Here we have another one of Coin-Op TV’s installments of some E3 coverage with Hailey Bright (Busy Gamer’s Gamette of the Year 2009). Hailey talks with Toys For Bob’s executive producer Jeff Poffenbarger about Skylanders Spyro’s Adventure. Check it out!

Thanks to Coin-Op TV for sharing this video from E3 with us, you can check out more of their E3 coverage here at www.coin-op.tv.

Wii U? Wii Me. Well it’s pronounced (Wii-Yoo), and it’s the first peek at the impressive new hardware going along with Nintendo’s new Wii U game system. The console is not nearly as impressive looking as the controller, but this bad boy above clearly makes up for it. Looks like we have a nice view screen for ‘game inventory’ type stuff along with the regular buttons and whatnots. Wonder if we will be able to play mini games on it too? Who knows, maybe even with the console powered off. More on this as we get it!

E3 UPDATE: June 08, 2011
(Gamespot) – As with the Wii, the controller is the heart of the Wii U. And it’s large–think somewhat smaller than an iPad and considerably bigger than the original Sony PSP. The reps on hand noted that the controller was designed to offer a new way for players to interact with the console, games, and other players. They understood that, much like the first time we saw the Wii Remote, the only way to really understand was to show us.

On the face of the controller you’ll find a 6.2-inch touch screen (Nintendo declined to say whether it was multitouch capable). A stylus slides out of the controller for use on the touch screen (which makes us think it’s based on resistive touch technology). During the E3 2011 press conference, Nintendo showed the stylus being used for fairly complex sketching, which shows us how detailed the touch screen will be. The matte screen has great viewing angles and offers vivid colors and brightness, making it ideal for use by two people at the same time at very off angles. The pixel density seems to be high enough to put it on par with modern smartphones. Nintendo stated that it’s not high definition, but the resolution appears to be substantially higher than the 3DS screen. We’re guessing the screen is under 1280×720 and above 640×480.

Nintendo eschewed a complex controller with the Wii by limiting the number of buttons. By contrast, the Wii U controller practically bristles with them. Two circle pads, similar to those found on the portable Nintendo 3DS, flank either side of the screen. A D pad resides on the left; A, B, X, and Y buttons are on the right; two shoulder buttons are on the top; two trigger-like buttons are on the bottom; and the usual array of start, select, and home buttons line the bottom. But it doesn’t end there.

Like the Wii, the Wii U controller also features motion controls that should be on par with the Wii MotionPlus. Although you won’t be using it like a Wii Remote, as its bulk and unwieldiness prevent it from mimicking sports equipment like bats and rackets.

A front-facing camera sits at the top of the controller, ostensibly for use in taking pictures and possibly for augmented-reality capabilities. At its E3 2011 press conference, Nintendo revealed that the controller will have video chat capabilities. Built-in speakers also play back sound, and the controller also features a headphone jack.

The controller is capable of playing games even if the TV is being used at the moment for something else, like watching shows. It’s portable in a sense, but only within wireless reach of the main console, because all of the controller’s visuals are generated by the console and then streamed to the controller.

One of the key features of Wii U is its backward compatibility with Wii controllers (remotes, nunchuks, and more). Many of the cases we saw involved anywhere from two to four remotes, with and without nunchuks, and one player on the Wii U controller. Players on Wii Remotes would generally get split-screen gameplay on the TV, while the player on the Wii U controller would primarily use the screen on the controller. Most of the games we saw would give the player on the Wii U controller extra information, or an entirely different perspective paired with vastly different controls. In general, the player with the Wii U controller was pit against the players with Wii Remotes.

We get uber delighted when our past Gamettes are out covering gaming events, especially the major ones like this interview over at E3 this year in Los Angeles. Take a peek at Coin-Op Tv’s Hailey Bright (our Gamette of the Year 2009) interviewing Radical Entertainment’s Chris Ansell for Prototype 2. Good stuff, and keep your eye out for the return of the BG Crew at SDCC in July 2011. Pending court dates of course (just kidding, we’ve been good this year).

Thanks to Coin-Op TV for sharing this video from E3 with us, you can check out more of their E3 coverage here at www.coin-op.tv.

Since most of us here at BG come from a heavy pen and paper Dungeons and Dragons background this was a title that peaked our interests a few months back. This franchise is well overdue for a revamped series that is accessible in multi and single player scenarios. Atari and Wizards of the Coast seem to know this but can they bring our dice rolling fantasy to our console/PC and do it justice? Lets see…

The Bad
I want to end this on a good note so just let me get the bad stuff out of the way. I’m not going to fill you in on a story background, this is a ‘hack and slash’ game. The story seems sort of back seat to you runnning around looting barrells and killing goblins. We all could expect this from an ‘arcade’ type game. So don’t expect heavy dialogue (just heavy dwarf grunting), and missions like – go kill these guys here, go destroy that mine shaft there, escort this fella over here so he can make you a new shiny sword..etc. Very lack luster, but like I said, I don’t care much about that here, what I wanna know is if it’s fun for me, or worth my time to invest the 1200 microsoft points to satisfy my RPG fix on our occasional sober weekend nights.

Im a stickler on customization of my character, I will spend much too much time making my toon. Like hours if I can’t get it right. Outfitting and gear are a big part of RPGs for me. That was my first big dissappointment here. You get to pick one of four basic D&D Class/Races. Elf rogue, Dwarf cleric, Human warrior, and a Halfling mage (with corn rolls). No hair or face options, just what you see is what you get. They could of given us a few Male/Female options atleast. Big minus for me…

This was suppost to be a transfer of 4th edition rules right? Well at 3rd level I seem to have acquired 145hp (If I remember I should have around 25hp). The weapon damages are all accurate why wouldnt the players HP reflect that also? Maybe too many dots or since it’s not turn based combat they decided to give us a nice cushiony buff. Probably for the better, but still… D&D nerds will notice their numbers not adding up.

Button mashing. The combat is lots of hitting ‘X’ over and over with the slight special attack thrown in there…somewhat repetitive. It does work, and well we all kinda figured we’d be spamming and spamming to see how much we ‘crit’ for, or how much our ‘backstab’ hits at. It would of been nice to include some tatics here and there, and maybe multi-ing it with friends could lead to flanking mobs, or kiting strategies to handle some of the swarms of mobs that are hurled at you. Respawns of critters seems to be fast also, for those who are into blind ‘XP farming’.

The Good
Once you get past the button spamming and getting over the “I wanted to play a female dwarf to see if she could have a beard”, this game has some nice appeal for the BusyGamer. Quick runs with your friends, levelling up and searching for new gear I will never get tired of. The weapon and armor merchants have random items that are level based, they do change between saves it sorta seems, since I was frequently returning to vendors to see what they may have added. And these items reflect well on your character, better swords glow, bows have fire around them that do ‘fire damage’, and armors change your appearance accordingly. This is do like. When I upgrade my weapon, it should make me feel ‘upgraded’. I see that instead of adding character options, they just added a ton of different loot.

Blood and stuff. The fighting animations are very stylized. Nice blood splats and poision clouds from deadly arrows were a nice touch. Fireballs look like fireballs. Ice spells keep you rooted with ice shards coming out of the ground. It’s good to see the power of these smaller DL’d games be used, and they didn’t skimp on the effects.

The level maps are pretty big. I found myself really looking at the UI map of the cave areas to see what spots or treasure chests I may have missed. They are well marked with quest givers, vendors, and objectives so you wont get lost and caught back in a horde of respawned baddies.

Levelling seems adequately rewarding, not too fast, actually seemed a bit slow, but over all will make the game a good 12hrs or so to finish. Which is pretty fat for a DL.

The Overall
Good if you want a quick jump in and loot some mobs and try to get some upgraded gear. Good if you like a game that you could probably have fun with over XBLive with your buddies while drinking a beer at the same time. Good if you like attention to detail with some nice casting and magic item effects, that reflect well on your playing style, and good if you understand this is not a Dragon Age, or even Baulders Gate caliber of game. Bad if you want good story, indepth character customization, combat tactics, turn based strategy, or a game that requires you to think a whole lot more than past your ‘X’ button. It’s a quick ‘hack and slash let’s see how fast we can dps this mofo down’ type of game, and that’s exactly what I think WOTC and Atari set out to do.

Gazillion Entertainment held an event in San Francisco this week and revealed a few tidbits on what we can be expecting from the new Marvel Universe MMO. “Free to Play” seemed a bit of a suprise to us, but with all the other power MMO’s (besides WoW) heading to free subscriptions (relying on in-game “microtransactions” only) this seems to be the safest route of attack for a game that has to compete with other hero games like NC Soft’s City of Heroes…anyhow here’s a few confirmed goodies.

What we know for sure:

Marvel Universe will be free-to-play, and was planned that way from its inception.

It’s being developed by Secret Identity, a sub-group of Gazillion that was formed in late 2009 specifically to build Marvel Universe.

You can play as Marvel characters, and other players can be the same hero as you at the same time, which the devs believe creates “lots of problems and lots of opportunities.???

You won’t have to choose only one character, but will be able to play as all of them.

Some of the characters you will play as are: Captain America, Iron Man, Wolverine, Hulk, Thor, Spiderman, Nova, and Squirrel Girl.

Doctor Doom will be the game’s main villain (at least at launch).

You will play through existing stories that are told in the comic books.

The game world exists within the canon Marvel Universe–this is not an alternate reality scenario.

Marvel Universe is being made primarily for adults (as opposed to Gazillion’s other kid-focused Marvel MMO, Marvel Superhero Squad). They want to target core gamers first, and also make it accessible for everyone else.

So does that mean I can’t make my own super hot hero chick that flys around in lingerie saving lives and kicking ass? Looks like it. /sadface

[Source]

Careful where you toss your grenades troopers, this has to be one of the ‘unluckiest’ throws we’ve seen. Those aint gifts that Santa would be dropping down a chimney thats for sure.

Be Your Own Souvenir! from blablabLAB on Vimeo.

This “Be Your Own Souvenir!” was a project run in January in the Catalan capital that let people do their best super pose and have a 3D printer recreate their likeness into a small little figure.

The computer takes pictures with three Kinect cameras while plugged into a network of programs that could take the person’s image in 3D, convert it into the necessary code and then have the 3D printer spit you out as your limited action figure.

I would want to get myself done in a regular “cool guy” version, a limited “I was riding on the back of a girl and fell and broke my femur” version, and the ultra rare “drunk as a skunk with my pants on the ground” version.

Attend any of our BG functions and you could get to see one of these three in person. No really.

[Source]

. . . Don't take the babes away!

‘ChinaJoy’, China’s country’s premiere gaming show, has been rolling out the girls in skimpy outfits to promote games for years. But lately it seems the game’s sections continue to move farther into the background, and the ChinaJoy booth ladies are moving more and more to the forefront (but hey were ok with that, arn’t we?).

This 2011 ChinaJoy event is going to be tightening regulations regarding booth babes and game companies. Reports from event organizers say things will be stricter about the ‘booth companions’ outfits and the booths themselves. ChinaJoy is actually not the first gaming show to toughen up over the amount of skin on display.

Los Angeles E3 cracked down on their “booth babes”, totally banning them from the event in 2007. E3 2006 was sporting rock bands, fire juggling, and ladies in skimpy clothes. Although booth babes did return to E3 in 2009, somewhat in a tamer display of power.

China has also recently cracked down on sex in online game advertisements, issuing notices that allows officials to force game companies to ‘delete content in online game promotions that is deemed inappropriate’ (what what what??). This not only bans the use of sex, but also gambling and violence in game promotion.

[Source]

Developers behind the sexy adventure game BoneTown have now released a trailer for their new project BoneCraft.

BoneCraft is a fantasy/sci-fi game parodying the MMORPG powerhouse World of Warcraft / Starcraft. The game is also noted to contain the likeness of elf and orc ‘women/men of the night’, and wild adventuring drunken space marines. We have no premise of what the other gameplay will be just yet, but you can bet your +2 Vorpal Long Sword it will be 18+ content.

And just know that you were warned now, before you get to the ‘elf toe licking’ scene. NSFW.

Unwelcome gets unwelcomed by his WoW Guild

World of Warcraft player “Unwelcome” suffered an accident that permanently robbed him of his hearing this recent year. Upon finding himself feeling abit alienated and shunned by his friends in real life, he also found out his Warcraft buddies to be a shunning experience.

Some games require a certain level of hearing, nowadays with subititles implemented for many story plot lines, most are not the case. Warcraft is very “deaf-friendly” overflowing with text-filled quests that don’t require aural cues to complete.

In Unwelcome’s case, his raiding guild was not so understanding:

“So i came back to wow. Now I’ve been playing with my guild for about 4 years. We have all become close friends. We have even done some rl (real life) guild parties. I explained why i have been off for so long to the guild. I explained my condition. Everyone was pretty supportive for about 5 minutes.

Do you know what the first question i got from my guild leader was? He asked me if i could still use (popular voice chat program) vent (Ventrilo). I told him no, but tried to assure him it wouldn’t be a problem as i usually research the fights beforehand and use dbm (deadly boss mods – a popular dungeon helper mod).

He tells me that i can’t raid unless i have vent. Guild rules and all. I was pissed. After a huge blow out between us i get removed from the guild and put on ignore.”

Since the happening, there has been many respondents to Unwelcome’s original post and most have clearly stated that there are plenty of ways to get around having a deaf raiding party member.

Unwelcome being quite despondent, later realized the World of Warcraft community at large rallied behind him with supportive words. Some did argue that his guild leader was within his rights to ban Unwelcome from raiding, arguments have been well-spoken and without malice.

Not quitting his World of Warcraft experience, Unwelcome has decided to make something of his own guild called ‘That Canadian Guild’ started by him and his brother on the Llane server in the aftermath of the incident.