Lesbian Gamers

Pontiac G8 GT Spy Hunter advert - cool

Remember Spy Hunter, the cool arcade game released by Bally Midway back in 1983, then ported to all and sundry in the following years? It was an awesome game in which you drove a car vertically up the screen, blew baddies up, protected civilian vehicles and now and again turned into a boat.

It seems someone at the Pontiac advertising firm really has a soft spot for Spy Hunter, given the new advert for the Pontiac G8 GT. If you like cars, watch this ad, if you enjoyed Spy Hunter watch this ad, actually you know what.. just watch the damn ad, it's cool.

Video Game Picks for March-April 2008

The post holiday season gaming slump is coming to an end and some mighty fine releases are heading our way within the next few months. We thought we'd give you all a heads up as to some of the titles you might want to add to your gaming purchase lists. We're not saying these games are fantastic, since we haven't played them, but they have energy surrounding them and we hope they're good ones.

This is going to be a longer post than usual, so to keep things neat, you can check out the LesbianGamers Gaming Picks for the March-April period after the jump. Oh and these are based on Australian releases.

Heavy Rain by Quantic Dream

Heavy Rain is a title we're looking forward to here at LG because we loved Fahrenheit (aka Indogi Prophecy) which was also made by Quantic Dream. A few new details slipped out about Heavy Rain recently, so we thought we'd share them with you.

Like Fahrenheit before it, Heavy Rain will focus on moral choices, but choices that will blur what may be bad or good. The story will focus on four characters: "Heavy Rain is about normal people that have landed in extraordinary situations. I wanted a much more personal story. The first thing that came to my mind, as a father of two little boys, was that the main theme should simply be a father's love for his son. This is not a game about saving the princess or the world. It's purely about a father's love." Fahrenheit was awesome at the in depth emotional connection between gamer and game, here's hoping Heavy rain has some of that same magic and perhaps someone with Carla Valenti's style.

On the off chance you missed it, here's some tech demo footage of Heavy Rain.

Borderlands slipage and female characters

You may recall we mentioned Take Two Interactive and Gearbox Software title Borderlands a while ago with regards to being 'One To Watch', well now it seems you'll have to watch it next year. Yes Borderlands has slipped into 2009, with "additional development" being blamed for the slipage.

On the upside we contacted Gearbox about the female content of Borderlands and this is what they had to say "Borderlands will feature female characters prominently as key playable characters." So there you have it, female characters and more importantly playable ones at that. Also note the plurality of characters and not character. So, some bad news and some good news.

Mass Effect Sexuality in Games - MTV

The multiplayer blog over at MTV has an interesting little interview with Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk from BioWare and they pretty much cover just why they think sexuality / romantic relationships are important in games. Needless to say it comes down to common sense, these things are part of life, so why shouldn’t they appear in mature story led games.

Sadly some of you may not be able to see the video (Canada, UK and Japan), but the upshot of it is that games are an art form, just as books, TV and film are. All of which at some point suffered disapproving looks and ‘inappropriate’ commentary.

Oh and they also say the word ‘appropriate’ a whole lot, like maybe the guy doth protest too much. That said they do make a great point with the suggestion it’s better to actually connect to a character than have it just be there for titillation.