Remember how you're excited for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? Well, you're an idiot--at least in the mind of the supremely talented Mr. Uwe Boll. You see, you should be excited about Postal, which just happens to come out the same day as Indiana Jones, but will be much many more awesomer. How could it not be? After all, movies based on video games tend to be fantastic examples of filmmaking (especially Uwe's movies, which will blow your mind they're so spectacular). But don't take my word for it--let's hear what Uwe has to say:

"On the Indiana Jones weekend - May 23 - we will go out and destroy Indiana Jones in the Box Office! We all know that Harrison Ford is older as my grandpa and his time is up!"

That's right, old people like Harrison Ford are no match for the likes of Zack "I have a billion credits listed on IMDB, but you have no idea who I am" Ward and Verne "Mini Me" Troyer. What's that? You say that even though Harrison Ford is old, Steven Spielberg might be able to put together a watchable flick? Hahahaha, you sir, are a moron! Right Uwe?

"Spielberg gets sloppy. We saw that with War of the Worlds (why the **** the older brother survived?) and also in parts of Jaws, E.T., Munich etc.! My performance in Postal as 'Nazi Theme Park Owner' outperforms easily Ben Kingsley in Schindler's List!"

YEAH! Stupid Sir Ben Kingsley and your lame knighthood and your stupid Oscar! You've got nothing on my man Uwe and his two Razzie award nominations. Who wants to be a knight and wear all that stupid armor anyway?

Here's the bottom line: When you go to the movies on May 23rd be sure to remember that Postal > Indiana Jones. Hey, at least you won't have to worry about a crowded theater...

A cold and rainy day in San Francisco might keep most people indoors, but it doesn't phase hardcore Super Smash Bros. Brawl fans. Well over 300 people showed up to the 1015 Club in downtown San Fran for their chance to compete in Nintendo's North American Super Smash Bros. Brawl Tournament. Because only 256 people could enter, people began lining up as early as 5:00am to ensure their spot in line. The first to arrive was Tania Monroy, who drove an hour into the city because "We thought there was going to be a longer line."

The doors opened a little after 2:00pm and contestants were registered and assigned brackets. One cool thing the tournament organizers did was to separate friends into different brackets so that they wouldn't have to compete against each other in the first round. After registering, players crowded around the one available practice kiosk in hopes of getting in a quick round before the tournament started while others used their Nintendo DS to chat with friends scattered about the venue via PictoChat.

At 3:30 the tournament kicked off. There were eight kiosks by the main stage, each of which hosted a head-to-head matchup. Players could choose from any of the default characters. From what it looked like, Mario, Link, and Kirby were the most popular choices. Brawls took place on the battlefield stage. Matches were four minutes long and players had three lives a piece.

If you've never attended any sort of videogame competition you'd be surprised at how intense things get. The crowd was really into the action, cheering on friends and erupting any time a player performed a final smash. The level of play was extremely high considering most competitors had never played the game--though it was obvious many had gotten their hands on the Japanese version. Despite a trip for two to New York for the finals and a chance to win a crystal-encrusted Wii being on the line, good sportsmanship was the norm, with players shaking hands and congratulating one another even in defeat.

If you'd like to showcase your own Smash Bros. skills, the tournament makes its way to Boston on March 1, and then to New York the following week. If New York and Boston aren't in your travel plans, check out the video below or view pictures of the event for a taste of the action.

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Get to know the people that bring you all of the great content on GameSpot in a regular series of short and lighthearted gaming-related interviews.

Episode XXIII: Joe Dodson

This week's Getting To Know is with the man who replaced me as "the new guy" in the office, Joe Dodson. Not only is he the "new guy" (a title that lasts a long time around here), but he's also a really funny dude with a unique sense of humor. Under the all-seeing eye of the camera Joe explains why his girlfriend kicks his butt in games, shows an impressive knowledge of one-word Atari 2600 game titles, and talks about the impact World of Warcraft has had on his life.

You may notice a snazzy new title screen this episode. That's because I'm learning to use Adobe Premiere Pro--just like the big boys do. Now maybe the GameSpot Live guys will stop beating me up and taking my lunch money when I walk through their area. Probably not, but I can dream can't I?

Getting To Know GameSpot will return with the previously promised appearance of one of the longest tenured GameSpotters, Ryan MacDonald. As always, thanks for watching!

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For many people the highlight of the Super Bowl is its commercials. We sent out a call for you to create your own Super Bowl commercial but received only one user submission, which you can view here. Not content to live in a world where the Super Bowl isn't inundated with ads, Brian, Ryan, Vinny, and I took matters into our own hands and made some commercials that put those terrible Sales Genie ads from the real game to shame. If this whole "covering video games for a living" thing doesn't work out we've totally established ourselves as heavy-hitters in the advertising sector. While I highly recommend you watch the entire showdown, you can now watch the commercials on their own without all that pesky football.

Once you're done watching, feel free to share your thoughts on the commercials by leaving a comment below. After all, they wouldn't be Super Bowl ads without people discussing which one was their favorite, right?

By now you're probably aware that I will be taking on SportsGamer.com's Shanker Srinivasin in a Super Bowl matchup in Madden 08. What you probably don't know is how this whole thing came about. I'm not going to sugarcoat things--it's an ugly story. It's a story of one man's ability to dominate another in video game competition and the story of a lesser man's inability to cope with losing.

GameSpot acquired SportsGamer in May of 2007. Most of the SportsGamer guys live in the Cincinnati area and they stayed there once they became a part of the CNET family. Everyone but Shanker Srinivasin, that is. The reasons for Shanker moving out to California are unknown. Perhaps he missed his parents, who still lived in the bay area. Perhaps he caught an episode of The Beverly Hillbillies and thought he could head out west and make a mint on oil. Maybe he was the reason for Bengals players always getting arrested and he had to get out of town. Or, it just might have been destiny. Whatever the reason for moving, Shanker started working out of our San Francisco office in mid-August and as fate would have it he was sitting right behind me.

While our office is generally pretty quiet—Justin sits next to me and he'll go weeks without saying anything to me unless he thinks I stole something—Shanker and I were quick to strike up a conversation since we're both into sports and sports video games. I still haven't quite figured out what his job is, but he does a lot of videos that cover specific strategies in sports games. He was always talking about how great they were so I'd go over to his desk and see what he was up to. I learned two things rather quickly: Shanker has an unhealthy obsession with Kobe Bryant (check out this video) and he has no problem cheesing the CPU by exploiting glitches and money plays. Now to be fair, Shanker does come up with some what I'd consider "legitimate" strategies and he does have an amazing ability to find weaknesses in the computer's play, but I'd stand there and chastise him for having to resort to cheap tactics to beat a machine. Hey, I never claimed that I wasn't obnoxious. His response was always "Dude, let's play right now! Let's play a game of insert sports game here and I'll take you down!" or something to that effect. One day, he got his wish.

I keep a Nintendo Entertainment System and a handful of my favorite NES games on my desk so that on those days where I'm really feeling down about games (like when another uninspired WWII FPS comes out) I can play something fun that reminds me of how much I love playing games. One of the games in my collection is R.B.I. Baseball. Tired of pounding on the CPU I asked Shanker if he wanted to play. I was the NL team and at first was going to be Houston or something until I told him he should be the AL because my dudes were awesome. You see? I was being fair. I then explained the buttons and we started the game. The first four innings were close—I was only able to bring one run across the plate. But then things exploded in the 5th inning when I dropped a big fat 9-spot on Shanker. I then shut him down in the bottom of the 5th and the game ended because of the 10-run rule. But that's not the worst of it. If you look at the box score you'll notice that I pitched a perfect game (the error you see in the box score was on him, even though you see it in my part of the box score) cementing my place in R.B.I. Baseball immortality.

Even with Shanker trying to grab the camera out of my hand I snapped a picture to preserve the moment. This is when I learned that Shanker is a poor loser. "Dude, you didn't tell me what the buttons were!" he whined, referencing when he didn't know how to take out his tired pitcher and I immediately paused the game so he could do so. Justin had my back on this one, chiming in with "I heard Aaron tell you the buttons. Both of them." Then he started whining about how the game was old and stupid and blah blah blah.

The next time we played was a few weeks later in NFL Tour. It was a warm-up game for my showdown with Shawne Merriman. I had played one practice game already and asked Shanker if he wanted to play me so that I could practice against a real person. He accepted, and he beat me by a touchdown. Sure it's a lousy game and the winner is always the person that gets the ball last, but he did beat me. I even admitted publicly that I lost to him.

Evidently Shanker didn't witness my domination of Sean Coonce in Button Mashing last year because our third meeting came courtesy Tecmo Super Bowl. I was the Raiders and he was the Bills. I was the winner and he was the loser. Final score: 37-7. As expected, the excuses came fast and furious: he didn't know the buttons, Bo Jackson is cheap, the game clock moves too fast, I tried an onsides kick on him…it was a never-ending onslaught of pitiful reasons for losing. I pointed out that if we totally erased Bo Jackson's performance from the game that I still would have beaten him 16-7. I also explained to him that the clock went just as fast for me as it did for him, and that my onsides kick was an accident (I was trying for a full-power kick) and that he was a beneficiary of me making the same mistake later in the game when a botched kick resulted in his only points of the game.

By now it should be obvious that reason doesn't work with Shanker. His demands for rematches became more frequent and more obnoxious. It just so happened that during this time we were trying to come up with ideas for Super Bowl coverage. The solution was obvious: Let me destroy Shanker once and for all in front of a worldwide audience. Best of all I'd be beating him in one of the "modern games" he's always clamoring for: Madden 08. He foolishly agreed and now I'm just counting down the days until I shut his yap for good.

It's on.

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Get to know the people that bring you all of the great content on GameSpot in a regular series of short and lighthearted gaming-related interviews.

Episode XXII: Justin Calvert

This week's Getting To Know is with the elusive Justin Calvert. I know, he's no Guy Cocker, but he does have a similar accent! You might be wondering why it has taken me such a long time to feature one of the most well-known members of the GameSpot team on the show. It's because Justin hates being on camera. It wasn't until I won a bet with him over whether or not he'd get some of the more absurd achievement points in UEFA Champions League (he failed) that he agreed to appear. I could have accepted $20 in lieu of his appearance, but you guys mean more to me than $20, so I turned down the cash to bring you this episode.

Thankfully it was worth the wait. In this week's episode Justin shows off his immense knowledge of Pong variants, explains his strikingly similar appearance to a famous boxer, and boasts about how much better he is at games than his girlfriend. Yikes! That can't end well. How did you live so long without knowing these juicy nuggets of info on Justin? Who knows? Who cares?! Getting To Know GameSpot is back!

Getting To Know GameSpot will return in two weeks with the mind behind GameSpot's great features, Joe Dodson. As always, thanks for watching!

I'm going to keep this simple: Fix Xbox Live. When you've finished fixing it, I want credit in my account for the time the service was down.

Why isn't this happening?

Last night I spent 28 minutes on the phone with your technical support and then billing departments before you disconnected me while transferring me to a supervisor. During those 28 minutes I explained the technical issues I was having with the service and was asked for a statement on my feelings on the whole outage situation. Then I was given a case number and thanked for taking the time to give you more information on the problem. The gentleman I spoke with was very nice and attentive, but wasn't able to resolve the situation (I didn't expect this), nor was he able to offer me an reparations for my time without service so I had him transfer me to billing.

This is the part that makes my head explode.

I gave the billing representative all my account information again (it seems your computers were having trouble looking people up by gamertags. Go Windows!) and then explained to her the problems I had been having. She informed me that you were going to give everyone a free arcade game for their troubles. I told her that I didn't want a free mystery game--all I wanted was a month's credit (I don't want to have to waste my time calling back to give you an exact number of days it was broken for me) for the time the service has been (and judging by your inept repair efforts) and will likely be down. She told me that you hadn't authorized any other course of action. I explained to her that if my cable or phone service went out for a period of two weeks they wouldn't offer me a free phone call or pay-per-view movie and still charge me for the time I didn't have service--they'd just give me an excuse (you've got that part down) and credit me for the downtime. After she read her little script about unforeseen issues causing the problems (Really?!) You didn't know people were getting Xbox 360's for Christmas?!) I asked to speak with her supervisor in hopes that they had the ability to help me. She quickly informed me that they would tell me the exact same thing and I wouldn't be getting anything other than a free arcade game. She put me on hold and that's when we magically got disconnected. Fun times!

So here's where we stand:

- You were totally surprised when all those Xbox 360's you sold between Thanksgiving and Christmas all went online on the same day.
- Live still doesn't work properly.
- You can't tell anyone when these issues will be resolved.
- You think an arcade game is going to make everything all better.
- Nobody knows that this mystery arcade game is and when we'll actually get it.
- You're making me pay for a service that doesn't work.
- You don't seem to care that you're making me pay for a service doesn't work.

I love Xbox Live, but you guys are making a strong case for Sony's free service being the best solution. I used to argue that I was getting my money's worth from Xbox Live, but right now I'm getting anything but. You're a billion dollar corporation--get things working and give me credit for the downtime. Oh yeah, enjoy your lawsuit--you've earned it.

Regards,
Aaron Thomas

Ladies and gentleman, via Nintendic I bring you the early favorite for the "Worst Box Art of 2008" award. It's so bad that I'd probably buy the game. Enjoy!

Click the picture or right here for an even BIGGER version of the box. Yikes!

If you watch NBC even a tiny bit you're no doubt aware that it has brought back the old show American Gladiators. I don't remember watching the show religiously or anything back in the day, but I would check it out if nothing else was on and I did play the super crappy video game version of the show. Out of curiosity, and because I enjoy shows like MXC and that other Japanese show Ninja Warrior where they have to climb the huge tower at the end, I figured I'd record the first three episodes to see how this new take on an old show had turned out.

It's pretty much exactly what I figured it would be. The show doesn't take itself too seriously, which is a good thing, because it's just plain goofy. If you're a Hulk Hogan fan you'll enjoy him in his role as announcer, and if you're not a fan of the Hulkster, his knack for calling everyone "brotha" will drive you insane. Oh yeah, his wristwatch is giant and shiny and it distracts me. Laila Ali is decent, but every time I see her I can't help but think that she looks and sounds like a younger, skinnier, more attractive Queen Latifah. That's not really a problem for her--because those are all good things--but seriously, that's all I think about when she's on. The contestants are surprisingly competent and it's impressive that even the smaller people have a shot at winning. The thing is, they're all terrible at talking trash--a shame since they get interviewed before and after every single event.

The Gladiators are another story. It's painfully obvious that none of them were given any time to practice the events and some of them have put on some downright pitiful performances. Mayhem was a joke in the Joust, stepping onto his opponent's platform during both duels. Hellga looks like she'd be a beast, but she has only been used twice, both times putting on less-than-stellar performances in Gauntlet. Toa tries too hard to be intimidating and just comes off looking lame. The only gladiator that has skill and a personality is Wolf. He's entertaining and he's competent in a large number of events. Is it just me, or does he look like Ben Stiller in costume though?

Most of the events will be familiar to fans of the old show and for the most part, they hold up pretty well. I'll break the events down in a list:

Assault: This is the one where the gladiator shoots tennis balls out of a cannon. It's not very good because it's too easy to hit the contestant and the contestants all look hella confused.

Earthquake: This is a wrestling match on top of a platform that's hanging a few feet off of the ground. I didn't like it until Militia pulled himself back onto the platform as he was falling by grabbing one of the cables that hangs the platform from the ceiling. That was pretty cool.

Gauntlet: The contestant must rush past four gladiators, each armed with foam blocks. This one's lame because the gladiator's don't seem to try very hard so it's rare that someone doesn't clear at least 3 of the four zones.

Hang Tough: Contestants try to use rings to swing over a pool to a platform on the other side. One gladiator tries to stop them. This one's usually pretty entertaining as both the contestants and the gladiators have some unique methods to get the job done.

Hit and Run: Contestants try and cross a bridge while gladiators swing giant 100 pound balls at them from the side. This event stinks unless someone gets hit--then it's awesome.

Joust: Stand on a pedestal high above the water and try and knock the other dude off into the water. This is seldom interesting. Why can't the contestants go head-to-head here?

Power Ball: This is the one where you grab a ball and try and place it in one of the bins in the middle of the playfield. Because there are two contestants and three gladiators nobody should ever, ever score, but they do. Why? The only good thing about this event is that it caused the first injury when that chick blew out her knee.

Pyramid: This is a 30 foot tall foam pyramid that the contestants have to climb. It would be easy, but each person has a gladiator assigned to stop them. This one is fun to watch because the contestants usually get destroyed, but it doesn't seem like anyone should ever get to the top (even though one did), so maybe it's too hard.

Wall: Contestants have to climb a 40 foot rock wall with gladiators nipping at their heels. This one's decent, especially when people fall off.

Eliminator: My big beef with the final obstacle course is that it makes the rest of the competition irrelevant. You earn a half a second head start for every point you're up on your opponent. The problem is the leads can vanish in the blink of an eye. Also, there doesn't seem to be any penalty for falling off the rolling things right after the cargo net climb. I hate the rolling things to start with and this makes me hate them even more. I do like how they show the losing contestant struggling to finish the Eliminator while they interview the winner.

Things the show could do better:

The contestants aren't good at talking trash. Stop interviewing them so many times.

Give us more information on injuries. I want to see the x-rays. And why gloss over a gladiator injury? That's awesome! Let me know what happened!

It's cool to see the old events, but a few newer ones would have been nice. Assault has got to go.

Let the gladiators be meaner. I should never see a gladiator congratulating an opponent unless they did something mind-blowing to beat them.

Random things I like:

I do enjoy how most events involve someone falling a good distance into water. I also like how they have flashing lights under the water. It gives me hope that one day someone will accidentally get electrocuted.

The music that plays when someone loses is good, but why doesn't it play all the time?

Watching people swim under fire, rocks.

The contestants are pretty skilled.

It's in HD. Everything on network television should be in HD.

The verdict: American Gladiators is a fun show, but I have my doubts as to how long it will be on the air. It seems like they shot the first season already so I'm sure we'll get to see who wins, but I don't see it lasting longer than a year. Bump the prize money up to a million (it's a paltry 100k right now) and give us more action during the hour (there's too much standing around talking) and the show will have some potential.

One of the cool things about working at GameSpot is you never know what's going to happen from day to day. You might get tapped to be on a live show, take a meeting with a developer for a preview, or--as was the case for me recently--play an NFL player on Xbox Live. Right before the holiday break, I came into work and was immediately asked by Brad Shoemaker if I could play "some football player guy" in EA's upcoming arcade football game NFL Tour. Having taken down Keenan McCardell in Madden a few years ago, I was eager to add another notch to my belt, so I accepted the challenge.

Brad forwarded me the e-mail with the information on the play session, and it turns out that the "football player guy" was none other than Shawne "Lights Out" Merriman of the San Diego Chargers. I'm actually not a big Merriman fan--I don't like his dance and the fact that Chargers beat the Bears earlier this year--so this news made me want to win even more. Because he is on the cover of the game, I figured chances were good that he had spent some time with it and was already pretty good. That meant it was time for me to get in a quick game before our big showdown. In what could only have been EA trying to give Shawne a leg up, I found out that the game was set to be delivered just 30 minutes before we played. This wasn't going to give me much time to learn the controls, much less learn the nuances of the game.

It turns out my worrying was for naught because I received the first of what would become about a half-dozen e-mails from Julie, the public relations representative handling our epic battle. "We're going to need a little more time," stated the first e-mail. "Shawne's 360 red-ringed, so he won't be able to do video chat on a second machine," stated the second. The third and fourth e-mails were "We're running behind" and "We're even more behind now." Yep, it was obvious. Shawne Merriman was ducking me. Now that I had convinced myself I was in his head, I went on the attack with my e-mails:

Julie,

Look, you don't have to cover for him. I understand that he's scared to death. Are there any Chargers around that aren't scared to play me?

Aaron

Julie needed the gamertag I'd be playing with, and after contemplating making it MauriceJonesDrew (If you don't know why, check it out here), I went with something that wouldn't get a 6-foot-4, 274-pound linebacker angry with me. Once I picked my name, I sat and waited. At some point during Shawne's frenzied attempt to not play me, Fed Ex dropped NFL Tour off on my desk. I quickly popped it in the Xbox 360 to see what I would be doing. I was pleasantly surprised. The controls are simple, there are plenty of plays available, and rather than worrying about what receiver is mapped to what button, you just scroll through them with a tap of the button as in Tecmo Bowl. I lost my first game to Shanker, an editor from Sportsgamer.com, but I felt pretty good about my performance and deemed myself ready for Shawne.

Three hours after the originally scheduled start time, Merriman and I met up in a game lobby. I fired the first shot. "I'm glad you were finally able to pull yourself together and show up. Don't worry, I'll go easy on you. How about you pick my team?" That was all the trash-talk Shawne needed to get going, and he assured me that I had better pick the best team in the game because he was, in his words, "going to make me wish I had called in sick." He picked the Chargers, then--because apparently I'm not all that smart--I picked the Bears, deciding to give them and their league-worst offense (they received a rating of one out of five here) a spin. My rationale? "At least I've got Devon Hester to return kicks." Wrong. NFL Tour doesn't feature 11-man squads and there are no substitutes, so I was without the Bears' biggest weapon. This was just a preview build, so there's still time for EA to tweak the rosters and include Hester. Hopefully, EA will do the right thing.

Even without the most dangerous kick-returner in the league, I was matriculating the ball down the field with ease. Shawne was controlling himself in the game, not really covering anyone but instead patrolling the middle of the field and trying to get himself an interception while guarding against the run. With horrific Cedric Benson as my back, I wasn't really a threat to rack up the rushing yards, so I started picking on in-game Merriman, dropping passes over the middle just beyond his reach. My first drive ended in a touchdown and with me telling Shawne that it was "OK if he paused the game to call EA and yell at them for making his player terrible." Perhaps I should have waited until I had seen him on offense before I ripped into him. Shawne's offensive philosophy could basically be summed up as this: LaDainian Tomlinson. Run left with LT, run right with LT, rinse and repeat. Even Bill Belichick wouldn't need a camera to know what play was coming. It was too bad for me that it was nearly impossible to tackle LaDainian. Even though I knew what was coming, I couldn't stop Tomlinson from repeatedly barreling over my defense and into the end zone.

My failures on defense didn't stop my mouth from running. "If LT was this hard to tackle, you guys wouldn't be a .500 team right now," I chirped after giving up a long touchdown run. "All you do is play video games for a living, and I'm still gonna beat you," he replied. My response was swift. "Since it doesn't look like you'll be there, do you want to come over and watch the Pro-Bowl with me this year?" "What's the matter, you going to cry?" he hollered into the headset when I took a break from talking trash to breath for a second. As the game wound down, the lead kept changing hands, with neither defense able to stop the opposing offense. Although the Bears' offense was absolutely terrible (I know, just like in real life), I had invested too much in this game to lose, pulling out all the stops, including a 40-yard Grossman scramble on my final drive, which gave me the lead with 17 seconds left to play. Rather than kicking the ball, you throw it in NFL Tour. My throw left Shawne with a long field and not much time on the clock. Apparently, I didn't pin him deep enough as he called his bread and butter "LT run left." Even though six Bears had him wrapped up at one point, LT took it to the house, giving Shawne the lead as he cackled into the microphone. There were still two seconds left on the clock, but without Hester, my return fell far short of the end zone and the game ended. Shawne fired off a few more jabs and I muttered "good game." Then, we parted ways.

While I may have lost the game, I had a great time. I matched Merriman's trash-talk every step of the way and enjoyed the fast-paced, easy-to-learn gameplay of NFL Tour. I'm not sure how deep it will be, but it looks to be a lot of fun, even if you aren't playing real-life NFL Pro Bowlers. NFL Tour will be in stores next week, but if you'd like to learn more about it before then, you can check out Brian Ekberg's hands-on preview.

Lights out.