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I’m not even that big a GTA fan – I’m the sort who does a few missions, loses interest, and then just drives around the city raising hell and seeing how long I can fend off the police – yet there I was last night, in line in front of a local game shop, waiting to get my hands on GTA4. I guess I just like the community aspect – lineup events remind me there’s an actual physical community out there; real people, not just semitransparent swearing poltergeists floating around on Xbox Live and PSN.

And oh what a community we are. Actually, I was surprised by how diverse the turnout was: all ages, all races, and a range of economic classes were represented – the only scarce demographic being, unsurprisingly, females. In the line of 75 or so people, I counted about 8 women – and two of those, interestingly enough, were moms there to purchase the game for their accompanying underage sons.

(By the way, that’s some fucking balls; when I was that age I didn’t even want my mom to pick me up at school. Not only were those kids able to bamboozle mommy into sitting in line with them for a couple hours on a Monday night to buy them an M-rated videogame, but they clearly didn’t give a shit if the whole rest of the line saw it.)

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Violence and videogames have been together since the beginning of time (or at least since videogames evolved beyond Pong). As we move into an era where the unlikely “uncanny valley,” the idea that as video game characters become more like humans yet not completely so they actually cause revulsion in those playing the games, isn’t so farfetched, I chose to take a look back and pick five game series which took violence to unprecedented levels and then told gamers, “You better like this or we’ll kick you in the throat.” So here they are in all their gory goodness: -- Elvis Ramirez

5. Postal

Postal is one of those games with absolutely no shame. At least Mortal Kombat had a story, a thin one but one nonetheless. Postal pretty much drops a machinegun into the player’s hands and says go kill things. Uwe Boll is making a film based on the game, now that’s an act of violence against the American public.

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With the way the economy is going and magazine and newspaper readership on the decline, it is understandable that the print media are scrambling to find new ways to increase revenues. But selling out to the proportion that the Official XBox Magazine has done is pretty damn ridiculous.

According to this Kotaku post, Insert Credit, a gaming website, reported on the death of print game journalism as they discovered April's issue of the magazine. An ad replaced the the magazine's cover, but the ad was tailored to look like the magazine's actual front page. This is not the same as selling ad space on the cover of your publication, this boils down to fooling people outright.

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By now, you gaming faithful have already watched the Sonic Unleashed leaked video on Youtube (like most of us, you guys are probably also salivating at the idea). Here it is for you folk that haven't seen it.

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It's like taking someone's gun and saying, "Now, shoot."

The Xbox 360 had an early lead in this console war, but now, Microsoft seems to be faltering behind Sony (and not only in Japan, where the 360 doesn't stand a chance against Nintendo and Sony's vice-like grasp on the market.)

The end of HD-DVDs may very well prove to be a serious blow to the Microsoft machine if they don't decide quickly what they are going to do about losing their large-capacity format. It seems that Microsoft took their lead and started lording it over Sony, not noticing that their was a flying chair coming right for Microsoft's head.

Sony is close to delivering on the promises that they made way back when the PS3 was first released, and with the advantage of having beaten Toshiba's format, well, let's just say Microsoft's situation is looking pretty grim, like impending doom grim.

Let us not mention Super Smash Bros. Brawl, which stands to sell many Wiis (feel free to giggle at that one) if the sales in Japan and the anticipation here are any indicators, lest Microsoft gaming execs really go ballistic. --Elvis Ramirez

Who said petitions don't work? Well, they really don't. Only sales numbers can compel a company to do anything, but I still say the petition to bring over Persona 3 FES, the expansion to Persona 3, to the states in April had something to do with the Atlus' decision to cave in to fans.

Persona 3 came out in August of last year. It missed getting buried in the deluge of holiday releases by a hair. Thankfully, Atlus fans gobbled up the game like it was manna from heaven. Mot other gamers ignored the game where simulated suicide was the key component to not only the storyline but also the game's mechanics.

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Activision has confirmed that Aerosmith will get it’s own Guitar Hero game.

A question comes to mind, who is going to be willing to shell out $60 for a game dedicated to one band (aside from the hardcore fans that have done as much heroin as Steven Tyler has)? This is great news if you are a big Aerosmith follower, but even if you really like the band, I assume that you want a little variety in your game. The big draw for these rhythm games is that you can pretend you can actually play your favorite songs, and this includes a variety of bands not just one. I’ve yet to meet one person on earth who has said, “This is the only band I listen to.” (If that “one-band” person is reading this all I can say is hit yourself.)

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Namco Bandai blamed the Wii for the closing of 50 arcades in Japan. They cited it as the main reason for the closures according to a report by Reuters.

When I read this all I thought was, “Why on earth do the Japanese still play at the arcades?” It was then that I realized that to the Japanese gaming isn’t part of a fringe culture, as it used to be in the U.S. (and in some form still is). This is an popular, family pass time. However, I can’t really feel sorry for Namco Bandai.

This is a company that has its hands in everything from action figures to video games, so when they start crying that the Wii is beating the crap out of one of their money generators, I find it hard to feel anything aside from indifference. It’s like a rich kid crying about getting an insignificant scratch on his or her Maserati.

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Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. has reported profits for the final quarter of last year. It just goes to show that pricing is a huge part of whether a console succeeds or not.

When the PS3 debuted, it was the most expensive console on the market. I’m sure that gamers remember the price tag that was roughly equivalent to a person’s soul. But Sony, finally coming to it’s senses and reducing production costs for the black behemoth, cut the PS3’s price to $400 last year. Yes, the PSP has also been successful and surely contributed to Sony’s profits, but the handheld device also received a price cut in 2007.

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Seriously, what the hell is this?

Atlus Co. is a game developer that specializes in weird, off-beat games and they show no signs of changing directions. The developer is currently working on Baroque, a remake of a title originally released for the Saturn and Playstation. The game follows the same twisted, surreal vision as other games in the Atlus Co. catalogue.

The game is a dungeon crawler. There is only one dungeon - just one huge seriously messed up dungeon. The layout changes every time that the protagonist enters, so you are guaranteed to get lost. This style of game is reminiscent of the older RPGs, specifically the text-based ones, where the purpose was to either get the hell out of the dungeon or find your way to the bottom (I never understood the fascination with going to face your ultimate demise at the hands of some three-headed beast on the bottom floor of a dank dungeon).

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The Call of Duty series has finally moved away from focusing on World War II. Don’t get me wrong it’s a great series but there are only so many times that I can kill Nazis without it getting repetitive (Note: Nazis are still bad). But the new setting has to deal with many of the same issues of repetitiveness that plagued Call of Duty one through three.

Now, there isn’t a lot of room for innovations in first person shooters, the mechanics are always the same. Point at something and shoot until it dies or blows up, whichever comes first (sometimes an enemy dies and blows up). So the real change has to come in setting, weaponry, and bonus features. Story is not a real factor in the FPS genre, so that doesn’t count. Call of Duty makes an effort to change all of these things, and while I applaud them, it’s still pretty much just shooting at things.

I played the multiplayer game with a couple of friends. We played a couple of normal matches where we ran around and shot at each other in ways that would get any real soldier sniped. But after a while we found ourselves mixing it up to stay entertained.

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So by now most gamers (and actually most of the world) are acquainted with World of Warcraft and the subsequent expansion Burning Crusade. The game has about 9 million subscribers if Blizzard’s ads are to be believed. That’s the entire population of North Carolina.

Back in November 2007, Blizzard released patch 2.3 for the game, completely changing it. The biggest adjustment that this patch brought was that it made it easier to advance from levels 20 to 60. Now to those few who have never experienced the game for one reason or another, leveling would take a person months of play and that’s if the person spent hours in the game on a daily basis.

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Having played Rock Band, I can honestly say that it blows Guitar Hero out of the water. The Rock Band guitar just feels better than the Guitar Hero one. The spacing is better and it has a more solid feel to it. It’s still nothing like holding a real guitar but for a second I forgot that I was holding a plastic mold with buttons. I’m not saying that the Guitar Hero series is bad, it just doesn’t offer anything new, and Rock Band does.

I played the game how it’s meant to be played, with three other friends. Watching the beads of sweat forming on my friends head as he did the guitar section on Aerosmith’s “Train Kept a Rolling” was not only hilarious but genuinely entertaining. My hand felt like it was on fire after finishing that song and I was just playing on medium. It leaves you with a real sense of accomplishment even though you know it’s just a game.

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So my friend downloaded the latest Burnout Paradise demo from Xbox Live, and I can say that the game is shaping up quite nicely. EA better not just stop at the demo, though. I’d hate to see this series go to crap.

My friend played it first, and the first time I saw him crash I had to bite my tongue from saying, “Oh, snap.” You see that’s the thing about the Burnout series, the emphasis isn’t on beating your opponent in a race. The focus is on driving around like a madman and trying to make the coolest crash possible, and if you take out your opponent with you all the better. I’m surprised Jack Thompson or the other anti-game groups haven’t jumped on this, and warned the public that Burnout could cause people to drive recklessly. Anyway, in Paradise you are treated to a little slow-motion movie of you wrecking your car. I never thought shattered window pane fragments could look so beautiful.

Aside from the aesthetic, there is no cumbersome menu to deal with. You load up the game, and you start driving – it’s that simple. The demo consisted of driving around a section of Paradise City, trying to land barrel rolls off of ramps, and crashing in style. I imagine that the game will follow a sandbox style, a style in which the player can go anywhere and interact with the game environment a la Grand Theft Auto.

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Welcome to Hadouken. This blog’s focus is gaming and the industry that feeds our “hobby.” Sometimes we hate it and other times we are vindicated in our love for games. So come back next week, and every week thereafter, for more commentary and news. Delivering a blue fireball to the gaming jugular.

Activision and Vivendi Games merged to form Activision Blizzard and gamers are going to be left out in the cold.

Now, the big companies will say that there is a benefit to having massive amounts of money behind game development. But how many big budget titles flop upon release (True Crime: New York City, I’m looking at you).

These hulking behemoths are going to attract all the programming talent in ways that smaller game developers can not. The worst part is that these companies are rarely driven by a sense of artistic merit or of responsibility to their consumers; they are driven by profit, which means that the company will stick to the same old formulas that net them cash. This trend has to stop before we have three big companies developing all the games.

As a gamer, I play the big developer titles and some of the smaller company titles and while I do enjoy playing both, I utterly despise visiting the same damn dungeon I visited in the last game in any series (i.e. every Zelda game ever made).

News of this merger has taken the hope I had for new, innovative games out back and pumped it full of buckshot.

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