Don’t get your hopes up, there is virtually no useable information regarding BioShock 2 on this new mysterious website recently launched; www.somethinginthesea.com.

To the naked eye the website may not even seem to have any correlation regarding 2K’s upcoming BioShock 2: Sea of dreams, but upon further investigation it becomes rather obvious.

If you click on the first picture, pictured above, you’ll notice it bares an uncanny resemble to the Big Daddy voodoo doll we saw dangling in the trailer.

Haven’t seen the trailer yet? It’s included after the break.

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With exclusivity these days being less and less common, the biggest remaining argument in the Sony vs. Microsoft camp comes down to graphics. If you haven’t played Fallout 3 yet and are debating whether the DLC is worth a less impressive visual experience, the scales have just been tipped in Microsoft’s favor.

A patch for the Xbox 360 version of the game is bringing the graphics closer to the level of the PC and PS3 versions of the post-apocalyptic role playing game. The patch brings specular maps  to certain textures of the game. In layman’s terms the patch makes lighting reflect more off the various creatures you encounter and makes the NPCs you talk to look a lot more lifelike. The PS3 still has an advantage as a few specular effects won’t be integrated with the patch and the more powerful console still features higher resolution textures.

Over at Armor Games, I’ve found a piece that might well help if you’ve been jonesing for Magic the Gathering lately–it’s called Armor Wars.

I found it at least a little odd that Armor Games is hosting a game called Armor Wars–can we get just a little more self-referential?  Come on!–but the game itself is at least fun enough.  Basically, it’s a card game, or approximation thereof, in which you play different cards with different effects in an attempt to take out your opponent’s castle.  Or “life points” if you favor the M:TG lingo.  You’ll get to work with creatures, direct damage, and spell effects to generate the various points you need to activate your cards.

This is, of course, fairly standard–anyone who’s played Magic in the last ten years will pick this game up and run with it.  Most of what decides a win or a loss, sadly, is the luck of the draw, but it’s still a good casual time waster.  Online play is also available, so you’re not just stuck taking on the computer.

Basically, Armor Wars is a surprisingly fun time that’s easy to pick up and play as long as you understand a few basics.

In the early days of home consoles backwards compatibility wasn’t something companies considered. If you wanted to play old games you just held onto your older system. With time though all things electronic break and there are still gamers who cling to favorites from outdated systems. An avenue that many go is simply to download an emulator and ROM files. That has two disadvantages: firstly ROM files are only legal if you have them as an electronic backup to a physical cartridge; secondly unless you bring a laptop on your travels it’s hard to bring these games with you, since getting them onto a PSP or other handheld requires modding it, which many of us are loathe to do.

Sony is currently in talks to allow many titles to be brought to the PSP. Currently a range of PSOne titles are available for download via the PSN store, but they are pursuing companies whose back catalog of games have in some cases never been seen on a Sony system: “We look for some of those big hits from all of the past games in their history and look for ways we can bring them over. It’s not always easy. There’s obviously technical areas that need to be bridged. But when those are solved, consumers will see a wide variety of retro games and brand new games coming to PSN,” said John Koller, SCEA marketing boss to MTV Multiplayer. Judging from the success of Nintendo’s Virtual Console this could be a great move for Sony, especially if they get their hands on some popular titles.

Casual gamers play a title for a little while, then move on to the next thing to grab their fancy. Next you have the more involved fans who pick up any title in a series no matter how terrible the review scores say it is. The most rabid fans by far are the ones with tattoos of the Triforce, 1-up mushrooms or what have you.

Somewhere in between are those of us who buy keychains, tshirts and coffee mugs bearing logos or characters. If you’re a big Fallout fan Japanese website Famitsu is selling some tshirts branded with icons and other content. You can show your love for fictional radioactive beverage Nuka Cola, your membership in the Church of the Children of Atom and your general love for all things wasteland.

If you really want to geek it up a bit, you can buy a shirt with glow in the dark logos as well as the standard style. Unfortunately the website is all in Japanese and the shirts will set you back as much as $50 after shipping.

I confess, I was looking forward to the release of Grand Theft Auto Four–it was all a lot of us could even talk about.  Every time you opened a game mag or watched a video, every time you read a game blog, or even if you were one of the couple dozen people who still watched X-Play, you were sure to hear something about this game, and the inevitable word was a series of slobbering superlatives as commentator after commentator fought all over themselves to see who could praise it the fastest, the loudest, and the most sincerely.

And now that it’s about to get a major new expansion pack, The Lost and the Damned, I figured now would be a good time to go back and talk about the original.  I, however, will NOT be using a lot of flowery language.

First, a recap of the plot for those few of you who haven’t yet tried it–you play as Niko Bellic, a recent transplant from an Eastern European country fresh off the boat in Liberty City.  He, like a lot of other immigrants, has come in search of that great American Dream: life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, a fresh start, and all the gusto you can grab.  Yes, it’s the kind of thing that makes you believe in America again…at least until things start going south for Niko right away.  He’s come for his cousin, Roman, whom he believes has made good already in the land of hope and dreams.  But Roman’s tales of wealth and success were gravely exaggerated–Roman’s up to his eyes in debt, and he’s desperate for an edge: an edge shaped suspiciously like his cousin Niko.  Thus, Niko will be working as his cousin’s protector and enforcer as the two of them try to make their fortunes in Liberty City.

Let me make one thing perfectly clear from the get go.  A lot of the flowery language this game got is well deserved.  The graphics are amazing, the gameplay is spectacularly fluid and intuitive, and that plot is straight out of some of the best of literature.  Anton Chekhov himself might well have written something like this if he’d been alive to see it.  Perhaps best–and yet, perhaps worst, more on that later–is the incredible variety of missions and options you’ve got to work with in this huge monster of a game.

This may be the biggest problem of Grand Theft Auto 4: sheer option overload.  Of course, you’ll have the full array of missions–kill this guy, kill that guy, kill all THESE guys, get this guy here, run protection, run the rackets, and so on and so forth.  A veritable criminal encyclopedia is available in this game, and you’ll get to try it all.  When you’re not out engaging in the criminal lifestyle, you’ll have a panoply of options to try out in Liberty City proper–strip clubs, comedy clubs, bowling alleys, bars, or just drive around.  Going to a strip club and getting a lap dance isn’t just a cheesy exercise in pointless graphic titillation anymore, kids–lap dances will now cause your controller’s vibration function to work in sync with the dancer.
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So you want to be a hero? Well if you are among the millions of fans awaiting the release of the popular movie taken from DC comics’ “Watchmen”, you can thank Glu Mobile Inc. for letting you have a feel of the game before the film hits the big screens.

Glu Mobile Inc. today announced the worldwide launch of Watchmen: The Mobile Game, the fifth title Glu has developed and published through its license agreement with Warner Bros. Digital Distribution on behalf of DC Comics. Watchmen: The Mobile Game is an intense action game where players fight crime through the streets of NYC and the jungles of Vietnam as the masked vigilantes Nite Owl and The Comedian. The game is based on the upcoming movie Watchmen, from Warner Bros.

Pictures and Paramount Pictures, in association with Legendary Pictures, opening nationwide on March 6, 2009.

Features include:

• Beat ‘Em Up Action – Play as the stealthy Nite Owl and brawling anti-hero, The Comedian, each with a unique repertoire of attacks, weapons and special moves.
• Gameplay Variety – Fight your way through 17 levels, including flying missions in Nite Owl’s high-tech aircraft, Archie.
• Original Storyline – All new Watchmen experience can be appreciated by newcomers and fans of the movie.
• Classic Characters – Cameos from classic heroes and villains from the Watchmen universe, including Rorschach, Dr. Manhattan, Silk Spectre and more.
• Multiple Environments – Non-stop action in Vietnam and the streets of and skies over NYC.

(Source) Press

And today it’s off to Newgrounds to take a look at the progenitor of the bunny-blasting fun of Bunny Invasion 2, the original Bunny Invasion.

A race of genetically modified, bloodthirsty rabbit has broken loose from a research lab upstate, and you play as Mr. Frost, a man who won’t be taking any nonsense from any furry monsters and thus sets out to protect his house from the bunny horde.  His house, you see, is the last building standing in town due largely to his protection efforts. You’ll have time between waves to buy weapons and ammunition, as well as a chance to upgrade your house.

Instead of having a simple crosshair reticle to aim with, this time you’ll have to guide two converging red laser sights over the target.  You’ll also have fewer weapons available, but you’ll get a multiplier that lets you get more money for killing more bunnies without taking a hit.

All things considered, the first Bunny Invasion is a real step back, but that’s to be expected.  The sequel’s the one to play, folks—but Bunny Invasion is still a solid shooter in its own right.

It was one of my favorite original Xbox games, and now, thanks to the joy that is Xbox Live, one of my favorite Xbox 360 games.  It’s Sid Meier’s Pirates, and it’s a whole load of easy, casual fun.

It’s kind of hard to say that a console title can be casual too–but Sid Meier’s Pirates definitely qualifies.  You play as a young man who watched his family be sold into slavery along with all their assets following the disastrous wreckage of its merchant fleet.  As you grow into young adulthood, the memory of this injustice sears into your very soul and you set out to recover your family and their fortune.  Not to mention get revenge on the man responsible for it all, the evil Marquis.

There are a host of different ways to play Sid Meier’s Pirates–you can follow the main quest, and go hunting down the Marquis via a series of hints from mysterious strangers in taverns.  You can try to find your lost family.  You can turn bounty hunter and go after the notorious top ten pirates cruising the Caribbean, including legends like Jack Rackham, Captain Kidd and Edward “Blackbeard” Teach himself (bonus kudos to Sid Meyer and staff for INCLUDING the lengths of burning slowmatch that Teach would plait in his beard to give himself a glowing, smoke-shrouded appearance).  Or you can just run amok and turn pirate yourself, ransacking cargo vessels and treasure ships all along the Spanish main.  And if you can get an island’s governor to give you a letter of marque, it’s even technically legal!  It’s true–it’s called “privateering”, and as long as you go after the shipping of countries that the country that issued you the letter of marque is at war with, you can’t be tried as a pirate.
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In a stupidly pun filled email sent out today, Capcom announced that they are partnering with the American Red Cross to host a blood drive in the wake of Resident Evil 5‘s release this Friday.

Gamers in the LA area are invited to donate blood at the World of Wonder gallery on Hollywood Blvd. in Hollywood, California from 11am-5pm. Those who do so will have the chance to get exclusive limited-edition RE5 Blood Drive collectibles, win copies of the game, enter a raffle for the exclusive red RE-themed Xbox 360 console and more.

There will also be kiosks with games to distract those who don’t wish to part with their blood. The game hits PS3 and Xbox 360 this Friday.