Meant to be played with a full living room, of the ten games represented in Deca Sports 2, none of them are any of the sports showcased in the previous Deca Sports.  Some draw similarities like figure skating to synchronized swimming, but in an attempt to make everything fresh, Hudson offers:  Darts, Petanque, Synchronized Swimming, Mogul Skiing, Road Racing, Tennis, Kendo, Speed Skating, Ice Hockey and Dodgeball.

Crossing timing mini-games with accuracy, most of the games in the collection are fun for ten minutes.  Petanque, a game very similar to bowling in Wii Sports or shuffle board, was one of the only games in the set to offer some depth.  Kendo is a random flail victory, and road racing is as exciting as it is in Mario kart minus weapons and Mario.  It’s hard to really replicate the experience of running around in gym class on a dodgeball court but that is exactly why it shouldn’t be in a mini-game compilation.

Dodgeball is an intense sport with strategy and timing, but in Deca Sports 2 it’s overly simple where one button throws to the people outside the court and another makes you catch the ball flying at your face but that’s all there is to it.  Shaking the Wii-mote sometimes has your whole team dodge the ball, which in Deca Sports 2 the whole team is controlled by one player therefore everyone moves together making the court look silly instead of like a battlefield, hurting any ability to get into the game when it’s all luck and two buttons.When you get down to your last player though, it works better, since that feeling of silliness is gone and it’s more about timing than luck.

We’ve all heard about the Wii by this point and considering the Wii is packaged with Wii Sports, we’ve all had the chance to play one of the five games on it.  While a solid game, there is always room for improvement.  Deca Sports 2 does it’s best to improve upon the one crossover Wii Sports game, tennis, by allowing the character the ability to miss-time a serve as well as run in towards the net or away.  A huge complaint in Wii Sports, the fact you can’t control where the character moves, was seen and fixed by the people at Hudson.  I’m trying not to draw many comparisons to Wii Sports but it is very hard not to, giving the natural similarities.

The game itself isn’t all bad.  The fact that you can customize your team using their  Mii-esque character creator like it does in Wii Sports is still fun.  It’s nice to play a league tournament with five characters you made yourself.  The body size of the characters you make also affect what their skills are.  If you pick a small character they may be quicker than a bigger guy, but the bigger guy packs more of a punch for games like tennis and petanque, therefore you have options for who you want to play for which sport your team is up to compete in.

Overall, there are some moments of fun here.  Also, don’t be afraid to play synchronized swimming because, surprisingly enough, the timing and motions they ask you to do are somewhat rewarding.  When I watched my hairy large white man with a beard twirls his shaved legs out of the water to music, I got a kick out of it.

Blast Factor: If you’re craving more mini-games that will keep your kids glued to the Wii or you’re in need of simple games, than this is the game for you.  Otherwise, you’re probably safe with Wii Sports, or maybe even picking up Wii Sports Resort for its Motion Plus games.

Deca Sports 2 is available exclusively on the Nintendo Wii, and retails for $29.99. A copy of this game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes.

Blast got a chance to chat with one of the performers (testers) about the newly designed Ocarinas that range from exact replicas of in-game instruments fans of the Zelda series surely get excited about, to well-crafted stand-alone musical instruments.  Not only are the Ocarinas developed at the website polished and perfected as instruments, but they also serve as memorabilia to an iconic franchise in the video game industry.  Meet Heather Scott.

BLAST: What is your background with music?  First instrument?  Favorite instrument?

Heather Scott: My background in music goes back to the womb!  My father was a grade school and middle school band director, so I have been going to his concerts since I was born.  All three of my older siblings played in the band in school so I always knew that I wanted to join the band as well.  Once old enough to join my father’s band I chose my first instrument, the flute!  I continue to play flute now and have a Bachelor’s degree in music performance from Illinois State University.  Currently I am working on my Master’s in flute performance from Webster University in St. Louis.  Besides the flute and ocarina, which I LOVE, my other favorite instrument (although I regretfully do not play) is the cello.

BLAST: What is your background with video games?  First system?  Favorite game?

H.S.I have always found video games to be a great way to relax and unwind after a busy day.  The first system I ever owned was a Nintendo.  The year Nintendo came out my siblings and I pooled our allowances to buy one.  We played ALL the time.  Later we got a Game Boy for Christmas.  I played that all the time because my favorite game was Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins.

BLAST: Are you a big fan of the Zelda series?

H.S. Yes.  The Legend of Zelda was one of the first video games I ever played, so I think I will always be a fan of the series.  I love how the series involves a mixture of action and puzzle solving skills.

BLAST: Has the popularity of the Zelda themed Ocarina helped business?

H.S. Definitely!  Thanks to the Ocarina of Time, many gamers have become interested in the instrument.  They are always pleased to discover that it is a real instrument after all!  Our Zelda ocarina is one of our best sellers.  We just came out with a new Zelda ocarina that features the Triforce as well as new Rupee ocarinas!

BLAST: What kind of tests do you run on the Ocarina’s you’re producing?

H.S. After the ocarina has been carefully designed, we run a series of tests to make sure it looks and sounds good.  We test that it’s in tune first.  That’s really important! Then we have testers play on the ocarina for a period of time to discover any inconsistencies.  Only when we feel the ocarina is truly ready do we put it on the market.

BLAST: Have there been any large orders of Ocarina’s, or any strange orders from super Zelda fans?

H.S. We have partnered with anime, cosplay, and music shops all over the world to bring the ocarinas to a larger audience.  These shops tend to order a lot of ocarinas from us!

BLAST: Have you ever thought about making other video game themed instruments?

H.S. We’re kicking around a few ideas….Keep an eye on our website!

BLAST: What do you see for the future of stlocarina.com?

H.S. I hope to see the company continue to grow and spread the art of ocarina playing!  We have come so far in such a short amount of time!  We are all dedicated to education, so when you buy an ocarina from us you are also gaining a support system to help you learn how to play the ocarina.  We are also excited about our ocarina trio and are hoping to be touring very soon.  This group aspires to promote the ocarina as well as world music.

BLAST: What kind of competition do you have, if any?

H.S. This year we will be holding our second annual International Ocarina Star Search Competition.  We had a lot of great entries last year and hope to have even more this year.  Contestants play one piece, chosen by STL, and one piece of their choice.  The winners get lots of great prizes including, ocarinas and the opportunity to perform and even record with us!

BLAST: What are you playing right now?

H.S. Currently I am working on a HEAP of Celtic music that the STL Ocarina Trio will be performing very soon.  I am also working on a few pieces for the triple ocarina including a piece called Farewell to Ireland.  I just finished recording Gerudo Valley from Ocarina of Time which can be heard on my YouTube channel.

BLAST: Are there any new instruments you are working on?

H.S. At the moment, we’re working on an exciting new model of plastic ocarina which should be available in October.  The great thing about this ocarina is that it’ll have a large range of notes and yet be very durable and affordable.

BLAST: What do you think is the reason for the ocarina’s popularity as an instrument?  Easy to play?  Easy to learn?

H.S. I think a large portion of the ocarina community is drawn to the instrument through the Zelda series.  However, those customers that begin by ordering a Zelda ocarina inevitably come back and order more and more ocarinas.  Collecting them is an enjoyment in itself.  Ocarinas have a very unique and beautiful sound that is different from any other instrument.  It is also fairly easy to learn.  Anyone could pick one up and be playing a song within minutes.  Ocarinas are great because you don’t have to know anything about music to get started.  You can also play lots of different types of music on ocarinas including classical, folk songs, Celtic, video game or movie music, and music from virtually any culture!  They also come in many different varieties, shapes, sizes and colors so there is always more than one perfect ocarina out there for everyone!

Besides the Legend of Zelda, I also enjoy playing music from many different video games as well as anime music.  I have a youtube channel where I record some of my favorites.  Please visit my Youtube page to check it out.

Byline: Heather is a flutist currently earning her master’s degree in flute performance. She is also a masterful performer of the ocarina. The pocket-sized wind instrument with ancient roots is gaining popularity thanks to its connection with the video game, “The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.” Heather, 23 and recently engaged, is a native of St. Louis. Her father was a band teacher and encouraged her interest in music. Her hobbies include swimming, kneeboarding and water skiing and playing the flute and ocarina.

The difference between MvC2 and many other fighters, like Soul Calibur IV or Tekken or Virtua Fighter (there are many), is that each player is allowed to pick three characters for each fight.  Once you’ve selected your characters and their assist type, which means that with the tap of the left bumper or the right bumper another character you’ve chosen who isn’t on the screen fighting at the time will jump in and shoot something or heal you or grab your opponent and jump back out, the battles ensue.

The combat is fast and frantic, but with only four main buttons:  Low Punch, High Punch, Low Kick, High Kick, and the two assists, the battles are all about button combinations and timing.  By offering players the ability to select three characters, the variety in teams is wide.  Even the best players can be beaten if they pick an un-unified team whose assists don’t work well with their move set.

If you’ve missed the jazzy theme song that guides players through the game, you’re in luck.  The song still sings above all of the action in the game, on repeat, which will probably grow on your nerves after the 10^th “I wanna take you for a ride.”  I can’t complain, the song is nostalgic and something fans of the game have to deal with.

The display options offer to pretty up the game and smooth out some of the pixels, but if you’re a purist and insist on playing MvC2 in it’s original pixilated form, the option is also available.

The real charm of the whole purchase is in the online play.  With Ranked and Player matches of up to six players with four spectators per round and minimal lag, the throwback fun of standing around an arcade cabinet while you wait your turn returns.  There’s nothing like basking in the smell of teenagers sweating around a machine in a dimly lit room, but MvC2’s online play is still incredibly fun.

Fingers crossed for some downloadable content for this package.  Although all fifty six characters have six costumes, some more wouldn’t hurt.  Some new levels and characters (a new theme song?) would surely help keep MvC2 at the top of gamer’s minds in terms of fighting games.  As is, the package is no different than the Dreamcast version, excluding online play.  But that’s good enough for me.

Blast Factor: A classic fighter, with everything unlocked from the beginning, now available on Xbox Live Arcade with the online play that never made it over from the original Japanese release. If you loved it before, get it, but if you’re new to the series, be sure to give this a shot.

Marvel vs. Capcom 2 is available on XBLA, as part of the Summer of Arcade, for 1200 Microsoft Points.

Bonnaroo is a seven year music festival staple. Many notable musical acts of the past decades (Radiohead, Bob Dylan, The Police, etc.) grace the stages of Bonnaroo. But what really sets it apart is the atmosphere.

I managed to buy my own ticket to this year’s festival. I’ll do my best to relay the scene.

Thursday

The car ride in takes 12 hours, eight of which are spent sitting in a long line of cars playing stop-and-go on back roads around Manchester, the town where the festival is held each year. With the line of cars reaching past my line of sight, it is hard to tell if there will ever be any relief from the relentless heat and sunshine over Tennessee.

I don’t know the cause of all the traffic. I heard at a gas station earlier that Bonnaroo had improved the flow of traffic this year, surprisingly, so you can imagine the sighs I let out when four hours of brake pumping traffic next to cornfields lead into five hours and six hours and so on.

My friend and I climb out of our car and walk the long line of vehicles. Most of the people we pass doing the same thing as us are as friendly and diverse as I had hoped. At least all the walking and pointing and pissing is eventually going to lead to something. A camp site, a map, and a show.

The traffic let us into Bonnaroo, and after we pass the people pointing at the sky calling for one more ticket so that they can enter the festival with the rest, we get into a campsite. The traffic caused me to miss early acts like Chairlift and White Rabbits. I hear from a friend before we put a tent together that Delta Spirit, a band scheduled to play around 7:30 p.m. (it is 11:00 p.m.) is delayed due to traffic and… weather and wouldn’t be playing until 12:30 tonight.

On cue with our escape from the car came a downpour of rain for the remainder of Thursday. The festival is a mess of cold and hungry and irritated attendees who just have the misfortune of being unable to control their situation and yet the show tents are still full of people and people were still dancing and having a good time.

Before Delta Spirit takes the stage, Passion Pit plays a dance-fueled synthesizer romp filled with all the energy they’ve been talked up for having. The crowd gets into the simple drum beats and the passionate screams of lead singer Michael Angelakos.

I catch Delta Spirit that night before heading back to the damp campsite. Matt Vasquez sings deep and scratchy soul music for the attendees who manage to stick it out even though the rain isn’t letting up. You have to give it to Delta Spirit for playing through all the mess and Ode To Sunshine couldn’t play against a more contrasting background.

Friday

The couple next door to our campsite are laughing and squawking about Passion Pit and about the sun and about the rain. It’s 6:30 a.m. I’m up. The tent two rows down has a naked bald man walking back and forth stretching and sipping on a bottle of water. We pack up our gear and begin the long, maybe two mile trek, to Centeroo, the main location for all the events at Bonnaroo — excluding Shakedown Street — where independent vendors of all shapes and sizes try their best to catch people before they make it to the stages. Past the porta-potties and the water trucks are protesters and the buzz of four-wheeled taxis.

Inside of Centeroo I make my way to That Tent, a tent that has been curated by David Byrne and has the Dirty Projectors playing later in the day. By noon the band Katzenjammer takes the stage. They infuse the whole tent with this pseudo chipmunk pop rock energy that doesn’t happen too often. They’re a European band of four girls who alternate instruments every song or every couple songs. I have to give it to them for committing so much to their own music that even when they’re performance sounded silly from all the high-pitched singing, they are still having more, if not the most fun, out of anyone I have seen so far.

At 1:30 p.m. David Longstreth and crew (The Dirty Projectors) take the stage. On the heals of their latest release, Bitte Orca!, Dirty Projectors rock the tent like I hoped they would. Songs like “Stillness is the Move,” sung by the lovely Amber Coffman, really shine. With volleyballs bouncing around the stage, fans of the band eagerly anticipate the arrival of David Byrne, the man who put together the events on That Stage as well as a collaboration with Dirty Projectors on the compilation CD “Dark Was The Night,” for a song called, “Knotty Pine.” Without hesitation Longstreth announces that “his friend David,” is joining them for their last song. With Byrne, as well as the rest of the Projectors on stage, the audience is in awe of how good the band sounds and of how much fun everyone is having.

After the Dirty Projectors I walk over to the Which Stage (you see, at Bonnaroo all of the stages have names that are clever and almost make you wonder if someone is listing a location or asking a question). The list goes from biggest to smallest with the What Stage, Which Stage, This Tent, That Tent and The Other Tent. Over at the Which Stage, Animal Collective is preparing to play to a huge crowd. It’s the largest crowd I have seen at Bonnaroo this year. Getting up close to catch Animal Collective singing songs like “My Girls,” off of “Merriweather Post Pavilion,” is a stretch considering the ground in front of the stage is so packed tight. At 2:45 p.m. Animal Collective begins their set with “Lion in a Coma,” off of MPP, and the crowd screams as the band breaks into their hour and fifteen minute set.

The audience pulses with Animal Collective and the sun comes out even brighter. Bonnaroo put all of the rain and the traffic behind it and walks forward until 5:00 p.m., when Grizzly Bear plays on This Tent.

Before Grizzly Bear takes the stage I climb up on top of a mound of dirt. The night before — remember all the rain? — well This Tent got flooded. In order to compensate, the kind people that run Bonnaroo piled mounds and mounds of dirt under stages that were flooded to help dry it out and it just happens that a giant mound of dirt sits in the back right hand corner of the tent. My friends and I climb on top of this mound and have the best seat in the house.

Grizzly Bear is late to take the stage. During the time when they are supposed to play and the time that they actually begin playing, things don’t look so bright for awhile. Fifteen minutes after their showtime Daniel Rossen flies into a guitar loud rendition of “Southern Point,” from “Veckatimest,” their latest CD. After the first song the band worked itself into their impressive set list giving the crowd what they want. With songs like “Little Brother,” and “Knife,” “Veckatimest” isn’t the only work Grizzly Bear has done that is worth talking about. After an hour Grizzly Bear begins to rap it up and Chris Bear asks, “Who’s all going to see Phish?” and the crowd roars and Grizzly Bear finishes their set with grace.

TV on the Radio and the Beastie Boys are on my list, so after Grizzly Bear closes their set I walk over to the Which Stage where TV on the Radio plays to a crowd as big, if not bigger, than Animal Collective’s. They sound amazing from the tent and Kyp Malone and crew play a set list ranging from “Staring at the Sun” to “Dancing Choose” and the crowd can’t be happier with the selection.

After TV on the Radio I walk over to the What Stage, the main stage where Phish and Bruce Springstein and Wilco are all going to play, and prepare for the Beastie Boys set. The crowd at What Stage is so large the musicians on stage must be in awe of how many people they can call their fans. Already the crowd reaches the back of the field yet more people keep piling in. Lines are made through the seated concert-goers so that those just arriving can cross their fingers and dive into a pile of people, hoping to find a clear spot where they can rest their feet on a blanket. Or dance.

On time with everything, the Beastie Boys take the stage and ask Bonnaroo what is up. It’s only a matter of time before the crowd is bouncing to Beastie Boys. Special guest Nas takes the stage with the Beastie Boys and announces that they’re collaborating for an album coming out soon. “Motherfuckin’ Bonnaro” is the in-between-song banter as the band rocks the stage.

Saturday

Hot and sunny and 8:45 a.m. I brush my teeth from water at a water station next to some porta-potties and then we make our way to Centeroo to catch Elvis Perkins in Dearland. I see graffiti on the walls outside of Centeroo are littered with even more artwork and it appears as if the momentum of the festival is still moving forward. People are starting to get used to the environment and it’s been two days so that makes sense.

Some people hope that Bonnaroo never takes itself down. But it has to in two days, so I make my way to This Tent, where Perkins is taking the stage to play a breezy set before Robyn Hitchcock and Bon Iver. When Perkins does appear on stage his hair is long and his face is cleanly shaven. He sings through a series of newer songs from his record with “in Dearland” and then he plays through older songs like “While You Were Sleeping” and “May Day” and the crowd really gets into it. Closer towards the end of his set he calls out for Jenny Conlee, keyboardist for The Decemberists, to come take the stage but she’s nowhere to be found. Perkins blames it on her “beauty sleep,” and continues to play until he calls on Bon Iver to close out his set with him. The sound is great and the energy on stage beckons everyone in the audience to move along with the music.

Hitchcock ends his set at 3:00 p.m. and Bon Iver takes over at 3:30. Bon Iver plays to the crowd and the crowd loves it. I hear that his concert makes numerous people cry and I don’t doubt it. He’s has a way with lyrics and sound, and live, the band sounds great. He closes out the set with the guys from “in Dearland,” coming out to play a Yo La Tengo cover followed by a sing-along for both the bands.

The show that stole a lot of my attention on Saturday comes from a little band called of Montreal. You may have heard of them, but if you haven’t, then you should. Their show, which was a monstrosity of color and energy and excitement, was one to be remembered. I don’t say that very often. What I mean is that when I see Kevin Barnes, lead singer of the band take the stage and start dancing around to songs from his latest, “Skeletal Lamping,” as well as songs from “Hissing Fauna” and “Are You The Destroyer?” the whole crowd bounces with him.

The icing on the cake of this show is the finale. Barnes and crew launch into a loud guitar solo which then follows suit like a majority of songs on “Skeletal Lamping,” where, at any given moment, you could feel like you’re having the worst trip you could ever have, Barnes grabs his guitar by the neck and smashes it into the stage. The guitarist with wings, Bryan Poole, tosses his guitar up above his head and it spins and he catches it, only to then smash it alongside Barnes in a passionate display of destruction.

After Barnes smashes his guitar he then smashes the mic stand into the stage a few times before turning around and diving into the drum set. After a couple minutes lying on the ground behind the set, he stands back up, and dives into the crowd to surf until the song eventually ends.

The What stage is packed with people eager to get a good seat for Bruce Springstein as well as to rock along with live renditions of Wilco’s “Impossible Germany.” Jeff Tweedy travels his discography, playing songs as a hot air balloon floats by in the background, as Tweedy comments on the smell in the air. Tweedy, smiling from ear to ear, looks grateful to be standing in front of all these people.

Sunday

Sunday afternoon Ted Leo & The Pharmacists play a good set. Showcasing a few new songs like “Even Heroes Have To Die” just after a couple hits from “Shake the Sheets” was a nice treat to what Ted Leo does well, which is writing rock with punk lyrics.

But the real send off for the whole festival comes from Andrew Bird’s set on the Which Tent at 4:15 that afternoon. Playing a good variety of “Noble Beast” and “The Mysterious Production of Eggs” keeps the audience involved through the loud noise of another band playing on the stage directly opposite his own. Whenever Andrew plays he plays it loud and well and the quality of the sound drowns out any other noise as Andrew Bird remarks about how Bonnaroo is his favorite of all the festivals and everything else.

But, before I cut out on the whole festival, missing Phish at the end of the day for more reasons than one (mainly traffic and exhaustion) I get a glimpse of Snoop Dogg as he arrives fashionably late to a huge crowd of people where sing-alongs and “hell yeahs,” were thrown out for an hour and a half.

It was a fitting send off to a festival all about sing-alongs and “hell yeahs,” because at Bonnaroo, everything goes.

Video game technology is always progressing therefore the actors behind the rolls of our favorite characters have to grow and adapt to the volatile video game world.  What unites MoCap (Motion Capture) actors like Reuben Langdon with any other actor is their commitment to the role.  Like any screen or television actor, they have to inhabit the skin of the characters they’re playing.  “For RE5 and many of the games we (Just Cause Productions) have done with Capcom we do a process which is called Video Storyboarding where we pretty much make a mini low budget movie of what the final product is going to be,” Langdon continues, “For RE5 we actually got into wardrobe and shot all the Video Storyboards on a Green Screen. It is great because for the actors it’s a full on dress rehearsal, allowing them to really get a grab of the character. For the Director and Producers it’s a chance for them to go through the whole thing and see what will work and won’t.”

Motion capture technology isn’t perfect.  If you’ve played any video games with camera focus on the face of a character, you’re lucky to believe they are actually talking.  Most of the time it looks like two noodles bumping into each other until the camera angle changes.  Langdon doesn’t doubt that this type of acting will improve dramatically in the future.  “I think as computer power gets higher so will the capture technology and the need to capture more details. Now, especially with games, you can capture everything that is needed.”

Langdon isn’t a newbie to the scene either.  His work as Dante in Devil May Cry made Dante as iconic as the game itself.  Much like a cartoon voice actor, Langdon can play completely different parts without the audience knowing.  “Dante is of course way over the top and the world he is in allows for some crazy things to happen. Not to say that Chris’ world is not over the top and crazy, just that with Chris everything was more grounded and subtle. I tried to keep it as real as possible with Chris where everything around him was crazy. With Dante, most of the time he was the crazy goof ball just going around enjoying his crazy world. Does that make sense?”

Before you crack open another blockbuster hit, take a moment and imagine the amount of time an effort the actors put into modeling the character(s) that you’re playing with.  When asked what his favorite video game is, Reuben said, “Street Fighter 4 rocks! Not just because I’m Ken Master either…though he is my favorite character.”  Maybe he’s plugging his next role.

Reuben Langdon, along with motion capture acting, is working on a movie called Avatar, with James Cameron.  He also has a small cameo in a new Michael Cera movie called, “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.”

It was hot and sunny as Henry Splinter tossed a ball up into the air.  It was way up there, yardsticks high.  The audience sat comfortably tan or flushed in the face.  There were couplets of attendees fanning themselves with conversations until the umpire quieted them.  The umpire sat on the edge of the court with an umbrella and bottled water and watched Henry with desperation.  After all, the umpire’s job depended on Henry; well, it depended on every tennis player, but most importantly on Henry at that moment.  The ball boys and girls were all where they needed to be and there were white lines framing action.  Henry knew he had to do something to the ball floating above his head.  His body was already arched; his arm drawn back and his feet ready to lift themselves off the ground. One swift overhand slam shot the ball towards the net.  It was too close.  The umpire raised his voice and called “Let,” as the neon ball slapped the top of the net.

Henry paced at the baseline and waited for his opponent to ready.  The tennis ball sprang back up from the ground and he watched his opponent shuffle around his own baseline in navy blue shorts that swayed in unison with his body and the rare breeze that rushed from the top of the arena down into the faces of the crowd.  There was sweat on his brow, it was shiny, and depending on the angle of his head you couldn’t see his face.  When Henry did catch a glimpse at it, his eyes were darting left to right at the crowd around him.

Henry’s opponent wiped his brow and readied himself; knees bent like arrowheads, and squinted between the sun and the court at Henry.  Henry tossed the ball up again, high above his head, his body arched and his feet left the ground, slamming the ball over the net.  He was quick to ready himself after the serve. His coach always reminded him to be ready for a return no matter how much better you think you are.  Henry didn’t like that he was thinking about his coach right then. It distracted him, and when his opponent returned his serve he almost didn’t have time to set his body up for a strong, two handed backhand.  The thought of losing a match today frightened Henry.  Just a couple years ago he was ranked third in the world, on the court that day he ranked somewhere in the twenties and found himself caught by an unranked African at what Henry thought was the end of his match.

Henry faced the left side of the court; his whole body faced that side, and stepped into the return quickly.  The top spin he applied to the tennis ball he prided himself on.  He managed to do that with a backhand every time and most other players couldn’t handle it.  When he first made a name for himself two years ago on a misty grass court in the dead of summer, he knocked the number two ranked player, Leonardo Sandal, a man not unlike every other skilled tennis player out in a quarterfinal bout at Wimbledon.  Henry only made it one step further.

He regained his footing on this desert colored clay court and the crowd gasped as his return made his opponent lunge.  Good, he thought, he won’t beat me.  Henry won that point and continued to win every point for the rest of the match.  He beat his opponent, Tsonga Djimbe, 6-3, 6-1, 6-0.  It was a clean sweep pretty much and the news broadcasters and the fans draped themselves over the guardrails of the stadium in an attempt to get Henry’s attention.  Two young Americans with red and white face paint waved an American flag up and down. Cameras in the stadium matched Henry and the American flag on all the oversized screens above the crowd.

On his way to the locker room a few people stood around handing out directions to anyone.  A twenty something man with a polo shirt and khakis and a camera around his neck stood with them.  He acknowledged Henry and smiled with everything but his eyes.  Henry wanted to ignore him but he flashed a bright white light at Henry and developed a picture for some paper somewhere.  Henry blinked rapidly and thought about breaking the camera.  Just a thought.  If he did anything, the inevitable lawsuits would put a strain on his bank account and he needed money.  His wife waited in the locker room.

#

In Henry’s awkwardly lit locker room were his wife, Melanie Splinter, and his niece Vanessa.  Melanie wore her brown hair in a ponytail, up in a pink visor, and had a natural tan about her. Henry knelt down and hugged his niece.

Henry spent a lot of time playing tennis because he loved it but the way his wife and niece dressed and acted.  It told Henry they didn’t feel the same way.  He loved the intensely intimate atmosphere of a duel between two people and when he hugged Vanessa it reminded him.  The amount of pressure on the tennis player’s shoulders gave him confidence; every success or mistake rested solely within himself.  He thought of people like his wife and niece who wore Polo shirts and khakis to these games; you know, those people who spent a significant amount of time buying merchandise rather than enjoying a good match.  They were just one big vampire, sucking all that was good out of it.

Henry was bitter and cynical, and some would say without cause.  In the locker room after his match, that was all that he was. His wife had begun to sigh as she watched him caught in a stupor.  His mind was completely detached from his body and she read it through the dullness of his eyes and face.

Six months ago Melanie started to notice the amount of time Henry spent just zoning out.  The first time she noticed it, he had been sitting in the living room with no television on, no radio, nothing, in a pair of pajama bottoms and his father’s beaten up posture.  He looked awake and he was breathing, but he sat like royalty.  Eyes straight ahead until somebody asked for them.  He snapped out of it a couple seconds after she put her purse down on the coffee table.  The same thing happened the next day.  This time he was sitting in the kitchen with a warm cup of coffee and an unfolded crossword puzzle hardly filled.

She thought he was depressed but Henry wasn’t only depressed.  He was distracted too.  Depression wasn’t something that Henry really needed to deal with or address.  Sure he was depressed, but that depression he always muffled with a pillow in the back of his mind.  Not to say that he never dealt with it, but he was stronger than it.  It all had to deal with spirit, for Henry.  If you’ve got enough spirit, he used to say, you’ll ace it every time.  Sometime around his peak, after he’d reached the highest point he was going to reach in his career, he started to lose spirit.

It hit him heavy one night after practicing for a few hours before his next tournament.  When he was twenty-three and finding his name on sports networks worldwide calling him the next Pete Sampras, he had it all.  He had everything he’d asked for as a child.  He had fame, health, a wife, a salary.  He rode that wave for as long as he could and he felt it slope downward once some new talent joined the circuit.  Once he lost.  He was never going to be that good again and it tore him apart.  He didn’t know how to replace what he’d lost; he wanted to get it back.  If it was something in particular, a technique, he’d fix it as quickly as he could.  But, it wasn’t any specific thing.  It was more like he’d lost a persona.  He’d lost that spirit of youth and confidence he’d once had in just about five years time, that fast.

In the green tiled locker room, where the fluorescent lights flickered from a bad electrical current, where Henry’s wife stood with all her weight on one leg and his niece squinted her eyes even harder than Henry did, he couldn’t take his eyes off Melanie.  She still had everything he’d lusted after when they first met.  Although her skin crinkled around her eyes a little more when she laughed and her body had filled with age.  When he could see her bra strap, it paved valleys in between her soft skin.  They were his, his little villages in between mountains, where he’d call himself mayor when his fingers dug under them.  She had some success in selling real estate around St. Louis and people still acted like she was something special.  Henry didn’t think he was good enough for her sometimes, or more that they both differed enough that he could never find himself committing as sincerely as some other people would whenever the two of them would go out to eat or have sex.

“That was a tough match, baby,” said Melanie.  Her tone wasn’t pleasant when she said baby.

“Huh . . .” Henry said.

“Don’t say too much at once,” Melanie said, resting one hand on her hip.

Her hips were already starting to look like her mother’s.  “What do you want me to say?  I’m tired.” He paused and looked up at the lights and shut his eyes tight.

“Well I thought you did great, Hank!” said Vanessa.  She smiled at Henry sitting slumped over with his elbow on his knee in a chair with his duffel bag and racquet next to him.  Henry smiled back.

“Don’t worry honey, he’s upset right now,” she said and winked at Vanessa, who smiled and asked if she could go.  Melanie told her she could wait outside.

Henry and Melanie had been taking care of Melanie’s niece for a few months now.  The child was sent to them as a last resort.  Melanie’s sister was the only other surviving member of her immediate family, and she wound up dead last May.  The coroner pronounced it as a heart attack . . . at thirty-three . . . Vanessa didn’t have anywhere else to live.  She told a policewoman about Melanie, and the next thing Henry knew they had something like a daughter.

“So, do you want to talk about this?”

I have never played the original Ready 2 Rumble, but I had heard it was a decent Dreamcast brawler.  Whenever I received this copy of R2R:  Revolution, I assumed it would be a solid boxing sequel to a franchise that already had experience in the fighting game genre.  With the motion censored controllers on the Wii, a boxing game seemed like an ideal candidate for the console.  Wii Sports did it already.  Every time I see someone playing the Wii they always look like they’re making left and right jabs when they are really just fishing or playing tennis or pretending to strum along on guitars.

From every angle, a Boxing game using motion censored controls (think MoCap Boxing) put on a home console should be a hit.

There are a myriad number of modes to pick from depending on how you want to play R2R:  Revolution from the start.  The arcade mode and the training modes are where you’re likely to spend most of your time.  But the arcade mode won’t be as rewarding as you’d expect it to be.  Instead of the gradual progression of weaker to stronger enemies, almost all the boxers are equally difficult to fight.  And by difficult, I mean nearly impossible to beat.

The tutorial at the start of the game isn’t as thorough as it should be.  While it does show you how to specifically do all the moves available to every boxer, the fact that it takes at least three or four tries just to shake the Wii-mote in several directions to land any blow better than a jab is difficult.  It may be the sensor on the Wii, but the moves are so hard to pull off that after a few matches, the enemies won’t be lenient by letting you attempt to dodge an attack two or three times only to accidentally throw a right or left jab, and instead the cpu will pummel you to death without hesitation.

Even when I set the difficulty down to the easiest level, I had to ask a friend of mine to help me beat the game.

All of the characters are satirical representations of celebrates.  Simon Cowl and Sylvester Stalone and David Beckham all make appearances alongside other celebrities.  All of the characters have different pluses and minuses.  Some characters have higher amounts of speed at the sacrifice of power.  Others have the opposite.  But what all this really means is that you can’t swing relentlessly throughout a bout due to a meter of energy that each boxer has.  The meter is good; it helps to vary the pacing of the bout so you can tell who’s got skill and who doesn’t.  But almost all the skill in R2R:  Revolution is based in luck.  If the game doesn’t recognize the way in which you shake the Wii-mote and nunchuck, you’re probably going to be pummeled.

That occurs to often causing confusion and defeat.  Even on the easiest difficulty, I had to plug a good half-hour into it just to beat the game.  And on top of that, winning doesn’t even feel that good because I was never sure if I won or just got lucky.

The character creation is a little silly and it is incredibly difficult to increase the skills of the characters you have created.  The clothing items are dull and don’t show me that the creators of the game really cared about that section.  The game has a cartoony vibe where all the characters are silly and nasty, like Ren & Stimpy but not as good.

Each character has a special move that they can only utilize when they’ve filled up their Rumble meter at the top of the screen.  There are a few ways to fill this meter up.  Either through silly taunting or by dodging/ducking/weaving your opponents attacks.  Once the meter is filled and you activate it, the round will inevitably take a pause due to the fact that after three successful swings, you will for sure knock your opponent to the ground.  Then they’ll have to frantically shake the controller up and down to get up.  The fact that this is so predictable, it becomes more of a fight of who can keep the opponent from filling up their bar.

Ready 2 Rumble:  Revolution is an overall disappointing attempt at creating a Wii boxing game due to the fact that the characters are unoriginal, the controls are based on luck, and the game is far to difficult (which is in parts due to the awful controls).  I don’t know who Atari planned on marketing this game for, but it surely isn’t anyone who likes to play video games.  I recommend they rethink this approach, make it easier and more responsive, and eliminate the silly character design.

But, past all of that, the power meter is a good inclusion to a boxing game.  None of that relentless punching.  And the game is hard, so if you like a challenge that you can’t really improve upon but merely become better at randomly flailing the controller around, this game is for you.

It’s still a fun game to play.  Whether you’re playing through the game by yourself or with a friend, it’s still fun.  A few things have changed however.  Firstly, the fact that you have a partner apparently revolutionizes the way you play Resident Evil.  If you remember Resident Evil 0, where you play through the game as the medic from the original Resident Evil, Rebecca, and her ex convict friend Billy, who fight their way through a train, then you’ve played computer co-operative Resident Evil.

As if Capcom thought their first attempt at co-op was a failure, or wasn’t as fun as they would have liked, they brought it back (Leon Kennedy RE4, solo).  Now, considering this is a next-gen video game, the A.I. of Sheva throughout the game is better, and I emphasize better, than any computer controlled character to ever be featured in a Resident Evil game.  It’s not perfect.  She still has a tendency to stand in the wrong place at the wrong time, or just expel all of her ammo without even taking into consideration that she might need to save it.  She may have a knack for finding herself trapped in situations that you are not in, and that you, being the human player, must then turn around and fight your way through hordes of enemies just to progress further in the game.  I guess that’s the game trying to imitate the experience of playing with another player but if you’ve even got one friend who’s played Resident Evil before, it will be easier.

By lacking the ability to replicate A.I. that you can feel safe with, the combat becomes more of a, “HELP ME!” tap B to save, affair.  It’s much harder to manage two inventories, to delegate who opens what, due to the fact that the combat is so intense, opening the inventory mid battle can become more of a hindrance than a benefit.  The inventory system is accessed through tapping Y, but it doesn’t pause the game. If your partner runs out of ammo in a town where your mission is to outlast a horde of the infected, good luck getting out alive.

The weapons are well polished and easy to use.  Weapons like the proximity mine add some variety to the combat.  Upgrading is a must but with the ability to continually purchase newer handguns even though I’ve been upgrading another one teases me.

Besides having to baby-sit when you’re playing by yourself, RE5 does have some redeeming qualities.  The graphics are polished, everything from Chris’ uncomfortably muscular body to the facial expressions of the boss as he talks his plan (Wesker from Resident Evil), all look pretty fluid and realistic.  The game play itself, the aiming and shooting, the melee combat, the knife, is all fun.  In RE5, the melee combat system gets an overhaul.  Now each character has options for how they wish to pummel their enemy.

However, Chris and Sheva can’t just pummel any enemy.  New monsters like the Executioner, a monster wielding a bladed sledgehammer spice up the combat.  The return of the Licker was a nice inclusion.  The Licker seems like a close relative to another new monster, the Reaper, who has an irritating way of one hit killing both Chris and Sheva whenever they’re near.  It’s best to just run past them, and get away.  Otherwise, get used to having about seven total bullets for most of the game.  But, you should already know that you can’t kill all of them.

Quick-time events are strewn throughout the cut scenes to keep the player involved.  It’s a good way to maintain attention.  But wait, shouldn’t my attention always be towards the game because it’s completely entertaining and interesting?  Shouldn’t I be able to play through the game and understand the story completely, understand why there are mutated Africans attacking my character and his friends?

You’d think they might have taken that into consideration, you know, the story and the dialogue.  However, from the first mission it is clear that the developers didn’t want to distract gamers with a story.  Forget empathy, forget even sympathy, here is some formulaic dialogue.  A character I used to think was a pretty good protagonist, Chris, becomes a variable to an equation.  Instead of having him do what any rational person would do and assess the situation he’s throwing himself into (mutations, rival, love, safety, just to name a few), he blindly runs through hordes of mutated things for another Resident Evil character, Jill.  You see, they were partners.  And partners never ditch each other, right?  Yeah.  Totally.  Real people never do that.  So he instead runs through the game spitting phrases like, “Let’s do this together,” and “we’re partners, together until the end.”  The entire time I was playing, I expected that at the end Chris and Jill would fall in love or something, or Chris and Sheva.  Instead, he says almost absolutely nothing after he saves her and just stares at her.  I don’t know how that comes across to you, but to me that is creepy and cheap, they could have developed their story more.  Not only is that formulaic but by the end, Chris hasn’t changed at all.

The approach to the story is boring and I had to wake up a friend of mine who dozed off listening to Chris make his way through the game twice.  The only character worth anything is Wesker, the villain.  The actor playing his voice put a little effort into it.  The dialogue I can’t fault him for, considering it’s just a rehash of every other game about fighting super powerful bad guys who mutate into monsters.  When is the archetypal villain who is out for global domination going to lose its appeal?

While the primary story involves a friend in search of a friend (yay!), the setting is created by the development of a new virus.  This virus infects people and mutates them.  Instead of zombies, because that’s apparently not scary enough, Chris and Sheva have to fight aggressive Africans whose faces mutate when they try and eat you but otherwise are mostly black and have weapons like flaming crossbows.  Some of the scenes were over-the-top, like the motorcycle battle.  Yeah, that’s cool.  But, I’ve played Gears of War before; I’ve fought that battle before.  I want some horror, some survival.

The boss fights range from aim and shoot to an endurance contest.  Turret battles with various monsters are too easy.  And, the fact that they are extremely mutated does two things.  Firstly, it makes the battle more epic.  The size and the grotesqueness of the creatures attempt to intimidate the player.  Secondly, it changes the genre of the game.  If you wanted survival horror you’re looking in the wrong place.

Previous Resident Evil games used zombies and the psychological connection that the characters themselves could turn if bitten as an important part of the game.  Not only did numerous protagonists throughout the franchise have to pump bullets into zombies, but those zombies could be and/or are their friends.  Instead, by the absurd amount of tentacles and blood and teeth, RE5 has the opposite affect.  The gamer is detached from the idea that they are to be afraid of the monsters and instead are reimbursed with confidence (weapons and ammo and combat).  You can look at this as the shift from Survival Horror to Action Adventure.

Aside from that, the Mercenaries mini game is still fresh.  With the ability to play it with a friend and a larger selection of characters I had more fun playing it than anything else.  The online aspect is good, and I’m hopeful that they allow downloadable characters (Barry Burton please), as well as stages.  But, if you’re a fan of Resident Evil, especially Resident Evil 4, you won’t find much of it in this package; just the game play and the universe.

I was eating hot air when mom told me we were out of gas.  I didn’t like that she included me, I wasn’t out of gas.  She neglected to buy gas in the last town we had passed through, that’s why our car came to a sputter halt on U.S. Historic Route 66.  Hell, I was downright pissed that we were here.  It was hot, I wanted to be somewhere else, and mom had been regurgitating her failing relationship with my father for the past two days so much so that I couldn’t stand sitting in this beat up station wagon anymore.

“So?” I said.

“So. . . we’re stranded in the middle of nowhere, it’s hot, I’m grouchy, and-”

“Just shut up Mom, you put us here.”

“Don’t talk to me like that.  You wouldn’t be anywhere without me.  Now help me find my phone, I should be able to call someone to help us out.”

I crossed my arms as she got out of the car.  This 1987 station wagon was a joke.  It’s the year 2005 and she’s still driving her dad’s car.  It was two years ago today that she got the keys to it.  Her father passed away hiking up Mt. Pilatus in Switzerland, he slipped on a rock, and when she met with the rest of her family to receive his will all he left her was a set of car keys and some memories.  This thing has over 100,000 miles on it and guzzles gas like a champ.  The engine coughed like someone with emphysema every time we started it up and the metal surrounding the radio kept me from tampering with it.  It heated up fast in the sunlight.  The tires reeked of use and as nice as wood paneling goes for the color of a car, it’s time had passed.

I watched mom shuffle through her purse in the backseat, her expression of desperation faded when her fingers rubbed against the familiar grooves of her cell phone.  The leather on the seat had started to boil my skin.  I was used to the heat by now, even the way the leather grabbed onto my skin, but the metal on my seatbelt made me hiss as I feigned interest at her.  We couldn’t get reception out here.  Satellites don’t care about us.

“Found it!” she exclaimed.

“Great. . .”

After about fifteen minutes of fidgeting with her phone she gave up.  I’d begun to watch the road through the passenger’s side rearview mirror.  I watched the wavering heat rise from the pavement and listened to the wind tickle my ears.  She said something about her phone not working.  She decided that our only plan of action was to hitchhike to a gas station.  My tennis shoes hadn’t seen a good walk in a while and I was glad to get away from this old, four-wheeled cocoon, plastered with images of my father and mother’s failure.

I got out of the wagon, opened the backseat door, it took two pulls of the handle to get the door open, and grabbed my duffle bag.  It was a heavy log with a strap attached.  Mom was struggling with her three suitcases and oversized purse when I walked around the back of the car and grabbed one of them for her.  They all matched, had jewel encrusted initials on the top, S.K.O., and shined like wasted money.  But the worst part about them was the fact that they weren’t even very big.  The suitcases were small and cute and matched and that negated the idea of a suitcase in the first place.  A suitcase should be practical and carry as much as possible without breaking bones instead of being cute and impressive to people who don’t travel.

It took us a couple hours of walking through the heat before we took a break.  I finally agreed with her when I couldn’t take her whining anymore.  She’d been telling me to take a break every fifteen minutes with excuses ranging from, “My feet hurt,” to “I feel like I’m about to die,” and my nerves were bound to concede.  That and the fact that my clothes were plastered to my skin, my hair was drenched, and this damn suitcase was killing my arm were about all I could handle.  We found a few large boulders off to the right of the highway and sat near them, flirting with shade.

“What’s in those suitcases, anyways?”

“Nothing really,” she tugs at her shirt and straightens her shorts out, “just some clothes and stuff.,,”  She lights the cigarette.  “It’s important to me.  You wouldn’t want me to throw away all of you comic books because they were too heavy would you?”

“No, but I didn’t bring all of my comic books on a trip across the country, now did I?”

She didn’t respond.

I watched the cigarette smoke leave her lungs and wondered how that could offer her any relief.  She’s filling her body up with something from outside for just a couple seconds and for what?   Satisfaction?  You can’t be satisfied this way.  Relief is nice, but temporary relief should not be a goal.  We human beings should try and obtain permanent relief and as much as we want to take a drag from a cigarette permanently that just can’t happen, well it could I guess, but those people would smell horrible and die in a couple years.

Watching her sit there with her cigarette in her mouth made me feel the heat even more.  It was a stupid idea to travel across the country in the middle of the summer.  It made sense to vacation to the south in the winter time; cold hurts because the spring and summer make use forget about it, but huffing across the country when I should be back at home playing video games and smoking pot made me boil.

Her oversized glasses, her obviously dyed brown hair lightly framing her sweat profile, and her consciously slumped posture under the shade of the rocks made me despise her.  I don’t know why she got to me so much when we first took a break; I think it was my arm.  The muscles in my arm were fighting each other and it felt like both sides were losing.  The pain from carrying the largest of the cute suitcases for a couple hours was catching up to me and venting on her was the best I could do to alleviate myself.  But who was she feeling?  I was the only one around for the next 20 miles or so and she was acting like at any moment some mechanic with broad shoulders would appear out of thin air and whisk her off her feet.

Check out the complete list below and check out as many of this year’s nominations as you can before next years list starts moving in.

For more information about the Game Developers Choice Awards, check out www.gamechoiceawards.com.

The complete list of nominees is:

Best Game Design
Far Cry 2 (Ubisoft Montreal)
Braid (Number None)
Fallout 3 (Bethesda Game Studios)
Left 4 Dead (Valve Software)
LittleBigPlanet (Media Molecule)

Best Visual Art
Fallout 3 (Bethesda Game Studios)
Metal Gear Solid 4 (Kojima Productions)
Prince Of Persia (Ubisoft Montreal)
LittleBigPlanet (Media Molecule)
Gears Of War 2 (Epic Games)

Best Technology
Spore (Maxis)
Grand Theft Auto IV (Rockstar North)
Left 4 Dead (Valve Software)
LittleBigPlanet (Media Molecule)
Gears Of War 2 (Epic Games)

Best Writing
Far Cry 2 (Ubisoft Montreal)
Braid  (Number None)
Fallout 3 (Bethesda Game Studios)
Grand Theft Auto IV (Rockstar North)
Metal Gear Solid 4 (Kojima Productions)

Best Audio
Dead Space (EA Redwood Shores)
LittleBigPlanet (Media Molecule)
Metal Gear Solid 4 (Kojima Productions)
Left 4 Dead (Valve Software)
Gears Of War 2 (Epic Games)

Best Debut
Braid (Number None)
Sins Of A Solar Empire (Ironclad Games)
LittleBigPlanet (Media Molecule)
World Of Goo (2D Boy)
Soul Bubbles (Mekensleep)

Innovation
Spore (Maxis)
World Of Goo (2D Boy)
Boom Blox (EA Los Angeles)
Braid (Number None)
LittleBigPlanet (Media Molecule)

Best Handheld
Patapon (Pyramid/SCE Japan)
Advance Wars: Days Of Ruin (Intelligent Systems)
God Of War: Chains Of Olympus (Ready At Dawn Studios)
Echochrome (SCE Japan)
The World Ends With You (Jupiter/Square Enix)

Best Downloadable Game
Castle Crashers (The Behemoth)
Braid (Number None)
World Of Goo (2D Boy)
N+ (Metanet/Slick Entertainment)
Pixeljunk Eden (Q-Games)

Game of the Year
Fable 2 (Lionhead Studios)
LittleBigPlanet (Media Molecule)
Fallout 3 (Bethesda Game Studios)
Left 4 Dead (Valve Software)
Grand Theft Auto IV (Rockstar North)

A tongue flies from the woods and grabs a hold of a scruffy biker running next to me.  Like clockwork, the rest of us aim our weapons at the tongue and free our friend. The battle isn’t over. In the background I spot an agile zombie leaping obstacles in an attempt to catch up to us. The number of undead creatures chasing us is growing, and our weapons don’t have enough bullets to stop them all.  
At least not right now.

Suddenly I’m splashed with blinding green slime. While I panic, my comrades try their best to keep us moving while fighting off the now exponentially more aggressive zombies who’ve got a craving for someone covered in slime and running for dear life.  I take too much damage.  I’m at my last stand, on my back with a pistol taking as many shots as I can at the relentless horde, when a booming howl echoes over the rest of the noise. That can’t be good.

Taking care not to disappoint, within a matter of seconds everyone, excluding my crippled self, is split up in a desperate attempt to avoid that howl. The noise is coming from an oversized monster that travels two times as fast as everything else my teammates and I have seen and it catches my eye as it launches a large slab of pavement in my direction. I die. The other three with me split up, attempting to find safety, but are killed within’ a matter of minutes.

Welcome to Valve’s Left 4 Dead, the four player zombie survival game that runs on the Source engine, (made famous by Half-Life and Counterstrike) with polished gusto and rests its motto on the idea that no one should travel alone. Teamwork is everything.

Ever since the introduction of zombie video games like Resident Evil, fans of Zombie Apocalypse scenarios have been hankering for a co-operative experience. However, if you like the slow paced horror feel of a game like Resident Evil, where the camera angles, lighting, music and sound effects all create this eerie, “I’m unprepared,” feeling that delivers a sense of accomplishment when you complete the game, you’ll probably detest Left 4 Dead initially.

L4D takes a different approach. Four characters are equipped with minimal weapons (Shotgun, Assault Rifle, Uzi, Auto-Shotgun, Hunting Rifle, or Pistol) and grenades in what some people would call, “zombie mayhem.”  L4D differs due to the fact that the game itself rips strategy and control out of the player’s hands and instead puts the control in the hands of the zombies themselves.

This means that, while four people can control their characters and how well they can kill zombies, they cannot predict how many zombies will be attacking them at once, nor can they control when boss zombies appear.  Valve has prided themselves on the idea that the enemies in the game spawn randomly every time. By doing this, each level is different each time you play it.

When learning the game, Call of Duty: World at War, was being developed by Treyarch (who previously produced the laughably stale, unbelievable mediocre Call of Duty 3), I thought it had to be more of the same. With the Call of Duty series being co-developed by Infinity Ward (the brilliant minds behind games like Medal of Honor: Allied Assault), and Treyarch, switching off every other game in theory sounded like a breath of fresh air, but in reality, it meant every other Call of Duty game would be good from this point on. In short — Infinity War made good games, Treyarch made bad ones.

Until devoting a good half week to plowing through CoD: WaW, I was sure that this would be the case. It would be more of the, “I take myself way too serious. Games are an art form and this is art,” type of nonsense, where the dialogue is far too cheesy and far too serious for me to do anything but scoff at the interactions between the blatantly unoriginal protagonist and his stock crew of rag tag warriors. But after busting through the single player and enjoying the fact that Nazi Zombies, a game mode involving four players in a two story building who must fend off wave after wave of progressively stronger zombies, as well as logging plenty of hours into the solid multiplayer mode, I was proven wrong.

CoD: WaW does take itself too seriously. That hasn’t changed; the single player campaign involves two different perspectives during World War II, one from the perspective of a Russian soldier who unbelievably survives multiple near death experiences, and the other perspective is from one of the most generic American soldiers in his trek through Japan. Both characters are surrounded by stock dialogue and characters. The only exception to the monotony that is dialogue in most war games, and especially any war game created by Treyarch, is the inclusion of Kiefer Sutherland as a voice actor for a sergeant in the American campaigns platoon. He offers a little bit of variety in terms of expectations but that is all, his lines are still boring

The campaign only lasts a few hours, ending with the Russian soldier planting a flag, and hardly does anything in terms of changing the structure of a Call of Duty game. That doesn’t mean it’s all bad necessarily, the levels are varied and the environments are fleshed out, but that isn’t a good thing either. Playing it safe behind the Call of Duty games that came before it, WaW’s campaign is as satisfying as a McDonald’s happy meal. Everything looks great, but it doesn’t fill you up, and it sure as hell doesn’t do anything new.

The ending is not very exciting and once the credits started to roll, I felt empty. After the last of the credits though, a new game mode was introduced. Nazi Zombies. I couldn’t have thought of a better idea, a better twist, on the World War II shooter than the inclusion of a four player, co-operative game that involves a variety of ways to destroy zombies. Getting a bunch of friends together to play this game mode is a well spent use of your time. Not only is it fun to shoot zombies with rifles, machine guns, rocket launchers and flame throwers from the 1930s & 40s, but the difficulty gets progressively harder. While the first wave of zombies is a synch, by wave ten, if you haven’t devised a strategy, you’ll most assuredly be overrun. Able to play online, as well as offline, this game mode gives CoD: WaW a much needed boost in terms of separating it from the plethora of other first person shooters to date. And with Valve’s, Left 4 Dead, right on its heels, Treyarch did a miraculous job of stealing some of that games thunder before its release with this game mode.

The multiplayer modes don’t very much in terms of what Call of Duty 4 did, by revolutionizing the way multiplayer first person shooters should be, and instead incorporates every facet of that, juxtaposing World War II guns for Modern guns. They’ve also replaced the helicopter, the boost you get from a seven kill streak in CoD4, with dogs. While this is annoying, more annoying than the helicopter, it is a valid inclusion to the game. The dogs are difficult to shoot at and prove nearly as effective as the helicopter. One major plus, and the only reason I continue to go back to WaW’s multiplayer instead of CoD4’s is the map design. Almost every map is very huge and very detailed, with numerous buildings and angles to shoot at enemies.

This offers a wide variety of confrontations due to the fact that nearly every time there is gunfire it is in a different location. The one thing I would remove completely is the inclusion of vehicles in the online modes. CoD is about intimate, skillful, combat where players actually have to excel at one thing or another to succeed in any aspect the game, not about unbelievably ridiculous carnage brought about by amateurs in a tank.

While Call of Duty: World at War is a solid game, it still lacks in its ability to innovate. It instead acts more like a modification of Call of Duty 4, and at $60, you’d have to be a dedicated fan of the series, or of first person shooters in general to fork that over. Or you just have a lot of money.

I’ve often heard people claim that many facets of entertainment, be they movies or music or video games or anything else, are masturbatory. For example, ever since Denis Dyack proclaimed Too Human to be a trilogy and one of the stand out franchises of the video game industry, he’s been stroking his own ego. 

Before anyone could get a hold of his game Dyack had managed to create a lot of press surrounding his very adamant bragging regarding how awesome his own game is. And, on top of that, it’s clear that he doesn’t care about what other people think about his game. He acts as if, in some way, that the appropriate stance to take.  Well Denis, you’ll be the only one singing praises.

When Too Human first kicks on, it blasts you in the face with a flashy menu of various things to do.  Options include a campaign mode, an online mode and some other menu’s you could glide through if you really cared about spending time at the menu. 

The real meat can be found when players first decide to pick up the campaign. Making it through the drudgery they call story was hard. Apparently your character Baldur, the son of the Norse God Odin, is tasked with stopping a machine race built to eradicate humanity. Recalling the story was hard because after letting the game collect dust on my shelf I forgot what it was about. 

I definitely hoped that Dyack didn’t intend for Too Human to excel in a story. I hoped he’d make up for it with innovative game play and captivating boss battles and exciting adventures online. At some points in the development of a story derived from the bowels of a teller, I couldn’t do anything but laugh. Jumping from generic cut scene to generic cut scene was bad; I was ready to turn the game off.

Too Human, a game that’s supposed to stand out and be one of a kind, falls terribly flat when it comes to the graphics and aesthetics. They are so terrible that it was hard to work up the motivation to even try and upgrade my character. I literally had to have a friend of mine come over and upgrade my character, for the mere sight of a white guy with no hair wearing all black in a world that is various shades of grey with some lava splattered places was just too much. I wish the puke induced by the game could have been black or white.

At least Too Human, while being a terrible game, could be likened as a rip-off of an actual good game.  Back in the late 90’s Phantasy Star Online was breaking down barriers in terms of what it meant for taking a home console and putting it online. On top of that, the game was fun and new and offered players a lot of variety. Many hours can be logged into PSO and I’d still consider it anything but a waste of time. 

Too Human successfully took the basic formula from that game and made it worse. 

When my character walks into an area enemies pop and charge at me.

Exactly like in PSO.

Likewise, when they die, they drop items that you then sprint too to pick up as quickly as possible. The better the weapon, the better the character. 

Exactly like PSO. 

But, where PSO excelled was in its ability to make an easy yet intriguing battle system and implement it into its own world successfully. A button combo or two would allow you to mow your enemies down, which you could then pull up a menu and cast magic, lay a trap, or use an item. It was good, and easy to learn and follow and very face paced and intense, much unlike Too Human.

When the enemies first tried to approach my dreadfully dull character surrounded by dull grey and black walls I remembered my character was one of the few classes that excelled in ranged attacks. Of the five available options, only one peeked my interest. 

The other four classes were:  Champion, average melee fighter, Defender, defensive melee, Beserker, offensive melee, Bio Engineer, healer, and Commando, ranged combat.

In the first room, when combat actually began, I pulled out my rifle and started blasting at enemies as they approached. At first this seemed pretty fluid and ideal for a third-person action game, but once the auto-targeting system, which seems arbitrary if you want people to enjoy playing a ranged class, takes over you can’t do anything but complain. All I managed to do with my rifle was continually shoot one enemy until they were dead and then shoot them some more while they lie, flaccid on the ground. 

The targeting system, on this superb next-gen console, prevented me from killing more than one enemy with a projectile.

Once I got over the fact that I couldn’t manage to get my character to fire at anything but a dead body I decided I’d slash some prices. They couldn’t have messed that up, could they?

The highly acclaimed fighting style that I’ve heard about, where all melee combat is directed towards the analog stick and how you swing it, appears sluggish, and as another fellow reviewer noted, “it looks like Baldur has to pause and smile for a picture after every successful swing.” 

What he means is that when your character attacks, no matter what combination of analog swings you use, he’ll pause for a split second.  Just enough time to capture a screen shot or something. This slows the combat down and cuts into the fluidity a few quick swirls from an analog stick should offer.

After struggling with a campaign worth chucking rotten food at, I reluctantly tried the game online.  Besides running around with a friend online, doing the same thing one does offline, the game is no different. 

Limiting an online game to a strictly two-player co-operative experience seems like a rushed conclusion to a problem. I feel like the idea was there, of including at least four player co-op (The Dreamcast did it, Why do current generation games purposefully lack what previous games had?), but someone forced Dyack and his team to put the game out early. 

Before it was done. 

Although playing this game online took away some of the drudgery of playing it alone, it was still the same game. 

Too Human is an utter let down. I never once uttered a, “that’s cool,” or even smiled. I frowned a lot.  But, no smiles. It lacked in story, in gameplay, and it certainly didn’t live up to any of my expectations.

Goldeneye became a staple in the first-person shooter genre as a good way to balance a FPS while keeping the plot interesting and inviting.

However, Goldeneye was the first and last bond game to really revolutionize a genre and/or just be itself a good game.  Subsequent games have been lackluster since then, and we didn’t even see a Casino Royale adaptation.

The next bond game, Quantum of Solace, could prove beneficial for the franchise and for first person shooters in general.

Developed by Treyarch, the Call of Duty developer, QoS combines the same intense combat found in those games with a unique third-person cover system. Using the Call of Duty 4 engine, enemy A.I. will be smart and responsive. The weapons, graphics and overall combat this time around are bound to garner some intense moments often seen in the Call of Duty franchise. 

Likewise, using a cover system, which is lacking in CoD, could prove to make QoS as revolutionary as Goldeneye was. It feels as if Treyarch looked at two recent and incredibly popular first person shooters and combined them both. It’s like Call of Duty 4 and Rainbow Six Vegas merged.

On top of a reliable engine, QoS offers players the ability to not only play as Bond in Quantum of Solace but also in Casino Royale. I know, you were asking yourself, “Where is the video game?” after you walked out of Casino Royale two years ago. And, of course, the original screen actors are in the game for added realism.

It’s about time the 007 video game franchise made its way out of the gutter.  It’s been a long time since Goldeneye, and it’s been a long time since we’ve seen a good Bond game.  Let’s hope for the best; let’s be shaken, not stirred.

On November 5, the Open Handset Alliance was created.  This alliance, consisting of 34 hardware, software and telecommunications companies was founded with the collective goal of furthering the standards of mobile technologies.

A few years ago Google acquired Android Inc. and from there they’ve been building a product that is now just a few weeks away from reality.

“Google’s Android platform will launch in the next several weeks. It will be an HTC phone, likely the HTC Dream, and will be launched internationally on the T-Mobile network. A window of between Oct 15 and Nov 30,” says www.veturebeat.com.

According to ZDNet, September 15 is the release date of the phone at $150, which will be, “available to existing T-mobile users,” on that day. A more expensive version of the phone, at $399, will be available sometime in October.

For those of you who don’t know, Android is a program based off of the Linux OS which has the potential to increase the ease of web based applications on the go.  Likewise, this program is free and Google has been offering the tools to create programs for this system for a while now.  At launch, it’s got the potential to knock the iPhone out of your hand due to the ease of development and reliability of its software.

At this time there are no actual specs; nor are there any pictures of a potential model for this, “Gphone,” but considering the proximity of its actual release, they’re bound to come up in the next couple weeks.

Carmack claimed that he passed up good money and stated that a Quake MMO won’t be coming out anytime soon. Aware of the struggles of MMO development and of the potential to rack in major dough, it’s understandable that the creative mind behind a FPS Classic doesn’t wish to put his reputation on the line just to make bank.

Id Software is currently developing a web-based Quake III port entitled Quake Live. ”We did not have the experience in website development, database management, and all of that web world type stuff,” said Carmack on developing Quake Live. “And honestly, we underestimated the challenge involved in that.” It’s probably a good thing they’re steering clear of the MMO genre for now, considering their current struggle with Quake Live. But, for those of you who wish to hop online and level up your Unnamed Soldier you’ve been daydreaming about since the mid-nineties, your dream may still come to fruition.

If you don’t have the motivation to pick yourself up off of your couch and go play with Marvel action figures then The Incredible Hulk The Game could be your squeeze, but, if you’re looking for something, anything else, you’re search lies elsewhere.

The premise is great. Everything about the Hulk is here, from his incredible strength to his ability to break down any wall he wants or climb any puny sky scraper standing in his way. He’s big, he’s green, and he’s mad.  That’s the idea behind anything revolving around the Hulk, and it is a fantastic franchise to bring to a console. 

An optimist would hope developers took a queue from Crackdown about how to do a free-roaming super hero game, which would have been great, but instead of that we’ve got clunky physics and a bulking green action figure running amuck looking out of place and fighting the same battles over and over.

The story leaves much to be desired. 

Edward Norton lends his voice to the game with depressing, blatantly monotone commentary between missions. Some of it fits the character. He is a giant green monster and all, but most of it puts a strain on sincerity. And the story revolving around something almost irrelevant to the movie doesn’t do much for anyone wishing to continue where the film left off. Hulk is tasked at destroying the creations of scientists who use the city as a testing ground for experiments. 

In an attempt to offer some variety to the game the developers tossed in some menial mini-games that involve crushing cars or collecting orbs. Emphasis on attempt. These mini-games offer nothing to the game other than giving you an objective for things you can already do. 

There is a trend when licensed video games get released around the same time as their movie counterpart and that trend revolves around the idea that everything feels phoned in. There are junky physics and roughly five different bad guys you repeatedly molest with your bulky hulk action figure. 

There is a cop-out story and relatively mediocre voice acting. I can’t see anyone, kids or action figure fans, wanting to play this game for an extended period of time. It was an utter let down and something not worth batting an eye-lash at. 

Guitar Hero: World Tour, the next game in the top selling franchise of 2007, gives players not only the ability to improve their timing and button pressing skills of the previous iterations but also brings in a couple of new friends in the form of a drum kit and microphone, for the first time in the Guitar Hero series. The unique wireless drum kit features three drum pads, two raised cymbals, and a bass kick pedal.

Take that, Rock Band, with your one less cymbal.

“The drum kit is unique because it’s wireless, and it’s velocity sensitive, meaning that the harder you hit the drum, the louder the note,” said Brian Bright, Guitar Hero’s project director.

So just how realistic is the new drum kit?

“It’s as real as you can get,” said Chad Smith, drummer for The Red Hot Chili Peppers, who tested it out recently. “If it can hold up to me beating on it, it should do pretty good. Playing guitar? — That’s all great, But hitting stuff? Awesome.” Smith and other drummers including The Police’s Stewart Copeland checked out World Tour at a press event recently.

Guitar Hero: World Tour may sound a lot like Rock Band — rightfully so. But it’s not just another band simulation game. World Tour also gives players the ability to create their own music. With the new innovative Music Studio, players can create, edit and record their own music and share it online with other players. 

This gives it some longer legs. 

But don’t let the ability for players to create their own music discourage those of you who just like playing along to your favorite tunes. Guitar Hero: World Tour promises to offer the most extensive catalog of classic to modern rock tunes in a video game to date. 

Noted inclusions thus far: Van Halen, Linkin Park, The Eagles and Sublime.