This week’s Georgia Straight includes my look at Microsoft’s Game Room, as well as reviews of, in alphabetical order, Alan Wake, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, Red Dead Redemption, Scrap Metal, Split/Second, and Super Mario Galaxy 2.

Lots of good stuff to play out there. Find some time.

NHL Slapshot is a video game being developed for Nintendo’s Wii, and you’ll play it by wielding a hockey stick.

Okay, it’s not an actual hockey stick. It’s not as big. Or as expensive. It’s a plastic mini-stick which holds the two Wii controllers, the Remote and Nunchuk. It’s much like the mini-sticks that I and my siblings, cousins, and friends used to use in the living room while playing knee hockey.

Which is to say that it’s enough of a hockey stick that you – or your kids – will be winding up to shoot virtual pucks at the television.

A word of advice. If you want to preserve your fancy flat-screen, carefully explain to your children – or husband/boyfriend – that they should not shoot actual pucks at the television.

Those little hockey sticks were part of the inspiration for NHL Slapshot, coming from EA Sports this September.

David Littman, creative director for EA Sports’ hockey games, created a prototype for the development team by sawing down a $200 composite stick and taping Wii controls to it. The final product, he told me by phone, is just like holding a real stick in your hands.

“When you want to take a slap shot, you wind up and shoot,” he said, “just like you would on the ice.” The hockey stick controller is also used to pass and body check.

In the past couple of years, EA Sports has only developed hockey video games for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. NHL Slapshot, being developed in Burnaby at EA Canada, expands the hockey simulation experience with a Peewee to Pro mode.

Joe Nickolls is the line producer on the game. He said that while the virtual hockey players start out younger than with the PS3 and Xbox 360 hockey games, they are doing the same things.

“You work your way up the ranks and the game gets progressively deeper as you go along,” he said on the phone. “This is not an arcade experience. You still need to be concerned with performance.”

NHL Slapshot, explained Nickolls, is as “deep or shallow as you want it to be”.

“You can play backyard hockey with your friends,” he said, “but you can also go full-on with five-on-five, drafts, trades, playoffs.”

NHL Slapshot will also include mini games such as a two-player shooter versus goalie mode, or two-on-two pickup.

Wayne Gretzky will be a playable character and is the cover athlete for the game. In a press release, the Great One said, “Being on the cover of the new Wii version of the game is exciting and is probably going to make me a bit cooler in the eyes of my kids.”

Gretzky was an easy choice, according to Littman and Nickolls, because he’s already done so much to grow the sport of hockey.

“EA has grown the sport of hockey through our video games,” Littman said, “and we just want to get hockey in the hands of more people. Gretzky’s grown the sport already. Now we can grow it together.”

Cross-posted at the Georgia Straight

Vancouver’s United Front Games studio releases its first game next week, and ModNation Racers is just what you want from a kart racer.

My look at it – and the studio – are featured in this week’s Georgia Straight. Also there is my review of the game.

On Cinco de Mayo (May 5), United Front Games invited the media to its studio in Yaletown to take a look at ModNation Racers. It was fitting, given that the kart-racing game … is partly inspired by Mexican wrestlers like Blue Demon.

In today’s Georgia Straight, I write about how the future for EA Sports – a video game developer – is to become a sports entertainment brand. And it’s doing so with some bold moves into the online space.

Sports games are Electronic Arts’ bread and butter, accounting for a third of the titles the video-game giant releases and a third of revenue. But in an interview by phone from EA’s Tiburon studio in Orlando, Florida, Pauline Moller explained that the future of the company’s EA Sports label may have less to do with video games than you might expect.

EA Games, another label under the Electronic Arts umbrella, is doing similar things, and Need For Speed World is leading the way.

The first Canadian Video Game Awards were handed out last night during a modest but slickly produced event at the Vancouver Convention Centre.

Some 650 people filled the ballroom. About 300 were industry VIPs seated at tables, with another 350 or so in the general seating area. And while the ballroom wasn’t filled to capacity, there was plenty of excitement and energy.

Early during the planning of the CVAs, there was a plan to include animation and digital effects among the award categories, but these were wisely dropped from the program. Instead, the CVAs focused on the Canadian video-game industry, presenting 11 awards, all to titles created by Canadian studios.

The fact that some of last year’s best games qualified for the awards simply speaks to the quality of games being developed in the country.

As it was, the two-hour event was just the right duration. Video Games Live — the symphonic celebration of video-game music — provided entertainment with four audio-visual segments that split up the handing out of the awards, including one segment honouring the history of video games created in Canada that ended with a title card pronouncing, “Look how far we’ve come.”

The line is somewhat of a mantra for Victor Lucas, co-executive producer and emcee of the event. He’s long been an advocate for the Canadian video-game industry, and the CVAs are an extension of his will, as much as anything. Lucas kept the program light and celebratory, although there were a couple of moments when the love-in got a bit syrupy.

As the organizers promised, the CVAs were a snappy affair, and they moved along with pace. It helped that the production crew for the event — Lucas enlisted his Greedy Productions staff who make EP Daily and Reviews on the Run — is used to putting together rapid-fire television shows. The technical aspects of the production were top-notch, with sound and lighting design that suited the space. Better yet, it seemed as though not a cue was missed, although some of the presenters had some fun with their own technical limitations.

The full list of winners is below, but the evening’s big winner was Ubisoft Montreal’s Assassin’s Creed II, which was nominated for six awards. It won four, including Console Game of the Year. Toronto’s Capybara Games was another multiple award winner, taking home the prizes for Critter Crunch and Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes.

Game of the Year, which was determined by on-line fan voting, went to Dragon Age: Origins, developed by Edmonton’s BioWare and published by Electronic Arts. That game also won the award for Best Writing.

PricewaterhouseCoopers representative Rick Griffiths said that despite his company being the adjudicators for such awards shows as the Oscars, “This is the one we’ve been waiting for.” It was only partially a joke, as he went on to say that in its latest analysis, his company was predicting that the video-game industry will be the world’s fastest growing entertainment sector for the next five years.

The entire event will be the focus of a 30-minute special airing on G4 on May 16 at 8 p.m.

The Canadian video-game development scene has indeed come a long way. As such, it deserves an opportunity to pat itself on the back. Even if it seems like nobody else gives a damn.

Winners of the 2010 Canadian Video Game Awards:

Best Audio
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II (developed by Relic Entertainment in Vancouver, published by THQ)

Best Technology
Tie between Assassin’s Creed II (developed by Ubisoft Montreal, published by Ubisoft) and Prototype (developed in Vancouver by Radical Entertainment, published by Activision)

Best Visual Arts
Assassin’s Creed II (developed by Ubisoft Montreal, published by Ubisoft)

Best Game Design
Assassin’s Creed II (developed by Ubisoft Montreal, published by Ubisoft)

Best Writing
Dragon Age: Origins (developed by BioWare in Edmonton, published by Electronic Arts)

Best Downloadable Game
Critter Crunch (developed and published by Toronto’s Capybara Games)

Best Handheld Game
Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes (developed in Toronto by Capybara Games, published by Ubisoft)

Most Promising Game
ModNation Racers (developed by United Front Games in Vancouver, published by Sony Computer Entertainment)

Best In-game Cinematic
Ghostbusters: The Video Game (created in Vancouver by Terminal Reality and Rainmaker, published by Atari)

Best Console Game
Assassin’s Creed II (developed by Ubisoft Montreal, published by Ubisoft)

Canadian-made Game of the Year
Dragon Age: Origins (developed by BioWare in Edmonton, published by Electronic Arts)

Cross-posted at the Georgia Straight