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Don't pay more for 'spore -- at least that's Steam's motto of the day, as it puts the Maxis developer action-RPG hybrid Darkspore on sale for 40 percent off its normal asking price. From now through 4PM PST / 7PM EST on Thursday, June 16, the PC-only title is going for $30, down 20 bucks from the MSRP. Steam is also offering an eight-pack of the multiplayer-enabled game for $90, normally $150.

Our review said that Darkspore was all right, but had "a lot of room for improvement." Now at least one way to improve it has been addressed: make it cheaper.

It's a situation that the non-sporting chapter of the games community is likely familiar with -- you stop by your local GameStop on an early fall evening to grab a copy of some non-athletic title therein, but are prevented from crossing the building's threshold by an impenetrable wall of Madden enthusiasts. We've got great news for folks living in the vicinity of the Charlotte Douglas International Airport: EA plans to open an EA Sports retail location in said airport's terminal, potentially limiting your run-ins with prospective wedgie-executors.

News of the store's construction came from EA Sports VP of brand marketing Chris Erb, who told Forbes the megapublisher hopes the retail location will be the first of three stores opening across the nation. No details were given on where the other two locations will be planted, but we suggest they take their business to a place that's a little more accessible than an airport terminal. You know, like literally any other place on the planet.

Nintendo went on a domain shopping spree recently, grabbing a few domain names related to Wii games (like rhythmheavenwii.com and kirbywii.com) as well as a lot of domain names related to Wii U, referencing things like New Super Mario Bros. Mii and several unannounced games and items like "Wii Zapper U," "Wii Fit U," "Wii Party U," Wii U Balance Board, and even "Wii Music U," most with variations like "Wii U Music." All redirect to nintendo.com at the moment. Check the full list after the break, as reported by Nintendo World Report.

While we'd love to say that we had an early look at, like, the entire software and peripheral lineup for next year's console, this looks a lot more like Nintendo just registered everything it could think of, just in case. The duplicate registrations for name variants support this theory. Take that, thwarted domain squatters!

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We got plenty of face time with the Wii U's fancy controller at E3 but, apart from some stock press photos, we haven't seen much of the actual console. That problem has been rectified thanks to Inside Games, which has posted a few up close and personal shots of the device. Overall, the Wii U bears a strong resemblance to its predecessor, albeit some extra ventilation grills, an HDMI port and more curves.

Speaking of curves, vertical orientation doesn't look viable, though we suspect the small tabs on the side of the console may be designed to fit into a stand. You can spot the tabs in the photo after the break, and find even more pics over at Inside Games.

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D3 Publisher has yet to share a specific North American launch date for White Knight Chronicles 2, keeping it in a nebulous "summer" window for now, but it did share a new trailer for Level-5's magical-Gundam-esque RPG. We've never heard a theme song that sounded more like Phantasy Star Universe's "Save This World."

Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is a very personal decision.

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You can be part of the ongoing experiments in Microsoft's Kinect Fun Labs. Six more well-known Kinect hacks are up for consideration as new Fun Labs apps, and Microsoft wants you to vote on the one you'd like to see first.

The apps in question include Keyboard Anywhere, Virtual Conductor, Kinect Body Art, Hand Puppets, Digital Pin Art, and Music Visualizer. If you have a strong opinion about which hack you'd like to see on your Xbox first, hit the Facebook "like" button associated with your choice between now and July 6.

Let's be upfront here: we don't know thing one about chipsets and motherboards. We play video games, we don't build the hardware they come on. But our friends at Engadget, well, they're all about that kinda stuff. So when they tell us that Nintendo's Wii U console will come packing a custom Radeon GPU with a chip similar to the R770, and that the chip is competitively stronger than the GPUs of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, we believe them.

Additionally, the chip is said to run DirectX 10, and is capable of handling four SD video streams -- presumably only one of those streams will be necessary, however, given Shigeru Miyamoto's statements about the WiiPad. As GAME Watch points out, the Xbox 360 was limited to a variation of DirectX 9, while the PS3 employs OpenGL APIs. But now we've gone right off the deep end -- what we're trying to say is this: the Wii U has a pretty decent graphical processor. Or, more simply, Wii U games will look good, and likely even better than Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games. There, that wasn't so bad!

Normally, after E3, some clear "best games" emerge -- either the ones that everyone knew would be amazing going in, and did not disappoint on the floor, or the Scribblenauts-style surprises that dominated conversations online and in the press room. There's usually a general consensus among the Joystiq staff about a few standout games.

This year, however, when we compared notes and discussed our favorite games of the show over chicken and waffles, we found that every Joystiqer picked something different (there was more agreement when we asked the Massively staff to join in, but it makes sense for MMO fans to be in accord). We can't really say what that means, but it seems significant.

And so, rather than debate our way down to a few choices, we're just presenting each of our favorite games, individually. You want Joystiq's "Game of the Show"? It's ... all of these. We'd also like to call out Bloodrayne: Betrayal and Mass Effect 3, which came so close.

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Hacker group LulzSec, the same group that's attacked Sony and Nintendo in the past, has tweeted that it's committed three distributed denial of service attacks against gaming companies today, bringing down EVE Online's Tranquility server, Minecraft's multiplayer services, and the Escapist Magazine's website. EVE Online's CCP has confirmed both the outage and the attack, the Escapist is unreachable at the moment, and Minecraft creator Notch says that things were down, but supposedly service has been restored.

LulzSec hasn't shared a reason for the attacks just yet, but we can only guess it's, as they say, "for teh lulz."

Update: The group has gone after Riot Games' League of Legends servers as well. Attempting to log in to the game gives a "server busy" message, though there's no official word from the company yet.

Update: Statement from CCP after the break. EVE Online still seems to be down.

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The Steam service just launched a slate of five free-to-play games, available from its client like any other Steam offering. Spiral Knights, Forsaken Worlds, Champions Online: Free for All, Global Agenda: Free Agent, and Alliance of Valliant Arms are now available for download through Valve's service.

So why get these F2P clients from Steam instead of just downloading the versions that were previously released through their own websites? Well, for one thing, each game will offer exclusive in-game content to Steam players this week, starting tomorrow in Spiral Knights and ending Sunday in AVA. Furthermore, these games will all support Steam's existing microtransaction backend, making the purchase of in-game content as easy as the impulse-buy of TF2 items.

Bye, money!

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Much like the real theme park, Disneyland Adventures isn't so much a game as it is an attraction. To be sure, the Kinect title has available mini-games, but the real meat of the experience seems to be the recreation of the park itself. Frontier Developments' David Walsh informed me that the park has been painstakingly recreated. Players can navigate the entire park using the Kinect, meeting Disney characters, visiting attractions and even collecting coveted hidden Mickeys (which I admit I'd never heard of before this preview).

The only things missing are the actual rides, which have been replaced with what appears to be a series of nearly identical minigames.

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Last week during E3, Nintendo generously announced a free release of The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords for DSiWare, playable on both DSi/XL and 3DS. The company didn't clarify, however, whether the game would be the original Four Swords multiplayer game that was packed in with A Link to the Past on GameBoy Advance, the GameCube Four Swords Adventures, or some combination of both.

Nintendo confirmed to Joystiq today that the game will in fact be the GBA multiplayer game that was included with LTTP. Clarifying further, we were told "This is separate from the GameCube version," though it's still unclear what updates, if any, will be made to the DSiWare version of Four Swords -- we'd be shocked not to see some redone graphics, and how about some online multiplayer for good measure? It remains to be seen.

The free download will be here in September, according to Nintendo's E3 presentation.

So, here's the thing about Child of Eden: It is quite short. That's a somewhat pedestrian complaint to leverage against a game -- and an extraordinarily pedestrian complaint to leverage in the very first sentence of a review -- but it needs to be said right up front to temper your expectations. You can beat it in a single sitting (or, as the case may be, standing), with the game's five chapters clocking in at a scant 90 minutes. It ends with a swell, and leaves you with a despondent, unanswered wish for more.

It is also one of the most remarkable video games I've ever played. Not only does it represent the most complete realization of what the Kinect has to offer, it possesses the (perhaps childish) distinction of being, for lack of a better term, a "crying game." It will almost certainly conjure tears from its hardest players -- not because it is particularly sad or melancholic, but because it is stirring.

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If you run to your PS3 now and fire up Tetris, you'll be presented with the option to update. Download that 75MB file and -- just like that! -- you'll be playing in 3D. Oh, also, you have to have a 3D television and be wearing your glasses. We should really have told you about that part first.

In other 3D Tetris news, right before E3 the Tetris Company announced plans to localize Hudson's Tetris Axis for 3DS this October, claiming that it "will allow fans to experience the game like never before – in 3D!" Now, by the time that comes out, fans will already have experienced it through the PS3 version, rendering that hyperbolic press release statement inaccurate.

To be fair, though, it was already inaccurate, because the Virtual Boy's V-Tetris got there first, in 1995.

It's hard to believe that the house that built Halo has been around for nearly 20 years, and only kicked off the past decade of Halo games halfway through its lifespan, but that's the case. The now-independent developer is celebrating the big two zero this year, and in typical Bungie fashion the studio will be offering a variety of special items to its fans, starting with an already released (and free) iOS app.

For those of you who without an iOS device, a whole mess of other things will be going down between June 23 and July 7 -- "Bungie Day" -- such as special additions to the Bungie store. And more importantly to us, the still mysterious "Bungie Aerospace" will be explained "in explicit detail. You can also win some totally serious actual steaks if you beat the Bungie dudes in Halo: Reach "by 20 kills or more" on July 7 -- a difficult feat for sure, but one worthy of earning the title "Steaktacular." The team will be in Reach multiplayer for all 24 hours of that day.

[Thanks, Tyler C]

Despite our wishy washy feelings about this year's big show, the E Triple, Epic Games VP and co-founder Mark Rein was quite positive on last week's proceedings. In an interview yesterday with Joystiq, Rein beamed about this year's show, saying, "I thought E3 was really good -- I thought the industry looked good. The quality of games on display was extremely high." He even had positive things to say about the growing divide between "triple-A" and "indie" development, explaining that, even though "it's definitely a boom or bust mentality now" with regards to the big publishing houses, "there was definitely more boom than bust" in his eyes.

But for him, the big news of the show was the same as everyone else: Nintendo's new console, the Wii U, and Sony's PlayStation Vita reveal. "The Vita blew me away," Rein told us. "I was shocked at how badly I wanted to take one of those home with me." He was similarly thrilled by Nintendo's Wii successor, though he wouldn't speak to any specifics regarding Unreal Engine 3 on the new console.

"I can tell you that I got to see it at E3 and it was what I expected of course. We were very excited to play some of their demos, see how good the feel of the hardware was -- it's a very impressive system and I think it's gonna do quite well," he told us. When asked about the possibility of UE3 on Wii U, as indicated by two UE3-based games in Nintendo's own sizzle reel, Rein referred us to our conversation at GDC.

He summarized it by saying, "'If Nintendo made a system that could run our engine, we'd be on it like water on fish.' And so when someone asked me what I thought about the Wii U, I said, 'Water, meet fish.'" Seems pretty direct if you ask us!

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The cheapest ticket to Los Angeles you're likely to find is on Amazon.com, of all places -- the retailer has discounted Team Bondi's LA Noire to $44.99. Pick it up with a Mad Men box set and watch Cole Phelps, 13 years after the events of the game, go undercover as an affable New York advertising exec!

If you're still in the mood for buying stuff, you should check out the "Dads & Grads" sale, which discounts PS3, Xbox, and PC stuff this week. Standouts include Mortal Kombat for $40, Final Fantasy XIII for $17, and the PC version of Portal 2 for just $30 (it's a reasonable $40 on consoles, too).