The average U.S. gamer is spending more time gaming than ever before, but only 4% of the gaming population is classified by the NPD Group as "Extreme Gamers." What kind of gamer are you?

The NPD group has released the 2010 edition of its Gamer Segmentation report, which looks into gaming and game purchasing habits. The report separates gamers into seven different segments: Extreme Gamers, Avid PC Gamers, Heavy Portable Gamers, Console Gamers, Online PC Gamers, Offline PC Gamers, and Secondary Gamers. The results were gathered from a January 2010 online survey, completed by 18,872 ages two and older.

Looking over the list, I'm not all that sure where I would fall. I tend to play a lot of portable and console titles, but my PC is packed with games, both online and off. As I don't quite meet the requirements for Extreme Gamers (most weeks at least), I guess the NPD would categorize me as a member of the press and not eligible to participate in the study anyway.

So what makes an Extreme Gamer? According to the NPD, it is someone who spends spend 48.5 hours a week playing games. I'm pretty sure there's some rounding and averaging involved there.

Still, even as an average, that's pretty extreme. More than two full days a week? Man, if I regularly gamed more than two full days a week, I'd be...well I'd be myself, 10 years ago.

Overall, U.S. gamers spent an average of 13 hours a week playing, which is a much more manageable amount. That's up from 12.3 hours from 2009.

The average age of gamers increased over the previous year as well, moving from 31 to 32, with avid PC gamers and offline PC gamers an average of 42-years-old.

No wonder they're so crotchety.

"With these kinds of shifts in the composition of the gaming consumer and changes in gaming behavior, it's clear that the need to understand gamers and their purchase patterns remains critical information to those that develop, market and sell games," said Anita Frazier, industry analyst, The NPD Group.

As well as aging gamers like myself, grateful to discover there's at least one gamer segment where I'd be considered underage.

Killzone developer Guerrilla Games and Sony showed off the first playable version of the PlayStation 3's next entry in the series, a Killzone that feels familiar, but much improved, a bigger world with smarter enemies. Oh, and stereoscopic 3D.

The playable demo, available in both 2D and 3D versions at Sony's Killzone 3 showing, started off with our futuristic squad of ISA soldiers approaching a Helghast oil rig planted in an alien arctic sea. The entry to the level known as "Frozen Shores" started aboard an ISA Intruder, a fly-by attack via mounted mini-gun. After taking down that rig by shooting out its supports, our dropship suffered an unfortunate crash, with Killzone heroes Sev and Rico down but not out and ready to take down scores of glowing-eyed bad guys.

Killzone 3's enemies and gameplay may feel familiar, but its environments certainly don't. As I took down distant Helghast soldiers with a conveniently placed mini-gun, then switched back to the stock M-82 Assault Rifle, snow flakes whipped by, as did the frigid winds of Helghan's shores. Oh, and it did it all in dazzling, but distracting 3D.

Helghast soldiers pop out against the brighter, whiter backgrounds of "Frozen Shores" as if they're illuminated eyes didn't already give them away. The alien army's newest trick, sporting big, unit enveloping jet packs added a little variety to the level. Seeing them pop in, hover down and attack from above added a sense of fright, even though our ISA soldier was indestructible in "god mode." That tension was alleviated the first time we saw a jet packer take damage, spiral out of control and fire into the air like a bottle rocket, crashing to his death.

It was a feeling of something old, something new and a game much improved from its predecessor. Control-wise, Killzone 3 felt solid, its controller layout feeling immediately familiar and its aiming, jumping and on-foot movement easy to acclimate to.

Here's what else is new.

The WASP

The latest addition to the Killzone arsenal is the turret turned mobile missile launcher known as the WASP. This massive weapon launches an array of nine missiles at any unlucky Helghast target in less than a second. It takes out infantry just as well as it decimates Helghast tanks. It's a hell of a lot of fun to use, especially when you have unlimited ammo.

There are two ways to deploy a cartridge of WASP missiles. The standard firing mode spews a rapid fire deployment of rounds almost as quickly as one can depress the R1 button. That barrage flies frantically at your target, so don't expect precision. It's good for clearing out a cluster of Helghast soldiers or whatever cover they're currently taking refuge behind. A quick tap of the R1 button will launch less than nine, if you so desire, but I was never able to fire less than three at a time.

The WASP also lets you paint a target, fire, and rain down the full nine at once on an individual unit in its alternate firing mode. The launch and the ensuing pummeling was almost instant, but Sony reps said the final firing rate of the weapon in will likely be slower.

Don't expect to see the WASP too often. It's super powerful, perhaps overcompensating, but with just nine rounds per cartridge and a standard ammo supply of three cartridges, expect to use the new weapon sparingly.

What WASP stands for, somewhat surprisingly, was one of those things that Sony "isn't talking about yet." That's right, this acronym is still to be revealed.

The Jet Pack

Perhaps the highest compliment one can pay Killzone 3's jet pack is that it feels like a natural addition, easy to control with a short learning curve. While wearing the jet pack, a tap and hold of the L1 button on the PlayStation 3 controller will give you a short boost, thrusting your character 20 feet or so into the air, then offer a slow floating descent. The pack feels more initially responsive than its counterpart in Halo: Reach, for comparison's sake.

In the demo level we played, the jet pack came in handy for a quick climb of the Helghan oil rig and a series of hops across a cluster of ice floes between the rig and Helghast base. While wearing the pack, our character's primary weapon was a mounted machine gun, a more than capable option for dispatching Helghast.

My one minor complaint about the jet pack was its mix up of the control scheme. Normally, the L1 button performs a melee attack. That changes when wearing the pack, as L1 fires your jet boost.

The "Brutal Melee" System

Killzone 3's other big talking point of the night was its close quarters combat. Sony reps informed us that only the M-82 rifle was cued up with melee attacks at this stage, so we kept that gun handy. The up close and personal attacks on Helghast soldiers consisted largely of boots to the face, knives in the back and, most fitting of the brutal description, a knife stab into the glowing eye of our enemies. A twist and turn into the skull later, Helghast soldiers fell lifeless.

The melee system didn't feel tangibly different from hand-to-hand attacks from other first-person shooters and the eye-stabbing was clearly early. There was no visible damage to those Helghast soldiers' helmets, giving the attack a less realistic effect. Frankly, I preferred shooting them in the kneecaps to watch them crumple.

The 3D

Killzone 3's three-dimensional effects, while offering a believable depth and a visually impressive distinction, felt like a lot of games we've already played in 3D. At time's it's distracting, at others it offers a better impression of being there. At one point, it made me nauseated.

HUD items and your targeting reticule layer nicely, at the depth of the TV screen. Entering iron sights is sometimes clear, sometimes disorienting, but always offering a realistic perception of depth. Killzone 3's 3D effect carries with it much of the trappings of the technology—you're better playing centered, there's ghosting, lens shutter can be annoying, and it can sometimes add confusion to the frantic fire fights. As a demonstration of the capabilities of 3D, it's strong, but may not be the ideal way to play an entire campaign.

Fortunately, the 3D effects didn't appear to affect the game's frame rate, moving as smoothly as the 2D version. While the game may have suffered slightly for its 3D wow factor, there's plenty of time left in development for Guerrilla to tweak, improve and further impress us with Killzone 3's big visual trick.

Killzone 3 is currently planned for a release sometime next year on the PlayStation 3. While we wait, here's a whole mess of new media, sadly only viewable in 2D.

John Marston faces off against some of the toughest hombres the waning Old West has to offer in Red Dead Redemption, but he's never faced a posse quite as cantankerous as the game reviewers we've rounded up for this Frankenreview.

We've gathered the roughest, toughest game reviewers this side of the 1900's to size up John Marston's Rockstar adventure. You think they're going to go easy on the game? You think they'll buckle under Marston's steely gaze? Obviously you've never spent time around these outlaws. Our own Michael McWhertor once pondered killing a man just for snoring too loud.

Eurogamer
et 50 years after the events of the more light-hearted Red Dead Revolver, Redemption's frontier has become a cat's cradle of political interests, stretched taut by moneyed men in bed with federalised government. The Wild West has grown mild in its old age, and grizzled gunmen with their brutish ways are growing obsolete. In setting the game in the twilight days of a cliché, Rockstar provides an overarching tension beyond the immediate lives of its inhabitants. Where Grand Theft Auto IV's Nico Bellic was desperate to escape his heritage, Red Dead Redemption's John Marston clings to it, a man in search of purpose and redemption in a world slipping from relevance.

D+Pad
The narrative is, like in GTA IV, built on simple ingredients: a witty script packed with pathos and flashes of humour, excellent voice acting and unobtrusive cut-scene direction. You only need to play last year's Assassin's Creed 2 for evidence as to how getting these staples wrong can lead to a less engaging experience. In comparison Red Dead Redemption is so immersive – striking a superb balance between genre cliché and presenting a world that feels genuinely fresh, in a videogaming context – that it mostly succeeds in masking the fact there is little genuine variety or innovation to the core story missions.

GameSpot
Whether you're galloping between locations where there are missions available or just trotting around aimlessly, Red Dead Redemption's world is a far easier one to get sidetracked in than most. That's because in addition to the dozens of excellent and varied story missions, there are countless optional undertakings to enjoy—most of which offer some tangible reward in the form of money, weapons, or reputation. While you're in town, you might choose to gamble at card and dice tables or tear a wanted poster from the wall and do some bounty hunting, for example. And when you're in the middle of nowhere, opportunities for gunfights and the like have a habit of presenting themselves or even forcing themselves upon you. Random strangers in need of help can show up at any time, and while it's a little jarring to find two or three strangers in the same predicament back-to-back, most of their requests are varied and fun for the short time that they take to complete. You might be called upon to retrieve a stolen wagon, to collect herbs, or even to rescue someone being hanged from a tree. There's no penalty for ignoring strangers, but when you help them you collect a small reward and become a little more famous in the process.

Game Informer
Given the limitations of the era's weaponry, Red Dead's gunplay is surprisingly exciting. Each weapon – from six-shooters and repeaters to sniper rifles and Gatling guns – has a distinct feel, and the hit detection system couples with Natural Motion's Euphoria animation technology to create visceral shootouts. Shotgun blasts blow enemies violently backward, sniper shots to the shoulder spin bandits around, and if you nail a fleeing enemy in the leg, he'll feebly crawl toward the nearest cover. When large groups of bandits descend on your position, you can activate the slow-motion Dead Eye ability to paint a large swath of enemies and watch in awe as Marston effortlessly puts them all in an early grave. Less practiced gunslingers can stick with the friendly snap-to auto-aim mechanic borrowed from GTA IV, but if you want to up the challenge, I suggest turning it off.

Telegraph.co.uk
The multiplayer is split into two main modes: free roam and map-based matches. Up to 16 players can take part in map-based games and in free roam mode. There are 5 match types altogether: Free For All Shootout (Deathmatch), Gang Shootout (Team Deathmatch), Hold Your Own (a team-based capture-the-flag match), Grab The Bag (which requires players to fight for a single bag of gold) and Goldrush, an every-man-for-himself match in which all players try to grab saddlebags and drop them at respawning chests. Each match starts with a shoot-out with players employing snapshots and side-rolls to make sure their team wins the contest, or that they're the last person standing. In free-roam mode players can form a posse of up to 8 members. Then the posse leader sets a goal and the newly formed gang can then tackle a variety of targets including bandit-held forts, bounties and hunting wildlife. In keeping with the trend set by Modern Warfare, players earn XP which they can use to unlock new weapons, horses and clothes for their cowboy.

Kotaku
Having already immersed myself in dozens of hours of Red Dead Redemption's world, I'm hungry to return, itching to complete my untended quests, adventure through its still mysterious lands and explore the bad side of John Marston. Having barely scratched the surface of its multiplayer-there's so much to unlock and experiment with-I'll be losing myself in its sublime world of hoodlums, peasants and drunkards. I don't think I've engaged in a single bar fight, being a good outlaw and feeling good about it, an oversight that I'll soon correct.

Looks like them little doggies got along just fine.

Want more Bulletstorm? Tonight's episode of GameTrailers TV has you covered, with interviews with the shooter's design director Cliff Bleszinski and producer Tanya Jessen. We're told the 12:20 AM Eastern and Pacific episode on Spike TV will include some "big gameplay reveals," including one gigantic boss battle.

At present, the word "tension" is almost exclusively considered negative.  

The quest of the modern man is to reduce tension, or stress, which are known causes of disease and emotional distress.  The desired state is one of complete relaxation.

However, in the artistic world, we find that many descriptions of good works imply tension: taut, solid, robust.  Likewise, many descriptions of poor works imply the opposite: loose, unfocused, flat.  It seems that while we prefer our bodies to be relaxed, we prefer our books, movies, music, and games full of tension.

While there are probably many reasons why having tension is good for art, I suspect an important reason is that tension provides definition.  Just like flexing your bicep shows its definition, putting an object in a state of tension is frequently a better representation of what that thing is than observing it in a relaxed state.  The human condition doesn't appear to be an exception.

It's quite clear that putting humans in stressful situations isn't enough to create compelling works of expression, though it's a good start.  Here, I see narrative as a helpful guide, yet again.  It is in narrative where choice-management decisions are the clearest, on a certain level.  In narratives, characters are making decisions that drive the story in a linear fashion, and often these are decisions we can more or less understand intellectually—by which I mean we can reason about them.

Characters in the best stories always make decisions that drive the story forward, but what does that mean?  At a functional level, we can that the characters make choices that take away choices.  Ideally, a character will want to take away choices only from an antagonist, but often we find that characters will soon resort to taking away choices from themselves in order to take choices away from the antagonist—often because they have no other choice.  In a good narrative, you see a progression from a large field of opportunities to a claustrophobic room of tough choices.

So an important aspect in creating compelling expression is a process of eliminating choices.  The art is in which choices to eliminate and in what order.  The artist must be aware of which choices the audience perceives as "easy" and which they perceive as "difficult," and begin eliminating the easy choices.

Of course, games provide other great examples of this.  Good moves in chess are ones that eliminate at least one of the opponent's options, and the best are ones that force the opponent to have to choose between two terrible outcomes.  The tower game Jenga is also a good example of tension-building through choice elimination.  These tension-inducing games also show that players cannot be confused with "audience"—in a game, players must be getting increasingly tense, just like characters in a film or novel.

Relaxation is inherently boring, pleasant as it is.  But does it have a place in games?

It may seem that this post is directly solely at the Expression and maybe Sport dimension of games.  However, tension management in important when thinking about the Diversion dimension, as well.  Diversion, after all, could be defined as a relief of tension—a distraction from tension, however brief.

It would be logical, then, to say that a "diversionary game" is one with very few rules—one that allows someone to enjoy a space of relaxation.  And indeed, "player choice" is frequently heralded as a goal of games.  However, I believe that misunderstands the aim of this person needing relaxation.  Doing nothing—laying in a hammock, listening to whale songs—is a better space of relaxation than a game.  If a tension-filled person is turning to a game, we can assume that while he may be full of tension, he actually wants more tension.  After all, rules create tension by their nature, so if this person wanted to exist in a space of complete relaxation, he wouldn't have approached the game—an activity intrinsically rule-bound.

What explains this seemingly paradoxical behavior?  I think that games can represent a sort of light at the end of the tunnel.  A reassurance that eventually all tension will be released, even if it will be shortly replaced by something else.  Therefore, I believe games should always be paying attention to choice management, continuously limiting options, and building up tension, so that once the game is over, players—win or lose—may sit back, relaxed, and for a brief moment, enjoy the ease that can only come after being tense.

Republished with permission from Interactive Illuminatus.

Ferguson is the author of Interactive Illuminatus, a blog dedicated to building up video game theory and investigating games' potential as artistic expression. He is currently working as a writing consultant in the Los Angeles area, and may be contacted at interactive.illuminatus@gmail.com.

Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D was plenty fun back in the day, back when Apple just opened the floodgates to iPhone gaming. But these days it's looking threadworn. That's probably why Activision just released Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D 2. Now with mulitplayer and a "new adventure." But for $10? Kinda crazy!

ModNation Racers on PlayStation 3 may be a fine racing game, but its frequent 30-plus-second load times are lamentable. Good thing one of the game's producers told us a fix is coming.

"That's something we are aware of," ModNation producer Dan Sochan told Kotaku on our latest edition of Kotaku Talk Radio when I mentioned the loading-time complaints to him. "There are certain reasons why we did the loading that we did, to keep transfer times between characters, karts and tracks when you're racing against people online, that all of those are really quick. But we are working on it and expect an update."

An update that might shorten the load times? "Yes."

ModNation Racers, like LittleBigPlanet also on the PlayStation 3 has been built to enable players to heavily customize their content — in this case their racers, race cars and tracks. Balancing the ability for gamers to share their creations and for the game to run swiftly is a challenge. Let's hope that a little more tweaking and the presumably downloadable update to which Sochan referred improves things all around.

Don't wait for us to tell you about the many secrets revealed in each weekly episode of Kotaku Talk Radio. Listen live each Wednesday at 11am Mountain Time. Or download the show onto your favorite listening device.

Could the success of the Monkey Island Special Editions herald LucasArts' return to straight adventure games? I spoke to Monkey Island 2 Special Edition: LeChuck's Revenge project lead Craig Derrick about the new remake and the possibilities it raises.

It's a time of resurgence for Guybrush Threepwood and the cast of the Monkey Island series. The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition was released last July for Xbox Live Arcade, PC, and iPhone. Telltale Games added a new chapter to the saga with the episodic release of Tales of Monkey Island.

Now LucasArts is gearing up for the summer release of Monkey Island 2 Special Edition: LeChuck's Revenge. Like the first SE release, it takes the original game and gives it a current-generation makeover, with updated graphics, new voice work (mostly from the original cast), a hint system, an art gallery, and a reworked musical score.

It's a larger, more complex game than the Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition, but lessons learned and tools developed while creating the first game helped speed the process along.

"I believe that leveraging all of the skills, technology and tools developed for the first SE was the ONLY way we could have evenly possibly created a Special Edition as complex and large as Monkey Island 2 while adding NEW features in the same time it took us to create the first game," said Derrick, further explaining that much of the development was handed over to LucasArts' Singapore team this time around.

"The distributed nature of the teams between San Francisco and Singapore introduced some new challenges, but since some of the first Special Edition was created there they understood what to do and I've very proud of the amazing job they've accomplished."

It was this distributed development system that paved the way for the inclusion of a Special Edition commentary, recorded for the game at the 2010 Game Developers Conference by original creators Dave Grossman, Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer.

I asked Derrick to detail how this entertaining new feature would work.

"The commentary is an optional feature that works very similar to those found on film DVD's. After turning the option on from within the bonus features menu the player will be given a choice to listen to select scene commentary while playing through the game," he explained. The player will be prompted via on-screen cue when there is commentary available. Pressing the button causes the game audio to lower, the screen to go letterbox, and silhouettes of Grossman, Gilbert, and Schafer to pop up on the screen to deliver their comments, Mystery Science Theater 3000 style.

"On most occasions the commentary appears as you enter one scene or another, but it will also appear after a particular moment has occurred providing further commentary or anecdotes about the scene. It's fantastic and I fully expect to see this feature to continue to be in more and more games."

That feature alone should be more than enough to get fans lining up for the game when it hits the iPhone, Mac, PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 this summer. What, no iPad? Did I waste $500 on this silly thing?

"Yes. Yes, you did," quipped Derrick. "I'm kidding! I have one too and I like it. It does seem to be missing something, though. Not sure what. Maybe I'll go think about that and let you know if I come up with something."

Teasing iPad comments aside, could the strong fan reaction to these remakes indicate a more adventure-oriented direction for LucasArts?

"We've always been in the action AND adventure game," Derrick responded. "It just seems that we've been emphasizing one over the other lately. The Special Editions and Tales of Monkey Island have been a way to measure the audience's reaction to us doing more straight adventure games and to see how the audience reacts to Monkey Island so many years after the first and last game in the series. It's been pretty successful so far."

But don't expect a new pure, point-and click adventure title from the company any time soon.

"But if we were to truly get back into the "adventure" business then I would say we need to take some of what we've learned from the "action" side of the business a little bit, look at today's audience sensibilities and reinvent the genre just as we did with Maniac Mansion 23 years ago."

IGN's Jessica Chobot recently went topless for charity, allowing a Sony artist to do a mold of her chest and then giving the cast a "God of War" paint job.

The plaster result will be on display at the God of War III art show at Gnomon Gallery before going up for auction to benefit the Keep-A-Breast foundation.

Sadly, I suspect that most of you just read "breasts" yadayadayadayada.

Keep-a-Breast

IGN's Jessica Chobot recently went topless for charity, allowing a Sony artist to do a mold of her chest and then giving the cast a "God of War" paint job.

The plaster result will be on display at the God of War III art show at Gnomon Gallery before going up for auction to benefit the Keep-A-Breast foundation.

Sadly, I suspect that most of you just read "topless" yadayadayadayada.

Keep-a-Breast