Friday. Game release day. I thought there was only one thing worthy of my cash this weekend, namely Super Smash Bros. Brawl, but I was very much mistaken. I bought a copy of critically acclaimed documentary ‘The King of Kong’ as well and watched it last night. The bottom line is that it’s a fantastic movie, easily accessible for gamers and non gamers with truckloads of drama, conspiracy and humour thrown in for good measure.

The film centres around two men. the first, Billy Mitchell, who in the 80’s set a high score on Donkey Kong exceeding the 800,000 mark. Second place at the time was several hundred thousand below this and his title as DK supremo seemed cemented in the history books.

Billy Mitchell, you’ll hate him by the end of this movie

That is, until avid game fan Steve Wiebe lost his job and needed a little project to fill his time spent at home with. Owning an old Donkey Kong Junior arcade cab with the original DK chip card loaded within, Steve fancies himself as the next champion.

Little did both men realise that the most intense rivalry in professional gaming history had just begun, one that would involve, lies, deceit, back-stabbing and bitterness from the Mitchell camp and some suspicious judging from his good friends at high score collection body Twin Galaxies.

Walter Day of Twin Galaxies and Steve Wiebe at the Funspot Arcade, Florida

This is an often heart breaking movie as mild mannered and all round good guy Steve beats Mitchell’s score, only to have his arcade cabinet ripped apart and inspected for tampering, only then to beat the score again live in an arcade to be outdone by an increasingly desperate Mitchell, pulling in every trick in the book to clutch onto his title.

Will Wiebe overcome the Mitchell clique and become the true master of what is undoubtedly the hardest game in existence? Buy the movie and find out -it’s truly awesome and shows just how competitive the ’sport’ of gaming can become when the heat turns up. You’ll adore Steve by the end while growing to despise Mitchell as this can truly be seen as a battle of good versus evil over an ape, a plumber and a damsel in distress.

You may think ‘it’s only a game’, but not after you sit through this.

“I’m bored of World War Two”. I hear these words and I wonder… how can people be so, hmm, blasé about it? How can something so terrible be used as a means of entertainment, to the extent that people grow weary of it?

Now I admit I’ve been one of those people who have played games set in this era and probably will again. Occasionally, I’ve wondered if it’s a bit off to use real world history, real world tragedy, as a setting for a videogame. But first person shooters, the genre that uses this setting, don’t have a great range of environments to choose from, do they? They must, by their nature, have some conflict at their core. Whether that be based on events set 70-odd years ago or on an alien world, they are also removed from what is real; there is typically a slight twist to them. Can you think of any FPS games based around recent world events? Call of Duty 4 was based on a fictitious conflict.

Of course, it could be said that a jaded attitude is understandable because of this limited scope and perhaps I’m in the minority but I sometimes find myself hesitating when faced with a virtual enemy. If they shoot at me, then fine, no messing about. Until then, I’ll hold off on the death dealing. Perhaps I’ve been lulled into having a ridiculously strong conscience where NPCs are involved, perhaps it’s the increased realism of settings on a graphical level or perhaps it’s a mix of these two things. I don’t know.

What I do know is that I’m looking forward to the next instalment of the Call of Duty franchise not purely because of the setting - back to WWII - but because of the story it may have; if it is anywhere near that of Modern Warfare, it should be beyond the average tale told by FPSs. I also like the sound of the new developments it promises to bring with the behaviour of virtual fire and perhaps water. But, most of all, I’ll be looking to get it for the multiplayer aspect - I don’t need to concern myself with moralising over the content there; instead I’ll be taking potshots at friends and strangers alike.

Be sure to come and join me, won’t you? I promise you won’t be bored!

On my way to work this morning I noticed something really uncanny. Right across my end of Edinburgh there are roadworks as far as the eye can see for the instalation of a new tram line (which everyone here hates the sound of). It’s messy, disruptive, loud and there’s fumes everywhere on my route.

But I didn’t for a second think that Master Chief himself was behind it.  Check out the picture I took this morning.

Stick a ‘3′ in the middle of that blue bit and I’m sure there’s a lawsuit there.

I can see it now, to make up for a lack of labourers, they’ve started engineering superhuman brickies in the visage of Master Chief.

’sigh’ this is how dull my walk to work is every morning :P