The 360 Extreme

Today there wont be much time to post, so we get an early morning lolcat. Perhaps today’s lolcat is a bit more sobering, forcing us to reflect upon our casual mockery of our feline friends. I looked in the sunday papers, it is a bad day for gaming deals btw.

This was not just an excuse to post my newest lolpic up on the site, but rather an opportunity to reflect upon how we as gamers view the Olympics. We spend much of our free time playing games, not necessarily sports, but we often have a strong sense of competition about us and more often than not we strive to derive a feeling of personal accomplishment from our games. The Olympics are huge people, if you haven’t noticed everyone is watching them, and perhaps even you are. One thing I noticed, is that gaming helps to instill in us a sense of community, a feeling of being in a team, and most of the time with people we might not even know. Lets face it, when you see your fellow Reds drive by guns blazing in a social slayer match you may not know who they are, but you sure are happy they’re off to kill those dang Blues. So when I go downstairs to see the rest of the family all sitting in their respective seats, eyes glued to the games, my interest is caught up just a little bit. I don’t know the first thing about most Olympic sports, and I have no idea what the names of all the people representing our country are, but for some strange reason I get excited when I see an American racing across the finish line. Is this my sense of patriotism? Or is it just the natural human tendency to root for the ‘team’ that gaming has amplified within me? As my family calmly watches, maybe once in a while leaning in closer in excitement, I will jump up in front of the screen yelling “OMG we have 2 Beat the CHINE3Z3!!!!1!1!”, not necessarily in l33tspeak, but always at a high volume. My family looks at me and says, you don’t even like gymnastics, and they’re right I don’t, I proceed to go back to my games honestly not even caring to watch the rest, I just somehow get caught up in that one race for victory. Lots of people get excited about the Olympics, but as gamers are we better attuned to the competitive aspect of it all? To be honest I am sure that real soccer players understand the game much better than I, but I mean, its multiplayer, I can totally dig that. Gaming helps me to look at an Olympic event and feel genuine excitement for their accomplishment, could the Olympics perhaps do the same for gaming?

People that normally could care less about sports will watch the Olympics nonstop, maybe, just maybe if these same people could just get a taste of the thrill of competitive games, they’d get off that couch and move over to the one with the 360 in front of it. Can the same people that blindly cheer for Michael Phelps, a man they had only heard of days before, someday be cheering on xX!B0neCrusher666!xx as he races to return the flag? Who knows. Perhaps free games such as Battlefield Heroes, that are social yet competitive will be enough to drag millions into gaming that would normally never consider trying to play a shooter. Maybe the mainstream population only needs a glimpse of the competition that gaming brings, and they will be hooked. Just like watching the Olympics, you don’t have to be physically fit to play games, and just like the Olympics, gaming can be the perfect outlet for our lust for battle.

What I do know is that there is something special about the Olympics, and even if you don’t watch them religiously, next time they’re on, take a minute to cheer for the team and you might be surprised at your excitement, the situation: 1min. left and only down by 5 kills doesn’t just apply to COD4 you know.

Because its too violent, and Germany has a restriction against extremely violent games… which causes me to wonder, why is MadWorld being showcased at the Leipzig games convention in Germany? According to gamekyo.com Platinum games have stated that MadWorld won’t even be sold in Germany, so why show it off? For those of you unfamiliar with MadWorld, it is quite possibly the bloodiest game this console generation, and it is on the Nintendo Wii. Perhaps the bigger question is, why won’t Germany allow such violent games, and why aren’t steps being taken to change this? Games such as the Witcher that have such blatant sexual aspects are A-ok in Germany, but would be frowned upon in America. It is interesting how tastes of what is decent and what is not have diverged on both sides of the Atlantic, I wonder if Microsoft made a bigger effort to get Gears 2 into Germany by showcasing it and getting German citizens excited we could hopefully see these trends start to change. Platinum at least has the gumption to show off Mad World, come on Cliffy, show the Germans some Gears

Without the permission of anyone I have decided to start the tradition of getting a daily lolcat and placing it here on the blog! Or… at least we should put something funny up here as often as possible. Relevant to gaming? Perhaps. Hilarious? Always.

IGN has posted an interview with Far Cry 2’s Gretan Richard detailing the map editor
that is to be included in the 360 version of the game. For those of you that have
yet to see this, stop reading and hit play.

Today I received this e-mail from Nathan (aka Jackaroosund0wn), requesting to be a writer for the360extreme.com…

By the way, the site will be undergoing a bunch of changes in the next few days…

Hey it’s Jackaroosund0wn from the Talkingaboutgames forums, I would love to help out writing for your site. I am currently an engineering major in my junior year, but please, don’t let that lead you to believe that I cannot write. I am endeavoring to be a lawyer, and as such I love writing and I can be serious or satirical if needed. I would love to write up some reviews for the site, if you need an example of my writing check out my Mass Effect review thats up on TAG
http://talkingaboutgames.com/component/option,com_fireboard/Itemid,26/func,view/id,7282/catid,16/
I don’t believe that you all get your games for free yet, so maybe a good idea would be to start building up a review library of past games, and I would be more than willing to write up some of those for you! I have a passion for video games, and a love for writing, and the added bonus of not being grossly immature, I would be honored if you all took me on.
Sincerely,
Nathan

We’re now up to part 10… Go check it out in the Walkthrough’s page…

YES! OMGZZZ!!!!!!!!!! I’m finally OFFICIALLY in partnership with nextgenwalkthroughs.com, I finally got my videos posted, that’s a link to nextgenwalkthroughs.com where my Dark Sector guide is posted.

I’m going to stop typing out nextgenwalkthroughs.com, because (a) I misspell it almost every time, and (b) they have a shorter second domain name (NGDUB.com)