Aaron Klein: The more I heard about Borderlands the more I got excited to check the game out. The tone of the press had been mostly doubtful, touching on how Gearbox was almost desperately racing to distinguish itself from a saturated release season populated with established gaming titans like Rock Band, Halo, Uncharted, Mario, Call of Duty and other anticipated new intellectual properties like Dragon Age: Origins and Brutal Legend.

A relatively late switch of gears in artistic direction to use hand-drawn textures, a controversial portrayal of a stylized suicide as cover art and the inclusion of a catchy, popular tune from Cage the Elephant in advertising trailers combine to illustrate just how badly 2K Games and Gearbox want you to pick up Borderlands.

Arthur Kotsopoulos: Funny you should say that because before they changed the art style and serious tone of the game I also wasn’t interested. Sure, there were hundreds of thousands of variations in weaponry, but other than that the game offered nothing to really make me want to buy it

It wasn’t until they changed the graphical art style and started to post up viral videos with that comedic touch to them. From this point on I got interested in the game from reading previews, viewing screen shots to watching video walk through of game play, It was a marketing strategy that worked for me.

Aaron Klein: And none of this is bad. I agree the roll out has been a masterpiece of marketing and has been as successful as possible at carving out a niche for Borderlands to have success. The big question is whether or not the actual gameplay can capitalize off this attention.

Arthur Kotsopoulos: I wasn’t expecting much from this game other than it being unique. Having had time to dig into it, I have to say I am loving it! The chance that any weapon I find could be my new favorite weapon is great. You will never find the exact same weapon twice.

Sure the game starts off slow, but this just gets you comfortable with the basics to get you ready for the long journey ahead in the barren wasteland of Pandora in search of the Vault.

How are you in all finding the integration of game play, travel and missions within Pandora?

Aaron Klein: The weapons are awesome, and that is a great observation. Your character is never totally optimized. There is always a better weapon out there somewhere. That keeps it interesting for the exact reason you stated: The next weapon you find on your ground could end up being your favorite.

I get a little OCD about the weapons, though. When new guns are so plentiful I tend to spend a lot of time tweaking my arms and making tiny decisions between the rifle with more power but less accuracy and the one with an increased firing rate but low power.

This is both good and bad. A couple of times I wanted to set the controller down just because this micromanagement was overly taxing. But then I realized, “hey, you don’t have to do this. Just run out there and shoot.”

Arthur Kotsopoulos: Exactly. It’s has enough RPG elements to keep you swapping out the weapons in your backpack as you level up. Yet at the same time not overly taxing to the point where you have to organize which weapons have this scope, barrel, handle and ammo capacity.

It’s an FPS that’s challenging, yet easily accessible. Borderlands blends the genres in a way I haven’t seen done so well since Bioshock. You have an open, sandbox world, a light RPG skill tree for each of the four character classes and hundreds of thousands of weapons with various stats and augments such as fire, electricity, poison and so forth.

My main gripe with this is the driving. It follows the Halo-esque driving controls except it doesn’t do Halo justice. If you clip a tire on the road or small rock the car just lifts in the air funny like it weighs barely anything. I tried to avoid the driving as much as possible because even when you do master it, it still becomes annoying.

Aaron Klein: I was worried about the driving heading into this game, and my worries were warranted. The driving is not very intuitive. Having the car go in whatever direction the camera is pointing means you can’t look off to your peripheral without driving off the road. Plus the vehicle gets hung up really easily on the environment. And when it gets stuck, it’s stuck. There’s no rocking it out.

Driving just tends to be a pain. Gearbox was already trying to do so much with the role-playing shooter dynamic. The vehicle was the darkest cloud over this game.

The map itself is laid out with different “levels” connected by a common area. It’s open, sure, but it’s also constraining because the map is mostly the land between canyon walls and not a wide open plain, like Fallout 3. I say this type of map is not conducive to the driving.

Arthur Kotsopoulos: Sure the map isn’t open like Fallout 3, but it is still massive. I’m currently only on my first play through, taking my time, and I have still to enter a few sections of the game. At the moment I’m in awe at how many areas there are and exactly how big each of them is.

Aaron Klein: But you need to have some way to get around the world. And driving, as bad as it is, is still better than walking. And it is more interesting when you team up in co-op mode to have someone in the gunner’s nest.

Arthur Kotsopoulos: Yeah in co-op, especially four-player co-op, the game really shines. The game becomes much more fun. You receive better loot and acquire more experience points as enemies become harder.

Loot must be shared accordingly though, as any player can take any loot. That can make for frustrating times if you found an awesome weapon and someone nabs it from under your nose.

It is also very hard when you are levels apart from your co-op partners. The game can become quite brutal and unforgiving.

Aaron Klein: I agree, the game is pretty solid as a single player title. But it absolutely shines in the co-op. I’ve been trying to put my finger on why exactly that is… and I think it works so well because the challenge and number of enemies ramp up to coincide with the number of players and their levels. The fight for loot afterwards also contributes to the fun, as it gives everybody something to talk about. “Check out this sweet sniper rifle, does the Hunter want it?”

Plus sharing XP and gold means players level up at relatively the same level.

A testament to the different ways to play the game: while you planned and shared the loot, when playing split screen with a friend we were having fun rushing to beat each other to the glowing gun on the ground, and even waiting to revive each other until the other had picked the battlefield clean of ammo & mods.

But I can see how that could be annoying when playing with strangers.

Arthur Kotsopoulos: Whilst it does feature a form of dueling in co-op with fellow teammates it’s a shame the game doesn’t feature online multiplayer.

I supposed it wouldn’t work seeing as not 1 gun is ever the same so having the ability to take in your weapons from single player to multiplayer would be greatly unfair.

Aaron Klein: I have a co-op cautionary tale to share, too: Make sure any characters your friends build on your system are associated with a gamertag. My buddy was playing without signing in to one, and when we tried to continue the next day his level 11 Hunter was gone.

Luckily I had a level 20 Soldier, and we were able to power level his new character up pretty quickly, but not before he got tired of the game because he felt so underpowered against the enemies we were up against in the current missions.

Arthur Kotsopoulos: Still, I believe co-op is where Borderlands truly excels. Whilst other reviewers think it doesn’t work as well as It should, I believe it works flawlessly as the enemies become more tough and much better loot is dropped.

It’s a battle of who can find the better loot, that battle is always fun, time and time again. What’s even better is the fact you can duel each other at any time by a simple melee attack to see who is the better of the Vault hunters.

It’s great fun to have your team mate bragging about an awesome weapon he just found only to have dueled you then defeated by your awesome level 30 combat rifle with corrosive damage.

It’s satisfying and enjoyable all in the one package and I feel Borderlands is probably one of the most fun and unique games to have been released in the past year.

Aaron Klein: I agree. It captured the “one more level” draw of RPGs and has earned itself a place in my disc drive for quite a while.

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From left, Zach Stewert, Travis Holtz, Tawny Ambriz, Juan Ayala, Jamel LeBranch and Chris Kuhn show off their killer poses.

Having to choose between participating in what may have been an occult ritual, and getting out of line to be the first to have a copy of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Max Sexson, 21, Andrew Bleich, 17, Spencer Sexson, 19 and Charles Vitols, 22, chose to stay in line.

They arrived with lawn chairs in tow to the GameStop at 168^th and Dodge streets at 6:00 p.m. Monday evening. Prepped with snacks, they were ready to wait six hours for the privilege of being among the first to get their hands on Infinity Ward’s sequel to its 2007 hit, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

Then this wild-haired woman approached them, Vitols said. She said she needed a group for a ritual to channel her dead husband, he said. She lit a candle and begun conjuring the spirits of the dead.

Nevertheless, as weird as it was, the foursome was not about to exit line for anything, even though they were the only people there at the time. They just silently watched as she poured her heart out and went on her way. What kind of game demands this sort of dedication?

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is one of the most anticipated games in history, and may be one of the largest entertainment launches as well. Michael Pachter, who analyzes the electronic entertainment industry for Wedbush Morgan Securities, predicted sales would reach $500 million this week.

That’s half a billion dollars! The Dark Knight made less than $240 million its first week in the box office. Make no jokes about it; video games are big business.

Attention to detail and multiplayer action are what separate the Call of Duty franchise from other first person shooters, Max Sexson said.

“Multiplayer just grabs a hold of you and keeps dragging you back in,” Sexson said. “You’ll throw your controller at the wall one day, and the next day you’ll pick it back up and hope it’s not broken.”

By midnight, the line at one of the two GameStops at 72^nd and Dodge streets had grown to at least 200 people.

Among those was Brad Smith, 23, said Modern Warfare has some of the best multiplayer gaming he has ever seen. He had been waiting in line since 9:00.

“Plus it’s kind of fun to make 13-year-olds feel bad about themselves,” Smith said.

Smith took the bus from his Dundee home to 72^nd and Dodge, knowing he would be left hanging for a ride home.

“There’s not a lot of things that’ll make me walk 24 blocks at midnight,” he said.

Tony Stover, 29, was

Like many popular video games, controversy has surrounded this franchise. The first game had scenes where the player assumed the point of view of a leader being executed in a coup. Another powerful moment was when the player saw through the eyes of a soldier slowly dying after being unable to escape a nuclear blast.

A leaked video of Modern Warfare 2 caused some minor outrage because it showed civilians being gunned down in an airport from a first person point of view.

Micah Conner, 21, defended the game he was waiting for, saying the sequence was designed to show the atrocities of terrorists, and it was taken out of context. Besides, the entire section can be skipped with no penalties, he said.

Citing research from the book “Grand Theft Childhood,” Conner said there is not a positive correlation between violence in real life and violence in video games.

“The game is rated Mature for a reason, don’t let your kid play it,” Conner said.

Chris Kuhn, 25, and Jamel LeBranch, 20, agreed.

“These games are actually made for adults,” Kuhn said. “I wouldn’t even want my kid in the same room while I’m playing.”

You cannot say that games are just for kids anymore, because there are plenty of games that kids cannot even buy, Kuhn said. It might even be right to call social services if you see a young kid playing a violent game like Modern Warfare 2, he said.

Juan Ayala, 25, said age does not matter; video games are for everyone.

“Me, I will not give up my controller for anything,” Ayala said.

Kuhn and LeBranch were looking forward to an extended night of playing “killing” each other in multiplayer.

“There’s nothing better than playing with friends and family,” LeBranch said.

The buzz about the game has been tremendous, Kuhn said. Waiting in line with dozens of equally psyched fans puts a face to potential online opponents. While waiting in line, he received several text messages from friends on the East Coast about how badass the game is, making the wait seem all the more worthwhile, he Kuhn said.

Kuhn was one of the few in the line who was not planning to skip work Wednesday, although he admitted he might take an extended lunch.

From left, Shaun Bergmann, Corey Conz and Nate Williams.

Video games as a medium is in its infancy and are just starting to infiltrate the mainstream, said Nick Jones, 27. Comparable to silent movies in the late 20^th Century. He predicted that by 2010s and 2020s video games would be just as big in the cultural conscious as movies are now.

“It took a while to take off, games are just now starting to infiltrate the mainstream,” Jones said.

A large majority of those in line for the game had already arranged to shed their responsibilities Tuesday. Tony Stover, 29, said he took the day off from his job as a financial assistant. Vitols said he had the next four days off from work, and Bleich said he was skipping school.

“I’ve got wrestling practice, but I might not even go to that,” Bleich said.

Here’s hoping his coach is not reading this.

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This would be more realistic if the ball was popping out of his hand.

I don’t know about you, but the only way to fully recover after a Husker loss is to fire up NCAA 10 and replay the game. I’m probably not the only one who thinks he can call a better offense.

This year EA Sports added a mode that deepens the connection between the digital and real worlds of college football: Season Showdown. Every week football teams go head-to-head with their real-world opponents in five categories. At the end of the season a tournament will decide who’s fans are the best at NCAA 10 and the most loyal supporters.

As of now, the Nebraska Cornhuskers are in first place in both the nation and the Big XII Conference.

The last time I checked, the only reward for winning Season Showdown is bragging rights. Although when I interviewed Ben Haumiller, designer of NCAA 10, several months ago I did plant the idea in his head that maybe the winner should be featured on next year’s cover.

How can you help the Huskers? If you have NCAA 10, the best thing you can do is continue playing the game several times a week. This will account for three of the categories: versus CPU, versus online showdown opponent and versus the nation.

If you don’t have the game, you can still help! EA provided two ways for people to participate online. Nebraska fans have been slaughtering the nation in the college football trivia category. Follow this link to log in to the Trivia Challenge and help pile on the points.

The final way to participate is a little less direct. Allies & Rivals mode allows you to vote on who you WANT to win each week.

The Huskers are currently ahead of Oklahoma 3 to 2. We are lagging behind in the Allies & Rivals cateogory by a margin of 27 to 73 percent. Oklahoma also has a slight lead in the online multiplayer category 415,000 to 396,000.

So log on and play some NCAA 10 to give the Huskers a boost this week! I’m sure Oklahoma’s fans will provide the biggest challenge until we undoubtedly meet Texas for the Big XII tournament. Follow the action on EA’s Web site, here.

Here are the current standings:

1. Nebraska
2. Texas
3. Miami
4. Ohio State
5. Virginia
6. Florida State
7. LSU
8. Iowa
9. North Texas
10. Tennessee
11. Penn State
12. Oregon
13. San Diego State
14. Michigan
15. Oregon State
16. Auburn
17. West Virginia
18. Washington
19. Notre Dame
20. Kentucky

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First person shooter gamers and role playing gamers do not really mix that often. The former enjoys the thrill of a headshot and multiplayer melees while the later is hooked by personalizing their character and looting new gear from dungeons.

Borderlands takes a little from each genre and adds enough cooperative elements to create an addictive game best played with others. Whereas Fallout 3 was a role playing game first and a shooter second, Borderlands is the opposite.

Earlier this year Gearbox announced a major change in artistic direction for Borderlands. It uses hand-drawn textures and black outlines to create a form of cel-shaded world that looks more like an illustration than a realistic rendering.

This change works well simply by being distinctive and light-minded. The art style minimizes the inherent dullness of a game set on a desolate dust bowl of a planet and adds a lighthearted sense of humor.

You start the game by picking your character class. Each of the four options has an upgradable special power. For example, the soldier deploys a turret that can be upgraded to heal allies or dispense ammunition while the Hunter unleashes his pet raptor to take out enemies from afar.

The player is given minimum information with no context when making this monumental decision, which is a problem if you are looking to spend a couple dozen hours or more leveling up a character. If you have not fired a weapon yet, how can you know if you prefer to fight with assault rifles as a soldier or rocket launchers as a berserker?

Borderlands is a pretty good single-player game, but playing cooperatively with friends is where the game really shines. Up to four players can play simultaneously over the Internet or via split screen. The intensity of the combat ramps up when playing with others, especially when using a mixture of character classes.

Players share money and experience points, but are on their own to fight for guns and ammunition. Whether you decide to cooperatively decide who gets what weapons, or its first-come-first-serve is up to how you play.

One cautionary tale on co-op, my friend lost his entire character because he was playing on a guest profile and it did not save. If you value your data, make sure it is associated with a profile.

The story in Borderlands is hardly worth mentioning. The focus is so strongly on cooperative play that narrative must have been seen as an action-slowing liability. Quest-givers do not have recorded dialogue, which makes them seem lifeless. Mission and story related information is related primarily through text boxes that are easily skipped over.

Without context, however, the story missions seem less urgent and less monumental. The benefit of that is that you might be less apt to speed through the game and more likely to help friends with their missions through the online co-op.

There are tons of missions in the game, nearly 200 including side missions. Moreover, when you finish you can keep your character and do it all over again against tougher enemies for better loot.

The missions are repetitive, mostly consisting of: Go somewhere, kill some stuff and return. While this can be monotonous because the missions are not driving the story, it does ensure that there is never a dull moment without some alien wildlife or bandits to exterminate.

One characteristic of role-playing games that did not make it into Borderlands is an attempt at a real and persistent world. The few non-playable characters that populate Pandora serve only to hand out missions. The planet feels unnaturally desolate, even for one that supposed to be on the frontier.

Borderlands boasts hundreds of thousands of weapons just waiting for you to find. The programmers developed a procedural system of generating new weapons.

Arms and ammunition are scattered in containers, eerily out-of-place toilets and on the corpses of fallen foes. The world is littered with them, which makes exploration and looting lucrative. The variety adds flavor; the next gun you come across could end up being your new favorite.

With so many weapons, it is surprising how different each one feels. It means that your character is never 100 percent optimized, even when you reach the level cap set at 50. It is impossible to find every weapon in the game.

Vehicular combat is a dark cloud in this game. The vehicles handle similarly to those in Halo with the left thumb stick controlling forward and reverse while the right thumb stick controls direction. This means that the driver has tunnel vision and is unable to rotate the camera around the vehicle to find out what enemies lurk in your peripherals.

This might have been a forgivable offense, but the vehicles also feel weightless and easily get hung up on the environment.

Role playing fans may find Borderlands lacking in depth and options. However, shooter fans will find a pleasurable introduction to many tenants of role-playing games. Either way this hybrid game should generate enough good ideas to benefit both genres in the long run.

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“We start a revolution!”

Perhaps no greater tribute has ever been offered at the temple of an entire genre of music than Brütal Legend. This game idolizes the power and energy of heavy metal, creating an entire world with metal as its central mythology. The world of Brütal Legend is steeped heavy metal symbolism; with every scenic vista looking like it belongs on an album cover.

Brütal Legend is a game with a lot of star power. First, it bears the name of one of the most critically acclaimed video game developers: Tim Schafer. Schafer spent more than a decade at Lucas Arts working on games like Maniac Mansion, The Secret of Monkey Island and Grim Fandango before founding his own studio, Double Fine Entertainment, and creating games like Psychonauts. He has earned the reputation as being one of the funniest writers in the industry.

The game’s second big name is Jack Black, who voices Riggs, and whose enthusiasm for rock music evident in movies like School of Rock and Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny made him a perfect advocate. In addition, heavy metal icons like Ozzy Osborne, Lemmy Kilmister from Motörhead and Judas Priest’s Rob Halford lend their voices to some of the game’s main characters. In another stroke of genius, Schafer secured the diabolical voice of Tim Curry as the game’s main villain.

Brütal Legend is a third-person, open-world action game where you play as Roadie Eddie Riggs. Riggs laments what passes for music nowadays, asking a fellow roadie, “Do you ever feel like you were born in the wrong time, like you should have been born in a time when the music was better?”

Soon enough he finds himself magically transported via his cursed belt buckle to a land of Nordic fantasy where demons have enslaved humanity. Only the power of metal–and Eddie’s superior organizational roadie skills—can save them.

In this world, Eddie can melt his enemies’ faces with a scorching guitar riff and allies can be healed with the soothing vibrations of a bass note from a steel string made from a giant spider. Eddie’s guitar launches special attacks, and behaves in a way similar to Link’s ocarina in the Zelda franchise.

The story lampoons various aspects of music culture. Eddie’s first roadblock, General Lionwhyte gets around by using his massive hair to fly, and represents the glitz and glam of corporatized hair metal in the 1980s. Other enemies clearly mock the emo culture, as they don black clothing and mascara while saying things like, “you don’t understand my suffering.” These guys get their power by drinking from the “Sea of Black Tears.”

Eddie’s roadie skills particularly help in the massive “stage battles,” which are duplicated in multiplayer mode. Stage battles are a mix of third person action and real time strategy. Here Eddie sprouts wings and soars over the battlefield, setting rally points and commanding his troops. Two opposing stages vie over fan geysers, which supply resources needed to build more and more powerful troops to take out your opponent’s stage.

Some RPG elements are evident in that Eddie earns flame tributes by pleasing the gods, which he can give to the Guardian of Metal (Ozzy) in exchange for upgrades to his vehicle and weapons. Side quests are good ways to earn extra flame tributes. There are around a half dozen varieties, including ambush attacks, races, hunting wildlife and searching for collectibles.

If anything bad can be said about it is that it is too short. However, it could have just seemed that way because it was so much fun.

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Uncharted 2: Among Thieves follows in the footsteps of Tomb Raider as much as the films Indiana Jones and National Treasure. Moreover, while he is by far a better action hero than Nicholas Cage, he even borders on being as badass as Harrison Ford in his heyday. Even in the midst of innumerable odds and great danger Drake is light hearted and resourceful.

Drake is a witty, intelligent treasure hunter with a knack for getting into, and out of, trouble. This time he is racing a ruthless Russian warlord with a private army and eye for world domination to find the Cintamani Stone. The stone resides in Shambhala, perhaps better known as Shangri-La, and is described as the “Buddhist Holy Grail,” granting its owner unmatched power.

The journey takes Drake from Turkey to Borneo to Tibet as he tracks down the location of the mythic kingdom by following clues hidden in archeology. The set pieces are dynamic and action packed. In one Drake is bounding between vehicles in a caravan while ducking and returning enemy fire, while another has him fighting on the rooftops of a speeding train.

Scripted events add excitement and surprise, like when a tank comes bursting through a wall while Drake is trying to escape a Tibetan town, or when the rail he just grabbed while climbing a railcar suspended over a cliff breaks way. An epic orchestra soundtrack adds to the tenseness of these moments.

Gameplay consists of cover-based shooting and tomb-raiding puzzles and platforming. Drake is often forced to improvise with the weapons of downed foes, but usually has an option to stealthily dispatch enemies before being detected.

Combat generally works well, although the cover system can be a bit rough when it does not snap to the surface you intended. Drake can only carry two weapons at a time, but this encourages experimentation.

Uncharted 2 is one of the most beautiful games ever made. Its detailed environments range from lush tropics, dark temples, forgotten ruins and icy caverns. Each setting is visually distinct from the ones preceding it, ensuring constant visual stimulation and a sense of progress.

Realistic lighting and shadows work to enliven the environment. The tone of the sun’s light is different depending on the setting, harsh in the tropics while soft and muted in the overcast mountains.

If the environments are gorgeous, the character models are even better. Many games suffer from a condition known as the “uncanny valley.” This hypothesis holds that there is a point when a robot or 3D rendering of a human looks so much like the real thing that the little differences, like waxy stares and robotic movements, elicit revulsion instead of compassion.

Some great games have found themselves dangerously close to this “uncanny valley” despite their dedication to realism. Mass Effect and Fallout 3 might be counted among those offenders.

But Uncharted 2 never comes close to the dreaded valley. Nuanced facial animations in cinematic cut scenes accurately convey emotion through subtle movements in muscles under the skin.

Combine that with some of the best voice acting in video game history and you have believable, empathetic characters.

So many games have characters who sound like they are reading their lines off cards; even many with big-name actors voicing characters. Nolan North, veteran voice for dozens of video game characters, does a great job injecting humor and personality into hero Nathan Drake.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is finely polished, well-tuned action adventure game with a story that can compete with anything Hollywood has to offer in the genre. The story does include from some clichés that often plague this genre—including double crosses, deathbed confessions and being forced to help your nemesis toward his goals–but does not suffer for it.

Even though Uncharted 2 includes a robust co-op and competitive multiplayer mode, the single-player experience is the star of the show and reason enough to purchase this game.

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WET is evocative of the work of Quentin Tarantino, specifically Kill Bill. The story, penned by 24 writer Duppy Demitrius, is thick with stylized violence, adrenaline-pumping action sequences and over-the-top characters. It is presented like a drive in b-movie, with a grainy, vintage film overlay and 70s-inspired soundtrack perfectly in tune with the game’s tone. Retro movie advertisements for refreshments break up scenes, and death screens consists of film melting in a projector.

The name suggests fluidity, and Rubi certainly delivers. She is able to shoot in any direction while jumping, sliding or running on walls. These acrobatic moves can be strung together, and are necessary if you wish to survive because they slow down time and allow Rubi to shoot at two different enemies simultaneously. They also rack up points that can be spent to upgrade Rubi’s weapons and skills.

WET is an exciting, fun game. A car chase scene that has Rubi jumping from car to car on a freeway is as exhilarating as anything put out by Hollywood. A second scene that has Rubi freefalling amidst the debris of a plane while shooting at enemies and trying to get to a parachute is simply thrilling. Other action movie cliché’s, such as never needing to reload weapons, are intact as well.

For the first several hours it is nearly impossible to set the controller down. But at some point the signature action sequences become too chaotic and repetitive. Rubi’s moves are easy to master, but don’t offer much depth.

The developers must have noticed the repetitiveness and added “rage” scenes where Rubi goes beserk, the screen turns red and enemies appear as silhouettes. They break up the style a bit, but only aesthetically.

Occasional platforming sections that serve to demonstrate just how clunky and arbitrary the controls are, and break the game’s strived-for fluidity. Other recent third-person games–such as Prince of Persia and inFamous–do a better job of having a character fluidly moving about an environment.

WET is an exciting action title that doesn’t take itself to seriously. The slow motion, lead chucking action sequences against innumerable enemies are initially endearing, but the style and presentation are the showstoppers with this game.

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The band’s original fans will get a kick out of seeing The Beatles perform in the Cavern Club or on the Ed Sullivan Show. Younger fans will love finally seeing Beatles songs released on the interactive Rock Band format. Parents can play with children to expose them to their favorite band, and children can play with parents to expose them to video games.

Even if the Rock Band guitar intimidates mom and dad, they know every word to every song and will not be shy about belting out “Can’t Buy Me Love.”

If you have never played Rock Band or Guitar Hero before, they are rhythm games where you try to match notes sliding down the screen by pressing the corresponding colored button on a guitar or drum shaped controller. They require attention, rhythm and finger dexterity.

Beatles fans who are not necessarily video game fans will relish in being able to pretend they are one of the Fab Four and picking up a microphone. Unlocking photographs and videos are the icing on the cake. The game is loaded with exclusive content, even the loading screens are filled with between-takes banter and jams captured in recording sessions at Abbey Road Studio Two.

Rock Band fans that are not necessarily Beatles fans may not be as enthusiastic about the game. Sadists will not find challenges beyond what is currently on the market, and 45 songs is half of what was included with Rock Band 2. Nevertheless, there is still find plenty to love. First, is the inclusion of three-part vocal harmonies providing a new challenge and allowing up to six people to play at once. Secondly, the visual style, cut scenes and general polish are amazing and unmatched in previous releases.

The development team watched a ton of reference footage and submerged itself in the Beatles and their history, said Josh Randall, creative director of The Beatles: Rock Band. Recreating four of the most famous faces in the world was a daunting task, and one that had to be performed perfectly to appease lofty fan expectation, he said.

The Beatles Rockband Intro from Stephane coedel on Vimeo.

Creating 3D representations of Paul, John, George and Ringo was one of the most challenging aspects of the game, Randall said. The team spent a lot of time trying to make them as evocative of the individuals they were based on as possible. But when early models looked a bit stale, Harmonix went back to the footage and discovered they were missing a critical element: joy.

The Beatles had joy pouring out of them every time they played, Randall said. Therefore, relatively late in the development cycle, Harmonix developed new technology to “turn up the joy filter” by making their eyes more expressive and increasing reactions to the camera and each other, he said.The team focused not only on their faces, but also on each Beatles’ mannerisms. From the way their mouths move when they sing, to the way their hair bounces and how wide they open their eyes, Randall said.

About once a month Randall and other members of the development team had a meeting with the shareholders: Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Olivia Harrison and Yoko Ono. Even Giles Martin, son of producer George Martin, was an instrumental collaborator. Their feedback helped drive the look and feel of the game, Randall said.

For example, Olivia Harrison invited some of the team members to her home to see private photos of George Harrison to help capture his essence in the game, he said. After watching game footage of the rooftop concert, Yoko Ono mentioned how it was a windy day. So Harmonix went back and simulated a brisk wind whipping the Beatles’ hair around to make the experience more realistic, he said.

Paul and Ringo’s help really came through in designing the Cavern Club set, as there were only a few black and white photographs and one old film to go off, Randall said. Much of the work in the game is based off their memories, he said.

“It was really incredible, to sit with those guys and hear their stories,” Randall said.

Early on they understood the game and how it could expose a whole new generation to their music, Randall said. They appreciated it as a new way for people to experience their work and as a challenge to be creative in a new medium, he said.

The Beatles were arguably the best songwriters in the history of Rock. Selecting songs to include in the game from such a deep library was a challenge in itself, Randall said. Primarily the team considered whether a song would be fun as a Rock Band track, he said. Secondly, they wanted to ensure the tracks covered the evolution of The Beatles’ sound and included favorites and deep cuts.

Story mode roughly follows The Beatles career, from the Cavern Club to the Ed Sullivan Show to Abbey Road Studios and the rooftop concert. Trippy dreamscapes accompany the music from the band’s studio years. These animations perfectly capture and modernize the visual style of The Beatles.

“If we were going to go psychedelic, we were going to go modern psychedelic with a riff off the stuff from the 60s,” Randall said.

Research consisted of watching and rewatching Yellow Submarine, he said.

“We wanted to capture the spirit and vibe of the music and come up with fantastic locations and abstract visuals that matched the feel of the songs,” Randall said.

The Beatles: Rock Band is not a game you can review alone. This is a party game, best experienced with two or more people. So we enlisted the help of Omaha-based Beatles tribute band Yesterday and Today to give us their impressions of the game.

Drummer Tomm Roland said it nearly perfectly simulates Ringo’s style.

“As far as what you’re playing, it’s on the record,” Roland said.

Even the details are perfect, he said. All of the drum fills in the game are programmed the way Ringo would do it left-handed, Roland said. In Ticket to Ride, there is a presumed mistake where the beat changes in the middle of the song, and even that is represented in the game, he said.

Matt McGuigan, bassist & vocalist for Yesterday & Today, said the bass lines were also well portrayed in the game.

“They have all the rhythms in there,” McGuigan said.

Ryan McGuigan and Matt McGuigan from Yesterday and Today.

More importantly, the game will have the same timeless quality that The Beatles’ music enjoys, McGuigan said. The Beatles’ have never spoiled, they continually find ways to be creative in hot new mediums and genres, he said. The visual aspect of the game just elevates the audio aspect to a new level, he said.

Working with The Beatles has bee a dream come true for the Harmonix team, Randall said.

“We spent a lot of nights here making sure we did right by these guys,” Randall said.

Being incorporated into Beatles history is flooring, he said. Paul McCartney has been so impressed with the project that he is using footage from the game in his concerts right now, he said.

If you are not satisfied with only 45 Beatles tracks, more will be available for download soon. In October, the remaining songs from Abbey Road will be released as downloadable content, followed by Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band and Rubber Soul in November and December. Depending on those sales, it’s a safe bet that more albums will be released in 2010.

Or if the simultaneous release of the game and The Beatles’ remastered albums has you reliving Beatlemania, check out Yesterday and Today at the Omaha Community Playhouse where they will be performing all of December.

Track List:

Cavern Club

• I Saw Her Standing There
• Twist and Shout
• Do You Want to Know a Secret
• Boys

Ed Sullivan Theater:

• I Want To Hold Your Hand
• Can’t Buy Me Love
• A Hard Day’s Night
• I Wanna Be Your Man

Shea Stadium:

• I Feel Fine
• I’m Looking Through You
• Eight Days a Week
• If I Needed Someone
• Ticket to Ride

Budokan:

• Drive My Car
• Day Tripper
• Paperback Writer
• Taxman
• And Your Bird Can Sing

Abbey Road Dreamscapes:

• Yellow Submarine
• Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band/With a Little Help from My Friends
• Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds
• Getting Better
• Within You Without You/Tomorrow Never Knows
• Good Morning
• I Am The Walrus
• Hello, Goodbye
• Hey Bulldog
• Back in the USSR
• Dear Prudence
• While My Guitar Gently Weeps
• Helter Skelter
• Revolution
• Birthday
• Octopus’s Garden
• Something
• Come Together
• Here Comes the Sun

Rooftop Concert

• Dig a Pony
• Get Back
• Don’t Let Me Down
• I’ve Got a Feeling
• I Want You (She’s So Heavy)
• I Me Mine

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Wolfenstein 3D blazed the trail for id Software’s 1993 release of Doom, which took the gaming world by storm and cemented the genre’s place as a pillar of video game design. While the latest reimagining of the franchise is nowhere near as revolutionary as the original, it sticks close to the proven formula and delivers a fun, adrenaline-filled Nazi extermination experience.

Wolfenstein carries the franchise banner well. The player fills the shoes of OSA agent BJ Blazkowicz as he investigates Nazi occult research activity in the besieged town of Isenstadt during the height of World War II. But the first time you encounter an invisible blade-wielding Nazi assassin you will realize this is not your typical WWII shooter.

Along the way, he finds allies in the Kreisau Circle resistance movement and the secret Golden Dawn society as he battles Nazis in the streets and sewers of Isenstadt. The Kreisau Circle is fighting to liberate Isenstadt from Nazi control. The Nazis are investigating a mysterious energy called the Black Sun through occult archeological sites. The Golden Dawn is a secret society tasked with protecting humanity from the corrupting influence of the Black Sun. The story is uninspired, and the characters are forgettable. However, the marriage of Nazism and the occult provides a dramatic contrast to typical World War II shooters, which makes Wolfenstein, stand out in a saturated market.

Wolfenstein is not a strategic shooter, requiring the player to duck excessively behind cover and conserve ammunition, but is more in the “run and gun” school where you charge most enemies without much fear. There is also no need to search for health packs, as Blazkowicz regenerates health after taking cover for a moment.

Early in the game Blazkowicz attains a Thule medallion that grants him the ability to enter the “Veil.” The Veil is an overlay that casts the screen in a greenish tint that allows you to find hidden doors and ladders, and makes enemies, hazards and collectibles easier to see.

While in the Veil, Blazkowicz has access to super powers, including the ability to slow time, increased speed, a protective shield and increased attack power to the point where he can snipe enemies behind concrete walls. You initiate these powers with the directional pad, which seamlessly enhances combat.

Instead of a linear mission structure, the developers divided Isenstadt into three common areas from where the player can access the missions and even go back and replay missions to sniff out hidden items. The levels are still relatively linear, although the player has some choice in whether to tackle a Golden Dawn or Kreisau Circle mission first, or to take on a side mission.

Between levels, Blazkowicz has to shoot his way through the streets of Isenstadt to an allies’ safe house where he can accept another mission, or to the Black Market to purchase weapon upgrades. As you complete more missions, the enemies that populate Isenstadt become more advanced and aggressive, reminiscent of last year’s Prince of Persia.

A compass at the top of the screen that points to the next objective guides the player through the game. A map of the common area is accessible from the objectives menu, but it is impractical and of marginal utility because the path finding with the compass works so well.

Wolfenstein borrows heavily from some aspects of two-year old Bioshock. The story is somewhat narrated through collectibles dispersed throughout every level much like Bioshock. These pieces of “Intel” can communicate tactics on taking out Nazi defenses, unlock weapon upgrades or simply add flavor.

Additionally, Blazkowicz’s Veil powers are reminiscent of Bioshock’s genetic plasmid enhancements. However, where Bioshock waxed philosophical on economics and free will in a setting with personality, Wolfenstein simply tasks the player with killing Nazis in a drab, war-torn eastern European city.

Cut scenes are the other primary narrative device used in Wolfenstein. While the opening cinematic is jaw dropping, the quality of subsequent cut scenes never manages to top it.

Enhancing your favorite weapons at the black market is a necessity. Upgraded weapons are substantially more powerful than originals. In between headshots, Blazkowicz loots the occupied city for Nazi gold to trade to trade for upgrades. There is a limited amount of money in the game, and it is not enough to purchase every improvement, meaning players could have vastly different characters as they play through depending on their style and favorite weapon.

In addition to the single-player game, Wolfenstein offers a robust multiplayer mode. The multiplayer is class-based, meaning you will have to select between an engineer, medic or soldier, each adding to the team dynamic in a different way. Soldiers, of course, are combat specialists, while engineers handle explosives and medics can disperse first-aid pack to teammates.

Borrowing from the Call of Duty model, every action in multiplayer earns money, which you can spend on upgrading your weapons and abilities in multiplayer. While Call of Duty does not stand a chance at being knocked off its multiplayer throne by Wolfenstein, upgrading and tailoring your character is addicting while the extra dimension of Veil powers creates a distinct multiplayer experience.

The developers at id Software, Raven Software and Endrant Studios, who all collaborated on the project, successfully blended old-school shooter action with several more recent conventions in the genre to create a modern game that remembers its roots.

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The single best addition to the series is the full utilization of the Pro-Tak system, which procedurally animates tackling. Up to nine players can gang tackle the ball carrier, while offensive players can add to the chaos by pushing the ball carrier to gain an extra inch up field. Nimble players can spin or juke their way out of a tackle and continue toward the end zone. This increases the relevance of the running game and provides greater balance.

The graphics are astounding. Stadiums come alive with location-unique cut scenes outside the stadium. Nearly 1,000 animations were removed and replaced while quarterbacks now have personalized stances and throwing styles. Referees measure first downs and debate touchdowns and coaches chew ass on the sidelines. Together it all adds up to one of the most realistic football experiences to date.EA Tiburon implemented a new philosophy when rating the players in a whopping 50 categories to determine their effectiveness of the field. Where in the past Joe Average MLB might have been given an overall rating of 80, now he gets a 70. This allows for more subtle differences between players and a more realistic experience.

Quarterbacks are also rated in several new categories regarding their ability to throw short/medium/deep, throw on the run and sell the play action.

Many tiny tweaks add up to a mountain of additional detail. Loose balls can sometimes trigger a minigame where you mash the buttons to try to fight for the fumble. Wide receivers and defensive backs have better interactions, hand checking and jostling for position. Quarterbacks can get rid of the ball during a sack, although it often ends up as a wounded duck throw. Defensive backs take better pursuit angles on ball carriers. CPU opponents use adaptive artificial intelligence to adapt to your playing style.

The pace of the game is slower, which serves to allow you time to make better decisions passing and hitting holes in the defense. Experienced players can still set the game speed higher for additional challenge.

One place where the game really falls flat is in the voice work. Tom Hammond and Chris Collinsworth attempt to bring a broadcast-style presentation but come across ridiculously stale. They are repetitive, and sometimes irrelevant to the action on the field. I was amazed by how their robotic voices could suck the excitement out of a tight game. This is especially surprising upon hearing that the duo recorded a combined 3,000 lines of new dialogue.

Most of the focus this year went to improve the on-the-field action, but franchise mode also saw improvements. A weekly broadcast-style recap show hosted by Alex Flanagan and Fran Charles presents the major developments after each week of play. CPU logic is improved during the draft, in accepting trade proposals and in signing free agents.

Online franchises allow up to 32 players to develop their own league and compete against friends for Super Bowls and draft picks. You can manage your team on the Internet or through an iPhone application so you are always connected to the action.

Nevertheless, here is the decisive moment: If I had to choose one football game this year, it would be NCAA 10, not Madden, despite all the improvements to the core game. While that is partially because of my bias in favor of collegiate athletics, it is also because NCAA 10 does a better job of capturing the essence of the college football experience. The Pro-Tak system is more fully realized in Madden, but for the most part both games share the same technical improvements. However, NCAA trumps Madden in the strategy department in the fact that you can adjust the aggressiveness of your players and setup play action passes by running linked plays.

But your choice should be based on whether you prefer professional or collegiate athletics. You really cannot go wrong either way. Both Madden and NCAA provide a grand gridiron experience for armchair quarterbacks.

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