…because now is the time to pee your pants more than you’ve ever peed before - the good people at Bethesda have revealed 5 - count ‘em - FIVE new Fallout 3 videos at PAX today, and the other good people at GameTrailers.com have laid them out in one convenient spot for your viewing and re-viewing pleasure. Here is the first one to get your drool going; once you’ve moped up, go to the url below for the other 4:

http://www.gametrailers.com/game/4758.html

Well, it’s official - there is absolutely nothing exciting going on in the world of gaming today. 45 minutes of pouring through recent headlines on 1up, n4g, gamegrep, kotaku and joystiq yields nothing but the usual boring drivel:

- Gears of War 2 and Fallout 3 and My Eyes Are Staring At The Back Of My Head And Getting Fucking Scared 4 are going to be playable at PAX this year.

- Will Wright has actually been in a fucking coma for 3 years, but we are still holding the half-done source code over his lifeless body because we think the game is going to finish itself eventually.

An exciting world we live in, indeed. Thank god there are still some places that serve alcohol for lunch.

Don’t worry, you can let it out. This is definitely cause for a major “WTF?” moment.

According to the cool folks at 1up.com, via Official Xbox Magazine, rumors are circulating that Gearbox, the developers behind the Brothers in Arms series, are going to be responsible to taking Master Chief, Cortana, and the rest of the Halo universe into the NEXT next generation.
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As a delighted owner of both the Wii and the robotic vacuum cleaner Roomba, I couldn’t help but “borrow” this news-bit, originally posted by the guys over at Kotaku. Here, a Japanese wiz-man (wiz-person?), Ron Tajima hooks up his Wii Fit Balance Board to his Roomba using a Bluetooth connection. The result? Vacuuming your floors by exercising, of course!

What would be even more cool, now, is to reverse the feedback to have the motions of the vacuuming Roomba transmit back to the Balance Board for a true balancing mini-game!

This 7-minute long (well, minus all the marketing junk at the end) trailer of the new Prince of Persia game has been circulating around the web today, fresh off the floor of the Leiptzig Game Show, one of the few remaining venues where they are still not ashamed to use sexy girls to promote love, peace, and video games.

German girls aside, the trailer is quite an enjoyable little piece of media. As an avid fan of the original Prince of Persia games, I can never quite pass up a chance to get a sneak peak at the next game, and this time was no different. A penny for my thoughts, you say? Why, sure. Well, first things first - I love the new art style. This, of course, is a highly personal thing, but for me it’s a great improvement over the previous look of the The Sands of Time et al - I never really bought into the whole “Dark Prince” thing, and this definitely improves on that color scheme.

The moves and acrobatics remain on the same track as before - wall-running and the like. Once again, not something that I was ever too crazy about - while all these moves are theoretically cool, they just stray a little too far from reality for me - even video game reality. It’s not parkour - because you can’t really do parkour in the mountains by simply pretending that tiny cracks can actually support your entire body weight even for a second - and it’s not classic platforming, because there is nothing classic about being able to slide down a 50 foot wall without so much as breaking a fingernail. It’s definitely cinematic, but my issue with it is that it’s too much so - you can’t stop at any point, take a breather, and enjoy the scenery - you have to keep executing crazy maneuvers until you reach that very occasional point when you are actually on solid ground.

The voice acting also definitely comes off as a little weird. The Prince and Elika sound like two teenagers having a relaxed conversation over milk shakes in a suburban diner - all the while they are scaling immense heights, performing head-turning acrobatics, and battling incredible beasts. I was half expecting one of them to come out with “So, you wanna catch a movie later?” at any moment.

Still, being a total graphics whore, the amazing art style might just lure me back for another try at this next iteration of an undying classic. It will definitely start out as a rental for me, though.

That’s what’s happening to Nintendo lately. First there was the lackluster E3 conference. Then word that their GameCube, Wavebird, and Classic controllers were found to be infringements of copyrighted patents. Now, new litigation is heading the way of the big N, this time from Hillcrest Laboratories, Inc., who claim that the Wii remote’s motion control and the interface used with the system were ideas invented by Hillcrest, not Nintendo’s developers.

As reported by Bloomberg’s Susan Decker and Wired.com (via the AP), the suit is looking to prevent the Wii from being imported into the United States. Oh no, what’s Ellen going to give away on her show now?!?
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No, I’m not talking about that boring third-person shooter from Microsoft. That’s still a 360/PC exclusive. I’m referring to Sega’s MadWorld, a cautionary tale about the havoc and mayhem that one man can bestow upon the world when he’s given a chainsaw in place of a missing arm. Covered in a recent cover story in Nintendo Power, the game, set to release in early 2009, focuses on Jack, a man “forced to participate in a lethal game show known as Death Watch, where the objective is to score points by dispatching your enemies in the most entertaining way possible.” Don’t know about you, but I’m sold.

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At this week’s Leipzig games convention in Germany, Sega announced a new entry into the House of the Dead arcade shooter franchise coming directly to the Wii entitled Overkill. Not merely a port, like the previously released HOTD Return 2&3 was, Overkill is an entirely new game developed for the Wii, and looks to be a pretty damn cool addition to the genre.

Perhaps the coolest part, though, is the trailer Sega put together to announce the game. As reported by Wired.com’s Game|Life blog, it’s not known yet whether the clearly Rodriguez/Tarantino-inspired Grindhouse look to the release footage will play an integral part of the gameplay or is just there for show (and to cash in on the cult success of Planet Terror?), but either way the video is worth checking out. The game is set to release in March of 2009.

I wonder if they’re gonna get Samuel L. to voice the cop?

(Thanks to Wired for the pic, as well.)

Since you all like the pics I dig up, figured I’d share the wealth again. Here’s your first batch (hehe) of wallpapers featuring Alison Carroll as Lara Croft. The folks who were whining about Alison’s mole and scar can be thankful for the wonders of photoshop, and the rest of us who know better than to pick out the minor flaws on a beautiful woman can rejoice in the large photo sizes. Thanks to the folks at Tomb Raider Live and the Tomb Raider News Channel for the images.

The latest commercial for the upcoming Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise for the DS, slated to release on September 2, uses the series humor - and Rare’s connection to Microsoft - to spoof the Halo 3 “Believe” ads which ran before the latter’s release. It’s cool to see spoofs like these, and it’s definitely worth a laugh. Check out the video over at Wired.com.

For those who missed them the first time around, the Halo 3 “Monument” ad can be seen here, and the particular ad on which the new spoof is based can still be found at The John-117 Memorial site (just fly through the monument for a few to unlock the video).