Happy Halloween everyone!

I'm not one for being scared. My nerves are already wound tight enough and though, being scared can sometimes be a fun experience, I have to whole-heartedly disagree. Halloween can be a good time to play some scary video games but here a handful of games that might have found their way into my hands, but I haven't been able to bring myself to finish.

Eternal Darkness. Developer Silicon Knights really broke the mold when they made this one. Eternal Darkness doesn't play like any game before, breaking the "fourth-wall" of video games to scare you to your gamer core. While I've managed to play with the lights off through about the fourth chapter, I recently tried to play again, starting from the beginning. I think I made it into a handful of rooms in the mansion before I had to put it away. Eternal Darkness even starts off with a bang, thrusting you into a dream before pulling the veil back on the lead character and introducing some of the more psychological, mysterious, and unnerving elements in the game. Eternal Darkness is easily my favorite "scary" game.

Super Mario 64. You may laugh, but goddam was I terrified of Bowser. I would relegate myself to the bomb-omb battlefield for hours at a time before I faced him in the castle's main chamber. And why do the Boos scare me so badly? Even to this day, I'll avoid the haunted mansion world for as long as I possibly can. Part of my fear surrounding Super Mario 64 was how hard it was for me to wrap my hands around some of the challenges. I couldn't stand to see Mario drowning in the quicksand around the pyramid, or rolling over in the murky water.

Killer 7. Killer 7 might not be considered a scary game by some, but for me, it was the atmosphere, the visuals, the overall creepiness that had me weirded out. How is it possible to play through two discs of this stuff? Some day, I'll grow a pair and manage to get through a large chunk of it and then force myself to finish. Until then, Killer 7 will sit around in my game bag for a while.

Resident Evil 4. Luckily for me, I actually managed to get through a lot of Resident Evil 4, despite the fact that it was mostly a panicked run, my sweaty palms barely able to contain the controller in my fists. It's not scary so much as it is tense, atmospheric, and diabolically difficult. Goddam that boulder crushing me because I couldn't tap A or jam L+R fast enough.

See, I told you I don't play scary games. If I did, the list would be longer.

Halo Waypoint makes itself worth it with Avatar RewardsWhile I ma

While I may be out of "the office" this weekend for Halloween, it doens't mean I can't keep up on the news, despite the news being available right on my Xbox! Yesterday, Kotaku posted video tour of the newest addition to your 360's dashboard and apparently there are Avatar Rewards to be had from the free content.

Halo Waypoint is your destination for everything Halo on the Xbox 360, kind of like Bungie.net, but not on your computer and accessible before you head in to any given Halo game. While at first I questioned the worth of Halo Waypoint, I'll question no more. Anything that gives players free content (even in the form of Avatar stuff) is alright with me. Here's a picture of a guilty spark avatar reward. How much space is any given avatar going to be allowed on screen? Seems like all of this extra stuff would take up a long of screen real estate.

That feeling spreads across a lot of things that the 360 dashboard has found itself privy to, starting with 1 vs 100 and moving on to Halo Waypoint and the Football toss minigame. I hope the free content will continue to come in order to make up for the fact that Live users have to pay for their online service. Being a silver user at the moment, I can say that I definitely feel like I'm missing out.

Modern Game Marketing - Epic Mickey's epic atmosphere spreads to comics etc

As more and more Epic Mickey details pour out, so does word of the Epic Marketing Campaign that'll go with it.

Kotaku reported Thursday that designer and cool-last-name-having-guy Warren Spector is going to continue "beating on that drum." What drum is he talking about? The drum of marketing (of course!) and taking a product and selling it across as many different products as can carry that product. In this case, you'll see Mickey tear across a dark landscape of T-shirts, coffee mugs, beanie babies and of course, big-screen adaptations. Who wouldn't want to see a good thing run into the ground?

It might be too soon to talk about good things though, especially because Epic Mickey is still a long way out. The Game Informer cover has come and gone (but we know how "cheaply" those things are considered), but a lot of the things you see about Epic Mickey remain in the conceptual stages.

Let us not forget that this is a third-party Wii game we're talking about. I don't mean to be such a detractor and suggest that Epic Mickey won't sell through mini-game compilation numbers, but I think the gaming public and the general public who will certainly have Epic Mickey forced down their throats in numerous ads, sponsorships, and general news media coverage should consider Epic Mickey with a grain of salt. It takes a lot more than a great idea to get the game out the door and it takes even more for the masses to latch onto that game and make it a seller into the sixth figure.

With Disney's burgeoning game's division, it's looking-good purchase of Marvel, and the usual marketing machine behind it, I'm sure we'll see Epic Mickey in at least two mediums come release.

Modern Game Marketing is a series on how new games, and the corporations behind them, get you to want them.

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The Ballad of Gay Tony

An assignment I couldn't complete...

In class the other day, a classmate was relating to another that they had to "level up to 10" for homework that night. They were lamenting the fact that they were being required to invest time in World of Warcraft for their digital arts class.

Apparently, in an attempt to justify the digital world (in this case, the "world" of Warcraft) as an art form, the professor charged each student with creating an in-game character and completing the tasks required to get that character to level 10.

Sure, this sounded interesting enough, especially when I thought back to the "A Life Well Wasted" where a Stanford program was in the business of recording the ends of digital worlds. Despite all that interest though, I could never bring myself to World of Warcraft, and if a professor were up front about such an assignment, I probably would have dropped the class at the beginning of the semester. I don't think grinding should EVER be part of any curriculum. I don't want to do it in my games and I don't want to do it in my academic career.

While I wish my fellow student luck in his grinding and grading, I don't envy that assignment at all.

DSi LL is Living Large

Are you glad you didn't rush out to buy that DSi just yet? Did you stick with your DS Lite, thinking that there'd be another iteration of the popular handheld out eventually?

Turns out you were right! Yesterday, Nintendo announced another cosmetic upgrade to the dual-screened mobile platform, this time calling it the Nintendo DSi LL. Announced at a Press Event in Japan today, the DSi LL sports a 4.2 inch screen and comes with two styli, including a larger pen-sized stylus.

The new unit will come in three new colors, including Wine Red (ooh fancy!) and be preloaded with two Brain Training DSiware games and a the DS Easy Dictionary.

Reportedly, the pixels are the same in the screens, but due to the larger size, everything will be much easier to read. It seems to me like this edition of the DSi will sit alongside it, not replace it. The DSi LL could be pointed at the older market, or even more so as a personal device for more professional environments, like school or work. While this makes a lot of sense, I don't know how much of a market there is to be had, what with cell phones taking the place of so many personal organizers and the like.

The DSi LL could also be seen as a means by which Nintendo will be able to sell a DS to EVERYONE (something they have been striving for since the inception of the DS Lite).

Bayonetta will be out in America on January 5th

Bayonetta's release in Japan might have a few people itching to order and shell out for shipping and handling, but maybe it'd be a better idea to sit tight and wait until January 5th, which just happens to be the game's NA release date.

PLAY READ WRITE got it's hands on the E3 build of Bayonetta back at... ummm, E3 (weird how that works). While there's been lots of talk about the discrepencies between the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game, one thing is for sure: Platinum Games knows how to build a beat-em-up. Either way, if you enjoy Devil May Cry, you can be sure you'll get a kick out of Bayonetta.

While the gameplay is really the star here, beware. With the game out in Japan and region-free copies available on the PS3, Bayonetta can be spoiled, so be mindful of what you click on!

REVIEW: Underworlds for the iPhone

Underworlds is a hack and slash game for the iPhone that accomplishes a lot despite the diminutive size and stature of the platform it's on. While you might not think of very deep experiences when you consider iPhone games, but Underworlds does a great deal to combat that stereotype.

Of course you'll have start by slaying rats in a basement, but the action quickly ramps up to extensive dungeon crawls and lots of evil skeleton bodies lying around. The looting also lends a large hand to the motivation behind you as a player. I sometimes run into points of RPGs and deep experience games where I just don't know why I'm still playing with nothing particularly exciting or exhilarating going on.

How many times will I have to traverse the world map before I find the enemy or shrine I'm looking for? Luckily, Underwolds does away with that feeling by including quick quests and short distances between where you are assigned a task and where you'll find that task's conclusion.

While I did find some frustration in a handful of battles I didn't seem to have enough health potions for, I will say that overall developer Pixel Mine did a great job of making sure that the difficulty doesn't ramp up faster than your characters leveling. Experience is always trackable on the bottom screen so you'll know how many monsters you have left until you have more skill points to spread around.

Speaking of skill points in fact, Underworlds maintains a fair amount of depth in it's system,

with different character classes and specific characteristics to level up, the players character can end up as one thing or another depending on how you play the game.

While the animations can be a little slow and the action can chug when there are a lot of enemies on screen, there's very little, graphically, to complain about. Ultimately you're getting an experience that's deeper than even arcade-classic Gauntlet (minus the multiplayer) that you can fit in your pocket for only $2.99.

I've saved my highest praise for last, because well, this was really a game-making bullet point for me. The inclusion of HUD buttons for your potions literally made the game for me. You don't have to pause the action on screen, you don't have to die because you couldn't use another potion fast enough, and you don't have to look far for your HP gauge. It's on the screen already! That shows a fair amount of consideration for the player from Pixel Mine.

You can download Underworlds from the App Store for you iPhone or iPod Touch. It requires iPhone OS 2.2.1 or later.

PLAY READ WRITE / REVIEW SCORE: 4 OUT OF 5

Gamasutra looks at Gamerscore

And what do they find?

Well firstly, completing a game's campaign does not necessarily mean getting 1000 out of 1000 achievement points.... Duh!

No, seriously though, Gamasutra's article on the average completion rates for Xbox Live's gamers is actually pretty interesting. Conceptually, the statistics speak volumes about the way we play games in this day and age.

While getting 100% of the possible achievement points is certainly a good way of knowing that you've gotten everything out of your $60 game, does the average gamer consider that "beating" the game? I know that I don't. Why should players force themselves to play the most boring, menial, laborious tasks a game can throw at them, just for the achievement points? I've set myself up for that kind of situation before, notably with last year's Prince of Persia title and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.

Both of those games were highly enjoyable, but when each glitch achievements on me, I just don't see the point of playing through all over again just because the hardest difficulty wasn't available on the first go around, or because I had to ask Elika to save me too many times.

But enough about me! What about other Xbox Live gamers? As it turns out, the smallish survey group Gamasutra is working with (straight from Microsoft) is "more hardcore" than most Xbox Live gamers and even that group has only 80% of its members having gotten every achievement available for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Doesn't that make the rest of us not look as bad?

OK, more about me: to put all this gamerscore talk in perspective, I present my overall gamerscore. I have achieved 9880 gamer points, but that's out of a possible 33595 points! Doesn't it seem like a drop in the bucket? Certainly there are plenty of games I haven't finished, or even earned half of the possible achievement points in, but am I a bad gamer?

I'd say no. Looking at the statistics Gamasutra has posted, it turns out I should feel pretty good about my 1000 out of 1000 on CoD4. While over 70% of surveyed players had completed the campaign in CoD4, only about 45% of players had gotten 1000 out of 1000. When all is said and done, gamerscore and achievement points prey on the suffering OCD gamer in us all. I don't think any of us should "feel pretty good" about getting 1000 out of 1000 in anything.

Avatar rewards for L4D2 on 360

Apparently, someone over on the Steam forums has dug through the bare naked code of Left 4 Dead 2. Doesn't that make you feel dirty? Someone has seen the game naked!

What's interestingly come from such sleuthing, is the hint that there'll be Avatar rewards for some achievements in L4D2. You'll be able to outfit you Xbox Live Avatar with items like the Med Kit or the Frying Pan. It's a neat way to show off what you've done in a game, and Avatar rewards are certainly more upfront that achievements (forget all that reading no one wants to do).

My question is this: Do Avatar rewards justify a purchase of Left 4 Dead 2 on 360 instead of PC? I just don't know how to justify buying a Valve-developed and published game on a console instead of PC, seeing as how PC has always proven to be the lead platform for Valve.

Personally, unless I find out that I won't be able to run L4D2 on my computer, I probably won't be enticed by Avatar rewards.

Even Miyamoto wants more Star Fox

MTV's Multiplayer blog published a clip from Miyamoto:

"I tend to forget those games [laughs]. I'm a big fan of the 'Star Fox' games. Every time we make a 'Star Fox' game I'm hoping people will enjoy it as much as I do. Of course the goal every time is to try and make it more and more fun but, at least in Japan, the people that purchase the 'Star Fox' games has decreased over the years. But we still try to make them more fun and hopefully people will see the appeal in those games."

PLAY READ WRITE can't help but agree. You may know (if you're a semi-regular reader) just how much Star Fox 64 means to me. It was a favorite of my past and a favorite of my present. Honestly, I have such high praise for Star Fox 64 that I sometimes think it's unfair to write critically about it. Everything from the branching path, all-range mode combat, and colorful characters just make me fall in love every time I play the game.

In fact, since there is currently no more Star Fox on the way, I'll just have to hop back on to Star Fox 64 and pretend that it's a new game. See you guys later.

iPhone games, surprisingly fun

While I'm new to the iPhone review business (see The iPhone App Review), I'm finding myself pleasantly surprised by some of the apps I've been charged with reviewing.

I've already written about Doodle Jump, but new comer Spin Crazy has piqued my interest and I've only played for about 6 minutes. I get this feeling from apps that can be read as either "I'm going to play this one a lot," or "I'm done already."

Some of that may be a matter of personal opinion. In other words: I'm not into RPGs all that much so am I really going to enjoy an iPhone RPG? Or: I like puzzle games and a mobile platform is perfect for puzzle games.

Enter Spin Crazy. I'll be playing this one for a review at The iPhone App Review. I'll be sure to let you know when it goes live.

Bastion promotional code Giveaway!

Since the League of Legends Beta has been blown wide open for players everywhere, it might be time to end PLAY READ WRITE's beta key giveaway. Sadly, I received no entries... at all.

Shocking? Not quite. In a way, I half suspected it. Such is the life of a fledgling blogger. I'm sure I could generate more readers elsewhere or in some way, but PLAY READ WRITE is more about writing for me, and less for everyone else.

That being said, I do like to reward people who do some to the site, look around, read a handful of posts and generally leave with good feelings. Thus, I'm going to start another giveaway in the hopes that I'll be able to continually offer a reward for people who have any constructive thoughts on the general direction PLAY READ WRITE is taking.

Luckily, after reviewing Bastion, developer Chad Townes, was nice enough to hand me a fistful of promotional codes to give away to readers! Please e-mail me at danielrbischoff@gmail.com and just drop me a line of criticism (constructive please!) or any ideas or questions you might have. Literally, anything you send me will probably get you a promo code, so just send away!

Third Person view coming to MW2?

While the above video does show a third person mode for Modern Warfare 2, much of the internet has wasted no time in calling foul. Of course there are plenty of gamers out there who've logged too many hours to be counted in CoD4: MW. How could a third person view not offend them?

Of course the biggest release of the holiday season is going to have a handful of surprises getting out the door, but how will any of them manage to stay under wraps until the actual release when leaked copies scrabble out the door somewhere in Europe?

Activision and Infinity Ward might have some explaining to do, but does anyone really think they'll be doing it until their PR machine can rev up. More to come....

Assassin's Creed 2's Achievements

The Assassin's Creed 2 achievements have found their way to the internet. You can see them over at Xbox360Achievements.org. They seem to be fulfilling quite a bit of promise, with hints at some of the variety Ubisoft Montreal has brought to the elements already well established in AC I. There are a handful of achievements I can't help but take particular interest in:

Art Connoisseur: Buy a painting from Florence and Venice. 10g. Ubisoft Montreal obviously takes a lot of consideration in their setting, story and content. I guess it's just natural that they'd want to include some of the art of the time. What pieces will we see?

Steal Home: Win a race against thieves! 10g. I like the idea of side-mission variation as much as I like the idea of main-mission variation and races can certainly fit into the world of AC.

Doctor: Perform an Air Assassination on a Poisoned NPC. 20g. I like achievements like these a lot because their easy to do, they sound like they're easy to do, but they only end up taking a handful of tries before you eventually get it right. Not like that goddam Mile High Club achievement.

What AC II achievements interest you?

Does ice need Tetris to be cool?

Jenna found these ice trays that don't just make cubes of ice, but everything you'd need to play Tetris in your favorite beverage.

While I'm sure you could probably stack up a high score with the Tetris ice-blocks you make, it'd take a while for a complete line to melt away. Lately I've seen a bunch of themed ice trays, including denture molds. Wouldn't that be creepy?

I don't know if I've blogged about them before, but which do you prefer? The Tetris Ice Tray or the Space Invaders Ice Tray?