Hello Prototype 2 fans!

Check out the Prototype 2 Elite Club challenge. The contest will run from May 10 - 24. Participants need to complete all 10 Xbox 360 achievements or all 10 PlayStation 3 trophies on one platform to be eligible for a prize.

Prizes: 1 Grand Prize: $500 gift card
10 Runner-Up Prizes: Prototype 2 Blackwatch Collector's Edition

Winners will be chosen at random from the pool of entrants at the end of the contest.

The next phase in our GameSpot and GameFAQs breakup has been made this morning. Some of you will notice the following:

- All games now have a game board, thanks to everyone's feedback. You will still see some genre boards and series boards around the site, but for the most part there should not be anymore confusion about a missing game board.

- The GameFAQs crossover boards will no long be accessible, but you may continue to read the discussions. With this change, you will no longer be confused about why you received a moderation mark in your moderation history.

If you miss posting in GameFAQs crossover boards, you can still do this by simply using your GameSpot login and password on GameFAQs. Please do be mindful of their Terms of Use agreement because they still moderate for trolling, censor bypass, and flaming.

Belated Happy May Day! Did you know that May Day is an ancient spring festival celebrated by a great many cultures such as Ireland, France, Germany, and even Sweden? **The earliest May Day celebrations appeared in the Pre 16-Bit days, when gamers across the world would gather in masses to pray for new and exciting IP's to be born into the world. May Day falls exactly half a year from November 1st (which in gamer traditions translates to Q4) when great titles are released into the wild for gamers to play and enjoy.

The most common way to celebrate May Day is to create a May Basket, filled with bargain bin gaming gems, swag, hot pockets, and various energy drinks. These baskets are then placed on someone's office desk. The giver then screams out whatever meme is relevant to the year and runs away. The person receiving the basket tries to catch the fleeing giver. If they catch the person, they must fight to the death in a game of Quake. And that my dear readers, is the history of May Day. Now onto some real news.

Community Happenings

Whispers around the office
I overheard plans to make changes to the commenting system. The comments will be down for a short maintenance on Thursday starting at 11:00 am PT and will be down for a short period of time (about an hour). You will also find messaging on the comments system during this time. More details will likely surface as early as this afternoon or tomorrow morning in theSite Enhancements or Technical Support forums.

5 Seconds to E3
Klondike is back again to give GameSpot members a chance to win a trip to E3. But you don't have to worry about embarrassing yourself this time. It will only take you 5 seconds to sign up and be entered to win a pair of tickets to E3 2012.

Ghost Recon Future Soldier Tournament TV
On May 22nd we'll be bringing back Tournament TV! Now, before you old school GameSpotters get too excited, there won't be a tournament leading up to a Friday live stream of the final match. If you live near the San Francisco Bay Area drop us a line at onthespot@gamespot.com with the subject title Tournament TV. Please don't forget to share if you can make it to our office to compete in person or if you'd like to be on a standby list to try for a slot to compete online.

Mass Effect Pixel Art Winner
There were some awesome submissions for our Mass Effect Pixel art contest, but in the end there could only be one winner, and that winner was yeah_writes submission, BEWARE! The following link contains massive amounts of awesomness!

Street Fighter X Tekken X Winner
A few weeks ago during On the Spot we did trivia a little differently, asking viewers to submit altered images of GameSpot staff members photo shopped as Street Fighter or Tekken characters. The staff argued and debated over their favorite entry until finally deciding on edubuccaneer's entry.

GameSpot Coverage

On the Spot Teaser - Rumor Has It
Sneaking in again to bring you the latest behind the scenes for this weeks On the Spot, we discovered that the fantastic fantasy Game of Thrones will be cutting across the screen during our live demo. Along with Starhawk, and Way of the Samurai. And as always we'll have our Maxwell McBargins to show of yet another gem from XboxLive Arcade. As for the trivia goodies, there will be some random t-shirts and Forza Motorsport 4 'Top Gear' DLC pack codes. Don't forget to join us on Twitch or Youtube at 11:00am PT to get in on the chatroom action because commenting system will be down for maintenance.

Making History
May is Video Game History month and many of you are aware that great games only get older with age. This week we will be showing off Street Fighter in celebration of their 25th anniversary. Be sure to join us during our live stream on Twitch today, May 2nd at 11am PT. Curious what else we'll be checking out? Here are other anniversaries we'll celebrate this month.

- Fallout 15th anniversary
- Metal Gear 25th Anniversary
- Zelda 25th Anniversary
- Wolfenstein 20th anniversary

Stay tuned for more details about how we'll celebrate these game franchises and more!

Video Game Forecast

Seems to be yet another strong week for most platforms. PC users will be delighted by sunny weather, TERA's release means it’s the perfect time to break out the multiplayer, but if you're looking to play alone in the dark during May Day, keep yourself company (and creeped out) with Call of Cthulu: The Wasted Land. Things are getting a little cloudy for the Vita but there is a slight reprieve with the release of Mortal Kombat. Short rainfall can be expected for the Xbox 360, you can expect to see a drizzle of arcade titles like Fable Heroes. And finally, Sony and Microsoft will both want to get their shades because the awesomeness of Awesomenauts is practically blinding. For more information on this weeks releases you can check out the extended forecast

This Week's Raffle Reward…

GameSpot community is introducing a new activity to our Community Check-In, the "Raffle Reward" program. How does one play the game? Simple. Just comment in the section below, seriously that’s it. What do you get in return? Well that’s where it will get interesting. This week we’re giving away a copy of Spyro Skylanders starter kit for the Playstation 3. All you have to do is finish the following sentence in the comments below:

Bonus Item

Check out this Portal parody called "If I were a Core", WARNING: some mild spoilers.

Bulletin

Some of the biggest news that came out on the social universe is the copycat of Pinterest, well, that’s what people were saying until they figured out otherwise. Facebook "Pinview" is a Facebook app that reformats your account into a pinboard format. Moving on to social console-quences, System Wars posters might find this news interesting. Reports say Nvidia smartphone graphics are set to out beat Xbox 360 by 2014. Speaking of console wars bragging rights, Microsoft’s record revenue reports also appear to be slipping, according to mashable.com "Microsoft also took a hit in its Xbox division, with revenues dropping 16%, which Microsoft blames on a soft game console market." If that wasn't bad enough news for the little lemmings out there, according to a recent article from Bloomberg.com, Motorola Mobility recently won a ruling on Microsoft Xbox 360 patents. But there is hope, with free-mium games being the super trend that they are, the Xbox 360 might be the next platform for these fun freebies.

Game-ology

This week in Game-ology we take a look at some ancient code, ancient graphics, and old republics.
First up Wired.com shared a report on "The Geeks Who Saved Prince of Persia’s Source Code From Digital Death". Apparently Jordan Mechner saved everything, and we mean EVERYTHING to read where they found this ancient history read on here. While we're on the subject of digging up ancient history… the "Game Archaeologist" asked a thought provoking question, "Are graphical updates worth the hassle?" Speaking of games that get cosmetic changes, we’ll talk about the stylized glory of Star Wars the Old Republic and how their subscriptions are not dropping despite lighter server loads. In an article on pcgamer.com we read that "Bioware lead writer Daniel Erickson said the game's subscription numbers are not dropping despite the somewhat emptier servers". While industry watchers speculated the loss of subscriptions, I find their lack of faith disturbing.

Why so Serious

Now for something a little different, and somewhat serious news. Google’s "vulnerability program" ups the payout for discovered weaknesses from $3,000 to a maximum of $20,000. Alright, that wasn't too serious, but here's something that might freak you out a bit, if your car has a Black Box it is likely "spying" on you according to Forbes. Next, there is a lot of debate about copyright infringers and whether or not they are "pirates" or "thieves" , and here is an insightful article on the subject. Speaking of copyright debates, recent changes to copy protection can mean that those of you who have DirecTV might need new gear to watch shows on HBO. In the world of patents, Arstechnica.com explains that Samsung is targeting Apple in the US with eight more patents. On a related note Apple wants to go to trial to defend itself against accusations in regards to e-book price-fixing.

FREE GAMES!

As if you needed another way to procrastinate at work here’s a nice little twist on the classic Mario game. Mario not quite your thing? Thinking to yourself if you wanted to play the original Mario that you’d just do it? Well fine! I have a few other goodies up my sleeve, first is The Secret World Social Web- Game but for those of you who aren’t a fan of Facebook here is the Indie Game Rambo: Last Blood a cute little 8bit browser game that you can play . Why should you be playing all these games? Simple really, in addition to being awesome, studies show that computer games helps with depression. And if the games aren’t enough to put a little smile on your face you could try a slice of Legend of Grimrock - Blueberry pie thanks to the gaming gourmet.

Making Mischief

Classic and rare Star Wars photos
Run Yoshi Run!
Mega64 - Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
Jedi Junkies video
Ideas for a valve gaming console
Tribute (Huge Pixel Art Poster)
10 Epic Movie Gadgets You Wish Were Real

Geeky Gimmies

Here’s just a little teaser to this week's’ Geeky Gimmies: Retro Edition you can see that on Synthia’s blog she’s gathered quite a long list of pixel perfect retro gaming items. Gimmies from games like Space Invaders, Mario, Pac-Man, and other awesome retro classics. For example you can see this awesome Mario amp and guitar as seen on globalgeeknews.

Feeling Crafty

Gamers are some crafty people, for example we have this amazing 6’10" statue of Samus Aran made out of paper and glue. But if that’s a little out of your league you can try this nifty apple puzzle But be warned, if you lack the proper knife skills to try this at home DO NOT try this! In addition to awesome crafts here is some great Star Trek Origami on Takei’s Facebook page. And for those of you who need a little incentive before your creative juices can start flowing, there is a propaganda art contest for the upcoming Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter movie.

Socially Weird, Terrific, or Frightening

First up the weird, here we see a piece on neatorama.com about what’s exactly in a hot dog, but be warned…. Ignorance is bliss for those of you who are Frank Furter fans. Next we have the Terrific, we’re sure some of you have seen this awesome Valve employee handbook with awesome tips about their company standards written in an extremely witty fashion, if only every work place could be so cool. And finally for the absolutely frightening, recently in China a young girl was swallowed by pavement, seriously here’s the video and the girl just vanishes under the concrete.

Bonus Item!

Fave Find and it's time for some Geekapella, Enjoy this Final Fantasy VII Chocobo Theme Song from the comedic team of Max and Sam.

Bulletin

The Internet is always pumping with fresh hype, trends, and legal e-drama. This week's Facebook acquisition of Instagram seemed to be the most talked about. Other topics that surfaced include accusations that CISPA is SOPA in disguise and embedding third-party videos or images war. Moving out of the greedy and on to the giving, Spotify now lets you share free music on personal blogs and Pinterest has new buttons on Ebay or Amazon.

Game-ology

Digging deeper into the realm of social and gaming-related topics, Gaikai plans to the cloud gaming service for Facebook users. The Facebook app beta launches with Saints Row: The Third, Dead Rising 2: Off the Record, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, and more. In other areas around the Internet, FrugalDad declares that gaming is good for you, Avault shares why World of Warcraft gets too much credit, Wired defines asynchronous gaming (think Words With Friends/Draw Something), and Massively contemplates MMO hotbar combat versus action combat.

Geeky Gimmies

For some awesome geeky gimmies, check out Synthia's latest blog. We've got everything from glasses and tables to accessories and more. Oh, we do take donations of any of the items mentioned. Thanks in advance! (We're kidding…kind of…but the items are pretty nifty and you should check them out.) If you find, make, or know of any other awesome Geeky Gimmies, feel free to send me a message.

Making Mischief

Here are a few funny images and videos.
- In the Zone: VG Cats
- Robotic rings turn your fingers into a face
- Real Life Simpsons
- The Emo Kid, Troll, and Hacker in All of Us
- Jedi Grandma
- Nintendo's Attempt at making a viral video.

Socially Weird, Terrific, or Frightening

First up, Jessica Nigri gets asked to leave PAX for exposing too much skin. Fun fact: the PAX community is apparently fairly anti-booth babe. In this recent PAX experience, Jessica Nigri (a big hit among cosplayers) showed up as Juliet Starling from Lollipop Chainsaw wearing a pink jumpsuit zipped down far below her belly button, she was asked to leave after receiving a "number of complaints." What do you guys think: Are booth babes at risk of going extinct? Speaking of things going extinct, your privacy! Just take a look at some of the 10 creepiest apps for phones, Facebook, and more We found this interesting albeit terrifying piece about apps for creepers, and not the cute and cuddly minecraft ones. Not even tinfoil hats will save you from some of these bad boys. For example Recognizr: this little gem lets you point your smartphone camera at somebody's face, after which their contact info and social network updates pop up. Fun huh? Last but not least, here's this awesome fan-made Mega Man X Movie. It cost $700, two green screens, and some pro-bono actors. It's amazing what hard work and passion can do for an indie movie.

Feeling Crafty

TheRealDuckie and a couple of his friends have started working on a functional replica of Walt Disney World in Minecraft. He frequently posts his updates on Reddit, and currently there are rideable rides, working restaurants, and other park features. Take that, Kinect Disneyland Adventures! Another heart-warming tale of a crafty kid, some cardboard, and a dream in "Caine's Arcade."

We've revamped the blog format to make it easier for you to get to the stuff you actually want. These reports will also be scheduled to come out each Friday thanks to Synthia's fabulous suggestion. As always, if you have some game industry community news worth sharing send me a PM or @GSJody on Twitter. Happy Friday!

Events & Activities

Is 2012 the year you plan to socialize or network with other gamers in person? We'll be keeping an eye out for events, gatherings, and other attractions you can attend in person. If you can't attend in person, we'll share if there's live streaming of the event. Here are some recent gatherings that were announced, or maybe they're actually happening soon! You can also discuss upcoming events by dropping by the Events & Attractions Forum.

- PAX East April 6-8, Boston, MA, $35+ [coverage]
- House of LAN April 20-22 San Diego, CA $35
- Game Hack April 28-29, London, UK, est. £6.00 [open registration]
- GBLAN 5 May 4-6 Green Bay, WI $30 [scroll to bottom for pricing]
- Ottawa Game Conference May 29 Ottawa, Canada, CA$187+
- SOE Live Oct 18-21 Las, Vegas, Nevada [formerly known as Fanfaire]

Kickstarter Alert

With the number of amazing kickstarters that have surfaced, we figured it is about time we share some creative ones established by people who have been in the industry. Because there are so many, we'll also have another mention to other kickstarters in our new social media reports that you'll see every Tuesday. This week's kickstarter goes to Jane Jensen's Pinkerton Road: "A Year of Adventure." This developer offers three adventure game opportunities. Watch the promo below, drop by the kickstarter page, and visit the game studio's official website.

Virtual Stimulation

We'll share some virtual stuff like new map packs, DLC, and beta offers in this area.

- Star Wars: The Old Republic is available for free this weekend.
- World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria beta opt-in and FAQ.
- Gears of War 3 Forces of Nature adds five multiplayer maps and weather conditions.
- UNCHARTED 3 Drake’s Deception new multiplayer map pack announced.
- Secret World preorder will guarantee access to exclusive beta in May.
- Tera beta is happening here!
- Sony's Season 3 of the Tester reality show has tts finale
- Little Big Planet's Sackboy wanders into Wonderland.
- War Thunder Closed Beta combat MMO has started.
- Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion preorder and get in the beta.

Goodies & Activities Bin

Here we'll share freebies, product announcements, and other activities you can check out.

- Sega’s Free Stuff Friday has Yakuza, Aliens: Colonial Marines, Sonic, and more!
- Get a free copy of Fallouton GOG.
- World of Warcraft: Noblegarden activity from April 8 - April 14.
- Blacklight Retribution is now in its open beta phase.
- Win a Prototype 2 Camaro SS and Foam blade arm on Activision's community site.
- Devil May Cry wallpaper available in celebration of the HD Collection version.
- Create a Blockbuster Movie Poster and win some City of Heroes goodies.
- Ghost Recon: Future Soldier (X360/PS3) multiplayer beta from April 19 to May 2.
- Mega Bloks World of Warcraft product line announced.

Career Path

If you're trying to get your foot in the game industry door, we'll share some game industry jobs every now and then!

- Capcom is seeking a UK Community Manager.
- Gearbox has a variety of positions available!

GameSpot is celebrating the GameFAQs breakup with style by offering GameSpot members a chance at a special treat! Over the next two weeks, GameSpot members posting topics in the new boards on the game page will receive tickets that we'll add to a fishbowl! We are not kidding, we have a real fishbowl!

The challenge starts March 28 at 3:30 p.m. PT, and you have until Sunday April 15 at 11:59 p.m. PT to participate and automatically be entered. The three ticket holders chosen randomly will each receive a $50 Best Buy gift card as a reward! Get your name in the fishbowl enough times, and you could end up with the whole shebang!

Everyone is invited to play, and we mean EVERYONE! Otherwise it wouldn't be a party!

PARTICIPATION

Each user who creates a topic will receive a ticket.
EXAMPLE:

= 1 Ticket

Every topic that becomes a hot topic (the read/unread icon gains flames) becomes five tickets
EXAMPLE

= 5 Tickets.

THE BOARDS

You can find all the boards needed to participate in this blog entry here. Keep in mind we'll be adding more boards as we go along. But make sure the board does NOT SAY "powered by GameFAQs."

RULES

- A user can have only one eligible topic per hour. If a user chooses to create more than one topic in a given hour, staff will select the topic.
- Topics must be a MINIMUM of 20 words in length.
- Duplicate content / plagiarism will not be tolerated. Violators of this rule will be disqualified and moderated.
- We'll be operating on a raffle system. The more topics, the better your chances. If your name is drawn multiple times, you can receive multiple rewards.
- Forum games (YLYL, Hurt/Heal, etc.) or lounge-type discussions will not count as a submission. We do, however, welcome these activities, but they will not be eligible.
- Forum topics created in boards powered by GameFAQs will NOT be counted.

Winners will be announced via a video announcement.

TIPS

- The better crafted the topic, the better your chances of making it a hot topic.
- Adding visuals such as video or images might increase interest in your topic.
- The more topics you post, the better your chances.
Be sure to check back for other ways you can earn profile points and emblems.
Got a question? Post it in the comments below.

Recap

The re-return of the daily community news is slowly gaining steam. This week, there were several fascinating blogs to choose from, 25 to be specific. And hopefully with the slow season of games ending, there will be a greater pool of gamer reviews to pull from.

Announcements

GiantBomb - Comin' Home
This was a big week at GameSpot. If you haven't heard the news, GiantBomb will once again be joining forces with us at the GameSpot offices. But that's not all: we're also welcoming aboard the good folks over at Comic Vine. Beers all around! (only if you're of legal drinking age...of course.)

Getting to Know GameSpot Delayed
This feature should be launching some time next week, so be sure to stay tuned to the community news. To help tide you over until then, however, please feel free to reintroduce yourselves to Jeff Gertsman.

Member Spotlight

This week's Member Spotlight shines on MrSelf-Destruct for his awesome (though spoiler-filled) blog about "How Mass Effect 3 should have ended - According to a fan" . For those of you who have played the game, or for those who don't mind the spoilers, you should go check out this insightful read.

Activities

Mass Effect Project Pixel
As promised earlier in the week, GameSpot is having a pixel art contest! GameSpotters will have two weeks to become massively inspired or, dare we say, affected by BioWare's latest release. For the full details and nitty-gritty of the contest, follow this link.

Mass Effect 3 Community Game Night
It's finally here! It's the first community game night of 2012 and what better choice than Mass Effect 3 and its spiffy multiplayer mode? Don't have a copy of the game? You can join in on the chat room and hang out with your fellow GameSpot member. Can't make it to the event? Never fear, your friendly community manager will be capturing the event (well, at least a part of it) and will be uploading it to the GameSpot Spotlight channel. If any other ambitious GameSpotters choose to capture their experience, share it with community@gamespot.com to get your video added! Also, check out Chris Watters' top three tips for Mass Effect 3 multiplayer.

What's Hot

Boy, it has been a while since we've done one of these so it's time to dust the old girl off and get her going again. There was quite a bit going on this past week with GDC in full swing. There were a great many sights to be had, games to be played, and panels to be…erm…planked? With all the chaos buzzing around the office, we're happy to finally have a moment to stop and relax with our favorite community news piece.

To start things off, we welcomed GDC 2012 visitors with some classic 8-bit style. Sure, it took us nearly five hours and over 6,000 Post-its to create, but we thought it was worth it.

We also decided that we would feature some of the wild indie games that we caught wandering the show room floor in last week's episode of On the Spot.

And last but not least, in episode six of Screen Tear, we follow Carlos to the Microsoft bar to see if any of his "multiplayer" pickup lines works on the female developers at GDC.

Gaming Forecast

Silent Hill: Downpour
Silent Hill returns with the eighth installment in its long-running horror genre series.
Tales of Graces f
The new story from the Tales of Grace series comes to the PlayStation 3.
Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Generations
Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Generations combines characters from both of the series timelines for players to battle it out.

Announcements

Trivia Time
After much deliberation and consideration amongst various GameSpot staff and certain valued GameSpot members, we are going to be attempting to make GameSpot trivia a regular thing in the GameSpot Competitions & Activities forum. Recently, we had our Umbrella Day trivia, which featured questions from the Resident Evil franchise. Those who took part in the activity and managed to answer enough questions correctly were awarded the Umbrella Emblem. This activity was so well received that we will be making this a reoccurring feature. Have a suggestion on a game that should have a trivia page? Have a great and difficult question that you want included? Submit your contribution to GS-Community.

Ranger Casting Call
Do you fancy yourself a helpful member of the GameSpot community? Perhaps you have a creative spirit just begging to be released? Is your knowledge of gaming considered nothing short of impressive? We're looking for helpful GameSpotters with gaming knowledge that reaches beyond that of the average user. Send GS-Community a private message explaining what games or platforms are your specialty.

Coming Soon….

Indie Spotlight
Marco Martinez plans to explore Indie games again in the Downloads site blog! Check back later today for the latest indie spotlight!

Getting to Know GameSpot
Long ago in an office not unlike the one we sit in now, there was a GameSpot staff member who would post videos to help GameSpotters get to know their editors, new guys, content creators, and even community managers. That man was Aaron Thomas, and some of his interviews were with GameSpot superstars like Ricardo Torres, Greg Kasavin, Andrew Park, and more. GameSpot community manager Synthia Weires will be rebooting this feature, and in honor of National Women's History Month, the first to be featured will be GameSpot's Carolyn Petit. We want to include some of your burning questions for Carolyn so feel free to mention them in the comments below.

The Return of Game Night
It has been a while since we've done one of these…perhaps it was the business of the holidays or the odd time-zone differences. Or maybe everyone was too distracted playing other games. Whatever the reason, one thing is certain: we're long overdue for one of these bad boys! So to get started, we'll be having a Mass Effect 3 Community Game Night on Saturday starting at 3:00 p.m. PT. For more details, check out this page here. UPDATE: If you'd like to create an emblem for this game night drop by the Emblems union!