UPDATE: Jeri Ryan has chimed in via her twitter account:

Okay, so… Mortal Kombat. It’s not a game trailer. Actually was made for the director to sell WB on his vision for a reimagined MK film. I did it as a favor to a friend. No idea yet what WB’s reaction to it was. And I’m not sure how you can contact WB to push them to make it. But you guys are resourceful…!

So that’s it folks, nothing to see here. At least not yet. The near unanimous fan reaction will hopefully get Warners to at least move in this direction if not actually use this particular pitch. Original post follows…
[Read the rest of this entry…]

Check your local listings, PBS is bringing Video Games Live home.

After five years of fan demand, VGL will release a DVD and PBS will exclusively air 90 minutes of it this summer. As part of the PBS Pledge Drive, The Video Games Live DVD, Blu Ray, and CD will only be available via PBS through November 1. This will be a great chance to support public television in your community and get a sweet DVD while you’re at it. Thats a lot better than a tote bag!

Dates will vary from city to city and station to station depending on when your local PBS station will run its pledge drive, so definitely keep an eye on the schedule. Video Games Live will run from July 31 through the month of August.

[Read the rest of this entry…]

The follow up to 2009’s best open world game, Red Faction Armageddon takes the destruction underground. You’ll play Darius Mason, the grandson of Red Faction Guerilla’s Alec Mason.

Game is coming March 2011, so you’ve got 9 months to camp outside your favorite retailer before you can take the deadly Nano Forge / Sledgehammer combo to some underground alien settlements. Oh yeah, this is the fourth game in the series and the first to actually include Martians.

Source: Redfaction.com
[Read the rest of this entry…]

Blood is an alumni from the early days of the fps genre, and its graduating class includes Hexen, Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, and Marathon. Back in those days, you didn’t need AI companions, ragdoll physics, quick-time events, a fancy 3D graphics engine, or any other neat bells and whistles to get players into your game, just guns, blood, and gore. Developed by Monolith and 3D realms, Blood utilized an enhanced version of the Build engine that had previously been seen in Duke Nukem 3D. It may not exactly have changed the way we look at gaming, but like many other games released during the period, it was chaotic grisly fun.
[Read the rest of this entry…]

When it was released in 2004, Far Cry was initially seen as a tech demo for Crytek’s CryEngine, which produces beautiful graphics even by today’s standards. The game itself wasn’t bad either, merging sandbox-style gameplay, spot-on FPS action, and enemy AI. You step into the shoes of Jack Carver, an ex Special Forces operative who is attempting to escape his troubled past. When escorting a female reporter named Valerie Constantine, his boat is attacked by mercenaries and she goes missing. Jack must search the island to find her, and discover why these mercenaries are attacking him. The journey will take him all over the island, from lush jungles, to deep forests, beaches, and canyons. The game’s graphical engine makes these visuals seem realistic as possible, and at times you may even forget that you’re being hunted down by mercenaries. Players can approach a confrontation any way they choose, be it an all-out gun approach, using stealth, or even setting traps to avoid confrontation altogether.
[Read the rest of this entry…]

The month of May saw Iron Man 2, the Halo Reach Beta, and news that Michael Bay was dropping Megan Fox but picking up TMNT.

We also released a ton of text features this month in addition to four new videos and two new podcasts! Time to catch up with what you missed!
[Read the rest of this entry…]

Since the alphabet is the building block of our language, the Powet Alphabet is the building block of what makes us geeks.

Media is great in the many different streams and tributaries its developed over the past decades. First came movies and television, then the music industry started taking hold. Computers came much later, and when those started becoming more common, video games started making the scene. So the entertainment industry saw all of this, and thought “Why haven’t we combined any of these media aspects together? The result has to be twice as good as either of the original parts!” Surely, musicals combined the ancient medium of theater, and later movies, and combined them with the constant melody of music. The music industry got a huge boost when it realized it could combine songs with mini-movies, and thus music videos were born and thrived. (at least until reality TV came about and usurped it) After the video game industry started making its big push into the mainstream in the early 90’s, the film industry took notice and asked itself the previous question: “A mix of the two can only lead to great things!”

(ye be warned…..)
[Read the rest of this entry…]

Regarded by many as the first successful business game, Trevor Chen’s Capitalism puts players in the shoes of a CEO. Your goal is to amass profit while keeping your company from going bankrupt or being bought out by another CEO. You can pursue your entrepreneurial path in several industries, including retail, factories, research and development, farming, and mining. You make decisions involving everything from what cities to build in, what products to sell, what crops to grow, and how much marketing you spend on your product. You have to take into consideration climate, supply and demand, location, and land value for each of your firms. You’;; be competing against other firms in the region too, and just like in the real world, the market is fierce.

You can either start from scratch with a brand new business, or play through one of the game’s 17 scenarios. If you’re a novice, then it pays to explore the game’s many tutorials, and even then there is a steep learning curve. The first few times I played, I found myself constantly issuing shares of my own stock just to keep from going broke. Once you do get the hang of things however, the game becomes fun, educational, and addictive. A sequel was released in 2001, and both games are available on GOG.com.