The Escapist might be getting old but our news sure isn’t, so grab yourself a slice of birthday cake, and enjoy this round up of the week’s top stories.
Nintendo Gets to the Heart of the Matter
Nintendo USA President Reggie Fils-Aime claimed that gamers were ‘unimaginative’ for bashing the Wii Vitality Sensor, saying: “Until you have that software, it’s tough to understand. If I told you that you would be standing on an oversized bathroom scale, and having fun doing it, you probably would have said, ‘Reggie, I don’t get it.’ And yet here we are with the balance board arguably as the third largest development platform across the globe.”
He sort of has a point, but to be fair to the balance board, it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to think of all kinds of use for it. A machine that does nothing but take your pulse? That’s a little bit more challenging. (link)
OH MY GOD, YOU KILLED SHEPHERD!
BioWare has revealed this week that if you don’t treat Commander Shepherd right in Mass Effect 2, he’ll die, like, forever. Along with this bombshell was a sneaky peek at one of the game’s missions, where Shepherd and Co. hunt down a man-fish assassin, as well as a new interrupt system that will let you push someone through a very, very high window at least once.
For me, this is just the icing on the cake that is Mass Effect 2. Well, that and the very impressive moustache of Parrish Ley, the lead cinematic animator. (link)
Miyamoto Kicks Down Zelda Timeline Sandcastle
Shigeru Miyamoto knows how to be cruel. It’s a simple story, ocarinahero10, a dedicated Legend of Zelda fan who thought he’d figured out the links between the games, sent a treatise to Nintendo to see what they thought of it. Rather than just ignoring him, which would have been a kindness in this situation, series producer Eiji Aounuma, who was speaking on behalf of a shadowy cabal of Nintendo high-ups, including Miyamoto, sent the fan a reply saying that actually, there wasn’t a time line at all and all his work had been for naught.
That hasn’t stopped ocarinahero10 though, he’s started a petition to force Nintendo to take him seriously, a tactic guaranteed to bear fruit. (link)
Modern Warfare 2 Ultra-Special Edition is Ridiculous
We all know the drill when it comes to special editions right? An art book, maybe a soundtrack CD, and usually a code to download a special multiplayer map – that’s pretty much the industry standard. Well Activison and Infinity Ward decided that the industry standard needed something more, and so for their super special edition of Modern Warfare 2, they’ve included a whole other game, the original Call of Duty, and a pair of night vision goggles. Which is a great deal, because what you need more than anything when staring for hours at a large backlit screen is a device that amplifies ambient light. (link)
Teen in Running for Idiot of the Year Award
It’s not often that I find myself going to the special mental vault I have to keep memes in and pull out the ‘Picard Face Palm JPEG’ to view with my mind’s eye, but sometimes there’s nothing else you can do. A young World of Warcraft player from Indiana announced in the game’s chat that he planned to hijack a plane and hurt as many people as possible, which is the equivalent of shouting it out in a large park where all the park rangers know your name and address. The teenage buffoon tried to claim that his account had been hacked, but that didn’t stop the FBI from seizing his computer, which means that at least this story kind of has a happy ending. (link)
