Includes first ever footage of ALIENS: Colonial Marines!

If you’ve never seen the Jace Hall Show before, you’ve been missing out one of the most insane and hilarious video game related shows to ever hit the internet. So you might as well start with the final because it’s only going to leave you wanting more.  This week, Jace visits Gearbox and Id Software in Texas to get some peeks at ALIENS: Colonial Marines, Borderlands, Doom 4, and a very special ‘live demo’ of Rage that’s not to be missed.  Plus the legendary John Carmack busts out his judo skills!

Check it out.

Inner monologue written live at Nintendo’s press conference.

Through a plastic smile the likes of which could only be hiding deep inner torment, Nintendo’s new Reggie, Cammie Dunaway. kicked off the show by introducing Shaun White Snowboarding. Though neither Mr. White nor Nintendo’s new VP of marketing were able to cope with the visibly uncomfortable control scheme and fell no less than six times in the short run, we were told we should be very impressed at how easy and accessible it apparently is compared to those crazy analog sticks that only nerds can comprehend.

Iwata then let us know that Nintendo was “changing the paradigm” and that “common sense didn’t make sense anymore” with an impressive lack of irony or embarrassment for someone who just vomited clichés into the laps of hundreds of people. But apparently Guitar Hero III’s Wii port is outselling other platforms, so clearly this is a brave new world.

After stepping through that looking glass, we struggled to re-acclimate ourselves as we were introduced to a new Animal Crossing that was almost discernible from the last one (not really). It apparently combines Miis with the classic Animal Crossing Lego-scarecrows to create something slightly more artistically reprehensible. The future certainly looks bright.

During this distraction, the real Reggie was deployed to the stage by a giant plastic tube. After throwing two terrorists through a window and jotting their names down in his “book of pain,” Reggie tore it up with all kinds of crazy bar graphs. Then he totally flipped the script and *BAM* hit us with a pie chart from nowhere.

The trailer trifecta of Star Wars: Force Unleashed, Rayman Raving Rabbids 2, and Call of Duty: World at War let us know of the many diverse ways in which the Wii is reaching new audiences with both sequels and movie licensed games. As Cammie what’s-her-name told us in a bubbly, this is precisely how Nintendo products are reaching new audiences.

The good news is that the Nintendo DS is the only “gaming dedicated” platform that will have Spore this fall. Obviously the fact that the DS can’t use MS Office makes their game much better than the PC version, despite apparently only encompassing about one-fifth of the actual game. And the blonde lady talking said “posse” and she was serious.

But the paradigm gets shiftier! New Pokemon and Grand Theft Auto! We are told the latter will use a “custom” engine, which clears up all that speculation that it will be using Unreal Engine 3. And a cookbook. Be excited for the cookbook.

Thank the heavens, Reggie returned to get us back on track with a Wii controller expansion pack! Now it does all the stuff I thought the Wii Remote was supposed to do to begin with. Or maybe it just makes the controls usable. Watching Cammie and Reggie fail miserably at some new mini games drove home just why the Wii is so accessible. Reggie called himself “the Regginator” and high-fived Cammie and all the women in the crowd threw their panties at him.

When Shigeru Miyamoto stepped off the teleporter, we knew the party was ready to begin. WiiMusic has the ability to create seemingly unlistenable kazoo noises to annoy your parents. Miyamoto proudly boasted about how their title wouldn’t alienate players the way other music games do by having “gameplay.” Instead you just push the buttons and it plays a canned melody from F-Zero. That’s right now anyone can play the saxophone, as long as they want to play some song from F-Zero!

Reggie closed the conference by letting us know that people have been yelling “Fad!” at him, though we think he may have been mishearing slightly. And that thought put a smile on my face that Cammie could be jealous of.

This blog article should be recognized as the sole opinion of the editor and does not necessarily reflect TNL’s official position on the subject.

After months of waiting, the saga finally returns.

For those unfamiliar, Red vs. Blue was a bunch of guys (and a few girls) who took the Halo series and turned it into their own virtual movie studio, developing characters and stringing along a surprisingly complex storyline over a hundred short episodes, loaded with plenty of humor. What could have gotten old fast, especially when the only visible difference between the characters is their color, was kept fresh through sharp writing and some professional quality voice acting that humbles some big studio efforts.

With all the tricks they pulled off in Halo 1 and 2, I’ve been itching to see what they can do with the Forge and the ability to record anything in Halo 3. Now the wait is almost over with the first episode of Reconstruction:

If you’re a lapsed fan who needs to catch up, a box set of the entire series complete with bonus DVD is available on their store site, along with RvB T-shirts and other assorted goodies. Even if you have all the seasons on DVD, I’d definitely recommend snagging the bonus DVD that includes Recovery One and just about everything else they recorded for Red vs. Blue that wasn’t included elsewhere. Their store is here.

While you’re there, make sure to pick up some headlight fluid.

No it's not official, but we wish it were.

In the spirit of Kojima's highly anticipated release, an anonymous poster published a short animated clip that parodies the opening sequence of Lupin the 3rd (a popular anime series for those of you scratching their heads). So what makes this something of interest of us that you'd be guaranteed to LOL? We'll let the video do the talking. 

Ok, perhaps you won't quite get the nature of this post, though the developer deserves a great deal of credit for using MS Paint (and a commercial animation program to put it altogether! Anyways, we thought that you would enjoy it whether that seemed like a logical news post (which you've probably figured out by now that GN no longer regularly spends time dishing out rehashed press releases). 

I am counting the days for MGS4; it can't come soon enough. 

The biggest game ever – or, the not-nearly-perfect perfect experience.

So Grand Theft Auto IV has officially arrived on the Xbox 360 and PS3 with all of the appropriate accoutrements. Namely, breathless news reports mentioning sex with hookers, cop killing, and the general decline and fall of western civilization. There are also the obligatory stories citing midnight madness in far-flung places like England and Australia, where evidently a couple of poor saps got beaten up for their copies of the game. Not that this ever happens in any other scenario. Ever.

What all of these fail to really discuss is the content of a game that's a cultural touchstone, giving players extraordinary freedom in an ugly, hateful environment where everyone is out to screw everyone else and grift is a way of life and death. 

In the midst of the enthusiast media falling all over itself awarding perfect 10s across the board and unprecedented sales that may even stave off EA's hostile takeover of Take-Two, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that most of us are just getting started in the mean streets of Liberty City.

Few people are bigger GTA fanboys than yours truly, having played and thoroughly enjoyed each and every title in the series since the groundbreaking GTA III. While I am enjoying so much of what the latest, next-generation version has to offer, I have been unpleasantly surprised by a few things that really should never have happened.

First of all, let's be clear – it is IMPOSSIBLE to read text messages, phone records, or anything else on your cell phone. Now, I haven't gotten very far, and I know that your cell gets upgraded as you move forward, but still. This is ridiculous. I've got a 40-inch hi-def TV, and I have to get about 3 feet away and squint just to read the incredibly small text. It's not just me and my old-man eyes, either. I've spoken with half a dozen other people who have the same complaint. How could this have been the final game design for such a crucial driver of missions and relationships?

Secondly, the map at the lower left of the screen is also incredibly small. Not only is it somewhat out of scale with what's going on on-screen (meaning you miss turns and key intersections all the time until you learn to compensate…which usually is a result of a failed mission or two), but terribly important icon markers for Pay-n-Sprays, safe houses, and other spots are indistinguishable from each other.

I have no problem saying I love GTA IV, and it is a spectacular visual feast. Driving and walking around the city is an exercise in wonder. I just can't believe that these huge problems made their way to the final game (and I can't possibly imagine how someone with an SDTV could even think about playing without losing their minds).