Feature

The Least Flattering Nudity in Videogames
Digital ding-dongs and other bathing suit areas we wish we could unsee.

By David Wolinsky

Whenever a cut-scene pops up unexpectedly, there can be one thing that will momentarily keep players from mashing the "Start" button: the chance that maybe there'll be some nudity. All games offer a nice escape from reality, and whether it's laughably bad or legitimately arousing, who among us would ever turn down some extra T&A or C&B along the way -- it's like finding a crisp $20 bill in an old pair of pants. And unless you're playing one of those creepy Japanese rape games ordered from a special catalog, chances are you aren't even getting off on it, so what's the harm? Well, some games go out of their way to inject unfortunate, soul-scarring, flat-out ugly parades of dangly bits. In no particular order, here's a look at some games that touched us here [pointing to eyes] on the doll.

Duke Nukem 3D

Well, you can say this much for the strippers in Duke Nukem 3D: they are dedicated to their profession. Gun-toting aliens are invading earth, "kidnapping our chicks," and what're these ladies doing? Gyrating in abandoned strip clubs, honing their craft for an audience of none. If you were a preteen at the time of Duke 3D, chances are you'd only recently just learned the word "tits," and giving wads of stinky cash to these gals so they'll unhook their bras doesn't really teach you what they look like. Obscured by pasties and a cornea-scorching amount of pixelization, laying eyes on these blocky bodies hardly makes up for the good karma you'll get in funding these ladies' way through college. Maybe Duke is just chewing gum and kicking ass to forget.

Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days

From the super-shaky camera to the intentionally crappy video compression effect, Kane & Lynch 2's biggest hook is its gritty realism, and nothing says "gritty" like an entire level that puts you in control of both of the titular scumbag criminals as they hoof it, completely nude, through Shanghai trying to dodge the cops. True, the game blurs out their modest (and therefore realistic) members -- and true, the guys were both tortured and left for dead; that they can walk at all, covered in razor cuts, is astonishing. But nobody wants to see the balding, paunchy Lynch or the curiously wiry Kane's birthday suits lit harshly by Shanghai's neon streets.

Indigo Prophecy

As he just recently said himself, Penny Arcade's Jerry Holkins often refers to the Penny Arcade Expo as a "nation," and it looks like they're slowly reaching toward attendance numbers to justify it. With PAX Prime having come and gone in Seattle over the weekend, Big Download reports the attendance reached 67,600, making this the biggest PAX yet.

It's a big increase over the attendance of PAX East (held in Boston) earlier this year, which was tallied at 52,290. However, there are already plans to move PAX East into a larger venue, so attendance for the east coast expo could soon balloon as well.

And what's more, it looks like there could possibly be a third event added down the line -- and it may be international. Gamasutra reports that while speaking to the Penny Arcade team -- Hokins and artist Mike Krahulik -- they hinted that a third event may be held in another country.

Madden Moments Live is a new, free game mode that drops you into specific situations and asks you to recreate moments that will take place throughout the upcoming NFL season. For the time being, there are a number of moments to currently play through from last year's New Orleans Saints team. Two to four moments will be added each week throughout the season. In return for Madden coins, you'll be able to buy future moments either individually, or you'll be able to buy the entire season's worth at once.

Other additions in the title update include altered pre-play functionality that will let you alter hot routes, make line shifts, and so on with the same buttons used in Madden NFL 10. Either by selecting it from the Play Now menu or during October (the in-game month) in franchise mode, a Breast Cancer Awareness Month mode will alter the game's theme to help support the cause. Additionally, you can now scout opponents in Online Franchise games, your opponent's lineup can now be seen in Ultimate Team mode, and various balancing issues have been fixed.

Stephen Toulouse, chief enforcement manager for Xbox Live, apologized for the agent's mistake and said that training has been updated. To err is human, but this latest issue stands in stark contrast to Microsoft's recent policy update. The new Xbox Live policy allows racial and sexual identifiers in profiles, after the company was criticized for taking action against gay and lesbian players. The policy was and still is intended to prevent harassment. Apparently the word "gay" is still a red flag, and the agent may have thought Moore was mocking homosexuals. Hopefully the new training involves using an atlas before banning gamers.

[Image courtesy of Google Maps.]

The package is set to include a 250GB console, the Kinect motion-control device, and a copy of Kinect Adventures. It'll set you back $399.99 when it releases on November 4.

Purchased individually, Kinect and the 250GB Xbox 360 would cost $149.99 and $299.99, respectively. Just like the 4GB bundle, that's a savings of about $50 should you choose to go with the pack-in deal.

ESPN has revealed the full rosters for the 15 Eastern Conference teams, with the Western Conference set to be revealed next Tuedsay, September 14. A total of nine teams from the league have four current players as opposed to three due to fan voting being too close to make a cut. Each team (with the exception of the New York Knicks) has no more than two legends, with those players who were in the original arcade NBA Jam being favored over others.

Due to contractural issues, certain legends you'd expect to be in the game, like Reggie Miller -- and much more notably, NBA 2K11 cover man Michael Jordan -- aren't in the game. Besides those issues, as a result of having to lock down the roster before certain moves were made, some players are on the wrong team. For instance, Al Harrington is still on the Knicks and Courtney Lee is still on the New Jersey Nets. According to ESPN, that will only be fixable on the PS3 and Xbox 360 version of NBA Jam, which is included with NBA Elite 11.

The news was revealed in a roundtable discussion published in this week's issue of Famitsu magazine, where CC2 president Hiroshi Matsuyama and Capcom producer Kazuhiro Tsuchiya discussed how the collaboration came about. According to Tsuchiya, the two outfits began talking to each other soon after the 2008 Tokyo Game Show. "Capcom has always had a sort of affinity for CyberConnect2," he said. "It was like they were making the sort of games that we ought to be doing, something which occasionally became a source of frustration!"

"From the second half of 2008 through 2009, we visited each other's offices and got to gradually spend more and more time with each other," Matsuyama added. "The one thing that really struck home was that the more we got to know each other, the more plain it was how similar our two companies are. The creative people on both sides are totally immersed in the development process -- we both have a common outlook on that."

Dead End of the Decepticon camp joins the fray, and Optimus' (SPOILER!) doomed predecessor Zeta Prime fills the new Autobot slot. Pulse and Static are Escalation maps that take place inside Trypticon and a trap-filled building, respectively. The new competitive multiplayer maps include Horizon, Sector, and Metropolis.

This will mark the very first time DICE has given public demonstrations of Bad Company 2 Vietnam. The expansion is said to include four entirely new maps, along with scads of Vietnam-specific weapons, vehicles, and unlocks.

Look for plenty of coverage as we inch closer to TGS 2010, beginning next Thursday, September 16.

Was Famitsu writing about the new Pokemon up there? No! It's actually a clip from their review of the original Pokemon Red/Green, released on the black-and-white Game Boy and reviewed in a February 1996 issue of Japan's leading game magazine. The score that first set of games received? One 8 and three 7's for a total of 29 points, not enough to earn it an editor's reward.

Oh, how times change! There's no denying that Famitsu's rating scores have inched upwards over the years -- something that's generated some controversy in Japan, especially considering how the president of the mag's publisher showed up in ads recently for a game that later received a perfect score. That scoring trend seems to be continuing, because Pokemon Black/White became the fifteenth game in Famitsu's history this week (and the sixth since the start of 2009) to earn four 10's from the review crew.