We know times at Eidos are a bit desperate as of late, what with Tomb Raider’s steady decline, last year’s Kane & Lynch fiasco, and generally not having any product of merit since Soul Reaver on the PlayStation. Still, we were a bit shocked to see how far they’d go to get people interested in yet another Tomb Raider game when Eidos released a batch of photos showing off their latest real-life Tomb Raider model, Alison Carroll.

Rather, we should clarify, showing off Alison Carroll’s vagina.

The following photos were not blown up or otherwise doctored and reflect the ACTUAL SIZE and EMBARRASSING DETAIL of the photos released by Eidos PR.

She’s a bit chafed in this one.

We still won’t buy the game, but at least we now know it exists. Eidos, make the next batch more flattering and perhaps we’ll keep posting about your game. Probably not, though.

P.S. We get it now.

This is a public service announcement:
For critical and commercial success, it is imperative that all music rhythm games ship with giant, gimmicky controllers. This is retroactively effective immediately as of November 2005.

This notice is especially directed at Nintendo who, despite producing superior music games like Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan! and Rhythm Heaven, has yet to earn the millions of idiot fans with money and critical awards to waste on less original titles like Guitar Hero, Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the ’80s, Guitar Hero II, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, Guitar Hero Mobile, Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, Guitar Hero: Metallica, Guitar Hero: On Tour, Guitar Hero: On Tour: Decades, and Guitar Hero: World Tour. And Rock Band: Special Edition, Rock Band: Japan, Rock Band: Track Pack Volume 1, and Rock Band 2: Special Edition.

Penny-Arcade is defending it. Maybe because Gabe himself is familiar with the sting of disapproval.

Assassin’s Creed is out today, and it’s notable for being developed by a French Canadian Barbie doll. But what many may not realize is that the game was not only developed by a girl but was also developed for girls. The game’s controls are simplified to the point that an ordinary housewife can play the game without problem and provides real men absolutely zero challenge. Scaling impossible heights and performing amazing feats of acrobatics require nothing more than holding up on the controls, and that’s not the usual hyperbole you get from us. It’s real. Also, Jade Raymond is not in the game.

In conclusion, don’t buy Assassin’s Creed, or else you’re a girl.

Not that we’re totally surprised, but the 2007 Spike Video Game Awards nominees, announced last week, are complete rubbish to a degree that we long believed only post-1990 George Lucas films could be. Of Spike TV’s Game of the Year nominees, 75% are first person shooters and exactly 0% are games available on Nintendo platforms.

The Orange Box — Our objection to nominating The Orange Box is that this broad nomination doesn’t credit the only worthwhile game on the disc. Had Spike TV instead explicitly nominated Portal, we might not have bothered exposing the rest of their trash list. Not that it would’ve been a good nomination list, but Portal would bring its shame level to an acceptable range that would irritate us without bringing us to a nasty public update.

Mass Effect — We haven’t played the game, just Bioware’s million other RPGs that follow the exact same design mold. Let’s guess: hours and hours of awkwardly presented dialog sequences connected by myriad bouts of miserable framerates and assorted (but constant) bugs that the press will write off because the game is overly ambitious and Bioware really tried quite hard.

BioShock — We played through all of BioShock to see if it had lewd scenes filled with pornography or a surprise cameo by Mario, but it doesn’t so we’re unsure why the collective gaming press decided to endlessly fellate the game this year. Our only guess is that most only played the game’s first hour, which we admit is rather good, and missed the fact that the game gets continually worse from there and that it climaxes with the most terrible escort mission in video game history.

Halo 3 — Clearly a choice of stupidity and ignorance the likes of which hasn’t been seen since last year’s Spike Video Game Awards. Or maybe Spike is run by the Protestants.

NO SUPER MARIO GALAXY—ARE YOU SERIOUS, SPIKE TV? ARE YOU AT ALL AWARE THAT OMITTING POSSIBLY THE BEST MARIO GAME EVER MADE RENDERS YOUR ENTIRE OPERATION A BIT OF A JOKE? THERE IS NO EXCUSE IMAGINABLE THAT DOES NOT CONTAIN THE WORDS DUMB DIRTY SHITTY PISS AND COMMENTS ABOUT SPIKE TV PRODUCERS’ MOTHERS PERFORMING UNMENTIONABLE SEX ACTS.

With that out of our system, we’d also like to highlight the general lack of Nintendo games throughout the list, with only Super Mario Galaxy and Wii Sports showing up in any of the non-Wii categories. And Wii Sports came out in 2006. And Spike is dumb.

There’s also a Studio of the Year award category that Spike clearly didn’t think about as it simply mirrors their Game of the Year nominee list with the exception of Harmonix. It doesn’t make any sense. If you assume the Studio of the Year award is just to highlight the developers of the Game of the Year nominations, then why does Bioware not make their list? Or if Studio of the Year is a category meant to recognize developers with special achievements other than developing a single hit game, why are all of the nominees studios that produced just one game, with the exception of Valve who in 2007 produced two halves of two different games? Why not just call it the “We’re Spike and We Know Jack About Video Games but Heard These Four Names at Some Point or Another During the Year” category?

We’ll end this by pointing out the Most Addictive Game Fueled by Dew category. That’s it. Just saying it exists is shame enough.

So it’s official now that Sony’s answer-to-everything PS3 SKU is on its way to the US market, on sale November 2, 2007. This makes Sony’s fourth PlayStation 3 SKU introduced to North America, so we put together this simple chart to briefly explain the differences between the hardware configurations in an effort to relieve confusion.

We encourage readers to print out the chart and post it near retailers’ PlayStation 3 displays to underline just how simple Sony’s made things (click the chart for a larger, print-friendly version). All those moms currently making the Nintendo Wii a massive sales success will have no problem at all deciphering the details and feeling comfortable and confident in their PlayStation 3 purchases.

We lied about the “one easy-to-read chart,” as we had to make a second addendum chart. Turns out 20GB PS3 units are still on the market, despite being discontinued a half year ago, so we detailed that unit’s unique and not at all convoluted feature set.

Think to yourself about the number of times you’ve been arsed to use ® and © signs to comply with PROPER branding nomenclature. When was the last time you, instead of stating, “Damn yo, Legos were bomb back in the day,” said, “I enjoyed LEGO® bricks in my otherwise unfulfilling childhood.” That’s not actually a question, because we already know the answer is NEVER.

Unless you’re Gaming Age Forum poster Kariido, who today started a new forum topic titled “Is the PlayStation® Portable underrated?” That conspicuous ® and the sentence “Do people even notice anymore that it can play movies, music and you can view photos for only 40 bucks more than the DS” set off alarms, and further digging into Kariido’s post history all but confirms that he is either a hired gun for Sony or a raving, lunatic dork.

Some more ACTUAL POSTS from Kariido on the wretched Gaming Age Forums:

“The PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system will be a excellent choice. The PLAYSTATION®3 version of the game will include unparalled high definition graphics up to 1080p, the ability to play with friends over the PlayStation® Network and a vast array of other features.”

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“This game is excellent on the PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system thanks to the Cell Broadband Engine Architecture.”

“Just in case you didn’t notice all games offer a variety in gameplay, storyline, themes, graphics and sound. All of these games are exclusive to the PLAYSTATION® computer entertainment system. So if anyone says “PS3 has no games” this clearly shows that it does- and the games that it does offer are all of top caliber.”

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“After finishing Heavenly Sword today I would consider it to be an excellent game. Its pretty much a killer app.”

We promise that’s the last time we link to that shabby excuse for a web forum. Unless we again run out of ideas for updates.