the one involving Kevin "Di3mini0n" Landon, the world's premier Guile player, though that one took a non-storybook twist and switched its happy ending at the last minute. As of this past weekend, it seemed that Landon was going to be going to EVO thanks solely to a surprisingly successful crowdfunding effort. Just last week, he had Tweeted: Due to circumstances , I am announcing with great sadness that I will not be participating at the Evolution 2013 World Finals . — Kevin Landon (@Di3mini0n) July 2, 2013 But then he got the idea that other enterprising gamers have had to get themselves to PAX and other big gaming shows: crowdfunding. And it worked: Cue the plot twist. Landon now says he doesn't need the money and will return it. While he did not respond to a Kotaku request for comment about his adventure, his manager, Isaiah Triforce Johnson did, saying that his gamer preferred to stay out of the limelight. According to Johnson, Landon's difficulties in getting to EVO were due to a work-related scheduling conflict. Johnson believes that Landon was encouraged by other members of the fighting game community to run the fundraiser instead of clarifying with Johnson's team about whether one of their sponsors was going to be able to fly him out there. The sponsor, VXG, will. "It was a misunderstanding," Johnson said. "It happens. So now, I said, 'We will return the money to the community.'" Since Landon's crowd-funding effort was successful, he actually has the $1500 from the community and can't simply flip a switch to undo and return the donations. Instead, according to Johnson, all 58 contributors will be e-mailed and asked to provide information for getting their money returned. If any decline, Johnson said their money will be given to a charity or to the prize winnings of an upcoming match. Landon will compete at EVO in three games: Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition Version 2012, Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 and Street Fighter X Tekken. EVO 2013 kicks off on Friday from Las Vegas. Much of the event will be streamed, and we'll be carrying those streams here on Kotaku for all who want to enjoy the virtual combat in the year's biggest fighting game event. To contact the author of this post, write to stephentotilo@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @stephentotilo. Top photo: Ermolaev Alexander / Shutterstock; Photoshopped by Gergo Vas.

If you haven’t read Justice League #22 yet, go away somewhere and come back when you’re done. There are spoilers for the Man of Steel movie, too. You've been warned. The first issue of DC Comics’ Trinity War summer crossover event features the Man of Steel doing something that he rarely does: killing someone. The victim this time is Dr. Light, a reluctant superhero caught up in the battle between two superteams. After he inadvertently attacks Wonder Woman—who Superman happens to be dating—Dr. Light gets his head burned off by Kal-El’s heat vision. It's clearly set up as an accident with any number of outs, and Superman expresses shock and regret right after it happens. There’s a vast evil conspiracy going on that’s trying to get the public to distrust the Justice League and this apparent murder at the Man of Steel’s hands is part of that campaign. Justice League #22 marks the third time in recent months that Superman’s killed someone. The previous incident comes at the end of Man of Steel, the blockbuster film that’s re-introducing Superman to a new generation of fans. In the Zack Snyder film, Superman snaps the neck of fellow Kryptonian General Zod when faced with the reality that someone just as unstoppable as him will kill as many people as possible. It’s presented by the movie’s creators as the only possible out. The moments where Superman kills in this year's Injustice: Gods Among Us comic are both similar and different as Man of Steel and Justice League #22. He kills Lois Lane by accident but ends the Joker's life with clear intent. Between the Injustice comic, the Man of Steel movie and today’s issue of Justice League, the questions of the moment now seem to be these: "Is Superman still Superman if he kills?" "Should Superman kill?" Comic book creators have toyed with the idea of a Superman who kills before. In fact, a quarter century ago, writer-artist John Byrne climaxed his revolutionary revamp of the character by having the Man of Steel reluctantly kill three Kryptonian criminals who had murdered the entire population of an alternate Earth. In the ensuing months, Superman was wracked by grief. The comic's post-Byrne creators had Superman temporarily exile himself to outer space for a bit of soul searching. He committed himself to not killing again, which seemed to be the character's default moral position. Comics creators kept him from violating that oath for years. Many people believe that Superman’s supposed to represent the best of humanity’s ideals. He solves problems by punching them, yes, but that use of force has generally been portrayed to be judicious. There’s an implicit trust that Superman will use his powers and judgment in the best way possible. But that steadfastness gets read as boring by lots of comics readers. And a fear of being seen as staid seems to be what’s driving the most recent instances of Super-killing. With the exception of writer Grant Morrison’s Action Comics run, DC’s New 52 reboot has struggled to make Superman feel as vibrant as other competing characters. And Man of Steel hit theaters in the wake of superhero movie successes where the lead characters could be more human, with more snark or attitude. So the more scuffed-up, less-than-perfect Superman that we're getting now may just be a sign of the times. Yeah, Superman kills. Human beings kill, too. But that last resort is seen as a moral failing if there are other possible solutions. Of course, the failing here isn’t necessarily at the character’s hands. It’s at the creators’. Super-killing seems to happen when creators want to convince readers that their take on the character is radically different from the baseline iterations of the character. The problem with continually having Superman send folks to the cemetery is that it robs death of its power as a plot device. Super-Killing-Man also implies a lack of ideas, too. When you have a character who can do impossible things, he shouldn’t be resorting to the most regretful of actions once a month. There've been three Super-killings in 2013, the year of Superman's 75th birthday. It's a really weird way to commemorate his creation.

Recently, there have been more and more interesting online games coming out in China. With Monster Hunter Online and Call of Duty Online, there will be two top tier free-to-play games in the middle kingdom. While these games are only available in China, that doesn't mean enterprising players abroad can't play them. Playing Chinese games abroad is indeed possible. These games at the moment do not check for IP addresses, so you can actually play them on any IP address. The actual problem is with the registration process. Before we begin, here's a disclaimer: *You cannot play Chinese online games without a valid Chinese ID number.* With that said, let us begin. Forgoing the need for a Chinese ID, it's actually not hard to play these games. Sure, you probably won't understand the language and it might be hard to pick up the game that way, but therein lies the extra challenge. Truth be told, not being able to read Chinese in a massively online multiplayer game will probably make menu navigation near impossible, but that doesn't make the game unplayable. On top of that, many Chinese players will be able to write and understand English. So with all that said and done, let's get started on how to sign up for and start a Chinese game. For this tutorial, let's go with the super cutesy MMO, Tao Yuan Online. The first step is to download the client. Normally the text would read like so: "下载客户端". In this case it reads "下载游戏." "下载" means "download". After downloading the client, the next part is giving up your personal information! Yay! To do so, we have to hit a button that says "帐号注册." This means "to register an account". Here is what the account registration form looks like. Once this is all filled out and done, it's as easy as opening up the client, hitting the login button and starting the game. I have been told by some game companies that they do accept foreign passports. However, being the paranoid person that I am, I am unwilling to give anyone aside the United States Government my US issued passport number. Some Chinese games require a bit more finesse to sign up for, but for the most part, signing up is just this easy. For Tencent-made games, for example, you can use an even easier method — just sign up for a Chinese QQ chat account. Signing up for a QQ requires little to no personal information, but when signing up for a game, there will be a prompt asking for a real-world Chinese ID. Other companies, like Perfect World, require the use of a bank card because their games are pay to play. This is now changing as more and more of these games are going for the freemium model. Hopefully, this guide will help some of you get to know the wonderfully weird world of Chinese online games. Top image captured from Call of Duty Online's "Hero" trailer. 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.

On June 26, a Korean language Facebook page called "We Do Phoshop" appeared online. The site solicited Photoshop requests, and the ensuing 'shops weren't exactly what askers had in mind. Or what anyone had in mind, for that matter. There's a tradition of these kind of Photoshops online in China. People would ask "Photoshop masters" to make them taller or cooler or whatever. And netizens would whip up trollish Photoshops for internet giggles. But people tended to know what they were getting themselves in for when they made the requests, so the end result isn't malicious. That's what is going on over at the We Do Phoshop Facebook page. Currently, it has around twenty-nine thousand likes and is still taking requests. However, so far, their page appears to be Korean language only — so here's a look at some of of those requests. Request: "Can you make this like a wild animal?" Result: Request: "Please put me in a picture with Iron Man." Result: Request: "Make me look like a super hacker." Result: Request: "I want you to make me look cool while grilling." Result: Request: "Please remove the guy with the camera reflection and have only me and the guy behind me in the booth." Result: Request: "Recently, my friend got married. Can you make this photo more congratulatory?" Result: Request: "Please erase me so it looks like the baby is flying." Result: Request: "You can't see my face. Could you brighten it up?" Result: Request: "Make it look like I have a harem! I want to be surrounded by women!!" Result: Request: "I want you to make it like I'm eating something nobody in the world has ever eaten." Result: Request: "This is a travel pic. I want you to erase the woman on the right side." Result: Request: There were three requests for looking heroic in battle. Result: Request: "Please put the pants over the socks to hide them. Also, recently I've been kind of down, so put some soju in front of me." Result: Request: "I want to be a superhero!" Result: (Invisible Woman) Request: "Please add a bear or something." Result: Request: "Make this tired pic more dramatic." Result: Request: "The white background seems empty. Please brighten it up!" Result: Request: "This is a photo of me sleeping in a 24-person tent. The look of me sleeping inside on a top of rubber mat is somewhat sad. Please change it to a picture where I am sleeping on mattress with a celebrity" Result: Request: "This photo was taken where the movie Peppermint Candy was shot. Please change the photo into a cold-hearted situation where a train is coming." Result: Request: "The box hinders the mood in the picture. Please change the box to something like a treasure box and make the entire photo have a warm mood." Result: Request: "I would be grateful if you could erase the people in the background. It's Disneyland but it doesn't feel like an amusement park. Please make it a bit more fun." Result: We Do Phoshop [Facebook Thanks, Sang!] 친구가 곧 결혼합니다(ㅋㅋㅋㅋ터짐주의ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ) [Instiz] 포샵해드립니다 [Nemopan via ロケットニュース] To contact the author of this post, write to bashcraftATkotaku.com or find him on Twitter @Brian_Ashcraft. 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.

"There are problems, however, with the requirement to manufacture in Shanghai." The "problem" is that the workers will be payed a decent wage and not be modern day slaves.

OK. So this is weird. Reddit user pourmeanother77 has edited a copy of Mario 64 so that his son's face replaced the texture on the game's goombas. It's about as simple a modification as you can do to a game, swapping one file for another, but when the result was "He laughed for a good 10 minutes straight while stomping on his own face", who cares how it was done? Edited a Mario 64 texture pack so my kid could be in the game. He laughed for a good 10 minutes straight while stomping on his own face. [Reddit, via Geekologie]

Brandon Kitkouski, who used to work at id Software and has also done stuff for Magic: The Gathering cards, now works at a small indie studio called Hammer & Chisel, which is working on "the only MOBA designed exclusively for tablets". That game is Fates Forever, and while there's not much to go on at the moment, there is the lovely piece of art up top and a teaser site. You can see more of Brandon's work at his personal site and blog. 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!

Giant Bomb comes together to remember our dear friend and colleague, Ryan Davis.

Laharl, Etna and Flonne return to their proper headlining roles when NIS America brings Disgaea D2: A Brighter Darkness to the PlayStation 3 on October 8 in North America, September 27 in Europe. Still too long to wait.

I finally watched Twin Peaks for the first time about a year ago. Man oh man, did that show make me hungry. All I wanted to do was drink coffee and eat pie. I can't imagine why that was! Oh wait, yes I can—the show won't shut up about coffee and pie, as evidenced by this superb supercut from Slacktory. This reminds me, I need to go pick up the Director's Cut of Deadly Premonition. Everyone doing well out there? Having a good week so far? Talk coffee, pie, games, or whatever else, here or over at TAY. (Via Vulture)

Well, that didn't take long. Little Witch Academia 2 was on Kickstarter for 3 hours before being fully funded. The page lists no stretch goals, although it sounds as if they're coming soon. Beyond that, Trigger's Facebook page also suggests they're looking into dubbing the new animated short. You might recall that Little Witch Academia is a bit like Japanese Harry Potter, except cuter. Here's the pitch from the Kickstarter for LWA2, if you'd like to watch it: What is concretely known is that the new episode will be at least 20 minutes, and will be subtitled in 7 different languages. The Kickstarter says they'll add 15 minutes if they get "enough" support, although it's unclear how much exactly that requires. The original, must-watch short is here:

If all this talk of No One Lives Forever has got you fondly remembering your first time playing the game, check out this great 2001 post-mortem by NOLF creative director Craig Hubbard.

It was supposed to be the first part in turning yourself into a bad-ass cyborg. An artifact from the glorious gaming future that we couldn’t live inside of yet. Sure, you can laugh at it now but you know you wanted a Power Glove back in the day. The accessory favored by Nintendo superfan Isaiah "Triforce" Johnson will be getting a documentary, which features interviews with engineers who worked on the wearable controller’s design as well as testimonials from toy industry insiders. Remember the Kinect, Wii Remote and PlayStation Move didn’t appear out of thin air. It was the Power Glove’s cool-looking articulated fingers that paved the way for motion-control gaming.

In a move that's already ticking off a lot of fans, Nintendo is denying the world's biggest fighting game tournament, Evo, from streaming footage of Nintendo's top fighting game, the GameCube's Super Smash Bros. Melee. The news hit today via an Evo schedule update on Shoruyken, the fighting game news site run by the people behind the tournament: Regrettably, we’ve just been informed by Nintendo of America Inc. that we do not have permission to broadcast Super Smash Bros. Melee for Evo 2013. Evo appears to have received no such streaming bans from the makers of other games in this year's tournament, which include Warner Bros.' Mortal Kombat and Injustice as well as Capcom's Super Street Fighter and Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3. Evo 2013 kicks off in Las Vegas this Friday. We've reached out to Nintendo to find out what the deal is here. Smash Bros. hasn't officially been at Evo for several years, not in the streaming era. Nintendo's move may be part of the company's crackdown on video use of its intellectual property. That policy already led to a crackdown in Let's Play videos, though Nintendo then seemed to be softening their policy, at least selectively. The rather awkward twist to all this is that the Smash Bros. Melee community raised nearly $95,000 in Evo's official charity fundraiser for breast cancer research earlier this year, a total surpassed by fans of no other fighting game. Raising that money earned Melee an inclusion in this year's tournament. And yet, now, because of an edict from Nintendo, footage of the competition in the game won't be streamed for fans to see. Gamers have been coming out in droves to Tweet and e-mail their complaints about this to Kotaku in hopes of getting Nintendo to reverse course. We're also hearing from industry figures. "As a supporter of Smash, this is very disappointing [for them] to take away a great opportunity to showcase Smash," CEO organizer Alex Jebailey told us. "I personally hope they can review the situation and understand how important this is for their fans to support them," Triforce Johnson told us. "I am one of those fans." The man is at the perfect nexus for caring about this one. He's a dedicated Nintendo fan—note his first name!—wears a Power Glove in public and manages more than a dozen gamers who are competing in various games at Evo. Johnson implored Nintendo: "Please allow EVO to stream Super Smash Bros. Melee." To contact the author of this post, write to stephentotilo@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @stephentotilo

The recently delayed Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time will soft-launch in Australia and New Zealand shortly, giving it some time for testing.

PvZ 2 Senior Producer Allen Murray told Polygon, "With Plants vs. Zombies 2 we're taking advantage of a lot of newer technologies ...if you're connected to the internet, you can save your progress and share accounts across multiple devices - and we need to make sure those systems, along with our ability to stream that content to players works."

The game was delayed globally in June to "later in the summer," presumably to make room for this window of testing.

If you're playing the re-release of Final Fantasy VII on Steam, I have a friendly reminder for you: you can mod the game, just like the original PC release. Like we wrote last year, fans have been modding the PC version of FFVII for a long while—so much so that you could experience something like an HD remaster if you want. All you have to do is use a mod managing program called Bootleg. Bootleg provides you with presets meant to help you with the best possible presentation, and it shows you where to download the mods you need. According to this forum post, it should work fine with Steam, as well as most PC versions of the game. You just need the following requirements: Which Windows? Windows VISTA (32 & 64 bit), Windows 7 (32 & 64 bit), and Windows 8 (32 & 64 bit). Free Space needed:The free space needed is approximately 10GB. Other System Requirements:A dedicated GPU with at least 512MB of RAM. Integrated Graphics will NOT work. Here is a step-by-step tutorial by EQ2Alyza, along with accompanying pictures. Here's a list of mods. Not all mods are visual—some, for instance, are for the music. Good news for those of you that are annoyed by the soundtrack on the Steam release, as it features low quality midi files! Here is a video tutorial for modding, although it's heavy on the music. And as a courtesy, make sure to actually read through some of the latest pages on the Qhimm forums—it's easy to flood people with troubleshooting questions that they've already gone over before, or have issues that could be resolved easily via Google search. This is the big, big caveat for those of you on Steam: in order to install some of the HD mods, you're going to have to disable cloud saving and achievements. That might be a dealbreaker for some of you—especially those of you that bought this version specifically for those features—so it's worth keeping in mind. I don't doubt that someone will come along and make mods that don't require you to do that, but for now, it's a thing you have to deal with. If you don't care about that stuff, you can enjoy a much prettier version of Final Fantasy VII. Sacrifices, people. Happy modding! Top GIF: from this video by XVermillion.

Gawker And Now, a Few More Stories From Wal-Mart Employees | Deadspin How I Made @DadBoner (And How @DadBoner Made Me A Better Man) | Gizmodo Dropbox Just Changed Everything About How You Use Apps | Kotaku Gaming's Greatest Unsung Heroine

After two years of quarreling, two tech giants have finally decided to play nice over the term "app store."

Goddammit, Blanka. Look at him go on his public rampages, totally unapologetically. Causing all sorts of havoc! I'm definitely the sort of person to laugh at this kind of slapstick humor, but it's even more golden with Blanka involved. I somehow missed the first episode of this, so in case you did too, here you go: *wipes away tear* To contact the author of this post, write to tina@kotaku.com or find her on Twitter at @tinaamini.

According to sources, Amazon is planning to significantly update the displays of its Kindle Fire tablets.

The NYU Gamecenter will be partnering with the EVO competitive gaming tournament to provide a MFA scholarship for prospective game designers to help "create the future of fighting games." More info is available at the Gamecenter website. They're also considering funding undergraduates using the same scholarship money, so if you're interested in that, they've got contact info on their site.

Bungie artists Mike Zak, Mark Peterson and Ryan Ellis describe the Destiny E3 demo in unique ways, like, "'Bird simulator' is what we're actually shipping." They also provide the classic lines, "I'm stuck in a room with two Canadians," "I don't speak Russian" and "It also looks like a scary spider."

It would be a real shame to forget about Cate Archer. Over the past week, I've been replaying the spy game No One Lives Forever for the first time since it came out in 2000. I'm struck not only by how well the first-person espionage-fest holds up all these years later, but how audacious it all feels, even today. In a world where people still doubt that a woman can be a great video-game protagonist, here's a game that pulled it off 13 years ago. And while on its surface, No One Lives Forever may be about Cold War spy games and larger-than-life James Bond gunplay, underneath its action-packed exterior is a story about workplace sexism and the women's liberation movement of the 1960s. No, really! When we first meet Cate Archer, the superspy Scotswoman at the center of the now-bygone series, she feels like a caricature: A well-coiffed killer in go-go boots, more or less a video-game incarnation of Austin Powers' sidekick Vanessa Kensington. But as the story gets underway, it becomes clear that agent Archer is much more than that—she's supremely capable, funny, brilliant, and possessed of an inhuman level of patience as she deals with her lunkheaded, sexist male colleagues. Many strong video-game women, from Tomb Raider's Lara Croft to Beyond Good & Evil's Jade to Mass Effect's Commander Shepard, simply exist, their respective fictional worlds being enlightened enough to get out of the way and let them be. By leading and triumphing, those characters make an implicit statement about how women can do this video-game action stuff just as well as men. In essence, her superiors are repeatedly telling her that she doesn't deserve to star in her own game, despite the fact that she's doing a smashing job of it. Cate Archer, by contrast, is regularly challenged on her right to undertake covert missions simply because she's a woman. Time and again she's asked to prove herself, and time and again her incredible acts of derring-do fall short of frustrating institutional double-standards. In essence, her superiors are repeatedly telling her that she doesn't deserve to star in her own game, despite the fact that she's doing a smashing job of it. Archer, wonderfully voiced in the first game by Kit Harris and in the 2002 sequel by Jen "Cortana" Taylor, is an agent for UNITY, a fictional pan-governmental agency assembled to wage counter-espionage against the Soviets during the 1960s. In true Bond fashion, UNITY more frequently winds up taking on criminal organizations like H.A.R.M., the primary antagonists of both the first game and its sequel. UNITY is a woefully old-fashioned place, as is made clear during Archer's first briefing with her commanders: One of the most enjoyable bits in that (lengthy) cutscene is when Mr. Jones and Mr. Smith mention Dimitri Volkov, H.A.R.M. executive officer and the story's main bad guy. No one in the briefing, including Archer's mentor Bruno, is quite sure who he is. But when asked what she knows, Archer rattles off an astounding array of facts, dates and places. She's clearly memorized his entire file on the off-chance that she might need to know something about him. No one in the room notes how amazing her display was—they simply carry on. That's cool; UNITY seems like the sort of place where extraordinary competence should be taken for granted. But at the end of the meeting, the odious Mr. Smith is sure to toss some shade Archer's way, telling her that he doesn't think wetwork is compatible with a woman's fragile psyche. That kind of horseshit doesn't let up as the game goes on; in fact, it becomes a running theme. Every character Archer meets immediately remarks upon her gender while expressing doubt that she's up for the task. Every early mission ends with Archer's superiors questioning their wisdom in "sending a woman to do a man's job." Ironically, the only character who doesn't dismiss her out of hand is ostensibly a villain, a feisty Scotsman named Magnus Armstrong who immediately identifies her as a fighter and a fellow countrywoman worthy of respect. When Archer exchanges code phrases with other field operatives, they've been written as snickering pickup lines. Clearly someone at HQ has been having fun with the idea of a woman field operative, which serves the dual purpose of A) being pretty eye-rollingly funny and B) illustrating just the sort of boys-club "humor" that women had to put up with in the 60s. ("Who writes this stuff?" asks one of her colleagues, mortified. "Someone in need of a girlfriend," Archer responds, patient as always.) She's a bloody superhero! Why can't she get any respect? Things tend to go awry during the early missions, requiring Archer (under the player's control) to turn on a dime and demonstrate endless resourcefulness, staying alive and salvaging some part of the operation. But for a good long while, it's not enough for her superiors. It's an odd feeling, surviving a thrilling video-game shootout only to have your post-mission briefing screen berate you for things that were completely out of your control. The disconnect between Archer's in-game actions and the way men in her world treat her is best exemplified when she first meets Dr. Otto Shenker, a scientist she's helping defect from Berlin. As it turns out, Dr. Shenker is something of an ass: I love this scene so much. We've seen a variation in plenty of movies: After braving hell and high water to reach her goal, the heroine is greeted with doubt. "Hold that thought," she says, turns, and proceeds to blow away like seven dudes. She turns back, cool as anything. "What were you saying?" I'm surprised that no other video game I can think of has stolen that idea in the thirteen years since NOLF came out. The scene perfectly underlines an idea that recurs throughout the game: You're going to give me a hard time for being a woman? Look buddy, I am singlehandedly winning the Cold War over here, I don't have time for this shit. Throughout No One Lives Forever, players will routinely manage the sorts of superheroic, impossible feats we so often undertake in video games. She'll infiltrate East German military bases, steal impossible-to-access documents, fight off legions of enemy troops, harpoon sharks on a sunken ship... only to be met with disdain and disapproval for not doing an even better job. After leaping from a burning aircraft, Archer blasts a dozen bad guys out of the sky while in free-fall, then grabs one, commandeers his parachute and lands safely. She then arrives back at HQ only to be berated for the mission's "failure." It's a great joke, albeit a bitter one. Time and again Archer is expected to prove herself when, we are meant to assume, a man in her position would have been given the benefit of the doubt. Afterward, her two superiors are discussing her work, and Mr. Smith says he doubts the veracity of her reports. He suggests that she's been falsifying them to make herself look better. The audacity of this guy! I played through those "reports" alongside her! I wanted to reach through the screen and smack him. She's a bloody superhero! Why can't she get any respect? Time and again Archer is expected to prove herself when, we are meant to assume, a man in her position would have been given the benefit of the doubt. That idea is best illustrated by Tom Goodman (actual name), the beefcake all-American operative Archer spends the middle section of the game working alongside. Or really, beneath, as her superiors waste no time telling her that she is to obey Goodman while in the field. When she first meets Goodman in a club in Berlin, they have the following (amazing) exchange: Goodman: So tell me, *Mizzz* Archer… Archer: Ah, now don't start with that. Goodman: What? Archer: There's no need to patronize me. Goodman: Was I patronizing you? Archer: Yes, you were. Goodman: Well, I'm sorry, but I didn't realize I was gonna have to baby-sit on this assignment. Archer: I may be a woman, but that doesn't mean I can't take care of myself. Goodman: Oh, I get it, you're one of those women's libbers! Dress up in men's clothing, ride motorcycles, smoke cigars, that kind of thing. Archer: Just because I can take care of myself doesn't mean I'm not a woman. They're not mutually exclusive, you know. Goodman: But isn't the point of women's liberation to allow young ladies, like yourself, to become men? Archer: The point is to allow young ladies to become whatever they please. Goodman: Ouch. Well, if you're as deadly with a pistol as you are with your tongue, you can watch both our backs. Archer: Alright, I will! Ha! Cate Archer for Prime Minister! That exchange perfectly encapsulates No One Lives Forever's particular brand of confident, low-key feminism. It's not about women being men, it's about women being whatever the hell they want to be. It's noteworthy that Archer herself explicitly lays it out, particularly since she's not living in some abstract video-game fantasy world; she's a 1960s woman living in the era the women's liberation movement actually got underway. The only people making a big deal out of Archer's gender are men; she's perfectly content to just go about doing an awesome job and saving the world. The way she confidently, smilingly takes Goodman's bait—"Alright, I will!"—just slays me. We know she's going to save the day; we've seen her do it before. Goodman has no idea who he's working with. The only people making a big deal out of Archer's gender are men; she's perfectly content to just go about doing an awesome job and saving the world. Later, Archer manages to hoodwink Goodman into agreeing to flip a coin to determine who will get to undertake each mission. Of course, she (suspiciously) wins every toss. At that point in the story, the missions stop going wrong. Archer begins to rack up victory after victory, all while Agent Goodman stands on the sidelines, looking handsome and being mostly useless. That said, eventually she begins to feel a platonic fondness for Goodman. He's something of a buffoon and is less skilled than she is, but he is one of the good guys. When he eventually sacrifices himself to save Archer from Volkov, she's visibly distraught at his death, and for the first time questions herself in the briefing room. Mr. Jones chooses this time to finally acknowledge what we've known all along: "You've performed remarkably well under extraordinarily difficult circumstances," he says. "I confess I was somewhat skeptical at first, but that was before I grasped the magnitude of the situation. In my entire tenure as a field operative, I never once faced a crisis this formidable, and certainly can't say I would have done so with the aplomb and competence you've demonstrated thus far." Amen, Mr. Jones. While it's a shame to see Cate Archer so frequently overlooked for more well-known woman characters, it's not entirely surprising. After all, No One Lives Forever itself has been somewhat lost to the sands of time—thanks to a quagmire of corporate acquisitions, the game is out of distribution and therefore difficult to purchase and play today. It's not available through digital retailers like Steam or GOG.com, and according to Activision's Dan Amrich, it's not even entirely clear who owns the rights to the series. The only ways you can play it are if you're lucky enough to still have your original PC discs or if you're willing to buy a used copy someplace like Half.com or eBay. For a variety of reasons, I have a hard time imagining No One Lives Forever getting made today. It's too bad more people can't easily revisit No One Lives Forever. In addition to being a heck of a lot of fun to play, the game provides an eminently worthwhile touchstone for our current-day discussion of video games and gender representation. All of the scenes I've referenced here were written with intention—rather than imagine a fictional 1960s where men and women co-existed harmoniously, creative director Craig Hubbard and his team at Monolith decided to explore the way things really were, albeit in an entertainingly exaggerated setting. I don't get the sense that they made No One Lives Forever as a feminist manifesto or anything, and the game certainly isn't some bastion of political correctness. Most every race (including Americans and Brits) is portrayed as a ridiculous caricature, there are more than enough lowbrow fat jokes, and I'm sure some would complain about Archer's cleavage-revealing jumpsuit. (I'm more offended by how fugly it is than how revealing it is, but that's a separate conversation. Fortunately, she dresses much more sensibly, and stylishly, in the sequel.) In directly approaching the gender inequalities of the 1960s, Monolith simply chose to explore the interesting conflicts inherent to an interesting time period and in so doing, made their game more interesting. (What a concept!) For a variety of reasons, I have a hard time imagining No One Lives Forever getting made today. It embraces its more ridiculous aspects with a joie de vivre almost unheard of in the gritty, realism-obsessed realm of modern action games. It's a spy game in which you spend a good amount of time actually doing spy stuff, not just shooting people. Its design is challenging and idiosyncratic, an at-times punishing stealth game that opts for simulation above scripted action, sometimes to a fault. The writing is smart and self-indulgently funny in a way I haven't seen in ages, and it stars one of the drop-dead coolest protagonists in video game history. On top of all that, it somehow manages to be both a mainstream action game and a lengthy parable about workplace sexism and women's liberation. Of No One Lives Forever's many uncommon attributes, surely that is the rarest, and worthy of celebration. To contact the author of this post, write to kirk@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @kirkhamilton.