Ars Certifies Dead Space's Scariness Cred [Dead Space]

"Do yourself a favor when you get the game," writes Ben Kuchera at Ars Technica. "Make the room as dark as possible. Turn the sound system up. Allow yourself to be swept away in it."

"The game is scary," Kuchera says definitively. "You're having a good time, and then BAM! Something happens and you jump out of your seat."

You folks know me, I've been sweet on Dead Space for a while now, but I am not sure I can bring myself to play it in pitch black darkness. I blame my timidity on a conspiracy in my childhood involving Steven Spielberg, who made Poltergeist, Jack Valenti, the MPAA chief who rated it PG when Spielberg bitched and moaned about an R; and my father, for encouraging me to watch it, giving me insomnia for a week solid and turning every slightly scary flick since then into a pants-shitting experience.

I'll play Dead Space between 11 am and 3 pm, thank you. With someone else running the controller, so I can yell "No! Not in there! Don't go in there!" and actually have the character on the screen take my advice.

Is Dead Space Scary? Yes. [Ars Technica]

Fun and the Future: Masaya Matsuura on Gaming Today [Industry]

Masaya Matsuura of NanaOn-Sha (PaRappa et al.) has a wonderful opinion piece over at Gamasutra on the future of gaming. You may not agree with all of his assertions, but it's nice to read something so passionate on the subject of where gaming is today and where it's headed. Based in part on his DICE 2008 presentation, Matsuura has an obvious fondness for the Wii and the implication for future games:

Video games are a very simple way to enjoy virtual experience. All you need is a TV, a console, a controller, and the software. This is an easy system for everyone compared with other forms of entertainment.

But like Hollywood, in order to keep the customers paying, the industry is using increasingly exaggerated content. Pressing buttons, moving sticks-these are small actions with grand effects. However, I think it is a slight error of judgment in our industry to believe that actions that in reality would carry great responsibility can be carried out in video games without thought for responsibility.

The Wii has come and put a cat amongst the pigeons of this unbalance. The harder you swing the remote, the faster the baseball bat moves. This more organic relation between imagination and reality is easily absorbed.

At the same time we understand that game designs that, for example, require the player to shake the Wii controller strongly to rotate a Tetris block, are unsuitable for input methods like this. The Wii requires a tighter connection between actual and virtual actions. But think! How can we improve on these kinds of obvious connections? That is the hint to make more advanced games.

It's a bit all over the place, but it's hard to fault Matsuura for that — it's a really interesting piece and wonderfully engaging, and certainly worth reading. Sure, it's only one take on the state of games today and he says many things that I'm sure many gamers would vehemently disagree with, but it's one (very passionate) side of the debate on where we are and where we're going.

A Sense of Fun: Anybody Could Be Your Player 1 [Gamasutra]

High Voltage Announces WiiWare Racer [High Voltage]

Still not having a publisher for The Conduit doesn't mean High Voltage can't work on other things, such as the above High Voltage Hot Rod Show a WiiWare title due out sometime before the end of the year. Crazy action, don't-give-a-shit physics and a Dukes of Hazzard air horn make this look good for a few laughs among friends. You can have up to four races simultaneous in split-screen mode. Let's see Mr. 36-Man Warcraft dude take on that.

High Voltage Announces New WiiWare Racer [Nintendo Wii Fanboy]

This Is What Those Guys Were Watching [Lets Tgs]

We're done counting the tens of thousands of votes you people cast in our "What The Hell Are These Guys Watching?" poll, and the results are in! So just what was it that had the Japanese crowd enthralled/confused? Was it Microsoft's star show-stopper, Star Ocean 4? Or perhaps the other Square Enix attention-grabber, Last Remnant? Or maybe, just maybe, it was the other other Square Enix 360 exclusive, Infinite Undiscovery?

Nope. It was none of them. Believe it or not, the video presentation that was showing at the time was for Rare's Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. Really. And every other time I saw it shown, people stopped, turned, and watched, where for most other titles (Star Ocean 4's STUNNING cinematics aside) they'd just keep on walking.

Guess it's not being marketed that heavily here, and looks, I don't know, different. Unique to Japanese eyes, maybe. Who knows! If you guessed wrong, chin up. There are more important things in life. If you guessed right, remember, internet bragging rights are yours for a day.

Microsoft Reconsidering XBLA Delisting Stance [Xbla]

Back in May, news that Microsoft would de-list low-selling, underperforming XBLA titles caused a bit of a stir. Well now that delisting might be put off or even canceled, according to Microsoft VP John Schappert.

Schappert told IGN that the original reports laying out how games would be targeted for deletion were, of course, taken out of context. Actually, I kind of buy his explanation. He said that the standards for delisting — a MetaCritic score of less than 65 and a trial conversion rate below 6 percent — were meant as parameters only, not absolute triggers for the XBLA axe. And that's good. Because Fable II: Pub Games is presently scoring a 55 on MetaCritic.

But ultimately, the new Xbox Live dashboard (not "experience") that goes live Nov. 19 might make delisting unnecessary. Originally, the idea was to reduce clutter in the marketplace. New sorting options in the new experience (ah, shit!) dash should make navigating the titles easier.

XBLA De-Listing Deferred [IGN via Gamasutra]