August hasn't been too gaming filled compared to other months, despite me being at home most of this month.  I've played a few demos, a few Arcade titles and then two retail titles so not much on the gaming front.

 In terms of demos, I tried out the WET demo quite recently. This is the Stranglehold-esque game from Bethesda. Think if John Woo, Quentin Tarantino and a grindhouse director made sweet gaming love, this would be the bastard child. It is..interesting. The gameplay feels a lot like Stranglehold which means it will probably get quite tiring after a while. However, the art style is very unique and gives it that grindhouse feel. One level in particular looks like the opening to the TV series Mad Men except with a lot more blood and an insane punk soundtrack in the background. This is one to probably look out for.

 I've been playing more Marvel vs Capcom 2 although my constant beatings have sort of stopped me from playing now. I've still yet to find my perfect trio and I've restricted myself to just playing with friends now to keep the humiliation to a minimum. I also played the horrific Turtles in Time which was promptly deleted from my hard drive upon completion.

 Madden 10 was a big thing for a while, leading the New York Giants to the Superbowl, but then Batman Arkham Asylum came along. I completed it today and I loved every second of it...well, maybe not the end battle which felt a lot like Bioshock to me which I also didn't enjoy too much, but the rest of the game is superb. The Scarecrow sections are extremely stand out, especially the third encounter which breaks the fourth wall in an attempt to freak you out, and it worked. The Riddles are great because they're generally little nods to the Batman fans such as having to find Calender Man's cell or Ra's Al Ghul. They're all really well hidden and it's fun to find them all.

 My iPod Touch has seen a lot more use than anything else this month. My times with my iPod have been spent between Rolando 2, a fantastic sequel to an already fantastic game, Harbour Master, which is an interesting Flight Control esque game and Space Invaders Infinity Gene which might just be one of the best shmups I've played in a long time.

 So, despite August being my month of birth, not many games were played sadly.

I love Spore Creature Creator. Seriously, it's so much fun. It's one of the best demos I've ever had the pleasure of playing. In fact, it's more than just a demo. It's like a whole game. I still quite skeptical of Spore itself, but Spore Creature Creator is great fun. I thought I'd show a few of my creations that I have made below. Enjoy!

That's right  kids! Another "celebrity" is using their influence to blame all the world's problems on video games. In this case we have wrinkly Oasis frontman, Noel Gallagher, complaining that video games have caused an increase in knife crime in the UK. He said:

"[It's a] pity scumbags are taking over our streets. In my day, status was trying to be somebody, do you know what I mean, not trying to kill somebody? I was up in Liverpool for a week a couple of weeks ago and even on the news there [knife crime is] every single night. I don't even know what [Conservative Leader David] Cameron or [Prime Minister] Gordon Brown are going to do about it. People say it's through violent video games and I guess that's got something to do with it. If kids are sitting up all night smoking super skunk [cannabis] and they come so desensitised to crime because they're playing these video games, it's really, really scary."

Now firstly, notice how he mentions drugs in that quote. "If kids are sitting up all night smoking super skunk [cannabis] and they come so desensitised to crime because they're playing these video games, it's really, really scary." How would a child have access to these drugs in the first place? That's what I want answered. If it takes drugs to make a child so "desensitised" then it shows, for one, that video games aren't all the problem he's making them out to be. Drugs are more of a problem than video games ever will be. And how do the children get these drugs? Irresponsible parents.

 Irresponsible parents are everywhere. Take, for example, the parents of the boys who stamped the goth couple to death earlier this year. As they sat in the docks, they smirked as their children were sent to jail for murder. That, to me, is sick. If a parent feels that way about murder that they can smirk at it, then their children will be just as sick. Child psychologists have proved that a parent is a child's biggest influence. If a parent is a smoker and smokes in front of their child, the chances are that the child will become a smoker. The same is the case here. If a parent finds crime and murder "amusing", then their child will do the same. And with the children of these parents, having their own spawn soon, the cycle will begin again and the scum will spread like a disease.

 But no-one ever blames the parents, they instantly blame video games. The uneducated media report on a story and find the perpertrator of the crime owned Donkey Kong, so they think, "This person owned Donkey Kong and thus has been tainted by barrells and Italian plumbers." Reporters at a few American newspapers and even The Guardian have stuck up for games as not being a cause at all, with one American reporter even going as far as to say she played Grand Theft Auto games (the main "culprit" in these fiascoes it seems) and she enjoyed playing them. If a person is too stupid to differentiate between reality and a video game, they deserve to be locked up anyway.

 If you're looking for someone to blame for the rise in crime, blame the irresponsible parents, not video games.

 And we end with a quote from a musical genius, Jarvis Cocker, that Jim Sterling from Destructoid noticed in his song, Fat Children.

 "The parents are the problem, giving birth to maggots without the sense to become flies."

Never has a lyric been suited more.

I've been excited about this ever since I first heard about it on an episode of the 1UP Show. it is, essentially, a Korg synthesizer in your Nintendo DS. It let's you use many of the functions, with a few more added, that a regular Korg synthesizer possesses, except this is just a small cartridge which you insert in your DS. Plus, it's a lot cheaper than buying a standard Korg. It's just so compact and quite easy to use, it would make creating music that bit more easier for a novice to do. I pulled this description from Play Asia and a video from You Tube to help explain how it works.

Now, I'm not a fan of western animated films. They all seem so samey and aren't really that original. However, Pixar seems to have the perfect formula for great animated films. They look good and have great, imaginative stories. From Toy Story to Monsters. Inc to Finding Nemo, each one I've found enjoyable to watch. The latest from the Pixar camp is Wall-E, the story of a trash robot left behind on Earth by humans heading skyward. At first, I was sceptical as to whether or not this film will be any good. However, after reading some reviews, watching the below trailer and seeing the average score on Metacritic (a huge 93 out of 100) I'm pretty much sold. Pixar films are like golden nuggets. They don't appear often, but when they do they are to be treasured.