Three months ago, TLB reader Dexter345 and I pieced together the mystery behind the Wii game Opoona. That it's not the horrible looking, lifeless, visually impotent game that it appears to be. It's a sexual odyssey that takes children deep into the Japanese perverse psyche. Sure, the awful gameplay tactics might look like a retarded revisiting to Wakka's FFX heroic dodgeball combat skills, but don't be fooled so easily, in reality it's a profound pollination metaphor. For teabagging. Helping you in combat is General Ovary Ourumov on the right, and Captain Condom on the left. We've already seen penis battles, and this video steps it up a notch with plenty of freaky STD tentacle enemies. There's still no release date announced yet, so we'll just have to save up our skeet strategies until next year for an explosion of joy when it finally gets released.

Remember when we watched this entire movie four months ago? Me neither. The video has since been removed, but I'm sure you can find it elsewhere if you really want to put yourself through the agony of watching it. I suggest watching the movie's trailer above as a warning of what's in store before you hunt down the whole film. The release date for the movie was rumored to be June 22nd, and now that's being bumped up to June 15th in recent reports. With Spider-Man 3, Pirates 3, and Shrek 3 all out in theaters right now, I don't think Dead Or Alive's timing is too good. I can't wait to see the month-old Pirates 3 beat the D.O.A. movie on its opening weekend.

Siliconera noticed that Square Enix updated their site with another video they showed exclusively at their recent Square Enix Party, letting us finally see it for the first time. Of all the Nintendo DS games I've ever played, this trailer for Final Fantasy IV contains some of the best handheld graphics I've ever seen. At the very end of the trailer it announces the Final Fantasy IV remake as coming out in 2007 in Japan, so hopefully we'll get this game by early 2008 at the latest.

Here's a new Japanese trailer for Eternal Sonata, showing the fast paced gameplay. It's hard to know what's going on for sure, but the interface looks simple enough, with attack and movement commands at the bottom, energy bars to the side, and life at the top of the screen. The enemies are entertaining, and their shape-shifting when provoked makes them even more intriguing. We get a sneak peak at an extra photography feature in the game, and then see several more stunning combo attacks. Eternal Sonata is expected to be released in America in August, but if you pre-order it from Gamestop now, you'll get one of the five new limited edition custom Xbox 360 faceplates for free.

The newest issue of PC Gamer magazine has an interview with the Hothead Games studio that's working on Gabe and Tycho's Penny Arcade video game. With years of great online comic content to pull from, and the exceptionally long title "On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode One" they've got a lot of gamers excited with high hopes for the first installment in the series.

In the first video we saw the gameplay close up, and this video focuses on the characters and some of the different areas in the game. We even get a quick glimpse at the character creation feature and how easy it is to customize your character's appearance. Click on the zoomed in pictures below for the different pieces of artwork Penny Arcade made for the magazine's cover this month.

Two weeks ago, the Square Enix Party event brought news that the Wii's Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Crystal Bearers would be more adventurous, with a Skies of Arcadia feel to it. The video they saw over in Japan is finally uploaded on the net for our pleasure, and the setting definitely has much more altitude to it. The trailer opens with music that reminds me of Titanic, and we're shown a large jewel and many ships, followed by someone falling off one of them, so I'm hoping for a much more hilarious Titanic ending, where we actually get to see the Leonardo DiCaprio hero fall off and go kersplat down below.

The video shows us many sky high brief battle scenes, including the use of the magic system, and even a few indoor cities. The graphics look just as good as the GameCube's Crystal Chronicles game, but not any noticeably better. It would be cool if the reason for flying is to avoid the miasma stream that drifts at lower altitudes, instead of constantly warding off the impending doom. Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Crystal Bearers comes out this Winter in Japan, so we might not get it here in America until next Summer or even late 2008.

A few years ago we had Read Dead Revolver, Gun, and a few other games re-exploring the wild west, and then killing Nazis became more cool and dead Indians went out of style once again. It's great how much politicians will moan about gangster games, but as long as the game's about textbook violence it's acceptable means of mindless murder with historic value. I loved Gun for the whole six hours it took to beat the game, I just wished it was longer. Riding through the hills and plains in search of gold, animals, and settlers in distress can only be done so many times before it gets boring, and the industry is nowhere near that limit.

Call of Jaurez is Ubisoft and Techland's revival of the ruthless wild west setting, and you play the same story from two different character point of views. Billy Candle grew up without a father and one day runs off in search of Aztec gold, leaving his mother and abusive stepfather behind. After two years of searching, Billy calls it quits and returns home, only to find his mother dead with "Call of Juarez" written above her body in blood. That's when Reverend Ray enters the story, and sees Billy standing above a dead woman and assumes the man to be the killer. Billy is filled with grief and fear, and runs away once again, and Ray is filled anger and disgust, and runs after Billy in religious rage.

With Billy Candle not knowing who his father is, I'm sure there will be a Luke-Vader ending scene, but it should at least be a bit more fleshed out than Gun's simple plot. Aside from a crappy interface, both the indoors and outdoors look immersive and engaging. Plus you can drive an arrow through your enemy's head for the most brutal headshot I've seen in a while. Call of Juarez also supports 16 person multiplayer shootouts, and it's only two weeks away from its June 5th American release for Xbox 360 and PC. This should be a great game to kick off the Summer with. Although, gamers in Australia must wait for the end of June, and Eurogamers won't get it until the end of August. The west is just too wild for you guys. Did the typical cowboy setting even exist in other continents? Cowboys on kangaroos would be so badass.

Hundreds of helicopters. Thousands of tanks. Endless amounts of explosions. And one cool holographic map to explore them all. With a setting of World War III it's hard to tell what military mumbo jumbo Tom Clancy will throw at us. With a lower over the shoulder camera, Ubisoft Shaghai plans to give us massive online multiplayer battles:

"A strategy game like no other, EndWar will allow gamers to lead their own armies against hundreds of others online in real global locations on the massive battlefields of World War III."

Built from the ground up for Xbox 360 and PS3, everything should look great, but EndWar also focuses heavily on sound. Their goal is to make voice commands dictate gameplay strategy just as much as your fingers can simultaneously control, which would offer an incredible online experience. Finally, the people swearing and shouting like lunatics will literally die off as their enemies just run in circles at their asinine commands.

I'd love to see a commercial where someone is bold enough to use the company phone line at work to call home and play the game while sitting in the office cubicle. All you would hear are typing keyboards and pages printing, and then it's interrupted with formation shout commands and orders to reload your guns. Everyone would stand up befuddled in curious fear for their lives, and then we'd see some in game explosions followed by a cut back to the office where a swat team has assembled in the office just as the gamer screams his war cry and yells "Fire the nukes!!" And then a quick and calm ending of "Rated T for teen, in stores everywhere on December 14th."

Here's a few images for extra ogling.

You can watch the official trailer here, but 10% of it is just Ubisoft's fancy logo and we get a lot of gameplay details in the video above. Splinter Cell: Conviction is an Xbox 360 and PC game  coming out this Winter, where Sam Fisher finally doesn't have an arsenal of weapons and strategy to choose from now that he's a fugitive on the run. I love how game developers will always talk up their game, and then when the next game comes out they talk about how their past games have just been practicing new features and how they've fixed past problems and mastered the gameplay in their series. Ubisoft Montreal certainly has been working hard on lights and shadows and the video shows it. Instead of the stealth missions you're used to the game uses "improvisation" tactics to deal with combat on the fly, grabbing and throwing weapons and objects as you go through each area. Everything looks great, but I'm buying the game for one reason: you can blow up hot dog stands. Current generation technology is so astonishing.

Last night was Ubisoft's Ubidays event, and more videos are starting to show up online. It won't be as dominating as Sony's Gamers Day event, but expect a few more videos. The trailer for Free Radical's Haze starts off with an emotional night scene, although this should go down as one of the cheapest plots of all time. You're in the future, your mom dies in a mysterious event, leaving your futuristic history a mystery, and then further in the future you join a mysterious fighting force, until you suddenly realize there's a lot of fucking mysteries in your life. That's pretty much what you'll read on the back of Haze's cover when it comes out this September for PS3, Xbox 360, and PC. I'm always up for an excuse to use futuristic vehicles, weapons, and suits though, all I need is a decent gameplay video and count me in. Here's six brand new pictures to inspect.

Update: Ubisoft is reluctant to give away precise information, but Haze will either release for the PlayStation 3 this Fall before the Xbox 360 and PC releases in late 2007 or early 2008, or Haze may now be a PS3 exclusive.