I was playing the demo levels of the new Warhammer 40,000 game Dawn of War: Dark Crusade and the units SHOOT THROUGH THE LAND!

Amazingly lame for a game series as mature as this one. And why has it become a trend to tack on as many names as you can to the game title. Even the abbreviation is massive WH40K:DoW:DC. It reads like a cryptography key from World War II.

At first I thought, 'why are they shooting the land,' then I saw they were actually shooting through the land to hit my building.

I'll have more on this game, which is scheduled for release 9 October, after I play the other demo level. But I can tell you right now I am quite disappointed with THQ and Relic on this one. They blew one of the most basic rules of gameplay.

The Video Game Voters Network kicked off the first ever "Video Game Voter Registration Drive" yesterday, and I’m sure some politicians are nervous, and understandably so. According to the VGVN, 50% of all Americans play video games. You can register to vote in your area on the VGVN’s website. Click the link above to read the press release, or click here to begin the registration process.

According to Douglas Lowenstein, president of the ESA, Play for Real will "offer the adults who have grown up with our computer and video games a unique way to involve themselves in the political process on all issues, including the ones that matter most to gamers." (The ESA, or Entertrainment Software Assosociation, is a trade organization created to represent U.S. computer and video game publishers. The Video Game Voters Network is a "grassroots political network for gamers and a project of the ESA").

So I was out of town this weekend teaching in a small town without internet access. But I had some time to catch up on some demos, reviews of which will be posted this week.
When I returned I had so many emails I didn't know what to read first, but this one caught my eye.

Do your grandparents got game?
First I thought 'that's not grammatically correct,' but after the ubiquitous 'Got Milk?' campaign and the equally gramatically incorrect 'I'm loving it!' McDonald's campaign I have come to expect nothing less from the marketing industry.

A rash of problems for Sony (including the massive laptop battery recall) has now been compounded by the delay of the PS3 release until March of next year. That is for everywhere except Japan and North America. AP article on Yahoo.

So you want to play the Call of Juarez Demo? So did I. But you're having problems installing the demo? So did I.

You know what I did in the end? I said forget it. After the large download, the totally unnecessary product registration procedure and finally the Securom problem I decided it just wasn't worth all the hassle. What kind of company puts a massive product registration into a game demo and then couples it with one of the worst forms of copy protection on the planet?

Sit Ubisoft, sit. Bad Dog.

So I was surfing the web today, not really looking for anything in particular when I came across an article about "Machine Learning in Games development." And since I had recently talked about things gamers might like to see in games I thought , "Self, this Nick Palmer guy might have a point." After reading the article I thought , "Wow this cat knows his stuff." So I decided it needed some added exposure.