Girl Gaming - Black Ops

When Call of Duty: Black Ops was getting ready to hit the market Activision and Treyarch put together a Prestige Edition and a Hardened Edition package of extras for their dedicated players. The Prestige Edition came with a copy of Black Ops, a Black Ops RC-XD Car, a premium steelbook casing, custom Black Ops emblem medal, a woods Avatar outfit, and four exclusive co-op maps. The Hardened Edition came with a custom Black Ops emblem medal, a woods avatar outfit, and four co-op maps. Awesome deal right? – For guys; yes, but for girls; well lets just say we received the short end of the stick on this one.

Unfortunately for those who have created a girl avatar on their Xbox Live accounts they

Half of WOW Gameplay are by top gamers.

Talk about fanaticism. According to a recent study from Raptr following players time within the last two weeks since the release of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, the top 11 percent of the most active users account for over 50% of total game play by all users. One of the most addictive games on the market clearly has its most addicted players wrapped around its figurative finger, capturing all of a certain group of peoples attentions and time much more than those of others.

And thats not to say that the bottom 89 percent doesnt log in

Finding love with XBOX LIVE

Many parents dread the life of video games for their children, mostly because they fear it will lead to an anti-social life style. Fortunately there are companies like Gaming Passions, and Game Crush and there is even a facebook group, Xbox Live Dating , that are here to help take the burden off of meeting new people through video game social networking.

The

When Gears of War 3 got pushed back, most of the office was pretty bummed out about it, but we're excited to hear that the game Bulletstorm will include early access to the Gears of War 3 Beta. EA and Epic Games have announced that the Epic Edition, of Bulletstorm will include the beta access as well as a 25,000 EXP bonus and some multiplayer visual upgrades.

Aesthetically, Bulletstorm looks awesome. The color palette shown throughout the trailers doesn't show a gritty looking shooter with dull browns and grays nor cartoon like greens and purples, but has it's own unique look that confidently displays a sci-fi looking world with fluorescent blues and orange. Bulletstorm's unique and untested look could be why the Gears of War 3 beta is being included.

Ever play TF2 and notice how every Scout spams the voice command "NEED A SENTRY HERE" over and over and over till an Engineer (most likely me) gives in and builds a sentry? Well apparently I guess there's an annoying Scout at Valve's HQ and I guess the programmers there decided to give in like I do. Only thing is, their sentry is real (well except for the shooting bullets part).

Actually the team behind Team Fortress 2 got to visit Weta Workshop (the same people who did animatronic work for the Lord of the Rings movies and the upcoming The Hobbit movie) a while back and made a request to make a Level 1 sentry for their home office. Well it just arrived recently and Weta went the whole nine yards. The sentry (which took several men to deploy and move) has a state-of-the-art motion detection camera and will "fire" on those in its paths. This is probably like every TF2 fanboy's dream to own one of these near replicas. The same goes for this blogger. Hopefully one

Politics in Games - North Korea not going be lead by a Gaming Loser

One of Kim Jong Il's sons is apparently too busy playing video games to take over the reins of his father and run the world's most secluded militaristic oppressive country. Wikileaks (you know that organization that just likes to be the fly in every government's luncheon soup) has released information from a 2008 U.S. government consulate cable in Shanghai to the U.S. State Department. In addition to the information about the future prospects of North Korea and its leader being in very ill health they released this:

"...the two youngest sons, Kim Jong-chol and Kim Jong-un, far too inexperienced and incapable of effective governance. xxxxx, observing that KJI's oldest son, Kim Jong-nam, is

Back to Future Game Available Soon

Coming soon to a future near you: the Back to the Future franchise is launching into the video game world, with the first game installment hitting stores for PCs at the end of this month.

The game will pick up where the third film left off, in the first of five installments. Players will be able to play as Marty McFly and Doc Brown, traveling through time and encountering off the wall characters and peculiar situations. However, few details have been let out about where in time the game will actually take the player.

Co-creator/co-writer/co-producer of the films, Bob Gale, has been hard at work building the games,

Mortal Kombat Pre-Order Goodies

I've never had a huge issue with pre-order bonuses. In most cases, the content added through pre-ordering your game at a local game store always felt additional. It wasn't until recently that I've felt like pre-ordering was actually more like paying ransom. Since when did content that feels fundamental to the game suddenly get taken from the experience and split apart amongst different retailers?

Mortal Kombat 9 is a prime example. At this point I think it's safe to say that 80% of the people that will be excited for the newest Mortal Kombat have experience with the old Mortal Kombats, they've been there and done that with Mortal Kombat. We'll

Industry News - Stupid Burglar caught due to Facebook

All I can say is wow. You have to be pretty thick to be a criminal in my case, but this just about tops it for dimwittedness.

Apparently, a D.C. burglar thought his victims Facebook to be the best outlet to proudly flaunt his stolen prizes. Somehow, authorities have yet to catch the perpetrator, although of all the dumb things he could have done to give himself away and solidify the evidence, taking a picture of himself smirking with the stolen cash and winter jacket he took is probably at the top of the list.

The burglar broke into Washington Post writer Marc Fishers home last Friday, running away with Fishers 15 year old sons laptop, iPod, some saving bonds, cash, and a pretty nice winter coat. He then proceeded to take a picture of himself with the laptops webcam, posing and smirking with the stolen goods, and then posted it on Fishers sons Facebook page.

The latest patch for the hit PS3 driving simulator Gran Turismo 5 is going todelight those who were complaining about the details of damage in the game.After downloading the patch, "My Lounge" it allows you to choose exactly how much of mechanical damage you're willing to have on your car due from online play.

To be more detailed about this patch's key feature, you can have your car take as much damage and be looking spiffy and untouched for theentiretyof online play with "NONE" option. In addition, with the "HEAVY" option, if you took a lot of damage during playtime, your car would look so damage, I don't think even Carfax would take it. And somewhere in the middle,there's a "Light" option where it shows your car taking some moderate damage but regenerates it over time....which I would have liked in real life, especially when I was driving through wintertime Iowa during my college years.