Now that X-Play has announced an indisputable list of the year’s best games, it’s time to unfurl the cursed scroll with the names of the hands down worst video games of 2009 and dole out, what are essentially the Razzies of the gaming world, The Golden Mullet Awards. Tune in at 6PM ET to see which games have earned the ignominious honor and make sure to take a look at these behind-the-scenes pictures of the award show.

Source:ezinearticles.com

What’s your favorite part of the trailer? I’m a big fan of the bouncing betty landmine action! Also, be sure to read my hands-on preview of the game’s multiplayer component from last month.

Source:G4tv.com

Announced last week at QuakeCon 2009, the Mac and Linux versions of Quake Live is now active and can be accessed on your Apple or penguin-powered personal computer.

Just head on over to QuakeLive.com and register, download the plug-in, and get fragging. I loaded it up in Safari and found it a little buggy. What is your experience with Quake Live on OSX or Linux so far?

Source:gtv.com

Don’t worry if you haven’t heard of Sarbakan Games. The Canadian game company has been around since 1989, but has been making solid advergames and titles-for-hire for clients like Warner Bros., AOL, Nickelodeon, Disney, MTV, and Mattel. Lately, though, Sarbakan has decided to create some original games, including an Xbox Live Arcade title. I love the possibilities inherent in a company moving into a heretofor unknown space, so I talked to Sara Garneau, Sarbakan’s marketing director, about what’s coming up for the company.

According to Garneau, Sarbakan’s got a couple of casual PC games in beta: A light, browser-based MMO called Star Fever Agency that skewers the entertainment industry by casting players as powerful Hollywood agents tasked with managing the careers of a stable of stars and starlets, and Little Noir Stories: The Case of the Missing Girl, a hidden object game available for PC.

While both PC games sound like they’d be interesting to their target markets (people over 35 who like casual gaming experiences), I’m guessing they’re not the right fit for you, dear hardcore-gaming reader. It sounds like you can’t shoot anyone in the face in either game! So I’m most interested in Sarbakan’s third title, the Xbox Live Arcade game.

While Garneau was not ready to provide the title of Sarbakan’s Arcade game or any tangible information, Garneau assures me that a full launch is coming in the first quarter of 2010, and that it will be worth waiting for.

“The mechanics are very original. It’s a full, exciting game,” Garneau said.

I tell you all this because there’s a slight chance that 2010 will roll around, and you’ll download this company’s Xbox Live game and find that it is, in fact, the single. greatest. video. game. you. have. ever. played. Admittedly, it’s a very small chance, but if that does happen, you’ll be able to say, “Stephen Johnson told me about this game months ago, before anyone had even heard of it!” and my position as a video game taste-maker will be forever cemented in the public imagination. If not, you’ll probably forget about this post altogether by then anyway, so it’s a win-win for me.

Sarbakan promised they’d let me know more info when the announcement of its Xbox game is made, and when that happens, I will in turn let you know.

Source:g4tv.com

TheFeed gang wants your thoughts on gaming, the crazy sales of Wii Spors Resort, and more. Let everyone know what you’re thinking and chat it up with your fellow readers. Leave comments on anything and everything that’s on your (gaming/tech/nerd) mind! The reader with the best comment will two Fruit Loops and one Apple Jack.

Source:g4tv.com

Jonathan Blow, the creator of art-platformer Braid for the 360 and PC recently posted a job listing on his site for looking for 3D Environment Concept Artist to work on his next game.

In an interview with yours truly, Blow said he’s working on a 3D game that’s “twice the budget of Braid.” The job posting describes the new project thusly: “a puzzle-exploration game that is philosophical, and quiet, and is being made for reasons other than crass profit motive.”

The help-wanted ad specifically states that applications not have a portfolio containing “Girls With Big Tits; Barbarians Wielding Axes, Covered in Blood; Aliens; Space Ships; Gangsters Getting Shot in the Face; Orcs; Giant Robots; and, of course, Postapocalyptic Wastelands.”

I can totally get behind these criteria… but man, seeing the tropes of the mainstream game industry all laid out in a neat little list sure makes them seem ridiculous, right?

Source:g4tv.com

Jake Gaskill: I finally picked up Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 for the Wii, and I’m thoroughly satisfied. I’m looking forward to trying out the Play the Pros feature during this weekend’s British Open (I’ve already torn apart Turnberry, so it should be a pretty easy tournament.) I’ll also be working on the XBLA title ‘Splosion Man, which I’m really excited about (be sure to check back next week for my review). Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll be able to get in any more Shadow Complex (BOO!), and when I say that that saddens me, you have no idea how much I mean that.

Stephen Johnson: A Left 4 Dead mania is sweeping the G4 offices, so I imagine I’m going to spend my weekend in zombie-town. I haven’t played that much multi-player L4D yet, but I’m teamed up with the great Jeff Kanjanapangka, Eugene Morton, and a yet-to-be-decided fourth. I’m sure they’ll school me good.

Here are the G4 office-workers I most look forward to murdering, in a virtual sense: Jonathan Goorvich, Dana Vinson, and Eugene Morton. Dana because she’s super-friendly and needs to be taught a lesson in evil, Jonathan because his glasses haunt my dreams, and Eugene Morton. He knows what he did. I know Eugene is on my team, but I’m going to light that bitch on fire anyway.

Raymond Padilla: I completely failed to start Blue Dragon last weekend. That’s what happens when you forget that your friends from Thailand are supposed to crash at your place. I’m not sure I’ll get to it this weekend either. I have a bunch of Dissidia: Final Fantasy to play. I’m also trying to con my friends from Sony and Ignition to come over for some Rock Band 2. The good news is that they suck at setting up WiFi, so I agreed to sort our their router problems if they play some Rock Band at my place…which really isn’t much of a con when I think about it.

Andrew Pfister: After a week spent on the road for Special Assignments™, I’d normally be looking forward to a weekend planted on my slightly misshapen futon (who needs luxuries like a couch?) and tasting a sample platter of games I’ve recently liberated from Billy’s office. But I think I’m going to be attached to my PC for most of the weekend finishing up Trine, diving into some of the newly released LucasArts stuff, and generally exploring my long-neglected list of Steam favorites. And if I find myself compelled to pick up a new widescreen monitor to enjoy them on, well, so be it.

Patrick Klepek: Having finally put Overlord: Dark Legend behind me (an entertaining Pikmin-like adventure that sadly dovetails into repetitive nonsense in the last few hours), this weekend promises a two-pronged dose of old school. On one hand, my recent efforts to install Windows XP on my MacBook Pro were successful, immediately prompting me to install Steam and purchase a copy of Trine, the wizard/knight/thief platformer that’s all the indie rage lately. I can’t wait to dive in. On the other, there’s The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition. Having not joined the adventure genre until The Curse of Monkey Island era, it’s been a blast to see where Guybrush Threepwood came from. Please, LucasArts — make more of these!

Source:g4tv.com

Sony’s PlayStation 3 lineup over the next year is nothing short of stellar. Yet, there is one game that PS3 fans will unfortunately not be getting their hands on anytime soon, and that game is of course Ubisoft’s Splinter Cell: Conviction. But if you think Conviction’s absence on the PS3 has anything to do with console favoritism, then you’ll be pleased to know that you’re only half right, according to Kotaku.

During a Q&A on the company’s official forums, a Ubisoft developer explained:

I’ve contacted Ubisoft about all this, and they’ve yet to respond at the time of this posting. I’ll give you an update when I hear back from the company.

Source:g4tv.com

There is a mix of different features in Homefront that THQ and Kaos Studios are calling the “Drama Engine.” The…drama engine? At first, it sounds like something silly, ala the Emotion Engine that was hyped for the PlayStation 2, but it’s actually a little cooler than that, as Homefront general manager David Votypka explained during E3.

“We have a mix of these really intense action moments combined with in-game storytelling,” said Votypka. “You’re not going to see any cutscenes in the game. One of the things that the drama engine done is it’s a lot of dynamic triggers and tracking of bringing events in your face, at the player, all the time. For example, in our demo…there’s this one sequence where this enemy jeep comes hurtling at you and you fire a rocket launcher and it flips over and careens towards you. Now, if I’m standing 30 or 40 feet to the left or the right, it’s actually still gonna track to the player, so there’s a lot of systems that’s checking dynamically [in] real-time about really bringing you those action moments right into your face.”

Essentially, Homefront still engages in a large amount of scripted events to convey drama, but rather than potentially missing out on part of the event because you’re looking the wrong way (or having the camera ripped from your control to force your vision there), it tailors the direction of the on-screen action, based on where you’re located in the environment. Cool!

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