Monday Check-In: Massive Effects

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!