“Morality challenges” are one feature that the developers talked up to us. “Say, you’ve been raped repeatedly by your father. But you’re pregnant, and your community tells you not to get an abortion. But you can’t take care of the baby, and your mother is abusive. The only game this year that will give you an achievement for making the right choice is Precious: The Video Game: Based on the Movie “Precious”: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire.”
“Oh, cool, you like video games? Well, uh, my friend just played BioShock 2. Yeah. And he liked it. Or I think he did, I can’t tell. He won’t tell me until the embargo runs out. Isn’t that cool? Yeah, it is. Yeah, just keep talking me like you think I’m cool until your cousin looks over here. Yeah, then she might think I’m hot and then she’ll tell her friends. No, that’s not the only reason I’m talking to you. What’s your name? Oh, yeah. Great. Now look excited.”
Holy shit, it’s Mass Effect 2 day! The day we’ve been waiting for since Christmas was delayed to Q1 2010. But for those of us waiting for GameFly to ship it from Antarctica, or wherever their distribution center is, you can spend some time remembering how a drunken copyeditor overlooked Mass Affect 2, how Lord Zargon ordered all space marines to grow hair, or how you’ll never get back the 7 hours of trailers you watched.
Today, we’re happy to reveal the latest trailer from BioWare: a seven-hour compilation of scenes from Mass Effect 2, including epic space battles, passionate interstellar lovemaking, and over fifty minutes of a player taking a prolonged cigarette break / phone call with a prying mother.
“Seriously, honey, this would be a really fun way for us to spend a little more time together, if you’d just take it seriously. I mean, think how nice it would be if you were really great at Rock Band. And, I think, with a lot more practice, you could be. But you’re going to need a lot more work before you get there. A lot. So… Maybe while I’m out at the bar on Sunday, you should do that.”
So Bayonetta sure has ignited a shitstorm – is it sexist? Is is embarrassing? Is Leigh Alexander going to turn back into a cyborg? All we know is that we’re happy for the androgynous Japanese girls of the world – finally, they’ll be left alone by us nerds. And we’re glad something will teach the young’uns about sex – after Will Wright ignored it for so long.
A representative for Nintendo told us, “The Nintendo DSi’s camera serves many purposes – a way to show that we’ve slightly improved the product, a feature we can add to press releases, a theoretically useful piece of technology. We never thought that it could actually be used to take photographs, but it just goes to show the ingenuity and resourcefulness of Nintendo’s fans.”
In case you missed it, Seth Schiesel of the New York Times called Dragon Age: Origins “perhaps the best electronic game yet made” today (as opposed to The Beatles: Rock Band, which he called “the most important video game yet made“). We’ve been following Dragon Age as well – the dwarven metalworker-related strike, for one – but we can’t help but wonder when Schiesel will finish his piece on “when there will be a Mad Men of videogames“.
