The finalists in 12 categories were announced today for the upcoming Canadian Videogame Awards, which will be held in Vancouver on Wednesday, May 18, 2011 at the Centre for the Performing Arts. More than 70 nominations were received this year from all parts of Canada, with 31 submissions represented in the list of finalists. Winners will be voted on by a body of “industry experts” from across the country.

Members of the public can cast their vote for Canadian Game of the Year at www.canadianvideogameawards.com

The Canadian Videogame Awards will be held the night before the Canadian Game Conference (formerly GDC-Canada) in Vancouver. As the third largest developer of video games in the world, the show will celebrate Canada’s spot on the world stage as a leader in interactive entertainment. Video Games Live will provide the entertainment for the evening and the show will broadcast across the country on Citytv and G4 Canada through the Rogers Network. Tickets start at $30 and are now on sale at the event website.

The CVA’s are sponsored by in part by Kinect for XBOX 360, G4 Canada, Sony PlayStation, Nintendo 3DS, Entertainment Software Association of Canada, The Georgia Straight and the Canadian Studios of Electronic Arts.

And the finalists are…

Game of the Year

· Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood

· Dead Rising 2

· FIFA 11

· Mass Effect 2

· Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction

Best Console Game (wait isn’t that the same…never mind)

· Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood

· Dead Rising 2

· FIFA 11

· Mass Effect 2

· Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction

Best Game on the Go

· Lil’ Pirates

· Osmos for iPad

· Scrabble for iPad

· A Space Shooter for 2 Bucks

· Trainyard

Best Downloadable Game

· Dead Rising 2: Case Zero

· Deathspank

· HOARD

· Shank

· A Space Shooter for 2 Bucks

Best Audio

· Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood

· Dawn of War II: Chaos Rising

· Mass Effect 2

· Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions

· Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction

Best Social/Casual Game

· Dex Hamilton: Alien Entomologist

· GardenMind

· Mercenaries of War

· Pocket God on Facebook

· Pot Farm

Best Game Design

· Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood

· Deathspank

· Mass Effect 2

· Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction

· Trainyard

Best Technology

· Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood

· Kinect for XBOX 360

· Mass Effect 2

· Scrabble for iPad

· Your Shape Fitness Evolved

Best Visual Arts

· Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood

· Mass Effect 2

· Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions

· Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction

· Tron: Evolution

Best Writing

· Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood

· Dawn of War II: Chaos Rising

· Mass Effect 2

· Prince of Persia – The Forgotten Sands

· Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction

Best Student Game

· Codex

· Ginkgo

· Hootlin

· WOMP!

Innovation Award

· Kinect Joy Ride

· ModNation Racers

· Scrabble for iPad

· Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions

· Your Shape Fitness Evolved

For full event information please visit: www.canadianvideogameawards.com or follow along on Facebook or Twitter. The Canadian Videogame Awards are produced by Reboot Communications in partnership with Greedy Productions and are officially endorsed by the Entertainment Software Association of Canada and DigiBC. The producers are joined by a national committee of developers, leaders, and associations from the Canadian interactive entertainment industry.

A new trailer for The First Templar has been released which shows Roland fighting a bunch of guys.

What struck me about this video more than anything were the foes. Look at the guys surrounding Roland while he’s hacking away at their comrades. They just stand there. As some of you know I have been playing Demon’s Souls a lot lately, dying more than I care to admit, and watching this video after playing that…how quaint.

But seriously why don’t the guys just stab Roland when his back is to them? He’s right there. Just stab the guy.

Finally, how is that rated T? Isn’t that last bit a tad…graphic?

Welcome to Don’t Shoot the Food, a semi-regular series where I combine my love of gaming with my love of cooking and eating.

In June my wife and I will celebrate 15 years of marriage and in October we’ll celebrate 20 years as a couple. Truly this is more of an accomplishment for her than me as while she’s easy to deal with, being married to a man-child, perpetually stuck somewhere around ten years old can’t be any picnic. That being said, one advantage I do have in the whole “ease of life” area is that while I’ll eat practically anything, my wife is somewhat of a picky eater.

Now, I don’t blame her for this. Her mom is not a great cook and seems to object to flavor based on some sort of deep seated religious belief, so my wife wasn’t exactly raised in a home that perpetuated a love of food. She had to eat blood sausage for Pete’s sake. I’m lucky she wants to eat anything. Unfortunately, her pickiness, which has improved greatly over the years, is also combined with a general squeamishness around meat. My wife enjoys a good cheeseburger, she just prefers to think that the sandwich grows on a bush somewhere. I think that, for the most part, she’d prefer to be a vegetarian except for the whole part about not liking to eat cooked vegetables. Raw is fine, but if they’re cooked, I have a very limited menu to choose from and they have to be prepared so as to retain their rigidity. In the grand scheme of things, not a big deal, but when you factor in the fact that my son is also not a big meat eater, it makes coming up with vegetarian fare that still provides protein something of a challenge.

Now, part of what makes cooking a challenge is that I get bored easily both with eating and with preparing. My family is pretty content to eat the same things but I’m not. I realize this just makes things harder on myself, and at times the result of my experimenting is a dinner that only I enjoy, but it’s a small price to pay for amassing a great collection of tasty dishes. At the end of the day, I love to cook, but I really love to eat and not just eat, but eat a bunch of different things, so I’m ok with making extra work for myself.

A couple of weeks ago I came across a recipe in Cooking Light for a pita sandwich that used white beans as the base and had all sorts of chopped up vegetables, all in a lime based dressing. What the hell, I thought, let’s give this a try. Strangely enough, my wife absolutely loved it. I mean, she could not stop talking about it, wanted me to make it when my mom and sister come (my sister is a full on vegetarian) and said I should write it up “in your little food column”. So here we are, a few days after her birthday, so I figured in honor of her recent celebration of yet another year survived on our glorious planet, I’d write it up.

Before we continue though, I have to give a very public and very big “Thank You” to No High Scores reader and community member dranore. Dranore has, for the past three weeks, made the dish in the column, taken an excellent photograph of said dish and then incorporated the photo into the logo for the post. Take a look at the last three columns and you’ll see what I mean. He doesn’t have to do this but I’m glad he does so I wanted everyone here to not only know about his work, but also to know how much I appreciate it. Dranore, thank you so very, very much.

Enough yapping! Let’s eat!

Southwestern White Bean Pita Pockets – Cooking Light

The biggest hurdle to this dish is that it involves a lot of chopping. It’s not hard, but it can be time consuming. You will need a food processor for this one as you’re going to be making a hummus of sorts, just using white beans and lime juice instead of the usual chickpeas and lemon juice. The nice thing about the sandwiches is that you can use whatever vegetable toppings you want. The next time I make this I may fry up some corn and summer squash and see how that tastes. The other nice thing is that the leftovers keep well so if you have extra, your lunch for the next day is taken care of.

Ingredients

Make four sandwiches.

1. 1 1/2 tablespoons lime juice, divided – Doesn’t have to be fresh. You’re not making a Key Lime pie or anything.
2. 4 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided
3. 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
4. 1/4 teaspoon salt, divided
5. 1/4 teaspoon ground red pepper
6. 2 (15-ounce) cans white beans, rinsed, drained, and divided
7. 1/2 cup diced plum tomato – I couldn’t find a plum tomato that didn’t look like it had been worked over in an alley so I used grape tomatoes and just cut them in quarters to make 1/2 cup.
8. 1/4 cup diced red bell pepper
9. 1/4 cup diced seeded peeled cucumber
10. 3 tablespoons diced red onion
11. 1 tablespoon chopped fresh cilantro
12. 1 small jalapeño pepper, seeded and minced – Be careful here. You don’t want to get that oil on your fingers and then rub your eyes. Ouchie!
13. 2 (6-inch) pitas, cut in half
14. 4 Boston lettuce leaves
15. 1/2 cup crumbled queso fresco – This should be in the refrigerated section of the grocery store with the fresh salsa and tortillas. Mine came in a wheel and you just break off pieces and crumble it in the sandwich. The cheese has a really nice, somewhat salty flavor. You could go with feta cheese if you can’t find the queso fresco, but definitely try and get the real deal as it’s a damn good cheese.
16. 4 lime wedges

Cooking Steps

1. Combine 1 TBL lime juice, 2 tsp oil, cumin, 1/8 teaspoon salt, red pepper, and 1 cup beans in a food processor. Run that sucker until the mixture is smooth. Stop to scrape it down the sides as needed. I couldn’t get mine totally smooth, so don’t worry if there are some small bits. You just don’t want huge bean chunks.
2. Put the rest of the lime juice, oil, salt and beans into a large bowl. Add the tomato, bell pepper, cucumber, red onion, cilantro and jalapeño. Toss it all to get it good and mixed up.
3. Open a pita half and put about three and a half tablespoons bean mixture into the pita half. Add a lettuce leaf, about 3/4 cup vegetable mixture and two TBL crumbled cheese. Serve with a lime wedge.

That’s all there is to it. Again, it’s time consuming only because chopping everything takes time, but other than that, it’s really easy and just the thing for the summer months when it’s hot and you don’t want to cook. These ingredients would also travel fairly well if you want to get your picnic on.

As much as I have complained about it in the past, I wouldn’t trade my wife’s pickiness for anything in the world as it has caused me to grow as a cook and seek out new dishes, like this one. In any good marriage, each person pushes the other to get them to grow as a person, so it only makes sense that would extend to the kitchen as well.

Still hungry? Check out the Don’t Shoot the Food archive.

I was sitting in a meeting at my day job recently in which we were discussing doing a Wii-related book. I’m the only gamer on the team so my first comment was that we need to factor in the possibility Nintendo might announce a new console this year, possibly as soon as E3. God I love it when I’m right.

Yesterday, Game Informer reported they have “multiple sources” willing to confirm Nintendo plans to unveil their next console at E3 (which runs June 7th through June 9th). From GI:

We have confirmed with multiple sources that this new home system is capable of running games at HD resolutions. There are conflicting reports, however, as to whether its graphics will be comparable to those on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 – meaning it could surpass or fall short of those systems.

The lack of HD video has always been a sticky issue for gaming on the Wii; that their next effort will support HD is a given. What will be interesting to see is if this is basically a Wii 1.5 that adds HD support, but keeps most every other part of the ecosystem the same, or if this is the opening volley to establish a next generation console. I would normally put my money on former rather than the latter, but the late 2012 release window indicates otherwise. To be sure, whatever Nintendo’s plan, it’ll be interesting to see if this alters whatever Microsoft and Sony have in the works. Fresh off releases of the Kinect and Move, you can bet that neither are interested in putting a new console on the market in the next 3 years. But if Nintendo puts out a legit next gen console in late 2012? They’re going to need an answer in 2013; 2014 at the latest. Let the games begin!

Ian Cummings, the Creative Director of the Madden NFL franchise, along with other members of the Madden team, has left the company according to Mr. Cummings’ twitter feed as well as other published reports.

I first read about this on the PastaPadre sports blog. Cummings confirmed his departure via Twitter this morning saying, “Thanks EA and Tiburon for an amazing 10+ years! Today is my last day. Surreal, but alas I must move on. Thanks to those sending kind words!”

What this means for Madden 12 is anyone’s guess. We are going to have Madden Ultimate Team Lead Designer Josh Looman on the podcast soon and I’m quite certain this is a subject that will come up.

As a side note: I know Ian Cummings (professionally) and I have spent hours talking with him at E3 about sports, Madden, Madden fans, and the direction of sports games in general. Ian’s a passionate guy, truly loves football, did a lot to turn that game around over the past few years, and quite honestly deserved a bit more credit/patience from the Madden faithful than he sometimes received.

The Humble Frozenbyte Bundle has raked in over $500,000 so far, an incredible amount, but there’s still more time for you to get $50 worth of games and help out a good cause at the same time. Head over to the Humble Bundle site and watch the donations tick up in real time! You can also see the top contributors, a list currently led by Garry’s Mod creator Garry Newman, as well as buy the games if you haven’t already done so. Go charity!

More news from Good Old Games today as it was announced that, woo hoo, the company is now offering the Alone in the Dark Trilogy.

But the “big” news is this: With the upcoming release of The Witcher 2, GoG is going to offer The Witcher: Enhanced Edition Director’s Cut at a 50% discount running from May 10 to May 24. If you are going to play the sequel — my advice: do this first.

I was told today that I was going to have to get a new video card (my old GeF 8800GT is coughing at the thought) and maybe even to go 6GB RAM in order to play The Witcher 2. It’s been a while since I upgraded anything so…

I guess I should ask the wife.

I played Backbreaker and wanted to like it. It just didn’t click. Even after the mega patch I just could never get into it. It does have cult status around the football gaming world and it certainly has its share of fans. Maybe this one will sway me.

PR ahead and it’s been a while since my red pen of redaction was exercised:

Prepare yourself for the ultimate gridiron showdown! (Backbreaker Vengeance). 505 Games and NaturalMotion Games announced today that Backbreaker Vengeance, the next chapter in the genre-changing Backbreaker franchise, will smash through (be released) on to Xbox LIVE Arcade for the Xbox 360 videogame and entertainment system for Microsoft this summer.

Backbreaker Vengeance takes the intensity and AAA appeal of the original Backbreaker Football console game and combines it with the pick-up-and-play nature of the multi-million selling iPhone games to create a one-of-a-kind sports experience for digital download on Xbox LIVE Arcade for Xbox 360. It takes as its inspiration the wildly popular “Tackle Alley” mini-game in Backbreaker Football to deliver an all-new arcade slant on football.

Backbreaker Vengeance marks the first time the series has been available as a digital download via Xbox LIVE Arcade for Xbox 360, featuring non-stop, hard-hitting arcade action; bone-crunching tackles; and tons of swagger from end-zone to end-zone. Unprecedented, hard hitting tackles (with no pre-canned animations) and jaw-dropping (unique) graphics complement the distinct pick-up-and-playability that proved so infectious with (of) Backbreaker Football’s “Tackle Alley” mini-game.

Whether you takedown or touchdown…it’s Vengeance!

For more information on Backbreaker Vengeance, please visit http://www.facebook.com/Backbreakergame

We are one step closer to Minority Report.

Not the part about the ball of wisdom telling you the name of a murderer. But remember that crazy thing Tom Cruise was wearing and he was frantically sliding pictures around an image screen? When I heard about this Netflix stoty that’s the first thing that popped in my head. It sort of makes me want to get a Kinect.

No, not really. (It does sound neat though)

Here’s the official word from “Major Nelson”

Today we released an update to the Netflix experience on Xbox 360. The next time you start up Netflix, you’ll be prompted to accept the update which introduces Kinect support for Netflix. That means controller-free navigation of thousands of movies and TV show, allowing you to use just the sound of your voice or wave of your hand to control your favorite Netflix content.

(I’m telling you that is Minority Report! My wife would HATE me if we had this. Every show and movie we watch would be a complete spectacle of me ordering the Xbox to do my bidding. “Bring me the Bore Worms!” I really may need to get this.)

You’ll be able to select movies and TV shows recommended for you by Netflix, as well as play, pause, fast forward and rewind using gesture or voice. Kinect support for Netflix on Xbox LIVE will also feature an exclusive new recommendation channel that is controller-free and uses a smart engine to suggest movies or TV shows based on your viewing habits and instant queue. Try it out and let me know what you think.

*Update: Kotaku is reporting this works about as well as a pet rock doing jumping jacks, so if anyone has tried this, let me know.

Just a quick heads up that I am still tinkering with our auto spam filter. The good news is that it’s catching almost all of the crazy boot selling spam.

And believe me they keep trying to sell you some boots.

The bad news is that it catches some legit posts as well. Not a lot but some. I’m trying to find the sweet spot and I honestly have no clue why it says some things are spam and others are not but — and I am basing this on some of your comments — we are not censoring anyone in the comment section. There’s no one reading your comments and then approving them. It’s all automated. My best advice for now is, if you write a long drawn out comment, CTRL-C copy it before posting it so if it does get caught in filter land you can edit it and repost. I can lower the filter guard a bit but if I do that we’re back to Boot-A-Mania.

So, please have some patience and I am publishing the comments that are legit that enter the spam filter.

Rest assured we are not ‘The Man’ and we are not trying to keep you down.