It’s no secret — far from actually — that Nitendo’s Wii is a massive success, with over 50 million units sold world wide. Nintendo now has one more thing it can brag about; being the fastest selling console in US history.

According to recent numbers NDP, the Wii has sold 20 million units in the US in only 31 months, making it the fastest selling console ever, surpassing the PlayStation 2.

I had heard vague stirrings of goodness about the Battalion Wars series for some time, so when I found a copy of Battalion Wars 2 on the Wii, I thought I’d found a real winner.  See, when I first took a whack at this I thought I was going to play an actual RTS on the Wii.  That really perked my interest–for crying out loud, TELL me the Wiimote and nunchuk aren’t just perfectly suited to a point-and-click style interface.  Seriously, try and tell me that.

But anyway, you can just about imagine my surprise when I didn’t get a map-driven point-and-click strategy simulation game, but rather a third-person shooter.

We start our little affair in the midst of a battle between the Iron Legion and the Solar Empire.  The Iron Legion is about to literally hand the entire world its own ass by knocking out the last functioning army left on the field.  Only a last-ditch effort by a single brave soldier can save the entire planet from being ground under the Iron Legion’s massive, heavy boot heel.  Fast forward a few years–the Solar Empire has been living in relative peace, but all that is about to change when the Anglo Isles, another area power, gets word that the Solar Empire was working on a new kind of superweapon.  The Anglo Isles forces launch an all-out assault, which you must repel.  And this is only the beginning of a massive and world-sweeping plot…but who’s behind it?  Only by playing through a series of battles all over the planet will you manage to find out.

Yes, this is a third-person shooter.  You will, however, have access to a pretty nice variety of units, making this almost a strategy game at the third-person shooter level, forcing you to make decisions about which units to use in which situations.  You may need to use flamethrowers against infantry, bazookas against armor, anti-air units against aircraft, and so on.  I admit, I haven’t seen that many third person shooters involve quite so much strategy, but that’s still like saying it’s the least painful hammer to hit yourself with.

Perhaps another interesting issue with this game is that it’s uniquely well suited for the younger set.  For all the gunplay in this game, I don’t remember seeing any blood.  There are explosions, but these are really little more than bursts of color.  Enemies set on fire with your flamethrower simply fade out after a while.  I’ve heard about parents buying this game for children as young as seven despite the fact that it’s rated for teenagers.  Frankly, I’m not sure why this game rated a T myself–asides from the popgun-like effects of the gunfire there’s not much in the way of truly objectionable content here.  But that’s neither here nor there–I’d honestly say that T might be an overreaction on the ESRB’s part.

The game itself, meanwhile, is fun in a cartoony sort of way, with fairly decent sound and graphics, plus quite possibly one of the better third-person shooters I’ve played thanks to its heavy dollops of strategy and occasional humor.  You might want to take a run at Battalion Wars 2, if for no other reason than they try harder than most of the rest.

MIcrosoft is gearing up for a big push when they release Project Natal, their own motion-sensing offering. Minor peripherals or controller upgrades aren’t usually big affairs, but this is the Xbox’s foray into a new direction, what many say might be the next evolution of video games. Many alternate control peripherals fail due to inadequate support. You pick up the game that came with it, play it til you’re tired of it and then hunt through the shelves for something else to use with it, only to find there isn’t anything else. Sales of the peripheral slump and developers don’t even bother consider creating games for the device.

That’s why Microsoft isn’t planning on releasing the new controller until they think its ready and has a good lineup of launch titles to get people using it. They’ve got Rare working on games for the device, though fans are concerned given some of the unimpressive 360 launch titles the developer put out in the past.

Microsoft claims they’re not going after the casual gaming market or any other existing market segment with the Natal. They’re aiming to get people who still aren’t gaming into the mix, claiming that for many the controller is a barrier which they hope to eliminate by making all the controls dependent upon simple body motion. At this point it seems unlikely that they’ll get too many more people involved. There’s still a big portion of the populace who consider video games and anti-social waste of time.

Announced back in February we haven’t really heard anything about Sam & Max on the XBLA since. However, Telltale has just released word that the duo will hit the service on June 17th.

Please make note that only Season 1, Save the World, will be hitting on June 17th with the second season, Beyond Time and Space, dropping at an undetermined date.

If you aren’t familiar with Sam & Max, it originated as a comic book and then progressed through several stages until it was picked up by Telltale Games who created a point and click graphical adventure entitled Sam & Max Save the World which is the same title coming to the XBLA.

The technology was just announced at E3 09 and already Microsoft is ready to put the technology to work on live TV on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.

Both Project Natal and the tech’s creative director Kudo Tsunoda made an appearance to show off the same two games that were featured during E3; a game where you have to smack balls at a wall brick breaker style and a modified version of Burnout Paradise.

Now, I don’t know about you guys but either Jimmy Fallon isn’t too good at video games or the technology is a bit glitchy. Both are completely plausible since the technology is still in at an extremely early stage.

Peggle only $1 on iPhone until June 14
Gamers Get Less Sleep: Gamers Ask “They Needed a Study?”
Assassin’s Creed 2 Black Edition revealed
Mario Party 8 Game Review–Take Their Hint
The Sims 3 Proves Piracy Is No Threat To Sales
Red Faction Guerilla Gets Smashingly Good Promotion
Samsung ad shows off real life Street Fighter II bonus level
Sony launches Vidzone service for Europe, Australia, New Zealand
Doom Resurrection hitting App Store next week
PSP Firmware 5.51 announced, community grows tired
Left 4 Dead 2 boycott group repsonds to Valves response
Famitsu puts Metal Gear Arcade on display
Free Saints Row 2 DLC pack hits Xbox Live
Overlord II demo hits PC, PS3
EA slaps Dwight Howard on NBA Live 10 cover
Crysis 2 on consoles had to be done
Apple Says New iPhone Superior To PSP

Peggle is already one of the most popular games on the iPhone and iPod Touch platforms, and today, and the next three days, it’ll be available for only $1. After June 14, it’s back to the normal $5 price point, which is still cheap, considering how cool and addictive Peggle is.

We’ve all been there. You sit down to play a few levels of whatever you’re plowing through at the moment and the next thing you know it feels like someone’s glued sandpaper to the inside of your eyelids and the clock taunts you with an obscenely late hour. A study presented at the recent SLEEP 2009 event told the world what millions of World of Warcraft subscribers already know: gamers get less sleep.

The study also showed that people who reported their gaming interfered with their sleep got 1.6 hours less shut-eye than everyone else and those who reported being addicted to gaming slept an hour less on weekdays. Only a third of those who reported being addicted felt that it interfered with their sleep.

While it’s easy to blame this on escapist, socially inept stereotypes, it’s quite easy to get caught up in games. Sandbox games can be particularly time-obliterating since there’s no obvious landmarks to call your attention to how long you’ve been playing. Bizarrely, the easiest I’ve ever been drawn into a game without concern for time was Viva Pinata. I haven’t played it since out of fear of losing entire days to its colorful world.

Ubisoft has revealed plans of a Collector’s Edition Assassin’s Creed 2, named “Black Edition”. Included with a copy of the game will be a 64-page concept art book, a “holographic” numbered game copy, a figurine of the main character and the soundtrack as well. If that’s not enough, the game will come packaged in a black box as well.

Ubisoft has revealed that it will price the Black Edition at 70 GBP, while the US pricing still has to be revealed.

Seeing as how me and the Big N parted company back around the Gamecube era (as in, I had one, but after a couple weeks I took it to the local Gamestop and traded the sucker in on an Xbox because, as far as I could tell, Nintendo would not put out a game for anyone over the age of twelve), I never really got the opportunity to take a stab at the Mario Party line.  Thusly, my first exposure to the Mario Party series was this one right here, Mario Party 8 for the Wii.

Yes, it’s true–the game that amounts to little more than a board game wherein mini-games are played to decide who wins and who loses has reached its eighth iteration with this one.  And, plotwise, that’s really all you do.  You’ll play, generally in a four player environment with computer players to make up the slack as needed when humans aren’t on hand (if it’s just you, you’ll play against a trio of computer players), a series of board games.  You’ll punch a dice cube above your head when it’s your turn, then you’ll proceed the correct number of spaces along the board, at which point you’ll receive rewards or punishments based on the rules and then proceed onto the next mini-game, and you’ll repeat for a certain number of turns.

Yes, it’s a little bit monotonous. No one ever said this sucker was going to be the kind of thing you’d ever mistake for high art.  Or low art.  Or any other kind of art, come to think of it.  There’s nothing really resembling a storyline here–in fact, the only thing that keeps Mario Party 8 from being nothing more than a second-rate collection of mini-games is that it’s actually a FIRST-rate collection of mini-games.  I admit that, when I played this, I had more than my share of fun, for about the first half-hour or so.  After that first half-hour, however, that’s when the boredom settled in.  It only started grating, though, and every time a new mini-game came up, the boredom lessened significantly.

Now, there’s a lot of appeal in a game like this.  Indeed, with three or more friends around this sucker’s probably incredible fun.  Even with one extra buddy in tow, Mario Party 8 could easily be a great time.  But if you’re playing this one by yourself, the limits of the fun are sorely strained.  In fact, the appeal in playing this one in single player mode is fairly well limited to the number of new mini-game experiences you can have.  Once you’ve played through all the different games, and all the different boards, and won all the various prizes you’re able to win, you might as well just unplug your Wiimote and take that sucker back to the store, because you’ve just done everything you could ever possibly do with this game.

Mario Party 8 isn’t the kind of game you can give a simple yea-or-nay review to.  It has a series of very specific applications that, if your intended use doesn’t fit them, will limit your enjoyment of this game by limiting its usefulness.  If you need a game to play with friends or as a short-term rental, then yes, absolutely, Mario Party 8 will do the job nicely.  The game is called Mario Party for a reason–take the hint.