Columns

I'm sure nobody has missed this, but I felt compelled to write something after reading a recent comment on the front page of the site. Pushing my tolerance to the brink, I'm ashamed to bring you David the Grammar Nerd, Volume 3: Thinking Before You Speak.

While I covered basic Netiquette in the previous installment, I think it's important to continue. I'm not sure why, but when people are on the internet, they feel some sort of license to say whatever they feel like, whenever they feel like it.

We've seen this come up recently with Xbox Live explaining how they determine what is or is not acceptable on the service. Stephen Totilo posted an interesting interview on Kotaku explaining how new vernacular had to be monitored constantly and for context. But sometimes, people can be both plain hurtful, or to quote Mike Bracken, "retarted" (yes, full of irony).

With the September release date inching ever closer, Atlus is starting to really dole out the goodies when it comes to their PlayStation Portable re-imagining of Shin Megami Tensei: Persona. Earlier in the week we saw website updates (with more promised) and now we've got a lengthy video highlighting how the game has been upgraded, what's been added, and how the experience has been streamlined from the original PlayStation version from the '90s.

I don't own an iPhone. I have an aversion to Apple products for some reason—but if I did plunk down my hard earned cash for something from Steve Jobs' technological empire, it would be the iPhone—the gaming possibilities alone make me lust after one.

I was fairly skeptical when it was announced that Dexter was coming to the iPhone as a game. I'd love to see a Dexter title (the show is great and certainly lends itself to becoming a game), but I didn't think this was the right platform. Give it to me on the Xbox 360 or PS3, and I'd be happy.

It's still too soon to tell if this adaptation will work or not, but these four new screenshots (courtesy of Games Press and available after the break) have me optimistic. The title looks like a PSP game at this stage—which is better than I expected. No firm release date has been set, but Dexter should be available for purchase later this year.

Dead Space was one of the better games of last year—an atmospheric blending of Event Horizon and Alien that gave me hope that maybe game developers can still come up with compelling original properties instead of just churning out sequels.

The game's already spawned a comic book, an anime movie tie-in, a sequel game and a on-rails offshoot title for the Wii—all this on top of the feature film version we’ve been hearing about for some time now. 

It looked like the big screen adaptation of Castlevania was basically dead in the water not too long ago. Director Sylvain White was gone and all signs pointed to the film spending a lot of time languishing in development Hell. Turns out that's not the case at all, actually, as Bloody-Disgusting has got the exclusive scoop that director James Wan (one of the co-creators of the Saw franchise) has come on board the project as a director and co-writer.

If you didn't get a chance to play Resident Evil 5 on your Playstation 3 or Xbox 360 earlier this year, but you own a gaming rig, then this may be good news for you.

Capcom has announced the official release date for Resident Evil 5 on the PC. North America can start slaughtering zombies on September 15, while Europe has to wait three extra days.

The big selling point for this PC version comes in the form of 3D. Gamers will be able to experience all that Resident Evil 5 has to offer in Nvidia's GeForce 3D technology. Infected people will come right out of the screen, apparently. Even the cutscenes will be presented in 3D. The only bad news here is that you'll have to shell out for some of those fancy 3D PC glasses separately.

If you're curious about this whole 3D thing, you can download a benchmark and tech demo for the game here (you'll need all the 3D vision hardware for this to work, naturally…). If you don't have a 3D ready video card, you can still play the game in the standard mode.

Bad news for anyone hoping for another trip to the underwater utopia of Rapture this year. Shacknews is reporting that BioShock 2 has been delayed. The title has shifted from its original November 3rd street date to a much more vague "sometime in the first six months of 2010".

Once the wave of initial disappointment wears off, this might actually be for the best. Releasing Bioshock 2 in November makes sense (it's out in time for the holiday rush), but as we all know that's a window where there are too many games and not enough time to play them all. Moving it to sometime after the holidays (or even to June of 2010) gives gamers a triple A title to look forward to during what is the biggest gaming drought period of the year, and it pretty much guarantees that Take Two will sell more units as there's not much in the way of competition. Metal Gear Solid 3 and Grand Theft Auto IV released in a similar fashion and both did well. There's no reason to expect that BioShock 2 won't reap the same benefits.

That being said, it's still a bummer. I was really looking forward to duking it out with Big Sisters this November…

One of the survival horror games coming out this year that intrigues me is Dead Space: Extraction. This Wii-only title is a tie-in to Electronic Arts' hit release from late last year. Basically, it's a survival horror game set on a spaceship overrun by hideous alien monsters.

The Wii version is a stand-alone game, and it differs from its big brothers in that it's an on-rails shooter. I've said before that I'm a little disappointed by the on-rails part, but after watching this new four minute video, I'm more interested in this game than I was before.

This latest video, hosted by guys from developer Visceral Studios, highlights how the Wii controls will work in the game. It appears as though a lot of thought has been given to ensuring that players won't be just swinging their Wii-mote around like a spastic kid after a sugar bender. This is good news.

My only real concern with the controls is the idea of having to turn the Wii-mote at a 90 degree angle to use the secondary fire mode of each weapons. Seems to me that using a weapon with your wrist turned like that for an extended length of time would probably be annoying (and uncomfortable), but other than that, this title seems to be shaping up nicely.

I'll be honest…I thought this was an April Fools Day gag when I first read it.

Lars Von Trier's horror flick Antichrist inspired a lot of response at Cannes. There was that whole press conference shouting match between the filmmaker and journalists, the outrage over the sexual violence and gore, and Willem Dafoe's naked butt. Now, there's news that Antichrist might be making the craziest jump of all—to the land of videogames.

/Film brings news that developer Zentropa is planning to bring Von Trier's dark vision to PCs everywhere. The game will be retitled Eden (the name of the cabin Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg retreat to after the death of their child) and is reportedly a first person adventure title being described as a "nightmare version of Myst" (at least that's what everyone's assuming based on a translation…). Eden won't follow the narrative of the film, but Willem Dafoe will be back to voice his character from the movie. One can only hope that the gruesome imagery from the film makes it into the final version of the game.

I posted a developer's demo for Konami's Saw videogame a few days ago, but it didn't have any actual combat footage in it. Here's a different clip from GameTrailers, complete with a look at how you'll be fighting your way through and a very unpleasant surprise.

Gamers will be able to decide if they want to live or die this October.