Mitch has written a total of 335,654 words on this site.

mitch@gamersushi.com Twitter: @mi7ch Gamertag: Lubeius PSN ID: Lubeius SteamID: Mister_L Origin/EA:Lube182 Currently Playing: PUBG, Rainbow 6: Siege, Assassin's Creed: Origins, Total War: Warhammer 2

Is Mass Effect the Best Sci-Fi Franchise of Our Time?

pop bioethics mass effect

With Mass Effect 3 on hot approach, it seems that related articles are crawling out of the woodwork. While I wouldn’t go so far as to say that’s we’re prone to sensationalism here at GamerSushi, there’s no denying that we’re jonesing pretty hard for that game.

Much like the Zelda article I posted a couple days ago, this essay on Mass Effect has been making its rounds today. It’s not about fixing the series, though, but rather examining why Mass Effect is the greatest science-fiction universe of our generation. It’s a very long read, but just like the Zelda article, it’s worth it. The author, Kyle Munkittrick, picks apart the many facets of Mass Effect and analyzes everything from the medium it’s presented on to its messages and philosophies.

One of my favorite parts of the article is where the writer touches on my favorite conversation from Mass Effect one, and maybe the whole series: the point of Virmire where you encounter Sovereign and realize that Saren is merely a pawn in this living, almost god-like, ship’s plan to destroy all sentient life in the universe. That’s part of what the philosophy of Mass Effect is, according to the author: the universe is large and uncaring, and what place does humanity have in it. By extension, what place do you as Shepard have in humanity?

I really like the recent surge in quality video game essays recently, ones that take a look at our hobby through a more refined lens. It proves that there’s more to video games than just explosions and scantily-clad women, so I hope this pace keeps up. What did you guys think of the article?

Source – Pop Bioethics

Does The Legend of Zelda Need to be Fixed?

legend of zelda

If there’s any game series crying out for a fresh interpretation, it’s the Legend of Zelda. While this belief is a little incendiary, many people feel that the series hit its zenith with Ocarina of Time and has been in steady decline every since. That’s not to say that the games are bad, necessarily, but they are formulaic and in need of a shot in the arm.

During my travels on the dusty roads of the World Wide Web, I stumbled across an essay entitled “Saving Zelda” by one Tevis Thompson. In his piece he runs down what he sees as the problems with the current version of Zelda and where the series went wrong. His comments on how the game world is just a series of locks (and how the items you collect can be equated to a jangling keyring) struck a particular cord with me, and this is by no means the only point he makes. He examines everything from the games’ visual styles to the design of the over-world to the re-treading of the same story over and over.

His article is a bit lengthy, but it’s well worth the read, especially if Skyward Sword left you wanting. The comments about how modern Zelda games do not respect the player is in step with how I felt about Skyward Sword, and the analogy of game designers being helicopter parents was almost too perfect.

I really urge everybody to take a break from their day and read this; you may not agree with every point but it’s a great argument against the staleness of modern Zeldas. What did you guys think of the article? Did the author make some good points? Where do you agree and disagree?

Source – Tevis Thompson

Today’s WTF: Black Ops Voted to Have Best Ending Ever

guinness world records black ops

I’m going to try and type this post without going into full-on editorial rage mode, but it’s going to be difficult. Guinness World Records recently held a vote to determine which video game had the best ending of all time. A number of “gamers” (13,519 to be exact) cast their ballots and came up with the Top 50 Video Game Endings of all time.

There are some pretty decent choices on the list like Shadow of the Colossus, Portal and Red Dead Redemption but the game that tops the list is last year’s Call of Duty: Black Ops. That game had a decent ending, but I wouldn’t put it at the top of any list, much less a list of the supposed best endings in the history of gaming. This isn’t the only puzzler either as Sonic Adventure 2, The Force Unleashed II and Super Mario Bros all make an appearance. I could rant forever about why the Force Unleashed doesn’t even deserve anything but a quick trip to the incinerator, and Super Mario Bros doesn’t even have an ending.

The whole list is after the jump. Continue reading Today’s WTF: Black Ops Voted to Have Best Ending Ever

Assassin’s Creed: The Fall is a Comic Adaption Done Right

assassins creed the fallComics book tie-ins to video games usually disappoint me, but I keep holding out for the one that breaks convention and is actually enjoyable to read. The Halo books were by and large pretty mediocre and the Mass Effect comics failed to catch my interest.

As staunch a supporter as I am of the Assassin’s Creed series, it might not surprise you to learn that I tracked down the deluxe edition of Assassin’s Creed: The Fall, a three-part comic series detailing the purge of the Assassin Order that occured in November of 2000. The comics follow Daniel Cross in 1998 and 2000 and his ancestor Nikolai Orelov in the late 1800s and the beginning of the Russian Revolution. Putting the historical sections of the books in the turn of the century was a really good idea, and the writers dip into some of the mysteries of that time like Rasputin and the Tunguska Event and work them into Assassin’s Creed mythology.

The story is actually quite good, and this probably stems from the fact that the creators were not forced into shoe-horning in an Ezio Auditore story like they had originally planned. Free from the canonical shackles of the game series, The Fall fills in some of the backstory that has been alluded to in the video games; namely how the globe-spanning Assassin Brotherhood has been reduced to three people operating out of a van and a handful of intelligence gathering cells.

There are some weird parts to the story as it is a fairly complicated tale compressed into three issues. Daniel Cross’ transformation from an asshole junkie to an almost messianic figure happens between issues two and three so seeing him as a clean-cut figure preaching to the Assassins is a little confusing until someone addresses him as Daniel. If his speech at the beginning of issue three had been over some pictures of him fixing his life and showing his progress it might have helped to lesson the shock. It’s nothing major, but it is a slight speedbump in an otherwise well crafted story.

Assassin’s Creed: The Chain is the follow up to The Fall, and I’m now eagerly awaiting the next installment of the lives of Daniel Cross and Nikolai Orelov. Has anyone else read The Fall, and what did you think? Do you want to track down a copy having read this? What are some of your favorite comic book tie-ins? Do transmedia efforts like these help breath new life into series that might be getting stale, like Anthony’s post talked about?

Notch, Psychonauts 2 and Dream Game Funding

notch psychonauts 2

Minecraft creator and Mojang founder Markus Persson (a.k.a. Notch) set the Twitterverse on fire this morning by suggesting to Tim Schafer that the former would foot the bill for the oft-wished for Psychonauts 2. This caused more than a few people to lose their minds and turned into Tim and Notch Tweeting back and forth, being very vague about their possible collaboration.

Not only did this exchange make me think about just how much money Notch has made from Minecraft, it also got me to pondering about which fantasy game series I would resurrect (or start) if I had the slush to do so. My mind first went to the Star Wars combat flight sims of yore like X-Wing or TIE Fighter. I don’t know exactly what studio I’d trust with this game, but I know that I’d try my hardest to make sure that the game would stay as close to the original as possible.

My other idea was also Star Wars related and it would be a sequel to Republic Commando. I’d bring on Karen Traviss to write the script and I’d possibly hand the gameplay off to Epic to make it into a third-person squad command game. If I was going to stick with a first-person shooter, I’d bring back the original team but team them up with the Bungie folk.

So what about you guys? What dream games would you fund if you had the money? A sequel, revival, or something new? What do you think about the possibility of Psychonauts 2?

Today’s WTF: Fans Tear Mass Effect Novel a New One

mass effect deception errors

Canonical consistency in video game universes is kind of a strange thing, given the loose nature of the story-telling and the tendency that most games have to go back and retcon plot points to better fit in with a new direction (Kojima says hello). Out of all the various franchises, Mass Effect has had a rock-solid fictional underpinning, thanks to the tireless work by the writing staff at BioWare. The in-game Codex has hundreds of entries that are incredibly detailed, giving you back story on everything from krogan reproduction to how spaceships prevent static electricity buildup while travelling at lightspeed.

Given the thorough nature of the Mass Effect universe, you might understand why the new novel, Mass Effect: Deception, is getting ripped to shreds for its heaps of inconsistencies. Written by series newcomer William C. Dietz, Deception picks up the story started by previous author and BioWare employee Drew Karpyshyn and manages to fumble even the most basic facts. There’s a Google Document detailing the many ways that Mass Effect: Deception drops the fictional ball, and it’s kind of hilarious to read.

There’s a whole smattering of errors here which makes me wonder who greenlit the novel considering that it glosses over some pretty important parts of Retribution, the previous book. Characters who previously knew each other have magically forgotten that they met, and one character’s neural disorder (a significant aspect of the last novel) is written off as an “adolescent phase”. I’m not typically one to be slavishly adherent to an established canon (except for when Lucas made Mandalorians a pacifist culture), but I have to think that you want to at least maintain some consistency. As you can imagine, there’s quite the poop storm over this book, with one angered fan going as far as to set it on fire.

What do you guys think? Are fans over-reacting? Should the author and the publisher have taken more care? Go!

Source – Errors in ME: Deception

Puzzlejuice Is an iPhone Title That Will Drain Your Brain

puzzlejuice

Thanks to Jeff’s sorcerous, seductive words, I picked up Puzzlejuice on the iTunes app store and have been playing the junk out of it for the past hour and a bit. It’s a combination of Tetris and a crossword puzzle paired together with great minimalist graphics. If you don’t think that sounds amazing, you can pack your bags and get the heck off my Internet.

To play Puzzlejuice you drag and orient blocks (a la Tetris) and when you get a certain amount of similar colored blocks together, you can tap on them and they transform into a random selection of letters which you have to scour for words (a la a crossword). The challenge is that you’re looking for these words while blocks fall from the sky and if they pile up too high, you lose. There are also a certain goals you have to meet, and words need to be above three letters (none of this “an” nonsense).

Puzzlejuice is the perfect iPhone game because it seems almost tailor made to be on the phone. It doesn’t try to shoe-horn in too much in the way of clumsy UI stuff and you can hop in for a quick round in one of its many modes, some with clever names like “European Extreme Mode”. It’s also very charming and has many winks towards nerd culture like naming the quit button “Rage Quit”.

There’s more iPhone gaming around here than usual, but with Infinity Blade II and Tiny Tower also dominating my time, and the fact that I got 100% of the achievements in Sonic Generations, I’m on my phone quite often. Has anyone else tried Puzzlejuice and if so what do you think of it? Are you tempted to give it a go?

Fan-Made “Legend of Zelda: The Lost Oracle” Trailer Kills It

As a site, we here at GamerSushi aren’t real big fans of “fan-made” productions, normally because they follow the same formula: they take a notable game (probably made by Valve) and pair it up with terrible acting/writing and moderately impressive CG. Not to be too negative, but these kind of get ho-hum after a while. If you really want to gain notoriety, try something different, like Joel Furtado did with this Legend of Zelda: The Lost Oracle short.

What do you guys think? Were you impressed? Would you like to see another Zelda game in this style?

Blizzard Cans BlizzCon 2012, Citing “Jam-Packed Schedule”

no blizzcon 2012

In a move that’s sure to incense Jay Mohr fans the world over, PC gaming giant Blizzard announced today that it will not be holding its annual celebration of its franchises down in Anaheim, California. The convention, which has not missed a year since 2006, is usually the platform Blizzard uses to announce its upcoming projects. With a next-gen MMO rumored to be waiting in the wings, many people had hoped that 2012 would be the year that we would first see “Titan”, but it appears that this isn’t going to be the case.

With a game from each of the company’s major properties hitting this year, Blizzard has said that they’re a little too busy to make BlizzCon 2012 a reality. While this certainly is disappointing, the prospect of seeing not only Diablo 3, but also StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm this year is more than enough to make up for it (there’s some Kung Fu Panda based WoW expansion too, I guess).

Blizzard will still be putting on the Battle.Net World Championship for StarCraft 2, which will take place in Asia closer to the end of the year, so we’re not even going to miss watching StarCraft pros beat the stuffing out of each other.

So what do you guys think of BlizzCon’s 2012 absence? Do you just want to see the games finally be released? Should Blizzard have held their convention, schedule be damned?

Source – Battle.Net

Tiny Tower is the Dumbest Game I Can’t Stop Playing

I don’t know why Jeff gets the rap around here as the iOS game guy, I’m just as guilty as putting as much time into my iPhone as my PC or consoles. Maybe it’s because I play more than two or three of the major triple A titles every year, but I digress.

Recently I’ve become addicted to a game called Tiny Tower made by NimbleBit. It’s actually been out for quite a while but I didn’t check it out until recently. This is one of the benefits of iPhone gaming, in my opinion, there’s not really a rush to get to the newest titles quickly (there are exceptions like Sword and Sworcery and Infinity Blade). Mechanically the game is very similar to Game Dev Story, but instead of running a studio, you build and maintain an apartment/shopping center and stock it with stores for your little “bitizens” to work in. There’s actually very little game here after the opening few hours; aside from a bit of re-stocking every now and then and building new floors, the game is hands-off for most of the time.

So why am I so addicted to it? Part of it is that the game taps into the aspect of my personality that really loves sim titles. Even if Tiny Tower requires very little attention from me, I still like the feeling of running something and micro-managing different aspects of it if I can. Even though the stores you get are random (and fall into different categories like retail, service and food, to name a few) you still need to staff them with bitizens who are good at those types of job, and try to get them into their dream jobs if you can. Another reason I really like Tiny Tower is because the game works on a similar concept to the Achievement noise, as the it will constantly chime at you when it needs to be re-stocked or when something else happens. It’s the definition of Pavlov’s Bell, and I hate it and love it for that. It’s the perfect game to have on your phone because it requires little attention and even when you have it open it only has you doing menial tasks like moving the elevator between floors.

So much of my time is spent glued to my phone because of this game, even though I spend very little of that time actually doing something. Have you guys tried Tiny Tower? Is there a game that you’re addicted to for a stupid reason? Go!

GamerSushi Asks: Falling Out with a Game?

battlefield 3

It’s rare, but sometimes the games we love just don’t appeal to us anymore. Sure, things may start off great in the beginning, but eventually something sours and we turn against even our most cherished titles.

This phenomenon happened to me recently with Battlefield 3, something I talked about a bit on Episode 37 of the GamerSushi Show. Since then I’ve tried to get in a few games to see if I could get back into it, but the magic is gone. I don’t know if it’s a case of preferring the way that Bad Company 2 handled, or if the netcode is really bad on my end, or what, but Battlefield 3 has just dropped off my radar.

It’s kind of a shame considering how hyped I was for this game, something my fellow staff members and regular readers would know fairly well. I posted every trailer and every snippet of news about the game, but now I can’t even go fifteen minutes without turning it off.

I wish I knew what made me turn my back on the game, but it’s very hard to pin down. At first I was enjoying the beautiful environments and the destruction (toned down as it was), but then I noticed that I was getting killed behind cover a lot, or I was being killed by five or less shots when I’d already fired a whole magazine, or no one on my team was PTFOing. When Back to Karkand came out it helped revitalize my affection for the game, but after hours on Wake Island (which is somehow now a terrible map to play), I’m considering leaving BF3 behind for good.

I don’t lone wolf all that often, but I’ve been doing that more now that my normal squad mates have left. Maybe it’s a case of me trying to fit in to a team-based game, but even the most team oriented titles allow for a little solo play. Has anyone else experienced something similar with a game? Have you started off enjoying something and end up not standing the sight of it?

Mass Effect 3 Demo Coming February 14, Contains Multiplayer

mass effect 3 demo

The final chapter in BioWare’s sci-fi trilogy Mass Effect will be releasing on March 6, but fans will have an opportunity to try out the various features of the game on February 14 when the demo launches.

In a post on BioWare’s social site, Chris Priestly laid out the details of the newly announced Mass Effect 3 demo and what we can expect from it come release day. The demo will feature both single and multiplayer content and will be launched simultaneously on all three platforms.

The single-player portion of the demo will contain a couple snippets from Mass Effect 3, one taking place early in the game during the initial Reaper assault on Earth and the second will occur on an unspecified alien homeworld where Shepard travels to gain the support of the populace. All three of Mass Effect’s different single-player modifiers, Story, Action and Role-Playing, will be available and Xbox 360 users will be able to take advantage of the Kinect integration. The demo will have all classes available and you can customize and level up Shepard. Progress in the demo does not carry over to the main game, however.

The multiplayer component of the demo will be available to all on February 17, but owners of Battlefield 3 (with an activated Online Pass) will put their boots on the ground day one. A microsite will be up on February 7 where you can check and see if your EA account is eligible for early access, but as long as your account contains an active Battlefield 3 Online Pass, you’ll be good to go. There will also be an early access program for people who have not purchased BF3 or activated a Pass, so no worries there.

The multiplayer demo will contain two levels, Slum and Noveria, but beyond that BioWare isn’t saying. I’m happy for an opportunity to try out the multiplayer, even if I’ve already pre-ordered the Collector’s Edition (although it should be Reaper’s Edition in my opinion).

Are you guys excited for the Mass Effect 3 demo? What are your thoughts on the early access for multiplayer? Oh, one more thing: PC players will need to get the demo through Origin, EA’s much-maligned digital store.

Source – BioWare Social Network

Demo Madness with Kingdoms of Amalur and The Darkness 2

kingdoms of amalur reckoning

It might just be me, but 2012 seems a little light on big tent-pole titles. 2011 would be a tough year to beat, true, but this far out the only notable games I can think of are Mass Effect 3 and Halo 4. I’m sure I’m missing some, but beyond that I’m not too sure if there’s anything to look forward to.

Demos dropped today for a couple relatively unknown games hitting early this year, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning and The Darkness 2. Kingdoms of Amalur is a new one for me, but it’s got some well known names behind it like Big Huge Games, Todd McFarlane, Curt Schilling and R.A. Salvatore. Big Huge Games made one of my favorite RTS games of all time, Rise of Nations, then kind of dropped off the map for a while.

Reckoning, which I’m going to be calling it for brevity’s sake, is a Western-style RPG that’s very reminiscent of Fable and Dragon Age 2. It controls more like a brawler, but you have all the RPG trappings you’ve come to expect from games of this flavor. You can pick one of three archetypes (warrior, rogue or mage) and min-max from there, but thankfully the game doesn’t lock you into one specific class. I actually really enjoyed my time with Reckoning, which has fun combat, a beautiful world, and an engaging story (despite all the obtuse fantasy terms). I can already tell it’s one of those games that sucks you in very quickly and doesn’t let go. I just love the art style in this game, which is stylized and helps differentiate it from similar games in the genre. Even the most basic weapons and armor look bulky and bad-ass and the spell effects are flashy and powerful looking.

I have a couple of minor nitpicks, mostly concerning the inventory and the conversation systems. Reckoning straight up lifts Mass Effect’s dialogue wheel, but doesn’t give your character a voice. Maybe I’m too used to that, but if you’re going to copy someone’s ideas, at least go all the way with it. That’s a minor annoyance compared to the inventory, however. Like most RPGs, you get a huge stash of loot to manage, and the screens to do so are big and clunky and move kind of slow. You can put consumables like potions on a wheel to use in combat, but you can’t put various types of weapons on there, meaning that during the tutorial I had to constantly hop in and out of the menu to use the various gadgets the game was trying to show me. Once you nail down your class I expect that this smooths out, but it was kind of annoying.

That said I’m really looking forward to Reckoning after playing this demo. Like I mentioned above, it’s a game that just grabs you and pulls you in without any difficulty, something that only BioWare and Bethesda games have managed to do. Hit the jump for the other demo I tried. Continue reading Demo Madness with Kingdoms of Amalur and The Darkness 2

Penny-Arcade Starts Gaming News Initiative with Ben Kuchera

penny arcade ben kucheraPenny-Arcade has traditionally stood up for the “little guy” in the gaming industry which is us, the paying customers, the gamers. In the past, this has involved being pretty vocal about the way the big gaming news sites handle their content and PA has attacked everyone from IGN to GameSpy and beyond.

In a pretty surprising turn this morning, Penny-Arcade announced that they are moving into new territory by finally breaching into the realm of gaming news by picking up famed Ars Technica editor Ben Kuchera. While no specific format has been announced yet, Ben’s Q&A on the Penny-Arcade forums has revealed that the site will most likely consist of hefty pieces of content released Monday, Wednesday and Friday, much like the PA comics proper.

Ben Kuchera is no stranger to the video game industry, having worked at Ars Technica for just over a decade. If you follow Ben Kuchera on Twitter, then you know that he’s not afraid to get down and dirty when he needs to, so the new Penny-Arcade site will benefit from his unique stance on the various happenings in video game-dom.

Penny-Arcade expanding into gaming news is a monumentous occasion, but perhaps it isn’t so surprising considering they’re a company that’s tried their hands at everything from web TV series to conventions that draw crowds in the thousands. What do you guys think about this move? Are you excited to see what’s going to come out of PA’s new site? What kind of content are you hoping for?

Source – Penny-Arcade

RAAM’s Shadow is Gears of War DLC You May Want to Skip

gears of war 3 raams shadow review

RAAM’s Shadow, the second piece of DLC for Gears of War 3, dropped on December 13 featuring a single-player/co-op campaign set just after Emergence Day. Starring Zeta Squad, composed of Lieutenant Kim from Gears 1 and Tai Kaliso from Gears 2 with two newcomers, RAAM’s Shadow offers a three-ish hour adventure with the opportunity to play as the titular Locust general, complete with Kryll shield and giant machete. Purchasers of the Season Pass may have gotten it as part of the deal, but what about those of us who didn’t go for the package offering?

It’s been a while since the DLC has dropped, so you’ll have to forgive me for that, but the experience I’ve had with it has made me realize that I wasn’t really missing much. Since the DLC is set years before Gears of War 1, you play on a Sera that has yet to be destroyed by the Hammer of Dawn and seeing a city in this world complete and intact is something unique, but the outdoor environments feel very sterile and “fake”, for lack of a better word. Gears of War has always nailed the “Destroyed Beauty” motif, so simply cleaning up all the rubble in the decor doesn’t make the world believable, it does the exact opposite. There are a few cool areas to fight through, like the bank vault which has stacks of money that catch fire and the school that really does look like a deserted evacuation center, but that’s about the extent of it. Continue reading RAAM’s Shadow is Gears of War DLC You May Want to Skip

Skyward Sword and the Problem with Pacing

skyward sword pacing

Having worked my way through most of 2011’s big ticket titles over the Winter break, I’ve finally made my way to Skyward Sword and have been playing it for a few hours. While I do appreciate the art style and the Wii Motion Plus controls work better than I thought they would, the game has some serious pacing issues, specifically in the first few hours.

Skyward Sword starts much like any other Zelda game with the protagonist (Link traditionally, but “Butts” in my game) awakening from a deep slumber filled with dreams of a distant threat. From there you have to do the whole rigmarole of learning how to Z-target, autojump and all those other Zelda actions that are so familiar to us from the past thirteen years of this formula. I get that all these concepts might be new for people who didn’t grow up with the Ocarina style of Zelda games, but for us veterans this kind of stuff can be boring.

The same thing happened to me at the start of Modern Warfare 2 where the game teaches you how to use the basic controls and even runs you through a near carbon copy of the freighter mock-up from Call of Duty 4. Given just how many people bought CoD 4, I would have assumed that people know how to use the controls, but I guess some developers feel the need to be safe rather than sorry.

Getting people used to the way a game functions is essential, but Zelda handles it so, so slowly that it verges on tedious. Once you get past those segments and finally get your Loftwing everything opens up, but getting there is a chore. Additionally, whoever thought that giving Link a stamina bar was a good idea should be fired.

I do enjoy Skyward Sword, don’t get me wrong, but I really would have appreciated a “Yes, I’ve played Zelda” option somewhere along the way so I could just get into the game. This might just be me, but I think they way the tutorial was done was pretty shoddy. What do you guys think? Did Skyward Sword drag a little bit in the beginning? What other games have done this for you?

Top Xbox LIVE Activity for 2011 Shows Black Ops on Top

xbox live top activity 2011 black ops

I really like the fact that every year Xbox LIVE’s Major Nelson posts the top activity for the service so we can see which games got the most attention during the year. Call of Duty has held the top spot ever since 2007, but I don’t think the domination by that series has ever been this strong.

Activision’s much maligned but million selling series holds three of the top spots with Black Ops surprisingly taking first place over Modern Warfare 3 which falls in second. Halo: Reach is still holding strong in fourth place and is faring better than two of this year’s big multiplayer releases, Battlefield 3 and Gears of War 3, falling in the fifth and seventh spots, respectively. I’m kind of surprised that Gears of War is so low considering that this is the series that defined multiplayer on the Xbox this generation, but seeing Reach in fourth spot warms my heart, if only out of spite for all the complainers who said Reach would be dead in a year.

Some other surprises from the list would be that GTA IV is still charting as is Gears of War 2. I guess Xbox LIVE gamers know what they like, and that’s re-hashes of a game from 2007 and previous iterations of an improved product. Thoughts on 2011’s Xbox LIVE activity list? Surprised that Black Ops still holds first place? Anything that should be higher in your opinion? Go!

Source – Major Nelson

Today’s WTF: Skyrim Mod Turns Dragons into Macho Men

Of all the things to mod into Skyrim, I’m not sure that Randy Savage was at the top of the list, but here we are in 2012 and someone has found a way to put the Macho Man into the game. The video detailing the mod is three minutes of pure terror and hilarity.

Originally I thought the mod would just replace the voices of the dragons with soundbites of Randy Savage, but when I saw what had become of their appearance, well, that’s a whole other story. I just couldn’t stop laughing when the guards heard the cry of at the beginning of the video and started acting scared. Good stuff! Here’s the link if you want to try out the Skyrim Macho Man mod for yourself.

GamerSushi Votes 2011: Game of the Year

portal 2

We’re at the end of the road for the inaugural edition of GamerSushi Votes and I think it’s gone rather well. We’ve talked the highs and the lows, but now it’s time to put all of our chips on the table and declare once and for all what our favorite game of 2011 is.

There’s no cheating here by saying 2011 didn’t have a Game of the Year, no sir. Each individual vote shall be inscribed upon the great Tablet of GamerSushi with chisel and hammer by Anthony, borne up the Mountain of Souls by Eddy, passed through the Cauldron of the Blaze by myself, given to Jeff and his eagle mount to soar high into the clouds to the Sky Palace of the Beard for Nick’s final approval. Yeah. It’s that important.

Now that you know what fate rests upon your mortal souls, vote! What was your Game of the Year for 2011?

GamerSushi Votes 2011: Game of the Year

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GamerSushi Votes 2011: Biggest Disappoinment

While 2011 was a year of serious highs, there were more than a few lows, too. Even when you’re as plugged into the industry as we are, sometimes you just can’t avoid the stinkers.

Some of the entries on this poll are fairly obvious, but I’m going to try really hard to not insert my own bias into this list. True, I’ve learned fairly heavily on my own opinions for the previous polls, but when you start slagging popular titles, that’s when the mud gets flung. Without further ado, here we go!

GamerSushi Votes 2011: Biggest Disappointment

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