Psh! Nailed it! Dead Space

You know, I liked the original Dead Space, but I felt like it didn't quite live up to one of its promises: the weapons.
The weapons, for the most part were definitely cool, but what happened to the ideology that your main man, Isaac Clarke, is an engineer/repairman, not a soldier? What happened to not finding your standard 3rd-person-shooter weapons and having to make do with workbench tools? I'll give credit on trying to give story context to things like having a full-on flamethrower instead of, say, a welding torch, or for the massive "boss fight/large enemy" gun but some of the stuff...just no. I mean, I'll give you the Line Gun for cutting ore or whatever, these are miners, but when is a miner going to need timed mines (ooo, I get it) that shoot out spinning lasers and dismember everything within range? So with a sequel coming out that has such cool new features as multiplayer, how about fulfilling some of that "not your standard weapons" promise? Maybe something like a nail gun? I know Extraction had the rivet gun but that doesn't quite count since A) Extraction was a side story and B) it nailed things to the wall, not enemies.
Come on guys, plenty of other games have had such weapons, even if they didn't quite make sense when you stopped to think about it, why can't Dead Space? You could even make a specific battle out of it. Have a Necromorph with body parts that make their way back to the main body and rejoin it once dismembered. That way you've gotta nail those damn pesky...appendages to the wall/floor to stop the beast. Imagine the multiplayer smack talk applications!
"OOOhhh I just cut of yo arm bitch! And now it's nailed to the wall! What now, one-armed man?"
My vision's going all slotted just thinking about it!
Of course with news on the sequel slowly trickling out, it looks like the Javelin Gun coming in DS2 may fulfill my wishes. I guess we'll see when it releases in...when it releases.

Gamez rulez commercialz!

So Adweek recently held a voting on the best commercial of the decade (I know, I wasn't told either) and, in a move that will probably have your grandparents shaking their heads if/when you tell them, two gaming commercials actually managed to make it into the top spots.

One of these was Sony's "Mountain" commercial from the heyday of the Playstation 2 which...well I thought was kind of lame. But that's probably due to my unexplainable dislike for anything involving Shirley Temple. Check it out and make your own decision.

The second of these commercials was from the Halo 3 "Believe" campaign (although this particular ad is apparently called "Diorama") and is pretty rad. I can't ever watch this commercial without thinking to myself "Man! I want all of those things and the time to set up that exact scene!"

Feel free to check out the other, non-gaming commercials as well. From serious political statements to commercials that make you say "Wait...what?" to the ones that just make you say "WTF!?" Enjoy.

The Missing Piece...of DLC. Assassin's Creed II

Anyone else notice that memory sequence 12 AND 13 were missing from Assassin's Creed II? Ok...ok..OK!! Stop yelling, I get it, you all noticed. Well Ubisoft has got those missing sequences coming to all of you (wth internet connections) as DLC titled "Battle of Forli" and "Bonfire of the Vanities," respectively.

The Battle of Forli tasks you with defending Forli from a group of brothers looking to hand the Piece of Eden over to the Templars and apparently rebuilds/revives the flying machine. And I think we can all give a w007! to that.

Bonfire of the Vanites will team Ezio up with Machiavelli to off the mad monk Savonarola and his underlings with the aid of a new move: the "spring-jump." Not sure exactly how many different ways a person, digital or not, can jump, but hey, I'll give it a chance. "Battle" will cost you $3.99 while "Bonfire" will cost you $4.99. The extra dollar must be to cover liability for the spring-jump.

Get Caught up on Mass Effect's Story! (at IGN!)

Never played the first Mass Effect? Well first, shame on you, and second, IGN has apparently got you covered not only for being a bad gamer, but also for being one with very little spare time! Personally, I recommend you pick up a copy and play through it now, it's worth it, I promise. Can't really say which version to go for though, 360 or PC. You're definitely going to get a better control setup and, depending on your hardware, higher resolution graphics with the PC version. The PC version is, however, INCREDIBLY buggy so you've got a much lower chance of throwing something with the 360 version. The choice is yours.

...or you could turn your laziness knob up to maximum and just go watch IGN's video here. It even works if you just want to brush up on some of the finer plot points before the sequel rolls around in January, ahhh technology...