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  On Your Knees, I Want You To Beg for this Sephiroth Cosplay

  For Final Fantasy bad guys, they don’t get any more popular than Sephiroth. Look at that hair! That sword! Sephiroth will never be just a memory. After making his iconic appearance in 1997’s Final Fantasy VII, Sephiroth became a fan favorite—and even started popping up in other FF titles as well as non-Final Fantasy games,…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published August 29, 2012
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  Combining The Best of Burnout With The Best of Need For Speed

  While Burnout creators Criterion got a lot of credit for revolutionising racing games with their design for 2007’s Paradise, they deserve just as much for the multiplayer stuff that makes 2010’s Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit a much better game than a lot of people realise. That’s why people are getting unusually excited about Need…

  By Luke Plunkett Published August 29, 2012
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  Zombie Games Can be About Farming, Too

  The first trailer for Microsoft and Undead Labs’ upcoming zombie shooter, State of Decay, focused almost entirely on action, even though we’d been told other aspects of survival were just as important. Here’s some of that other stuff, like building farms, growing crops and hanging out in secured zones with other folks who like to…

  By Luke Plunkett Published August 29, 2012
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  The Adventure Time Game’s Collector’s Edition Includes The One Thing It Needed To

  There are plenty of gaming references (and even entire episodes) in Adventure Time – there’s even a video game system as a character – but really, I’ve always felt the most video gamey episode of all is actually one that doesn’t even directly involve them. I’m talking about The Enchiridion, from the show’s first series.…

  By Luke Plunkett Published August 29, 2012
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  Halo LEGO For Classy Older Folks

  Everybody knows that the discerning LEGO fan can not be seen dead buying children’s toys. No, they collect LEGO sets that reflect their more adult tastes, like fancy architecture and expensive sweaters. This mock-up, then, is a nice compromise. It’s technically Halo LEGO, being a Forerunner Spire, but because that’s a building, and it’s presented…

  By Luke Plunkett Published August 29, 2012
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  For $300,000, You Can Pretend You’re a Nintendo World Champion

  Aside from having a magnificent name, Thor Aackerlund also has the honour of being one of only three absolute winners at the famous 1990 Nintendo World Championships. Aackerlund took out the 12-17 year-old division ahead of 29 other finalists from across America, and for his troubles not only got to keep the controller he played…

  By Luke Plunkett Published August 29, 2012
• CultureTotal Recall

  Your NES Could Have Had a Keyboard And Wireless Controllers

  In the mid-80s, thanks to the success of platforms like the C64 and MSX, video game machines that could double as personal computers were hot. So it’s understandable that, ahead of Nintendo’s entry into the North American console market, the company was thinking that its first US machine might need to be more than just…

  By Luke Plunkett Published August 29, 2012
• CultureTotal Recall

  World of Warcraft’s 2001 Reveal Feels Like a Different Age

  The year was 2001. Rather than battling evil computers on white-washed spaceships, we were instead still living on Earth playing PC games, and stuck in that awkward phase between the pre-WoW Blizzard and its post-StarCraft efforts. That phase is perfectly illustrated here in this cover feature in the sadly now-defunct CGW magazine, giving the world…

  By Luke Plunkett Published August 29, 2012
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  Animal Crossing’s Unexpected, Glossy Photo Shoot

  Photographers Pamela Reed and Matthew Rader are getting mildly internet famous for their fashion shoots, which instead of using enormous static images instead use animated .gif files The pair are also, however, big fans of Nintendo’s Animal Crossing series, so for their latest shoot they put down the catwalk gear and instead went full-blown cosplay.…

  By Luke Plunkett Published August 29, 2012
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  Ferrari Sits Untouched in French Barn for 46 Years, Will Now Appear in Gran Turismo

  The Gran Turismo Trophy is an honour bestowed by series producer Kazunori Yamauchi. It basically means that he likes somebody’s sweet old ride so much that he promises to put it in an actual Gran Turismo video game. Previous winners include Mary Pozzi’s 1971 Camaro, but the latest is this adorable Ferrari 500 Mondial “Pininfarina…

  By Luke Plunkett Published August 29, 2012
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  These Amazing Mass Effect 3 Costumes Are on Their Way to DragonCon

  Prop creator extraordinaire Bill Doran and his wife, Brittany Sheppard Doran, gear up for DragonCon 2012 in style with a pair of expertly-crafted suits of Mass Effect armor. If that’s not justification enough for me to hit up the show this weekend then I don’t know what is. With Bill in his N7 Defender armor…

  By Mike Fahey Published August 28, 2012
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  US Sanctions Force Blizzard to Pull Games From Iran

  Having earlier believed that it was Iran’s fault gamers in the Middle-Eastern nation had suddenly found themselves unable to access Blizzard’s World of Warcraft and Diablo III, it turns out there’s another country’s government to blame. Namely, that of the United States. Because the US has imposed trade restrictions and economic sanctions on the Islamic…

  By Luke Plunkett Published August 28, 2012
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  Check Out The First-Edition Covers Of Some Of The Greatest Novels Of All Time

  Hey, it’s another book-themed off-topic! This time around we’ve got something particularly musty, and particularly cool. Flavorwire has assembled images of the first-edition covers of 25 of the most famous classic books of all time. Man, look at Lord of the Rings! And Brave New World! I feel like I’m not alone in that when…

  By Kirk Hamilton Published August 28, 2012
• Culture

  Cancelled Crytek Game Looked More Alan Wake Than Crysis

  French artist Eric Cochonneau, formerly of Killzone developers Guerilla and Electronic Arts, has also worked at Crytek, where around 2008 he helped out on a game called Redemption which was ultimately never released. Or even seen publicly. Until today. NeoGAF user miladesn was digging around Cochonneau’s portfolio when they discovered the artwork, intended for an…

  By Luke Plunkett Published August 28, 2012
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  Fox News is Now a Video Game Bad Guy

  Of course, he can’t come out and say it’s Fox News – we live in a world plagued by lawyers – but when Alex Jones, the producer of Capcom’s upcoming DMC, says this monstrous video game boss is “one particular American [media] outlet that shall go unnamed”, we know who he means. Dropping the game’s…

  By Luke Plunkett Published August 28, 2012
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  A Show-Stopping Contender For ‘Most Ambitious Video Game Wedding’

  Video games don’t just make for great wedding-proposal material, they can also make their way into the wedding itself. We’ve run pictures from a lot of cool video game weddings over the years, and this latest one, sent in by Marvel Sutantio and his bride Christy, is surely up there with the most ambitious of…

  By Kirk Hamilton Published August 28, 2012
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  Pre-Panda Patch Brings Cross-Realm Zones, New Areas, and New Class Abilities to World of Warcraft

  It’s one of those little things I never thought about until the first time I tried a game that had it as a feature, maybe a year ago. One of those little, tiny, quality-of-life features that nobody knew, back in 2004, that we would all want so very badly by 2012. And so, it comes…

  By Kate Cox Published August 28, 2012
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  The Full Story Of Spec Ops: The Line, From Audacious Storytelling to ‘Cancerous’ Publisher-Mandated Multiplayer

  You may or may not have heard this already, but despite outward appearances, Yager’s third-person military shooter Spec Ops: The Line was a surprisingly artful, even audacious game. It wrestled with big ideas like player complicity in onscreen violence, military slaughter of civilians, post-traumatic stress disorder and insanity. In a new article, Polygon‘s Russ Pitts…

  By Kirk Hamilton Published August 28, 2012
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  Crusader Kings II‘s New Roman Expansion Pack Wasn’t Built In A Day

  No, it was built over a much longer period of time than that. But hopefully Legacy of Rome will be worth the wait—some of the DLC for the excellent strategy game has been disappointing, and some has been quite good. And let’s not forget that you can also mod CKII into the best Game of…

  By Kirk Hamilton Published August 28, 2012
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  The Internet Game Critics Carry Madden NFL 13 to the 95 Yard Line

  In a stunning upset over Madden NFL 13, Michael Fahey of the Atlanta Kotaku attempts to carry a football analogy too far and fumbles the ball. Then he explodes. And then there was a Frankenreview. It’s that time of year again. The time that I get swept up in the wave of Madden NFL fever,…

  By Mike Fahey Published August 28, 2012