It’s that time of year again. Love is in the air, suicide rates are spiking, and businesses everywhere are lying and trying to take advantage of you. Some companies are spending millions in television advertising to convince you that buying pajamas on the internet will get you laid. Or perhaps the woman you desire will finally surrender to you once she sees that you’ve bought her a teddy bear that cost more than the Prestige Edition of Modern Warfare 2? What about diamonds, or the boxes of chocolates where you only end up getting one or two bites of the one you really like? Maybe a really expensive, super-special arrangement of flowers from that guy with the commercials who gives off the distinct impression he might be considering marriage someday in the state where they make the pricey teddy bears? That’s not likely to do it either.
The brutal truth is that the only people guaranteed to be stimulated this evening are the flower shop owners and Hallmark store managers. Plus, in the opinion of this aging writer, if you’re having to pay for it you’re with the type of chick you might as well try and get the money back from once she’s refilled your health meter. Instead you need to keep your Modern Warfare 2 NVGs turned on and eyes peeled for the type of girl that cares more about a players Mana then his gold. A woman who’ll start an Army of Two with you and always give her all playing Co-op even when you’re wounded and it looks like you won’t have ammo enough to make it to the next save checkpoint.
Well, not really, but I’ll play along with this beautifully accomplished hoax. A lot of work and coordination must have gone into producing this video, but the result speaks for itself. How many people will be suckered into believing this is real?
Your dream has been answered, albeit at least ten years past its relevency, but hey, better late than never. Actually, this calender isn’t called the Girls of Ultima for trademark reasons, but it is called Mystik and it depicts all the famous characters from the entire Ultima series. Better yet,, these are real flesh-and-blood girls, so you won’t have to feel icky inside staring lovingly at cartoons.
Are you incredibly hot? Do you find it hard getting through the monotonous day without your specially crafted gun holsters on your ankles? Do you have long, flowing hair with the tensile strength of steel, capable of pulling a 6-passenger car 50 meters through a Beijing suburb like Chinese kung fu woman Zhang Tingting?
Then Maxim and Sega want to hear from you! Maxim.com is running a contest until September 30, 2009 to find a real-life Bayonetta for Sega’s upcoming action game, Bayonetta. Sega stated that it is “looking for the one girl who best captures the style and attitude” of the ankle-gun toting protagonist in PlatinumGames’ upcoming title.
The winning contestant will be spotlighted on Maxim.com and will receive an Xbox 360 system, a 50-inch Panasonic TC-P50X1 Plasma HDTV and a copy of Bayonetta for the Xbox 360. Entrants have to be at least 18 years old and legal, female residents of either the U.S. or Canada.
Maxim, Sega and PlatinumGames will select the entrants for the online voting gallery and fans will vote on the top entries at Maxim.com from October 1 to October 23, 2009. PlatinumGames will then “factor in” all of the responses to determine the grand prize winner. In other words, American Idol-style voting. The winner will be announced on October 29, just in time to wear that Bayonetta costume for Halloween.
Ken Levine, mastermind behind Bioshock, System Shock and Freedom Force, has written an interesting article wherein he discusses several influential games that influenced his life. Most notable is his admission that the original Legend of Zelda ruined his romantic relationship.
After I graduated from college, I moved to an apartment San Francisco with first super-serious girlfriend. She was a couple of years younger than me, so at the end of the summer, she was set to go back to school. On our last day together in San Fran, I for some reason picked up The Legend of Zelda. As she stood by waiting for some romantic gesture to happen on our last day living together, she was instead treated to watching me obsessively plow through Hyrule for around 15 hours. By the time the cab showed up to take her to the airport, I realized if I had any hope of keeping her as my girlfriend, it was time to shut off the NES.
Needless to say, we didn’t spend the next summer together.
Ken goes on to discuss the Atari classic Adventure, the classic Castle Wolfenstein and Ultima Underworld.
The NPD Group just released a study which found that there has been a significant increase in the total number of female gamers over the last year – up as much as 28%. While the report does break things down in detail, it fails to give any hard numbers that might be of real help to many of the male gamers who spend the majority of their life online. Specifically of concern, but conspicuously omitted – what are the real odds that the party’s scantily-clad Elven warrior-priestess you’ve been chatting online with for weeks isn’t secretly wielding a sword? Or the possibility that the flirty new shooter calling herself “ImH0t4W11″ in your Conduit clan doesn’t carry an extra piece in her belt?
Unfortunately, science may never be able to give us those kind of specifics. However, the report was able to offer this ray of hope for those so concerned:
“These types of players ["extreme" femal gamers] account for just four per cent of total gamers, says the report, however their playing habits have become a little less extreme. While they still spend an average of 39 hours a week playing games, that average is down seven hours from 2008.”
Loading ...
Loading ...