Wow, what a trailer that was. Earlier, the first trailer for Watchmen debuted before The Dark Knight in theaters and later on where we pretty much love to be, the Internet. There's me thinking this is just another trailer that's supposedly amazing. I didn't watch right away but did in the end. The editing and placement of the music (The Beginning Is the End Is the Beginning by The Smashing Pumpkins) are probably what made this spread across the hills of the web.

Watchmen, a gritty adaptation of Alan Moore's comic-book series, from director Zack Snyder (300), is to be released in 2009 by Warner Bros. The track played is absolutely fantastic - I have got it downloaded from 7digital. I'll let the trailer do the explaining...

WARNING: LINK TO PAGE CONTAINING EPIC TRAILER

Wow, I just watched Sony's E3 press conference and what an impressive show it was. From the opening right round to the finish - I was very happy with some of the announcements. They seemed to focus on the core players a lot, whilst not drifting too heavily into the casual market.

Going to have my full impressions up (along with the other conferences) in a later blog. Just wanted to express my super impressed brief thoughts on it. Now, I am going to make sure to watch GameSpot's own live coverage and then probably get away from my computer. So many hours on the website this evening I've been on.

E3 continues...

I'll give my thoughts on E3 another time. There were too many annoyances regarding today's conference. My thoughts on that will be revealed another time. Today, I wanted to tell you about how I got in contact with PEGI, a European ratings board that allows publishers to assign age ratings to their titles. Games that are rated below 12+ don't necessarily get checked right away by PEGI and are put on store shelves. These age ratings are determined by the publisher - not the board. Anything higher, usually would have to get checked by them before it hits shelves or passed onto another board (such as BBFC).

What this means is a video game rated by PEGI can go straight to the retail shelves without necessarily getting checked over other than the developer team. In rare cases, as outlined in my e-mail, the publisher can get the rating wrong. For my comparison, I am using GRID and Need for Speed ProStreet.

Now, the age ratings, in my opinion might as well be combined into one rating. I see very little difference between what sort of game should get a 3+ and 7+ here in Europe. It's not that I am worried about but the fact about how ProStreet is rated at a lower age rating than GRID. Both are racing titles, both contain crashes. Fair enough.

However, if you've ever played ProStreet, you would probably notice the sexual themes that are associated with it. A good example of this is when the camera, at the beginning of an event zooms in to certain areas of the female. I'm sure you know what I mean here. Yet, perfectly acceptable as a 3+. Sure, parents are the ones that should have the control but it doesn't help with titles have faulty ratings like this. Furthermore, the parental controls feel weak on a console because of the rating.

The e-mail reply from PEGI stated that they will be getting someone to test out ProStreet to see if it is suitable for re-rating and they said it was likely because some previous titles in the series have been rated higher due to similar content. Apparently, they'll keep me posted on what happens but it will be interesting to know if this goes any further.

E3 is here next week and GameSpot should have a lot of good coverage, I hope. I could have gone along to be apart of the audience for their shows but unfortunately I cannot make the necessary arrangements on getting there all the way from the United Kingdom. It would have been great to be there, though in person.

Instead, I'll be there virtually and try to catch the three main conferences from Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony. I love E3 but last year was kinda disappointing with the way it was changed. Hopefully, this year, I'll enjoy it a bit better. e3.gamespot.com is the place you'll need to be constantly at next week.

Wanted to mention something about the GameSpot statistics... I like the GameSpot website but it's really disappointing to see some of the statistics lately. Right now, it's a Friday night and there are only around 2,000 users signed in recently. This time around a year ago, there would probably be about 10,000 users signed in. Now, the figure seems to be at around 2,000 constantly.You can check the statistics on the main forums page.

Anyway, the last thing I wanted to mention is about a movie I have seen recently. Babel, a movie that only contains about one-third of the English language focuses on different families and how unlucky they can be. Somehow, things seem to connect together between the families. We learn how societies can be so different and how some would probably think "that is wrong." My favourite story was the one about the deaf and lonely Japanese girl. I really did feel the emotion from her performance. I also thought this was one of Brad Pitt's best performances; now one of my favourite movies.

...I really want to get these titles fully completed to their maximum gamerscore. It's not really about the actual gamerscore but the actual sense on completing the full set of achievements for the title.

Other titles I've been meaning to get around to (although, it probably is unlikely I'll get full completion of gamerscore) are Need for Speed ProStreet - keep coming on and off this, The Orange Box - I've already played the best game on this (Portal) and Alone in the Dark - a new addition but I've only done one level so far.

I really need some new headphones for this computer, as the ones I am currently using (cheapy ones) have the material ripped around them. I could connect speakers (I have some spare) but feel I can fully listen to a video, piece of music and actually prefer it through using headphones. I certainly don't want cheap headphones this time around. This also reminds me - there's a nice set of headphones/headset combo for the Xbox 360. That would be so cool to play Gears of War and listen to all the environmental sounds around you.

Beijing 2008 is out on Xbox 360 in a few regions and I received it on the release date as a rental from my online DVDs rental service. I believe it should be out for those of you in the USA, in early July. I've played it for a few hours over a few days. There are too many times that make it a hard title to recommend. Let me sum it up:

Good

• Variety of events available straight away
• Nice presentation
• Online play doesn't feel limiting

Bad

• Most of the events revolve around mashing some buttons or moving the sticks
• Not suitable for younger players - this button mashing is serious stuff
• Too many scenes to skip before you can actually play the selected event

The bad points really do make it probably a title that I am glad I only rented. The button mashing concept is back in this olympics title but I feel it's just aged too much. I would rather the events have more of a strategy to them rather than doing something repetitive. It's not fair on those who just can't button mash very well. It just gets too demanding on your hands for some events. Not all events revolve around mashing buttons. There's archery, my favourite event, where you have to keep the stick steady and fire (taking wind direction into account). This did remind me of the darts mini-game in Grand Theft Auto IV.

I probably will not be playing this for a while since I just can't stand the overuse of mashing a button. Like I said, this is very intense button mashing for some events. Just not suitable for me. Maybe others will enjoy it more because they may like the concept it brings but for me - it's a no-go title.

Moving along - GameSpot feels a bit broken at the moment because of user feeds (the orange icons on every profile) not working. This has happened before and now again. So, because of this, I am unable to get through a lot of blogs through my normal way of reading them in Google Reader. I can use the side panel but unfortunately this can miss out some blogs.