Sunday is typically a slow news day in the
gaming blogosphere, probably because everyone is playing the games they were talking about during the week. This
creates a decent opportunity to list some of the slightly off-topic content that wouldn't cut it in the weekly trawl
for news. Anyway, recently I discovered Google Video, which is where Google
users can upload fan content or movie trailers to share with anyone who wants a look. I discovered a lot of decent game
trailers and fan movies which can be played back pretty much flawlessly (ie. no pausing) on a decent connection. Plus
because the files are on Google's servers, all the links work. There are also a few videos which really shouldn't be on
there (copyrighted) so it wouldn't be ethical to link you to them here. Although all it takes to find them is a bit of
imagination in the search box. Without further ado, here's what I've been watching on web lately.
To start with, here's a link to the controversial Xbox advertisement that was banned in the UK last year. The first time you watch the commercial it can be a bit shocking, but after repeat viewings it leaves you to marvel at how they managed to put birth, life, death and video gaming into one 30 second segment. It's still pretty gross though.
For our first bit of machinima, here's the Lenny and Larry Presidential campaign which was shown at the Machinima Film Festival in 2003. It's a great satire of the US election race, created by modding Quake II.
Also on the archive.org site is a machinima movie shot in the Desert Combat mod for Battlefield 1942 titled; Soldats sans Merci (Soldiers Without Mercy). This one’s a bit more gameplay orientated than Lenny and Larry.
Of course, you can’t write an article on machinima without mentioning Red vs Blue. Currently on its third season and 59th episode, this Halo based series is full of gags and gamer jokes. It’s probably the most high profile machinima out there.
I bought a PC recently to play games like Half-Life 2 which will probably never come to come to the Mac (let alone be playable on my Powerbook). This video demonstrates the power of the Havok engine for setting up mouse trap style traps. And this one’s just the HL2 bad guy getting his ass kicked.
If you haven’t done it already in-game, here’s a short video of the GTA: San Andreas jump from Mount Chiliad with a motor bike and parachute.
Finally, I’ve been checking out some of the commercials in Gametrailers.com’s TV spot section. Living in the UK means I don’t get a lot of the US game advertisements on the TV.
That’s a summary of what I’ve been looking at lately, but I’m sure there’s a lot of other decent video gaming content out there to check out. If you’ve got any links, whether you’re personally affiliated with or just stumbled across, leave us a comment and we’ll update this blog entry.
