As a wise man once said, folks…war is hell. And if you ever wanted a down to the minutiae idea of what war was like, go get your hands on a copy of Shellshock 2: Blood Trails.
Bear with me–I’m going to explain that one like no tomorrow and you’re going to be amazed by the time I get done. But first we’re going to have to tackle the plot, and that’s going to just confuse you blind as to why I call this a really accurate simulation of war.
Shellshock 2: Blood Trails, is a Vietnam-war era first person shooter game revolving around the Walker brothers, one of which went off into the deepest jungles of Vietnam to recover something called White Knight. The cargo plane carrying White Knight was shot down by the North Vietnamese in a brief aerial battle. One month after Caleb Walker went into the jungles in an attempt to fetch White Knight, he emerged from the jungles a gibbering lunatic. Thus, when his brother was drafted and sent to Vietnam, HIS first mission was to try and get something–anything!–out of his now-insane brother. But brother Caleb wasn’t in the talking mood, and by the time brother Nate showed up, Caleb burst his bonds and rushed out of the facility where he was being held. Now, Nate, along with a few other GIs, are left to hunt down Caleb and solve the mysteries surrounding White Knight…including why the dead in Vietnam seem to be coming back to life.
Yes, that’s right, folks–there’s ZOMBIES afoot. Now, we’re already a little left of center of reality—not even the Viet Cong thought of harnessing the sheer might of the walking dead. But there’s realism here in that, much like the actual Vietnam War, when you play it, you very seldom have any idea who’s shooting at you and it’s very clear that those in charge of the game really don’t want you to win. So you see what I mean—it’s very much like the ACTUAL Vietnam War, just with zombies.
Seriously, I played through this sucker and, even in the very first level, I was getting shot at from a whole lot of different avenues and I could barely even tell where the fire was coming from. By the time I got to the SECOND level, I couldn’t even see the muzzle flashes anymore. I was just taking incoming fire, as evidenced by brief flashes of white in my heads-up display, for no clear reason from no clear direction. I was inside BUILDINGS and still getting hit from all sides. It was as though the very game around me decided that it wasn’t having me continue to ADVANCE, so it was going to shut me down, one way or another.
So despite the fact that they’ve got zombies going on in here, the really amazing part of the whole mess is is that this is almost EXACTLY like what we hear about the Vietnam War. The only downside is that this not only makes for a really bad experience for pretty much everybody, it also makes for a really lousy game. There’s nothing worse than trying to exist in an environment where unseen people shoot at you and you have absolutely no idea how or where to return fire. Bad enough to get shot at, how much worse to get shot at from random directions?
That sums up my experience with the whole thing nicely—this game is so badly flawed that it’s almost unplayable. There’s absolutely no reason to play this misbegotten wreck, so don’t even try.
As some may remember, Valve and publisher Sierra were in a heated court battle for years. The two finally settled the case, where Sierra was to pay Valve royalties of $2.4 million, however, during the court battle, Sierra was taken over by Activision, who took over the debt to Valve.
Game Developer magazine ran their annual survey of the industry and found out that on average, salaries among the workers in the game development industry rose by an average of 7% in 2008. The average annual salaries increased from around $74,000 to $79,000. 
Nintendo has unveiled a Wii and DSi video on demand service, named “Wii-no-Ma”. The new service was unveiled by Nintendo’s Satoru Iwata in Japan earlier today.
GSG Gameworld, developers of the STALKER games, have announced a new expansion, STALKER: Call of Pripyat. This is the third standalone expansion for STALKER, while the title, Call of Pripyat, is a working title and subject to change. 
EA is riding on top of the DLC bandwagon it seems, as the company today announced a microstransaction store in The Sims 3, one that will sell in-game items. The company plans on having quite a bit of content available on release day.
