I was told it was shitty, but man oh man. So very very very very very very shitty.

Dammit, man! I tried to save you from that horror!

Attention (Games) Writers!

Is anyone here interested in contributing games reviews to Static Multimedia?

I've got a perfect person for you. I'll pass on the info.

It's been discussed before, but this seriously may be the greatest game ever

Hitman blood money for the 360 is hard as hell sometimes, but I played it all day saturday and damn what a fun game!
my first time with the series and I love it!

I am super close right now to getting a job at SEGA to be a tester......cross your dicks!

I wanted to get into software testing a few years ago. I really do think I'd be good at it. Too bad every job is on the west coast and requires previous experience.

Shit, my company's desperate for testers right now if you (or anyone else) is interested

There are plenty of QA jobs right here in Chicago, and many are entry-level. Sure, most aren't as glamorous as testing an exciting video game, but they'll provide you just as much of a challenge and be just as rewarding. Shit, my company's desperate for testers right now if you (or anyone else) is interested

What company do you work for?

Rep Lee Terry (R-Nebraska): As a father of three young boys -- 11, 8 and 6 -- who are avid gamers, I'm very concerned about the content included in the games.
Jon Stewart: And as I stand there, watching them play these violent games, helpless to do anything about it, I can't help but wonder where the system has failed... Who wants to be the first person to sound like an out-of-touch jackass? Oh, you! Congressman Upton.

Rep Fred Upton (R-Michigan): I'm a gamer myself. I used to be an expert in Pong. That was a great game. Boop! Boop! Boop boop!

Rep Joseph Pitts (R-Pennsylvania): It's safe to say that a wealthy kid from the suburbs can can play Grand Theft Auto or similar games without turning to a life of crime, but a poor kid, who lives in a neighborhood where people really do steal cars, or deal drugs or shoot cops might not be so fortunate. There's almost certainly child somewhere in America who will be hurt by these games. Maybe his dad's in jail or his brother's already down on the corner, dealing drugs.

JS: Maybe he buys a gun. Steals a car and tries to run. But he doesn't get far. In the ghettoooo, in the ghetoooo. Seriously, the House of Representatives is full of insane jackasses.

i'm playing the shit out of Hitman for 360. it is fantastic. hard as hell, but fantastic.

Have you shot the bottom out of the glass bottomed hot tub yet? It's supposed to be pretty spectacular.

is this the level where you shot the old guy and his dog? I never saw the hottub (and I can't figure out where the helipad is, no elevator would take me to the roof.)

I just started the mississippi level, GREAT GAME!

It was either this or another marathon masturbation session.

Why not both?

Played this for the first time in about two years. Still great fun. I put it on workout mode and played for a half hour or so. Burned over 250 calories. My feet hurt.

It was either this or another marathon masturbation session.

Kraft offers a DDR-style game and $10 pad
Posted Jan 17th 2006 7:30PM by Dan Choi

Link



Kraft is offering a "free" game pad (with a $9.99 shipping & handling fee) so folks can try out 2 free steppin' games on their PCs.

The quality of the mat's probably nothing to replace your metal arcade set-up with, but the Groove Master and Rockin' the Boat games you can download for it are free. (And you can likely use the USB pad for better PC dance games as well if Kraft's downloads don't float your boat; an online demo for Rockin' the Boat can be found here.)

Promoting an active lifestyle seems in line with corporate packaged-food and junk/fast-food strategies these days, especially if potential lawsuits are to be headed off at the pass.

DDR-style game pad for $10...

Here's a Dance-Dance-Revolution style USB mat you can get from Kraft (the macaroni and cheese folks) for only $10. This is a pretty good deal and you could likely turn this into all sorts of controllers and as parts for projects. I bet it will even work with the open source version of DDR. So, grab one while you can and they're available. [via via] Link.

Comments (newest links first):

Funny... looks remarkably similar to the one geeks.com is selling for $4!

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=DMATT-FF-NB

Posted by: bdunnette on February 24, 2006 at 10:31 AM

The Kraft pad came in on Friday, and works as advertised. Under OS X, the buttons all work.

My sisters played StepMania over the weekend, though, and reported that "double-steps always miss!" I'm not a big DDR player, but apparently there are points when you have to depress two buttons simultaneously. These simultaneous keypresses weren't registering.

Turns out that the Up, Down, Left & Right buttons are mapped to a hatswitch, and so it's not registering Up+Down. For now, I just turned the gamepad diagonally -- the diagonal buttons map to USB buttons, not a hatswitch.

Anyone taken this apart yet to see if there's a way to modify the hatswitch button presses? There are unused buttons reported (5, 6, 7, 8).

Posted by: dlong on February 01, 2006 at 09:38 AM

Got mine this morning, (That's pretty quick for a food product premium)

Posted by: dijital101 on January 30, 2006 at 10:03 AM

Ordered one when this story hit, and we received it yesterday. It's legit. The dance game that they've got on the pad site is a good one for the young kids -- not too hard, but still gets you sweatin'. The kids are having a blast with it.

Posted by: jacl on January 28, 2006 at 09:10 AM

I've taken the risk and will keep you updated as of what happens. (I used a cap-one card that has fraud protection it also has a very low limit so they can't do as much damage in case this turns out to be bunk). I only use this card for things like this that might have bad consequences.

Posted by: dijital101 on January 19, 2006 at 08:38 AM

A check at register.com shows both sites are registered to Kraft.

Posted by: Spoonman on January 19, 2006 at 07:40 AM

I found the link. Kraft.com links to kraftfoods.com, which links to kraftbrands.com. Kraftfoods.com makes mention of the game pad giveaway on their promotions page, so it looks like this is legit.

Posted by: mwproductions on January 19, 2006 at 07:15 AM

Funny - I can't find any links from pages on kraft.com to kraftbrands.com, the site in the post. A search on their site doesn't come up with anything about a game pad promotion either. I'd be suspicious about submitting my contact or payment info.


Posted by: Youkai on January 18, 2006 at 11:18 PM

Anyone playing Chi-bi-Robo for Game Cube?

The wife's been hooked on it--you're a tiny little robot that's been assigned to help clean up the household of a highly dysfunctional family (the daughter seems to be autistic and only speaks like a frog, the wife is pissed at hubby for bringing home electronic gadgets...leading to a self-imposed exile in her bedroom). Along the way, you encounter a multitude of animals and weird toys that come to life and have their own problems that you have to solve. Earn "heart points" and "moolah" along the way.

This game is surprisingly dark, what with the non-communicative human elements and the somewhat depressed and mentally unbalanced anthropomorphic characters. There is a highly morbid death in one extended animation scene, and a psychotic pink Teddy bear who is the single most frightening thing I have seen in a video game since I tried a Silent Hill 4 demo!

Annoying noises (all characters talk with subtitling in voices that make the Sims seem like pleasant conversationalists) and sentimentality abound, but it has a great 3-d cartoony set design. The bitch of the thing is that your robot has to run around and do all of this in 15 minute spaces of time, and has low "battery power" that must be earned--either way, the game gets interrupted quite often for the character to "recharge". The ultimate goal (we think) is to solve all the relationship problems and become the #1 Ranked Chibirobo Robot.

For logical puzzle fans, explorers and "cutesy character" lovers, this is a game to check out.

So, uh... you're a shark... and you get to ram things and bite people in half... and destroy piers... and then get captured... and try to find a keycard... as a shark... and then get stuck in a wall and die...

EXCITEMENT.