I’m not a huge Ozzy Osbourne fan, but I thought this WoW commercial featuring him was pretty funny:

According to this Radio Times article at least. The Official Website also contains some info on the new season.

I’ve raved previously over my love for this series and I was both relieved and bummed that the American adaptation never took off. If you want an idea of why I love this show so much you can check out a lot of clips of it on YouTube. I’d embed one, but it appears embedding is disabled on all of the clips.

Alas the show itself still isn’t available in the U.S. so I’ll have to resort to downloading it off the BitTorrent networks. I really wish they’d at least release the DVDs here so I could buy the damned things.

Just because I’m egotistical enough to think you folks give a shit what I think, here’s another entry on new video games that I’m really looking forward to owning some day. Today’s game is the next in one of my favorite franchises: Call of Duty: World at War.

Not sure why they went with the hard rock guitar soundtrack for the launch trailer as it seems… out of place… but the game looks pretty solid and it’s averaging a healthy 88/100 score on Metacritic.

I know a lot of folks are sick to death of first person shooters set in World War II, but I’m not one of them. I was initially very skeptical of Call of Duty 4: Modern Combat because it was abandoning the WWII setting, but I ended up loving the hell out of it. That hasn’t stopped me from playing the occasional multiplayer session on Call of Duty 2 though.  I’ve been waiting a long time for CoD to take on the Pacific theater as by the time Medal of Honor—which is the other WWII FPS I’ve enjoyed immensely—got around to doing that setting it wasn’t very good. I never played CoD3 because it was a console only title so I’m pleased that this latest version is available for the PC.

The single player looks great. The multiplayer borrows some of the best ideas from CoD4. Flamethrowers, ‘nuff said! And it has a Nazi Zombie(!!!) Co-Op mode (see trailer after the jump). Alas it’s too close to Krismas for me to pick the game up anytime soon, but with a little luck I’ll get as a gift.

I can remember all the way back to 1975 and seeing Disney’s Escape to Witch Mountain in the theater. I was seven years old at the time it came out in March of that year. I don’t remember a whole lot from that age, but I definitely remember that movie because I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. I so wanted to be like the kids in that movie that I had dreams about it for weeks to come. I can also vividly remember the sequel, Return from Witch Mountain, which came out three years later. The fact that I loved both movies as a kid shows that my critical thinking skills still had a ways to go as watching the films today I can see a lot of flaws in them, but they still hold a special place in my memories of childhood.

So it goes without saying that I was intrigued to find a trailer for the remake titled Race to Witch Mountain:

I know you can’t judge a movie by its trailer, but I’d be lying if I didn’t mention that my inner-7 and 10 year-olds are totally geeking out over that trailer.

They showed a small clip from the upcoming Krismas episode The Next Doctor on the Children In Need special:

This gets me worked up on two levels: First it gets the whole Krismas vibe going and then it gets me all excited about new Who. This just makes Krismas day that much more wonderful.

I’m a long time fan of the Prince of Persia series of games having played the original on my Commodore 64 back in 1989. I thought the reboot they did on the PS2—Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time—was excellent, but the next two games suffered a bit from sequelitis. They weren’t bad, but not as awe inspiring as the first. When I first saw screenshots from the latest PoP game designed specifically for the Next Gen consoles I was skeptical at first, but after seeing it in motion I’m excited once again:

Of particular note is the young woman, Elika, who fights alongside the prince against the forces of darkness. The first game also featured a female companion, Farah, who was mainly there to help with some of the puzzles in the game. While Farah was armed with a bow and arrow her contribution to fighting off the monsters was… pathetic. She was only able to shoot one arrow every thirty seconds or so and ends up being more of a problem than a help as you’re continually saving her from the monster she annoys.

In contrast Elika is an amazing partner that will be integral not only in solving the puzzles, but in successfully defeating the monsters you have to fight. Check out the following footage showing off some of the first level and see just how much Elika contributes to the fight. She’s not just a companion, she’s a necessity:

That’s some wicked cool game play there and I can’t wait to get my hands on it. It’ll hit store shelves on December 2nd so I’m going to have to hope I get it for Krismas.

This was apparently uploaded last December to YouTube, but I only just found out about it thanks to the folks over at Unreasonable Faith. It’s quite funny though it will, as UF points out, give Christians with a persecution complex fuel for their fires:

That song will be stuck in my head all day now.

I’ve railed about my dislike for what passes for pop music these days, a common side effect of getting older, so it’s probably not surprising that I don’t know much about the duo that goes by the name “Gnarls Barkley”, but I came across this video that features one of their songs and I was impressed. I’m not sure if it’s the official video of the song or just uses the song as a background to the video, but it manages to illustrate a feeling I can recall from the many breakups I’ve had over the years. Warning: It’s definitely not for the squeamish, but as an illustration of heartbreak it’s unparalleled:

It’s odd. The memories this video brings back are painful, but also worthwhile. A lot of what made me the man I am today was learning how to overcome the sense of loss and rejection that came from having a relationship break up. I had my fair share of girlfriends over the years before I got married and all of them, save for one, broke things off with me instead of the other way around. In my younger years I often failed to see the end coming and was thusly taken by surprise, but it taught me how to recognize the signs that things weren’t going well for later relationships.

As painful as they were, I wouldn’t trade those experiences for anything. Well, maybe one or two of them, but most of them taught me a lot and made me a better person. That makes them valuable and worthwhile in spite of the pain.

[Updated: Looks like a forum mod may have overstepped with his statement. According to an article on Kotaku.com getting banned in the forums will NOT affect your ability to login to EA games afterall.]

An article over at the Ripten Video Game blog reports on a post by a community moderator in the Command and Conquer forums that suggests EA is taking a hard line against its customers. Basically if you say something in the official EA forums, any of them, that causes a moderator to ban your account then you won’t be able to login to any EA games you own:

Well, its actually going to be a bit nastier for those who get banned.

Your forum account will be directly tied to your Master EA Account, so if we ban you on the forums, you would be banned from the game as well since the login process is the same. And you’d actually be banned from your other EA games as well since its all tied to your account. So if you have SPORE and Red Alert 3 and you get yourself banned on our forums or in-game, well, your SPORE account would be banned to. It’s all one in the same, so I strongly reccommend people play nice and act mature.

All in all, we expect people to come on here and abide by our ToS. We hate banning people, it makes our lives a lot tougher, but its what we have to do.

Those banned will stay banned, but like most other internet services, its not that hard to create a new fake e-mail account. However, its a lot harder to get a new serial key =)

Nice to see they take such a light hearted approach to potentially locking video gamers out of the games they’ve purchased because EA didn’t like something they wrote on the forums. Considering the number of people who have been banned for expressing their anger at the company on the forums, well, I can see another potential class action lawsuit arising out of this decision. They really are working hard to ensure gamers have every reason to hate them as a company it seems.

Sent in by SEB reader “Matt”.

Well it’s official. David Tennant has announced and the BBC has confirmed that he will be leaving the show after the shortened 2009 season:

Outpost Gallifrey: David Tennant Leaves Doctor Who

The Guardian newspaper this evening broke the story prematurely, reporting on their website (in a report subsequently pulled down) that Tennant is “vacating the TARDIS and leaving the BBC’s Doctor Who series at the end of next year. Tennant’s decision brings to an end his popular four-year tenure as the time lord.“ The article went on to say that the BBC had confirmed that the actor “would complete the filming of four special episodes to be screened this year and in early 2010, as well as 2009’s Christmas special.“

The BBC Doctor Who website has now posted the full news: “I’ve had the most brilliant, bewildering and life changing time working on Doctor Who. I have loved every day of it,“ the actor says. “It would be very easy to cling on to the TARDIS console forever and I fear that if I don’t take a deep breath and make the decision to move on now, then I simply never will. ... I’m still the Doctor all next year but when the time finally comes I’ll be honoured to hand on the best job in the world to the next lucky git - whoever that may be.“ Tennant added that he “always thought the time to leave would be in conjunction with Russell T Davies and Julie Gardner who have been such a huge part of it all for me. Steven Moffat is the most brilliant and exciting writer, the only possible successor to Russell and it was sorely tempting to be part of his amazing new plans for the show. I will be there, glued to my TV when his stories begin in 2010.“ He furthermore says that he feels “very privileged to have been part of this incredible phenomenon, and whilst I’m looking forward to new challenges I know I’ll always be very proud to be the Tenth Doctor.“ Says Russell T Davies, “I’ve been lucky and honoured to work with David over the past few years - and it’s not over yet, the Tenth Doctor still has five spectacular hours left! After which, I might drop an anvil on his head. Or maybe a piano. A radioactive piano. But we’re planning the most enormous and spectacular ending, so keep watching!“

I wonder if he’ll follow in Eccleston’s footsteps and show up in some American TV series for a short while. Either way we can start speculating on who the next Who will be come 2010.

According to this item on MTV.com:

With Halloween mere days away, it was a nice surprise when Neil Gaiman dropped by the MTV offices to discuss his latest project, “The Graveyard Book” — now number one on its respective New York Times list. Given the intense interest in Hollywood to adapt it before it ever came out, we had to ask: Will there be a movie version?

Yes, according to Gaiman.

“I don’t know if I can talk about this, but seeing that you’ve asked me, and seeing that I haven’t been told by anybody that I can’t talk about it,” Neil revealed, “but yes.”

[...] “They want to start making films, and start producing their own films,” Gaiman said. “And they read it, and they loved it, and I spoke to them, and they said all the right things, and they seem to listen. So I don’t think it’s going to be transported to a graveyard in Los Angeles where they’ve been burying bathing beauties or anything. I think we’re actual going to stick with where the book is written and film that. And I think part of the idea is that they know they can also do the special effects cheaply.”

That will be a big issue for this film, considering most of the characters are “dead, or werewolves, or ghouls, or something else mysterious,” Gaiman said.

Exactly how that will be achieved — what levels of transparency are the ghosts? How corporeal can they get? — is “part of the fun of making the film,” he said. “There’s probably going to be an awful lot of screen tests to figure how you can pull it off in the subtlest, coolest, and most convincing way, and that will be a job for next year.”

The fact that Gaiman is producing the film fills me with hope that it’ll be a good adaptation.

The 800 pound gorilla of MMORPGs continues its phenomenal growth with Blizzard announcing today that they’ve broken the 11 million player mark:

IRVINE, Calif. - October 28, 2008 - Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. announced today that the subscribership for World of Warcraft^®, its award-winning massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), now exceeds 11 million players worldwide. This milestone was reached as the beta test for Wrath of the Lich King^®, World of Warcraft’s second expansion, nears completion. Wrath of the Lich King will launch in several regions around the world starting on November 13.

“It’s been very rewarding to see gamers around the world continue to show such strong support for World of Warcraft,“ said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment^®. “We remain fully committed to responding to that enthusiasm with a high-quality, constantly evolving game experience.

That’s

active

subscribers, by the way, which Blizzard goes out of their way to mention:

World of Warcraft subscribers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or have an active prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the game and are within their free month of access. Internet Game Room players who have accessed the game over the last thirty days are also counted as subscribers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired prepaid cards. Subscribers in licensees’ territories are defined along the same rules.

If WoW were a county it would rank in the list of countries by population at 75 out of 221 right between Greece (11,215,000) and Chad (10,781,000). Growth has slowed quite a bit since the first couple of years, but they still anticipate adding another million to the list within a year’s time now that they’ve launched in Russia and Latin America. Gotta admit, that’s mighty impressive.

When Sony first announced the Star Wars Galaxies MMORPG back in March of 2000 I was really excited at the possibilities only to be really disappointed with the end product. After watching my friend Hairboy play the beta it seemed very much like it was just Everquest redressed with Star Wars graphics. I never did end up buying the game. Now word comes that Bioware and LucasArts have teamed up to produce a MMORPG based on the highly successful Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic RPGs:

The story-based MMO will be set roughly 300 years after BioWare’s 2004 single-player RPG Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (PC, Xbox) and the Obsidian-developed sequel, or 3500 years before the beloved film series.

“We’re making KOTOR 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and beyond—this game is that big, it’s got that much content in it,“ explained BioWare co-founder Ray Muzyka. “It’s very innovative—it’s story based.“

The game has seen a team of 12 full-time writers producing content for the past few years, according to IGN, with each class getting its own story arc as “not everybody’s fantasy was to be Luke [Skywalker].“

“You get to choose many things in the game—your faction, your class, good and evil, how your story unfolds,“ explained lead designer James Ohlen.

“We thought of a Howard the Duck MMO, we thought it was a little too crazy,“ Muzyka joked. He also noted that the game will feature a “full economy.“

“The game is playable,“ asserted BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk, though a playable version was not shown today.

The Old Republic will allow players to choose a companion, as with the previous KOTOR games, and will have full PVP, PVE and RVR (realm vs. realm) combat along with raids. No classes have been revealed as of yet.

I have to admit that I’m not all that excited about it this time around. It probably doesn’t help that I was one of the few people who didn’t really care for Knights of the Old Republic. I bought it for the PC and played maybe a quarter of it before I got bored and moved on to other things. I never picked up the sequel. Granted, just like with Warcraft, the MMORPG by its very nature will have to play much differently than the RPG games did, but I’m still not all that excited about it. The setting is too far back in the past for me to give a crap. I’m much more interesting in the setting used by Star Wars Galaxies, but they fucked that game up so much that it’s not worth playing.

Of course my opinion may change as the game gets closer to release and we learn more about it, but my initial reaction is a solid “meh” at the announcement for now.

After being sued by the Church of England over the appearance of Manchester Cathedral in the hit FPS Resistance: Fall of Man it’s understandable that Sony would go out of its way to avoid offending religious sensibilities. So when a post showed up in the official European Playstation forums pointing out that a song in the soundtrack for LittleBigPlanet contained verses from the Qur’an and thusly could be considered offensive to Muslims, they opted to err on the side of caution and delay the launch of the game so it could be removed. Now they’re being criticized by a different Muslim group over that decision:

M. Zuhdi Jasser, M.D., president of the non-profit American Islamic Forum for Democracy told Edge on Monday, “Muslims cannot benefit from freedom of expression and religion and then turn around and ask that anytime their sensibilities are offended that the freedom of others be restricted.

“The free market allows for expression of disfavor by simply not purchasing a game that may be offensive.”

Jasser, who has also appeared on CNN, in the Washington Times and National Review, said that not only does the First Amendment support freedom of expression, but Mohammed also “defended the rights of his enemies to critique him in any way even if it was offensive to his own Islamic sensibilities or respect for Koranic scripture.”

[...] Jasser said that the demand to censor, as well as Sony’s willingness to bend at the request, is counterproductive to freedom of speech.

“…To demand that [the game] be withdrawn is predicated on a society which gives theocrats who wish to control speech far more value than the central principle of freedom of expression upon which the very practice and freedom of religion is based.”

Jasser added, “The fact that the music writer is a devout Muslim should highlight that at the core of this issue is not about offending ‘all Muslims,’ but only about freedom of expression and the free market.”

He still said that he does not endorse the use of Koranic verses in non-educational videogames, calling the literature “the words of God.”

But he took a clear stance in upholding First Amendment rights.

“AIFD stands against any form of censorship in the marketplace of ideas whether imposed by government or by corporations intimidated by the response of militants or those with an inappropriately sensitive level of political correctness,” Jasser said.

Needless to say, I agree with him. I can totally understand why Sony opted to play it safe, but I still think they should have kept the song. I also think we need more Muslims standing up and saying things like Mr. Jasser here.

Apparently it’s considered offensive to Muslims to put passages of the Qur’an to music. One track licensed for the game has two lines straight from the holy text as lyrics so Sony decided to delay LBP’s release so they could remove the song:

During the review process prior to the release of LittleBigPlanet, it has been brought to our attention that one of the background music tracks licensed from a record label for use in the game contains two expressions that can be found in the Qur’an. We have taken immediate action to rectify this and we sincerely apologize for any offense that this may have caused.

We will begin shipping LittleBigPlanet to retail in North America the week of October 27th. Sorry for the delay, and rest assured, we are doing everything we can to get LittleBigPlanet to you as soon as possible.

Needless to say I find this silly, but it’s probably in Sony’s better interests to cover their ass and avoid the controversy that would otherwise result. The song itself is Tapha Niang by Toumani Diabate and can be heard on his MySpace page if you’re curious. I thought it was rather pleasant myself.