This ain’t your grandpa’s bowling alley, bucko! [Poweroutage]

The next time a bolt of lightning hits the transformer outside your apartment during a game of Wii bowling, you could always hit the bricks and try your hand at the real thing.  If it’s RL bowling you’re after, the coolest venue around is the new RedPin Restaurant & Bowling Lounge in downtown Oklahoma City’s Bricktown, an upscale combination of contemporary food, drink and solid maple-and-pine lanes.  Located along the canal just west of the Harkins Cinemas 16 (and downstairs), the RedPin occupies 12,000 square feet on the ground floor of the Centennial Building and boasts a posh restaurant that seats 175, a lounge with a unique one-of-a-kind red recycled glass bar top, and an available VIP room (that seats 20) just off the RedPin’s 10-lane alley.

The bowling experience at RedPin is about as high-tech as it comes, with bowler-specific automated bumpers, flat-screen HD monitors at the score keeping tables and the very cool option of personalizing the giant video screen at the end of your lane.  Each lane features a ‘mini-lounge’ where you can relax while critiquing your friend’s armswing (or lament your last baby split) and every lane has access to the RedPin’s restaurant-style dining service.  Rates are a user-friendly $4 per game from 11 am until 5 PM, then just $5.25 after that.  Bowlers can also rent lanes by-the-hour:  $45 before 5 PM and $55 thereafter.  Hourly rental includes bowling for up to six and shoes.  Speaking of shoes, rental is $2.50 if you’re not doing the hourly thing, and you’ll be setting your dots in kicks custom-made for the RedPin.

Now let’s talk about food.  In a sport that uses terms like turkey and Swiss cheese ball, you’d be excused for imagining that culinary interests are right up there with ball beveling and lane condition for the average bowler - and you’d be right.  At the RedPin, however, a chicken wing is much more than a style faux pax at the line and the food is about as far removed from standard bowling alley fare as - oh, I don’t know - Neptune is from the Sun! 

On my first visit to the restaurant, I had stone-baked pizza (is there really any other kind?), and it was the best I’ve had anywhere.  Mine was a Meat Your Match, which included a tantalizing combination of pepperoni, smoked bacon, grilled chicken, salami, seasoned beef and hot peppers.  There are five other flavor combinations (which I’ll be trying on my next five visits).  Besides pizza, diners in the restaurant can enjoy five different varieties of stuffed panini sticks, an imaginative collection of sandwiches, including RedPin Sliders (mini-burgers with center-cut smoked bacon and cheddar), Grilled Chicken Sliders (you guessed it:  grilled chicken with honey dijon and red onions - or a choice of other toppings and sauces), Grown Up Mac & Cheese (with Parmesan truffled fontina cream sauce, no less) - and more (and, yes, they do have chicken wings - I mean, Flying Elbows).  Several entree choices feature the RedPin’s special upgrades:  guests can order ‘Spares’ (which feeds 1-2 with the selected menu item) or ‘Strikes’ (which feeds 2-4).  All of the food at the RedPin can also be ordered on the Events Menu in party-sized trays designed to feed 20 people - and they’ll customize your order to specifically satisfy your group.

More food-related bowling terms:  sour apple, pumpkin, cheesy cakes and jam.  Sure all of these actually refer to bowling, but they make me think about dessert. At the RedPin, I wasn’t disappointed.  How about Red Velvet Cake with whipped cream cheese icing or Chocolate Lava Cake with a ‘molten’ chocolate center?  Of course, there’s also a traditional Cheesecake, a Four Berry Creme Brulee or even Sinkers and Suds:  fresh doughnuts from OKC’s famous Brown’s Bakery, served with coffee.

Coffee is, of course, for the serious bowler (like me), who doesn’t want the edge taken off his game.  For everyone else (at least everyone else over 21), the RedPin Lounge offers an astounding (really) array of beers (draft, foreign and domestic) as well as unique signature drinks and wines (red, white and sparkling - by the glass or by the bottle).

So the next time the power goes off or you forget to pay the electric bill, cruise down to Bricktown and check out the RedPin Restaurant and Bowling Lounge.  You can stay from 11 am until midnight Sunday through Wednesday and from 11 am until 2 p.m Thursday through Saturday.

Oklahoma-born septuagenarian plays CTF. [Interviews]

When California entrepreneur Don Sessions read the history of Red Bull energy drink’s rapid rise in the international beverage market several years ago, one of his first thoughts was “I can do that!”

And as it’s turned out, he was right. Sessions was quick to recognize that there was probably room in the burgeoning multi-million dollar sports/energy drink market for one more product – if he could find the right niche and the right label. And finding the right “label” was extremely important to Sessions, who had spent most of his career in the music industry.  Genesis: Ol’ Glory.

Working with technicians at Corona, California-based Flavor Specialties, Inc., Session developed a vitamin-enriched, caffeine-enhanced blend of guarana and ginseng extracts that he believed would appeal to both younger and adult tastes. “I wanted it to taste good,” he told PTD Magazine in an April interview. “Some of those energy drinks are awful.”  The result was a smooth, citrusy drink without the bitter aftershock of some of the other drinks on the market.  The taste is so appealing to some energy drink fans that it’s actually inspired the creation of scores of Ol’ Glory-themed blogs on the Internet (and at least one Ol’ Glory club in Wyoming).  From the stainless-steel vats of Southern California, the powdered base for Ol’ Glory is shipped east in barrels to a carbonated beverage bottler just north of the loop in Dallas, Texas. There Ol’ Glory is constituted in liquid form and packaged in 16-ounce aluminum cans.

With a recipe perfected and in production, all Sessions needed now was a distinctive label to wrap around his product – and what, he thought, could be more distinctive than the red, white and blue theme of the American flag? Wrapped in its flag-motif and decorated with images of the American bald eagle, the design even includes the complete text of the Pledge of Allegiance – with the words “Under God” in bold text. “I’m tired of people in this country trying to take God’s name out of everything,” he explained. “So I had it put in bold.”

And Sessions is a man who makes bold statements. His interview with PTD was held in the company’s south Oklahoma City corporate home: a 40,000 square foot warehouse that the 72-year old businessman picked up after its previous owners went bankrupt. In one corner of the warehouse is a small office – the rest of the space is reserved for pallet after pallet of Ol’ Glory. Dressed in a casual sports coat, Sessions sported four huge gold rings on his left hand and a couple more on his right. And these weren’t plain gold bands, either – they were embedded with diamonds that would make the showcase at most jewelers look like a collection of glass chips.

“When I’d meet my friends in the [music] business, they’d ask, ‘How’re you doing?’” Sessions laughed, “and I’d show ‘em my fingers. That’s how I’m doing!” Sessions hopes his success in the music industry will translate to the energy drink industry as well.

He and a business associate, Oklahoma City attorney Bill Hall, have turned their focus to distribution and marketing, perhaps the most crucial factor in ensuring the success of the Ol’ Glory label. Sessions chose Oklahoma City as the initial hub of his distribution wheel for several reasons – one of which is that he’s native to the Sooner state, born in the northeast Oklahoma community of Ripley. Besides the nostalgic ties, commercial property in Oklahoma was much more attractive than similar sites in the Los Angeles area where Sessions lives. “And this is more centrally located,” Hall pointed out during a tour of the warehouse facility.

So far, the focus on distribution has yielded good results. According to Sessions, Ol’ Glory is now available in 22 states and in such major venues as Wal-Mart, K-Mart and 7-Eleven stores (for a complete list of retail outlets, visit Ol’ Glory’s website at www.olglory.com). To make sure distribution to their retail outlets is timely, the company maintains 25-40 truckloads of Ol’ Glory in the warehouse at all times (1,600 24-pack cases per truck – do the math: that’s a lot of caffeine!). As the company expands into other parts of the country, Sessions plans to develop other regional bottlers and distribution systems.

With a unique taste growing in popularity and an equally popular price-point of 99 cents, Ol’ Glory has already established a solid foothold in its distribution area, and Sessions plans more for the new drink on the marketing front. The most recent innovation was the introduction of a new 4-pack format, which began shipping in mid-April.

The most significant marketing coup for the company, however, is a new relationship with the Army National Guard. Hall, a Viet Nam veteran who spent time ‘in country’ with the 4th Infantry Division, was instrumental in bringing Ol’ Glory to the attention of the Oklahoma Guard and after a series of meetings, a new can design was developed that advertises the National Guard on the rim. New point-of-sale and promotional posters now feature the Army National Guard and their recruitment efforts. “We found we had a parallel message,” said Hall, describing the blending of Ol’ Glory’s patriotic design and National Guard advertising. The National Guard distributes Ol’ Glory free in its recruiting efforts and at special events. It’s a win-win situation for both.

“I’d like to see Ol’ Glory become the drink of the Armed Forces,” said Sessions. To facilitate that, he and Hall are planning a trip to Washington, D.C. to speak with representatives of the other branches. If that effort is successful, the Ol’ Glory label will make a quantum leap in visibility – and the drink will be on its way to national recognition.

Then maybe Sessions can buy some more bling - so stay tuned, we’ll let you know how the old man is doing!

10 PRINT (”Hello World”); [Vertical]

Welcome to the first issue of Playedtodeath, Oklahoma’s premier video gaming news venue.

We’re glad you picked us up and we know you’ll look forward to fresh newsprint every month, as well as daily industry and cultural updates on our interactive website.  Each month we’ll talk about the things that are important to gamers:  reviews of new games and gaming systems, features that focus on your unique lifestyle - including the cooler places to hang when you’re not leveling up - and straight talk about the products that you find interesting (your phone does what?)

To make sure we provide the very best in computer gaming news, we’ve assembled an international staff of writers who bring years of computer gaming experience to the keyboard.  Our people know the movers and shakers in the industry personally, and we don’t cut corners when it comes to bringing you the latest stories:  when Kaz Hirai keynotes the 2008 Tokyo Game Show, we’ll be in the audience mentally translating yen to dollars and wondering how many people can legally share a sleeping tube.  When a new energy drink is introduced in OKC, we’ll be there to guzzle a freshly-minted can and crush the empty against our foreheads (or better, our friend’s forehead).  When Nintendo or Sony or NCsoft rolls out a new release, our reviewers will literally play it to death, to give you the best info to use in deciding how to spend your gaming dollars - that’s our promise to you.

And we want you to participate in this adventure, too - by giving us honest feedback on the reviews and articles you read on these pages.  If your thinking is concise and your analysis piercing, we might even print your emails in our Forum feature (spelling and sentence structure is important - we hope you didn’t stop paying attention in fifth grade).  Let us know about gaming-related events for our monthly activities calendar, like the LAN party you have planned in the basement of your sister’s cousin’s daughter’s house - who knows, we might show up and bring door prizes (generally expired pizza coupons and stuff like that).  Playedtodeath will occasionally even be news (as opposed to reporting it), when we sponsor the biggest LAN party in the state of Oklahoma later this year (keep your schedule clear during Fall Break).  And every month, you’ll have a chance to win cool stuff (with very little effort on your part).

In short, we’re going to make every effort to be that computer gaming newspaper that you always wished (at least since last Thursday) you could read while you were waiting for a Saturday night table in Bricktown.  

So, enjoy - and keep doing that thing you do with the PS3 controller!

Two Game Bento Lunches [Freeplay]

Everyone loves free games.  Here are two that I’ve been enjoying just a bit too much lately.  From the land of the rising sun comes Cat On A Dolphin. I love this game not least for the title, which is cuttingly accurate: the game involves a cat riding on a dolphin. It can be a bit tricky getting into the swing of it, but once you do, it’s addictive.

Rose & Camelia was introduced to me by one of my friends as “a Victorian face-slapping game”, and there’s not really much one needs to add to that. Have your mouse, and your sense of offended virtue, at the ready.

Give a Little Back: Child’s Play 2007

I was born with severe hemophilia A, which is a complicated way of saying that my blood has problems clotting.  As a result of this, I’d have to make pretty regular trips (once or twice a year) to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where Dr. Allen would draw some blood and tell me that, no, not much had changed since the last time they saw me.  Then I’d get a lollipop and convince my dad that instead of going in to school late we should go to a Phillies game or see a movie, but I digress.

While waiting for my turn in the back room, I’d inevitably have one of three options - watch the TV (which was usually tuned to a morning talk show or soap opera, for the sake of entertaining the moms who had brought their kids), read a book (which, being a kid, I wouldn’t always remember to bring), or the Game Castle.  The Game Castle was a marvelous little thing - literally, shaped like a generic fairytale castle, it held a monitor as well as a Sega Genesis with one or two controllers.  I remember passing the time with Echo the Dolphin, Sonic, and Comix Zone, and for those 10-15 minutes (or half an hour if I was lucky and there weren’t any other kids who wanted to play), life was as good as it could get.

I tell this story not because I’m feeling nostalgic, but because last week the guys at Penny Arcade announced that Child’s Play has started up for 2007.  Child’s Play is an outstanding charity which has brought the joy of gaming to upwards of hundreds of thousands of children’s hospitals worldwide in the last four years.  There are two ways to donate - either send money to a general PayPal fund that will be distributed to all of the hospitals, or click through to a specific hospital’s Amazon wishlist and pick and choose.  Whether buying something as simple as a sticker book or as extravagant as a 360, you will be making a difference for patients of children’s hospitals across the world - 45 hospitals from six different countries are participating already, with more surely to be added as the holidays approach.

Last year, when I found out that my old stomping grounds at CHOP had been added to the list, I immediately logged onto Amazon and paid for a black DS and Final Fantasy III cartridge.  This year, maybe I’ll add a PS2 or two to the cart, or perhaps show some love to one of the hospitals in Australia or the UK.  Whether through donations big or small, I hope you’ll join me in supporting this wonderful cause.

Armageddon Empires [Indiescene]

Some games require a huge buy-in. You need to invest a lot of time learning the system, understanding the interface and reading the documentation over and over. The problem with this, of course, is that the payoff may not be worth it. Beyond the learning curve could be great indie gems like Dwarf Fortress or Dominions 3, but you need to either find a walkthrough or commit to the self-education. Who wants to do that?

This is the dilemma facing Armageddon Empires, a new post-apocalyptic wargame from Cryptic Comet. It’s an old-fashioned game in many ways, most significantly in how you will need to read the freaking manual to get started. There’s not a lot of in-game help for you. There’s not a lot of clarity on when you need to right click and when you need to left click. The drag and drop tool is fussy, too.

But you’ll forget all of this once you master the system. Armageddon Empires is a game of exploration and area control. You explore hexes to uncover enemies and resources. As expected, you spend resources on bringing new units to field, but there’s an original twist here. You can also spend these resources on dice before each turn, high rolls determine who gets to go first. The person who goes first gets more action points. So do you save those green resources to move your hero from your hand or spend them on the chance of points you can use to buy more cards?

This either/or decision making is everywhere in the game, potentially turning the tide of battles by spending “fate points,” making an intimidating game quite intuitive once you get the basics in hand. It helps that the setting is familiar enough to not throw up too many barriers to understanding. Air, artillery, infantry, zombies, cyborgs, etc. Nothing that your standard geek can’t manage.

Armageddon Empires rises above the crowd, though, because it is a surprisingly sophisticated wargame. Your armies will start with a couple of units at most, but eventually you will need to manage their composition carefully. Air strikes will need to be timed to even the odds, all the while costing you precious resources which are rarely in high supply. Like the best strategy titles, Armageddon Empires expects you to balance the needs of the moment with the promises of the future, but it never makes you feel like everything is riding on an early turn or a single fateful decision.

Of course, a large number of you will just give up early in the demo. Those of you that stick around will be treated to one of the best new old strategy games in a while.

Ecco the Dolphin [Retrograde]

There’s a wave of nostalgia – pun intended – when loading Ecco the Dolphin for the first time. It’s been fourteen years since this charming swim-em-up enthralled Genesis/Mega Drive gamers across the world. Released under the banner of the Sega Vintage Collection, Ecco the Dolphin is a welcome inclusion to a growing range of titles perfectly pitched to a generation who grew up with Sega, myself included. For me, this was the game which prompted the purchase of a Mega Drive all those years ago.

For those of you who missed it the first time round, the story goes like this: Ecco is a happy-go-lucky dolphin until the day a mysterious whirlwind rips his pod and most oceanic life from the seas. Alone, the young dolphin must travels the seas, explore the past and even travel to another world to rescue his family. He must find an ancient whale, battle alien denizens and the sentient ancestor of life itself before going one-on-one with an alien queen. Powerful stuff, eh?

For the most part, time has treated Ecco well. While the graphics and music are true to the Genesis incarnation, it’s a shame to have to say that for this re-release the graphics were not at least upscaled. Like Sonic, the game is played against a blue border, and modern HD TV’s manage to make each pixel painfully clear. This is the kind of game where you don’t sit too close to the screen, but it is still well worth purchasing.

Ecco remains one of the best examples of mid-nineties gaming. The plot is strong, and the levels are a genuine challenge. The XBLA incarnation even offers the ability to save the game, mid-level, a blessing to anyone who had to try and remember the passwords the first time round. Like most ports to the 360, Ecco comes with Achievements, although in this department, they are painfully lacking and oddly random, from completing the Undercaves to finding hidden statues left over from the original game in Jurassic Beach. However, playing Ecco is not about Achievements, and anyone who does unlock one is bound to be more interested in their ocean adventures than in a few measly points. Where else do you get the chance to explore Atlantis, travel through time, and listen to the song of the ocean?

Ecco’s biggest pull is with its previous audience. Given that, I’m pretty sure it won’t be too long until more Genesis titles including the even more gorgeous sequel hit Live Arcade. If you remember Ecco then this will be gaming heaven, and if you don’t, it’s high time you tried this true unsung classic.

Roadwar 2000 [Retrograde]

We were just outside of Pittsburgh when the mutants attacked.

We’d seen them tailing us since DC.  Well, smelled them more than seen, you know what the mutants are like.  They picked off three of our escorts in the first wave, but then our commandos and bodyguards brought their firepower to bear, and we tore them apart.  They only caught us because we had lost two of our hardtop sports cars just north of Bethesda, where some penny ante local gang got lucky with a few shots on our tires.  Fortunately, Pittsburgh is the steel city, and we made up for the losses by bolting on armor to our bus at a foundry.  We also found a few construction vehicles.  Those will come in handy for hauling our supplies.  It takes a lot of food and gasoline to keep a gang like the Rum Runners mobile, and we’ve got a long way to go before we get to the ruins of Chicago.

Roadwar 2000 is a strategy game that borrows the trappings of the Mad Max and Road Warrior movies to simulate life and combat in a post-nuclear apocalypse United States (or, in the case of Roadwar Europa, a post-nuclear apocalypse Europe).  It’s a world where abandoned cars, guns, and ammo are plentiful — and death is just around every corner.

Life in Roadwar is nasty, brutish, and short.  Every turn you can decide to move (if you have sufficient fuel), or search for loot, vehicles, or people.  The people you meet might be weak refugees, willing to join you in exchange for food, or they might be seasoned gangsters, eager to either join or kill you.  Every possible stereotype has been thrown into the blender here, and it works well.  Mutants, Communist invaders, born-again Christians, Satanists, renegade National Guardsmen, and other groups all pick on the corpse of a devastated continent.

Your job is to survive, and as they say, the best defense is a good offense.  As you travel around the country, you’ll acquire vehicles and gang members, and even take over a few towns if you’re lucky.  Become strong enough, and you may be contacted by a secret underground network, the remains of the legitimate government.  They want you to … well, that would be telling.  Let’s just say you’ll want to stock up on gasoline.

The graphics are serviceable but sparse – think Ultima II – and the user interface is daunting, one of those “a different letter for every function” approaches that dominated the mid-80’s.  Print out a reference card from the internet and keep it near your keyboard.  Complicating matters is that the game offers not one but three different systems for resolving car-to-car combat.  There’s a full-on turn based tactical combat (similar to Steve Jackson Games’ Car Wars).  There’s also “quick combat”, which is somewhat faster and requires fewer decisions, and “abstract combat” which is even faster and requires no input at all.  Early in the game, you get a bonus for winning a full tactical battle (your gang can manage an additional car), so it’s worth going for the gusto.

For being so hard to beat, Roadwar 2000 is wonderfully approachable.  It has a wonderful setting (Fallout fans will feel right at home) and crisp, if sometimes arbitrary gameplay.  It’s not for everyone, but I have been playing Roadwar 2000 off-and-on for 20 years now, and I don’t think I’ll be stopping anytime soon.  If you’re handy with an emulator and willing to get your hands dirty, give Roadwar 2000 or Europa a try.

Roadwar 2000 and Roadwar Europa by SSI, for Amiga, Apple II, Apple II GS, Atari ST, Commodore 64, DOS.  Occasionally available on eBay.

FreeCol [Freeplay]

In 1998, director Gus Van Sant remade Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho in a particularly unusual manner: he filmed a shot-for-shot remake. Critical opinion was divided on whether Van Sant’s work was an homage, a rip-off, or simply an exercise in pointlessness.

In the world of video games, the equivalent to Van Sant’s work are the free versions of classic games. FreeCiv is the most well known, but there are efforts at free versions of X-Com, Master of Orion, and the subject of today’s column, Colonization.

It’s fairly easy to be snide about this. “Wouldn’t it be great to have a game that is just like this other brilliant game, only I didn’t have to pay for it?” Truthfully, though, these games don’t exist just out of a desire to save money. Largely, they originate because the developers wanted to play the games on some non-Windows platform.

Like its cousin FreeCiv, FreeCol suffers from a user interface that is somewhat clunky, unattractive, and only minimally planned out. A slightly more central problem, however, is that the original Colonization wasn’t that great a game to begin with. Most of its charm was in its graphic design and implementation, very little of which makes it into FreeCol’s implementation. So in this case, it’s as if Gus Van Sant decided to remake Herbie The Love Bug.

The game is a faithful remake of Colonization, and so it clearly met its own objective. From my perspective, though, the tragedy is that they didn’t take the opportunity to move beyond a simple reimplementation, and actually improve on its inspiration.

If you’re one of the seven people who were addicted to Colonization in the mid-1990’s and want to play it on a modern system then FreeCol is the answer to your prayers. For the rest of us, however, it is more of a curiosity than a work of art. But then, I didn’t like Gus Van Sant’s Psycho very much either.

FreeCol, for Windows, MacOS X, Linux, and any platform that supports the full Java 1.5 VM. Free download from http://www.freecol.org.

E for All Expo - Day 2

Today things are just as busy as the opening (and when I say “busy”, there’s plenty of people, but not E3-like crowds), but it appears that people are here mostly for the various competitions. Just before we’re let into the expo floor, a Scottish drum and pipe quartet get the crowd going.

I head over towards the Fatal1ty area and watch the legend himself completely decimate gamer after gamer in Q3A. I tried to play him a couple of years ago playing UT2004 and he wiped me all over the map. Quite a humbling experience, but then again he gets paid to do this.

But all the talk is the Guitar Hero II competition, sponsored by Target and judged by some of the Major League Gamers. Some of these guys are very impressive, and the top five from each day get to complete in a finals, with prizes ranging from the Guitar Hero 3 demo kit $1000 gift cards from Target. It’s pretty entertaining to watch some of the folks getting on stage and see these guys really get into the spirit of the event.

Rock Band

There’s been a lot of buzz for this game, and it certainly delivers. All throughout the day you hear “Black Hole Sun” by Soundgarden or “Wanted Dead or Alive” by Bon Jovi being belted out by rock wannabes. The guitar controller feels very substantial and has a few more knobs and switches than the Guitar Hero controller, such as an effects switch and five more buttons on the lower neck. The drum kit also feels good and easy to use. Don’t bother asking if I tried my chops on the microphone, I’m tone deaf. I can already see the Rock Band videos popping up on YouTube now.

Metal Gear Solid 4

People usually run to this area to get a chance to play MGS4. You basically get to play the same sequence as seen on some of the demo trailers floating around the Internet. Thing of it is that they only let 12 people in every 30 minutes, having to first sit and watch a video sequence, then go into the play area to try the game. Some people have stood in line for over three and a half hours. I’m not one to want to stand in line for that long, so I just peered through the fence surrounding the display and watched people play. If there’s a reason to get the PS3, MGS4 will be it. The gameplay, controls, graphics, etc., are stellar. Solid Snake may have a chance of knocking the Master Chief on his armored kiester! They were pretty strict about taking photographs of the game, so I managed to sneak a shot of the outside of the display. If you’ve seen the videos of the demo, you’re not missing anything really.

Guitar Hero III for the Wii

Your eyes are not deceiving you! I got a chance to play it, and it’s outstanding. Unlike the demo stations for the Xbox 360, where you can only play five random songs, the good folks from Activision were kind enough to unlock the entire set list to public! The controller is also all the buzz; simply insert your Wiimote into the guitar controller and viola! And one thing the Wii Guitar Hero III controller can do that the others can’t is use the rumble features of the Wiimote when you use your Star Power. Graphically it doesn’t look as great as the Xbox 360, it still impressive nonetheless. I spoke with some of the Activision developers and they said that unfortunately there will not be any DLC for the game because they wanted to get the game out to market and had to sacrifice that functionality. However, they said that have a lot of evil plans brewing in their studios and that the Wii has a very bright future for the franchise. And the best news of all is that it will be released along with the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions at the end of this month. Righteous!

Super Smash Brothers Brawl

There were massive lines to get a chance to play this game. When I finally got a chance to play it, it was equally fun and frustrating, mainly because I was getting my butt kicked by one of the Wii Booth Babes! I had to resort to just a whole lot of button mashing in order to get anything going.

PMS Clan

For those of you that run in the professional gaming circuits, you probably have heard of the PMS Clan. I got a chance to speak with one of the co-founders and clan mates. For those of you that don’t know, the clan was founded by two twin sisters in college and have been at it for almost 10 years as professional gamers. They were there promoting their clan as well as representing some of their sponsors. They were really nice people to talk to and are doing a lot to help promote safety for young girls that are playing a lot of games on the Net. They even agreed to pose with me for a picture.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

As I walked over to the HP display, where they were showing off their new Blackbird 002 super-rig, I got a chance to play the Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare demo that was just released. There’s nothing like playing this game on an $7000 computer, decked out and overclocked to 3.7 GHz. This game manages to capture all of the magic of the previous CoD games and then kicks it up a notch. One of the most impressive parts of the demo was having to walk into a darkened building, activating your night vision goggles, and running around taking out your foes. You could see the infrared beams of your squadmate’s rifles as you maneuver around.

Power Outage

If they wanted to get rid of us they just had to tell us! Toward the end of the day the conference center experienced some “technical difficulties,” meaning they lost power to right half of the South Hall. To make matters worse, there were about another 15,000 people meandering around the Staples Center because of the Jennifer Lopez/Marc Anthony concert playing later in the evening. That was my cue to get back to the hotel.

That’s it for now. There’s plenty of things to see and I need to get back onto the floor. Keep checking back this weekend for more coverage!

Cheers!

PK

« Previous Page — Next Page »