1. PSE...nvy: Xbox marketing OG VP says 360 aspires to be the new PS2
2. 150...megabytes, the new 640k? Developer struggles with XBLA file sizes 
3. SEX...box dust-up over Mass Effect makes child expert mass abject
4. WHA...t's the matter with Kansas? Nothing Simon Adebisi couldn't cure
5. RND...The Gangster of Academia reflects, cooperatively, on his book

 The Burnout Paradise city map

In Round 1 of our Vs. Mode exchange with MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo (also featured on his blog Multiplayer) on Burnout Paradise, he graciously admitted, after much to-ing and fro-ing about his assorted experiences with the game, that in the end we were right and he was wrong about the quality of the title. We thanked him for recognizing the wisdom of his elders, but in truth, we had long suspected that Burnout's radical reinvention would be the source of much consternation among gamers. In today's Round 2, Totilo risks the wrath of Nintendo fanboys the world over by daring to suggest that Burnout Paradise is a better Animal Crossing than, well, Animal Crossing itself. (We've never played it, so we'll just offer up a quick "no comment" and leave Totilo to stand alone in the line of fire.) For our part, we ran with his suggestion that the next big trend in games might lie in ditching the medium's historically goal-oriented focus, coining such sure-to-be-industry-standard terms as SOS, MMSS and SSAOWG in the process of exploring the power of online-connected open worlds. Some excerpts:

Stephen Totilo: Burnout: Paradise could be my own Animal Crossing. Paradise City is huge. There are lots of things to do, mostly involving smashing thing--cars, gates, signs, etc. There's also just interesting terrain, good lines to race through--across bridges, through railroad tunnels, up and down big staircases, down the beach, in the hidden circuit race track (I found it!) in the southwest part of the city. And like Animal Crossing, I can welcome other people into my city or hop into there's and play together, mostly an improvised fashion. Better for my tastes, though, I can play against them without them, knocking off their high scores while they're asleep. As I said in my Round 1, I don't even care that much about the races in the game anymore. I just like driving around, wandering digitally. I guess it's the difference between going to a specific website or just surfing the web to alleviate boredom. We all know which of those activities is actually more fun.

N'Gai Croal: I wonder though, if die hard, old school, goal-oriented players will wag their fingers at gaming delinquents like ourselves who reject the idea that winning isn't everything, but the only thing, for whom beating the game--or other people--is their entire raison de jeu. As I become increasingly hardcasual in my gaming tastes, I need games to stop boxing me into one way to have fun, one way to progress, one way to entertain myself. I don't want the proclivities of 12-24-year-old males, who have unlimited amounts of time to grind through a developer's set path, to prevent me from having a good time. As Brad Pitt said of Project Mayhem in "Fight Club," "You decide your level of involvement." (Would this be Vs. Mode without a "Fight Club" or Metal Gear Solid reference? I think not.) The more developers that follow in Criterion's footsteps, the more teams that choose to achieve their hours of gameplay by expanding their games along the twin axes of density and variety to accommodate a wider range of gaming desires rather than along the narrow path that satisfies the same old hardcore joypad-twiddler, the more fun I'll be having.

To read Round 2 of our exchange in its entirety, click on the link below. 

1. CON...You can't spell "cross-media convergence" without it
2. ALL...your vaporized water are belong to Valve Software
3. YOU...only get one chance to make a first impression
4. PRO...and con: A look at Disney's field trials with the DS
5. RND...For the 25th anniversary of "Thriller," a killer tribute

 Chair Entertainment co-founders Geremy and Donald Mustard

You've read the press release that we just posted unveiling the partnership between Orson Scott Card and Chair Entertainment for Ender's Game. But that's not all. We caught up with the founders of Chair--creative director Donald Mustard and his brother, technical director Geremy Mustard--for an exclusive email interview about the announcement. Here's what they wrote back to say:

How old were you when you first read "Ender's Game"? What do you remember most strongly from your initial reading of the novel?

Donald Mustard: I was 10 years old when I first read "Ender's Game." I read a lot as a child and had already made my way through most of the John Carter and Tarzan books when I noticed "Ender's Game" on our bookshelf (way to go Mom and Dad for having such good taste!). Within the first three pages I was absolutely blown away by the book. It was unlike anything I had ever read. I had never (and rarely still do) experienced such a compelling and well developed universe. I loved how smart the characters were written and how visceral and important their actions were. I loved the Battle Room and the intricate strategies that were used by the students. But most of all, I loved the character of Ender Wiggin, how his brain worked and the way he was always able to outthink and outwit his opponents. You read the book and you want to be like Ender, think like Ender.

"Ender's Game" is a true literary classic; the kind of book you love more each time you read it. It's truly an honor to be part of the team that gets to take the "Ender's Game" universe from words on a page into an interactive, visual medium. We know that just like us, there are literally millions of people who have waited a long time for this game, and we can't wait to play it either!

How did you first meet Orson Scott Card? How did you end up collaborating on the screenplay for Advent Rising?

Geremy Mustard: Donald and I had the core idea for Advent Rising since we were much younger and as we began to make plans for the game, we were really interested in seeing if we could get feedback from an accomplished science fiction author to see if our ideas all made sense. I don't think we ever actually thought we'd convince anyone to help us, but we thought we'd at least give it a try. Orson Scott Card was our first choice and we were able to track him down and pitch him our idea.

He's been approached many times before and doesn't usually get involved with work on games, but he agreed to meet with us for 30 minutes. We ended up spending about four hours with him, after which he offered his assistance with the game. It was amazing to be able to work with someone whose work we had admired since we were both very young. Our work on Advent was able to build a very strong foundation of friendship and trust and we all hoped we'd have the chance to collaborate on something bigger in the future.

How soon after you began work on Advent Rising did you start discussing the possibility of working on an Ender's Game title? What factors were involved in the negotiations?

 The original book cover for "Ender's Game"

Science fiction fans who love videogames, start your rejoicing. Later today, award-winning author Orson Scott Card and Chair Entertainment--the creative team responsible for Advent Rising and Undertow--will officially announce plans to turn Card's beloved novel "Ender's Game" into a, well, game. But you can read the announcement here first. The interactive game won't tackle the entire book, however; instead, it will focus on the famed Battle Room. And in something of a twist, Ender's Game is being built from the ground up for digital distribution via services like Xbox Live Marketplace and Playstation Network rather than DVD or Blu-Ray, immediately making it the highest profile download-only title to date. Click on the link below to read the press release that's going out later today. And click here to read our exclusive interview with Chair co-founders (and brothers) Donald and Geremy Mustard.

1. HOW...many espressos and lattes can you buy for $35? $17? 10? 5?
2. CAN...Tag replace the Pad? LeapFrog Enterprises seeks a jump start
   
3. CIV...ilization and its discontents: Firaxis puts Wii version of Civ on hold
4. RIP...Prop Joe: The co-op is dead...but long live Co-Optimus
5. THE...hardest working man in game journalism gets a promotion
6. TNA...wrestler moonlights as a columnist for GameTap
7. RND...Looking to kill time? Make your own album cover
   

 Qwizdom Q2 Remote

Writing about games as frequently as we do has certainly made the staff of Level Up open to the applications of videogames in a variety of areas. That said, there's nothing like a story about games being used in the educational arena to get our knees jerking furiously in protest. The latest such article to trigger our inner curmudgeon is a New York Times story titled "Students Click, and a Quiz Becomes a Game," about the proliferation of game show-style clickers as a teaching aid throughout U.S. schools.

The games had begun. In a darkened classroom at Great Neck South High School on a recent afternoon, the Advanced Placement physics students sped through a pop quiz, furiously pressing keys on hand-held clickers. A projection screen tracked their responses in real time, showing who knew what through an animated display of spaceships--individually numbered for each student--that blasted off or fell by the wayside with each right or wrong answer.

The students were not competing for grades (it was only a practice quiz), but they certainly acted as if they were.

“Let’s go, let’s go!” yelled a boy from the back of the class. “What’s the next question?” The Great Neck district has been introducing the clickers in an effort to liven up traditional classroom teaching with a more interactive approach. After a successful test at one of its high schools, Great Neck expanded the technology to other schools.

To read the rest of this post, click on the link below.

 Burnout Paradise, developed by Criterion Games and published by Electronic Arts

Another year, another set of games to incite email warfare between MTV and Newsweek. Yes, Vs. Mode is back once again, after a brief hiatus which saw the principals take their battle to the pages of Slate. The subject of our newest Vs. Mode discussion with MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo (also featured on his blog Multiplayer) is Criterion Games' and Electronic Arts' racing game Burnout Paradise. In Round 1 of our exchange, Totilo explains why "It's complicated" is the best way to describe his relationship with the latest Burnout, while we describe how we fell hard, fast and almost completely without reservations in love with Criterion's refreshing new take on its aging franchise. Some excerpts:

Stephen Totilo: EA sends me a review build in December. I play it in my PlayStation 3. My wife and I love Burnout 3: Takedown, me for the racing, she for the crashes. I drive through a few intersection-triggered events in my first sitting, winning enough of them to unlock the crash mode so that I can let me wife give it a try. But I give crash--Showtime--a go before her and it all falls apart. It seems too easy. I tumble my car farther and farther down a road, causing massive property damage and waiting for the mode to get hard. Surely there must a time limit I'm going to have trouble with or a score threshold I can't easily meet. Not really. It's easy. It reminds me of how Lumines got on the PSP, too easy for too long before any challenge emerged. This is happening in my first un-supervised session. I want out of Showtime mode and put the controller down so that my car goes still and, at last, the mode does time out. This seems wrong, even broken.

N'Gai Croal: It would have been so tempting for Criterion to have made the open world optional and layered a structured event system on top of the game as it exists today. Everyone wins, right? Especially since I'm a fan of developers providing players with as many options as possible so that we can customize the experience to be exactly what we want it to be. At the same time, I can't help feeling that we've all benefited from Alex and his team fully committing to making Burnout Paradise an open world racing title. They've embraced it in ways large, small and highly instructive for anyone who follows in their footsteps. Driving through gas stations to replenish your boost; through auto repair shops to fix your car; and through junkyards to switch vehicles. Taking out cars to add them to your collection. Anywhere, anytime Showtime mode for your destructive delight. Having three different burnout systems--Stunt, Speed and Aggression--which both harkens back to Burnouts past and lets players drive the way they want to drive.

To read Round 1 of our exchange in its entirety, click on the link below.

1. SEX...box, partially retracted: Child expert backpedals on Mass Effect assertion...
2. SEX...box: ...but does Fox News know about the coming release of Rez HD?
   
3. WHA...t fresh hell is this? One man's experience with Playstation Network
4. GTA...without Jack Thompson: like Harold Melvin without the Blue Notes?
5. RND...Blame Canada: Could this be the hot new slur on Xbox Live?
   

1. GAF...Idol: EA attack dog publicist Jeff Brown forcefully defends Mass Effect
2. YOU...got served: Major publishers subpoenaed in Silicon Knights-Epic Games suit
3. ECH...o and the Bunnychamber: game journalists fuss, fight over compensation
4. RND...New Bond film named; somewhere, an untitled World War II game weeps

 All For One: The poster for Season 4 of "The Wire" 

It's often been said that the foundation of any successful relationship is trust. The founders of BioWare and Pandemic have made it clear in interviews that they trust Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello, whom they know well from his days as a managing director of their previous owner, Elevation Partners. But as they are being slowly assimilated into the Borg the EA empire, we wondered, how might they quickly develop similar faith in the rest of their new colleagues? There are any number of bonding exercises that could do the trick: a weekend paintball retreat; a long night of drinking and Rock Band; standing up on a chair and falling backwards into the welcoming arms of their fellow studio general managers. But what better way to build trust than for BioWare Pandemic to collaborate with a slew of existing EA studios on a brand new IP? This is the subject of today's "An Immodest Proposal."

Our game concept is ripped from yesterday's headlines, or rather a Wired.com piece that several blogs picked up on last year, titled "Sims Designer Had the Wright Stuff for Street Racing Way Back When." Inspired by the documentary "32 Hours 7 Minutes," the story centers around the revelation that Sim City creator Will Wright once held the record for an illegal cross-country race from Brooklyn, NY to Santa Monica, CA. Like many of you, we had no idea that Wright was once fast or furious. But we saw in the combination of this story, EA's wealth of studio talent and the persona of Wright himself the potential for the company's next great videogame franchise. Still, with the company having suffered a black eye in recent years for some of its labor practices, and the street watching its headcount like a aerie of hawks, we don't suggest that EA overwork its teams or add more people to tackle this. Instead, we'd dream big and urge EA to borrow a page from Google and let everyone at the company spend one day a week working on a project of their own choosing. Or, in this case, our own choosing--for the sake of corporate harmony.

Now, on to the project.

1. OPP...ortunities: Let's make lots of money
2. WHA...t's the frequency, Sony? Skype on PSP delayed in Japan
3. CAN...Capcom be strong-armed into making Bionic Commando Wii?
4. UWE...Boll vs. proto-Anakin? Actor-martial artist issues challenge
5. HOW...much were those saved game files worth to their owner?
6. RND...Esquire's "Dubious Achievements" unlocked, laid to rest

We've often complained about the generation gap that divides those who understand videogames as a medium and those who, in ways large and small, dismiss them. But is it possible that this gap has become, for some of us, a security blanket, an article of faith? What would happen to those of us in our mid-thirties and above if our parents, grandparents, bosses, religious leaders, politicians, all wanted to play as regularly as we do?

The spur for this brief-but-heartfelt reflection is a just-published AP story titled "Youth Vs. Adults In Gadget Wars" about gadgets like mobile phones, social networks like Facebook and the culture clash that can emerge as young and old meet on these playing fields. The article begins with an anecdote about a college freshman and his grandmother communicating via IM and pointing out correctly that "Long gone are the days when the average, middle-aged adult did well to simply work a computer. Now those same adults have Gmail, upload videos on YouTube, and sport the latest high-tech gadgets." Then it continues with:

Nowhere are the technological turf wars more apparent than on social networking sites, such as MySpace and Facebook, which went from being student-oriented to allowing adults outside the college ranks to join.

Gary Rudman, a California-based youth market researcher, has heard the complaints. He regularly interviews young people who think it's "creepy" when an older person — we're talking someone they know — asks to join their social network as a "friend." It means, among other things, that they can view each others' profiles and what they and their friends post.

"It would be like a 40-year-old attending the prom or a frat party," Rudman says. "It just doesn't work."

It's a particular quandary for image-conscious teens, says Eric Kuhn, a junior at Hamilton College in upstate New York, who's blogged about the etiquette of social networking.

He accepted his mom's invitation to be Facebook friends and has, in turn, become online friends with other adults she knows. But so far, he says, his 16-year-old sister has declined to add their mom "because she thinks it is not cool."

From a gaming perspective, would it be cool with you if your boss wanted to join your Rock Band band and bless the mic with his or her vocal stylings on a nightly basis? What about if your grandparents asked to cowboy up with your Halo clan and help you re-finish the fight? Or if your parents had their heart set on your World of Warcraft party?

We've long been fans of the site The Smoking Gun, with its troves of mug shots, celebrity riders and other documents of the famous and infamous behaving badly. So it might seem a bit strange for us to accuse these purveyors of sensationalism of being, well, sensationalistic, but that's what we're going to do. A few minutes ago, while scanning the list of stories on The Drudge Report, we came across the following headline "Online shooting game lets kids target presidential candidates..." Intrigued, we clicked on the link, which brought us to The Smoking Gun and the headline "Hey Kids, Shoot Your Favorite Candidate!
Clinton, Obama pace gunners in "Presidential Paintball" online game." The site went on to describe the game as follows:

For the aspiring young assassin, a popular online games site offers kids the opportunity to assume the identity of a leading presidential contender and then shoot their political opponents in a series of armed confrontations in the White House. While the ammo is paintball, the game on the hugely popular miniclip.com site allows kids to train a rifle scope on six presidential aspirants and squeeze off a hail of shots (which are accompanied with a rat-a-tat sound). The game, "Presidential Paintball," features six candidates in the crosshairs: Barack Obama; Hillary Clinton; John Edwards; Mitt Romney; John McCain; and Rudy Giuliani (it seems the game was developed before the ascension of Mike Huckabee). If a candidate wins a head-to-head confrontation, he/she advances to a new shootout, which occurs in various White House settings, including outside the Oval Office. When a candidate gets blown away, bloodlessly, a screen appears noting that they have been "eliminated," not killed. To better direct a fusillade, young gunmen can use their computer's mouse to place a crosshairs on a candidate's head or body. Of course, the imagery of Obama and Clinton, both of whom have been the target of threats and receive Secret Service protection, being targeted in such a manner-by children, no less-might be seen as troubling in some quarters.

Sounds disgusting, doesn't it? Well, we clicked on the link for Presidential Paintball, selected Barack Obama--the candidate and the Level Up staff are both fans of Omar Little on "The Wire," so perhaps our mutual gangsta might give us an edge--and fired up the game.

1. RED...Ring of Death, revisited with a purported Xbox insider
2. DRA...ma for your mama: Romero vs. Wilson, Round 1--fight!
3. OBJ...ection! See Geoff Keighley's ace defense of Mass Effect
   
4. SAD...Another lengthy examination of the GameSpot fiasco
5. YOU...know, things break, or, adventures in Xbox customer help
6. MON...strous Iwata harnesses children's smiles as energy source
7. RND...Thugs, cuz and Senator Barack Obama all love "The Wire"

 The Medic class from Team Fortress 2, developed by Valve Software and published by Electronic Arts

On our way back from the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the Level Up staff contracted something--no, not that, or that, or that--and we've been laid out for the count. So no, we will not be giving you our post-game analysis of Steve Jobs' Macworld presentation, which conveniently left out something near and dear to Sony's heart: Blu-Ray drives for Mac desktops and laptops. (In fact, wasn't the whole point of Mr. One More Thing that disc drives and recorded media are so last millennium?) You won't get our Progress Bar assessment of the games that we saw at Ubisoft's New York City showcase, including Lost: Via Domus, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2, Tom Clancy's EndWar and Far Cry 2. (We're really glad we saw Ubi's lineup, but in retrospect, leaving the apartment today was a very bad idea.) And unfortunately, Part II of our two-part Q&A with Bungie writing director Joseph Staten will have to wait until another day. (Though we did give you the juiciest tidbit yesterday, which others seem to be slowly picking up on.) No, we'll be conserving our energy to bang out our next American Geek column, which closes later today. But consider both of today's posts--written and published while close to death's door (we kid, we kid)--as evidence of our deep and abiding affection for you, our Dear Readers.

1. LIB...erté, égalité, fraternité: PS3 is closing the gap on Xbox 360--in France
2. THE...WGA is a lie: Videogame Writing Award noms fail to list Portal
3. XXX...box, Part II: "gamer nerds" respond en masse to conservative critic
4. THE...Day the Music Died, or, only worked sporadically and sparsely
5. RND...if you want to turn green with envy, read this story. And this one.

 Weta Workshop's life-sized Warthog for the as-yet-unproduced Halo movie 

Having finally decided to publish our two-part August 2007 Q&A with Bungie writing director Joseph Staten, there's a bit of scoop that's so good, we couldn't wait until tomorrow's installment to share it with you, so we're excerpting it today. In the middle of an exchange with Staten about the fine line that Bungie must walk between making Master Chief a proper character and leaving plenty of space for the player to feel as though he or she is the Spartan warrior, we threw in a question about how the planned-but-aborted Halo movie would tackle the problem of a lead character whose face was hidden by his helmet. To our surprise, Staten not only answered the question, but offered up the fascinating revelation that Master Chief would have in fact been something of a supporting character in Halo film. For the first time, the normally tight-lipped folks at Bungie give some insight into how the Halo movie might have played out, which we present to you exclusively here at Level Up. Enjoy.

I know you can't talk about the movie very much. But on a high sort of level, those same things that you said make Master Chief work for the game--the transparency of the character; the fact that while the character is iconic, he doesn't have a face that you see--did that pose a challenge in the conversations that you were having about how to make something as cinematic as Halo work well as a movie?

Uh-huh.

And do the fans really want to see the face? How do you deal with something like that?

Back in August, we conducted a series of interviews with Bungie for a Newsweek magazine story about Halo 3 that for a variety of reasons never came to fruition. One of the people we spoke with was Halo 3 writing director Joseph Staten, whom we first met when we began seriously writing about videogames back in 1999. In Part I of our two-part Q&A with Staten, who also authored the novel "Halo: Contact Harvest," Staten discusses how the story for Halo 3 emerged from the ashes of the truncated final act of Halo 2, the interplay between a games script and the game itself, and how the writers' room at Bungie operates. Enjoy.

From the interviews I've done with folks from Bungie, people seem to be all saying that the problems that arose at the end of Halo 2 didn't originate in the story or the script, that they were technical instead, which then had script ramifications. Can you talk about what that was like for you as a writer? And since you're being held blameless, did anything have to change in how you approached writing the scripts during the long pre-production process on Halo 3?

Got you. Well, just to give you a little bit of the history of Halo 2, I think from a writing point of view, we of course set out to tell a story with an ending. A cohesive story. Set it all up so there was a great third act where everything got wrapped up. The Master Chief and the Arbiter came together to fight against all the bad things in their world and emerged as heroes side by side together. The reality of the situation is that we ran out of time on the single-player campaign and we basically ended the story at the end of the second act, and we didn't have time to produce the third act.

The really sad thing about that was that we had time to write a pretty good cliffhanger. And what I mean by that is we knew early on, with however many months to go--four months to go--that this was going to happen. We made the painful decision to cut early, and we had time at least to write something that wasn't horrible. It certainly wasn't what we wanted to do. We knew it was going to be painful for the fans and for us as well but we had time to make it not completely horrible. And that's no fun to write when you know you're writing something that isn't the best way it can be and you're writing to solve a problem and a fairly big problem. So that's the basic way that it went down.

There's certainly things that could have been written better as far as Halo 2 went, so I don't know why people hold me blameless. They just must like me, N'Gai. I guess they think I'm a stand up guy. But no, I mean that was the basic story. It wasn't anything we set out to do. We certainly didn't set out to write a cliffhanger.

1. MAR...ch Madness? This...Is...Monopoly!
2. FOR...what shall it profit a man to gain a magazine if he loses his soul?
   
3. SWE...et dreams are made of this I: reflections on gaming virginity
4. SWE...et dreams are made of this II: reflections on gaming memories
5. NEE...ds one more letter: I-N-F-R-I-N-G-?
6. SHH...All quiet on the Western blog
7. XXX...box: conservative columnist goes nuts over Mass Erect Elect Effect
8. GOD...spelled backwards is the heart of Peter Molyneux's next game
9. RND...Rage, rage against the dying of the light
10. RND...The collapse of America's Team, as relived through YouTube

 Matt Bertz, Content Manager for Game Informer magazine

When we launched our "Make or Break" series last November, we promised to ask "prominent developers, reviewers and expert gamers to share with us via email the five key features, details, techniques or flaws that they look for in games in the same genre." We've done fairly well thus far on the developer front, scoring responses from the folks behind Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction (creative director Brian Allgeier), Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (lead multiplayer designer Todd Alderman), Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (game director Amy Hennig), and the colon-free Crysis (company president Cevat Yerli). But we haven't yet offered up any opinions by reviewers. Until today, that is.

The first videogame reviewer to enter the "Make or Break" hot seat is Game Informer content manager Matt Bertz. With six years of covering games and technology in New York City under his belt prior to joining GI Bertz was the editor-in-chief of Surge, a short-lived gaming magazine that won the 2004 Silver Eddie Award in the Consumer Entertainment Under 250,000 category. His writing has appeared in many outlets, including Next Generation, AOL, Laptop, Mean, Men¹s Fitness, GameSpy, and XLR8R. Because Bertz recently reviewed Crysis for GI, we asked him to tell us what he looks for when he's evaluating a first-person shooter. Here's what he had to say.

 Crysis, developed by Crytek and published by Electronic Arts

1. Non-linearity (or the illusion thereof)

Why it matters: Gamers have spent the greater part of two decades navigating claustrophobic corridors and taking cover behind boxes. The last thing you want is for the player to feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, reliving the same basic experience throughout the entire game. Non-linear level designs allow the players to engage the enemies in a manner of their own choosing, rather than having opposing forces repeatedly spring from behind closed doors and cover after the player crosses a trigger line.

Who got it right: The paramount example of a developer that understands the advantage of non-linear gameplay is Crytek. The German wunderkinds have created two stellar titles, Far Cry and Crysis, each of which offers a sandbox world for gamers to engage with tactics of their own choosing. In these open worlds, players can determine their own play styles; they can move stealthily through the jungle to avoid unnecessary combat, ambush soldier patrols and disappear back into the heavy brush, or walk up the roads guns blazing in classic Rambo fashion. These titles also sprinkle carefully scripted events in certain segments without sacrificing the freedom of movement and decision making an open world affords. Despite its overall unpolished nature, GSC Game World's S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl also offers enjoyable experience because of the sense of exploration its open environments offer.

1. EGO...trip: imitation--the sincerest form of flattery--plus the real thing
2. RX!...reflections on a week of videogame abstinence
3. XXX...Jenna Haze, Ashlynn Brooke and Celeste Star are PS3 fangirls...
4. XXX...while Veronique Vega and Charlie Laine prefer Ron Jeremy Mario
5. STA...y gold, Ponyboy: The Outsider's David Braben speaks
6. GOD...Hand: should we be offended by its retrograde cultural politics?
7. McD...Fatworld, the game, or "Animal Crossing meets 'Super-Size Me'"
8. ODE...to Aftertouch: how we shall miss you in Burnout Paradise
9. RND...Once upon a time, Microsoft wrote a touching children's book
10. RND...The Mother of All Top Ten Lists, by Meta-Journalistic Web Surfing 

Brian Braiker files this report from NEWSWEEK's CES Blog:

What is it?

Newsweek's Brian Braiker files this report on targeting the younger demographic at the Consumer Electronics Show:

The Consumer Electronics Show has always been geared to appeal to the little kid in us. Oooh, new toys. Drool. I want. But at this year's CES, 14 companies as well as children's groups are gathering for the first annual "Sandbox Summit." The goal: to figure out how kids—as young as 3—play with technology and what gadgets they're going to gravitate toward as they get older.

Read the Full Story Here

1. CON...tempt for enthusiast media continues, unabated 
2. DO!...want: Rock Band drum kits that take things to next level
3. RAP...the Vote: Level Up nominates Eric B. for President
4. ONE...console future plea rears its futile head yet again
5. RND...Why digital distribution isn't ready for its close-up

1. GSW....GameSetWatch critiques our critique of its critique of videogame reviews 
2. BET...ter late than never: MTV Rhythm Game Track Finder takes the stage
3. RON...ald McDonald turns on Mario, Master Chief in attempt to rehab image 
4. RND...Blogging: hazardous to one's health? 

Regular readers of our daily High Score posts know that GameSetWatch is a blog that we here at Level Up very much enjoy. So it is with something approaching great reluctance that we take issue with its January 2nd post, titled "GameSetChat: How Do Wii Judge Fun For Mainstream Gamers?" In it, site editor and man-of-many-hats Simon Carless (who also serves as the publisher of both Game Developer and Gamasutra, chairman of the Independent Games Festival and organizer of the Independent Games Summit at the Game Developers Conference) shared an IM exchange with Joel Reed Parker of Game Of The Blog discussing the quality of Wii software and the perceived inability of game reviewers to distinguish between good and bad casual games. Here's a snippet of what they said:

Joel Reed Parker: Man, Wii third-party software really is bad...a friend got a Wii and was asking me for advice about party games and good games and such. According to the aggregate scores sites, not much.

Simon Carless: But I will say that conventional reviewers do a poor job of differentiating fun casual games from bad casual games--or just bad games, in my opinion.

JRP: I agree wholeheartedly. Same goes for kids' games also.

SC: Like Mario Party 8 has a 62 average on Metacritic's Wii chart, and so does...Heatseeker? Blimey. OK, we definitely need write something about this.

JRP: I didn't even seen the Rayman Raving Rabbids games as high as I thought they would be. It's all the predictable stuff--Mario, Metroid, Zelda.

SC: There's definitely a problem here--Elebits, Korinrinpa, and Dewy's Adventure are all worth checking out, and are lost in terms of scoring with markedly inferior games--even/especially from a 'mainstream' gamer perspective.

It's understandable that in an IM chat, Carless and Parker would use Metacritic averages as evidence of a disconnect between reviewers and consumers when it comes to non-core games. But how truly make a case without examining the text of the reviews? By our lights, the text of a review is where a writer should, in part, attempt to weigh his or her own experience against that of the game's intended audience, be it tween girls or military shooter fanatics. The score, on the other hand, should measure the game against both others of its ilk and against games in general.

Carless and Parker, however, appear to have assumed that the consumer guide aspect of a review (what does the writer believe a typical player might think of this game?) is more important--or somehow separable--from the critical assessment aspect of a review (what does the writer himself or herself think of this game?) when it comes to casual games.

1. $$$...The Great Console War of 2005-2007, by the numbers
2. WHO...'s down with LBP? Every last homie!
3. SEX...ytime? Rez HD converts spare controllers into "trance vibrators"
4. HUT...Madden NFL 08 mod used to teach plays to college players, explained
5. REW...ind, selectah! Nostalgia rules on Xbox Live Arcade
   
6. RND...How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child?

 Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli, whose Windows PC game Crysis shipped in November of 2007

When we're conducting an interview with a developer, the bulk of our time is spent discussing their current project. But after the voice recorder is turned off and the liquor is flowing, the conversation almost inevitably shifts to videogames made by other teams working in the same genre as that developer. For us, it's always fascinating to look at games through the eyes of those who make them, because they often see things through a different set of eyes than the typical gamer; the same can be said of reviewers who are particularly knowledgeable about a certain genre. As part of our ongoing quest to take the best conversations that are occurring in the shadows and bring them to light, we offer you the new occasional series Make or Break, which asks prominent developers and reviewers to share with us the five key features, details, methods or flaws that they look for from games in the same genre.

Our newest contributor is Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli. His company first won attention for the large, lush environments and open-ended gameplay in the 2004 title Far Cry, which was published by Ubisoft. Its second game, the military sci-fi thriller Crysis, was released last November to rave reviews for its landmark visuals. In today's installment, Yerli explains what he looks for in a first-person shooter.

2007 has been a fantastic year for gamers. A lot of excellent games were released, all fighting for my limited time and attention. Here are the qualities that kept me playing games even while crunching on Crysis. Every one of them is a make or break criterion; a potential stopping point for me whether playing or even when we're designing our own productions here at Crytek.

 Portal, developed by Valve Software as part of Half-Life 2: The Orange Box, and published by Electronic Arts

1. Make me feel smart

Why it matters: I like to feel smart, and I like to win. Games should account for this by balancing challenge and reward, skill and intellect, in the right mixture. The core gameplay should be easy to learn. One of the few games I actually finished and was sad to see end was Portal, although the song made up for it.

The core mechanic is deceptively simple--a gun-like device that makes two holes that the player can pass through--but it manages to give me enough complexity to keep me wanting to solve the next puzzle.

1. OUR...sincerest best wishes for 2008, delivered in heartfelt Level Up style 
2. EGO...trip: What do Tom Brady and Level Up have in common?
3. EGO...trip: Alex Ward invokes our name in defense of Burnout Paradise
4. EGO...trip: Bonus Round's final 2007 Year in Review episode 
5. SOM...ething of a phenomenon: Microsoft crows about Xbox 360 shipments
6. HOW...would your Rock Band logo measure up?
7. HMM...Fanboy, faced with relationship dilemma, turns to peers for advice
8. MOD...Epic releases mod tools for the PS3 version of Unreal Tournament III
9. SEX...or games: which would be more difficult to give up for a week?
10. RND...Obama love reaches a fever pitch in the media
    

 Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, developed by Infinity Ward and published by Activision

We know, we know. We said that we wouldn't start posting again until next week. But as a full service blog, when our readers reach out with questions, we do our best to provide the answers. In the comments section of today's post titled "Goodbye To All That: Level Up Issues Its Brief Reflections On 2007 and Looks Ahead to 2008," BigDaddyDW asked:

On an unrelated note, N'Gai, maybe you can comment on the holiday software sales for the Xbox360 and the PS3. In particular, I have seen COD4 on sale for $38 no fewer than five different times between Thanksgiving and New Year's (Circuit City, Best Buy, Target included)...I thought this GOTY [Game of the Year] was selling well--if so, do you think that is related to the numerous sales? Or has it been holding its own at $60?

BigDaddyDW, you're going to have to wait until later this month for the December edition of Monday Morning Quarterback (no, really) for our holiday software sales analysis. But with 2.2 million units in sales in the month of November alone (1.57 million units on Xbox 360, 444,000 units on PS3 and 167,000 units on PC), we find it hard to believe that Call of Duty 4 was being price reduced by Activision because its sales fell off a cliff in December. Nevertheless, we turned to Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter for his thoughts. Here's what he had to say:

Echochrome, developed and published by Sony Computer Entertainment

The staff of Level Up will resume its regular posting schedule next week. With the Consumer Electronics Show right around the corner, we're using the next several days to prepare a slew of videogame related posts so that we can turn our attention to the world of gadgets without feeling guilty about leaving our loyal readers high and dry. For those who didn't read our year end "Who's Next" double issue (the one with Houston Rockets center Yao Ming on the cover), you missed a near-record-setting three separate stories on videogames in our print edition, which included:

1. A brief profile of Harmonix co-founders Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy.

2. The five most important games of 2007.