It’s that time of year again: when digital distribution companies declare war on your wallet.

Basically, this is the time of year when all the digital distribution platforms offer dirt-cheap prices on many games both old and new. If you’re a gamer on a tight budget, this is your Boxing Day, except you don’t have to wait in line or fight off an old lady for a toaster oven. The deals change every day, so if you see something you like, get it now.

The Steam Holiday Sale is probably the biggest one out there. Right now you can get Portal 2 for $13, or the entire Telltale Sam & Max series for 75% off. Not to be outdone, Good Old Games currently has 50% off most of their titles, so if you want some awesome older games for cheap, head over there.

So, how fast will Steam’s servers crash due to the massive amount of downloading? I’m betting on about ten minutes.

Hotel Dusk: Room 215 is an adventure game that’s so hard-boiled you could serve it with a side of toast.

Set in the ’70s, you are Kyle Hyde: a disgruntled salesman who works for a company called “Red Crown.” Three years ago, Hyde was a detective for the LA police department who was forced to confront his former partner, Bradley, for doing…something; the game doesn’t really tell you at first. Since Hyde blows a hole in his chest, I’m assuming Bradley either killed his girlfriend or stole his Star Trek DVDs, both very heinous crimes. Afterwards, he left the police force and joined up with Red Crown as a salesman with a weird side job: He gets paid to find lost items. I’m not sure someone could make a living off finding lost keys; it sounds like something his boss said when Hyde asked for his performance review.

Anyways, he’s ordered to drive to Hotel Dusk, a crappy hotel on the outskirts of Los Angeles, to find a mysterious box. When he arrives, he starts discovering clues that rekindle his detective instincts, and starts delving into the building’s shady past.

When Kyle heard that Bradley lied about liking The Walking Dead,
Kyle didn’t take it so well.

OK, so the game’s story sounds like every single detective cliché put in a blender with the music video for “Take on Me,” but it’s much better than that, honest. I can’t reveal too much, it being a mystery story and all, but I can say that it’s a surprisingly well-written tale based off of a very worn-out genre. The conversations between the characters feel natural and appropriate for the time period; they call a gun a “piece” and money “scratch.” It amazes me that this is a Japanese game, because most of the time, Japan’s view on America is not very accurate (*cough*Metal Wolf Chaos*cough*). Yeah, it dances along cliché, but it’s done so straight faced and so well that it doesn’t matter.

The characters really shine through in this game. Kyle starts off as your standard rough-bitter detective guy; he drinks scotch, he monologues whenever he has a moment alone, and he drops one-liners like Marlon Brando if he had fortune cookie papers taped to the brim of his hat. But the game goes further and really builds up his hopes and fears, which all nicely wrap around his main goal: finding out why Bradley betrayed him all those years ago. Without going into spoilers, all of the characters have intricate back-stories and compelling reasons to be at that hotel. My favorite one is Melissa, a little girl who runs away from her neglective father, who at first sweeps the “worst brat” awards. But she grows into a mature young lady who should be referenced in design textbooks under “how to make children characters.”

Kyle Hyde’s dating tips: You find the hottest girls
walking on a highway alone.

If nothing else, Hotel Dusk gets points for originality in its use of the DS hardware. The puzzles are basically unique exercises in what you can do with the DS screens, like looking on the back of a jigsaw puzzle by closing and opening the DS, or using the stylus to pick a lock. It’s pretty cool and very satisfying when you figure the puzzles out, which can make or break an adventure game. The game also switches between the walking view and an investigative view, where you can move the scene around and check items at your own pace, and it feels very intuitive.

Sometimes the game will give you information that you need to remember, so Kyle provides you with his notebook, in which you can draw penises record important dates or secret codes.

Here’s the big problem with the game: It’s a graphic novel with puzzles. “Well, isn’t that what an adventure game is?” No, shut up. I’m doing the review here, not you. Go sit in the corner and think about what you did.

The problem is that there’s so much text that half of your game will be hitting the “next” button until either the character is done talking, or your eyes start to bleed. Remember those puzzles I was talking about before? Those are two of the maybe five puzzles that require actual skill to complete; everything else is chatting. Kyle uncovers some evidence, you confront somebody, and they spew out their life story like they’re trying to pitch it as a movie to you.

But Kyle does look like a bad-ass detective
version of me, so I’ll let it slide.

Another complaint I have is that the game is a harsh mistress. I’m going to put this in bold so it sticks: SAVE THE GAME OFTEN. Like, after every conversation, if you can. If you mess up certain puzzles, or say the wrong thing to certain guests, they’ll refuse to talk to you and the game will be over, forcing you to reload your last save. Here’s the worst part: The dialogue can’t be skipped, meaning you’ll have to spend another goddamn hour listening to that annoying brat whine about how drunk her dad is until you want to drop kick her into the nearest chimney.

But despite those problems (believe me, there are a lot of problems), I really like Hotel Dusk. It’s the same reason I like Harvest Moon: It’s one of those games that you play at a slower pace, to mix it up after shooting a group of terrorists in another brown-gray “realistic” game. It’s sort of like an omelet; it’s got well-cooked ham and delectable cheese, but some asshole left some shell pieces in there. And I hate shell pieces in my eggs. But you eat around them because your girlfriend made it for you. And apart from the occasional crunch that has you contemplate homicide, it’s actually quite good.

What, nobody else has had that problem? Bollocks.

To recap, a pre-release version of Minecraft 1.8 was “leaked” to the ‘net, where anybody could play the next version of the game if they copied the leaked files into their game directory. To which Notch, the creator of Minecraft, responded: “Ooh, looks like 1.8 has leaked, not that I’d ever admit that.  Be careful when installing software you don’t trust though.” Then he asked for everyone to report any bugs they found.

For those of you who don’t follow game news, that’s not the response you’d expect from a developer after their product finds its way onto the Internet. Usually, the response is something like “Oh Christ what happened? I don’t care, put DRM on everything!”

Now the patch is officially released, and players are getting their first taste of the Adventure Update, which adds more content such as sprinting, guarding, and a leveling system that rewards the player for exploration. The Minecraft world now automatically generates towns and strongholds, but they’re always empty and it’s extremely buggy. There have been at least three times where either a stronghold has spawned over a ravine, meaning if I take the wrong door, I’m skydiving into a pool of lava, or the towns look like they were built by redneck monkeys.

Not only that, new creatures have been added to the game: The Silverfish, The Cave Spider, and the Enderman, which is now the creepiest thing in videogames. It’ll probably surpass the Creepers on my list of “things I don’t want to find in a dark alley ever.” Endermen look like they were co-designed by Stephen King and H.P. Lovecraft, and they’re basically harmless guys who just walk around and tidy up the place. That is until you look directly at them, at which point their mouth opens and they shake uncontrollably. As soon as you look away, they teleport right in front of you and start attacking you. Maybe it’s just very sensitive about its skin condition.

A full list of the updated features can be found here, and I can be found on Minecraft, re-lapsing into my addiction with the game.

Sources: Minecraft Wiki, The World of Notch, Game Bandits

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…

OK, maybe not far, far away, because it’s exactly like this one. I think it’s in New Jersey somewhere. You know what? Screw it. You all know what Portal is. How couldn’t you? It was voted our favorite game of all time, and it was also heralded as the greatest game ever made, as if it came with a free phone call to God. I’m not going to dance around the issue like a bunch of grizzly bears after finding Red Riding Hood’s bloated corpse: If you don’t know what Portal is, stop what you’re doing right now and just go play it. Yes. Right now. OK, after you’re done checking Facebook. Fine, after you walk the dog, but right after that, play the damn game.

So, for those of you who haven’t been enlightened: In Portal 2, you return as everyone’s favorite Latino mute orange jumpsuit-wearing protagonist, Chell, after being in cryogenic stasis for a long time after Portal 1 (an exact date is never given, but when the computer repeats “9-9-9-9-9-9-9″ when talking about years, suffice it to say you’ve missed a few birthdays). You are awoken by a bumbling rogue personality sphere named Wheatly, who wants you to find the portal gun and help him escape Aperture Science laboratories. This eventually leads to GLaDOS being re-awoken by flipping on a bunch of switches (this somehow brings her back to life despite being at ground zero of a catastrophic system failiure and explosion, but whatever) and she decides that the best way to exact revenge is to plop you back into the testing chambers. But this time, GLaDOS is out for blood.

Oh yeah, she remembers that time you killed her like it just happened yesterday (which it sort of did for her, being recently dead and all). Her dialogue is like a combination of a physics professor, a computer, and the world’s most passive-aggressive housewife. She insults Chell at every twist and turn, but she does it in such a roundabout and off-tone way that you can’t help but laugh. And the best part is that she’s not the only funny character there. I’m not going to spoil it, but suffice it to say that GLaDOS is just the appetizer in the main course of hilarity.

Well, there’s no funny way to say this: Portal 2 is better-written and funnier than the original. No lie. I remember playing through the original and chuckling through the cake references and the overtly robotic tone GLaDOS took with regular human problems, but in this game I was laughing uproariously at every little quip. I was actually looking forward to the dialogue more than the puzzles, and, in fact, that’s what kept me going through the harder puzzles, knowing that either GLaDOS or somebody else would be waiting on the other side to make a snide joke at my expense.

Portal’s gameplay can be explained by asking one question: How many times can you give the middle finger to gravity? The answer: However many times you want. Placing and jumping between the two portals is still the main part of the game, with players having to combine their ingenuity with physics to get from point A to point B. This might sound boring to anybody who hasn’t played it, but let me tell you, falling down three stories to use the momentum to portal jump and fly happily through the air like a mute female Superman is more fun than any shooter I’ve ever played. It’s challenging, while still being fun enough so it’s accessible to anybody.

But for the experienced portal jumper, there are several new toys to play with, such as shimmering walls of light that you can redirect as walkways or shields, disintegration lasers, “faith plates” (or as I like to call them: Tony Hawk plates), as well as several different colors of scientific goop that can make you bounce, run faster, and place portals on any surface. All of these items work together to make the tests both interesting and challenging; I imagine if these products were on the market, it would make a prison break look like a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Honestly, science has never been this much fun since grade five, when I tested the effects of fire on a thermal nuclear reactor. Incidentally, I live in Saskatchewan now.

OK, I know how bad this looks. I’m gushing over the game like it was a high school football captain that just asked me out to the prom—but I’m not ready to put out till I’m married, dammit! The game is very well designed, from the environments, to the characters, to the sound design; but it’s not all great. In fact, there are quite a few things that bother me.

To players of the first game, the first few levels are a joke, and the punchline is that they’re almost exactly the same puzzles you did before! I’m serious, they’re copy/pasted from the first game, and after that they’re still relatively easy when compared to Portal 1. Yes, we know about momentum. That’s great Valve; I think every grade school-er in the country could do these. The game just isn’t challenging; once you get the hang of portal jumping, most of the puzzles can be practically breezed through, even with the new gadgets. It’s a good thing that there’s going to be a challenge mode released, cause otherwise I’m going to be left with a serious case of puzzle blue balls.

Oh, and the game is short. Just like that sentence. While it’s good that the game never overstayed its welcome, even with the fantastic co-op mode, it barely is enough for its $50 price tag. Maybe this could have been saved up for The Orange Box 3 or something. Speaking of that, what happened to the whole thing about Portal’s universe and Half-Life’s universe being connected? Where did that plot line go?

OK, the last problem is a little odd to talk about, so whether or not this is something that should be mentioned, I’m not sure. Here’s the thing: I really loved Portal 1, mostly because that while it was funny, it was dark. You had to laugh, to escape the niggling fear in your mind that you are this crazy AI’s little toy monkey, and it couldn’t care less about your well being. The hidden messages you found off the beaten path were from other kindred spirits, warning you that GLaDOS was going to barbeque your ass. But the new support characters completely subvert that, taking the game from unnerving dark humor to clean pristine “wacky” humor that, while delivering the same laughs, just seems to exist more to create Internet memes than to actually deliver an artistic product. It all strikes me as very cynical; it sounds like Eric Wowpow didn’t think that lightning could strike twice, so they opted to go for the more general humor rather than the atmosphere of the first game. I think this is a discussion for another day, however.

In spite of all this, I’m going to say what we’re all thinking: Portal 2 is the most fun you can have on your PC till someone invents a way that it can transform into a laser-firing sexbot with Bill Nye’s voice. The game is fun, the characters are still great, and overall Valve did try their best in bringing Portal to the AAA market. While it has some flaws, it’s still a testament to the level of artistic direction games need.

Having said that, I think it’s time that we all agree that the next time someone shouts “the cake is a lie,” we need to punch them in the kidney. It’s the only way they’ll learn.

Seriously, it’s not funny anymore. Stop it. Also, if someone shouts “Science!” as a response to something stupid, punch them in the kidney, too. Actually, people who like Jersey Shore, Call of Duty: Black Ops, or anybody named Paul all deserve a punch in the kidney. I don’t know why I’d punch the last group of people; at this point I’m pretty sure I’d have gone mad with power.

Incidentally, if anybody knows Stephen Harper, punch him in the kidney, too. Why? Cause I’m pretty sure you’d hurt your hand, as he is an android. Prove me wrong.

To celebrate this most joyous day, we’re giving you a unique peek behind the screen. We’re publishing—for the first time ever—selections from an e-mail thread that GC newcomer Jillian Dingwall started on the official staff mailing list, asking how the GameCola staff came together here, from all corners of the U.S. as well as Canada, England, and Scotland, for the sole purpose of talking about our favorite Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney couples.

Yes, we’re looking at GameCola origin stories today. I didn’t realize before compiling this article how many of them involved physical pain. Enjoy!

Michael Ridgaway (reviewer and author of “Quantum Geek“): Paul will tell you that Vangie and I started when we met Matt Gardner, and he turned us on to writing for the site. The truth is that Paul kidnapped us when I was 13, and he’s been making us write for him ever since. Considering we only post once or twice a month, he’s not a very good jailer.

Nathaniel Hoover (editor, YouTube administrator, comic artist, reviewer, podcaster, and author of “Flash Flood“): I was enjoying a two-month span of absolute boredom at my old job—an educational publishing house that had just about run out of things to publish—and I’d started writing reviews for GameFAQs to fill the time. I must have accidentally made a joke in one of my reviews, because Paul kicked down the door to my house in the middle of the night, flanked by two heavily armed goons, and politely asked if I had any interest in joining the staff. I’ve been alternating between helpfully contributing to the site and trying to take it over/destroy it ever since.

Artist’s rendering by Eric Regan.

Jeff Day (author of “Gamera Obscura“): How did I get involved in GameCola? Umm…hmmm… Well, I first became relatively involved when I asked if my site could become an affiliate with GameCola…then it was all a blur. I believe I was lured onto Paul’s casting couch…then another blur…then I was writing about a Popeye game for the Super Famicom. Huh? Where am I?

Elizabeth Medina-Gray (editor): I was friends with Matt and Paul, and I’d written a couple of reviews for GameCola and submitted fanart and fanfiction and things like that. When I started working on an adventure game (testgame), Paul convinced me to join the staff and write a monthly article about it. And then I started dating Paul and that was a million years ago and he won’t let me leeeeeeeeave! (I kid.)

While I don’t actually write the monthly testgame article anymore, I love being part of the GC staff and editing and secretly controlling the entire operation by whispering subliminal messages to Paul while he sleeps. What?!

Kevin Leacock (web developer and occasional blogger): I went to high school with Paul. One day, he decided that he wanted to start some kind of online gaming newsletter. I think it was really just to impress me. (It failed, but that doesn’t stop Paul!) He got the worst writers from our school and started e-mailing everybody who looked at him this newsletter. It grew and grew as his writers churned out articles on a monthly basis, and eventually it couldn’t all fit in an e-mail anymore. So Paul comes to me, a qualified web designer, and asks for a favour—he asks me to write a column for him.

I told him again and again to bugger off, but in the end, he swapped me a few sexual favours and I just couldn’t say no. Meanwhile, he opens up FrontPage and makes GameCola a “website” himself. This lasted a little while, with me submitting articles on a when-I-can-be-bothered basis. At some point I made some GameCola forums, and spent a lot of my time running those (we actually had readers and commenters back then), so I stopped writing articles. Finally, in 2009, in return for loaning Paul my hamster, Paul agreed to a full site redesign, so I spent a year working on a new site with Jeddy and Colin’s assistance.

Obviously, Paul still has my hamster, because I was voted Staff Member of the Year for 2010. I HAVEN’T FORGOTTEN, PAUL. I WANT THAT HAMSTER BACK.

Colin Greenhalgh (staff artist): Paul and I actually met in the test tube womb at the Meglocorp military medical compound in the coldest part of Alaska. We were spawned from the same genes, those of Professor Henry Von Richtenbach, the smartest man alive. During this process, the compound was attacked by a secret Russian military organization, and our mitosis was unable to fully complete before the scientists attempted to rescue us from the compound.

Artist’s rendering by Eric Regan.

That’s right: Paul and I are the same person. What he feels, I feel. What he thinks, I think. When the compound was attacked, we were split up. Separated by time and distance we grew apart, but then he created GameCola and INSTANTLY, I knew of its existence. I started to search the World Wide Web from end to end. In 2005, I found the site.

Under the pen name of “Colin Greenhalgh,” I started writing bad articles for the site. I slowly grew out of touch with writing but used my position to work my way into the heart of GameCola. I now have COMPLETE control over the visuals of the site, and there’s nothing Paul can do to stop me! AHAHAHAAHAHAH! You shall know my revenge as swift implementation of classy, colorful art. BWA-HA, BWA-HA.

Alex Jedraszczak (podcast host): Paul made a post on a game development community on LiveJournal. Back when people actually used LiveJournal. And, I responded! At the time, I had a lame website that I kept while I was in community college, and Paul was impressed that I could actually generate content at all. When I came on, I ended up getting Staff Member of the Year just because I wrote a review every single month. On time. Sadly, that doesn’t cut it anymore, now that I have to compete with people who are actually funny, so I’ve been demoted to Captain Podcast. But, I also have one of those “Real Life” things now, so I don’t have as much time as I did while I was going to school. Oh, for those salad days…!

Christian Porter (reviewer, blogger, podcaster, author of “Top of the Heap,” and creator of “Speak American“): I started with GameCola back in 2007, after my wife saw posts that Paul made spamming various LiveJournal groups with requests for writers for a videogame humor site. She told me it would be good to write for GC and then land a paying gig with another gaming blog like Kotaku in the future. A pretty grandiose plan, considering that her husband’s sense of humor is an unmarketable blend of references to genitals and swearing, but it sounded fun.

I’ve never met any GC staff members in person, although I do own a collection of RealDolls that I had custom built to replicate the whole GameCola team. I had to get a second job just to cover the additional beard fees, but it pays off when cuddletime comes around and I get to dive into a sea of simulated man-whiskers, or at night, when I shoo my wife out to sleep on the floor of my kid’s room and I change them into their jammies, and we all sleep like babies. Goodnight, Paul. Goodnight, Matt. Goodnight, Nathaniel…

Kate Jay (author and illustrator of “The Gates of Life“): I first heard about GameCola from my co-worker, Matt Gardner, and started reading articles, even wrote a review or two as a guest. Then Paul got in touch with me, saying that they were updating the story and style of their choose-your-own-adventure story “The Gates of Life,” and did I want to help with the art? Truth be told, I tried reading the first few chapters, had no idea what was going on, and wasn’t sure I’d be able to understand enough of the storyline to create illustrations that fit the content. Still, we worked on character designs and background histories so that we had a place to start. Then they showed me the new chapters, and they were pretty much over 9,000 times better than the original ones (no offense, guys!).

From Episode 5 of the new “The Gates of Life.”

I’ve since become in charge of both writing and illustration, and I hope to further improve upon the series as a whole, garner some new fans, and maybe get some guest writers in, too. It’s been a pleasure working with and talking to the entire GC staff!

Nikola Suprak (reviewer and author of “Cleverbot Considers” and “Games That Secretly Suck“): Hooray, I’m no longer the newbie of the group! That means I don’t have to carry around the GameCola tablet of shame anymore, right?

I can’t rap or dance, and Paul said we aren’t allowed to use fairytale formats anymore. So you get a mix of haikus and limericks!

There once was a lad named Suprak
Who wrote his reviews in a shack
They were written for free
And read by like three
And ignored en masse by GameFAQs

Although I won gifts.
Once in a great while, that is.
Happiness and pie.

Then along came a man named Paul
Who read my review on Brawl
And out of the blue
Proclaimed “Come join my crew
And hearken my clarion call!”

I quickly agreed.
Although arguments are hard
When you’re at knife point.

And to let you know what’s in store
My fortunes can be seen in a soar
I’ve moved out of my rubble
As my pay is now double
And my readers are now counted as four!

David Donovan (reviewer and author of “The Miner’s Journal“): I’d always thought about writing reviews/top ten lists for GameFAQs but never got around to it. I finally sat down and submitted a top ten list, and within about five minutes of it being posted I received an e-mail from Paul about GameCola. This leads me to believe that Paul had been silently watching me for some time, possibly years, subtly manipulating the circumstances of my life to lead me into his cold, unyielding embrace. I rebel against his unholy love by always meaning to contribute more often but ultimately only getting out one article a month. My defiance gives me a sense of dignity and self, which proves invaluable when Paul makes me accurately recite all the comebacks to the insults from the Monkey Island sword fights as punishment.

Justin Luschinski (reviewer, blogger, and author of “Moddus Operandi“): Justin Luschinski is an enigma wrapped up in a mystery glazed with a conundrum and packed inside an episode of Lost. It’s not known where he came from, or who would dare let this monstrosity into this world, but it’s been said that he was in the test tube right next to Paul Franzen, and was created by compiling different genes from the most successful people in the world to create the greatest human being alive. Everybody from Gabe Newell to Bruce Willis and even the MMA fighter George St. Pierre was spliced into his DNA. This was to give him a chance when he’s leading the human resistance against the cyborg-pandas in the great war of 2012.

This experiment, of course, failed.

Artist’s rendering by Eric Regan.

Paul went on to eventually come to terms with his dark upbringing and create the best videogame website known to man, while Justin disappeared into the frozen wastes of Canada. Years later, Paul apparently found a letter in the mail that only had the words “Let me join” and several horribly Photoshopped pictures of that time when he drop-kicked a toddler into a trash compactor while wearing a Charlie Chaplain bowling hat and a t-shirt denying the Holocaust. For some reason, Paul believed him, and now Justin writes funny reviews with what little free time he has, though he’s been known to run away to live in the woods for weeks on end. Apparently, he can still play videogames during those times, somehow. It’s not known what consoles polar bears own, but on some cold nights, it’s said that sometimes you can hear Justin crying in the wind. Crying because Sega will never end the Shenmue series properly…

Oh, and he’s also a dumb university student who sort of thinks he’s funny.

Side note: Jillian’s response, upon learning that GameCola is a site built of lies, torture, kidnappings, cyborg-pandas, and genetic engineering? “I’m definitely gonna like it here!”

Happy b-day, GC.

* Any and all birthday gifts will be added to GameCola’s advertising fund. Help us buy more fans!

You can view/listen to/ignore the complete video series on the GameCola YouTube channel. Below are the first three videos, so you can laugh at the predictions we made for gaming in 2009, which I’m still not convinced ever happened. The podcast is over an hour long, broken into nine videos; if you make it all the way to video #6, we’ll give you a cat.

Paul Franzen, Christian Porter, Justin Luschinski, and Alex Jedraszczak talk about, like, videogames, and stuff. Without a single real topic in mind, the podcast turned out far more cohesive and with far fewer awkward pauses and off-topic excursions than all of the previous podcasts combined. What did we end up talking about?!

• Stuff
• I think videogames were mentioned
• Three-dimensional graphics are just a visual trick

We also read listener comments LIVE on this pre-recorded podcast! Yes, folks, people actually do listen to the podcast. And, we listen to people who listen to the podcast! You, too, can have your grammar be made fun of on the podcast if you just comment on this article, or e-mail us! Until then, you’ll just have to listen to comments from other people being read LIVE on the Internet.

GC Podcast #34

Game(s) needed: Any Steamsource game, such as Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2, or Portal. The Left 4 Dead games don’t count.

Today, we’re gonna go back in time. A time when men were courageous, women were masculine and didn’t have as many rights as they have today, and when a younger, college-less me wrote his first article for GameCola, about Pirates vs Vikings vs Knights.

I was originally going to check out another mod, but then I learned that this game is not only officially supported by Steam, but they’ve added a new class! So I figured, what better way to reintroduce my column with one of my favorite mods available out on Steam?

For the uninitiated, Pirates vs Vikings vs Knights is a neat little Steamsource mod where you choose either the seaworthy and rustic pirates, the berserker murdering PETA nightmare Vikings, or the solidly dignified and somewhat Catholic knights.  That’s it. What’s that? You want a story? Go read a book while you sit in a scented bath while you wash your vagina, you pussy! This is a multiplayer mod, about three deadly groups of people from three very different time periods, so the story is about as essential as a turtle in a House of Commons meeting.

No, the main attraction of this mod is the gameplay, which is balls-to-the-wall stabby sword wahey fun. PVK switches out the shooting aspect from Half-Life for some good old-fashioned head-decapitating melee combat. Instead of holding down the fire button until everything in front of you breaks, the game has you slicing, stabbing, and blocking in various different ways, and even lets you charge up your swings for maximum carnage. Each class even gets their own special attack meter, which you fill the better you do in combat. The Captain can fire an explosive shot, some of the Vikings can do a special charge move, and one of the pirates can stick his sword out and fly through the air like he snorted a line of Tinkerbell’s fairy dust.

Every character class has melee weapons, with a few of them having any sort of ranged weapon, and for the most part, the big muscular barbarian is going to do more damage then the small rogue armed with a crossbow, despite what logic might tell you. Apparently, the developers look at historical accuracy the same way a ten year old boy would, because I seem to remember the crossbow and black powder rifle ending the age of knights and traditional warfare; instead, anybody primarily using a ranged weapon is basically a free meal ticket, so they might as well glaze themselves in honey so that the Vikings will have an easier time roasting their heads.

The pirates, Vikings, and knights aren’t like your standard red vs. blue thing—they are all different and unique in their own special way. You can play as the Vikings if you like raping and pillaging various countrysides, or the pirates if you like raping and pillaging various countrysides on a boat, or maybe the Knights if you like raping and pillaging various countrysides with Jesus! Oh history, how I love you so.

The Knights have the Heavy Knight, the self-righteous collection of plate mail and hypocrisy who is pretty much the game’s tank, and the Assassin, a rogue who uses his crossbow, longbow, and stylish goatee to punish opponents from afar. Because the Assassin is the only primary ranged class in the game, most of your time is going to be spent decorating the walls with your missed arrows, and running away like a little bitch. Granted, when these two work together,  they have a distinct advantage over the other classes, which is hilarious since they get their asses kicked all the time by the other forces in history.

A knight is about to educate a viking on his theory of constant motion.

The Vikings come to the fight with  the Beserker, a mighty barrel-chested bearded man who goes into battle wearing only a loincloth to hide his massive testicles; the Huscrl, the one with the foresight to go into battle in full armor and carrying a shield; and the Gestir, the spear-toting cousin of the Huscrl.

The Beserker comes from the school of thought that armor is for girly men, and he blocks incoming arrows with his massive beard, which apparently has the properties of kevlar, because he’s got some of the most armor and health in the game. Not only that, but his special attack is screaming at the moon, which makes him fly off into a rage of dancing blades and decapatated limbs. There isn’t much to say about the Huscrl, really—he’s got a large two handed weapon, a sword & shield combo for when you want to hit something, and throwing axes for when you feel your opponent needs a laugh. The axes are hard to aim, you only get six of them, and they do so little damage that you might as well rush headfirst with your battleaxe anyways.

Finally, we come to my favorite swashbuckling, grog-guzzling, women-stealing pirates! They are the only ones with black powder rifles! They also have the lowest health, paradoxically, but we’ll get into that later.

The pirate classes are the Captain and the Suicide Bomber. Yes, that last one is pretty much true. I know the game might trick you by labeling the latter class as the “Skirmisher”, but the only skirmish going on is between kegs of gunpowder and limbs. The “Skirmisher” has a cutlass that does no damage, several flintlock pistols that do no damage, and a huge keg of black powder on his back that does ALL DAMAGE.  Despite carrying this on his back, he’s also the fastest class in the game, and the weakest. If you so much as sneeze on him, his bones will disintegrate before he hits the ground. This also means that your strategy is to throw your powder keg at your opponents, then dance around them and poke them with your sword like a fat kid on the playground.

The Pirates also have access to the Captain, who is equiped with a better cutlass, a blunderbuss that is basically a single-fire shotgun,  and an attack parrot! Yes, polly doesn’t want a cracker, he wants your fucking eyeballs. The best part is that, in the options menu, you can name your parrot, and thus begins the adventures of Muffins, THE DESTROYER.

YES MUFFINS YES! TASTE THE BLOOD OF THE PHONIES! THE TIME OF REKONING HAS COME! DESTROY! DESTROY!

As for the game itself, well, it’s damn fun. Not just fun, but DAMN fun. Each class is unique and special in its own way, the combat is fun and engaging, and other than a few balance issues, this might just be on my top ten list of favorite game mods. Even the ranged combat is fufilling, once you get the hang of it. If you’ve got Steam and a copy of Half Life 2, you have no reason not to check this out.  It’s a fun game, if a little unbalanced, and attacking vikings with your parrot will never get old. Which reminds me, let’s check on how Muffins is doing.

MUFFINS! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

You can check out the PVK website here. This mod is avaliable on Steam in the Tools tab.

Electronic Arts confirmed that The Old Republic won’t be released until the 2012 fiscal year.

Well, it turns out that The Old Republic is impressive—most impressive—but it’s not a Jedi yet. The MMO set in Bioware’s Knights of the Old Republic universe has been delayed until some time in the 2012 fiscal year.

At the recent Credit Suisse 2010 Technology Conference, EA CFO Eric Brown told press that the official target date is sometime in EA’s 2012 fiscal year. That sounds like a long time away, but in reality it means sometime from April 2011 onward. It still sucks, though, because in January, EA already announced that the game was delayed till spring 2011. Though, as the game is the most expensive thing that EA has ever made, I don’t blame them for taking their time.

The comparisons with WoW have been so numerous that it’s practically Bioware’s destiny to tangle with the wildly successful MMO. Considering that World of Warcraft has had years to add content and perfect itself, it’s pretty damn hard for any upstart MMO to compete on the same level; it’s like trying to attack a fully grown lion with a celery stick. Nevertheless, considering the game’s rumored production cost of 300 million, EA isn’t going to release it until it’s able to at least make its money back.

I’m still excited for it. While World of Warcraft is awesome, riding around on a horse beating up hairy dwarves is an average Sunday for me, so it gets pretty boring. I want a change of pace. I want to ride around on a space horse beating up hairy space dwarves….IN SPACE.

Turns out people really will buy a new EyeToy. Huh.

Yes, everyone’s favorite hands-free controller has had marvelous success, selling 2.5 million units, and only during its first few days on the market.

“We are thrilled about the consumer response to Kinect,” said Microsoft exec Don Mattrick, ”and are working hard with our retail and manufacturing partners to expedite production and shipments of Kinect to restock shelves as fast as possible to keep up with demand.”

“With sales already exceeding two and a half million units in just 25 days, we are on pace to reach our forecast of five million units sold to consumers this holiday.”

Those are some pretty impressive numbers. If I were an investor, I’d either be satisfying my girlfriend (and maybe my wife, too), or crying into a pillow. Considering that nothing interesting has been released for it, apart from Dance Central, I’m honestly surprised it did so well. Then again, considering how much marketing they did without even showing people the actual games, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised people bought into it.

However, Sony’s no slouch when it comes to sales, as they’ve reportedly moved 4.1 million copies of their own motion control system, the PlayStation Move. But that was over the course of the last few months, as the Move came out on Sept. 15, and the Kinect’s sold 2.5 million in half the time, so PlayStation publishing execs should hold off on the hookers and blow until the holiday season is over.

Personally, while I am interested in the technology, I’m going to wait until something interesting comes out, as I really don’t need another version of Wii Sports, even if it was designed by the guys who made Perfect Dark. And the fact still remains that without any way to actually touch or connect with any sort of real object, motion controls are very limited in the experiences they can create, and so far nobody’s willing to try anything cool with it.

I will say I’m interested in Kinectimals. I would love a new pet tiger, as my current one, Ling-Ling, has a bad habit of sharpening her claws on the living room drapes. And my bed. And the plants. And the family hamster.

Sources: Kotaku, Eurogamer