Ubisoft's action-stealth game Assassin's Creed 2 already has its predecessor on the run for first-week sales, to the tune of 1.6 million units worldwide. That's 32 percent more than Ubisoft's original medieval sneaker, which, working backwards from that figure, sold about 1.1 million units during its inaugural sales week in November 2007.

Video games don't respect humanitarian laws, according to a study of virtual 'war crimes' in contemporary shooters like Modern Warfare 2 and Army of Two, and whose results, say researchers, are 'as deflating as reality'. Swiss human rights groups Pro Juventute and TRIAL ("track impunity always") chose to analyze video games and not literature or film, which they view as 'passive' mediums, compared with 'shooter games, [in which] the player has an active role in performing the actions'. What's more, says the report, games are used as military training tools and set during present-day conflicts, 'thus illustrating the realism these games have now achieved'.

Of all the Mario Kart games, the best was probably the first, and now you can see why for 800 Wii Points, or about eight US dollars. We're talking the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) original here, born 17 years ago in 1992. It supported 1 to 2 players, packed eight playable Mario-verse characters, and offered three championship cups divvied into three distinct 'kart' classes.

Care to take your very own Federation starship for a spin and maybe right a few of the wrongs done by Paramount writers to the franchise over the past decade or two? The thought of beaming down to planets and playing World-of-Away-Team-Craft have you grinning from pointed latex ear-to-ear? Has the new Star Trek MMO got a deal for you! If you're too impatient to wait for Star Trek Online's planned early February launch, you can beam onboard a few weeks early to give the game a shake in open beta.

Microsoft wants you on Xbox LIVE for the weekend with, of course, a view toward forever, and it's prepared to temporarily waive the cover fee to grab your attention.

After years of third-stringing it, Sony's beleaguered PS3 may finally be rallying, according to sales data cited on Sony's US PlayStation blog. The company's American division reports year-over-year October hardware sales lifted nearly 70 percent, and says its online PlayStation storefront clinched record revenues, with downloads up 60 percent over the same period last year.

Before you ask, no, the PS3 isn't getting an Xbox 360-equivalent Facebook interface in today's version 3.10 Facebook-angled firmware release. That's the bad news. The good news, if you're PS3-do-or-die, is that it actually adds a few bits Microsoft's implementation doesn't support yet.

Fire up your Xbox 360 later today and you'll discover your social network just broadened by a factor of two. Microsoft teased Xbox 360 Facebook and Twitter integration at E3 this summer and rolled it out to beta testers several weeks ago, and it's finally available to everyone starting today.

Nintendo says a high-definition upgrade for the Wii remains a distant future endeavor, dismissing criticism that the system needs a visual boost to be creatively competitive.

Modern Warfare 2 is no longer available in Russia for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 owners, it seems, despite the game hitting store shelves as scheduled early last week. Noticed by fan site Hellforge on Friday, Russian game site GotPS3 claims Russian officials had threatened to ban the game, prompting retailers to yank copies from store shelves and distributors to shut down the outflow of new stock.

Has there ever been video or photo coverage of terrorist violence that hasn't seemed somehow detached from it? All our images of Oklahoma City are post-op shots of a cratered nine-story federal building. Videos of the planes crashing into the Twin Towers are generally from distant vantages. The short clips of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold terrifying fellow high school students with Hi-Point 995 carbines and TECH-DC9 semi-automatic pistols played endlessly by cable news channels are from blurred, black and white security cameras, and Harris and Klebold aren't in most of them.