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Editor's note: Michael is beginning to show a bit of a knack for dreaming up writing exercises that engage the community. This challenge was all about distilling one's writing down to its essentials. I think it was some famous guy that said, "Brevity is the soul of wit."  I wonder who that was.... -James

I'm going to level with you guys: I was a little worried. With one week to go before the entries for The Final Cut were due, I only had two submissions -- and one of them was my sample review. I started to think that this time, I had created a challenge that was too difficult or one that wasn't well-suited to the Bitmob community. In a place that grants writers the freedom to express themselves as they see fit, a writing prompt that asks authors to continuously cut their reviews down to meet increasingly more difficult word counts is a hard sell.

Thankfully, my fears were unnecessary. Several of you decided to take part in my writing prompt, and I'm grateful for your support. You came up with some great examples of distilled prose -- examples that I'm pleased to share with the Bitmob community.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls...this is The Final Cut.

The Final Cut -- Ceremony of Innocence

by Richard Moss

Richard kicks off the challenge with a bang. He chooses a very obscure game for his review. In fact, the game, Ceremony of Innocence, might not even be a game at all in the traditional sense. However, his review is definitely a review, and it gets sharper and clearer with each cut. 

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I think the various consoles should set aside their differences, team up, go through a cheesy montage sequence, and battle the dreaded foes of boredom and placidity throughout the galaxy. Curse my '90s-television upbringing.

News Blips:

An industry research company asserts that the PS3 will eventually outsell its competition during the current console generation. The company indicated that the PS3 "will still be a commercial platform five years after the Wii has been replaced. Lifetime PS3 sales are predicted to reach 127 million units, compared to 103 million Wii units." The analysis also noted that worldwide console sales will fall by 9% this year, but overall figures of consoles installed in households will continue to grow. By the time we realize the extent of the console network across the globe, Skynet will have us in its web. [IndustryGamers]

Speaking with IndustryGamers, industry veteran Will Wright (The Sims) believes that the Wii belongs in the toy market. Wright stressed the stark difference in gameplay that the Wii provides, lending a toy-like level of fun instead of the involved experiences of the Xbox 360 or PS3. "It really is more into what I would call the toy market, because most of the Wii games I've enjoyed felt more like toys than like games," he said. I think Wright is on to something here -- I've amused myself for hours on end just by driving my cat crazy with the Wiimote.

An anonymous source has confirmed that Sony will implement a familiar-looking nunchuck add-on for its Arc motion-control device. In a move that aims to bring Wii developers into the PS3 camp, and in order to facilitate a developer's "upgrade" to the PS3, the new add-on will feature elements "reminiscent" to the Wii's own controller. Tomorrow, Sony will reveal addition details in a special event at the Game Developers Conference. Oh, great -- first it looked like a Spin Pop, now it resembles a deep-sea creature. [Develop]

Microsoft has no plans to adopt Blu-ray support into the Xbox 360. In the past, the restrictive storage limit of the Xbox 360's disc media has forced developers to cut content from their games. This led to a push for transition in to the much-lauded Blu-ray format. Microsoft remains adamant that the future lies with digital distribution: Director of Xbox and Entertainment Stephen McGill proclaims that "the future of home entertainment started last autumn when Xbox 360 became the first and only console to offer instant-on 1080p streaming HD movies." I fervently hope that CEO Steve Ballmer doesn't help out by bounding across a stage while yelling his lungs hoarse. [CVG]

Got any hot news tips? Send 'em over to tips@bitmob.com.

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I should've known that something weird was going on today when my bowl of alphabet cereal spelled out "those Framerated guys will confuse the hell out of you". Yep, it said all of that.

Video Blips:

• The zany bunch at Framerated throws us in a loop by playing through the first 30 (yes, 30!) minutes of Final Fantasy 13. I feel like I'm in a time paradox -- where's my Delorean when I need it?

Continue after the break for a return to the world of Zenozoik in Zeno Clash: Ultimate Edition, some timely saves by the goalies of FIFA World Cup: South Africa, and a reminder of the inherent dangers in owning a Portal gun.

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Editor's note: Brian argues that there is a strong connection between the public's disinterest in academic subjects -- most notably history -- and the general consensus that RPGs are a niche genre: If people don't care about their own origins, why would they care about an invented history? -James

Programmers originally designed video games as complex diversions intended for geeks, but the release of the infamous virtual paddle-battle known as Pong altered their future. With a simple Magnavox Odyssey Tennis clone, Atari shifted video games' appeal from hackers to bar patrons and soccer moms worldwide. Ever since the '70s, the indusry has seen games that have appealed to hardcore gamers or casual gamers exclusively, and sometimes titles have even appealed to both market segments.

Hundreds of games belong in each bracket, but one particular genre rarely leaves its hardcore confines. The role-playing game has typically appealed to hardcore gamers due to their tolerance for complex statistics and immersive worlds. But I've got another reason RPGs rarely reach the mainstream -- they often draw from academic subjects like history that people typically find boring.

Despite living in a complex world full of incomplete records and archaeological wonders, few people care to learn about it. Most of the Earth's nearly seven billion people see history as an amalgamation of dates and names, when really, it's about learning from our predecessors so we can improve the future.

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Bizarre Creations developers Geb Talbot and Garreth Wilson join Dan Hsu, Demian Linn, and Brett Bates on this week's show, which kicks off Bitmob's "3 Great Prizes, 3 Ways to Win" giveaway. 

The group recalls their favorite racing games, pit Bad Company 2 against Modern Warfare 2, suggest N64 games that need to be re-released, and discuss just how aware game reviewers need to be about other forms of media.

Have a question you want answered? Want to share some important insight with the world? E-mail the crew at letters@bitmob.com.

Click here to find out how you can get in on the "3 Great Prizes, 3 Ways to Win" giveaway.

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This is, without question, the world's most confusing product:

For starters, it seems as though the backpack's makers threw every conceivable cultural meme at this thing -- including President Obama, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Harry Potter. But I suppose the Chinese flea market salesmen weren't aware of their product's baffling appeal.

And don't even get me started on the colors -- beyond being unspeakably weird, they simply don't make any sense. Why does Sonic have the number 10 on his chest? Why are his eyes yellow and his hands red? So many questions...so few answers.

If one thing is certain, it's that Chinese bootleg backpacks are awesome [via Geekologie]!

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Editor's note: Did last week's PS3 debacle leave you staring blankly at your TV screen, slack-jawed and unsure what to do with your life? Check out Alex's list of similar game company screw-ups for some solace. -Brett

Sony did its best to ruin St. David's Day (Monday, March 1) for Welsh gamers with the "ApocalyPS3" -- clearly an anti-Celt effort to overshadow Wales's national day. While the problem -- due to faulty internal clocks on older PS3s -- fixed itself in the end, it got me thinking: How have other game companies dropped the ball in the past?

The World of Warcraft "Corrupted Blood" Plague (Blizzard)

This one was actually fun to watch. A glitch caused a disease intended to be confined to only one area to spread to the entire world of the World of Warcraft. It gradually reduced players' health -- not a big problem for higher-level players, but it killed others in seconds flat. Good Samaritans spent their time setting up virtual clinics and directing people away from infected areas, while pranksters (or assholes, depending on your point of view) deliberately spread the disease until Blizzard reset the servers.

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At the risk of being publicly flogged for making an outdated Xzibit reference, I'm happy to announce that all you folks who (I've heard) like Bitmob can now have "Bitmob in your Bitmob," as it were, on your browser.

Simply click on the links below to install a Bitmob theme on your preferred browser. Note that you'll need to be on Firefox 3.6+ to install Personas (fancy Firefox lingo for "themes") and on Chrome 3.0+ to install the theme.

Enjoy -- and I would love any feedback or suggestions for future Bitmob-related stuff!

• Personas for Firefox | Bitmob 1.1
  
• Bitmob.com Theme - Google Chrome Extensions
  

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Looks like EGM[i]: The Digital Magazine will animate in ways that were previously only achievable while reading the EGM print magazine under the influence of mind-altering hallucinogens...I imagine.

Video Blips:

• In case you were wondering, here's a glimpse at how EGM[i] is set to work. It's pretty cool, even though I was hoping for some kind of crazy LCD-screen/magazine-paper hybrid. Sigh. I can only dream. [EGMNOW]

Continue after the break for some Super Street Fighter 4 training from fighting-game guru Justin Wong, the gangstalicious Mafia 2 trailer, and a mini-documentary on NASCAR in Gran Turismo 5.

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Editor’s note: Part of my love for video games is dissecting their inner parts, which means breaking down the systems that govern play. Suriel makes a strong case that players will be more satisfied with their victories when they understand exactly how a game's design works. -Rob

In December of 2009, Steve Horvath, vice president of marketing and communications for board- and card-game publisher Fantasy Flight Games, announced that the company would no longer continue to support the Universal Fighting System (UFS), a card game based on fighting franchises such as Street Fighter, Soulcalibur, and Tekken.

As huge fan of UFS (though, I had stopped playing in May of last year), I decided to revisit what cards I had left and mess around with some new decks. I quit because of the money-sink that any collectible-card game eventually becomes, not because I had fallen out of love with it.

UFS was complex even by its peers’ standards. The game was governed by a set of rules that define how play unfolds, but its design was based directly on fighting games. Players controlled one character and performed and blocked attacks through control checks. Rules consisted of symbols, card difficulties, effects, and phases that took place in set orders¹ -- all things that intimidated casual players.

A recent mantra of many developers and publishers today is that simpler is better -- that complexity is off-putting to key demographics who just want to enjoy a game. It's certainly easy to connect complexity with difficulty because an increased number of limits can seem restrictive, and therefore, more burdensome to manage.

But like harder video games, the sense of accomplishment that comes from achieving victory under such restrictions and obstacles can be far more satisfying than a system without any sort of limits or rules.

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This week on Hit or Miss: The industry goes flippin' nuts. Seriously, you know it was an interesting week when the word "apocalypse" was bandied and it was only slightly an exaggeration. Add to the Great Global PS3 Fail the insanity that went down at Infinity Ward, and it was as though the Great Reckoning of Our Time was finally upon us. Luckily for me, I love reckonings.

Oh, also this week: Portal 2 was announced and people were allowed to be gay on Xbox Live.

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By now, you're probably on your way to California, Florida, or even Mexico for Spring Break. But interns don't receive vacation breaks. Oh no. We slave away, each day, to provide you -- the adoring audience -- with quality content. So enjoy the sun and surf, but try to pull yourself away from the gorgeous women to check out this week's Reviews Spotlight.

Michael Rousseau hasn't been outside in a while -- but not because he's sick. On the contrary, he's currently enmeshed in Borderland's newest downloadable content: The Secret Armory of General Knoxx. Does the General outdo Moxxi and Dr. Ned? Scroll down to find out.

Next up is a trio of basement-bound vacationers: Beau Baxter Rosser, Carlos Macias, and Frank Anderson. The three share their impressions of Quantic Dream's newest thriller, Heavy Rain. Be prepared for some poorly penned water puns!

Ryan Conway's back with another entry of  "For What it's Worth," wherein he scrutinizes the two geekiest games ever made, Stepmania and Decimation X.

Lastly, Sean Hinz concludes the series of spectacular reviews with his article, which exposes the good and the bad of Darksiders.

New Borderlands DLC Knoxx it Outta the Park
By Michael Rousseau
Like the best reviews, Michael begins with an astute analogy. But he doesn't compare the Borderlands DLC series to a work of literary genius or to another game. Instead, he compares the downloadable trilogy to the original Star Wars films. Third in line, does General Moxx provide the same amusement as rampaging Ewoks? Let's hope Michael's metaphor holds water.

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