The assiduous censorship of Australia's interactive entertainment industry continued last week when another high profile game title was turned back at the border. The denial of being granted the maximum videogame MA15+ rating due to its violence means Konami's Silent Hill: Homecoming is now illegal to sell, rent, or advertise in Australia. It also marks the fourth game to be refused classification this year by the Classification Board (formerly the OFLC) alongside Dark Sector, Shellshock 2: Blood Trails, and Fallout 3. While many gamers will bay for blood and shout cries extolling the impingement of civil liberties and our perceived steady decline into a nanny state, it's worth reminding the vocal (but uninformed) masses not to aim their hatred towards the Classification Board. Yes, they are the public face of classification, but ultimately they're as hamstrung as the average Aussie gamer in the face of antiquated policy set out by a myopic government.

Australia is now marred with quite a reputation on the international stage when it comes time to decide if products are fit for sale in our country, and it's an issue being picked up on foreign shores. GU Comics has put together a great strip (I guess it's still a strip if there's only one cell?) with their take on how backwards our current system is.

I'm sorry. This post is not politically charged in any way, shape, or form, but I simply couldn't go past this photo without making a small change...

When pondering the mind doesn't keep me up at night and I'm left to my own devices, I've been known to play games. My arguable World of Warcraft addiction, in addition to eating several hundred of hours of my time, has actually opened my eyes to some of the more subtle game mechanics which keep people coming back for more. Every player has their own reason for questing that one bubble closer to the constantly moving player level cap, completing their tier six armour set, or grinding Enraged Earth Spirits until they have enough primal earth to finish whatever the hell it is they're crafting. Thottbot, Allakhazam and other sites have become bibles to players trying to calculate exactly how many of monster X they're going to have to kill, and by association the amount of time they'll have to invest to get that all-important payoff.

There's an interesting read over at Eurekalert at the moment looking at men and women and their brain functions while gaming, particularly the direct correlation between territoriality and reward/addiction portions of the brain. No surprise then that guys got a little more into it than the ladies, and it goes a long way to explaining why men love the King of the Hill game types so much.

The highly-anticipated action title Heavenly Sword, which is exclusive to the PlayStation 3 platform, is out on shelves and receiving plenty of well-earned praise. So what's next for developer Ninja Theory? We caught up with studio co-founder Nina Kristensen to ask her a few questions about women in games development, female protagonists, and the future of the Heavenly Sword brand.

Looks like plenty of hardcore Halo fans opted to stay home and pick their copies up on launch day this time around with small crowds at the major Sydney stores. We staked out EB Bondi Junction and attacked people waiting in line with our video camera to find out what made them come out and pick up their copies rather than wait 9 hours and get it the following day.

The skateboarding game scene is about to change with the launch of EA's Skate. We caught up with John Rattray, pro skater and now game character to discuss his involvement with the project, some of his skate injuries, and the new Flickit control system.

You've played Guitar Hero, and you love the shredding, but you're sick of being tethered to your television set and wired guitar. Jam Sessions brings you all the things you love about playing the virtual guitar, without the wires. GameSpot AU recently caught up with Ben Taylor, product manager at Ubisoft Australia to discuss their brand new rhythm title Jam Sessions for the Nintendo DS.

Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney and head-boot delivery system. You don't even have to be a fan to enjoy this one.

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The Xbox 360 recently celebrated its first birthday Down Under, and then put another notch on its belt, getting a nice anniversary present with its one millionth piece of software sold. While we're still waiting with bated breath for an announcement from Microsoft Australia on the availability and pricing of the Xbox 360 Elite model (the black version with HDMI and the hard disk we're reviewing here), MS has thrown Aussie Xbox users a bone in the form of the matching black accessories for the Elite, and a new hard disk drive for the storage challenged.

The new drive is primarily targeted at those who purchased a core system pack -- the one without a HDD or wireless controllers. It's also designed as a replacement for the 20GB model found pre-installed on the premium pack 360s and gives users more room for their media.

The 20GB disk drive found on the more expensive model of the Xbox 360 slots into a groove on the top of the console and provides storage space for save games, user-ripped CD audio and the plethora of content available on Xbox LIVE, including: game demos, Xbox LIVE Arcade games, and more.

At a recommended retail price of AU$229.95, the 120GB HDD for the Xbox 360 certainly isn't cheap, and as a point of reference, the retail price of a 5400rpm SATA drive on its own will run you somewhere between AU$85 and AU$120 if you shop around -- about half the cost of this product. Interestingly, even with our strong US dollar exchange rate, we normally pay around twice the US RRP for games. This isn't the case for this hard drive, with US gamers getting stung for US$180 (AU$212).

So what do you get for about half the cost of a new Xbox 360 core console pack? Our kit came with the 120GB hard drive, a transfer cable to connect up and sync your console data, and a DVD with the software to do it. There are only two methods of working it, so you'd have to be a real monkey to bugger it up. Install the hard drive in to the top of your core system, turn on the console and begin using it. Or if you already have a drive installed, plug one end of the cable into the port on the bottom of the new drive and the other into the USB sockets on the front of the console and put in the DVD to begin the transfer.

The software will run automatically from the Xbox dashboard taking you into a transfer menu. The 120GB drive comes preinstalled with Xbox LIVE Arcade game demos and some video content, which is nice if you're installing it as your first HDD. Unfortunately if you're upgrading from the standard 20GB drive, the first thing it wants to do is a quick format, junking all the freebies so you can copy across your profiles and save games. The software did warn us that once transferred you won't be able to copy the data from the 120GB back to the 20GB. Although we can't see any reason you'd want to anyway.

While the 120GB hard drive may seem like a great upgrade -- and at six times the existing capacity it is -- normal users are unlikely to even fill the smaller drive by discriminately downloading content from Xbox LIVE and not storing their entire CD collection on their console. US users have a more legitimate use for the larger drive, as they're able to access movies and television shows through the Xbox LIVE IP TV services. Unless this service rolls out soon in Australia, it's hard to justify the steep retail price of the drive when the 20GB will do the job.

If your sole reason for wanting one is so you can store more multimedia content on the drive, you may also want to consider that the Xbox 360 is able to stream wirelessly and via Ethernet when paired with a PC running either Windows Media Center or Windows Media Player 11. The cost of this unit will buy you the best part of a terabyte of PC hard drive storage you can use to store your content on, and watch remotely using your console as a set top client.

This is by no means a technically flawed product in that it does exactly what it says it will on the box. It's a 120GB hard drive, it comes with software and a cable to sync data between two drives, and it stores multimedia content. Its cost however is slightly prohibitive, making it a little hard to swallow even for hardcore gamers, given the streaming options are already included in the box regardless of your choice of console pack. If you're a gamer who has purchased the core package and now feels the need for space, then you've got two options in the 20GB and 120GB hard drives. If you're a premium console owner with an existing drive, you may want to put those 230 clams towards a couple of new release games, or an armful of stuff hitting the bargain bins.

Lunch, one of the most satisfying parts of the day. Working in the heart of the Sydney CBD we have plenty of choice when it comes to picking something to fill the hunger hole. So imagine our surprise when while wandering around the other day looking for something to munch on we accidentally stumbled across an arcade machine haven nestled in among the numerous PC component stores in Capitol Square. It's not your traditional arcade hangout, there's no Street Fighter, Time Crisis or Virtua Tennis here (we know where all the local ones are). Hidden in amongst the approximately eleventeen billion various photobooths we found a couple of those claw games where you move it around, press the button to drop the arm and act surprised when it drops your prize on the way to the escape chute and you don't win. You know, those machines you see at carnivals and in dodgy cinema lobbies.

Ordinarily we'd just keep on walking, but there was something special about these machines -- they were filled to the brim with various plush Nintendo game character toys! Official ones, direct from Japan no less!

I'll spare you guys the fine details, like exactly how many coins we plowed into the various machines, but let's just say they've made their quota for the month, and the economic stability we've now given the company who runs them means they shouldn't have any trouble getting that new Lexus they've had their eye on. Between the five of us, most walked away a prize each (Ando even liberated two) and the office has a few more fuzzy mushrooms, Goombas and a Doraemon than we did last week. The people that didn't win are set to go back next week. Perhaps we can collect the whole set -- we don't have any doubles yet.

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