This game makes me grin In a room full of peers I embarrassed myself. A few weeks back, I found myself in a meeting room along with folks that head up a lot of the other gaming websites and magazines in America. After a brief presentation, Atlus started to ask the group for a few volunteers to be the first to playShin Megami Tensei IV. Before their sentence finished I found my peers laughing at me....

The trailer for a new, modern combat shooter,Massive Action Game, debuted at Sony’s event today. There’s a lot of guys running around, blowing stuff up and shooting one another. Apart from that, we get the title, a flowchart that shows a chain of command and a maximum player count broken down into squads of eight. It really isn’t a lot to go on. The chain of command first made me think this was some sort of tactical affair, where higher-ranked players would plan out strategies to be executed by ground-pounding players in the squads....

Fortnite, Epic Games’ quirkyMinecraft-inspired game announcedat the VGAs, will finally be unveiled at Comic-Con next month. How do we know this? Uncompromising investigative journalism, perhaps? Or, maybe JUST MAYBE because there is a panel called “Epic Games Presents:FortniteRevealed” on the schedule. If you are attending Comic-Con San Diego, you can catch the panel in Room 6A on July 12 at 10:45 AM. If the room feels surprisingly sexy, it’s because Destructoid’s own Dale North and Hamza Aziz will be in the audience....

If the single-player demo forFrontlines: Fuel of Warleft abad tastein your mouth, don’t let that discourage you from trying out the game’s multiplayer demo that’s up on the Xbox Live Marketplace right now. As far as I’m concerned, you can’t compare the demos to one another — they’re like two totally seperate games in regards to quality and polish. Included in the demo are two maps: one is a city area that supports up to 16 players, the other is an oilfield that allows 32 players to go at it, while throwing in land and air vehicles at the same time....

Will even include a controller Skylanders Trap Teamis heading to mobile devices as well! And like, the full actual game. Activision is claiming console-quality graphics, and it even comes with its own high performance controller. This is huge! This will actually seriously put a dent in console sales. Kids are growing up with the tablets in their hand practically at birth. Who needs the console when they can get the game for the device they already have at home?...

This guy is possibly the greatest thing to have ever happened to Youtube. His name is Ricky Tic, he walks around with the URL ofhis Youtube channelon his clothes, and he thinks he’s brilliant. Check out his work, which ranges from brilliant recreations of Merlin’s life, to amazing Batman comedies. He’s a genius. Speaking of URLs printed on clothing, we played videogames this week. You really should hit the jump to find out what the staff’s been up to....

After four long years Looking for another 2D sprite-based fighter to get your fix, between now and whenever Lab Zero releasetheirSkullgirlsDLC? Why not tryVanguard Princess? EigoManga have released an English-localized versionof the PC indie fighting game, which was developed almost single-handedly by Tomoaki Sugeno, a former Capcom staffer who worked on such titles asResident Evil 3andKing of Fighters EX. Even now, four years after its original Japanese release in 2009, the game looks pretty sharp, and well worth the play if you’re into 2D fighters....

The San Francisco Chronicle hasa nice little articleaboutPlayStation Home, discussing the problems that have hit the “service” since launch. Aside from the bugs and glitches, the main focus of the article is on direct user impact and the censorship of words that some feel has gone too far. Michael Marsh is a 38-year-old straight man and an active supporter of gay rights. He tried to set up a gay/straight alliance club inHome, only to find that words like “gay” and “bisexual” were taboo in Sony’s virtual world....

In philosophical terms, “agency” is the capacity for a person to make decisions and act according to those decisions. The ability to decide one’s own actions entails a substantial degree of self-expression and so is quite a significant power to hold, both pragmatically and existentially. In videogames, however, agency becomes a tricky thing. Virtual actions are the products of the agencies of multiple participants: the player who acts, the developer who enables actions, and in cases of story-based narrative, the player-character whose actions drive forward the plot....

Here’s why that’s more than a little uncomfortable [Update: In our comment section below, Molamolacolacake linked aGizmodo articlethat contained the following correspondence with Niantic: We recently discovered that the Pokémon GO account creation process on iOS erroneously requests full access permission for the user’s Google account. However, Pokémon GO only accesses basic Google profile information (specifically, your User ID and email address) and no other Google account information is or has been accessed or collected....

[Mash Tacticsairs Monday through Friday at 4p.m. Pacific onDtoid.TV. Watch King Foom play a variety of games, each day with its own theme. With a heavy focus on community and viewer interaction, you can be as much a part of the show as anything else.] If so, too bad, suck it, he’s totally mine, and you’re able to’t have him. With that out of the way, please join us forMash Tacticstonight as we fire up someBorderlands 2, and rampage through Pandora....

Can you feel the hype running through you? Hot diggity dog! Games are really awesome! Today on the Core we’ve got a really awesome guest. We’ll be joined by Manuel Tovar, the founder of the Museum for Art and Digital Entertainment in Oakland. If for some reason that’s not enough for you, we’re also going to talk about one of my favorite games, one of Phil’s favorite games and MUCH MUCH MORE!...

There is a lot of finicky business in bringing Japanese games to the Western market. Between localizing, formatting, and marketing, an especially niche title may very well just wallow out here. Which is a shame when we are missing out on crazy stuff likethis. So what’s a little weeaboo gamer in need to do? Well, MonkeyPaw games hopes to solve that problem. According toGamasutra, MonkeyPaw Games has been founded by a former CEO of Hudson, John Greiner, and promises to bring to Western gamers “real Japanese games,” as Greiner says....