Why don't we complete the games we start? The industry's common response is that people don't have as much time as they once did, or that the modern audience's tolerance for difficulty is markedly lower than it used to be. There's truth to both of these statements, but there's also a ridiculous nostalgia behind them. It implies there was a moment before Rock Band and Wii Sports when we all finished Super Mario Bros. and beat Metroid without the help of Justin Bailey. The late '80s and early '90s have become a sugar-coated era in game history that many game developers seem content with simply refining. In truth, the answer is more complicated than either of the aforementioned explanations.
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It bears mentioning that there's a cultural bias against videogames that keeps deep, prolonged engagement with a game from being socially acceptable. We bestow finishing difficult books or sitting through long, artistically challenging movies with a dignity playing videogames just doesn't have, perhaps deservedly so.

The reason for DICE delaying the PC release of Mirror's Edge may be a little clearer.

DICE are retooling the PC version with enhanced graphics and - video card permitting - the NVIDIA PhysX engine to allow more accurate physics modelling of the virtual cityscape and the many, many things that can realistically fall off it.

...More gaming PC's have been sold over the past three years than Xbox 360s, PlayStation 3s, and Wiis combined. The study, which tracks the sales of three different classes of gaming PCs over since Q3 2005, found that 196 million units have been sold between then and Q3 2008, compared to a worldwide total of 74.7 million consoles. As Edge points out, this of course doesn't take into effect handheld gaming systems like the DS and PSP, which sold a combined 125 million units during the same period.

The study goes on to conclude that the $20 billion dollar PC gaming market, predicted to rise to $34 billion by 2011, was bigger, worth more money, was growing faster and had better tech than the console market could provide.

Blizzard has categorically denied it is 'milking' the StarCraft franchise by deciding to release StarCraft II in three separate products.

At BlizzCon last month Blizzard revealed that the single-player campaign of the hotly anticipated follow-up to the still popular StarCraft will be divided into three products reflecting the game's three races - Terran, Zerg and Protoss. The first game in the series will be Terran: Wings of Liberty, followed by Zerg: Heart of Swarm and Protoss: Legend of the Void.

Some fans reacted angrily to the announcement, accusing Blizzard of milking the franchise, with some even openly promising to pirate the game when it comes out.

Running across an entire city isn't a hard thing when you're moving as the crow flies, and this is the feeling that DICE's Mirror's Edge wants to give you: freedom.

Unfortunately, Mirror's Edge has a tendency to trip over its own feet, keeping you slipping and sliding blissfully along, only to have a tedious jumping puzzle or hazy objective put the brakes on.

Mirror's Edge takes place in a futuristic society in which the people have acquiesced their right to freedom of speech in order to live safely. Well, at least most of the people.

In short: it's very good but not the classic it could have been.

A bold leap that doesn't nail the landing.

Mirror’s Edge: Leaps of Faith End in Splat.

Mirror's Edge, the First-Person Parkour Game You Must Play

Both Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Joseph Lieberman, who once stood together to attack the current rating system, are big fans:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY)
"This new supplement to the ratings is a real gift for parents as we head into this holiday season. Parents need all the information they can get to make more informed decisions about what’s appropriate for their children. These new rating summaries offer more helpful information than ever before to help parents to get involved and get informed."

Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT)
“For well over a decade I have called upon the video game industry to inform consumers about the content in video games so they could make the right choices for their children. One result was the creation of the ESRB rating system, which provides useful guidance to parents about game content and age-appropriateness. The ESRB has now taken consumer education one step further with their new rating summaries, which provide a greater level of detail about game content to help parents be even more prepared to make informed game selections for their children. I applaud the ESRB for taking this proactive step to inform video game consumers.�

In fact, this week in LA at the Professional Developers Conference, Windows 7 officially shoved Vista aside. Having suffered through the often deserved criticisms of that ill-fated OS installment, Microsoft's people are thrilled to tears to be able to talk about something (anything!) else. On Sunday, they took journalists through a lively 7-hour orientation on Win 7, then handed off a Dell XPS M1330 loaded with pre-beta Build 6801.

"We had all the best intentions of helping to secure the PC platform even more, particularly for novice PC users who needed to be protected," said Steven Sinofsky, a senior vice president in Microsoft's Windows group. But Sinofsky acknowledged that Microsoft needed to work more closely with outside companies to avoid a similar mess this time.

Microsoft won't repeat this mistake with Vista, Sinofsky said, and because the OS kernel -- or its underlying code base -- is the same as the one in Vista and Windows Server 2008, all of the devices and applications that work with those OSes should also run on Windows 7.

Revealed on Gametrailers TV overnight – Call of Duty: World at War will feature a "zombie mode" that's unlocked once you complete the game. It's a four-player co-op mode pitting you against endless waves of Nazi undead. Man, that sounds cool just saying it. The mode features its own economy in which things like buying weapons as well as making barricades and moving obstacles cost money. Yes, flamethrowers are involved.

You have to go to Gametrailers to watch the whole thing, it's the last mark on the thing's progress bar, if you don't want to watch the whole show.

Producer Dan Bunting called it "total survival horror." Guess that means it won't be on the Wii version!

The combat is as smooth and strategic as you could hope it to be too, so there’s no fault on that side. You can take a silenced pistol and sniper rifle approach if you want or use rocket launchers and molotovs to flush the enemy out. The fire in this game spreads beautifully and can really be used as a weapon to funnel and direct enemies – plus it looks gorgeous.

The enemy AI showcases some basic quirks though – like closing the distance to reach you and then waiting to pull out a sniper rifle to shoot you with instead of a pistol. It’s not a huge issue, but it is noticable and occasionally holds back the game from reaching the brilliance it is capable of. That's the case with some of the filler missions too, which can get repetitive. Completing missions for the Gun Seller for example is pretty much always the same - find the enemy truck, drop a well-timed grenade in its path and reap the rewards.

For the most part though, that brilliance manages to stay intact and Far Cry 2 secures its place as one of the gaming highlights of the year. Really; it is a very, very good game. It feels like a blend of all the things we like about games. It has the upgradeable weapons and tactical options of Deus Ex, the open world and vehicles of Grand Theft Auto and the solid FPS mechanics of Half-Life 2 – and each element manages to be both distinct and at one with the overall game design.

Some rumors indicate that Microsoft may have already shipped beta versions of SP2 to select hardware and software partners along with early builds of Windows 7. Microsoft has created a place holder Knowledge Base Article on October 2 related to the forthcoming SP2 betas, piquing the interests of anyone who has taken notice.

There haven't been any reports from testers mentioning any of the features due out in Vista SP2 or Windows Server 2008 SP2/R2--however, Mary Jo Foley over at ZDNet blogs claims sources have provided the following information:

"Microsoft's goal is to deliver both SP2 releases before it delivers Windows 7 in order to lessen confusion among users as to whether to deploy Vista and Windows Server 2008 — or to wait for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 (a k a Windows 7 Server). Currently, Microsoft is believed to be attempting to RTM Windows 7 in the second half of 2009. The Softies have said Windows Server 2008 R2 is on track for 2010."

As part of the London Games Fringe (an indie adjunct to the full-blown London Games Festival), female gamers will be able to compete head-to-head in the first Grl Gmr Tournament.

Taking place on October 25th at the Rocket on Holloway Road, the tournament will consist of Wii Tennis, Tekken, Unreal Tournament, Kuri Kuri Mix and Mario Kart competitions. Five individual winners will be named, with one overall winner being crowned Champion.

New York's powerful police unions say that a violent new video game called "Saints Row 2" is an abomination. In the game, the player controls a gang member who can steal, do drugs and kill as many characters as possible, including police officers.

In a recent round table discussion between the Church of England and a collection of some of the leading charity groups in the UK, the Church of England came to the surprising conclusion that games can be a force for good in the modern world.

I've been reviewing games for 16 years. The entire time, I've tried to avoid using the word "fun" because it's so subjective. It's a fine concept when you're just shooting the breeze with friends. But as a critical observation, it's simply not helpful. Since it means different things to different people, it says more about the person using the word than the thing he's describing. I consider it a crutch for lazy writers.

Today, I'm going to make an exception: Saints Row 2 is fun. It's so fun that I'm not sore about all the times it did something glitchy or just locked up. It's so fun that I don't mind the so-so graphics. It's so fun that I can easily look past the crass and occasionally tasteless writing.

Blizzard's executive vice president of game design Rob Pardo has his hand in just about everything the company does, so though I was scheduled to speak to him specifically about Diablo III, our conversation meanders a bit.

We start off discussing the newly-revealed Wizard class the firm had only that morning revealed as a part of the latest Diablo title, but soon we're covering everything from Blizzard's efforts to stem the tide of cheaters in their online games to the company's efforts to bring their games to the silver screen.

This marks the third interview in my series of talks from Blizzcon 2008 which includes chats with World of Warcraft lead producer J. Allen Brack and StarCraft II lead designer Dustin Browder. The final part, an interview with Blizzard CEO and co-founder Mike Morhaime on the company's current and future plans, should appear soon.

Picture the scene. A small country pub in Canterbury, a warm, autumn evening, surrounded by friends drinking and smoking in the beer garden; relaxing after a difficult, hard day at work. The birds are singing, the breeze is light and feathering our very souls. This is heaven.

And then the nerds arrived and I was already preparing my 8 feet of rope and looking out for a ceiling fixture. Within minutes, they’d taken no regard to the peace and quiet, solidarity and gentle nirvana we had around us; they’d started to talk about Vista as if it was serial sex-offender, part-time puppy and kitten contract killer, who deals crystal meth to teenagers.

1. We've got games your 10-year-old won't be better at. GOG.com offers you critically acclaimed games from major publishers in every genre. Don't let your kids mock the graphics; remind them that the classics never go out of style, unlike their totally wicked haircut.

2. So you're cheap. It's okay--we are, too. For less than the cost of a lunch at some lousy diner you can own some of the greatest games of all time. No matter how big the file is and how successful the game was, you'll leave the table satisfied that you got a great deal for your money. As an added bonus, our house specialities won't make you sick.

3. You buy it, you keep it. Don't let your DRMs turn into nightmares (clever, no?). You won't find any intrusive copy protection in our games; we hate draconian DRM schemes just as much as you do, so at GOG.com you don't just buy the game, you actually own it. Once you download a game, you can install it on any PC and re-download it whenever you want, as many times as you need, and you can play it without an internet connection.

4. All games are Vista and XP compatible.

Just in time for the run-up to Bethesda's Fallout 3, GameTap has added both of Black Isle's original Fallout RPGs to its lineup. To celebrate, the company is offering the first Fallout in its free subscription rotation.

Hailed as one of the better PC games of all time, Fallout is a post-apocalyptic romp through a ruined American West, featuring a cast of memorable characters and an uncompromising tactical combat system.

The Canon Rebel DSLR isn't a video camera, but if you have the time and energy like San Diego resident Ryan Cashman, you can make a pretty neat stop-motion animation with it.

Cashman explains he set the Rebel's exposure to 20-30 seconds, and he drew the LED piano player with a green LED keychain. He then strung all the photos together in Adobe After Effects and added in the music (also his original composition). Pretty neat. Kind of looks like a little cactus. I wonder how long it took him?

Oh, so that stuff's amazing. But, how often you gonna do it? Dinner parties, sure. But here's the stuff you're going to take advantage of, not every couple a days, but every couple a seconds.

Slow continuous zooms. Rotate the view. Get the hand tool and toss the image. Press a key and click and hold. Bird's eye! Who needs the Navigator palette?
They call it OpenGL support. I call it, the addiction. Once this smack enters your bloodstream, CS3 will be dead to you.

Oh, and every zoom level is a bicubically rendered thing of beauty.