To be honest, we find the placement of the blue and purple Tetris pieces disturbing. Check out the highlights for today:

News
Shane Kim talks MMO stumbles
Midnight Club: Los Angeles midnight movie
ASA dismisses GTA IV telly ad complaints
PS3 firmware version 2.42 is now live
This Wednesday (today, we mean): Geometry Wars 2
Nintendo Q109 results drown company in billions
Capcom: Q109 sales up 15% (thanks Monster Hunter Freedom 2G)
The BBFC seeks to classify online interaction
Bourne game rights forget Vivendi, return to Ludlum Entertainment
Revealed XBLAugust prices incorrect
See Dark Void's jetpack action in video
Ticket to Ride Europe yet to arrive on XBLA, customers getting antsy
HAWX grounded until 2009
Ubi to release Armored Core for Answer in September
Rock Band concert tour, chance to humiliate yourself on-stage announced
ESA releases annual report publicly for first time
Doctor Who wants to time warp, play retro games
Wii MotionPlus co-developer demos tech in new video
GT5 Prologue update hits on Friday
PixelJunk Eden Trophies detailed, but not in gold

Rumors & Speculation
GTA: Chinatown Wars site hints at Nintendo WFC features
Zombies!!! coming to Xbox Live Arcade???
Rumor: Wal-Mart spotted selling 60GB Xbox 360

Culture & Community
DC, Capcom partner for Resident Evil, Devil May Cry comics
Eegra picks Game Makin' Shindig winners
Wii Brew's Wii Pack Generator delivers no-fuss homebrew
CollegeHumor reveals Bowser minion coup d'etat
Zero Punctuation apparently missed the actual E3
Edge: Nintendo tops industry's best publishers

We know we've been banging the drum for Dark Void pretty hard, but we're hoping that after today you're going to understand why. The segment of the game in the above video is the exact one that sold us on it, from the flailing animations the hero Will makes in flight to the radical UFO hijacking. (Notable difference in our experience: We had a much-cooler walk-through guide, designer Jose Perez, who didn't pretend to still be freaked out by controlling the jetpack after he'd played/watched the demo 100,000 times. Really dude? Really?)

Even if you've gotten tired of hearing how great Dark Void looks, we urge you, take a look at this video and see if it doesn't get your thumbs flicking in anticipation. If you want more, we've put some gun-play video after the break.

This Bully-themed costume has one problem: this hombre has a watch on, whereas Jimmy is watchless. Epic fail, man -- better luck next time! (We're kidding, of course!) Check out the highlights for today:

Joystiquery
Readers pick best webcomic: Waiting

News
Demigod releases first trailer, confirmed playable at PAX
Blackwater mercs say 'make music, not war'
Molyneux talks three new Fables and a secret project
Nintendo files lawsuit to curb DS piracy
Amazon clarifies some Gears of War 2 Lancer details
Resident Evil 4 vs. Resident Evil 5 vid showcases scary similarities
Valve committed to XBLA, re-releases possible
Scrabulous disabled for US, Canadian Facebook users
Square Enix pres Yoichi Wada preaches platform neutrality
Hell's Highway pushed back to September
A Grimm first trailer
'A Snake for a new era,' Kojima teases
Sierra: Ghostbusters 'absolutely not cancelled'
Sony profits dip, games division way up
Riccitiello: EA should have bet on Wii; PS3 and 360 still 'meaningful'
Take-Two excited about Wii, mum on GTA for the system
Double Fine: Brutal Legend is 'fine,' weevils not
EA doubles Q1 revenues, troubled by $95 million loss
New PlayStation 3 FCC filing found, likely 80GB
Command & Conquer FPS Tiberium delayed to fiscal 2010
Mass Effect DLC now on PC for free
Battlefield Heroes pushed back to late 2008
Bionic Commando Rearmed's divergent finale
EA generated $90m through digital distribution in Q1
EA: Boom Blox not a bomb after all
Red Alert 3 skipping PS3 due to 'exotic and tough' development
Shane Kim talks MMO stumbles
DC, Capcom partner for Resident Evil, Devil May Cry comics

Rumors & Speculation
Pachter: Nintendo has not abandoned the core audience
Rumor: Yoda could come to PS3 Soul Calibur IV through DLC

Culture & Community
Dreamcast emulator for PSP real, really slow
No compromise with working, full-size NES belt buckle
BlizzCon tickets on sale August 11
Fuel for debate: More E3 'best of' award winners announced

We're only halfway through the pandemonium that is Comic-Con this year, and the International Masquerade is still to come -- but in the meantime we wanted to bring you just a taste of the eye candy available on the show floor and in the clogged halls of the SDCC. Us? We're wearing our patented bedraggled blogger hobo look. These are the people who made an effort.

Imagine if Marvel's super heroes were to form a sort of ... alliance. An ultimate one, at that. Then, they somehow gained the ability to fuse their powers together. You'd have yourself a Marvel Ultimate Alliance of Fusion, or "MUAF," but we don't think we like how that acronym crawls off the tongue. Tweak it a bit and you have Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2: Fusion, Activision's next action-RPG team up set in the Marvel Comics universe, where players will, in fact, be able to combine the powers of various heroes to make more powerful powers.

The game was announced at Activision's E3 non-E3 event, where only a brief teaser was shown. This slightly longer snippet was unveiled at San Diego Comic-Con 2008, which got underway today in Southern California. It indeed shows off various Marvel characters fusing their powers, but looks far from actual gameplay. It's still pretty slick to see Wolverine and The Hulk team up for a variation of the Fastball Special, though.

Will Wright gave the opening keynote today at the nerd-packed Comic-Con 2008, an event so chock full of fellow geeks we're hard-pressed to find a free patch of San Diego Convention Center floor to stand on. For the first half hour or so Will rattled off profound observations and inspirational quips at approximately the speed of light, leaving the second half of the presentation to an extensive demo of the civilization and space stages of Spore.

The touted reveal of the MashON Spore Comic Book Creator wasn't much more than a few minutes' discussion of the tool that will live at http://mashon.com/spore/, enabling players to take the creatures and other assets they make in the game and import them into an interactive comic book creation engine. A booklet passed out to attendees while waiting for the keynote tells us you'll be able to drag and drop screenshots taken in Spore right into the tool, add audio and video clips and other assets, create and lay out the entire story environment and share it with friends via email or Flash embed code. Users can rate and save other players' stories on the Mashon.com site and play them back as digital flip books as well as print them out. Wright talked about how the Comic Book Creator fits within the overall ethos of the game, which is about putting players more in the role of George Lucas than Luke Skywalker, allowing them to actually create the worlds themselves beyond just playing in them.

Capcom's Seth Killian has posted a friendly note for fighting fans on the official Capcom blog, reminding us that Street Fighter IV begins hitting Japanese arcades the week of July 21. Not all that helpful for those of stuck in the States. Thankfully, "S-KILL" also has the lowdown on where and when the general public can experience the game for themselves on this side of the Pacific.

The final coin-op version of SFIV will be playable July 24-27 at San Diego Comic-Con and at the Evolution 2008 fighting game competition finals in Las Vegas from August 8-10. As an added bonus for EVO 2008 attendees, Capcom will have the latest build of Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix on hand as well.

While megatons were nary to be found at Epic Games' Gears of War 2 panel at this year's New York Comic Con, Epic president Michael Capps and writer Joshua Ortega nonetheless revealed a few tidbits that are sure to pique the interest of the Gears faithful.

Immediately after production on the first Gears wrapped up, the team had to ask itself what it could to make the game "bigger" and "more badass." For example, they saw how people responded to the last-minute addition of the chainsaw. What could they do to improve the chainsaw? Chainsaw duels, perhaps?

Cover, which is admittedly inspired by the oft-forgotten Kill.switch, will also be expanded upon in the sequel. Players have already taken cover behind inanimate objects: rocks, walls, etc. But, what if players could take cover behind moving, living things? What if players could kill a massive enemy and then use it as cover? This ultimately led to the development of massive worm creatures for the sequel.

Sid Meier is attending New York Comic Con '08 this weekend promoting his upcoming Civilization Revolution game. He'll be at the 2K Games Booth (#1157) on Saturday, April 19, from 1-3PM. He'll be making chit-chat with fans and "providing autographs." There's +2 internets in it for the guy who gets Meier to sign his man-boob.

Attendees will also get a chance to try out demos of the console-only Civilization Revolution, which should be very close to done now. Revolution is expected to release on Xbox 360, PS3 and DS on June 3. The Wii version is still hidden by the fog-of-war.

Though it's hard to imagine anything more exciting than obtaining The Hulk's autograph or shaking hands with Iron Man (watch out for that palm beam!), this month's New York Comic Con will also give attendees a glimpse of upcoming testosterone-fueled chainsaw epic, Gears of War 2. The convention will host a special "preview" of the Xbox 360 shooter on Sunday, April 20th, delivered courtesy of Michael Capps, president of Epic Games and Joshua Ortega, a man described as a "writer" for Gears of War 2. Must be some in-joke we don't get.

The New York Comic Con will take place from April 18th to April 20th at the Jacob Javits Center. In New York.

During a Viva Piñata panel at Comic-Con, Rare announced a Nintendo DS version of their well-received (but demographically incongruous) Xbox 360 title, Viva Piñata. A Rare developer answered some basic questions on the PinataIsland.info forum, quelling fears that the title would not be developed by Rare – he said, "Very definitely 'yes' on this one. We have a dedicated handheld dev team." – and that the gameplay would be different – he said, "Game play wise, yes. It's the same game ... ." Still no word on whether or not the game will take advantage of the DS' Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection.

While it's not a huge surprise – Shane Kim intimated as much to 1UP – it's curious to see Microsoft publishing a title on a competitor's platform. If they can get the Pokemon crowd hooked on Viva Piñata via the enormously popular DS, then we're betting some of those kids just may grow up to be 360 owners.

[Via ShackNews]

Straight from Comic-Con, the Mario gang stop to pose for Karin+Bruce's camera. Check out the highlights for today:

Joystiquery
The Political Game: Gamers like Mike
Today's most poetic video: Beowulf

News
Sony: No PS3 price cut plans outside US "at this point"
Godfather 2 in development, it breaks our heart
Sony Europe and Sky to deliver on-demand video for PSP
EA was wrong to ride PS3 & Xbox 360, CEO says
Jaffe and Incognito chief leave Sony to start 'Eat, Sleep, Play' - announce Twisted Metal PS2 port
PSP patent presents possible DualShock / Sixaxis controls
Gears of War PC with 20% more
EA wants to stop 2K All-Pro Football franchise
Advergaming hits Indian movie industry
First footage of Sega's Iron Man, with developer walkthrough
BJ's Wholesale goes Blu-ray
David Jaffe's first interview regarding Eat Sleep Play
Enemies, bosses bound for LittleBigPlanet
Syphon Filter sequel pushes PSP to 333MHz
Stranglehold placed on Xbox 360 and PC Aug. 27
Bungie Weekly: Everything old is new again edition
Lego Indiana Jones announced

Rumors & Speculation
Rumors: new Bionic Commando, and four RPGs from Level 5

Culture & Community
Suspicious 'game board' causes airport evacuation
Companies looking to make work more like games

When push comes to shove on the floors of a comic book convention, nothing can defend your nerd pride like claiming favor to Beowulf. The mere mention of its name will send Doctor Who cosplayers running for cover behind the nearest collectable bust vendor. It's only fitting that both the film and game trailer debuted today at Comic-Con.

Ubisoft has made quite a show out of the San Diego convention, revealing their nerd trifecta of Heroes, Lost and of course, Beowulf. While this first glimpse doesn't feel particularly inspiring, it's not nearly as tacky as the CG effects in the film itself.

Ubisoft announced today that their video game adaptation of ABC's island mystery Lost will be coming out in the first quarter 2008 to PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. A trailer is expected to be shown today at Comic-Con between 5pm and 6pm PT (8pm to 9pm ET).

While not divulging much about the trailer, Ubisoft gave a hint to the story of the game. You play as one of the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815. According to the description provided by IGN, "you'll have to try and unravel the mysteries of the island while dealing with unsettled business in your past." Ubisoft said that you will also interact with familiar characters and battle Ol' Smokey.

If we're playing an unknown character from the original crash, we're kind of worried about how the game will progress in relation to the show -- will we be limited to what we can do so as to not upset the current storyline, or will this serve as an alternate timeline separate from the show? One only needs to mention "Nikki and Paulo" to a Lost fan to know that adding survivors post-crash is a recipe for ire.

Producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse have reportedly worked with Ubisoft to devise the game's storyline. Said the two, "Ubisoft has done a fantastic job and come up with a game that is visually amazing and imaginative both on its own and as an extension of the world of the show." Hopefully we'll have a better idea after the trailer tonight.

[Update - The trailer has been embedded behind the break. Enjoy!]