Game Junkie
Gerard Campbell, chief video game reviewer for The Press, has been playing video games for what seems like forever. He still remembers when he had to load games for his Sinclair ZX Spectrum from a tape player. Gerard blogs on events in the gaming industry.
Talking about stuff with Xbox NZ
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Modern Warfare 2 is generating a lot of interest this week: it's already grossed something like US$550m in its first week of sales, and tomorrow, Saturday, at 11.30am, I'll be talking on National Radio about the game.
No doubt the airport/terrorism sequence will be a topic of discussion. If you've got nothing better to do, tune in and have a listen.
OK, 
with the launch of Facebook, Twitter and Movies on Demand on the Xbox 360 this week, I caught up with Tom Hunt, Microsoft NZ's Xbox category manager, for a chat to see how things went and what's planned for the future.
GC: So, Tom, it's a little busy for you guys at the moment, isn't it?
Tom Hunt: Yeah, but in a good way, man, in a good way.
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A bit of fun and best of the year
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I thought I'd start today with something that made me chuckle while I was playing Assassin's Creed 2 the other night. It's not a plot spoiler so won't ruin your enjoyment of the game but it'll probably make you chuckle as well.
Not long into the game you'll come across the uncle of main character Ezio who, when introducing himself, spouts a phrase more commonly associated with a pint-sized Italian plumber than a Renaissance freedom fighter. You can find a video of it at Kotaku.
OK, it's about that time of year when a lot of gaming writers, myself include, sit down and start pondering what our best games of the year were. It's something we do, year in, year out.
I'm doing a cover story and feature for our hardcopy The Box and I've narrowed down some of my best games of the year, and some other categories. Here's what I've got so far. Remember, these are based on games I've played.
Game of the Year Uncharted 2: Among Thieves; Modern Warfare 2; Batman Arkham Asylum, Assassin's Creed 2, Left 4 Dead 2.
MC Hammer on Twitter, gaming, and Hammer pants
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Here's the transcript from the 10-minute interview I had with MC Hammer (real name Stanley Burrell) at last week's Xbox 360 launch of the Twitter/Facebook update and Lips: Number One Hits. He's a huge tech geek and a great fan of sports games, namely Madden, although we didn't have much time to talk about gaming.
GC: When did you realise that Twitter was something that you wanted to follow?
MC Hammer: Well it wasn't really about me following, it was about engaging the platform and seeing the responses and the interactivity. How immediate it was. How stimulating it is to the mind. To send a message out, about a subject, and have some people immediately give their input which is collaboration. So the minute that I started using it, it was 'Wow, this is it'. I felt like it was a winner from the time I engaged the platform.
Do you think that as a musician, because music is stimulating people's emotions, that Twitter is the perfect platform for a musican to use?
I think that the behaviours that we already have as songwriters bodes well to tweeting. The idea in tweeting is that in 140 characters you have to be efficient and get to the point. A songwriter is used to telling a whole story in 16 bars ... so we're used to communicating in short bursts like that. We've already been trained for it. If you embrace it and not be fearful of it, you'll see that you already have a skill set that is optimised for tweeting.
Design a game weapon
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Thanks to all those who took the time to comment on yesterday's post about the terrorist sequence in Modern Warfare 2. It was great to see so many varied and well-thought out comments: I appreciate it.
Right, on to today's topic. Of all the video game characters that have been created over the years, without a doubt Sony's Ratchet and Clank are two of the most loved and recognised. More than nine million copies of Ratchet and Clank games have been sold in the PAL territories since the first game was released in 2002.
I've loved most of the Ratchet and Clank games (although R+C: Size Matters on the PS2 was pretty poor) and the latest game in the series, A Crack in Time, has hit the PS3, and this time you control Ratchet and Clank as they battle the evil Dr Nefarious as he tries to gain control of time itself.
In a nice touch to celebrate the fact that most of the game's weapons can be customised with a variety of mods that you find scattered around the game's planets, Sony is running a competition where you can design your own Ratchet and Clank weapon and, if you win, get it built by the fellows at Weta Workshop in Wellington.
Imagine that, your very own Weta-built weapon that you designed sitting pride of place on top of the mantelpiece. Wouldn't that be a talking point when the in-laws come around to visit?
Controversy just for the sake of it?
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After playing through the controversial airport sequence of Modern Warfare 2 last week, and discussing it with friends and colleagues over the weekend, it's obvious to me that every gamer who plays it is going to react differently to the scene.
Personally, I didn't fire a shot as I walked - I can't run - through a Russian airport, while the men around me fired systematically on innocent civilians, filling the air with terrified screams. I don't know what it was but something just made me not want to pull the trigger. Maybe my morality chip was kicking in, I don't know, but something just held me back.
Other friends who have got the game said they blasted through the airport, firing away happily, with one saying he gunned his way through to the end. Another said he fired on the civilians, saying it's just a video game.
For those who haven't played Modern Warfare 2, at the very beginning of the game, before you've even loaded a clip or fired a bullet, there is a warning that tells you some people may find one mission "distrurbing or offensive" and it gives you the option to skip the mission. Don't worry, skipping the mission won't penalise you in any way. You're given another chance to opt out of the mission before you start the game.
After finishing Modern Warfare 2 over the weekend, and contemplating the experience, I feel that the terrorist sequence was totally out of place in the overall scheme of things. It added absolutely nothing to the story - and this is clearly evident in the fact that developer Infinity Ward gives you the option of skipping the sequence altogether. Also, graphically, it looks inferior to the rest of the game, as if it was almost a last-minute add-on.
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