Times change when it comes to art.  Be it the fine works of Michaelangelo's David to what we have now with video games.  The interactive arts, as they are, range from cinematic to the top down strategy.  After two months and eighty games the votes are now in and tallied for the upcoming exhibit "The Art of Video Games". The exhibit will contain glimpses of five eras (Start!, 8-Bit, Bitwars, Transition, Next Generation)  with four genres each (Action, Adventure, Target, Combat/Strategy).  It'll delve into the past with games from MS-Dos programs all the way to the latest games from PS3 and 360.   There will also be a small hands on exhibit to let people try one game from one of four eras and of each genre. For the complete list of exhibits and winners; along with runner-ups look here.  The exhibition will be held at the Smithsonian American Art Museum from March 16, 2012 till September 30, 2012 in Washington D.C.

It's been a hectic week here at GameDwellers.  If you've been following the bouncing ball then you know what's been going on in and around the industry.  For those of you who have missed out (and you all know who you are) here's the low down for all the witty gaming banter that you might need. Does Monkey Ball 3D roll in the same league as its predecessors?  Will Patapon 3 march to its own drumbeat?  Find out in our reviews from Elia Pales and Tim Krynicki. What's the magic number for the next gen consoles?  Why 2014, of course!  Find out what Microsoft and Playstation are rumored to be setting up. Nintendo is dropping their prices on the Wii!  Buy one and you will not be getting a second one free. Haven't been able to access PSN lately?  Maybe it's because of "external intrusion." PSP Go maybe dead to the world, but in America its still alive and well.  Find out more here. To port or not to port- that is the question.  If it were up to us we'd have these awesomely stellar games brought to our handhelds in our top five wishlist of games we want on the 3DS. Have you gotten your iPhone 4 yet?  If you have then heads up for the new iPhone 5 due out in October. We'll keep rolling out the outright amusing and intriguing news here at GameDwellers.  So stay tuned!

As I reported in my review for Dragon Age 2 about the small gripes of scene repeats, achievements not unlocking and the lack of an auto-attack; BioWare has heard the call and finally released a 3 meg patch to fix some of the errors that were in the 1.0 version of the game.  Auto-attack is back and the DLC-pack "The Exiled Prince" finally has its achievements unlocking. Now as I restart my game for my canon mage run here's hoping more patches get done to give it a more polished and not so incomplete product.  No, they didn't fix the recycled maps or anything like that; just tweaking some of the mechanics of what should have been in the game on initial release. PC gamers will have already received their 1.02 patch for Dragon Age 2.  Patch 1.01 is for PS3 and 360.  

In the final installment of Valve's "product line from Aperture Laboratories" investment videos entitled "Boots"; the clip below is all about the fancy footwear. Now, who never said these boots were made for portal jumping? Portal 2 will be out April 19 to a PC, Xbox 360, or PS3 near you!

There have been some rumblings around the BioWare forums as of late about the possible changes to the "heads up display" or HUD, for Mass Effect 3. On the developer's forums Brenon Holmes posed an idea as to a new concept for combat information.  Take the interactivity of Dead Space's RIG and interface and combine that with the awesomeness of Shepard and omni-tools, and you have the makings of a potentially awesome HUD.

That's one of the things that I love about Dead Space; the interface... it feels really immersive. I just want to touch the hell out of those buttons. So we are still investigating ways of putting some of our HUD elements into the environment... we'll see what we end up with.

He went on to express how they had tried to integrate the same concepts with previous HUDs but to no avail; due to the cover system that was being implemented in Mass Effect 2.

It was ok when Shepard was out of cover, like in the image you linked. The issues started to crop up once you popped into cover, with the way that the camera was positioned and with Shepard's orientation changing we had to do some fairly crazy stuff to get the health indicator to display in a reasonable position. Even then it ended up being rather confusing to reference when you were in the middle of a fight. I think if we'd simplified our health system so we only had one meter or bar it might have been easier to represent it on the armour (like on Isaac's back in DS).

If they did consider a new attempt at "streamlining" the HUD again, it would be the third iteration of it for the third game.  While streamlining, in all fairness is nice, how far can you actually go before not only immersion is broken but information that is actually vital to combat becomes a cryptic guessing game?  Whether they consider to do it or not, here's hoping that the "character head balls" my Shepard has will be replaced by something not so obtuse.  Personally I'd go with the old ME 1 interface, it gave me everything I wanted and more. What do you guys think?  Is it acceptable or back to the drawing board?