Press Start!: That One About Snatch(er) and Leaking.
Press Start! Weekly Top 5 list chronicling the happenings in gaming in the past seven days.
The abridged week always leads to a certain funk that bookmarks both sides of it. You begin checking out prior to the Holiday, and the days that follow are (for most of us, I’d wager) a haze of recuperation, lament at the end of the Holiday, and an attempt to gain your footing again.
As such, the world of gaming news is either unremarkable, or I frankly didn’t give much of a shit. Too busy trying to burn off the impressive caloric excess while simultaneously polish off the remainder of flesh and sweets that populated my house.
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#1: Hell Yeah, BioShock Infinite E3 Demo.
The delicious irony is that one of the most exciting things to happen this week in gaming is something that I am willfully abstaining from. Gametrailers and Spike TV came together to wank off to the E3 demo that left many a gaming journalist panting. Their lungs constricting, collapsing, quivering.
They gave way to the entire spectacle, allowing gamers round the Blue Marble to check it out.
But I’m not going to.
I can’t handle such excitement, my frail nerd body beleaguered by poor sleep. Excessive caffeine. If I were to watch the demo, I’d surely collapse in a pile of fluids and rotting body mass.
So watch it for me. Do it.
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#2: Kojima Bringing Us A ‘Snatcher’ Radio Drama.
Hideo Kojima and Suda 51 are combining their wonderful post-modern forces to bring Sdatcher into the world. If you’re a geek worth his or her weight in mint copies of Chrono Trigger you have no doubt heard of Snatcher. It’s a cyber-punk glory fest that was written and directed by Kojima way back in the late 1980s. Since then unapologetic cyber-punk dorks like me have clamored for a remake. Or a re-release. Something. Stop teasing. Kojima1 Stop teasing the tip.
Instead we get this.
Sdatcher.
What is Sdatcher? It’s a fucking Snatcher radio drama. Man, only Kojima. Suda 51 is writing the pig, Kojima and directing and planning it, and Grasshopper’s Manufacture’s Akira Yamaoka will be cranking out the music.
This is beyond odd. In the world of Kojima, that means it makes perfect sense.
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#3: Download This ‘NiGHTS: Into Dreams’ Album. You swine.
Since we’re already jacking phalluses and rubbing labia and assorted pinkery to esoteric games of yore, it seems fitting to pimp out this anniversary album. Way back when Sonic Team and Yuji Naka put out good games, they unleashed NiGHTS into the world. The son of a bitch was packed with an analog controller that sat in my barely pubescent palms and glowed with glory and promise.
The game itself was a bizarre romp, filled with intoxicating visuals and a soundtrack that touched both my tits and my soul.
Over at OverClocked ReMix they’ve released an album to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the title’s release. The glory days. Just listening to the free album is enough to smash the Wayback Machine into full speed. Star Wars t-shirts and tortilla chips. Caffeinated drinks and a general lack of bathing. Comic books and action figures.
Eerily little has changed, though time has marched and I’ve slowly forgotten about this game, one of my favorites ever.
Download the album, and bask in memories percolating up to the top of your little gaming psyche.
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#4: China Now Offers Insurance For Virtual Properties.
Do you feel outstanding amounts of anxiety when contemplating the destruction of your property? I feel you. Do you feel a nauseous feeling in your little belly when thinking about someone stealing all your coin? Most importantly, are these fears tied to something in video game? Yeah, I’m talking about the straight-up non-tangible. Your Crusher Destroyer Battlefleet in EVE Online. Or uh, totally tricked out avatar in Second Life.
Or something, or something.
Well fear not, True Believers! If you live in the wondrous country of China, you can now buy yourself some virtual property insurance. Sunshine Insurance Group has decided to do all the gamers and intangible maestros of the virtual worlds a solid and offered protection against loss of your favorite mounts, and bank accounts, and lands in the various and persistently populating video game worlds.
Nice, nice. Who needs a Blizzard authenticator when you can buy actual insurance? Eh? Eh!
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#5: ‘Gears of War 3’ Leaks.
Hackers have hacked this year. Quite well! Anonymous and Lulzsec and now whatever bastards are behind the Gears of War 3 leak. Last weekend as I was busy filling my gullet with fried objects and alcoholic beverages, a seed was dropping into the desert. That seed was a torrent for a leaked version of Gears of War 3, and as you can imagine such a thing sprouted rather quickly.
Youtube videos commenced, Dude Huge commented. Understandably bummed out.
The game still has the highest number of preorders for any 360 game. Ever. Which is remarkable. I think the part that I find particularly weak sauce is having it leak into our muddy pirate streams is that it wasn’t a finalized copy. Buggy and incomplete. Half-baked. If it was the final copy, I imagine that Epic games would still be saddened that it happened two months prior to the least. But at least in that instance, the son of a bitch would have been spit-shined and finished.
Alas.
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What caught your eyes this week?