www.a51.org.uk

…I thought I would post a link to a youtube video of Jack Bauer interrogating Santa Claus! :p

Piracy and games aren’t always a bad combination!

I’ve been silently campaigning (hoping even) for a new Monkey Island game for years now and Telltale Games almost sneaked one out with a completely new story without me noticing.

It’s now calling itself the Tales of Monkey Island and it is being released in five episodes:

The first chapter is out now and you can download a playable demo at http://www.telltalegames.com/monkeyisland

And yes! It’s good, it’s very good! The writing is classic Monkey Island and they’ve even got the voice talent of the original Guybrush Threepwood himself – Dominic Armato. The guy with a name that sounds like tomato!

If you are a fan you won’t be disappointed.

Insult: “You fight like a dairy farmer.”
Comeback: “How appropriate. You fight like a cow.”

Anyone catching the news coming out of E3 will know that Sony and Microsoft, as well as Nintendo, all now seem to be seriously commited to providing motion control systems for their consoles.

Nintendo are pushing ahead with a new iteration of their control system called Motion Plus which is an add-on for the Wii-mote that promises more precise movement tracking.

Microsoft surprised everyone with Project Natal, a motion tracking system which requires no physical controller. It tracks your body movements and even claims to include advanced facial recognition.

Sony also launched a new motion controller dubbed (unofficially) by the internet as the PSPenis! (Well, the prototype is a stick with a big purple bulb on the end so they should have seen that one coming!) It uses the Playstation Eye for tracking and also promises tracking precision to millimetre accuracy.

As all three companies now have a motion control strategy it makes serious sense for third party developers to begin designing games based solely around motion sensing. So we could see some very different games in the near future.

Although, there is at least one guy that doesn’t seem particulary happy about this prospect…

Other great Sony news from E3 (I’m focusing on Sony because I missed the Nintendo and Microsoft press conferences!) is the announcement of Final Fantasy XIV to be released on the PS3 in 2010. Yes, that’s in the same year as Final Fantasy XIII is coming out. Also Project Trico was officially announced and named The Last Guardian. It’s the sequel to Ico and Shadow of the Colossus and it looks stunning.

EDITED 04/06/2009: I’m completely wrong of course! The Last Guardian is the prequel to Shadow of the Colossus and Shadow of the Colossus is the prequel to Ico. Thanks to LiQuidGFX for spotting the mistake.

There is also a shedload of new PSP games being released in the coming months including a new Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid: Peacewalker as well as the previously announced Little Big Planet PSP and Motorstorm Arctic Edge.

It looks like Sony are finally getting the message that Playstation owners want games and lots of them. Which is great news!

I’m not the greatest fan of reality TV but that’s a rant for another post. Nevertheless I have been forced into watching a couple of episodes of The Apprentice and I came across this mash-up by Cassetteboy the other day.

Made me chuckle!

Just heard about this next interweb phenomenon in the making… Basically, find a plain old black t-shirt on Amazon with a picture of three wolves and the moon. Then just insert this comment:

This item has wolves on it which makes it intrinsically sweet and worth 5 stars by itself, but once I tried it on, that’s when the magic happened. After checking to ensure that the shirt would properly cover my girth, I walked from my trailer to Wal-mart with the shirt on and was immediately approached by women. The women knew from the wolves on my shirt that I, like a wolf, am a mysterious loner who knows how to ‘howl at the moon’ from time to time (if you catch my drift!). The women that approached me wanted to know if I would be their boyfriend and/or give them money for something they called mehth. I told them no, because they didn’t have enough teeth, and frankly a man with a wolf-shirt shouldn’t settle for the first thing that comes to him.

The internet will then add a few hundred more comments for you, including a 2300% rise in sales of the t-shirt in question too!

Remember… Most shirts like this only contain one wolf. This shirt has three wolves, plus a moon. You are basically getting three wolves and a moon for the price on one wolf. You won’t find that deal anywhere else.

The page is here and there are about 298 five-star ratings so far!

Go wolves go! Rise up to that moon you long so much for!