I'm big on contrast today. Yesterday, it was inexplicable political activism, but today, it's all about thematic contrast.

Thus, I present the debut trailer for Aliens: Colonial Marines:

The game is scheduled to hit the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC platforms in Spring of next year. It's being developed by Gearbox Software, and while they were indeed responsible for that whole Duke Nukem Forever debacle, they were also the people behind the phenomenal Half-Life: Blue Shift expansion.

Based on that trailer, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt with the Aliens IP, at least until they publicly screw the pooch.

That last sentence? Totally a segue. Hit the jump to see my contrast thing come full circle.

You played Dragon Age, right?

Don't worry if you didn't finish it. Only like four people did, and three of them work for Slashdot, cleaning spiders out of the server racks.

Since you did play a bit of Dragon Age however, I'm going to assume you have some kind of familiarity with the Mabari War Hound. Bigass half-pitbull, half-bear, half-snuggly cuddle monster, the Mabari are a ferocious ally, and almost impossible to cosplay.

Unless you're a dog, anyway. Then the Mabari is a SUPER ADORABLE cosplay option! Behold:

Hopefully boys and girls, you have learned something here today. If not something about the joys of contrasting YouTube videos, then about how incredibly lazy a blogger can be when he'd rather be playing Deus Ex: Human Revolution than showing you people disturbingly sexual aliens and painted puppy snouts.