Today marks one of those days that I’m really, really glad I’m a functioning video game reviewer–I’m going to review a game that I’m absolutely convinced you need to be told about.  Chances are very good that you haven’t actually heard of it, which is why I get the opportunity to use my good offices to fill you in.  It’s called Forumwarz, and it may easily be the most unique game I’ve ever played.

You’ll play as a young forum-goer, like so many other internet users out there, who’s just starting out in the world.  You’re out to make a name for yourself in the world, and as such, you go out and attempt to “pwn” internet forums, a name for causing such disruption that you make a forum uninhabitable.  Along the way, you’ll meet a series of other internet users with a series of different goals and interests who want to employ your skills to advance those goals and interests.  You’ll run into everybody from conservative talk show hosts with bizarre proclivities to furries to indie rock figures and beyond.  But what’s lying beyond all these disparate interests?  Who are you really working for?  You’ll find out in a tale of surprising depth and intrigue.

In fact, you start out so new that your opening rank is actually “Jimmy the Re-Re”.  Please don’t bother with flames—that’s a quote.  In fact, they’ve devoted such detail to this rank that your two attacks as Jimmy are “bash keyboard with helmet” and “drool on keyboard”.  After a little time spent as Jimmy, you’ll be allowed to select a new class of character, each with different kinds of attacks and defenses—you can be a hacker, a troll, an emo kid, a camwhore or a permanoob.  You can even play through the whole game as Jimmy if you’re so inclined, but this is discouraged for all but the most extreme player.

The gameplay itself is unusual, as you select an attack, resolve the result, let the forum get in ITS attack (they’ll try to flame you with varying degrees of success) and then the process repeats until either you or the forum is down in flames.  The closest analogue is a collectible card game.  Every day, you’re permitted four “forum visits” to wreak your havoc, and the number resets at a set time each day.  This may sound somewhat restrictive, but I haven’t told you the best part yet—the game is free to play.

That’s right, the entire first chapter of Forumwarz is free to play.  The second chapter, however, you’ll have to pay to play, and the cost is minimal at best—just ten dollars.  You’d pay more for a Xbox Live title, and instead, you get a game that’s fantastically fun to play, and you can play for days in small installments.  I like to start my day with a round of Forumwarz, and frankly, I think you will too.

Oh, sure…Forumwarz doesn’t have the action and the explosions of some first person shooters and suchlike, but what it does have is clever gameplay and plenty of laughs.  .  It’s almost nice to be able to play a game that I can only play for about a half-hour or so a day instead of taking a few hours at a crack, because the trade-off for that is that I can play it for weeks and still get a great experience with something new every day. Forumwarz is great fun, and in the end, that’s what counts most in a game.

Used game sales are a huge business — they account for well over 40% of GameStop’s — the largest game retailer in the world — revenue. So it’s of no surprise that more players are looking to enter the market, one of those being Amazon, and now, Walmart.

The mega retailer has opened used games kiosks in 77 of its retail stores, helping gamers sell their old games and buy used ones. Walmart is looking to expand those kiosks to even more stores, once the system has been fully developed and tested.

Ubisoft recently revealed that over 450 people are working on Assassin’s Creed 2 — that’s three times as many as on the original game. Game producer Sebastien Puel said that 75% of the people who worked on the original are also working on the sequel, and he noted that the original too four years to complete, one of the longer development cycles. Assassin’s Creed 2 will reportedly have a lot of the features that were meant to be in the first game, as the development team has more resources.

Bad news for Sony, as NPD’s latest April sales reveal that Sony’s PS3 only sold 127,000 units, the lowest since before the release of the 40 GB model in October 2007. To make matters worse, the age-old PS2 outsold the PS3 for the month, selling over 172,000 units.

Granted, the PS2 just received a price cut to $100, which has fueled sales, and might suggest that the PS3 is in desperate need of a price cut as well. If that’s not reason enough for a price cut, the NPD numbers show that the cheaper PS3 SKU outsold the expensive one by 9 to 1.

Cellphones have been lambasted for their impeding of drivers since they became widespread. Many states have instituted laws requiring hands-free devices while driving and studies have shown that the mental distraction of talking on a cellphone is no worse than having a conversation with someone present in the car. Generally the most dangerous group on the road are teenage drivers, prone to reckless thinking and lacking the experience of seasoned drivers.

One of the biggest trends amongst teens and young adults these days is text messaging. It’s the instant messaging generation taken wireless and they’re taking it on the road as well. Parents are of course concerned, so the National Organization for Youth Safety is sponsoring a contest challenging schools to teach their students how dangerous texting while driving is.

Colorado’s Vail Christian High School is going about this in a manner that is likely to get their attention: by having students play Mario Kart while attempting to read and send text messages. As you might expect students are using the Wii wheel to simulated a somewhat realistic driving experience. If this program works we’ll soon be seeing teenagers who avoid the temptation of on-road texting and gaze fearfully at their rear-view mirror every few moments, watching out for blue shells.

When newscasters aren’t reporting on the dangers of the swine flu, they’re speculating on the recession, namely when we can expect to be out of it. As things worsened the video games industry grew despite declining currency values, rising unemployment rates and general low-level panic. Yet recently things have started to go the other way for the industry, with analyst Douglas McIntyre saying that this is an extremely bad sign, pointing to lower console and game sales than last year as a suggestion that most people’s discretionary income has dried up.

Don’t panic people, because there’s a rational explanation for all this. When Mr. McIntyre suggests that video games are a reflection of how much consumers have to spend, he’s correct, but he fails to account for the fact that unlike other discretionary spending such as food or apparel, the video game market fluctuates depending on what’s available. There’s a near continual trickle of video games released year round but the titles that really spur sales are fewer and often clustered around certain periods of time. In April 2008 both GTA IV and Mario Kart Wii were released, two powerhouse titles that gobbled up cash, while this year April didn’t have much to compete.

Falling console sales can simply be attributed as much to market saturation as low cash flow. In 2008 the Wii and PS3 had been out for around a year and a half. Now they’ve been available for two and a half, with the Xbox 360 having been on the shelf even longer. No matter how powerful, intuitive or flashy a console is eventually it’s going to hit the point where the number of people hoping to buy one drops off.

Right now fans are holding out for the big titles. E3 is on the horizon, meaning that many developers are holding back their big guns to debut at the event, thus achieving the maximum publicity. Games aren’t struggling, you’ve just got a lot of gamers playing through old favorites while they wait for the next big game instead of picking up less impressive titles.

Sure, there have been some major issues with two out of the three downloadable content packs Bethesda has released for Fallout 3, but in spite of that they’ve been selling well. Soon they’ll be selling even better since Microsoft’s exclusivity is coming to an end and more content packs are on the way. All three of the existing DLC packs are going to be available for the PS3 this year. Operation Anchorage releases in June with The Pitt and Broken Steel following after with a four to six week interval between each.

The two new content packs will be released for PS3 eventually, but they’re going to be released for the Xbox 360 first. Point Lookout will bring the player to a new swampy area with new quests based around the real Point Lookout State Park of Maryland. Although the Fallout universe is set in an America where events eventually diverged from our reality, some of the events will draw on the collective past, including the Civil War.

Mothership Zeta continues with the running reference in the Fallout universe to the existence of aliens. In previous games you could get your hands on a powerful albeit short ranged alien blaster if you stumbled upon their crashed ship. In Fallout 3 the same thing happens, but in the DLC pack you’ll find yourself abducted by the alien ship responding to the distress call you can pick up on your Pip Boy.

As with the previous packs there’ll be new quests, characters, items to collect and even some new perks, but at this early stage no details are being discussed about what they might be, though they did say that we can expect a ton of new art for Mothership Zeta. Lookout Point is set for a June release and Mothership Zeta for July.

It seems a little late in the game to be releasing a third-party Wii controller, but Nyko has gone ahead and done it anyways, calling it the Wand. After their lawsuit over the Kama they’ve made sure it’s quite distinguishable from Nintendo’s controller in terms of looks, but the overall shape and functionality is the same.

One of the more interesting features though is that the Wand allows for electronic emulation of existing buttons. With the Nintendo Wiimote if you want some sort of alternate control scheme i.e. a light gun style controller, it can only operate the buttons in an analog fashion. The Wand is set up so that a peripheral plugged into the port on the end can have its own buttons.

There are two packages available, the ‘core pack’ which comes with a Wand and vibration enabled wired Kama; then there’s the ‘Action Pack’ which includes a Wand and a light gun accessory. It’s obviously styled after the Nyko Perfect Shot but functions a little differently. Before slipping the controller into it, you remove the battery cover. It also includes the mandatory orange bit you stick on the ‘barrel’ to indicate it’s a toy, though why you’d take it outside the house is beyond me (well with the exception of maybe bringing it to a friend’s place to play, but then just stick it in a bag).

The Wand is now available in stores for $34.99, the Core and Action packs are available for $49.99

Cryptic Studios delays Champions Online to Sept. 1st
Sims 3 gets leaked
Rock Band Unplugged song list and DLC unveiled
Valve reveals Spy achievements, all new Meet the Spy video
Tatsunoko vs Capcom coming to the US, to be showcased at E3
Chinese firm tells Engadget to take down PS3 Slim photos
Datel announces microSD/SDHC expandable Xbox 360 memory card
Realtime worlds and APB to appear at E3
Tony Hawk: RIDE controls explained
3D Realms still exists, retains Duke Nukem rights
BlizzCon tickets sold out
Broken Steel Game Review–A Perfect End To A Nigh-Perfect Game
Another sign of Forza 3
Bethesda planning to release “really big Wii game”
Stalker Call of Pripyat system requirements released
Resonance of Fate Unveiled for PS3 and Xbox
Sniper update becomes the Spy update

Cryptic Studios announced in late April that their newest MMO Champions Online would be shipping on July 14th. However, Cryptic has made the concious decision to delay the game until September 1st, but why?

Well, executive producer for the game, Bill Roper, gave the following reason:

Through our constant dialogue with our vocal and supportive community of beta testers, we quickly realized that in order to implement certain features that we all considered important the development of Champions Online would require more time

And, according to Joystiq, these features will include things like “more instanced and scripted missions” along with “core powers, travel powers and upgrades”.

Well OK Mr. Roper, let’s just hope you and Cryptic Studios deliver a great game.