asylum

It's true that New Yorkers groan the most about the summer heat, but nobody's complaining today because we have Libe Goad from AOL's GameDaily in the studio! She gives us her take on the boring PS3 Slim and even defends our right to be 35, fat, and bummed-out gamers!

Libe helps us kick off the show with a chat about the new PS3 Slim. After yesterday's unboxing, we've all determined that you'd have to be a fool to upgrade from the PS3 Fat (that can't be the official name), but there are a few games to look for on the console, like Wet, starring Eliza Dushku as Rubi Malone, a "lethal heroine who will take any job as she likes it and the price is right." Other games of interest include Wolfenstein and Batman: Arkham Asylum.

All this game talk leads us to a study that reveals the average gamer is 35, fat, and bummed. As a nongamer, I see absolutely nothing fallacious here, but Jeff and Libe have to disagree, and they make a good point. First, the CDC only surveyed 552 subjects in the Seattle-Tacoma area. 552 is a pretty small sample size to determine the "bummertude" of this group, and I'm sure it doesn't help that Seattle rains 226 days a year, these poor gamers are literally being forced to stay in their houses, can we blame them for actually being fat and bummed? We'll get to the bottom of this...

We also talk briefly about the 12 most annoying types of Facebookers, like the Let-Me-Tell-You-Every-Detail-Of-My-Day guy (aka Twitter feeders), or the Town Criers who feel the need to broadcast every headline they see on TMZ. Unfortunately, I think all of us are guilty of being The Self-Promoter, but who isn't? Everything you post on Facebook is a form of self-promotion, isn't that why people join social networks in the first place?

Per usual, we always need Calls From the Public, so if you have something to say feel free to give us a call at 1-866-404-CNET or shoot us a line at the404(at)CNET{dot}com!

Eidos' highly anticipated Batman: Arkham Asylum is due to hit stores on August 25. The action title, which will be available on PS3, Xbox 360, and PCs, follows the caped crusader as he takes on the likes of Joker, Poison Ivy, and other supervillains. Several new screenshots surfaced at E3 2009.

Additional reading: Dan Ackerman's take on Batman: Arkham Asylum.

One of the most buzzed-about games of the year isn't a big-name sequel or movie tie-in, although it does have the kind of pop-culture bona fides other games can only dream of. Instead, Batman: Arkham Asylum (published by Warner Bros. and Eidos) is a standalone story about everyone's favorite caped crusader--although the vibe is more Christian Bale's moody Dark Knight than '60s Adam West Technicolor antics.

Video games based on comic book characters have almost uniformly disappointed in the past because the games bore little resemblance to the source material. Typically, they're generic brain-dead beat-'em-ups that a game developer awkwardly inserted a 3D version of a licensed comic book character into.

Perhaps because it started life as a lower-profile project, this game was able to develop without a movie release deadline to hit or a hard holiday season shipping date. What we've ended up with is one of the best games we've played this year, with appeal that goes far beyond comic book fans.

Set on an isolated island that houses an asylum for the criminally insane, Batman must recapture several of his old arch-enemies (who are conveniently all locked up in the same facility). The game smartly mixes several different types of action, and never leaves you doing the same thing for too long. … Read more

Here it is. It's the latest trailer for Batman: Arkham Asylum. The trailer is set to air Thursday night on MTV, but fortunately for us, Stephen Totilo, from MTV's Multiplayer, decided to post it early for everyone to drool over.

Eidos and developer Rocksteady Studios set expectations very high when the first trailer for "Batman: Arkham Asylum" debuted in November. The setting of Arkham Asylum combined with the dark tone of the story seemed to embody the feel of Batman's universe.

With Emmy Award-winning "Batman: The Animated Series" producer Paul Dini writing the … Read more