Being a huge Neil Gaiman fan, I didn't want to pass up a chance to post new screens for the upcoming Coraline video game. Check out Coraline and her band of merry mice (I'm not kidding - they have instruments and everything) after the link.

Following their announcement to bring Neil Gaiman and Henry Selick's Coraline movie to video game consoles, D3Publisher has now also confirmed that they've bagged the rights to release a video game tie-in for Imagi Studios' 2009 feature length animation, Astro Boy. Go, go, go, Astro Boy! On to the full article!

Run. Run, or the other mother will get you, and will give you buttons for eyes, so it's time to... button mash? In time with the release of the movie next year, D3 Publisher will be releasing the video game version of Coraline. More in the full article.

Let's talk about mythology for a while and no, this is not going to be a lecture similar to the ones you get in your Literature classes. Let's talk about gods and goddesses in relation to video games and the World Wrestling Federation (WWE).

The full article awaits after the jump!

Have you been good for this holiday season? Well, whether you were naughty or nice, Ubisoft has the game for you. Whether you're into assassins, solving murder cases or maybe even taking good care of your pets, Ubisoft is coming to town.

One of their most highly anticipated games for the season, Assassin's Creed, will be coming in this November for the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3, with the PC version coming in early next year. It won't be in time for Christmas, but maybe it'll make a deadly romantic Valentine's gift.

Beowulf (360, PS3, PSP, PC), the video game based on Robert Zemecki's new movie of the same name, will also be arriving this November, just in time for the movie. Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway (PS3, 360, PC) has been delayed from its holiday release date and will instead be arriving next year. The Wii's Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 will be arriving this December though. Naruto: Rise of a Ninja for the Xbox 360 will be arriving this October.

So you'd better watch out, and you'd better not cry. You'd better not pout, and we'll tell you why. Gamers from all over get a game to play over the holidays from Ubisoft:

• Blazing Angels 2: Secret Missions of WWII (PS3)
• CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Hard Evidence (360, Wii)
• Haze (PS3)
• Heroes of Might and Magic V: Tribes of the East (PC)
• Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 (Wii, Nintendo DS)
• Petz (PS2, PC, Wii)
• Imagine (PC, DS)
• My Coach (DS, Wii)
• Cranium Kabookii (Wii)
• Chessmaster (Wii, PC)

So while Ubisoft may not know whether you're sleeping or whether you're awake, it has a great line up for everybody (young and old, naughty and nice) this holiday season.

 

RPG fans, gather round. We're going to nitpick a topic to death. (And you know nitpicking is one of RPG fans' favorite hobbies.)

Paradox #1: monsters that don't drop loot. This article was spawned by an article over at WOW Insider that asked why is it when you have a mission to collect ogre brains, few ogres actually drop brains. The world of Blizzard's World of Warcraft is full of liverless boars, brainless ogres, and bloodless orcs.

Paradox #2: monsters drop nonsense loot. Remember how dragons in the first Neverwinter Nights dropped their blood in handy little bottles (complete with decorative covers)?

(Warrior: And with this last arrow I kill you. Dragon: Hang on a sec. Let me bottle up my blood first. You got a needle and tube handy?)

RPG fans have gotten used to the fact that every creature (from blind cave fish to rabid rodents to sea turtles lazing on a beach) carry gold in little bags and elixirs in standard-sized bottle. Some animals even drop swords!

And we spend so much energy to defend our favorite RPG and explain why this is the case, when we could be spending that energy writing feedback to our favorite developer to tell them to put more thought and design into their next RPG.

Is loot-dropping realism too much to ask? "It's a game; it's not supposed to be realistic!" exclaim the echoes. Really? Then what's with the effort to make good scenery, characters that look alive, and amazing storylines that pull you into the story so you'll forget that "it's just a game"? By the way, if you follow those backlinks, you'll see that many new RPG games have evolved to take advantage of new technology, so maybe it's time to universally change the way item drops are done in other "traditional" RPGs?

We have a few ideas to deal with the drop rate paradoxes. [This is just the short version of this article. Click on the "Full Article" below to Jump to the "Full Article."]

Solution #1: bring in hunter skills. We propose incorporating automatic hunter skill parameters in RPGs. [More about this solution in the Full Article.]

Solution #2: bring in battle finesse. Your character is a better fighter at higher levels, right? So you aim and attack better. So there should be less battle damage done to loot. Therefore, the higher the level of your character, the higher the chances of getting dropped loot. Besides, you need more loot at higher levels because weapons and armor is more expensive, right?

And that's all for now. We could keep nitpicking more things and throwing out more ideas - and there are a lot more RPGs we could mention for their good points and bad points (Dungeon Siege Throne of Agony, Lost Odyssey, Final Fantasy XI...), but you get the main points. What do you guys think? Anybody care to share their ideas about loot-drop paradoxes?