No? Hm. Well, here, check out Stephen Colbert’s exclusive preview of Microsoft’s Project Natal:

They always look.

Nick:

The stars have aligned. Not only will this year mark the release of games by Tim Schafer, Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman — three veterans of the Golden Age of Adventure Gaming — but it will herald the resurrection of Monkey Island, the game that brought the art of insult swordfighting to the masses.

In celebration of the upcoming remake of The Secret of Monkey Island and Telltale’s first season of Tales of Monkey Island, I dove back into my collection of LucasArts adventure games. First up: The Curse of Monkey Island on Mega-Monkey mode, to truly test my puzzle-solving prowess (and alliterative aspirations, apparently.)  Once I’ve killed Dread Pirate LeChuck again…again, I’m planning on paying a few of my favorites a visit: Full Throttle, Day of the Tentacle and The Dig, most likely. And to cap it all off? I’ll be returning to the colorful streets of El Marrow in Grim Fandango. (Fact: Grim Fandango is the best game ever made. Honest! Look it up somewhere.)

And lest I forget the current generation of gaming, I oughta mention I’ve been plugging away at InFamous (50% completion rate and still excellent) and Red Faction: Guerrilla. Talk about an underdog of a game; Guerrilla’s only been out for a couple weeks and its price has already been slashed from $60 to $40.

Lemme give you some advice: No matter what opinion you may have of Saints Row or the older Red Faction games, toss it right out the window. Red Faction is relentlessly satisfying both online and off. Don’t be shocked if it ends up at the top of my list for Best Games of 2009.

Still the best at what he does.

Aaron:

Purchasing the Xbox 360 version of XMOWUE (that’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine: Uncaged Edition — which makes for an awful acronym) for $37 dollars at Target was the best gaming decision I’ve made this week. I’ve patiently waited for a sale on the game since its release, and I’m glad I finally got a chance to scoop it up.

The game is absolutely ridiculous, disgustingly gory and extremely family friendly (not really). Now I’ve never really read any of Wolverine’s comic series — give me Batman or Spider-Man anyday — but I can tell Raven Software lovingly nailed the feel of being Wolverine. It’s brutal, but also beautiful in a demented sort of way.

I’ll also admit within this allotted virtual space that I’ve become addicted to The Sims 3.

The last time I played any Sims title was way back in 2002 when the first game’s vacation expansion came out. After that I quietly put away the voyeuristic notion of controlling virtual people in favor of more conventional gaming experiences. Plus, I was annoyed with the hundreds of expansion packs EA and Maxis kept releasing (honestly that’s written with just a tinge of hyperbole). Even so I’m back for the third game, and it’s as crack-like as I remember. I have to stop sometime soon though, otherwise it’ll become my new World of Warcraft.

Which, by the way, keeps telling me to play it. I need help.

With Bill Clinton and the Fresh Prince in the rosters, NBA Jam really is the quintessential '90s sports game.

Doug:

Still working on games like Fallout 3, FIFA 09, and others, but have brought out some oldies this week as well as taking in some brand-spanking-new demos.

Kicking it old school: Been taking in some SNES games thanks to the power of emulation, specifically NBA Jam: Tournament Edition and International Superstar Soccer, the precursor to the Pro Evo Soccer series we know now. Gotta love some 16-bit goodness every now and then, but I’m still kind of tweaked that I can’t get the cheat codes for NBA Jam to work. Ah well.

Two big sports game demos dropped this week, though: NCAA Football 10 and The Bigs 2. I put damn near 120 hours in to NCAA 09, and am still kind of looking forward to 10, but man…I was not very impressed with the demo upon playing it for the first time. In fact, you could say I’m kind of down on the game. It just didn’t feel right — I had wanted the game to feel different, to make some improvements, but it still feels odd now that they’re here.

The other demo was The Bigs 2, 2k Sports’ take on arcade baseball. I only ever played the demo of the first one, but it was well liked by a lot of people, including 1up.com’s Sports Anomaly podcast. Well, the demo is incredibly good — fairly easy to pick up, a ton of fun to play, great mechanics, and it doesn’t feel unfair like a lot of arcade sports games can. I would definitely love to get my hands on the full game when it comes out soon.

They're certainly colorful, aren't they?

After a bit of governmental deliberation the United Kingdom has chosen to make PEGI (Pan European Game Information) ratings the sole standard for labeling the content of videogames. The decision came about as part of the Digital Britain report, an inquiry begun last October by Stephen Carter, the country’s first Minister for Communications, Technology and Broadcasting, to primarily help modernize Britain’s telecommunications capabilities. PEGI’s ratings will be enacted with help from the independent Video Standards Council (think of it as the British version of the Entertainment Consumers Assocation…kinda).

In light of Tuesday’s announcement, PEGI has unveiled its new color-coded classification icons for UK game releases, as seen above. The freshly minted labels keep the same age ranges as the previous ones, but ditch the black-and-white, Electronic Software Ratings Board-like design.

Previous to Tuesday’s ruling, PEGI ratings were used in conjunction with the British Board of Film Classification‘s (BBFC) system of certificate labeling (e.g., Universal, 12 and 18 among others), resulting in a somewhat confusing dual game rating — especially for mature titles. Now that PEGI has control of classifying videogames released in the UK, the hope is to create a clearer and more easily managed system which provides parents and families with easy-to-understand ratings.

If anything, let’s hope for the sakes of our British friends that the decision prevents any more game bans from happening in the future.

I promise this story wasn't an excuse to reuse an image

Not a few days after 1UP posted its bold rumors about Microsoft’s Project Natal — as we mentioned here on Monday– did the company that Bill Gates built snap back and dampen the prophetic claims. According to Xbox’s director of product management, Aaron Greenberg, “Natal will run on Xbox 360 so no new console investment will be necessary.” Greenberg’s statement is directly opposite 1UP’s rumor post, which states that Natal will be released sometime in the fall of 2010 and become “the cornerstone of Microsoft’s next evolution of the Xbox…as an add-on for the Xbox 360…[with] similar hardware but upgraded, repackaged, and rebranded.”

Who really knows, though. Microsoft could be enacting its damage control protocols to cover up an updated model of Xbox; Eurogamer’s rebuttal post isn’t exactly heavy on details. And while an entirely new console is unlikely, Natal being packaged with an Xbox 360 and marketed as a new experience is very feasible. Maybe that’s what 1UP’s source was implying.

Based purely on what’s been shown today, and assuming things go to plan:

The Sure-fire Big Winner: Xbox Live

Direct download capability for 1080p movies and Xbox 360 games; an expanded Netflix lineup; Facebook, Last.fm and Twitter tie-ins to come in the fall; and a whole host of exclusive downloads and DLC content for games coming this year. That $50 a year spent on an Xbox Live gold account keeps looking better and better, and regardless how the games turn out, what you’ll be able to do with the system grows and grows.

Most Important Announcement: Microsoft’s Project Natal

It's waggle, Jim, but not how we're used to: Microsoft's Project Natal could well be the biggest announcement at E3 2009.

We knew it was coming. It may even have been shown a year ago, before Microsoft acquired the company responsible for the technology. But actually seeing Project Natal — Microsoft’s code name for its controller-less motion control device — was very stunning. Sure, some of the tech demos displayed (a ball kicking/punching/heading game, motion to control the Xbox dashboard) were a bit hokey…but they showed a level of motion-recognition that was very tight and reactive. The big deal was Lionhead Studios (publishers of Fable 2, Black and White and many other games) and the tech demo they created where players could interact with a schoolboy named Milo. To say it encroached on the uncanny valley is an understatement; if it’s what the video demonstration billed it to be, it’s less a game and more interacting with a legitimate AI character. Absolutely stunning.

To say that Microsoft could capitalize on the market the Nintendo Wii has pioneered while also pushing the boundaries of what’s possible as an interactive activity with Project Natal is an understatement. The potential is there; whether it comes to fruition in the final form will be interesting to see.

Nothing’s Shocking: The surprises that…well…didn’t.

• Hideo Kojima taking the stage during the Microsoft press conference (accompanied by a “!”) to announce Metal Gear Solid: Rising, which will feature Raiden.
• Bungie is working on something other than Halo 3: ODST in the Halo universe — Halo: Reach.
• EA Sports is adding a mixed martial-arts game, EA Sports MMA, to its roster.
• Brütal Legend is going to kick everybody’s ass. Hard.
• Sequel-tastic: Left 4 Dead 2, Crackdown 2, Metal Gear Solid…and plenty more from EA and Ubi.

The Day and Date Club: Games that made a great first impression.

Here comes the sun: The Beatles: Rock Band broke cover brilliantly today at E3.

• The Beatles: Rock Band. After months of speculation, teases and being under wraps, the game was finally revealed today. It was a hell of a start to Microsoft’s press conference.
• Forza Motorsport 3. Another game that had lived under cover until now showing its head, and it is looking good as well. Especially innovative could be the game’s replay editor – if the Turn 10 spokesman was being truthful during the demonstration today, it could yield spectacular results.
• Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction. Site editor Aaron Thayer was particularly enamored with this game’s combination of stealth and action. The lighting system and revamped hide-in-the-shadows gameplay along with the extremely visceral action is a tantalizing prospect for this fall.
• Brütal Legend. The metal Zelda. Tim Schafer’s (well deserved) golden ticket-in-waiting.
• Honorable mentions: Assassin’s Creed 2, Mass Effect 2, Alan Wake.

We’ll be sure to have more for you tomorrow after Nintendo, Sony and a host of others make their presentations and the show floor opens.