Last week, McFarlane Toys revealed its plans to produce action figures based on Activision's hit Guitar Hero franchise. Now another of the publisher's biggest gaming properties is making the jump to the tangible world, as the toy maker today confirmed a line of four action figures based on the upcoming Call of Duty: World at War.

The line features three Marines and one British Special Ops soldier. Each 6-inch trooper features "game-accurate" sculpting and carries a distinctive weapon, from an M2-2 flamethrower to a Mark II Sten gun.

The line marks an intersection of two McFarlane specialties. The company has produced game-based toys for Soulcalibur II, Halo 3, Metal Gear Solid 2, Onimusha 2, and Ultima Online in the past, and it also has an ongoing military line that focuses on modern-day US troops from all armed forces branches.

Each Call of Duty: World at War figure will sell for around $10-$15. McFarlane Toys expects to launch the line this November.

It's not uncommon to hear people within the gaming industry point out that games are bigger than movies. While that statement is true, it's also slightly misleading. Games do bring in larger revenues than box office ticket sales in the US, but when one adds in the DVD market and other revenue films generate after their initial theatrical run, gaming clearly trails the movie business.

That might be changing, as the Entertainment Merchants Association has released its annual report, and the trade group's recap of 2007 compiled cross-industry stats and offered a little perspective on the relative sizes of the gaming and film industries.

According to the NPD Group's year-end figures, the US retail gaming industry took in $18.85 billion during 2007 in hardware, software, and accessories. That's nearly twice the Motion Picture Association of America and Nielsen EDI's record-setting US box office take of $9.6 billion for the year. The gaming industry even surpassed DVD software sales in 2007, reported to be $16 billion by the Digital Entertainment Group and $15.9 billion by Adams Media Research.

Despite the impressive numbers, interactive entertainment still comes up short against the totality of the movie industry. The US box office, DVD sales, and DVD rentals markets combined for more than $33 billion in revenues last year. (No data for the gaming rental market was reported.) Furthermore, that figure doesn't include the billions spent on DVD players and other home video hardware and accessories.

Few games have successfully survived the transition to the big screen, but Paul W.S. Anderson's track record with such projects has been as good as anyone's. After directing the surprise hit Mortal Kombat, Anderson went on to produce and write a threesome of pictures based on Capcom's Resident Evil series of games, the first of which he also directed.

It appears Resident Evil film franchise may be even tougher to kill than its trademark zombies, as the MTV Movies Blog is reporting that Anderson is in talks to return for a fourth flick. Although Resident Evil: Extinction concluded with a ready-made setup for a sequel, the blog is reporting that Anderson hasn't nailed down a story yet, something that has been delaying progress on the project.

"I love the Resident Evil franchise and we always try to make the best possible movie we can," Anderson told the site. "If we could find a good Resident Evil 4 to make, then we would do it," he said. "But I wouldn't just do it for the sake of it, that's for sure."

Regardless of what happens with the series, Anderson isn't about to shake his association with game adaptations anytime soon. He's signed on to direct the long-awaited Spy Hunter film, and is also attached to a movie based on Konami's Castlevania series.

Although this column usually tries to look at the broader issues and personalities in the game-journalism world, there are plenty of smaller topics swirling around that don't necessarily warrant a full column of their own. The PressSpotting Round-Up will take a quick look at some of these issues on a periodic basis.

What to Say When They Say You Can't Say That
The wider gaming world got a peek at the complex give-and-take between journalist and game publisher earlier this month. MTV's Multiplayer blog was the one that pulled back the curtain, reporting that Konami was prohibiting those with early review access to Metal Gear Solid 4 from discussing the game's install times and cutscene length in their reviews. The rumor was essentially confirmed later that day when IGN UK's review of the game admitted, "In return for letting us play Metal Gear Solid 4 before its release, Konami issued us with a list of things that we're not allowed to discuss." A few days later, a Kojima Productions team member revealed to Kotaku the exact contents of that list. A few days after that, 1UP's Jeremy Parish added the shocking revelation that Konami "presented [the nondisclosure agreements] to us at the literal last moment...and made it clear that we wouldn't be leaving until we signed them."

Nondisclosure agreements are a pretty common prerequisite for reviewers who get early access to games for review. These agreements usually preclude the journalist from talking about the game before a certain date, or, occasionally, from discussing certain story elements that might spoil the game for the reader. But Konami's NDA went even further, asking reviewers not to reveal technical details that were directly relevant to any fair review of the game. GameSpot's Kevin Van Ord probably put it best on this site's own Reviews Blog: "I believe it is flat-out wrong for any publisher to request that pertinent information be left out of a review. The journalist decides what information is most important for the review--not the developer or its publisher."

So what should a journalist do when confronted with demands like these from a game publisher? One option is to offer a slightly delayed review of a full retail copy of the game, which is exactly what outlets such as GameSpot and Electronic Gaming Monthly did in response to the Konami situation. Nevertheless, this is a less-than-satisfying solution because the delayed review is both less useful to the reader and less lucrative to the outlet publishing the review. The better option is probably to leak the unreasonable publisher's demands out to the press anonymously, allowing the court of public opinion to punish the company for their overreach. As long as the press continues to adamantly and vociferously call out these types of situations when they come to light, publishers will eventually learn that trying to restrain what a reviewer can say about a game is just not worth it.

Battle of the Associations
With all of the attention paid to the Konami NDA controversy, you may not have noticed this month's shouting match between the Entertainment Software Association, which organizes the annual E3 trade show, and popular news blog GamePolitics, which is owned by an ostensible ESA rival, the Entertainment Consumers Association. Here's the five-cent version of what happened: The Escapist pointed out that Texas Governor and E3 keynote speaker Rick Perry supports some controversial statements from controversial pastor John Hagee. The story then got picked up by GamePolitics. All fine and good, until ESA Director of Communications Dan Hewitt issued a statement to Joystiq saying that GamePolitics is "tainted with anti-ESA vitriol" and accusing the site of being more of an ECA recruitment tool than an impartial news site.

This is pretty clearly an overreaction on the ESA's part, in my opinion. Yes, there is an inherent conflict of interest in ECA-owned GamePolitics covering the ESA, and the site should probably do more to disclose this conflict when its writers discuss the E3 organizer. That said, claiming that GamePolitics has a history of "anti-ESA vitriol" just isn't supported by the facts. Yes, GamePolitics covered the ESA's recent troubles retaining members, but so have countless other sites that have nothing to do with the ECA. What's more, GamePolitics' coverage has been relatively moderate compared to the blistering portrayals of the organization in some corners of the gaming blogosphere. There's a difference between being owned by a company and being a paid shill for that company. GamePolitics is clearly the former but not the latter.

The Anticlimactic Entertainment Expo?
Is it me, or does the buzz about this year's E3 seem a little less buzzy than it has in years past? Maybe it's because a lot of the behind-the-scenes action for this year's show is taking place weeks before the show actually starts. Already, large swathes of the press have been out to Los Angeles to see pre-E3 presentations from the likes of EA, LucasArts, THQ, Sega, and Sony, just to name a few. A select few journalists even went back to check out more games as part of the judges panel for the E3 Game Critics Awards. Although much of the information revealed at these meetings is embargoed until the show officially starts, this stuff has ways of leaking out through the journalist grapevine and making brand-new games seem old even before they're officially unveiled. Beyond the preshow events, the leaked contents of a preshow marketing survey have stolen the thunder from a number of announcements that Microsoft and Activision seemingly had planned for the show.

Though these events seem to point to a rather pointless E3 this year, I wouldn't be so quick to assume that there won't be some blockbuster announcements. The fun of a major trade show like this is that you never know exactly what will be revealed, or what new game will catch the collective eye of the thousands of journalists assembled in Los Angeles. Remember, it's pretty easy for a weak buzz to become a deafening roar of news and excitement once the show actually starts.

Chartz-ing out the Wrong Course
Business journalism is based on having good, fast, reliable data available to analyze and work into stories. So it's easy to see why some in the game press fell in love with VGChartz, a site that organizes historical and current game and hardware sales data by week and region. The free site provides some rather robust graphing and comparison features, and even earned a glowing write-up from O'Reilly's popular Radar blog. Is VGChartz the answer to every game journalist's data-based dreams?

Not so fast. Simon Carless over at Game Set Watch has put together a pretty thorough expose of some of the shoddy practices behind the creation of the VGChartz "data." Carless' piece details a variety of statistical sins, but the most egregious is probably the way the site adjusts sales figures after the fact to line them up with more reliable (and fact-based) estimates from the likes of the NPD Group. In light of this revelation, it would be pretty irresponsible for a game journalist to treat VGChartz data as anything more than an educated guess. It's a shame, because a site with VGChartz' presentation and accurate data would be a must-visit for any journalist.

This Month's Must-Read: GameRankings Derangement Syndrome
Anyone interested in the interplay between reviewer and developer should check out this great piece from the Dallas Morning News on how publishers and developers pay way too much attention to game-review scores on aggregators such as GameRankings and Metacritic. The best quote comes from Matthew over at Magical Wasteland, who compares a nervous developer trying to please feature-hungry critics to "a food company performing a taste test to find out that people basically like the saltiest, greasiest variation of anything and adjusting its product lineup accordingly." It's nice to know that critics have the power to affect the course of game design, but I have to wonder sometime if we have too much power in constraining designers to the path of least resistance.

Quote of the Moment
"That looks like one of those new-fangled toys the kids play with, the why-eee"--Anderson Cooper mispronounces the name of Nintendo's nearly two-year-old system on CNN.

For more about PressSpotting, check out the introductory column.

Kyle Orland is a freelance journalist specializing in video games and based out of Laurel, MD. He writes for a variety of outlets, as detailed on his personal site, and he's also the co-author of The Videogame Style Guide and Reference Manual. Orland's views do not necessarily reflect those of GameSpot.

Questions? Comments? Story ideas? Bitter invective? Send it to Kyle.

When Microsoft announced its last Xbox 360 price drop, the cat was already out of the bag several times over. That could be the case once more, given that last week's leaked K-Mart ad, which showed a $50 price drop for the 20GB Xbox 360 model, is being backed up by a number of sources.

The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that Microsoft plans a $50 price cut for the 20GB Xbox 360 before the E3 Media and Business Summit, citing retail sources for the information. That might sound familiar, given that the Reporter was also the first outlet to go public with news of last year's $50 price cut, and cited retail sources for the info in that article as well.

As if last year's utterly unsurprising price cut wasn't enough to suggest that the retail world leaks like a sieve, Microsoft may have another big price-cut announcement thoroughly undermined by newspaper ads. In addition to the K-Mart ad, Joystiq is now reporting that a Radio Shack employee has passed on that chain's upcoming flyer, which shows a $300 20GB Xbox 360 advertised with the words "New low price!" Joystiq reports that the ad is set to take effect July 13. The E3 Summit is set for July 14-17 in Los Angeles, California.

For its part, Microsoft has been dealing with the reports and ads by sticking to its standard policy of not commenting on rumors or speculation.

Earlier this week, Activision announced that Blizzard Entertainment's house band Level 70 Elite Tauren Chieftain would be lending its World of Warcraft-inspired "I am Murloc" as a free downloadable track in Guitar Hero III. Today, another parody band has stepped up to the mic for an on-the-house performance, this time for Guitar Hero rival Rock Band.

With Fox's The Rocker starring Rainn Wilson (The Office, Wheelman) out next month, MTV Games and Harmonix are offering a cut from the film's fictitious glam metal act Vesuvius as part of next week's downloadable content. "Promised Land" will be available as a free download for the Xbox 360 on July 1 and the PlayStation Network on July 3.

With the Motley Crue-headlined Cruefest kicking off next week, MTV Games will be paying tribute to the tour with the next regularly scheduled DLC update. Included as part of the Cruefest Pack will be Motely Crue's "Down at the Whiskey," Papa Roach's "Time Is Running Out," and Trapt's "Who's Going Home With You Tonight." The Cruefest Pack can be purchased for $2.99 (240 Microsoft points), or each song can be picked up individually at $.99 (80 Microsoft points) a piece.

A complete list of tracks available for Rock Band can be found on Harmonix's official Web site.

The Grand Theft Auto franchise has never had an easy time of it in the press. Given that the title is in itself a felony, it's not surprising that some parents and politicians would assume it to be a negative influence on kids.

Those who share that point of view can point to an incident in New York this week, as Long Island-based Newsday is reporting that police have arrested six teens for going on a crime spree that they admitted was imitating acts seen in Rockstar's GTA series. Through Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning, the kids mugged and severely beat a man, attempted a carjacking, and vandalized a vehicle before being arrested by Garden City police, authorities said. A bat, a crowbar, and a broomstick were confiscated from the teens upon their arrest.

The teens spanned ages between 14 and 17. Two of them had prior records, one for burglary and larceny, the other for drug possession. All six suspects were charged as adults; five of them face a felony robbery rap, while the sixth was charged with misdemeanor criminal possession of stolen property.

"They decide that they're going to go do some street robberies, emulating the popular fictional character Niko Bellic," Nassau County detective lieutenant Raymond Cote told Newsday. In the first incident of the night, the mugging, Cote said the teens "approach him from behind, force him to the ground, start punching him, kicking him, knocking the teeth out of his head and take what he has on him."

Three years ago, Guitar Hero turned the gaming industry on its ear by proving that a market existed for playing with tiny plastic rock instruments. Later this year, McFarlane Toys would no doubt love to find a similarly lucrative market for playing with tiny plastic rock stars, as the company behind the Spawn character is producing a line of Guitar Hero action figures.

The first wave of four toys will be based on the fictitious axe men of the Guitar Hero universe, including shirtless punk Johnny Napalm, Euro death metal nut Lars Umlaut, and jean-jacketed rocker Axel Steel. Rounding out the line will be the unlockable God of Rock character. Each figure will stand about six inches tall, with between 15 and 18 moving parts, a Guitar Hero logo base, and (naturally) a custom guitar.

While McFarlane Toys is best known for its Spawn series of figures, the company is no stranger to the world of rock. The company produced a line of KISS figures in 1997, and has since produced a small Hall of Fame's worth of rock star toys, including The Beatles, Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix, Jerry Garcia, Ozzy Osbourne, Metallica, Motley Crue, and Bon Jovi.

The Guitar Hero toys are scheduled to go on sale in November to coincide with the holiday launch of Guitar Hero World Tour.

Activision and Vivendi Games aren't expected to merge their businesses in any official capacity until next month, but that hasn't stopped the two gaming giants from getting a jump on comingling their brands. Activision and Blizzard announced today that Level 70 Elite Tauren Chieftain's "I am Murloc" will be available as a free downloadable track for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 editions of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock beginning June 26.

First performed by "Blizzard Entertainment's house band" at BlizzCon 2005, "I am Murloc" parodies the mysterious race of fish-people that count themselves denizens of Azeroth. The thrash metal song debuts as Blizzard gears up for its Worldwide Invitational 2008 in Paris, France, this weekend, where the developer has fueled speculation that it will be making a major announcement.

World of Warcraft joins an elite few set of games that have been given the rhythm-game treatment. Previously, the main themes from Bungie's Halo 3 and Sony's God of War have been released as free downloads for Guitar Hero III. "Still Alive," the cult-hit ending credits theme to Valve's award-winning puzzle-platformer Portal, was handed out gratis for MTV Games and Harmonix's Rock Band.

Last week, a John McCain ad made gaming headlines for incorporating the work of Medal of Honor: European Assault composer and Barack Obama supporter Christopher Lennertz. At the same time, Nintendo was wrapping up a brief legal tussle with Morgan Creek Productions over audio appropriation of its own.

As reported by Game Politics, a suit filed on June 12 by Morgan Creek alleged that Nintendo had illegally used music from the 1993 Christian Slater film True Romance to promote its 2004 GameCube game Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. The piece--Hans Zimmer's "You're So Cool"--plays in the background of the 30-second spot, which can be seen on Google Video.

While the bouncy song may seem a good match for the charming style of the Paper Mario series, the movie it is pulled from is thematically at odds with the popular mascot. Written by Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction, From Dusk Til Dawn) and directed by Tony Scott (Man on Fire, Days of Thunder), True Romance is a love story about a guy who falls in love with a prostitute, kills her pimp, and goes on the run while trying to sell a significant stash of cocaine.

Morgan Creek had been seeking damages related to the song's use, at least until it voluntarily dismissed the case on June 18. Neither the film company's lawyers nor Nintendo's representatives had returned GameSpot's requests for comment as of press time.

Last week, EA planted Maxis' Spore in the minds of North American and European gamers, hoping that its Creature Creator would take root and fester into an obsession on the level of the multimillion-unit-selling Sims franchise. With more than 1 million new species uploaded to the Sporepedia in a single week, it appears as if the spore of Spore is doing its job.

Aiming to further germinate the Will Wright-spawned "sim-everything" game, EA and GameStop today revealed the collector's edition for the PC edition of Spore. Titled Spore Galactic Edition, the limited-issue package offers a standard fare of extras, including a "making of" video, the National Geographic Channel-produced How to Build a Better Being DVD, a hardcover concept-art book, a Spore poster, and a 100-page Galactic Handbook.

The Spore Galactic Edition adds a $30 premium to the standard PC edition of the game, retailing at the suggested price of $79.99. Spore makes its long-awaited debut for the PC, Mac, Nintendo DS, and mobile phones on September 7 in North America and two days earlier in Europe. A Wii version is also in development and will launch at an as-yet-undetermined date.

According to developer Bungie Studios, the amount of kills in the latest instalment in the Halo series is more than the total population of the planet. An observant poster called Omega on the official Halo forums, quoting official game kill figures, noted, "As of early Saturday (June 21) or late Sunday the number of kills in Halo 3's campaign exceeded the population of the planet (or at least its projected population)."

The total Halo 3 campaign kill count as of press time is 6,751,629,478, and the estimated total world population is 6,705,066,871.
The total friendlies killed in action is probably less to brag about, but is also quite high, currently standing at 1,177,960,021.

Halo 3 was launched to huge fanfare on September 25, 2007 in the US (September 28 in Europe). It was the best-selling video game of 2007 in America, and the last time anyone counted, it had sold some 8.1 million copies. It is even big in Japan, despite the traditional failure of first-person shooters in the country and the small Xbox 360 installed . The campaign mode features nine levels, and completes the story of the trilogy, which started in 2001 with the Halo: Combat Evolved and conitnued

This is obviously just the kind of thing that Nintendo wanted to stamp out when it released firmware 3.3, complete with provisions intended to stop people from playing homebrew Wii games. The so-called Twilight Hack, which this firmware upgrade was reported to have disabled, involved manipulating a save game file for The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess to allow unauthorised code to run on the consoles.

Well now its worst nightmares have come true--Nintendo's wholesome family console has become an adults-only vibrator in a unique homebrew application by Team DWiildo. Called the Wiibrator, the application runs through the Wii to make the Wii Remote, well, vibrate. Team DWiildo suggests using the Wii Remote jacket, for safety's sake, and instruct gamers to "Not try to use this with either the Wii Zapper or Wii Wheel peripherals."

There are four different "playing levels," in what is described as a "highly advanced technology demo." The team clearly have ideas for where the project is now going, possibly featuring the ability to add a "stimulating" slideshow of images, USB webcam support, and online chat functionality, as well as local multiplayer options to future versions.

Online multiplayer for up to 32 eager participants may also be coming soon. According to the info, "This would make it the first ever widely available tele-diIdonics."

The media tend to come at video games from a lot of different angles. Various stories might alternately treat gaming as a multibillion dollar business, a growing cultural phenomenon, an art form worthy of critique, or the leading edge of a technological revolution. But there's another potential gaming angle that gets comparatively little coverage or respect from the press in general: gaming as professional sport.

This is slowly beginning to change, though, as more and more media outlets begin to take pro gaming seriously. CBS, Spike TV, USA, and DirectTV have all experimented with pro gaming broadcasts to various degrees, and G4 recently announced a deal to show Championship Gaming Series events on its network.

The entire pro gaming subculture is also the subject of a new book, Game Boys, a fascinating look at pro gaming's efforts to gain respect and attention through the lens of two competitive Counter-Strike teams. I talked with Game Boys author Michael Kane about his experience writing the book, the current state of pro gaming on television, and whether or not video games could become the next great spectator sport. Some excerpts from our conversation:

On gaining access to the pro gaming world as an outside journalist
"The organizations were always very helpful... It was a little more difficult to break through and reach the gamers themselves. They weren't really bashful kids, but they were conditioned from sitting in front of computers for hours a day; they weren't exactly the most extroverted. That's not to say that there wasn't a social dynamic among themselves, there was very much that. That's a major theme of the book, the fact that it is actually social, which is not something I expected. ... Being someone from the outside coming in and asking questions, I think, took a little bit of breaking through."

On the need for a media-friendly "star" to push pro gaming to the masses
"It's certainly vital. I don't know that there needs to be one personality. It's a tough trick, because the action takes place inside the monitors. ... I found that these were actually interesting kids, by and large. The challenge is, if I spent a day with these guys, I probably had three hours of access and seven hours of watching them play video games...

"For people putting them on television, it's going to be a balancing trick of showing a lot of the game action itself...and then they're going to have to feed in some personality segments as well. They need to find the handful of people in gaming who are good on camera, and hopefully they'll be the same kids that are doing well in tournaments. But there's no guarantee, and that's the challenge."

On how to present pro gaming effectively on TV
"The challenge is coming in and out of the game, and tying [players to onscreen action]. 'OK, red commando shot blue commando, which one of these kids sitting in this chair is the red guy and which one is the blue one?' ... As a template, you could maybe look at the Olympics, where they take these things like biathlon--with the skiing and the rifle--and they stop halfway and they go out to a personality profile: "at home" with the Norwegian guy and then the Finnish guy. You wouldn't have a rooting interest in that if you weren't sitting there and weren't watching, but at some point they pull you in.

"I think they maybe need to focus more on that, less on the sort of assumption that people are glued to it. If the goal is to expand the audience, they're not going to get more people to watch that aren't already committed to it unless they help you, unless they give you a reason to root for one kid versus the other, and connect it specifically into the game. I guess that's the point they're at now--they can show the game, and then after the game's over they can show Danny Montana at home in Miami with his granddad or whatever. That's interesting, but the real hook is going to be if they can learn to splice and weave those two things together."

On what types of competitive games are best for televising
"One-on-one games leave me a little bit cold. ... I certainly think a team game is going to be the one that captures people's imagination, because you've got communication. If you've got two people, one-on-one, there's nothing existing outside the game except the people sitting there staring. At least in Counter-Strike you've got strategy sessions, you've got a coach, you've got one kid on the team who feels like he's being ignored in the offense, you've got roles. You've got something there, you've got something to wrap your hands around. It translates."

On the future of pro gaming coverage on TV
"My gut feeling is that everyone...instinctively knows this is going to be something, this is going to be part of the entertainment landscape in 10 years. It can't not be. Gaming is too popular. More and more people are playing, and eventually these 20-year-old gamers will be 35-year-old executives and they'll be making decisions and allotting marketing money and making advertising decisions. Gaming is only going to become more accepted and present.

"[Putting] the best gamers on TV is not a stretch--the best of any competition on TV has been a standard on sports networks for 15 years. It's going to happen, and [the TV executives] know it's going to happen, but they don't know how. I hope they're willing to see it through the trial and error for five years, 10 years. ... It's going to gradually build, you're going to gradually increase the audience, and when it's significant they want to be there."

For more about PressSpotting, check out the introductory column.

Kyle Orland is a freelance journalist specializing in video games and based out of Laurel, MD. He's written for a variety of outlets, as detailed on his personal site. He's the co-author of The Videogame Style Guide and Reference Manual. He got it from Agnes.

Questions? Comments? Story ideas? Bitter invective? Send it to Kyle.

Electronic Arts' Medal of Honor series has always been noted for its sound design, from authentically reproduced gunshots to rousingly epic scores. Republican John McCain apparently hopes the music from the series will help rouse the electorate, as the presidential candidate used a selection from Medal of Honor: European Assault in a recent campaign ad, as reported by GamePolitics.

The spot emphasizes McCain's history of military service--along with his five years as a Vietnamese prisoner of war--as evidence that he knows about the human cost of war. McCain states that, "Only a fool or a fraud talks tough or romantically about war," while a piece of music titled "Casualties of War" plays in the background.

The composer of that piece, Christopher Lennertz, has taken exception to the use of his music for a political ad. While he told GamePolitics that McCain's use of the music wasn't illegal, he still didn't approve of it.

"I am dismayed that my music has been used to promote his platform and even more disappointed that a candidate who claims to be the best voice for American entrepreneurs and business owners in this troubled economy so flagrantly ignored the most basic values and tenents of copyright and intellectual property," Lennertz said in a statement to Game Politics. "What, I ask, does such an action or oversight say about Mr. McCain's regard for the intrinsic value of American products, services, or creations? Where does the line get drawn? Is it reasonable to use my music to sell tobacco, alcohol, or pornographic materials? Is it reasonable to use it to promote a religion in which I do not believe? Is it legal?...yes, perhaps, is it ethical?...I don't believe so. Is it American?...definitely not by my standards. ... As an artist, business owner, and patriot, I proudly support Senator Barack Obama for the Presidency of the United States of America."

Representatives from Electronic Arts were unable to comment as of press time.

Keeping tabs on the Metal Gear Solid saga is not for the faint of heart, considering the seemingly limitless twists, turns, hooks, and hammers that creator Hideo Kojima has interjected into the game's long and winding storyline. With Kojima promising to wrap up all loose ends pertaining to the Solid Snake epic with Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, some game buyers may be left in the dark as to what outstanding mysteries, exactly, are being resolved.

As part of the MGS4 preorder program, Konami offered gamers one way to get an update on Snake's exploits with the Metal Gear Saga 2.0 bonus DVD. Now, the publisher has said via Sony's official PlayStation Blog that it will be releasing the complete "MGS4 Database" as part of this Thursday's PlayStation Network update.

The free, downloadable package offers a Kojima-certified knowledge dump of all things Metal Gear Solid, including a complete storyline, character profiles, and relationship diagrams. The information extends through the final installment in the series, but information pertaining to or resolved by MGS4 will be blacked out until the final game has been finished to prevent spoilers.

For an idea of what to expect from Kojima Productions' landmark action adventure, check out GameSpot's full review.

In 2006, the first Godfather game was released for the PC, Xbox, Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, and the PlayStation Portable. (A Wii edition shipped the following spring.) The full-sized editions were largely the same, with players shaking down businesses in the street and fighting off rivals to take over territories, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas-style. The handheld spin-off, titled The Godfather: Mob Wars (pictured), went one step further, featuring card-based Risk-meets-the-Mafia gameplay in which players vied for control of New York City's five boroughs.

Although Mob Wars received only tepid reviews, it looks as if EA will be offering something similar--albeit presumably vastly expanded--in the Godfather II. At a Chicago investor summit yesterday, EA CEO John Riccitiello revealed that the publisher's Redwood Shores studio is hard at work on a second game based on director Francis Ford Coppola's Oscar-winning Mafia film series. Though Coppola is no fan, Riccitiello was particularly excited about the game, lavishing praise on executive producer Hunter Smith for making a "spectacular" game.

"I think we'll be talking a lot about [The Godfather II] this fall," he gushed to analysts. "You can play this game both at the street level, much like GTA or a Vice City-style game, but you can also play from the top down, almost like an RTS. You can go into strategy in the boroughs, you can see what's going on, you play it in a different way, on a different level. It's a very differentiated gameplay experience." Riccitiello did not go into further detail, quickly jinking to other topics.

Contrary to widespread reports, Riccitiello didn't explicitly say that The Godfather II would have an RTS mode, merely that it would have the top-down view common to the genre. However, though rare, a crime RTS game is not unprecedented. The lukewarmly received 2004 RTS Gangland had armies of criminals conquering urban turf in a fictional 1930s city, drawing resources from gambling parlors, speakeasies, and other illicit operations.

When development began on the Gears of War movie last year, the project sounded like it might have bucked the game-film curse. Then semi-independent studio New Line Cinema (Lord of the Rings) picked up the film rights, and commissioned Collateral writer Stuart Beattie to pen the screenplay. Hope climbed further when the game's lead designer, Cliff Bleszinski, signed on as a creative consultant and executive producer.

Today, though, came a one-two punch of news that many fans of Gears of War--GameSpot's 2006 Game of Year--may find disheartening. Variety is reporting that, after months of negotiations, Len Wiseman has signed onto direct the project. Besides being married to actress Kate Beckinsale (pictured), Wiseman is best-known for directing the less-than-acclaimed Underworld action horror films. He also directed the fourth Die Hard film, Live Free or Die Hard, which briefly featured some Gears gameplay.

In addition to directing, Wiseman is reworking the script with writer Chris Morgan, the mind behind the reviewer-pilloried script of The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift and the forthcoming Wanted. The pair are currently working together on the sci-fi suspense-actioner Shell Game, with Wiseman also cowriting and producing the third Underworld film, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans.

Both of Wiseman's current projects are due out next year. Gears of War is expected in theaters next summer, while Gears of War 2 will ship for the Xbox 360 this fall. And while another high-profile game adaptation (Kane & Lynch) recently caught the attention of a major Hollyoowd star (Bruce Willis), no major roles in the Gears film have yet been cast.

When the Nintendo Wii was first released, a spate of health-care scares followed. Seemingly not used to standing upright, punters first complained about aches and pains in their body, dubbed "Wii Shoulder" from strenuous bouts of Wii Sports. Next up, the straps used to secure the controllers to one's wrist came under scrutiny. A lawsuit was filed in Texas in 2006 by a disgruntled gamer who claimed that the straps were "ineffective," and his controller had flown through the air, hit his brand-new Wii, and broken said console. Others reported on flying controllers inadvertently damaging expensive electronics, furniture, and bystanders. Nintendo responded by offering replacement straps.

And now, according to The Daily Telegraph broadsheet, the Wii is wreaking havoc on innocent households once more. "Flower pots, television sets, and even pets" have been accidentally kicked during workouts with the exercise game Wii Fit.

Polling 1,000 women in the UK, it found that 86 percent of respondees owned Wii Fit, and that around 20 percent admitted to having a few "little accidents" whilst trying to lose pounds with the minigames. The average cost of items broken per person amounted to £6.55 worth of damage each in the last year. In a somewhat dubious grasp of the laws of mathematics, The Daily Telegraph then surmises that that means the total cost countrywide of the damage wreaked must therefore equal some £20.1 million ($40 million). Although it seems unlikely that 86 percent of the general female population has a copy of the game, and that they have managed to rack up that much damage when the game only came out in Europe at the end of April.

With Wii Fit's popularity making the game near-impossible to find and World of Warcraft's subscriber base nearing 11 million, it was just a matter of time before the two collided in some form. That form, as it turns out, is a project at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence which could augur the combination of real-world exercise and in-game raiding.

In a YouTube video creatively titled "User Interactions with the Wii Balance Board," grad students Matthieu Deru and Simon Bergweiler showed off how they hacked the peripheral to control movement inside World of Warcraft. According to the tech-blog Technabob, the pair connected the balance board to a PC running a special homebrew application which translated on-board motions into in-game movement via Bluetooth connection. For about a minute, they guided two characters on a brief stroll through Azeroth.

Whether by oversight or design, Deru and Bergweiler chose not to have players walk in place on the board, as some Wii Fit minigames do to often exhaustive effect. Instead, they change the characters' orientation by leaning forwards and backwards, and then lean forward or backwards for movement in those various directions.