I’m really not sure what to make of these trailers/teaser clips from the upcoming “Arkham Asylum” video game. The animation looks alright, except for the faces, and Batman looks pretty great. Bane and Harley – especially Harley – look more like “American McGee’s Batman” by way of Simon Bisley, which has me both kind of turned off on the game and intrigued, simultaneously. Ah, who am I kidding – like I’d have time to play the thing these days, even if I owned a next gen console.

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Longtime KFR readers know about our love affair with the most excellent Playstation franchise, Ratchet & Clank. We’ve long wondered why the hell nobody had licensed the characters for a line of toys, action figure or otherwise. Well, now our wait is over, and they look kind of cool! Now, when’s that R&C comic book announcement?

More pics here.

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I just wanted to share that my fist clip art collection, Game On!, is now available from the ever so awesome xtrapulp.com. I put way more time into these than I probably should have, and hopefully it shows. So, if you’re in need of some vintage video game system illustrations for an article, project or whatever, give my set a look, K?

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Everyone loves a good minigame, right? Well, “Crank 2″ has a slew of them that have just been released, but while they’re entertaining, it’s difficult to say that they’re “good.” First problem is that the sound is cranked up pretty loud, and there’s no sign of a volume control. This is going to seriously limit the office gameplay and probably get more than a few people in dutch with their bosses.

The actual games themselves are pretty basic, made interesting only by the aforementioned cranked (HA!) soundtrack and the over the top sprite designs, which in at least one case seems to have been designed explicitly to piss people off. Specifically, Help the Hooker, a Frogger-like game in which you help Rita streetwalk across a busy LA surface road. While she gives the Invisible Man a non-stop lapdance.

Seriously.

Touch the Granny, Not the Cop is a Pac-Man clone that’s actually hyper annoying, and Escape on a Moped is an extremely basic racing game with car jumping and speed boosts. None of them are really worth spending more than a minute or two on, unfortunately, but I expect that won’t stop someone, somewhere causing a stir over the Help the Hooker game. Which is probably exactly what it was designed to do in the first place.

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Man, between the announcement of “R&C: Future Weapon” and the new Katamari game, I may very well give in and get a PS3 come the end of summer. Damn you Insomniac Games!!!

MY BLASTER RUNS HOT. DOES YOURS? RATCHET AND CLANK(R): FUTURE WEAPON CONTEST.

As the mightiest hero in the galaxy, Captain Qwark is looking for a weapon that is worthy of his greatness! And YOU may just be lucky enough to create it.

SIGN UP NOW AT: http://playstation.innovyx.net/r?xlcqTnnEcHWPHJEHWJcJlnHvlJc

The winner of the weapon contest will have his/her weapon included in Ratchet & Clank(R) Future: A Crack in Time, win a trip to the San Diego Comic-Con International and more!

Design and submit your idea for a new weapon and get the chance to have it included for actual play in Ratchet & Clank(R) Future: A Crack In Time.

Two years ago, Insomniac Games allowed fans to decide on what animal enemies would morph into in Ratchet & Clank(R) Future: Tools of Destruction(R). For its upcoming game, Ratchet & Clank(R) Future: A Crack in Time, the designers at Insomniac are handing over the reins to their fans again. In the spirit of Ratchet customizing his own weapons, Insomniac is giving you a chance to show your ideas and fill the final weapon slot in the game with one of your own creations–one that even Captain Qwark would be proud to wield.

www.insomniacgames.com

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Check out this neat little Watchmen promotional site and relive your youth – or in some of your cases, the youth of your older brother/cousin/uncle. Just hover your cursor over the arcade game cabinet on the right, deposit the quarter and beat the 8-bit holy hell out of a few dozen thugs in some sort of Final Fight tribute. It’s really kind of fitting in a meta sort of way, to play a video game with characters that are based on other, more well known characters…even if in this case it’s a couple of mid-level video game stars from the late 80s. The only real shame here is that there’s only one level of the game online. For now, at least.

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