Solace is a “bullet hell” style vertical shooter by One Man Down, a student team at the Digipen Institute of Technology. The game is based on the five stages of grief, as defined by Elizabeth Kübler-Ross: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. Each of the five game levels represents a stage on the Kübler-Ross scale, with appropriate color schemes, enemy design, music composition and even gameplay tweaks.

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Today on Talkabout, Abbie Heppe and I tackle Metroid: Other M and its heaping helping of strange and bad decisions. Already this is shaping up to be a divisive game on the internet, and a particular flashpoint seems to be Abbie’s review of the game. A few accusations have flown that our review of Other M is some kind of feminist rant orchestrated by the female members of X-Play. Morgan voicing the X-Play video review has fueled this fire to some degree. So here’s a little clarification for those wondering about this aspect of the opinion we’ve presented.

The whole of G4’s editorial staff is on the same page on this one. Adam, Rob Manuel and I are in full agreement with Abbie’s review, and frankly I would probably have been even harsher on it than she was. In other words, requests that someone else review the game are not in Other M’s best interests. Morgan may have read the video review script, but I wrote it, so you can safely put thoughts of a feminist agenda aside. This is not some anti-Wii or Girl Power conspiracy. This is a bunch of longtime Metroid and Samus fans horribly disappointed by what has been done to a franchise and a character which meant a great deal to us.

We don’t care what any other outlet gave Other M. This is what we think of it. Use it to inform your purchasing decision, whether or not you agree with it in the end. That’s what we’re here for, after all.

It took some time, but Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 finally has its first big chunk of DLC, the recently-released "Stimulus Package." The timed-exclusive pack (1200 Microsoft Points, or $15) has five new maps for the game, although two are actually returning “favorites” from Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. We played the hell out of them over two days and returned from the battlefield weary of noob tubes and dual-shotguns, but pleased with the Stimulus offerings.

The two returning maps are "Crash" and "Overgrown." "Crash" is a great addition to the game, a finely balanced map with tons of hiding places and an absolutely brutal Bravo flag emplacement that makes Domination a constant struggle for survival. "Overgrown" struck us as a puzzling inclusion, as it’s neither particularly memorable or fun to play, but it can probably be chalked up as a bone thrown to the huge chunk of the MW2 population that refuses to do anything but snipe.

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Here's a heads-up for those who are still working their way through Assassin's Creed II: The Battle of Forli, Ubisoft's first downloadable chapter for the game, is Sequence 12 in the AC II story. If you haven’t completed the game up through Sequence 11, some of the content discussed in this article may be considered spoiler territory. You've been warned.

Assassin’s Creed II’s first DLC chapter is unusual in that it’s very clearly content meant to be in the original game, but cut out, most likely due to the limited amount of time the Montreal-based team had to finish the game for release. The first DLC, The Battle of Forli, fills in some blanks that lingered if you played through the game to completion.

If you have already completed the game, installing the DLC will cause Rebecca (the Animus 2.0 tech) to suddenly figure out how to access the corrupted 12th memory block, sending you directly into the DLC missions. Presumably, playing the game from the beginning will result into Sequence 12 simply being integrated into the story proper.

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