Word is out that Hollywood screenwriters David Weisberg and Douglas Cook (responsible for blockbusters such as Double Jeopardy and The Rock) are set to bring the videogame Darkest of Days to the big screen. Hotshot producer Joe Roth is said to be behind the project.

Adapting a videogame for the big screen has always been an exciting project, but some videogame fans don’t know how to feel about this latest adaptation yet–given the fact that the game is not exactly garnering positive reviews in the gaming world.

The plot of the game revolves around a soldier named Alexander Morris who is fighting in the Civil War. When he is wounded, he is rescued by a man who takes him to a futuristic portal called Kronotek. Apparently, the people at Kronotek have found a way to make time travel possible, allowing them to protect history at all costs. Morris is then invited to participate in this cause by helping protect people who have key roles in history.

Despite the potential of the game’s premise, many gamers found themselves questioning the game’s plausibility especially since the main character does little to question the unusual situation that he finds himself in. The mechanics of the game are not much better. The players spends long stretches of time walking and the weapons are poorly designed.

There is no doubt that gamers are hoping that the skills of the screenwriters and producer combined will turn Darkest of Days a better movie than it was as a game.

If you’ve been anticipating the release of Final Fantasy XIII since you’ve heard of its inception then you don’t have to wait long anymore. The release of the game is bound to be one of the hottest launches in the videogame industry especially now that it has been announced that it will be heralded by an event.

On March 8, an event called the Final Fantasy XIII Experience will be celebrated in San Francisco. If you’re a hardcore fan of the entire Final Fantasy franchise then this is one event that you don’t want to miss.

Guests will have the chance to be the first ones to play the game. Trailers and artwork will also be featured in the event. You will also have the chance to meet the designers, developers and other creative masterminds behind the game. A raffle will also be held where lucky winners will receive various Final Fantasy prices.

Square Enix announced that 200 of its members will have the special opportunity to attend this event. On top of that, members that already have Bronze Tier memberships will have a chance to enter a special sweepstakes. 50 winners from the sweepstakes will have the chance to attend the actual launch party of the game.

Do you like adventures with yakuza clans, being in the company of pretty girls and cage fighting—at least, in the virtual world? If you answered yes then you are probably one of the many videogame fanatics who were clamoring for the release of Yakuza 3 in Europe and the United States. Well, you’ll be happy to know that your gaming prayers have been answered.

European gamers are in more luck because the European version of Yakuza 3 is set to be released with a Premium Edition and will come with plenty of extras—such as four options of downloadable content and a soundtrack with 31 tracks. The edition will also boast a relationship chart. If you are new to the game, then this tool will help you get up to speed as to who are the characters and how are they related to each other. If you’ve been playing the game before and you are just making a comeback to the world of gangsters, then the chart will simply help you recharge your memory.

Customers who will also pre-order the game will receive other bonus features such as mini-games for two-players and special costumes.

Unfortunately, gamers in the US will not be so lucky. If you are planning to buy the game in the US, you will have no choice but to pre-order the game. This is because the DLC features only come with the preorders and are not available on the shelves. Want to know what these DLC features are? There is Battle for Survival where you battle the big bosses of the Yakuza. There are also All-Star Tournaments where you can form 7 or 8 teams. There is also a special game called Haruka’s Request where your character explores the underworld of Yakuza gangs through a series of mini-games.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves was released last October and has sold over 2.5 million copies to date—an astounding feat for a videogame that has only been in the market for four months. Not only that, but the game has also received 15 nominations in what is considered the Oscars of videogames—the Interactive Achievement Awards.

Fans may know the game, but few of them know about the man behind the game—or rather, the woman. 45-year old Amy Hennig is the creative director over at Naughty Dog Studios which is a property of Sony Computer Entertainment America.

Hennig was actually an English Literature major in UC Berkeley. After graduating, Hennig started to attend film school. It was while she was studying film that she took a job in a videogame company in order to make ends meet. Little did she know that it was this job that would change her life forever. Hennig discovered that she was more interested in the gaming industry than in film. It wasn’t long before she dropped out of film school to focus on developing games on a full-time basis.

For a couple of years, Hennig worked hard for the company Electronic Arts, striving to prove herself to be a competent designer. Her hard work paid off in 1993 when a lead designer of one of the games quit and Hennig ended up as the replacement. Hennig’s first project is a game that perhaps many videogame fanatics remember, called Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City.

Now, with the whopping sales of Uncharted 2, it’s not hard to see that Hennig has come a long way.

With the most gorgeous graphics and top of the line hardware available, gamers can’t beat the PS3. With its dual function as a BluRay player, there’s no better gift for your tech geek this holiday season. If they already have a system, here are the best gifts to along with it.

Batman: Arkham Asylum: America’s favorite brooding crime fighter enters the depths of insanity in one of the year’s most critically acclaimed games. Fans of The Dark Knight will love this game, which pits Batman against the Joker (voiced by Star Wars’ Mark Hamill) and other iconic villains in the home of Gotham’s most insane evildoers. The story is gripping, the controls are tight and the overall experience is on par with the best of the caped crusader’s adventures.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves: The most wished-for PS3 game listed on Amazon.com. This stunning third-person adventure game follows fortune hunter Nick Drake as he is thrust back into the underground world of thieves he sought to leave behind. Crisp graphics, well-above-par voice work and a suspenseful story laced with twists make this a must-have for anyone with a PS3.

Rock Band 2: If you’re in the mood for something a little lighter, Rock Band 2 is the perfect party game. You and up to three friends can rock out the vocals, drums, guitar or bass on classic hits from today and yesteryear. It’s fun for single players, too: master songs on the expert level to unlock even more songs. Music comes from the likes of Journey, Modest Mouse, Nirvana, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Linkin Park and Bob Dylan.

Energizer Power Charger: Never worry again about charging the batteries in your controller with this convenient charger system. The only downside to wireless controller is dealing with dying batteries, this charger completely eliminates that disadvantage. Charger dock can hold two controllers at once.

The ever popular Xbox 360 is still a favorite among modern gamers. Give them what they want this Christmas on one of the most sophisticated, well-balanced consoles available.

Grand Theft Auto IV: If you’re giving someone a 360, make sure this game is included. It ranks as one of the best-reviewed games of all time thanks to its pristine graphics, well-developed storyline and unbelievably expansive environments to explore. Gamers can ignore the outstanding plot and spend days exploring the city, stealing cars and helicopters and creating general mayhem. A true landmark for video games. That said, this is an adult game in every sense of the word, so you might want to stick with a Mario game for the little ones.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2: The most recent installment of the massively popular war series brings realism and excitement to the war genre. The single player option offers a gripping story, and the multi-player mode is simply unsurpassed.

Wireless controller: Another remarkable advancement for the Xbox 360. Instead of being restrained by a cord a couple feet long, the Xbox 360 wireless controller gives the player up to 30 feet of freedom. It’s energy efficient, too – the two included AA batteries last for up to 40 hours, with ample warning given for when the time is about to expire. Choose between white, black or red.

Wireless headset: Make your gamer’s experience truly immersive. The wireless headset lets you communicate with players from all across the globe during multi-player sessions. Coordinate attack patterns with your teammates or taunt your opponents with the sleek and simple wireless headset.

Xbox Live Starter Pack: Join the new wave of gaming! Connect with Xbox Live and play with gamers from across the planet. This starter kit comes with three free months of Xbox Live Gold, which includes access to free game demos, exclusive downloads, Facebook, Twitter and Netflix Instant Watch for Netflix members.

If you’re a fan of MMO games then you probably know all about Free Realms. Released almost a year ago, the game has now garnered an astounding 8 million players around the world, according to Sony Online Entertainment president John Smedly. According to Smedly, the widening fan base of the game is due to the game’s sophisticated features that allow users to easily customize their pets, houses and other aspects of their virtual world. Smedly also boasts that Free Realms is also much more than your average virtual world game. He says that it is also a “portal for the imagination”.

Aside from being free, there are also a couple of other things that make Free Realms stand out. For instance, participation in combat is not required in order for the players to move on to the next level. A player also has the option to join other mini-games that focus on other activities like raising pets, exploring or building constructions. The game is also known for its social networking feature. Users can easily share content with each other such as video, images and links. They can also chat with each other simultaneously while playing the game.

Another great thing about Free Realms is that it has available options for parents who want to monitor the content that their child is getting access to. It also helps that the game soundtrack, “It’s Your World” by The Dares is also a popular hit on iTunes. In fact, it qualified for a world record when The Dares performed the song in a game convention while a virtual version of the concert was simultaneously taking place inside the game.

Do you ever wonder who writes the summaries and descriptions on the boxes of the videogames that you buy? Well, it’s no other than the Entertainment Software Ratings Board, also known as the ESRB.

Basically, it is the ESRB’s job to provide objective synopses, objectives and other game information in the game boxes and on their official website. However, ESRB’s objectivity was recently questioned when they released the summary of Dead or Alive: Paradise.

The folks over at ESRB seem to take an opinionated stand when it described DOA: Paradise as a creepy and raunchy game where players can watch scantily clad women frolicking at the beach. According to the review, the game also provides other activities where the player may attempt to win the favors of these women in hopes of getting closer to their company. The review also stopped short of bashing the game when it states that DOA: Paradise mostly involved “creepy voyeurism” and portraying women in an imprudent way.

Even though there are no laws that mandate ESRB to maintain objectivity in their reviews, the organization thought it would be better to just revise the whole thing. The newly revised description describes the game as strictly for mature players as it contains mature subject matter such as gambling, nudity and other sexual themes.

After much anticipation, the game Mass Effect 2 was finally released in the United States last month, followed by its launching in Europe. Hailed as the first blockbuster game of the year, BioWare’s Dr. Ray Muzyka is confident that the game is bound to be one of the biggest in 2010.

According to the estimates of EA, the game sold a whopping 2 million units on its first week alone—sealing the second place in the list of the highest-rated games in Xbox 360 of all times.

So what makes Mass Effect 2 stand out from the rest of its competition? First, critics and players alike both agreed that some of the technical aspects of the sequel have definitely seen improvement since the first installment. Some of these technical features include loading time, graphic images as well as the shooting mechanics of the game. Another great thing about ME2 is that it can be enjoyed by anyone. If you never played the first Mass Effect, you don’t have to worry about getting lost in the game’s narrative. If you’ve indeed played the first installment, then your prior experience can come into play in this sequel.

So what about the game’s story? Although the storyline of Mass Effect 2 is not exactly Oscar material, dialogues and characterization take the game to the next level. Despite a predictable plot, the game features gripping dialogue and introduces multiple well-developed characters with detailed back stories. Surely, that’s already more than one would expect from your usual science fiction videogame.

Really Good News About Your Children’s Video Games
 by: Marc Prensky

Research published by University of Rochester neuroscientists C. Shawn Green and Daphne Bavelier has grabbed national attention for suggesting that playing “action” video and computer games has positive effects – enhancing student’s visual selective attention. But that finding is just one small part of a more important message that all parents and educators need to hear: video games are not the enemy, but the best opportunity we have to engage our kids in real learning.

Any observer knows that the attitude of today’s children to video and computer games is the very opposite of the attitude that most of them have toward school. The amount of time they spend playing computer and video games – estimated at 10,000 hours by the time they are twenty-one, often in multi-hour bursts – belies the “short attention span” criticism of educators. And while years ago the group attracted to video and computer games was almost entirely adolescent boys, it is now increasingly girls and all children of all ages and social groups. One would be hard-pressed today to find a kid in America who doesn’t play computer or video games of one sort or another.

The evidence is quickly mounting that our “Digital Native” children’s brains are changing to accommodate these new technologies with which they spend so much time. Not only are they better at spreading their attention over a wide range of events, as Green and Bavelier report, but they are better at parallel processing, taking in information more quickly (at “twitchspeed”), understanding multimedia, and collaborating over networks.

What attracts and “glues” kids to today’s video and computer games is neither the violence, or even the surface subject matter, but rather the learning the games provide. Kids, like and all humans, love to learn when it isn’t forced on them. Modern computer and video games provide learning opportunities every second, or fraction thereof.

On the surface, kids learn to do things – to fly airplanes, to drive fast cars, to be theme park operators, war fighters, civilization builders and veterinarians. But on deeper levels they learn infinitely more: to take in information from many sources and make decisions quickly; to deduce a game’s rules from playing rather than by being told; to create strategies for overcoming obstacles; to understand complex systems through experimentation. And, increasingly, they learn to collaborate with others. Many adults are not aware that games have long ago passed out of the single-player isolation shell imposed by lack of networking, and have gone back to being the social medium they have always been – on a worldwide scale. Massively Multiplayer games such as EverQuest now have hundreds of thousands of people playing simultaneously, collaborating nightly in clans and guilds.

Today’s game-playing kid enters the first grade able to do and understand so many complex things – from building, to flying, to reasoning – that the curriculum they are given feel like they are being handed depressants. And it gets worse as the students progress. Their “Digital Immigrant” teachers know so little about the digital world of their charges – from online gaming to exchanging, sharing, meeting, evaluating, coordinating, programming, searching, customizing and socializing, that it is often impossible for them to design learning in the language and speed their students need and relish, despite their best efforts.

An emerging coalition of academics, writers, foundations, game designers, companies like Microsoft and, increasingly, the U.S. Military is working to make parents and educators aware of the enormous potential for learning contained in the gaming medium. While “edutainment,” may work for pre-schoolers, it is primitive when it comes to the enormous sophistication of today’s games. We need new and better learning games, and these are finally beginning to appear. Microsoft has sponsored a “Games-to-Teach” project at MIT which is building games for learning difficult concepts in physics and environmental science on the X-Box and Pocket PC. Lucas Games has lesson plans to help teachers integrate its games into curricula to teach critical thinking. A UK study by TEEM (Teachers Evaluating Educational Multimedia) has shown that certain games can help youngsters to learn logical thinking and computer literacy. Given the almost perfect overlap between the profiles of gamers and military recruits, the US Military uses over 50 different video and computer games to teach everything from doctrine, to strategy and tactics. “America’s Army, Operations,” a recruiting game released for free in 2002, now has almost 2 million registered users, with almost a million having completed virtual basic training.

Academic research into the positive effects of games on learning, which not so long ago sat unread on the shelf, is being noticed by national media. Theoretical and practical guides such as “What Video Games Have To Teach Us About Learning And Literacy” by Professor of Education James Paul Gee, and my own “Digital Game-Based Learning,” are now on bookshelves. Experts, such as former Stanford CFO William Massey, who created the learning game “Virtual U.” are working with game designers to build games that communicate their knowledge and experience. Foundations like Sloan, Markle and others are funding these efforts. The Woodrow Wilson school has begun a project called “Serious Games” to increase the use of gaming in public policy debates, picking up an effort that begin 10 years ago with “Sim Health” from Maxis.

Yet despite all the findings, research, and cries for help from the kids in school, many parents and educators still tend to think of video and computer games as frivolous at best and harmful at worst. The press often encourages this with headlines about “killing games” when in fact two thirds of the games are rated “E (everybody),” and sixteen of the top 20 sellers are rated either “E” or “T (teen)”. To counteract this “name prejudice,” users and funders of today’s “new” educational games often refer to them by “code” names, such as “Desktop Simulators,” “Synthetic Environments,” or “Immersive Interactive Experiences.”

Yet what these new, highly effective learning tools really are a combination of the most compelling and interactive design elements of the best video and computer games with specific curricular content. The tricky part is doing this in ways that capture, rather than lose, the learner’s interest and attention. We are now becoming much better at this. The money and will is there to do it, and our students are crying for it.

About The Author

Marc Prensky is an internationally acclaimed speaker, writer, consultant, and designer in the critical areas of education and learning. He is the author of Digital Game-Based Learning (McGraw-Hill, 2001). Marc is founder and CEO of Games2train, a game-based learning company, and founder of The Digital Multiplier, an organization dedicated to eliminating the digital divide in learning worldwide. He is also the creator of the sites and . Marc holds an MBA from Harvard and a Masters in Teaching from Yale. More of his writings can be found at . More of Marc’s writings on the positive effects of video games can be found at www.marcprensky.com/writing/default.asp.

marc@games2train.com