Capcom's Dead Rising 2 snubbed E3 earlier this year (citing swine flu concerns or something to that effect), but it's making up for that missed opportunity by showing off a veritable truckload of footage at the Tokyo Game Show. I've lost count of how many videos have been released over the past day or so, but trust me when I say it's a lot. If we were in sort of in the dark about what to expect from this zombie-slaying sequel, I think things are now illuminated.

I'm not going to post all of the videos here (because I'm lazy), but I will say you can find pretty much all of them by heading over to G4's website. They've got the original trailer, multiplayer footage (which had me wondering if I was really watching a trailer for Dead Rising 2 at first…) and all sorts of other goodies.

I am going to share one video, though—because it highlights one of the numerous new weapons players can use to kill the undead in the game. It's a combination pitchfork/shotgun, and if the idea of taking out zombies by impaling them on the tines, lifting them in the air, and delivering a buckshot coup de grace to their rotting faces doesn't make you giddy, then I'm not sure we can be friends anymore. I'm sorry, there are just certain things I expect from the people I spend time with—and appreciating the joys of shooting zombies in the face is very high on that list.

It's no secret that the Atari Jaguar was a terrible failure—one of gaming's worst. The last dud in the sordid history of Atari's Tramiel family ownership, the Jaguar followed the Lynx's underrated hardware debut in the late 1980s with an early '90s abomination of poorly designed hardware and software that barely competed against its 16-bit forebears, much less the higher-tech Neo Geo, 3DO, CD-I, Sega 32X, and Sega Saturn technologies against which the system was supposedly targeted.

So why bring up this sore spot in 2009, roughly 16 years after the Jaguar's ill-fated launch? Because as an artifact of video game history, the Jaguar speaks volumes about where we've been, where we are, and where we're going.

Do games need to be easier to attract a wider audience? Or are games too easy as it is? Where did all the hard games go? What role does culture play? Will "Autoplay" features reduce frustration or just make gamers lazier than ever? With your help, we attack these questions from all directions. Also: quick hits on Scribblenauts and Muramasa: The Demon Blade. With Chi Kong Lui, Brad Gallaway, and Tim "If You Lose at Candy Land You're Banished to the Woods" Spaeth.

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Topic and Game References:

• Gamasutra: Are Games Too Much Like Work? by Lew Pulsipher
• Scribblenauts
• Muramasa: The Demon Blade
• Sorcerian
  

Please send feedback and mailbag questions to podcast (at) gamecritics (dot) com.

Electronic Arts is really pulling out all the stops to promote Dead Space: Extraction, the on-rails Wii-exclusive follow up to last year's hit survival horror game Dead Space. This latest video showcases more interviews with the development team, a look at some of the controls, and a bit about the game's design philosophy when it comes to creating fear.

Dead Space: Extraction hits retailers next week.

No laughing matter

HIGH The Cloud Sephiroh fight.

LOW The rest of the game.

WTF Doing a William Shatner impression does not count as a "joke".

At the most recent PAX show, I was fortunate enough to spend a bit of time with a game I had been greatly anticipating: Dark Void from Washington's own Airtight Games.

Produced in conjunction with Capcom, Dark Void is an adventure game featuring aliens and jetpacks inside the Bermuda triangle. With tight transitions between air and land on top of clever vertical combat, this title is definitely one to watch—it also doesn't hurt that the people behind it are some of the same folks who worked on one of my favorite Xbox titles, Crimson Skies.

Airtight Games' president and creative director Jim Deal was kind enough to spend a few moments talking with me about this upcoming title and I'm quite glad to share what he had to say.

Not nearly as sharp as it looks

HIGH The hand-drawn artwork is incredible eye-candy.

LOW Feels empty and barren; a rough sketch of a bigger game.

WTF Did the developers honestly think that style trumps substance?

Speaking personally as an moderate observer to the spirited gender and ethics debate taking place at GameCritics.com, there's several interesting things to note. Despite one serving as a catalyst for the other, the heart of the topics raised by both Mike and Alex are tangents that don't directly conflict and intersect with one another. Both have both been accused of being "hostile" and both sides have made assumptions and generalizations about the other's underlying motivations based on "tone and tenor" and "privilege."

Boris Kodjoe (who told us all he was in Resident Evil: Afterlife via his Twitter feed a few days ago) is apparently not only an actor, but also a PR guy. Whenever news breaks about the latest movie in the series, it seems like Kodjoe's the guy telling us about it. He's a veritable renaissance man…

Kodjoe had a chat with Wilson Morales over at Black Film recently and he not only informed us of more casting news (Ali Larter is back, Prison Break's Wentworth Miller has been cast), but he also gave us our first real plot synopsis for the fourth film in the franchise (after the break).