Portland’s The Thermals return with their fifth album Personal Life on September 7th, and it seems to feature the exact same infectious power pop sound that they’ve perfected over the years. The video for “I Don’t Believe You” is directed by Whitey McConnaughy and stars Carrie Brownstein formerly of Sleater-Kinney.

Well that didn’t take long. The star of the Double Rainbow viral video has already sold out and been recruited by Microsoft to hawk Windows Live Photo Gallery. Strangely, his incredulousness just doesn’t feel as genuine here.

Weird. Valve recently announced that Stephen Merchant (yes, writing partner of Ricky Gervais and co-creator of The Office) will be voicing a character in Portal 2, and they’ve released a new gameplay video to prove it. He plays Wheatley, a floating eyeball droid type thing that acts as your companion through part of the game. I don’t know that this necessarily increases my anticipation for Portal 2 (it’s already pretty high), but I’m definitely not complaining either.

If you haven’t yet heard about the massive traffic congestion problems just outside of Beijing, China, you might want to check out some of these crazy photos. Apparently this was part of a recent 10-day traffic jam that spanned 60 miles. It’s not the first time they’ve had traffic issues, but wow… some people were stuck in it for like 5 days. No wonder they’re talking about creating a new type of bus that actually straddles cars on the road. I think it’s fair to say that North Americans are never allowed to complain about traffic EVER AGAIN.

It’s always nice to see piles of research money and the world’s most gifted minds being dedicated to a task that is almost completely useless.

There’s been a definite trend in commercials and trailers for blockbuster video game releases as of late. They all seem to favour quiet, sombre music in an attempt to appear artistic and thoughtful — something that probably stems from the Gears of War commercial that Microsoft put out a few years ago featuring Gary Jules’ cover of “Mad World”. The idea of using live action shorts to promote a game has also really taken off.

With Halo it inevitably leads to talk about how great a live action movie would be. This new Metroid: Other M trailer does the opposite for me, however… it proves why a Metroid movie should never be attempted, unless it’s simply a two hour silent film. Let’s face it, Metroid has always been more about atmosphere and less about character development. I suppose it does make the game look pretty epic though.

Check out a few more live action Halo Reach spots after the jump.

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Of all the bands in the world, I don’t think I ever would have predicted that Of Montreal would be the ones to put out a new video featuring a bloody beachfront brawl between barbarian invaders and cannibalistic natives. But somehow it works. Can’t wait for the black metal remix! Their new album False Priest hits stores on September 14th. Video directed by Jason Miller.

Puzzle Quest meets Castlevania anyone? Although Konami claims that the main inspiration for Castlevania Puzzle: Encore of the Night is an older Japanese game series called Puzzle-Dama, I can’t help but think that Puzzle Quest was also a big influence as it essentially takes the RPG and story elements of Castlevania and combines them with a Match 3 puzzle game. Konami have pushed the Castlevania series in some strange directions as of late (most notably with a fighting game on the Wii a couple of years back), and this is perhaps the most unexpected direction yet. What’s even more unexpected, however, is just how enjoyable the game actually is.

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