Okay - you guys know I like history, so here's a piece.

(Thanks to insert credit)

Gunvalkyie is a quintessential Sega hardcore game: hard to get into, hard to learn, and once you "get it" you pretty much rant and rave about how great it is, even if nobody agrees with you. My friend Lee could do the *craziest* stuff on that game, including beat it in an impressive fashion. My old roommate David loved it. Me? I thought it was cool, but to be honest my hands suck at technical gameplay. Like Virtua Fighter, Virtual On and other Sega titles, Gunvalkyrie required a level of precision that most people simply would not commit themselves to (I certainly didn't), but the end result was a kind of hardcore, deliberate-twitch Zen state similar to what you'd see in Japanese 2d-shooters like Mars Matrix or Ikaruga.

Anyhow, it seems it was originally slated to be a Dreamcast game but got rescued by being released on the Xbox. Will we ever see a sequel? Probably not. But its still cool.

BD+ was added to Blu-Ray at Fox's insistance.

And now its causing problems for some people.

If you own a Samsung BD-P1200 or LG's first-generation dual-format BH100 player, Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer and The Day After Tomorrow have issues with your player. If you have a PS3, just update your firmware. If you have a Sony S1 and various Panasonic models, might load slow. Samsung's BD-1000 may well skip uncontrollable for both movies.

So, Fox, thank you for the wonderful BD+. Its causing problems and kept both Intel and Microsoft out of the Blu-Ray camp. I don't know what Sony thought you were going to do for them, but I can guarantee they didn't expect you to make them look bad. To anyone with these these players, sorry, but that's the trick with being an early adopter.

The RIAA and recording companies are slowly catching on to the fact that consumers like non-DRM media, and that it causes less problems (for consumers and companies). Hopefully the movie industry will learn from their lessons and mistakes - nobody wants to see movies recalled again due to DRM related incompatabilities. Nobody wants to own a movie that won't play like it should. And we should never have to hear about it again.

DRM hurts normal consumers far more than it will ever hurt piracy. If anything, I'd say it might even make piracy more attractive - if the legit stuff becomes problematic because of DRM, I'd go looking for stuff without the offending DRM attached too.

Mr. Ebert.

Mr. Barker.

Me?

Lets have a meal first.

Fine restaurant with a knowledgeable and creative head chef and a great team of sous chefs, wait staff, and sommelier. You step in, watching the practiced staff seat you, bring you menus, drinks, and informing you of the chef's special inspired by a trip out of country. You order that; why not? The order hits the kitchen, and the its abuzz making your meal. The chef took flavors foreign to you (and ordinarily your dish), ingeniously blending and contrasting them, mindful of pleasing textures, aromas, and subtleties. The sommelier recommends a wine or two that could go well with the meal you ordered. The food is cooked and plated, your wine arrives, everything is served. Each action by every person there paints a stroke on the canvas before you.

I believe this is no less a work of art than a painting, a piece of music, a song. I will agree with Clive Barker in part. Now here is where some Ebert comes in:

You inhale the meal without a second thought. All that work, preparation, research and experimentation has been for naught; you treat a 5-Star experience with the same familiar contempt you would a dollar menu McDonalds hamburger.

Art is a form of communication between the artist and the audience. Some forms of art have an innate distance (go to any museum and attempt to touch a painting - see how fast the guards move), others allow for participation and interaction (singing and music are wonderful examples). Art is creative, be it "starving artist" pure or commercial (like many of Mr. Ebert's movies), but regardless of intent, medium used or message, art has one undeniable requirement; an audience. Even if the artist is the only person who "takes in" the piece, the requirement is met.

Games are art. That being said, many gamers play games as only games and do not take the time to fully appreciate what has been laid out before them. Subtle nuances of craft and detail are ignored for basic satiation of "boredom," desiring at most the most basic of flavors in terms of presentation, game-play, writing, etcetera.

"More violence! More blood! More sex! More rush!"

I have no problem with the malleability of games in terms of art as Mr. Ebert does. And I can see Mr. Barker's enthusiasm for the potential of games as an art-form. But I argue that the biggest obstacle video games as a whole face to being recognized by art (outside our gaming community) is the audience the games are being made for needs to deepen its palatte and be be thoughtful in playing games so they can talk and discuss the art form, even from a near apologetical standpoint. While not all games will lend themselves readily to in-depth discussions, a thoughtful conversation on themes and ideas shown will do more for the cause than heady intellectuals arguing or "She blows things up better in a thong."

As usually, I'm pimping one of my favorite games.

I'm not sure when the update will be released, but to say I'm looking forward to it would be an understatement. Right now if you've ever been interested in City of Heroes now is a great time to try it out, and you'll nice and ready to take advantage of i11 when it comes out.

I would like to smile a bit with the Dual Blades "Combo System." No details as of yet, but I do recall another NCSoft affiliated developer *cough*ArenaNet*cough* with a similar sounding idea *cough*Assassins*cough*. Not that I mind, of course. I'm hoping the weapon customization has lots of options, including a certain weapon(s) not many people think of, but should.

First, Halo 3 sells over $170 million its first day.

Secondly, Halo 3 players would also be interested in UT3.

Unreal Championship 2 came out in April 05. Halo 2 came out in November 04. Couple months difference for great games in the same genre. One story I've heard is Epic was aiming for the '04 holiday season, but realising that Halo 2 was coming out around the same time, delayed the game's release, using the time to polish it more and give it a fighting chance at making money. The holidays are competitive enough as is, seeing more games released in from September through December than the rest of the year. Good titles can easily get overshadowed by blockbuster, AAA-budget games with their AAA-marketing budgets. So supposedly UC2 got bumped to avoid Halo 2 and the glut of other titles.

If that's true, then its possible Epic is repeating that. IGN's Gamermetrics (according to the the Gamasutra article) believes that Halo 3 and UT3 share customers. Not a great leap there. It also doesn't require rocket-science to know that given Halo 2's performance that MS would be pushing it hard (in fact, its easily verifiable). I could be wrong (and maybe Shacks can correct me), but I can't think of a single PS3 FPS that would be likened to Halo 3 in terms of sheer hype and marketing, giving Epic and UT3 a more commanding presence. Similarly, the PC is where Unreal is an 800 lb. gorilla, so its hard to picture there being much to challenge them there.

While timed exclusivity does make sense (ie, Sony paid for the lead), its possible that Epic played a shrewd hand; have Sony pay for what they would've done anyhow. I suspect the truth will only ever be known by Mark Rein and company, though.

Exteel has restarted its beta program, so if you've been wanting to try and get into a Beta, now's your chance.

http://www.exteel.com/us/news/

For more info (including the modest system requirements):

http://www.exteel.com/us/faq/

Okay, someone pinch me.

Wow.

The way you determine who "wins" and what place they're in is by who makes money, not bleeds it. In that case? Nintendo has got quite a lead right now.

Can they go the distance? *shrugs*

But they certainly aren't hurting right now.

You can play here.

I got it in 26:57 with 6:30 of that being penalty time. Average at the moment is 33:41 with 9:43 penalty time.

That was fun, actually. Didn't care about the GPS prize (which is good considering my time!), but I did notice something. Four out of the five questions/clues I was given had unreleased games as their answers. Coincidence? Probably not. Good marketing? Oh, I think so.

I'm not sure who came up with the idea, but it was a great one. In one fell swoop they promoted Reaper (tv show), the Garmin GPS and every unreleased title that comes up in the scavenger hunt. Guess what? Now if nothing else, when you see those new games on the shelf in the near future they already have a "hook," something that can grab your attention, a point of recognition, because of this game. The fact you sought the game out, that it was interactive, made is much more memorable than just a passive ad on a banner that you've already trained yourself to ignore.

To whoever came up with this idea, as someone who's involved with advertising for a living, I'd like buy you a coffee.

Story here.

Well, looks like the "Digital revolution" for television has been delayed, which may delay the "HD revolution" as well. If its not mandatory, well, that's going to slow people adopting it, after all. "I can wait until later" being a fairly reasonable explaination for putting off getting a new HD television. So, its entirely possible that the many 360 and PS3 owners this generation might not see the best their systems have to offer. Similarly, this might affect the adoption of Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, since their main selling point depends on HDTV.

Provided HD costs continue to go down, by 2012 (7 years after the 360 debuted) hopefully it'll be a safe assumption that all the early console buyers will have HD, and by the time the new set of consoles really start taking it off that HDTV will be the defacto standard in homes.

As is things weren't full enough with Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, another format is attempting to enter the fray.

Read up on it first.

Its an interesting approach, however I sincerely doubt we'll see any real mainstream adoption of it here, given most companies have already thrown their weight behind Blu-Ray and/or HD-DVD. Their movie catalog is relatively small right now, with some bigger names (Saw II, Saw III, Lucky Number Slevin, etc) along with stuff you probably won't see at your local cinema center. At launch there might be 20 titles here, although if you're into Bollywood stuff there might be an additional 50 titles.

When Arstechinca covered the format originally New Medium Enterprises, the company behind HD-VMD, stated they were shooting more for India and China with the product, aiming to be the HD version of VCD. If nothing else, the new format still plays normal DVD's, so if the machines drop in price enough, they could well become the last DVD player some people buy, complete with HDMI and upscaling.

I like the idea, and the while the normal HD-VMD discs are about 20g (four layers), supposedly the format can go up to 50g with 10 layer discs. If " ...the hardware is essentially a DVD player with new firmware that can address the multiple layers in VMDs" statement is true, then its entirely possible we might see the DVD format continue on for a good while longer for PC's if VMD burners and media can be released at a reasonable price and level of performance.

Chances are this will be a footnote in the HD battle here in the US, but its an interesting one. Of course, if one considers the price (the players are $200), its possible the format might discover a niche somewhere, somehow, especially if existing players can take a simple firmware upgrade to play the HD-VMD discs. Similarly, if thats all it would take to upgrade an existing DVD drive, then Microsoft might well want to take note...