This was supposed to be the ad aired during the Super Bowl, but CBS wasn’t too keen on the “Go to Hell” tagline. The commercial will still air with a revised tagline: “Hell Awaits.” Ahh, stupid censorship. I wonder why CBS had such an issue with the original. I mean, COME ON. The whole game is about hell. And going there. And they’re ok with advertising the game but not that tagline? LAME! If I’d been on the EA team, “We’re Already There.” definitely would’ve been on my list of new tagline suggestions.

What replacement tagline would you have suggested?

[SOURCE: THRfeed.com]

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Sick of playing the same Rock Band songs? Thanks to the folks at WaveGroup, you’ll soon have access to some fresh tracks. This week, they announced licensing agreements with major recording artists including renowned guitar virtuoso Steve Vai. Also in the works:

Widespread Panic
Gov’t Mule
Reverend Horton Heat
Stroke 9
Slightly Stoopid
Galactic
Rebelution
Bif Naked
Assembly of Dust
Nick Gallant
Kid Beyond
RX Bandits
Jet Black Kiss
Doug Doppler
Austin Willacy
The Humans
Rain Dogs

Will Littlejohn, President/CEO of WaveGroup commented, “We’re honored to be working with such amazing musicians, and bringing their music to RBN. Our job is to make the music look and feel authentic in the Rock Band™ environment. As musicians ourselves, we go to great lengths to make the experience of playing these songs fun and engaging.”

There’s no official release date for the new tracks, but Scott Dugdale, a composer at WaveGroup, said in an email that it was going to be “very, very soon.” The tracks will sell for $1.99 each (159 MSP) and can be purchased individually.

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This is quite possibly the best Guitar Hero ad I’ve ever seen. I laughed. I cried. I felt all warm and fuzzy inside. Oh, Alan. You can come over and play Guitar Hero with me any time.

[NOTE: If the video is showing up as super freaking tiny, refresh the page or click the direct link to this post. I don't know why it's doing it, but until I figure that out, just do the refresh to work around this annoying issue.]

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Congratulations, PS3, for doing something really fucking cool and smart. You have earned back some of my respect. NOT ALL! But a good amount. More than a handful of respect. Maybe a couple of cups worth. But do NOT under any circumstance decide that it’s a good idea to partner with Snappy Salads and promote the Strawberry Field Special that comes with a diet soda for the “GIRLZ!” or I will personally punch every person responsible for the campaign in the nose. You’re on thin ice with me right now after that OMG PSP campaign. We may be able to work things out, but don’t push it.

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I hadn’t heard anything about “Dragon Age” until I saw this video on VG247 but it is now officially part of my Christmas wish list. The title is due out on November 3rd on the PS3, Xbox 360 and PC.

From the official site:

Dragon Age: Origins is a dark heroic fantasy set in a unique world. As the spiritual successor of BioWare’s popular Baldur’s Gate series of games, it uses a pause-and-play tactical combat system. Play in over-the-shoulder mode, or the more tactical top-down view. Dragon Age: Origins features a stunning amount of cinematic dialog. Players will be able to acquire unique party members. These party members will have their own motivations for accompanying the player.

BioWare co-CEO Ray Muzyka describes “Dragon Age: Origins” as a ’spiritual successor’ to the “Baldur’s Gate” series, though it is not based on “Dungeons & Dragons.”

Whatever it’s based on, I’m stoked. I’ve been waiting for a game to come out featuring voice over artists that can rival those in “Heavenly Sword.”

Visit the official Dragon Age: Origins site»

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My roommate immediately ran into the kitchen, grabbed the fire extinguisher and prepared for the firestorm he knew would ensue.

Although I feared spontaneous combustion, I clicked the ad and saw this:

You can’t tell from my screen grab, but if you go to the official OMG Lilac PSP site, you’ll see that the image on the PSP screen rotates through a few scenes to show everyone what it is that girlz <3 2 play! The screenshots made me want to vomit. There are a couple of colorful fantasy lands, what I’m assuming is a shot from the Hannah Montana game and – my personal favorite – PONIES!!! Unless that pony can breathe fire and transform into a soul-sucking alien when enemies get too close, it can go to hell.

Does Sony REALLY believe that the reason girls don’t buy their handheld system is because it isn’t going to match their lip gloss color? NO! It’s because it’s expensive, hard to hold and therefore a pain in the ass to operate – the same reason guys don’t buy it. And do they feel that the games promoted on this site are representative of the games all girls play? Come on, guys. Who did you hire for this campaign? The same agency that created this ad?

There’s a quote on Joystiq from John Koller, SCEA’s Director of Hardware Marketing: “While SCEA has a broad range of PSP owners from under 12 to over 45 years old, we saw a tremendous opportunity for us to connect with the female and ‘tween’ demographic and create a PSP system that girls will love.” Guess what, John? I’m a girl and I think this ad is crap. It gives the male demographic more reason not to take girl gamers seriously. Thanks, dude.

For years, marketers have targeted video games to guys. I think one of the main reasons the Nintendo Wii was such a hit with women is because Nintendo included them in their ads having a good time AND fully clothed. It’s a super simple move, but one that seems pretty rare amongst most consoles and game developers. It’s Marketing 101 stuff. If you want a certain audience to buy your product, you’re going to have to bring them into the conversation. But there’s another level to this. DO NOT assume the conversation girls want to have with you is about “Pretty Pony Punkin Patch” and that you’re going to get their business by marketing sweet little cupcake games. That’s not to say that there aren’t girls (or boys) out there who would enjoy those games, it’s just to say that the days of assuming that all girls play with Barbie and all boys play with GI Joe are over. And those unwilling to admit that and push their advertising forward are going to piss off girl gamers who like to blog.

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Because of “Little Big Planet” awesomeness and my insatiable desire to improve my gamer card I started exploring the PS3 menu and – for the first time – actually launched PlayStation Home. Remember how PlayStation Home was supposed to be the big thing that was going to revolutionize the way everyone felt about Sony? And remember how launch kept getting delayed over and over again until we were all so sick of hearing about it we just kind of decided it didn’t exist? Maybe that was just me.

Regardless, I’d honestly forgotten about it until I was digging around on the menus trying to figure out if I was logged in or not and came across the icon. Fifteen thousand million hundred downloads later, my system was updated and I had created an avatar.

I hadn’t kept up with the way PlayStation Home was supposed to work, so I started exploration with no expectations. You start out in your house that you can rearrange and design however you want, but anything unique will have to be purchased with real money from the mall. Once you get bored here, you can go out, explore the world and chat with other people.

Every building you want to enter requires a download. Luckily none of them seemed to take very long and you can load them in the background while you bum around. While waiting for the theater to download, I came across a group of people dancing and stood around watching them, jealous that I hadn’t yet discovered the beauty of the R1 button and all of the pre-set dances and expressions you can tell your avatar to do.

Within less than a minute, a dude was hitting on me. Out of the massive and ever-growing list of pick up lines, this guy decided that “UR HOT” was the best one to use. Clever, these boys. Part of me wanted to run away and another part didn’t want to be viewed as a rude bitch, so I stuck around and we went through the standard ASL/music preference talks until I decided “HEY! This is a virtual universe and if I don’t want to talk any more, I CAN run away.” So, I did.

I went to the mall and wandered around until I stumbled across an area where you could hear “The Pulse” – Sony’s podcast. I’d never listened to it before and I thought it was great. They featured two women and I wasn’t clawing out my ear drums at the sound of their voices. It was really well done and I was kind of confused about being impressed by something from Sony again. About that time, I ran into another dude, ChadRock10. We were both native Texans and hit it off pretty well so we decided to stick together.

We were having a good time chatting it up when this other dude ran into the frame between us. I was in the middle of typing a response (which – unless you have a keyboard takes about 4 years per sentence) and he came up to say hello. Neither of us responded, so he shoved against ChadRock10, screamed out “BALDY!!!” and ran off. It was hilarious but also sad. I mean, really? There’s someone out there who was so offended that another avatar didn’t address him, he had to call him a name and run away before it turned into a fight. Wow.

Because it was taking so long to chat with ChadRock10 and I hadn’t launched PlayStation Home until well after midnight, I didn’t explore anything beyond the mall or the movie theater where you can watch game trailers and The Pulse vodcast (which I thought was great.) But you can also play casual games with other avatars and do a bunch of other crap.

Overall, I gotta say I was pretty impressed at the potential here. Will it be the thing to revolutionize the PS3? Not without a lot of work. It kind of reminded me of the beginning of chat rooms when everyone was on dial-up and took forever to respond to messages or log in to another chat room. But those were still good times. Keep your expectations low, be prepared for a bunch of things you’ll have to download initially to make it work and go check out PlayStation Home if you haven’t already. It’s worth a look.

P.S. PlayStation – please make the videos on your site share-able so I don’t have to dig through 8 pages of crappy YouTube clips to find the one I want at about 20% of the quality of the ones you have on your site.

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Man, that’s hot. Look at all those points! I can’t wait to show all my friends!!!

I do think that having the PSN Portable ID is a step in the right direction for getting people interested in picking up more PS3 titles. I suppose it’s better late than never. I will say that I’m a little disappointed to realize that all the trophies I’ve unlocked playing Little Big Planet with my roommate are only showing up on his profile and not mine. But I guess that’s no different from the way most games work when you’re playing together on the same console. Regardless, I’m not adding the card to my home page until I get some more points. As it is now, it’s just a little too depressing to look at on a daily basis.

Get your PSN Portable ID»

UPDATE 08/27/09:
So it turns out that my ID DID save the trophies I won from gaming on my roommate’s profile. It just takes awhile to update:

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Nice.

Stolt from Photobucket»

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And because the release date hasn’t been announced, but they’re already capable of doing things like you’ll see in this next video, I would like to encourage all horror film creators to start writing scripts NOW that have to do with gamers connecting with evil virtual worlds. If you can release a movie the same week as Natal, you’ll make millions.

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