Jon posted a great little rant against Sony’s PR, and Phil Harrison in particular, in yesterday’s MCP. If only he had waited a few more hours, he would have had this fodder to add to the fire. In the latest of a long line of colossal fuckups, the new PSP commercials jump into the realm of ephebophilia, depicting a grown man seemingly examining a teenager’s penis at a bank of urinals. Except, as it turns out, the penis is a PSP! Oh ho ho. Good job, Sony, topping your racist billboards with an even more hot-button issue. I’ve got nothing clever to say. Fuck you, Sony; these ads remind me of the dork in grade school repeating all his dad’s dirty jokes to score some friend points on the playground. Except no one laughs and someone puts a dirt clod in his lunchbox.
The folks over at Rooster Teeth have announced that their long-running machinima series Red vs. Blue will come to an end with their 100th episode. I thought the series was good idle fun when it first came out, but the stratospheric ambitions of the twisted storylines kinda lost me — or my interest, rather — so I haven’t really been in on the whole community. What’s the prevailing opinion? Is it good the series is on its final lap, or does the team still have juice left in their borrowed story? Note that Rooster Teeth are not shutting their doors; it’s just Red vs. Blue getting the boot.
Gamebrink has a review of the PSP game that finally scored big in Japan: Monster Hunter Portable 2nd. This is the title that topped a million units sold in just a few short weeks of release; for a PSP game, that’s pretty damn near unheard of. The first offering on the PSP, Monster Hunter Freedom, didn’t do as hot in North America as it did in the far East (or near West), but the review makes it sound as if it’s worth checking out for fans of RPGs unfamiliar with the franchise. Y’know, if you can find time between everything else that’ll be hitting your penis this year.
A pair of ex-RedOctane developers have settled a lawsuit with Activision, resulting in the two signing an agreement not to work on any guitar, synth, or drum rhythm games for a year; they also are prohibited from making any hardware peripherals for the Guitar Hero series for six months, and can not display the demo of the rhythm game they were pitching to publishers. Don’t feel bad for the little guy, though: they misappropriated Activision’s proprietary information when they left to form their own development house. They probably have mustaches, too, which they are prone to twirl.
The IndyGamer blog kindly points us in the direction of Prominence, an upcoming sci-fi point-and-click adventure game from independent studio Digital Media Workshop. Take a gander around the gallery and the features; the story kind of reminds me of a cross between System Shock 2 and Bioforge, a combination which instantly breaks the critical portions of my brain and reduces me to helpless anticipation.
Finally, a brief torture regimen for those of you into that kind of thing.