I must admit I’d like to tear the monitor apart for what I’ve seen. I’m not responsible if you will tear your monitor apart after seeing this.

Original on the left, Photoshopped on the right. Looks like some korean guy did a sexed up version of Faith, upsetting her original creator, Tom Farrer, who declared: “It was just kind of depressing that someone thinks it would be better if Faith was a 12-year-old with a boob job”. I was shocked too because I saw innovation and unconventionality crushed between the hands of a hotaku. Poor Faith…

EDIT: Taking a second look, I edited the previous two pics and this wouldn’t look bad either: [Link].

I played Crysis in the last few days and it was really good, until the final boss. Moving around and surviving with the nanosuit skills was fun but the bosses were mere fps action and it killed the mood. I’d have liked a boss like Reflux from Rayman 3, despite the time it takes to kill him . Nomad and Psycho were also good characters so expect to see them in some comics.

I’ve been browsing around for remakes lately and I found a Metroid 2 remake in indie development but luckily this time we’ve got a tech demo. Project AM2R has a site and a blog to keep you updated but the fun part it’s that some people have already speedrunned and completed 100% the demo on easy, normal, hard and pacifist. Well, actually i found the background musics a bit boring but it’s up to you to judge.

Yep, I turned 22 last week and now I’m here to show you what I got:

Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn, Left4Dead, a Yoshi action figure and a T-Shirt (not pictured because it’s already in the laundry), plus, I got 100€ from my grandparents, which I partially used to buy Unreal Tournament 3 for 12€ on steam. Hooray for the weekend deals!

On to the big news: GDC is finally ongoing and I got a couple of interesting videos. The new Legend of Zelda and the Cryengine 3 Demo!

While I appreciate the new Zelda they’re working on (but I wanted Metroid Dread, really), I’m also worried for the hardware needed to run the hypothetical Crysis 2 on my PC. Should I start saving for a couple of nVidia GeForce [insert random alphanumeric string here] to SLI them? I hope Crytek optimises this version of their engine for low-end computers too, because the performances were too different between pc with just a few hardware differences (example: 8800gt and dual core 3.0 GHz -> unplayable, 8800 gt and core2duo 3.0 GHz -> Holy Mother of Realistic Debris!). Also, saving Wii Channels on SD cards is now possible. Go update your Wii.

Another good news is the release of The Battle For Wesnoth version 1.6! A lot of time and a shovel of release candidates has passed since 1.4 but this time we’ve got many more animations, more fantastic portraits and a whole new campaign, so you may want to check out the homepage of the game. To be honest, there’s still a lot of work to do with translations, portraits and unit animations but for a free, open-source, game the amusement you can get from is incomparable.

Lately, I was wondering about Samus. I mean, we all know she’s female, right? But how did you know? I’m pretty sure everybody of you first saw her in her genderless-suit. I’m really curious to know how you discovered the truth so I opened a new poll. As for the previous poll, people thinks Lara’s breast are fine as they are now. Achievement Unlocked: Champagne glass!

Time flies. It’s been almost a month after the last post already. I know I should have written this earlier but I had some exams to pass. I passed every one of them by the way and only three remain in October but I have the whole summer to work on those, between some Mario Galaxy and Metroid.

You may have read the latest news on game announcements at E3 but let’s recap, just to make sure what we’re going to buy and why.

Microsoft

Probably the most embarrassing conference I’ve seen, even worse than that Nintendo conference from 2009. Let’s face it, Kinect (Natal’s new name) is just an improved Eye toy and what they showed was a more multimedia box than a gaming console. Movies, Facebook integration and sport events aren’t that interactive when it comes to actually play. And about Skittles, I’m sure that the little girl enjoyed that part as much as we didn’t. You’ll see my comic on this later. There’s at least a really good news in the release of a new 360 model, with built-in wi-fi and larger HDD.

EA

Nice stuff, really. I’ve got a couple of friends overly excited about Battlefield Vietnam just for the lack of Carl Gustav and seeing Dead Space 2 in action with more quick time events was really a bang. I’ve been re-playing Dead Space lately after EA’s big sale on steam and I perfectly recall the adrenaline i felt the first time a drag tentacle grabbed me.

Crysis 2 is nearing completion and it has been optimized for slower machines while faster machines will star in Need for Speed: Hot pursuit featuring multiplayer police car chase.

Ubisoft

Ubisoft presented a handful of very interesting games, starting with Child of Eden, from Tetsuya Mizuguchi, and ending with Rayman Origins, passing by Assassin’s creed brotherhood. They also showed a new non-video-game with plastic guns and laser sensors that allows you to battle in your living room or set up checkpoint runs. I don’t know if you have ever seen this but in the 90’s there was a game called “Laser combat” sold with 2 guns and 2 chest sensors. It’s pretty much the same, even in the look.

The most interesting product is probably the UBIart Framework: a new in-house development engine. I hope they release it as free someday, like the Unreal Engine or Quake Engine.

Nintendo

Everyone that wasn’t expecting anything big after the leaks in the months before E3 got terribly shocked. Nintendo threw on screen a huge number of games for both DS, Wii and the new 3DS, finally unveiled. Goldeneye, Donkey Kong Country Returns, Kid Icarus Uprising, Zelda Skyward Sword, Kirby Epic Yarn, Golden Sun: Dark Dawn and many more. I really can’t figure out precisely how much I’m going to spend within the next year.

My bad, I couldn’t see the Nintendo 3DS in action as you don’t get the 3d effect from videos but from what I’ve read it works like a window on another world. The black border around the screen helps to isolate the 3d image from the rest and your brain reads it independently. It sounds awkward but it’s possible if your eyes aren’t too close or too far from the screen and not tilted. With the amount of games revealed and awaiting us within the end of Nintendo’s financial year (March 2011) there’s no doubt they owned the show this year.

Sony

Sony’s motion control, named Move, is finally priced at $49.99 and supported by good games and not only tech demos, like Sorcery and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11. Media molecule’s Alex Evans unveiled a little more of Little Big Planet 2 and how it will be a platform for games and not just a platform game. I admire their intents but I feel that the LBP franchise would work way better on PC with external applications and a supportive community. Just look at how far Garry’s Mod made it.

The big bomb came with Gabe Newell, announcing that portal 2 will be released on PS3 too. I wonder what made him change his mind considering that coding forPS3 is actually time-consuming, despite his previous statements were jokes or not. Medal of Honor and Dead Space 2 went on the screens again with Dead Space Extraction as bonus playable with the PlayStation Move. The conference ended with a disturbing clown in an ambulance promoting a new Twisted Metal game.

The worst part was Kevin Butler, charging up the crowd  and mocking the products of other companies like Sony invented everything in gaming since the creation of PlayStation. That’s not something you do in front of people who probably owns every console on the market.