I had a problem. I had to complete the Splinter Cell Co-Op campaign, but my co-op buddy was gone for the weekend. So be it. I turned on the game and prepared to wield two controllers.

Let me take you back to last Friday, when I decided to — ugh — work from home so that I could finish the co-op campaign of Splinter Cell: Conviction.

I had finished the solo campaign on my own and had found a stolen moment here or there to network my review copy of Ubisioft's game to that of MTV's Russ Frushtick. But Friday was the last day we could play and a certain lawsuit (and dinner plans) was causing just enough distraction that I knew we wouldn't finish.

I struggled to figure out how I would finish the co-op campaign, something I felt I had to do before I would run a Kotaku review of Splinter Cell Conviction.

But on Saturday morning I began to try the impossible: playing the game's fourth chapter with two controllers, clearing co-op on my own.

Wireless controller in hand, I placed a second, wired Xbox 360 controller next to me on the couch and was immediately confronted with the foolishness of my endeavor. The fourth chapter begins in zero-tolerance phase. The co-op characters, an American and a Russian spy, presumably controlled by separate gamers, would have to sneak through a loading dock full of tractor trailers, get inside a warehouse filled with guards and activate a device. If either of them was detected and an alarm was raised the mission would be terminated. In other words, I failed when I tried to sneak the American through while leaving the Russian standing behind.

So I had the Russian hide under a truck while the American sneaked through. The American dropped some bodies. That made the enemy alert and passage tougher from the Russian, who I took control of once I got the American into the shadows.

I kept failing the mission, until, well, I got them both through. The secret was to play it as if was two successive single-player runs through that challenge.

My strategy did not work during the next part of the co-op campaign. That's when the controller-juggling began. Picture a man trying to drive two cars at once, stretching to reach both steering wheels with a foot on each accelerator. Kind of hard to do.

Instead, I found an exploit. I could move one guy ahead and not worry too much if he'd get caught in a stranglehold or even shot prone. Those moments trigger countdowns, seconds ticking before oxygen is lost or life drifts away. But during those moments, I realized, the man in trouble was actually safe. As soon as he'd be in that predicament I grabbed the other controller and either sprinted over if I needed to kill the choker, or crept over if I needed to merely revive my other guy.

Sometimes, though, during the choking bit, my non-choked guy would get shot. At these moments I became as fleet with hands as a pianist. My second guy, shot, would go down prone. But Conviction lets the shot character sit up and fire. The choked character, meanwhile, standing but being throttled, can elbow the choker to make a kill-shot from the other player available. So imagine me activating the distraction elbow on one controller, then having the prone guy sit up with the other controller and fire a shot at the choker. THEN... I would resume control of the guy who was being choked, dash over to the now-sitting shot guy and revive him. And then I'd have to figure out how to run both guys to the shadows.

It wasn't easy.

My solo co-op skills improved as I played, but the end of the fourth chapter defeated me. To those who have reached it, know that I was able to deactivate the turret on my own, but I could not get both guys to the plane. I tried for two hours.

Then I hit the game's playable epilogue, and, without spoiling what happens, just rest assured that I was able to clear that part on my own.

Bottom line: You can play much of Splinter Cell: Conviction's co-op campaign on your own, split-screen with two controllers. But it's really unwise.

Reminding us that the movie based on Mark Millar's award-winning comic book Kick-Ass hits theaters on Friday is one of the few good things to come from this trailer for the PlayStation Network video game.

I'm not generally one to judge a book by its cover, but the trailer for WHA Entertainment's movie tie-in doesn't give me faith that this is going to be a quality video game product. The characters look blocky, the animation jittery, and the special effects are all over the map. For example, Big Daddy stabs a guy through the chest, and there's no blood? That can't be right.

Still, developer WHA Entertainment seems pleased with what it's accomplished.

"We are excited to provide players a closer look at the gameplay and characters involved in Kick-Ass," said Howard Horowitz, Founder and CEO of WHA Entertainment, Inc. "Kick-Ass is set to deliver non-stop superhero action to gamers, and what could be more fun than getting to play as one of the three super heroes based on the super characters featured in the movie?"

I don't know, swing dancing? Sledding down a hill of freshly fallen snow? Was that a rhetorical question?

Kick-Ass the movie hits theaters on Friday. Kick-Ass the game hits the PlayStation Network on April 29 for $14.99.

It's the last day to play Halo 2 on Xbox Live, and Bungie is taking the opportunity to deliver long-time players some thank yous and fake news via the game's matchmaking message center.

Original Xbox game support on Xbox Live dies today, and Halo 2 holdouts like Kotakuite Cmonty06 are taking some time to get a few final rounds in. He passes along some of Bungie's final messages to its most dedicated fans. Messages teasing new features that will never come, thanking players for their support, and suggesting that the game would have been much better with jetpacks.

Hell, every game is much better with jetpacks.

Thanks for the pics, Cmonty06!

Gaming laptops are often an oxymoron, a device that either is too expensive or too big to really be a laptop or a computer too underpowered to play games.

But Dell and Alienware have been for years trying to find the proper balance between these two seemingly opposing issues. Their XPS was a monstrously large, monstrously fast laptop. The M15X, pared down the size, but was still beefy and pricey. Then came Alienware M11x, a 11.5-inch, 4.5 pound laptop that strives to deliver a gaming laptop that can actually be used on your lap.

Does the shrunken-down M11X deliver or does all of that downsizing mean the gaming capabilities shrunk too?

Loved
Size: Finally, a gaming laptop that isn't a back-breaking, flattened desktop. I still remember the absurdity of not just carting around the original XPS gaming laptop, but then opening it up to reveal a computer that literally didn't meet the definition of a laptop. The M11X is the perfect size for gaming on the go, not just gaming at a LAN party. Its compact form factor fits perfectly on an airplane tray, it's snug on your lap, but not so small that you feel cramped while gaming on it.

Battery Life: Thanks to some clever power management and the inclusion of a switchable graphics chip, the M11X manages to squeeze as much life out of a single charge as my costly ultra portable, letting me game my way through half the seven and a half hour trip to Hawaii or write on the laptop the whole way there with battery to spare.

Weight: It's certainly heavier than my wispy Lenovo ultra-portable, which comes in at just 2.42 pounds. But 4.5 pounds is still a feather weight compared to most laptops and any gaming laptop I've seen.

Power Pack: That's right, I love the M11x's power pack. Why? Because I'm sick of gaming laptops that have monstrous power packs. The XPS' charger was nearly the size of an Xbox 360 power brick and weighed more than my laptop at the time. This one is a sensible power supply not much larger than ones used by typical, small laptops.

Sizzle: Despite greatly reducing the size of the laptop, Alienware still manages to pack in all of the neat little frills that make their laptops different. The keyboard is backlit and can be customized to display a rainbow of colors. The Alienware icon and power button is also backlit as is the name of the company. Each can get their own colors. Finally the laptop features twin speaker vents with adjustable colors. You can also use the provided software to have the computer flash different colors to alert you of things like new emails.

Feel: Writing on the M11x is quite comfortable thanks to a fairly wide keyboard and sizable palm rest. In fact, the M11x is as comfortable to write on as my Lenovo, a laptop I do all of my writing on while traveling. The difference is that my Lenovo, which rang in at nearly the same price as the M11X, can't run any games to speak of.

Load Out: The tech specs of a laptop are often the deciding factor in portable computer purchases. The form factor is a big deal, a huge deal, but you wouldn't want to buy a system that didn't scratch your muscle-power itch. Fortunately, the M11x's guts are as impressive as its size. Keep in mind that the smaller size and price do mean you do sacrifice some performance. This isn't the gaming laptop that the M15x is.

The M11x features an 11.6-inch 720p WLED screen, a 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GT 335M switchable graphics card, an Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 1.3GHz processor with a 3MB Cache, 4GB of dual channel DDR3 memory running at 800 MHz and a 500GB SATAII 7,200RPM hard drive.It also have a built-in camera and mic, two headphone jacks, three USB and a slew of other ports including two memory card readers. Keep in mind this is the rig I tested out, each is customizable.

Price: Starting at $799, the system I reviewed came in at $1099, or still less then my fancy, but single-purposed Lenovo. Pricey? A bit, but not absurdly so.

Graphic Hot Swapping: Not quite the auto-sensing, auto-switching gee wiz tech of Nvidia's Optimus system, the M11X still has the ability to switch between graphics chip sets on the fly. By holding down the function key and pressing F6 you can quickly hop back and forth between the low-energy, low-functioning integrated graphics chip and the middle of the road GeForce GT 335M graphics card. This makes the screen black out for less than a second, but is incredibly easy to do. It also saves quite a bit of battery life. All gaming laptops need this functionality moving forward. Better still, Optimus' ability to auto detect when that needs to be done and do it automatically would be the perfect solution. Still I'll settle for this.

Hated
Touchy Touch Pad: It's crazy to think that gaming with a touch pad could be anything but frustrating, but the placement and sensitivity of the pad makes using it frustrating even for non-gaming at times. The problem is that the pad is located in the dead center of the palm rest. When typing, if one of your hands is hovering over the pad, something fairly common, it will interfere with the pad recognizing your finger tip. I keep catching myself and have to shift my left hand out of the way to move the pointer. I tried adjusting the sensitivity the other way and found it causing my pointer to hop around on the screen when typing. It's a common issue with touch pads, but that doesn't mean I have to be OK with it.

I can play Modern Warfare 2 on medium settings, tool around in Just Cause 2, check out Crysis, all while sitting on a plane with the laptop resting on the tray, a drink sitting next to it with room to spare.

Sure, this isn't the laptop you'd buy if you want to make sure it will run high-end, top setting games for the next five years, but if you're looking for a package that neatly combines gaming with affordability and true portability the M11X is your only choice.

The M11X was manufactured by Alienware in February. Retail starts at $799, the unit lent to Kotaku retails for $1099 USD. An M11X was sent temporarily to Kotaku for reviewing purposes and will be returned. Played games on it while sitting in a passenger seat of a car, while laying in bed, sitting on a couch and during a Colorado to Hawaii flight.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

This week's episode of Kotaku Talk Radio is now live, featuring none other than Major Nelson, the living embodiment of Xbox Live.

Okay, maybe not the living embodiment of Xbox Live, but Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb is the official mouthpiece for the service, bringing fans constant updates through his own weekly podcasts and the Major Nelson website. If you've got any questions about the past, present, and future of Xbox Live, Major Nelson is your man.

Want to be heard on Kotaku Talk Radio? Call us on the air LIVE at (877) CHAT-212 or use Skype to dial in! You can also pick up a nifty, and free, iPhone App to listen to the show live here.

It looks like even Apple was caught off guard by the success of the iPad, citing its runaway success in the U.S. as the primary reason everyone else has to wait another month for it.

It's a classic case of bad news, good news for Apple customers outside of the U.S., as the company pushes back the international release of its latest gizmo to late May. The bad news, obviously, is that folks in other parts of the world will have to wait even longer, while Americans slowly transition from treating their iPads better than a newborn child to tossing it on the couch or leaving it on the bathroom floor.

The good news? There's still plenty of time to reconsider your purchase! Read the news, reviews, first-hand accounts, taste tests, etcetera, and determine if you really want to dedicate an undisclosed amount of money to a shiny touchy thing.

If that didn't make you feel better, perhaps Apple's statement will:

"Faced with this surprisingly strong US demand, we have made the difficult decision to postpone the international launch of iPad by one month, until the end of May. We will announce international pricing and begin taking online pre-orders on Monday, May 10. We know that many international customers waiting to buy an iPad will be disappointed by this news, but we hope they will be pleased to learn the reason-the iPad is a runaway success in the US thus far."

Somehow I don't see that pleasing people. The power of hope only reaches so far, even when you are Apple.

Anyone out there disappointed?

First it was World War II, then zombies, and now 19th century Polish composer Frederic Chopin, with an upcoming rhythm game by Polish studio Bloober Team dedicated to the star of Namco Bandai's Eternal Sonata.

I suppose two video games based around your works doesn't count as a video game explosion, but I'm still keeping my eye out, now that a second Chopin-themed game is in the works. This time around it's a music game in a vein similar to Guitar Hero and Rock Band, which makes much more sense than the composer's appearance in a Japanese role-playing game.

Bloober Team's Music Master: Chopin, in development for the PC, Mac, and iPhone, is a game that celebrates the occasion of the famed composer's 200th birthday, which we forgot to celebrate back on March 1. Funded by a grant from the Polish government, the game will feature piano performances of Chopin's greatest works, along with some vocal tracks and rock arrangements, you know, for the kids.

The game is still at an early stage of development, with the first art assets weeks away, but it should be on track for a release in the first half of 2010, the year the Polish Ministry of Culture is calling The Year of Chopin.

The studio is currently in talks to bring the game to additional consoles, and I would love to see something like this show up on WiiWare, the PlayStation Network, or Xbox Live Arcade. I don't want to sound like an old man here, but when every radio station I turn on sounds exactly the same, it's time for you kids to remember what music was really all about - dying of pulmonary tuberculosis at the age of 39 in 1849 Paris.

New game featuring Chopin music is in development [GameMusic.net]

Apparently a lot of you are sick of playing video games set in the city in which I live.

Last week, from the comfort of my desk at the Gawker Media offices in New York City, I reported about an event I attended in the TriBeCa neighborhood of New York City about a new video game that will be set in New York City.

That game is Crysis 2, and many of the comments I saw in reaction could be summed up as "another one?"

Yes, video games have been set in the Big Apple, for a long time.

Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, Nintendo Entertainment System, 1987: Boxer Little Mac goes jogging past the Statue of Liberty.

Make that, a really long time.

Spider-Man, Atari 2600, 1982: Peter Parker, in spandex, swings past, uh, maybe a skyscraper or large NYC-style cheese grater.

Everyone knows that there are piles of games set in New York City. (Everyone = Wikipedia.) Even the people making games in New York City know this.

"There was this point when everybody was doing New York [in video games]" Crysis 2's lead creator Cevat Yerli, told me. (He's not from New York. He's based in Germany). "So why do we do New York as well? ... I liked the challenge of standing out from all the crowd."

You see, we've crossed from the era when it was hard to make games set in NYC because no one was doing it, to the era when it's hard because everyone is doing it.

Prototype, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, 2009: Some sort of biological infection wrecks Manhattan. The military is called in. Players get to blow them up and the infected creeps — chases through Central Park included.

Standing out from the New York crowd was not Yerli's only motivation. Before I even told him I live in Brooklyn he was justifying the transition of the Crysis series from tropical island to Manhattan Island with the one fact every New Yorker agrees with: This city is awesome.

"I also always saw New York as a symbol of nature," Yerli said. "It is an icon. People know the Statue of Liberty. People know New York. There's so much to it, and, for me, it's the pride of mankind. Then if I want to save some city — which one would it be — that symbolizes the strong will of mankind, if you will? That is New York."

I thanked Yerli for designating my home as the place to save.

Games set in New York often are in this city because they have to be (that's where Spider-Man lives!) or because it makes for a recognizable backdrop (that's the Statue of Liberty!) or because, well, it's a cool city that provides a pretty good template. You don't even have to call it New York City — call it Liberty City — and people will still know what you're talking about and look forward to base-jumping off the Empire State Building or cursing at the taxis.

Grand Theft Auto IV, Xbox 360 and PS3 and PC, 2008: A love letter to four of five of the boroughs of New York City, as multicultural and socially wild a New York game as there ever has been.

Realize that even some racing video games have New York City tracks, which makes little sense, unless you've fantasized about looping the lanes of Manhattan Bridge or the streets of Times Square. Also odd, and worth noting, almost no major New York game-making development studios are in New York City, so this isn't like television or comics where the creators seem to set their fiction in the place they live.

Yerli, whose Crysis series was previously set on a tropical island is in New York for the 2010 sequel for good reason, he told me: "This time the the location is an integral part of the story. It has its own character arc per se. It is a lively character that is alive. It has its transformations going on. It is something that is, in a sense, crying and you want to protect it. It wants to be saved and for me that kind of already tells so much story without having to tell it. Showing it instead of telling it."

I'm okay with the idea of New York crying. Hey, I was okay with whatever it was that happened to New York in Metal Gear Solid 2, though I'm still not sure what that was. (Anyone?)

Turtles in Time, Super Nintendo, 1982: The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, NYC residents.

For all the games set in New York, I don't have many memorably New York City gaming moments. I think I liked jumping to the top of the Empire State Building in Prototype, but it's already fading from memory. I liked spray-painting subway cars in the version of New York in Marc Ecko's Getting Up. Doing a King-Kong and shooting down helicopters from the top of the Empire State Building in GTA IV's The Ballad of Gay Tony was cool too, rivaled by the game's motorcycle chase on subway tracks and that great New York moment of dangling a blogger from a helicopter hovering over Battery Park or thereabouts.

I don't mind all the New York City video games. But I live here. Admit it, though, Los Angeles, GTA: San Andreas not withstanding is too devoid of landmarks to be an interesting video game locale. Other cities? Shanghai is getting some attention in Army of Two and Kane & Lynch sequels this year. Moscow has some cool buildings, as does Paris, which was rendered quite nicely in last year's The Saboteur.

Maybe Crysis 2 can be the final New York City game. Yerli has an idea that might make it suitable for that honor.

He had told me that he'd been to New York City three times during the development of Crysis 2. The third visit was recent:

"Over New Year's I've been to New York to work out the ending of the game," he said. "I was supposed to go to kind of my second honeymoon with my wife and I canceled that one." (He remains married, believe it or not). "Instead I came here for New York for New Year's.... The point was the end [of the game] wasn't clicking. So I got this beautiful view of Central Park and whole of New York on the right side of me and I was thinking: 'What can I do with New York in the end?'"

"How can you destroy it?" I asked.

"Something that no game, no movie, no fiction ever did with New York," he said. "And, rest assured, that trip did provide the idea."

New York video games, I love you all.

Crysis 2, PC and PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, 2010. New York needs saving.

University of Guelph professor Barbara Morrongiello doesn't want your children to be eaten by dogs, so she's created a video game that will teach kids how to avoid catastrophic canine confrontations.

Dogs are man's best friend, but they aren't all that sure about children. I can relate. Children can be downright terrifying, and while our canine companions are generally on their best behavior, the loud shrieking, sudden movement, and occasional spooky laughter that emanates from our species' young can cause even the most peaceful pooch to ponder taking a bite out of them. Hell, I've come close myself.

Barbara Morrongiello wants to help children avoid being the target of dog wrath, which is a noble endeavor if I've ever heard one. To that end, she and a group of researchers from Belgium have developed The Blue Dog, a video game designed to help kids recognize situations in which their otherwise friendly pets might get snappy.

The goal of the game is to "impact children's knowledge of dogs and understanding of dog behaviour," so they can safely interact with them and avoid getting bit, says Morrongiello. She says children have a "false sense of security" when it comes to their own dogs and don't understand that you can't safely do everything you do with your own dog with other ones.

It's the truth. Between cartoons, movies, and the way we coddle our own pets, we're training children that dogs are all cuddly bundles of love and affection, like stuffed animals. Wild street dogs, wolves, coyotes, and yes, dingoes take offense when you treat them like stuffed animals.

Before playing The Blue Dog, children are tested on their current knowledge of dog behavior via a series of photos that depict dogs in various safe and unsafe situations. Once their knowledge is assessed, the children are free to take home the game and play it for a few weeks.

The game is basically a series of scenarios with wrong and right ways to react. If the child chooses incorrectly, the in-game dog will bear its teeth and growl, letting the player know it made the wrong choice. In effect, she's using dog training techniques on children. I find this oddly pleasing.

Morrongiello plans to use a similar format to create a game that teaches children about fire safety. I'm interested to see how she implements the growling and teeth baring.

U of G professor uses video game to teach dog safety [GuelphMercury.com]

After months of teaser trailers and bizarre dream sequences, we finally get a chance to see Naughty Bear practicing his murderous ways. It's like Friday the 13th, only with teddy bears.

I think it's an apt description, judging by what little gameplay we get to see here. Artificial Mind and Movement has created an interactive teddy bear slasher flick. Naughty Bear is the shunned outsider who finally snaps, taking out those who wronged him in various diabolical ways. Replace the dancing bear with a half-naked female co-ed at Camp Crystal Lake, slap a hockey mask on Naughty B, and you've got an interactive 80's horror film.

Naughty Bear is heading to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in June. Be afraid.