Nerf spokeswoman Chris Moon issued an apology for the incident that erased two years of data at Lightsoft Interactive last friday, saying: “We at Nerf promote fun and safety, but such and event is unfortunate and we are sorry to hear such a tragic event has happened and been caused by our product.” Spokeswoman Moon also told reporters that Nerf would be donating a number of specially made “Soft Darts” to the company in order to prevent future disasters of the sort.

Nerf also took the time during this statement to announce their newest Nerf product: The NerfZooka BS-90. The lastest Nerf gun fires foam Aqua Noodles. Retail pricing is set at 130$ but to ease the cost the BS-90 will fire any Aqua Noodle pool toy.

The Image below is of the NerfZooka at Nerf’s firing range.

Image courtesy of Nerf

San Francisco, CA–CEO and President David Gould of Lightsoft Interactive said friday evening, “We lost everything in the most balls out awesome nerf battle ever.” According to information the office had over twenty stress releasing nerf guns, including but not limited to,  the N-Strike Vulcan fully automatic nerf chaingun with ammo belt, Longshot CS-6 nerf highpowered sniper rifle, and “some of those bitchin’ new nerf swords for whoopin’ on your friends when they aren’t lookin’.”

Lightsoft was developing what many gamers were calling “The coolest game ever seen.” Lightsoft was without a publisher and was hoping to gain one by the end of this year. In a phone interview David had this to say about the tragedy.

“It’s a huge loss. Not one of those oops we lost a few hours of work kind of losses, we’re talking about two and a half years of hard work ruined by a single stray nerf dart. I mean what are the chances of a nerf dart hitting the massive red ‘irreversible format drive button.’”

When questioned about the massive red drive formatting button David had no comment. However David did say he wouldn’t give up and his team returns to work on Monday saying, “This will be the best Hamtaru DS game ever.”

So I played my first few games in the new Beta last night. I gave up the game for a month or two after 1.3 came out due to a frustration over balance issues. I’m a marine player, my TrueSkill™ is around 20 and I played against each of the other races a few times. I was pretty excited about the new patch, and overall I do like Relics intentions with the new patch. They are changing things up a lot, but it’s just not working out so far.

Marines suck now. Nids are crazy overpowered, Eldar banshees are retarded, and orks… well, they’re alright.

I kind of like the new scouts, but they just aren’t effective enough. They are billed as a Marine’s player best and only defense against the crazy amount of Close Combat units in this game now, but they just can’t cope. A single unit of Banshees, Gaunts, or Boyz can just make any Teir 1 Marine unit evaporate. The new Scout Shotgun ability does help when a CC unit is running at you, but it only knocks the charging unit back for a second before they are back on their feet and in your face with maybe 1 or 2 shots each with the shotgun. This *maybe* gets the charging unit down to half strength, if you’re lucky. But this is still enough to destroy your squads.

And what the hell did they do to the Force Commander? I had a level 5 Commander with Thunder Hammer an a fully charged Iron Halo run into a level 1 unit of nobs capping our victory point and he almost instantly died. 1 hit from each of the nobs took down the shield, and another hit or so each killed him. What the hell.

Generators also die WAAAAAAY to quickly. If a single unit of anything makes it past your lines and onto your power, it’s impossible to get something there in time to stop them from taking out all 3 generators. At least in 1.3 you could run a unit there and save 1 or 2 generators… but no longer. This makes a marine player sad as we rely on power sooo much and to effectively defend a power station you need to dedicate at least 2 units. Which really hurts your offense.

The Upgraded Predator is pretty awesome though, if you can make it to Tier 3… (which I only did in 2 of my 5 games last night)

So in the end, I have to say, Relic is taking a step in the right direction but then they fell down and shat themselves. Maybe they can get a change of pants, get up, and release another patch to even things out a bit more. Or maybe I’ll just start playing Nids. Haha!

You know, a lot of websites wouldn’t bother to tell you whether or not patches have increased the playability of a game.  No, the gamespots and the IGNs and the EVIL LARGE NEWS SITES of the world are perfectly content to play’em and leave’m.  But not here, no.  In part due to the fact that we are too poor to purchase new games but mostly because of JOURNALISTIC INTEGRITY, you can look forward to knowing whether or not poop has since turned to gold.

And so here we are, at 1.01.1039.  Details of the patch can be found here.  But you don’t need to go there.  In fact, I’d rather you wouldn’t.  Don’t leave me for their honeyed words and empty promises.  You need me.  You need me to tell you whether or not it works.

It does!  It works pretty well, and playing the game is significantly easier now than it was in the past few weeks.  Fewer people dropping randomly, fewer people needing to bog down their connection by force proxying their connections.  All and all an improved experience.  Now that connection issues have largely been fixed, a more standard tweak and content adding patch should drop before the end of the month.  Hopefully it will take care of the minor balance issues, but with details scarce we’re going to have to wait and see.  At the least, the replay system they are working on could help in giving players an idea of why they lose, an absolutely critical element in retaining new ones and keeping interest up amongst the more advanced players.  Because losing without having any clear idea why is never any fun.

Also, a demo isn’t too far off.  Hopefully a multiplayer one so people can know in advance whether or not they’re in for a headache.  I’ll keep you posted.

One word summarizes the news of Kojima’s Castlevania.

AWESOME!!!

Quite possibly one of the biggest announcements at this year’s E3 is famed Metal Gear creator and director Hideo Kojima’s creation of a new Castlevania game. Castlevania is a game almost everyone has enjoyed and to have a brilliant director like Kojima work on a title only brings glee to my childhood heart. For the first time in years I’m excited about a sequel. And we’ve all waited for the day Kojima works on something other than Metal Gear.

View the awesome E3 trailer here.

Kojima Productions has a teaser flash page for the new Metal Gear, as revealed in the latest update. A very obvious picture of Big Boss flashes across the screen when lighting flashes. Though many speculate, only time will tell as to what the real answer to the mystery is.

My prediction: A PS3 remake of Metal Gear, you know the NES retro one. Yes there was a metal gear game before the PS1. Damn brush up on your game history newb!

Check out the sweet kojima productions clock here.

You really screwed me Relic
You really did a number on me
Never knew me playin’ Dark Crusade would come back to haunt me
But we was kids then, Relic, I was only 18
That was years ago
I thought we wiped the slate clean
That’s messed up!
Oh God my brain is racing
(I love you!)
What are you doing?
Change the rotation I hate this map
Does this look like a big joke?
(No!)
There’s a building with 360 degrees right above the victory point
in your new mode
what, you think I’m kidding you?
(you asked for that, didn’t you?)
No!
Bullshit you dev don’t freaking lie to me
What the frack’s this ally’s problem on the side of me?
Screw you ass, yeah bite me
Relic, RELIC!
Why don’t you buff me?
You think I’m terrible don’t you
(It’s not that!)
No you think I’m terrible
(Baby)
Get the hell away from me, don’t touch me
I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU!
I SWEAR TO GOD I HATE YOU!
OH MY GOD I LOVE YOU!
How the hell could you do this to me?!
(Sorry!)
How the hell could you do this to me?!

(Be sure to check back for the ‘balance’ patch!)

With a plethora of MMOs out there one stills cuts through the mundane, Guild Wars. Having sold over six million units since its release nearly four years ago, guild wars has released a large content update to commemorate its launch and success.

Read the offical news here Here

And be sure to check out all the updates and expansions at www.guildwars.com

I’ll see you online!

Ten years after the release of the Vandal Hearts II, Konami, At this year’s Konami Gamers Night showed off Vandal Hearts Flames of Judgement the prequel to the original two. The story is as follows:

On the continent of Sostegaria, two rival kingdoms stand on the brink of war. Caught in the tide of battle is young orphan Tobias Martin. Driven to defend his homeland, and to avenge those already fallen, Tobias enlists with his comrades to fight for peace. But all is not what it seems, and they face a threat far deadlier - and closer - than they know.

Konami has announced the following features:

Classic gameplay, expanded and streamlined - Combines the speedy RPG pace of the original Vandal Hearts with improved user mechanics and top-notch presentation.

Strong story - Serving as the prequel to the original Vandal Hearts, Flames of Judgment delivers a rich, focused, and character-driven storyline.

Multiple endings - The player’s actions throughout the game will determine the party’s future and more!

Available on XBLA - Download from the comfort of your couch.

Party members adapt to the player’s style of gameplay - Player characters naturally and automatically improve at whatever they do, providing a wide, range of customization options.

Konami has not announced the following features, however, when I was at the Konami Gamers Night event I was able to speak with the assistant at the kiosk. When I question him about the prospects of downloadable content he replied with, “We can’t comment on that at this time.” Could that mean missions, quests, continents, and items avaliable for download? We can hope!

Check back, as more information is revealed about Vandal Hearts we’ll be here to cover it.

Marvel.com has posted a new video, or what they call a vignette, of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, featuring some new gameplay footage and short clips of interviews with the dev team at Raven. Now this was released Possibly because of the recent leak of the upcoming movie onto BitTorrent, but who really knows?

While certainly not the only movie game in existence that doesn’t suck (Escape from Butcher Bay comes to mind), it’s certainly looking to be a fun ride.

[Marvel]