New York Comic Con! Baby Boba Fett with a tiny red lightsaber! Unabashed anime love! Sexy Asian Mario with big boobs! Hispanic Captain America! Comic Con, where we nerds come to roost! I wandered the floor on Thursday and Friday drinking in the sights and sounds and playing video games.

I watched a demo of Max Payne 3, which mixes the archetypal washed up alcoholic cop story with John Woo gunfights. Picture Max flying through the air in slow motion, firing dual magnums at faceless henchmen in São Paulo with all of the flair you’d expect from Rockstar Games.

I played a quick demo of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword that included a flying section and a boss fight. Both sections were clearly meant to introduce the game mechanics. Link flies on the back of a giant bird this time and in the demo, he has to chase down another bird. Flying with the Wii remote was smooth and felt a lot like the simple flying sections in Twilight Princess. The boss fight was a basic sword fight complicated by the use of Wii Motion Plus. You have to strike the enemy at specific angles to hit him, which took some practice. The new art style is bright and colorful.

I spent the most time playing the tenth anniversary remake of Halo: Combat Evolved. The game was extremely familiar – it’s basically the original game with updated visuals and some new features from Reach. I just couldn’t resist getting my Halo on against 15 other people (and placing in the top five every time).

I also ran through one level in Super Mario 3D Land, which was a weird hybrid of side-scrolling and 3D Mario. I still can’t get the 3D effect on the 3DS to work for me. It was an enjoyable enough Con for someone whose interest in comics is limited to a few Alan Moore sure shots and Loeb and Sale’s Batman.

And before I sign off, free stuff roll call!

• 1 Max Payne 3 shirt from Rockstar Games
• 1 Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword shirt from Nintendo
• 1 beer from Animal Planet (by far the longest line I saw, except for maybe Mass Effect 3) for Finding Bigfoot
• 1 Xbox 360 lanyard from Microsoft
• 2 Rebel with a Cause buttons from Starz

Slim pickings, but what’s swag compared to uninhibited nerd love?

Rockstar Games never skimps on a soundtrack and L.A. Noire is no exception. The game features the music of Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, and Thelonious Monk — a suitable backdrop for a detective thriller set in 1947 Los Angeles. In addition, Rockstar partnered with Verve Records for L.A. Noire: Remixed, an EP of remixes of jazz standards by the likes of Dave Sitek and DJ Premier. Premo turned Louis Jordan’s “Ain’t Nobody Here But Us Chickens” into an undeniable head-nodder. Rockstar sure knows how to please hip-hop heads.

L.A. Noire is out now. Watch the launch trailer below and listen to the rest of L.A. Noire: Remixed here

Last Wednesday, Nintendo hosted a preview event in New York to showoff the Nintendo 3DS and announce its release date and price (March 27, 2011, $249.99). I showed up too late to partake of the muffins and yogurt, but I did get to try the thing out with a bunch of different games.

The 3DS is Nintendo’s new handheld and the successor to the DS — it’s not a redesign, but a new device with new games. The top screen displays images in 3D without any special glasses. You can adjust the 3D effect with the slider right next to the top screen. You can turn it up and down or turn it off completely.

Personally, I didn’t find the 3D effect to be all that eye-popping, even with the slider all the way up. Images didn’t really jump off the screen; instead they appeared to sink back slightly as if I were looking into a box. Also, you have to hold it at a very specific angle to get the effect and if you tilt away from that sweet spot, the stereoscopic images get all messed up. It’s one of those things you need to try out yourself. Since they can’t show 3D with screenshots and video, Nintendo announced a massive promo campaign where they’re sending out 3DSes to retailers and street teams.

Developers have already begun to shoehorn 3D into every game just like they did with motion controls on Wii. Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition has a mode that uses an over-the-shoulder angle to make the 3D more noticeable. The change might offend purists, but it’s still totally functional. I’m not too concerned about tacked-on 3D graphics because it’s much harder to ruin a game with 3D than it is with motion controls. And again, you can easily turn the 3D off.

To avoid having 3D labeled as a gimmick, Nintendo is emphasizing games where 3D enhances gameplay by making depth more pronounced. Madden, which was playable, is a prime example. You get a greater than usual sense of distance looking down the field, which is arguably more than just a novelty of having the images pop out at you.

The main draw for me was The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D, a remake of the N64 game. The game plays as well as ever with cleaned up graphics. The demo was restricted to the Kokiri Forest and part of the Great Deku Tree. When I hit the “Thanks for Playing!” screen, I was itching to play through the whole game again, but more to see the new graphics than to experience it in 3D. The 3D effect got distorted when I targeted enemies and the camera swung.

Steel Diver is a submarine action game that feels like a tech demo or an iPhone game. Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D is just the Mercenaries mode from Resident Evil 4 with more characters, weapons, and maps, but it didn’t look or play as smooth and the original. And zombies’ heads didn’t explode when I got a headshot, which made me put the game down immediately.

Kid Icarus: Uprising, which revisits the old NES game, was the real stunner. Project Sora, Masahiro Sakurai’s studio that worked on Super Smash Bros. Brawl, turned the game into a mix of on rails shooter and action game which, given its fast pace, feels oddly like Sonic the Hedgehog. I only truly appreciated the 3D effect while blasting through the colorful environments in Icarus.

If you disregard the 3D, the 3DS is effectively a beefed up DS with some new features (more cameras, wireless stuff, gyro sensor) and an analog pad — and that’s a good thing. Handheld games can definitely use more horsepower and there are definitely some great games on the way for the 3DS.

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Yeah, I like Madden. I’m not a big video game dude though but I like Madden. I be too high to play video games sometimes.

-Freddie Gibbs

Halo: Reach is out today and ML (with some special help from GameStop) is giving away three posters. The first three readers to send us an email with their full name and “Reach Poster” in the subject will each receive a brand new poster. Direct all emails here:

And if you email us in the next five minutes, DJ01 will ghost tweet for you for the next six months. Trust me, he’s good.

Update: That’s all folks! The lucky winners have been contacted. Until next time!

The next time there’s long stretch of time when I don’t post anything on ML, you can blame Halo: Reach. Even though I’ve sworn all kinds of unbreakable oaths to the deity known as Nintendo, Halo has dominated most of my gaming time since Halo 3 came out in 2007.

The next entry in the series, Halo: Reach, comes out September 14 and it promises to be as big of a blockbuster as ever. While you’re waiting to empty a clip in a friend, you can check out HaloFest over at GameStop, where they have videos, contests, and giveaways. One of those life-size statues would go great with the life-size Wu-Tang tapestry I’m trying to commission for my living room (artists, holler).

Check back soon for our thoughts on the game when we get our review copy AND a special Metal Lungies giveaway.

OK so let’s talk about Robot Unicorn Attack.

I got a link from my friend last night who just told me, “play it. beautiful music.”

I didn’t follow the link right away because I was reading a book. I know, I’m lame. But tonight, I noticed two of my roommates were playing this flash game with extreme interest.

Simply put, Robot Unicorn Attack is the next big thing.

In the game, you play as a robot unicorn who jumps over floating pink cliffs, collects rainbow butterflies, and avoids giant metallic stars.You have three tries or “wishes” to go as far as you can. The further you go and the more rainbow butterflies you get, the higher your score.

While all of this is happening, “Always” by the British synthpop duo Erasure loops in the background. This really sets the tone and defines the game’s character. The endless chorus of “Always, I wanna be with you / And make believe with you / And live in harmony, / harmony oh love” while you’re jumping around as a rainbow-shooting robot unicorn (did I mention the rainbows?) is pretty mesmerizing. Half of the discussion about this game is about the music.

Then there are the dolphins. Yes, dolphins. Conversations like this are happening between college kids right now.

Guy 1: Have you gotten to the dolphins yet?
Guy 2: No?
Guy 1: Man up.

The dolphins appear every time you get 5,000 points. Some people have been trying to figure out what the dolphins do, but as one user on the Adult Swim discussion board put it, “they don’t mean anything, just that you are awesome.”

So just to recap: unicorns, stars, butterflies, and dolphins. And everything is pink and baby blue and sparkling all over.

OK. The presentation is stellar and the gameplay is addicting, but what is it about Robot Unicorn Attack that’s eliciting this kind of response from people? The game has been played 1.6 million times and there are endless comments about how “amazing” and “incredible” it is. One person wrote on Facebook, “Robot Unicorn Attack completed my life. Ive never played a game so simple yet so amazing. Everything is so rainbow its great. Live on Robot Unicorn Attack!” Something about this game has struck a cord with young Americans right now.

There’s a layer of darkness underneath the game’s cheery exterior. Before you start, you get messages like “A fiery death awaits you” and “Persistence is futile.” When you lose, the unicorn explodes and you see its severed head with wires sticking out and tears streaming down its cheek.

Maybe there was a unicron on some girl’s binder in second grade. A cute girl. A lost love, perhaps. A robot is an emotionless husk that doesn’t dare to feel or think for itself. Meanwhile, there are butterflies and rainbows everywhere and a voice sings, “Am I here in vain? / Hold on to the night / There will be no shame.”

Put all of that together, and you’ve got the mind frame of the 21 year old who is about to graduate from college into this bleak economy.

Robot Unicron Attack is the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” of my generation. Play it. Feel it.

Screw hip-hop for a second. A group called Zelda Reorchestrated spent the last six years recreating the soundtrack to The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time to sound like it was recorded by live musicians. Ocarina is possibly the greatest game of all time and the soundtrack is freaking timeless.

Zelda Reorchestrated almost realizes the dream of a fully orchestrated Ocarina soundtrack – the project uses a virtual orchestra, which sounds good, but isn’t entirely convincing. We’ll have to wait until another day for the real deal.

Download ZREO’s Ocarina of Time Soundtrack

via Joystiq

Rockstar has shown time and time again that it has good taste in music. DJ Premier and DJ Green Lantern hosted two of GTA4’s radio stations; Oh No, MF Doom and Ghostface did the title track for Chinatown Wars; and Statik Selektah did the soundtrack for The Lost and Damned as well as a banger for Midnight Club: L.A.

So their collaboration with Timbaland on a music game should come as no surprise. Beaterator, which came out last week, is Rockstar’s first big foray into the music genre.

Rockstar is quick to point out that Beaterator isn’t a game in the traditional sense in that it doesn’t have goals and challenges like Rock Band or Guitar Hero. With Beaterator, Rockstar aimed to create a portable, powerful, user-friendly music creation suite.

Continued after the jump

The big question is, is Beaterator a tool or a toy? From my time with the game, it looks like a little of both.

You start out in Live Play mode, where you string together loops from pre-existing templates. You can easily switch around different drums, snares, synths, etc. which will be arranged to sound like house, pop or hip-hop depending on the template. You can blindly press buttons and whatever comes out will sound like music. If you never leave Live Play, Beaterator is a toy.

But once you’ve made something you like, you can take your creation into Studio Session and edit and rearrange each loop. Then, in Song Crafter, you can create your own loops and edit everything in far more detail. Beaterator offers a very robust editor. It’s not just a Timbaland sound board.

There is one major restriction: everything you make in Beaterator will sound distinctly Timbaland-ish, (go here if you don’t know what that means) unless you stray very far from the premade sounds and loops. This will deter anyone who wants a full-fledged studio in their pocket (and anyone who hates Timbaland), but the game app would be overwhelming if it were completely open-ended. A Rockstar rep said future iterations with different producers are possible.

From what I saw, Beaterator looks very thorough, but I didn’t get to really push its limits. Regardless, Beaterator definitely removes the intimidation factor that hangs over music production.

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Beaterator is out now for the PSP for $39.99.

Debut Trailer

Ice- T, Chris Robinson, Kevin Rudolf, Jay Sean, Clinton Sparks, Double-0 and Donnis play Beaterator

Marco Polo, Torae, Dru Ha, Buckshot, Ski Beatz, Pete Rock, Sean Price and Jay Electronica play Beaterator

No More Heroes: Desperate Struggle. Game designer/auteur Suda 51’s , over the top, stylish action game. Jidaigeki meets punk rock meets miscellaneous American pop culture references. It’s OK to be a little confused.

I put the rest after the jump because it’s an assload of videos.

Super Mario Galaxy 2. Sequel to the illest shit ever. The first was a shot in the arm for platformers. The second is the ideas that were left on the cutting room floor.

Metroid: Other M. Surprise of the show. Nintendo enlists Team Ninja, the makers of the tits-filled Dead or Alive games, to develop a sidescrolling 3D Metroid game.

Sin and Punishment 2. Two little kids flying around shooting shit up. You gotta love Japanese games.

Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All Stars. Some Japanese anime studio versus Capcom. So dope I can set aside my deep-seated hatred for anime. (Anime sucks. That’s not up for discussion.) Also, we need a Wu-Tang vs. Capcom.

Golden Sun DS. The Golden Sun series was long overdue for a sequel. Great RPGs full of puzzles and exploration. I might need to buy/steal a DS for this game.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii. This is kind of the realization of a dream. A cooperative Super Mario Bros. game. 2D games are definitely a lost art.

ML will attend E3 next year, by any means necessary.