The refusal by the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) to certify the videogame Manhunt 2 is not acceptable to Rockstar game company. And so, they launched an appeal a few days ago against the BBFC's decision to refuse Manhunt 2 certification, accusing the board of putting its reputation above the interests of gamers.

 Geoffrey Robertson is the one representing Rockstar and in his first statement he said that the BBFC should be renamed to British Board of Videogame Censors (BBVC) as expression of the way Rockstar thinks that BBFC had thrown a shallow verdict upon the game: "There's no evidence that playing interactive videogames leads to a propensity to act them out in real life. We wonder why Manhunt 2 has been singled out for special treatment", he mentioned. He also spoke about the methods of the board as being "simply ignorant of the gaming experience" and "throwing adjectives with hyperbolic abandon at the game".

Robertson also presented a statistic that shows a number of 26.5 million gamers existing in UK, with the average age of 28, and he believs that the board is using its reputation in order not to give a proper rating to the game: "Their reputation is not at stake; if it were we could show how, over the last century, they've been derided for some of the most stupid decisions in censorship history" (...) "But we're not going to go down that road", he added. He even went that far to accuse the board of not even playing the game they rated, but the response was that the members of the board had played the game before giving it a rating and also before the hearing. Robertson also mentioned: "We say [Manhunt 2] has been banned not because of any likelihood it will harm gamers, but because of the likelihood it will harm the reputation of the BBFC." The appeal and the debate is ongoing.

If there is one thing that will appeal to the patriarchal gaming community, that’s good looking females showing off, pleased by your superb gaming progress. It’s in the nature of man, geek and Latino lover alike to enjoy free style attention from the opposite sex, and the newest Need for Speed: ProStreet photo shoot delivers in full. The following material isn’t office-safe.

<-180x150 Small Rectangle - left->The scoop came via Polygamia, a polish gaming zine whose editors seem to have a very keen eye for Electronic Arts’ new promotion techniques. Our two beautiful nymphs are none other than the Sun’s Page 3 girls Amii and Becky. Microsoft tried a similar approach to things a while back, when merchandising the Xbox, but fresh meat is always wanted and double the trouble is double the fun. Sex symbols showing off near a wild Ferrari will do wonders for your business, regardless of what you’re selling. I can’t remember the last time I saw EA’s logo so close to such perfectly balanced pair of breasts though.

I always wondered how fellow gamers should look like and what differentiates one kind of player from another, but with Playboy and MTV releasing games for their target audiences, borders dim and slowly fade away. Take Need For Speed: ProStreet for example; are we going to find casual, hardcore and niche gamers interested in the title? Electronic Arts isn’t taking any chances and decided to advertise for everyone, that much is certain.

I’m sure Need for Speed: ProStreet is all worth it, but such cheesy and aggressive promotion tactics seemed a bit off when slaped on mainstream games. Times change and the return of John Riccitiello as EA CEO might herald even more changes in a company which got numbed down over the past years. At least promotion for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 racer shows us a face EA kept well hidden in the marketing back offices.

A few days ago the ATI Cayalyst 7.11 driver version was released. After a large number of complaints and other compatibility issues list, the engineers from ATI fixed in this new driver a lot of conflicts which were also not necessarily related to the Hellgate game. But when it comes to this game, the problem of the game not running properly at all on DirectX 10 mode under the previous Catalyst 7.10 driver has been solved. So basically, if there was anything wrong on their end (in this case), the ATI people fixed it.

<-125x125 Button - left->The memory management system from the game engine hasn't been improved yet, but a small amount of performance boost is visible due to the new video driver. Among other tweaks and fixes, the new driver has improved performance and even has removed some glitches from Bioshock, Call of Juarez, Doom 3, Fable, World in Conflict, and Rainbow Six Vegas (for a full list check out the driver release notes).