It's a lengthy podcast. The comment It's at timestamp 37:22 if you want to hear it for yourself. netGameRadio is suspender-popping proud at all the attention this has earned, but all that attention has put a whammy on its servers.

The entire podcast can be retrieved from TotalGamingNetwork, too.

The Inside Battlefield Show [netGameRadio via TotalGamingNetwork

The downside is that GameStrata registration is currently using a token system, requiring you to sign up in hopes of receiving an invite (similar to the moderate pain it was to first join Gmail). But we tested the service and received an invite with no problem after our registration. Here's the full list of games that GameStrata will be supporting at launch:

Lost Planet: Extreme Condition (PC, Xbox 360, PS3) Battlefield 2 (PC) Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PC) Universe at War (PC, Xbox 360) The Club (Xbox 360) - Coming February 19th

When watching this Battlefield 2 does the NES video (covering Track & Field, Super Mario Bros., Duck Hunt and Track & Field 2) you've got to wonder: Exactly how vast are the swathes of time available to gaming enthusiasts to put something like this together? That Mario segment alone must have taken a few hours, to coordinate jumps-on-noggin with avatar collapse. Still, whoever you are, oh lifeless yet inspired gamer, this beleaguered Kotaku blogger salutes you. Florian Eckhardt

This is the kind of thing that just makes me so angry! It's not necessarily the scumbag cheating hacks—I don't even play Battlefield 2, and this exploit could be a non-issue now for all I know, it's the awful nu metal. Seriously, people, what is wrong with you? Drowning Pool? Are you kidding? This song has gone from being just plain embarrassing to legendary cliche status as the worst example of a regrettable music trend. I'm begging you, for the love of God, please stop tacking on this aural diarrhea with your game highlight videos.

If you really need a peppy soundtrack to keep the viewer's interest levels up during your painstakingly edited FPS best of's, may I suggest "Shake Your Coconuts" by Junior Senior? Feel free to e-mail me for other suggestions when this particular song doesn't quite fit the mood.

Thanks for the video, Alan. Michael McWhertor

Perhaps the strongest advertisement I've ever seen for Battlefield 2, "The Pwned Life" apparently took a year to create and is voiced entirely by one man. It takes the form of a mockumentary on the life and times of a hardscrabble gang of soldiers, complete with soundtrack and interviews. Top-notch stuff and outstanding comedic timing. Eliza Gauger

In the meantime, I'll have to satisfy myself with Battlefield 2: Armored Fury. "US forces are fighting on their own soil — defend your territory against the MEC and Chinese forces, from the Alaskan pipeline to the prairies of the American Midwest." Except for the pinkos, bandannas and leg warmers, it sounds just like Red Dawn to me. At any rate, for 10 bucks, it's worth a shot. FLORIAN ECKHARDT

Battlefield 2: Armored Fury [EA.com]

Unfortunately, it all turns out to have been a sham — the 'Bush Killa' video wasn't made by Islamic terrorists at all, but instead was the creation of Battlefield 2 fan SonicJihad. More embarassingly, both SonicJihad's name and the title of the video that sparked the controvery are references to the hip-hop artist Paris, who released the Sonic Jihad album with a track called 'Bush Killa' on it... referring not to chimp-faced Dubya, but George Bush Senior.

In other words, overreactions all around. Although if we're guilty of being lazy in our research, so is the Defense Department.

Fan-made Battlefield 2 video mistaken for terrorist propaganda [Ars Technica]
Previously: Al Qaeda Using Video Games For Recruitment

Extremist groups like al Qaeda are using military style video games to recruit young Muslims, the US Defense Department told Congress. "What we have seen is that any video game that comes out ... they'll modify it and change the game for their needs," said Dan Devlin, a Defense Department public diplomacy specialist.

Reuters reports that games like EA's Battlefield 2 are getting modded, so that an man in an Arab headdress fights off American invaders with an automatic weapon. A narrator's voice underscores this by saying, "I was just a boy when the infidels came to my village in Blackhawk helicopters."

Of course Reuters has to add the requisite: "Critics of the U.S. video game industry have long blamed the products for violence among American teenagers in civilian society, including high-profile shootings at public schools."

And now due to these extremists, politicians will have another excuse to blame games. Thanks al Qaeda. Thanks a lot.

Full Article [Reuters] And thanks, CRAW!

If you're looking for a little bit of Thursday afternoon free gaming on your 360, we've just got word that Battlefield 2 is now available as a demo on Live. Just go to the Demo and Trailer section to download it — it clocks in at 380 megs, so this isn't a tiny Geometry Wars size download. Still, we're pleased that more demos are being released for 360, even as PC gaming companies actively abandon any effort to allow their players to try before they buy. We really do think demos discourage piracy.

Can you hear it? It's the sound of girlfriends and wives everywhere howling in righteous fury at boyfriends and husbands hunched over their computers testing out the latest Battlefield 2 patch. A few things in the patch notes worth mentioning: it looks like tons of guns have been retuned, players can no longer jump and shoot and server search filters are working properly. Some BF2 veteran who installs the patch leave us a comment and let us know how it's working out.

Battlefield 2 1.2 Released [WhoDigs?]

Via GamePolitics, we ran across a link to an article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about the growing need for video games that hold some of the Christian ideals. This is the second time in a couple of weeks that Christians and gaming have popped up together. The article has some folks wishing there were quality video games that reinforced Christian value systems (wtf, the 1991 game Bible Adventures isn't good enough? I kid). Though in the 1UP piece (God Mode) we linked, these gamers were OK playing Battlefield 2. All kidding aside, is there a viable market for games that reinforce Christian ethics? Probably on some level, but will major publishers take on the task of creating such games? I'd assume not. Maybe the casual market can pick up the slack...?

Christian Video Games a tiny Market [St. Louis Post-Dispatch]
Gaming for the Lord
Bible Adventures [SeanBaby]
God Mode [1UP]

Two new $10 booster packs were announced for Battlefield 2 today. The packs, which will retail for $10 each will see release in February and March, respectively. February's booster pack is called Euro Force and March's booster pack is entitled Armored Fury.

Battlefield 2 Two New Packs Announced [Game Gossip]

EA's Booster Packs [Petition]

Robin Williams isn't just a gamer, he's a sniper. I also figured him as more of a shotgun man myself.

A blogger got a chance to have a quick chat will Williams about gaming while the comedian was working on a film in the area.

Here's the conversation:

"Hey Robin - do you still play online games?"
"Oh way too much!" he said.
"What are you playing these days?" I asked
"Battlefield 2 - the 2 stands for 2 in the morning."
"Oh really? What class do you like?"
"Hmm?"
"What class do you like to play as?"
"Oh - the sniper. I'm always the sniper!" he said enthusiastically.
"Well I'll watch out for you"
"Well you can try - but by the time you see me you'll be dead!!"

Mork and Me [The Archies]

Panogames is a cool new site that does 360 degree panoramic screen captures from video games. The result is pretty amazing. So far the site has panocaps for Quake 4, GT Legends, Battlefield 2, GTE FIA GT Racing, Half Life 2 and Call of Duty 2.

Panogames [Official Site]

Gamespy is hosting a Battlefield 2 tournament that will make one lucky clan a quarter of a million bucks richer. The rules are kind of funky, however. As the two brackets of the tournament divide the teams by platform. The PS2 Champion and Xbox Champion will then meet on the console of the team who acquired the most points during bracketed play. That seems like an easy quarter of a million dollars if you score more points than the cross-platform counterpart. It's not all bad though, the finals' losing team still takes home $50 thousand for the team. So if anyone is looking for a 10th for their BF2 team, lemme know. I'm down for owning newbs.

Poor Electronic Arts. They've already had a little bit of a problem with their fantastically popular Battlefield 2 PC game. Now the modding community has screwed them, and if you can't trust modders who can you trust?

EA released an early build of their BF2 editor out to a few community leaders and "respectable mod teams" last week to help them work out the bugs. Within days the early build of the editor was out in the wild.

Now, I'm not in the blame the modders boat on the whole Hot Coffee issue, but I have to say that if you want to be taken seriously by developers, you need to not leak early stuff they're letting you test out.

BF2 Editor Pre-Release Leaked [BF2 Scene]