All Topics Gaming older than one year ago

#drugs Ah, Easy Rider. The film that depicted the rambling adventures of motorbike drug dealers through the American South, Southwest and West. The film's production and film itself were heavily laced with marijuana and LSD. More »

#toys McFarlane toys has released images of their eights series of Halo action figures, due in June. Continuing a pleasant trend, some are all-new figures, including ones from Halo: ODST. More »

#onlyinjapan Yuichiro "Jienotsu" Nagashima likes to dress up. He also likes to pummel the crap out of people. More »

#realtimeworlds APB, a game that can best be described as a massively-multiplayer Grand Theft Auto, is currently in beta testing. One of those testers has been kind enough to pass along some proper, in-game screenshots of the experience. More »

#ruhroh Kara Petrich, a mother in Washington State, thought she was buying DS game Petz: Monkeyz House. The box said Petz: Monkeyz House. The cartridge did, too. The game itself was another type of monkey business altogether. More »

Larry Hryb's Xbox Live account compromised.

#ds That DSi XL thinks it's so smug, with its big screens and its enormous stylus. What it needs is to be taken down a peg or two. Have its guts ripped out, let the internet feast on its insides. More »

#gallery Mai Shiranui, from The King of Fighters series, wears a skimpy costume. She's a video game character. She can pull it off. But how does a real lady wear Mai's outfit? More »

Filed under: Mac, PC, Meta (about Joystiq) By the time you read this, the inaugural PAX East will be nothing but a cherished memory. However, that wasn't the only big event which occurred in the world of PC gaming this past week. Here's a handful of the biggest stories from the last seven days:

Exclusive Features

• Reviews: We give our final verdicts for Dragon Age Origins - Awakening and Gratuitous Space Battles - The Order.
• Boot Disk: Our retro game feature looks at the original Black and White.
• All You Need To Know: We give you the 411 on the upcoming Western shooter Lead and Gold.
• Freeware Friday: Our popular look at free PC games checks out 10 Second War.

As we told you earlier tonight, Nintendo is ramping up for the launch of the DSi in Korea. When the system hits on April 15th, Nexon is goign to be there with Maple Story DS on the same day. Not just that, but a special DSi branded for Maple Story is also going [...]

James “Harvey James” Harvey created 4 shirts to honor Cave Story. Well, 4 shirt designs I should say. These shirts are never going to be produced, as Pixel, the creator of Cave Story, rejected the designs. At least we get to see what could have been.

Start shopping here (Apply code PAXEAST842 at checkout)

#breaking Larry Hryb, Director of Programming for Microsoft's Xbox LIVE online gaming network, has had his Xbox LIVE profile hacked. More »

It's been nearly five years since Dark Energy Digital began work on the water physics-based action-adventure game Hydrophobia. In that time, the developer has shown approximately nobody the game -- heck, before I heard about the game heading to Xbox Live Arcade last summer, there hadn't been a lick of info on it in nearly nine months. But with this week's announcement of the game's XBLA exclusivity (and subsequent playability at PAX East), Joystiq was offered its first chance to play the title this morning. I'm happy to report that ... it's pretty good!

Alright, so, while Hydrophobia probably isn't going to be taking top spots on my 2010 GOTY list, I could certainly see it making an appearance on my "best of XBLA" list this year. The demo immediately made me think of playing Shadow Complex at last year's E3 -- it doesn't quite look like what you'd expect from XBLA, and the developers made sure to repeatedly affirm the game's "AAA quality" throughout my hands-on earlier this morning. Whether guiding the game's main character, Kate, through platforming areas or underwater, the gameplay itself felt like a solid base for what could be a very interesting (six-hour-ish) experience.

Though the original Uncharted was a well paced and cleverly written experience, it wasn't without its share of largely inoffensive faults. For instance, the game's stealth aspects weren't well publicized to the player, leaving Nathan Drake's instant kill abilities unused for most playthroughs. The game's main antagonist, Navarro, wasn't really demonized in the first half of the game. There were also small plot omissions -- like, for instance, how did Elena and Drake get to their plane after the exciting conclusion of Chapter 3?

Naughty Dog recently rectified these three issues during a presentation at PAX East by creating a new, "third-and-a-half" chapter for Uncharted, in which Elena and Drake had to sneak onto an airstrip filled with Navarro's goons, and escape unharmed. With a little help from the audience, the Naughty Dog developers in attendance were able to create a framework for the new chapter, and even bestowed it with yet another clever moniker: "Strip Search."

#sony Ever since it launched in 2006, one of the neater features of the PlayStation 3 has been its ability to run operating systems other than its own. Like Linux. Next month, however, the console will ditch that compatibility. More »

It's rare for a company to announce a firmware update that removes functionality from a product, but that's exactly what Sony is doing with the upcoming release of PS3 firmware update 3.21 on April 1st. The rarely utilized, but nonetheless useful, ability to install another operating system (Linux) on the PS3 will be removed in the upcoming system software revision, a feature that was already removed in the PS3 Slim. SCEA's Patrick Seybold explains that the removal of said functionality is necessary "due to security concerns ... [and] will help ensure that PS3 owners will continue to have access to the broad range of gaming and entertainment content from SCE and its content partners on a more secure system."

This move may be a response to recent claims that the PS3 has been "hacked." The language used in Seybold's post reminds us of another Sony platform that's been plagued by rampant piracy: the PSP. While the move seems to be a preventative measure on Sony's part, the early response to the removal of Linux support has been passionately negative. Undoubtedly, there will be few that will be genuinely inconvenienced by this decision. However, the rest of us have good reason for some dread: who can look forward to the prospect of downloading and installing a firmware update that offers no added functionality?

[Thanks to everyone that sent this in!]

DICE informed us at PAX East that it will continue to support its hit title Battlefield: Bad Company 2 with patching -- however, one thing it won't "fix" is players accidentally picking up kits from corpses when trying to activate M-COM stations in rush mode. With millions of copies sold so far, the kit kerfuffle is a problem we've consistently heard and experienced. Little did we know that there's been a remedy to the issue all along, as Bad Company 2 producer Gordon Van Dyke told us that players can press the M-COM activation button early. He expressed that BC2 players should spread the word.

It turns out that if players hold the M-COM activation button (example: the B button on Xbox 360) before the prompt displays, they'll be able to initiate (or deactivate) the station once in range. This avoids the frustration of picking up kits off the stacks of bodies that inevitably pile up next to the boxes. It's a rather simple solution to one of the most frustrating elements in the excellent multiplayer shooter.

A rose-tinted look back at the major games in the hallowed strategy series.

A rose-tinted look back at the major games in the hallowed strategy series.

Firmware disables "Install Other OS" system feature available in all pre-slim models.

As we reported last week, Hank Chien is the new Donkey Kong world champion. That’s quite a surprise victory, seeing as how we’ve never heard of this guy, but we knew all about Billy Mitchell and Steve Wiebe. Now that Chien has gotten into the spotlight, he’s enjoying it! Check out a [...]

This new commercial for Style Savvy was shown during Nickelodeon’s Kids’ Choice Awards. I think the Nickelodeon aspect will become clear as soon as you see it.