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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Tosh.0

Every week he gives the subject of a viral Web video a chance to redeem themselves on his show. In the past he has featured Ms. Teen South Carolina, Tron Guy and the worst best man. This week he featured this kid (now 20), who’s excited reaction to receiving a Nintendo 64 for Christmas has more than 10 million views on You Tube.

I received a Nintendo 64 for Christmas one year. It was awesome, but I’m pretty sure I said thank you.

If you like that, here’s a link to the extended version.

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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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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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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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Little King’s Story has a charming story with dark undertones. Your chief advisor, a knight who evokes Don Quixote, pushes you towards world domination. After a few days, a priest comes around and compels you to build a church. They both subversively discredit the astronomer who is investigating the cause of earthquakes that begin to shake the land. And it all begins with a little boy who stumbles across a magical crown while chasing some rats.

You begin the game with nothing. Your castle is a shed. Your character is helpless, but has the power of command. He can call his subjects to form a royal guard that follows him around the world to find treasure and fight enemies. At the beginning, you can only control five subjects, but that number grows to 30 as the game progresses. You grow your kingdom by constructing buildings, which allow you to train your citizens in different professions. These citizens do everything from you. Carpenters build bridges and stairs, soldiers fight enemies, lumberjacks and miners clear obstacles, farmers dig holes to find treasure. There are 18 classes.

As you conquer territories, you expand you kingdom, which proves an extremely addicting task. You finance this expansion by completing missions and treasure hunting.

Your minions’ inability to find a path to their objective without running into barriers is occasionally exasperating, as is precise targeting in situations with multiple enemies. This makes it difficult to strategically target enemies on the fly.

The map is another area that could be improved. It lacks detail and the ability to zoom in which creates a problem navigating the labyrinthine world. Even the main camera has little zoom control.

The enemy kings are not particularly evil or threatening, although they are formidable foes. They represent different philosophies or ways of life, the causes of numerous wars throughout history. You have the beatnik bacchant king who wants to drink and party all day. There is the Worrywart Kingdom whose ruler is a giant egg that constantly questions and second-guesses the meaning of life before deciding to hatch.

There are eight kings for you to usurp. In addition to eight major bosses, numerous guardian bosses must be defeated to expand your kingdom. Your subjects also provide a mountain of missions for you to complete.

The bosses have extraordinary attacks and can decimate your forces. Battles can be long as you slowly chew away an enemy’s health while protecting your soldiers from their attacks.

The penalty for failure can be tremendous, mostly because of the archaic save system, which is a constant source of frustration. There is no auto save, and you cannot save via the pause menu. You have to return to your throne in order to save your progress. The problem is expounded when the king’s low hit points are taken into account. It would be a miracle if you played through the game without losing several hours of progress after a cheap shot gives you the “life over” screen. This screen boots back to the main menu where you have to reload your last save.

Nevertheless, the frustration serves to sweeten your successes, and is largely outweighed by a minimalist story that mysteriously compels you to finish the game.

There is a lot to love in this game, and it will take a while to complete it–20 to 40 hours depending on your completionsist tendencies.

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Alex Mercer is Prototype’s protagonist. In the beginning of the game, he awakens in a morgue, about to undergo an autopsy. He flees, only to be riddled with bullets and escape again by jumping 20 feet over a fence. Mercer must discover why he has these newfound abilities by piecing together his forgotten past.

He discovers his city falling apart. A mysterious plague has infected the populace, turning citizens into zombiesque monsters connected to a hive mind. Bioresearch firm GENTEK is somehow involved, and a covert biowarfare military unit called Blackwatch is determined to stop the diseases’ spread even if it means killing everyone in Manhattan.

The story unfolds through cinematic cut scenes and a puzzle of memories called the Web of Intrigue. Much of the story is narrated by Mercer to a mysterious third party on the 18^th day of the infection, with the player taking control of the past.

Amnesiatic protagonists are cliché in the gaming world, but Mercer’s method of remembering his past forgives this sin. The way Mercer unlocks memories is grotesque. He literally extends his tentacles into an individual, rips them apart and consumes them to display a short cut scene. There are 131 people walking around the game world with a piece of the conspiracy in their that can help unlock the story’s mysteries.

Consuming a pedestrian or enemy is also how Mercer replenishes health, learns some skills and assumes their form. Mercer is a shape shifter, which adds a stealth element to this action-heavy title. He can blend into the crowd to lose enemies, or disguise himself as a soldier to gain access to a military base.

The stealth mechanic requires a major suspension of belief, but a necessary one to maintain the fast-paced action. For example, the military know they are looking for a shape-shifting superhuman, yet if they see you disguised as a random pedestrian or fellow soldier jump 30 feet in the air, glide and then run up the side of a skyscraper they don’t bat an eye.

Getting around the city is delightfully liberating. Mercer has super speed, can run up the side of buildings, jump three stories and glide on the air. This is particularly helpful when being pursued by angry Marines in helicopters, making it effortless to travel the New York rooftops.

Prototype is a brutal game, and Mercer is no hero. He does not care how many civilians are killed on his path to vengeance. In fact, the game rewards players for killing in the form of evolution points. This creates a disconnect between the Mercer you want to root for in the cut scenes, and the homicidal maniac you play in the game. This detachment is even more pronounced than in other games with this problem, such as Grand Theft Auto.

Evolution points are spent to upgrade Mercer’s abilities, and are earned liberally. Improvements include new attacks, new ways to view the world, new ways to get around and protective powers like armor. Although Mercer can pick up and use enemy weapons, his shape-shifting abilities provide a much more interesting method of dispatching foes. He can grow Wolverine-style claws from his hands, turn his fists into giant hammers or morph his entire arm into a blade or into whip like tendrils. His attacks are devastating, often hewing an opponent in two. That this is not a game for children doesn’t even need to be said at this point.

Melee battles are messy and chaotic. It is a good thing Mercer can take a lot of damage, because Prototype throws waves of enemies at you. The camera can sometimes be an additional foe, providing horrible views particularly when you fight too close to a wall.

If Mercer didn’t have enough ways to create havoc, he can also commandeer enemy tanks and helicopters. Jumping on the back of a helicopter, making your way to the door and consuming the pilot is one of the most rewarding experiences in the game.

The main story has more than 30 missions, and with tons of side missions this game could keep you occupied for a couple dozen hours, longer yet if you attempt to find all the hidden content and memories. The story missions have a great balance, straddling that fine line between challenging and frustrating. The side missions are mostly the standard combat and time trial fare, but a lack of innovation here does not impede their enjoyment.

What the graphics lack in detail they make up for in scale. Dozens of vehicles and seemingly hundreds of people can be on the screen at a time. Vehicles realistically swerve, skid and crash when approaching street battles. Citizens hysterically run away from you and the infected monsters. The combined effect presents a city gripped in fear at the violence playing out on its streets.

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“UFC 2009 Undisputed”
Publisher: THQ
Developer: Yuke’s Osaka
System: Xbox 360, PS3
ESRB Rating: T (Teen)
Released: May 19, 2009

Despite being prominently featured in the game, Omaha’s own mixed martial arts fighter Houston Alexander hadn’t played “UFC 2009 Undisputed” until we invited him to the City Weekly offices to check it out a couple weekends ago.

“It freaked me out when I saw my brother playing it,” Alexander said. “Wouldn’t it freak you out if you saw yourself up there?”

Houston Alexander playing UFC 2009 Undisputed

It probably would. Hell, I was a little unnerved just watching digital Houston on his back taking blows to the face.

“They’ve got everything pretty accurate,” Alexander said. “This game is pretty damn accurate.”

That accuracy extends to the last detail. After winning a match Alexander celebrates by “throwing the bones” by crossing his wrists above his head like the Blackshirts after sacking a puny Missouri quarterback. A puff of pride wells in Alexander’s massive chest when he hears UFC announcer Bruce Buffer call out his name and hometown: Omaha, Nebraska. The honor of representing our city and state as a fighter and in the video game is one Alexander holds dear.

“When you throw up the bones, what do you think about? You think about Nebraska and the Blackshirts,” Alexander said.

This type of reaction is possible through a massive attention to detail. Neven Dravinski, producer of “UFC 2009 Undisputed,” said the team worked closely with UFC officials to make every detail perfect. The UFC’s tagline, “As real as it gets” was a sort of motto for the development team, Dravinski said.

“When you’re playing, we want to make you feel like you’re watching the event,” he said.

Digital Houston Alexander on the cover of the Omaha City Weekly

There was a lot of internal pressure to represent the sport as accurately as possible, he said. Some of the game’s designers spent time in the octagon training with real UFC trainers to get a better understanding of the intricacies of the sport, he said. Those same trainers would make visits to the studio to check out gameplay and make suggestions to add to the realism.

The No. 1 question in my mind when approaching this game was simple: How will you be able to control all of the nuanced moves used in the octagon with a simple gamepad? Too complicated and the game is frustrating, too simple and it becomes a button-masher.

Happily “UFC Undisputed” strikes as fair a balance as possible without sacrificing the complexity of the sport.

It does take time to learn the nuance of controlling your fighter, but at the same time the basic moves are simple enough for you to jump right in. The four buttons control strikes and kicks. The resulting action is a consequence of the context. If you are in close, you will throw a knee or an elbow.

The ground game is a little trickier, mostly controlled through movements on the right analogue stick to gain superior positions over your opponent.

“We really endeavor to follow the mantra: easy to pick up, difficult to master,” Dravinski said.

Although the controls are fairly intuitive, there is no getting around their complexity. That may turn some people off, but it also leaves a door wide open for deep strategic decisions. Some fighters do better on the mat, while others have powerful standing attacks.

Watching two people who have mastered the controls play the game results in a match that is very indicative of a real-life UFC matchup with a lot of tension, Dravinski said.

In addition to using the likeness of more than 80 UFC fighters, Octagon Girls and referees, the team at THQ used many of the same graphics and animations the UFC uses in its broadcasts to increase immersion.

Broadcasters Joe Rogan and Mike Goldberg recorded dozens of hours of commentary for the game. The commentary is some of the best featured in a game, with Rogan referring to the fighters and their past fights with intimate detail. The commentary is seamless and relevant to the onscreen action.
You may be surprised to find out how vain some of the fighters were. Some would want assurances, saying, “make sure I have a six-pack, I haven’t started cutting yet,” Dravinski said.

“They definitely want to make sure they look good.”

Fun aside, working with more than 80 fighters was a neat experience, he said.

“I was not prepared for how relaxed and down-to-earth these guys were,” Dravinski said.

Each of the UFC personalities in the game came into THQ headquarters for photographs and 3-D scans, Dravinski said. The scan builds a three-dimensional image of the fighter’s body, which is overlaid with the photographs to produce beautiful and accurate character models.

Alexander said he had to make dozens of facial expressions while the 3-D camera swirled around him recording every angle of his face. But the best part about visiting the studio was seeing some of their neat toys, such as a life-size model of Han Solo frozen in carbonite and Jabba the Hutt from “Star Wars,” he said.

Translating each fighter’s distinctive style to the game was a challenge, Dravinski said. The fighters were assigned one of three common striking styles (boxing, kickboxing or Muay Thai) and grappling techniques (wrestling, judo or Brazilian jujitsu).

The development team worked with the UFC to delegate skill points, which affect their proficiency in several areas, such as standing strikes or submissions. However, some considerations had to be taken into account for balance.

“You still have to make a video game, it still has to be fun,” Dravinski said.

These combinations results in realistic situations and force the player to adapt to their strengths and their opponent’s weaknesses.
Alexander’s reactions to the game are shared by many of his colleagues, Dravinski said. Many UFC fighters are gamers, and their feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, he said.

“There are a lot of fighters who play a lot of games,” Dravinski said. “They come in and say, ‘I eat, I sleep, I train and I play games.’”
Alexander is among the gaming UFC fighters, saying he likes to play “Scarface” and “Godfather 2” on his PS3 in his down time. But his favorite games are from gaming’s golden age, the pre-NES days of arcades and the Atari, he said. He still likes to play “Pacman” and “Galaga,” but his favorite game of all time has to be “Moon Patrol” on the Atari 5200, he said.

But while being a video game character is a fun novelty, Alexander’s eyes are firmly on the prize.

“The video game is cool, the accolades are cool, but it means nothing if you’re not winning,” Alexander said. “You’ve got to win!”

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Cornfed Gamer – You only have one year between releases of NCAA, how do you balance the time between adding new features and improving the core, on the field experience?

Ben Haumiller - That’s a fun part about it, is that we do have such a tight time line every year that there really is no down time. We don’t ship for six days and I’m already working fully on next year’s title.

You’re constantly thinking about what you’re going to be doing next and always working within the budget you have for that year with what you can get in.

A lot of that comes from talking to the community members and seeing what the fans of our game really want to see added. So we put a lot of stock into what they want to see.

CFG – I imagine some ideas you have to cut, or wait and it takes two years to implement?

BH - That’s always the toughest part is seeing something that you really want to see in the game not make it in just because you don’t have the time to do it. A lot of times you try to work it in gradually, where it might be a two-year feature to get the full scope of what you want to see. You get elements of it one year, and go for it full bore the next year.

But there are some things that wind up getting cut that just breaks your heart. You get so attached to some of these features but it comes down to a balance of what’s good for the whole of the game, not just those singular parts. So something might get cut that you’re attached to, but it’s for the better of the whole game.

CFG - Give me an example of a feature that you were a big fan of that got cut in the past, or even in this year’s release?

BH - One example would be dynasty mode priority score updates, like you see on ESPN. Where, during the course of the game you’re getting updates on other games that are happening around the nation to make you feel like you’re in a full environment. Like you’re actually there in the middle of a Saturday afternoon.

But for technical reasons it has always been difficult to get those in the right way, especially when also trying to include scores from online games of other friends and online dynasty.

That’s one thing we would like to have. It would be nice point and we’re working to try and get it but we haven’t quite got there yet. Other things pop up that lower that on the priority list of what we’re doing.

CFG – How you guys decide to allocate rankings and skill points to the different schools and players?

BH - Team ratings, that’s all done by a committee of us on the NCAA team. We all get together and have a roundtable discussion to come up with our top 25 rankings for each year.

In the past couple years we’ve had roughly 18 of the top 25 schools within one spot of where they wound up in the real life preseason rankings. We do our list back in February, before a lot of the spring practice happens. We’re taking a lot of stabs in the dark at what we think schools are going to look like and how the top 25 is going to shape up based on what we know at that time.

As for the rosters, that’s something we really try to do based on the team and what you’re expecting when you’re playing as that team. If you’re playing as USC, for example, and they have a team that’s built around running the wishbone, that’s not going to make much sense. When you’re playing as USC you’re expecting to have a team that’s built with a pro-style offense. If you’re looking to play as Alabama, you’re looking to have a stud receiver to throw to at all times.

That’s how we build our roster. We don’t have the real players in the game,  so we can’t actually create the teams based on the real life players. But we’re building them based on the themes for those teams.

Another example from the Big XII is Texas Tech. If they’re not throwing on every down and they don’t have the players to be able to run that offense then it’s going to seem a little strange to you when you’re playing the game. So we’re trying to keep them as true to their real-life identity as possible even though we don’t actually have the real players in the game.

CFG - There’s so much focus on downloadable content and digital distribution nowadays, have you guys ever thought about releasing a core game every three or four years and providing downloadable roster and schedule updates every year?

BH - There are discussions always happening on what’s the best model and how we want to get the product out. We’ve discussed a lot of different options and that one is something that has been mentioned as well.

Those decisions are made well above my position. I’ve just got to work with whatever decision we go with. But yeah, you’ll see a lot of change into digital distribution and getting content out that way. We’re not planning on doing it next year or the year after, but who knows what happens in the future.

CFG - How do you decide what new features from past games get to stick around in the next iteration and what kind of things get left behind and why?

BH - When we moved to the next generation, that first year it was really about getting a game up and running. We weren’t sure what full game experience we would have. We were trying to grab everything we could from the older version and get it in, but it became a point of, OK, we could take all these features, but there are certain things we wanted to really redefine how they work and really do them the right way. Not just port over what we had before and keep going.

With dynasty sanctions, for example, where you get players that get into trouble and you can choose to discipline them, or not, and you might end up running into the heat of the NCAA. That was something where we had a system that works well on the PS2 version, and it was a fine system, but we really want to, at some point, go back and readdress how that works and really upgrade the system and make it a much better and more fun experience.

So the decision was made for some of the features, to leave them out right now with the plan of going back and make them larger and better. So you’re seeing things come back along the way.

CFG - You guys do both Madden and NCAA Football, and a lot of the gameplay is similar. How is the focus of NCAA different from that of Madden, or what different considerations do you take as a team when focusing on the college sport compared to the professional sport?

We have two separate teams that work on each title. The guys that work on NCAA with me, we’re all very huge college football fanatics. I mean, I try to make it to at least 10 to 15 college football games a year all across the country just to see different places I’ve never been before and check out some great games along the way. I haven’t had a chance to make it out to the Sea of Red yet but it is definitely on my list.

We feel our games are best when they are as different from each other as possible. There are things that are very similar, and a lot of our gameplay stuff is shared. Our gameplay team does work on both titles because when it comes down to it, a halfback dive is a halfback dive. There’s really not much difference with the way its run in the pros versus in college.

But where we get really specific is in our playbooks. The Wildcat is now becoming a phenomom in the NFL right now, but we’ve had it in NCAA since Arkansas was running it a few years ago.

CFG – How often do you get Lee Corso and the gang together to record new audio for NCAA?

BH – We bring them in every year to record new content. We try to throw away the lines that are considered to repetitive, or have been there for a few years, and try to freshen them up. One thing we did this year with Brad Nessler is you were able to go online and actually enter in the phonetic spelling of your last name. So he read a bunch of, thousands of, user submitted last names, so when they went in and actually edit rosters or create players and put their own last name in, they’ll actually hear Brad Nessler say it for the first time.

We have a lot of scripted commentary we try to have them read for certain situations, but a lot of fun is when we have them come in and just watch the game being played and react and talk about what they’re seeing. We get a lot of great content and a lot of great commentary just from letting them do that, for letting them be themselves. I mean they call games for a living, so letting them just do the commentary based on the action they are seeing while watching the game being played, you get a lot of really cool, key things they would say. When you’re trying to write for them you’re trying to channel their voice, and it’s a little tough to do at times. Just let them naturally do it on their own and they come up with some great stuff.

CFG - There are certain features to the game that are unlocked by purchasing the features using Microsoft points. Why are these essentially downloadable content instead of part of the core game, and does it create a competitive disadvantage for those playing online dynasty?

BH – A lot of these are what are considered accelerators. The five star prospect thing, that is something that’s intended for the guy that wants to play the feature and wants to experience it, but maybe doesn’t have the time to play every high school game. They want to jump right in and start playing in college. So we give them the option to bypass that section.

Or in dynasty for example, you want to have the toughest place to play but you don’t have the time to invest to get your team to the top, we’re giving you a way to accelerate your experience to get you to that point.

Everything we have as far as the accelerators this year are things you can find and do on your own, but this gives you a chance to jump in there a little earlier.

It’s something that in the long run really doesn’t unbalance the game so much, since, everything is already there for everybody. But we do see how some people may say, ‘well we don’t want that in our dynasty, we want everybody to do it on their own.’ So that’s one thing that will actually be in the patch that we’re coming out with–I don’t know the exact day yet, but it will be as close to launch as we possibly can–will be the option to have that turned off for online dynasty so people can have their dynasty without the concern that somebody may have some downloadable content.

CFG – What’s the winner of the Season Showdown tournament gets. If Nebraska wins, do we get to see a Husker on the cover next year?

BH – Hahahaha. So we’re working through everything we can to try to figure out if we’ll wind up having a great grand prize for it. It really comes down to, the intent behind it was really all along the pride of your school and showing off that your school is the best. We don’t know yet exactly what that’s going to mean in the long run, but for now it definitely Is a mode that’s geared toward showing off your school pride.

CFG – There’s no NCAA for the Nintendo Wii this year. Why?

BH – We decided to take a step back for a year and really take a look at what we can be doing with the Wii console and make a college football game on the Wii that really just blows people away. So it’s something we’re looking at doing in the future. No commitment yet on when we’ll be doing it again. But its something we are looking at jumping back into and really utilizing what the Wii can do to make a unique college football experience.

CFG – Personally I’ve always preferred dynasty mode. Do you have any ideas we can look forward to with dynasty mode in the next few years?

BH – I’ve got pages and pages of notebooks filled of things that we want to do with dynasty. A lot of it does come into increasing the coaching aspect and adding more of an athletic director mentality to what you can do.

One thing that’s really nice is we’re not going to run out of ideas anytime. It’s just a matter of getting all those things prioritized and implemented into the game. With online dynasty being added last year that opens a whole new realm. It’s a lot more fun to recruit against your buddy for a five-star quarterback than it is to recruit against the computer. We definitely see that as the way to go.

Everything is moving into the online space, so we really want to be there with that and increase how you’re able to interact with the game, where you’re able to play and how you’re able to do the different aspects of the game. Whether it be at your console, whether it be at your computer, whether it be on your mobile phone. Wherever you go, being able to always be connected to whatever happens in your dynasty and being able to participate is definitely the future as far as gaming goes.

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