Lara Croft Visits Finland

While Eidos has said that it will never hold real life modeling of Lara Croft again, that isn’t stopping tributes. The Miss Finland competition recently had some contestants go out in the freezing cold and take some Lara Croft themed pictures (one contestant named Sara Chafak is a particular ringer for Lara).

Source: iltasanomat.fi

Netflix Won’t Be Renting Games

Netflix has announced that they will not in fact by renting games by mail. While it was originally part of the plan to include game disks in the Quikster service reserved for its DVD movies, though that plan was quickly quashed.

The decision was no doubt motivated by the margins on physical products as opposed to streaming (roughly five times greater). Right now, streaming only customers outnumber those getting DVDs from Netflix at a rate of 2 to 1, a discrepancy they expect to grow as more opt for streaming and drop the DVD service (2.76 million DVD subscribers were lost in the last quarter alone).

Get Crackin’!

The relationship between Wonderful Pistachios and Rovio’s Angry Birds entered a new level with the launch of The Hunt for the Golden Pistachio, the first fully branded Angry Birds game. The game, which rolled out on GetCrackin.com, requires a Chrome browser and functions like the standard Angry Birds games except that birds are used to crack open pistachios as well as destroy pigs. Golden Pistachio is the first game conceived from inception with the advertiser in mind. Users will also get the chance to win a total of $300,000 in prizes, which range from free pistachios and Angry Birds plush toys to $25,000 cash. Those prizes will be offered through December 31.

Heroes And Survivors Wanted

Soon to be in theaters, The Grey is the story of an oil drilling team in Alaska struggle to survive after a plane crash strands them in the wild. A pack of wolves are hunting the humans who see them as intruders. Several Facebook destination apps have been rallying fans on Facebook with various engagements and sweepstakes. An app called The Grey contains trailers and links to social media (including Google+). Fans can register to win a trip to the Daytona 500, text to win a trip to Alaska or check out a PDF and learn more about the gray wolf or pick up some survival tactics. The app also contains a link to the film’s Tumblr which contains stills from the film and a link to the official website. Fans can also win a poster signed by Liam Neeson after uploading a photo of themselves with a poster, standee or billboard for The Grey. Another app called “Local Heroes Sweeps” asks fans to tell their story about how they have acted as a hero to win free movie tickets for a year. At the top of the app, a box containing stories from different heroes in the news is followed by user submitted stories which fans can read and vote on in order to determine the winner.

Deus Ex – Extraction Protocol Short Film

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a game with a very distinctive look and style. While this short film Extraction Protocol by Hit Film’s director Simon K. Jones doesn’t quite have the budget to replicate cybernetic limbs, it gets most of the game elements pretty well.

 

Mario Deals With Indie Cred, Or Lack Thereof

Braid is a game that’s so indie in its construction and execution it hurts, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t inspired by other games. Here, we see the hipster hero of Braid shown just how close to other games his is.

NimbleBit Points Out Dream Heights/Tiny Tower Similarities

Zynga has both been accused and accused others of copyright infringement since almost the very beginning of the company. While not resorting to any legal solutions (at least not yet) the developers at NimbleBit striking out against Zynga’s iOS Dream Heights over its similarity to Tiny Tower.

“Even when you refuse to go work for Zynga, sometimes you end up doing work for Zynga anyway,” wrote NimbleBit co-founder Dave Marsh. “I don’t wish Zynga any ill will, I just think it’s depressing for all the devs at Zynga that don’t have creative freedom.”

Source: Twitter

Street Fighter X Tekken: No Exclusive Xbox 360 Characters

The PS3 and PS Vita version of Street Fighter X Tekken will be getting exclusive characters, but as it turns out the Xbox 360 will have no exclusive characters of its own. According to Street Fighter X Tekken Producer Yoshinori Ono, the lack of Xbox 360 exclusives is not because they didn’t try.

“We do have the exclusive characters for the Sony platform. We have Cole, the two Sony cats, Kuro and Toro. But basically for the Xbox 360, we were in discussions with them (Microsoft) for which character to put in as an exclusive, but we weren’t able to decide on a character because of differences in timing and things like that,” said Ono. “So unfortunately for Street Fighter X Tekken, only the PlayStation family will be getting the exclusive characters, but it’s something we wish could have happened. It’s just too bad, basically.”

“In terms of characters we wish we could have put in the game, Master Chief or Marcus Fenix from Gears of War would have been really cool, but it was just really difficult,” Ono added. “We have Cole from inFamous on PS3, which is really cool, but that’s just the way it turned out.”

Source: X360A