11th November 2009 - Welcome back gamers for another week of Wednesday humping! Check out our HOT sponsors 'Deal of the Week', an exclusive competition and then as always, jump into the forums and join the debate. Check back on the weekend for our weekly wrap up of all things gaming, but first more on that pesky R 18+ classification. It's been a big week in gaming not least because apparently something rather important dropped on Monday. Enough to cause a Morning breakfast program to comment on 'the violence in video games'. Tonight on Wednesday also sees the Sydney leg of the XBOX Insider tour. Check back later in the week for more on that. Nerd Rage This past week or so, the controversy surrounding an R 18+ censorship in Australia continued to simmer away with news that Modern Warfare 2 was not going to be censored for a scene involving reenacting terrorists in an airport seemingly killing innocent civilians. This was one of the early scenes in the game and gave players full control of mowing down the innocent. The Ballad of Gay Tony was released without nary a bother and yet last hump-day night, the long awaited Left 4 Dead 2 demo dropped albeit toned down to the max. Is there a difference between sex and violence these days in games? Is realistic re-enactments too close to home while head-popping zombies are hidden from view; perhaps as some suspect- it was the cricket bat. Australians all let us rejoice. If you feel strongly about it; the following petition can be signed and passed along in the hopes that one day, head popping sexy nazi terrorist zombies can live in peace. Sign me up! Deal of the week This week's deal of the week comes from our sponsor Games101. They have introduced a new line-up of games called "UK Direct". This range provides Australian consumers with lower priced games without the need to import. The other great thing is that Games101 has provided All Age Gaming readers with a special discount code. For full details on the new range and the discount code, go HERE. Off Topic Game Although we promised an off topic iPhone app, we just couldn't pass up the chance to weigh in on Bungies latest stunt, Halo Waypoint- for the XBOX LIVE marketplace. Although much anticipated by fans, curious about what it may be, it turns out to be nothing more than a collective hub for all your Halo 3 achievements and scores. That said it does kick-start the new Avatar rewards program and streams a lot of video content including the new Halo anime series. Straight up you can pretty much receive a new helmet/ t-shirt and toy and it is neat to see it read your scores and calculate all your achievements into one rank At the time of writing there was no supported party chat or viewing options and no other way to connect with players inside the hub. You can see past and present achievements for all Halo games as well as new challenges issued by Bungie. It seems to be essentially a front end to the community site already imposed on the Internet and for some reason also shows up on your gamer-card. There are no 'achievements' for your gamer score though- but people can at least see when you are using the app. If I didn't know better I would swear that Microsoft is paying Bungie every time their logos appear on the dashboard, blades or now gamer cards. To be fair, it works well and if Facebook had implemented a similar design for viewing whole pages and posting comments, it would have been excellent. More curious is why Microsoft insists on rolling this out as a separate application and download for the dash rather than integrating it it into the game as an update for only those who are interested. Rockstar and EA both have large cross over communities with tracking stats and video but thankfully are currently only on the web. Next week So that’s it, another humps for another week. Check back on the weekend for a full breakdown of the week’s events and join us next week as we look at trade shows and cos play in Australia and we talk about the off topic DS games you love. We hope you enjoy the week, so keep humping, gamers! Article Written By Ian Crane 
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