Hoaxing is now 'in season'

April fools has become somewhat of an Indian-Giving christmas for gamers, with developers and media alike posting updates that excite us until the cold hands of realization are able to disturb us from our blissful ignorance.

Having an undead character in WoW, I have long awaited the chance to supplement my '/dance' moves with an actual guitar. This dream was seemingly realised with Blizzard's announcement of the new 'bard' hero class for their upcoming expansion to the world that is warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King. I quickly realized that this was in-fact a hoax and as many of you most likely did, I had a few laughs. Upon thinking about it further however, I came to the conclusion that this concept was actually quite feasible in spite of the incongruity between guitar strumming metal-heads and the estbalished mythos of the Warcraft universe. Honestly, consider the possibility of being able to support your raid by churning out some uber-tunes on a harp or an epic violin, not to mention the added novelty factor inherent with being able to play music in-game.

Alas - Blizzard giveth, and Blizzard taketh away.

Similarly, upon stopping by IGN's site as part of my daily survey for interesting entertainment related news, I was greeted by a headline that induced upon its viewing, a certain stiffening of a particular southern extremity. This was of course IGN's exclusive announcement of a Legend of Zelda game-to-film-adaption, including a trailer. In my excitement I ignored all text and begun immediately watching the trailer. If the low production values were not evidence enough of it being a hoax, then the date of its postage certainly is. Once again my excitement had been robbed from me.

I will however concede that the possibility exists that the actual joke is that this trailer isn't a joke and that gamers will be forced to cringe as they watch this would-be 'LotR killer' fail on a scale too large to be described with words, or even neanderthalesque grunts for that matter.

EA is one developer that did not manage to make my facial expression change from absolute glee to maniacal dissapointment within a span of 5 seconds, as their announcement of an updated Soviet logo for Red Alert 3 found the right balance between amusing and ridiculous. What better way to advertise your hell-bent campaign to crush capitalism than with a floral emblem?

In other April fools related news, sympathy is demanded in light of the Terran's enslavement of the proud Tauren. One might speculate that this unit could be included in the final build of the game as a single-player novelty, after all, they've designed and animated it so why waste that work?

Moreover Blizzard has made clear their intentions to begin domination of the console market with their debut trailer of 'Molten Core'. It isn't too far of a stretch to postulate that Blizzard, being a PC-centric developer, may be having a crack at the console with this one.

One can only hope that IGN and Blizzard will at some point in time, be on the receiving end of an elaborate April fools hoax. Scheming COMMENCE!

Snake Charmer on a bus

With Konami’s release of Metal Gear Solid Mobile , fans of the series are able to have a snake in their pocket at all times. Despite being on a smaller scale than is usual, it has been nothing but smooth slithering for the grizzled-veteran-of-sneak so far, having attained a solid 8.0 from IGN who have stated that it is “a great example of how to correctly bring a beloved franchise to a platform as modest as a cell phone”.

Whilst having a conversation regarding this game on the bus, a passenger sitting near to my posse served us an early Christmas present by informing us in an all-important manner that ‘Snake’ was in-fact nothing new to the mobile, and that he’d been playing good old snake for years. This would have been funnier still had the mobile metal gear been a port of MGS3 – Snake Eater.

The Cry of the Deprived

Nintendo Australia last updated their brawl section around a year before
'Pit' was announced as a newcomer for the game, and even that was almost a year ago.

As the long awaited sequel to Melee, 'Super Smash Brothers Brawl' swoops to glory in its Japanese and American releases, earning such titles as 'fastest selling game in NoA's history', Australian and European fans are still in wait of a release date.

However, some gamers in these areas have been rescued by the Vassal of interregional compatibility - 'Wii Freeloader', a nice piece of software developed by Datel that (as the name suggests) allows you to load up imported copies of software on your Wii.

I am both elated and annoyed at the availability of innovations such as this. On one side of the spectrum, Australian gamers that experience up to 6 month delays on games (to use the Super Paper Mario 'crisis' as an example) are now able to import and receive games roughly around the same time they release in 1st world countries - by the way, your eyes have not deceived you, I am in fact implying that game release dates are now part of the critera used to distinguish between 1st, 2nd and 3rd world nations.

On the other hand, if the 'hardcore' audience continues to import all their games, Nintendo Australia may perceive that those titles targeted at this audience are no longer profitable. This may cause them to 'forget' the hardcore title, and focus upon the release of casual numbers such as 'Wii Sports 2' & 'Mario Party 10', in effect, flooding the market with redundant party game compilations and further depriving the loyal Australian consumer of decent games for his drought-stricken Wii.

I am one of the latter, as I have solemnly sworn to await the Australian release of Brawl, in belief that my staunch support of 'hardcore' releases in Australia will eventually encourage others to take up the same cause, thereby coercing Nintendo Australia that these titles are in fact wanted here, and that something should be done to provide the gamers of Australia with the titles that we love at a reasonable time.