Star Gamers

Zac Efron, 19, and Vanessa Anne Hudgens, 18, tell me "Resistance" was their favorite game over the summer.

"The best game, I think ever, is PS 3’s ‘Resistance: Fall of Man,’" Hudgens says. "Whenever I play that game, or watch somebody play that game, I get so caught up in it. It’s so much fun, killing the aliens. And they’re so freaky, you get scared."

Now that video games are a national pastime, it’s no surprise celebrities have become game dorks. (Stars are just like us, right?) Efron describes himself as just that, a game "dork" stuck on "Halo," "Fuzion Frenzy" and various PS 3 and Xbox 360 titles.

"I’ll be playing PlayStation 3 and goofing off, then I’ll go to the grocery store and there’ll be photographers" from the tabloids, he says. "It’s hilarious" as a lifestyle.

Like gamers everywhere, Efron sometimes has trouble concentrating on real sports, because he’s used to controlling virtual sports stars with his thumbs.

"Dude," he tells me, "I was in London for Wimbledon, and I wanted to go see all my favorite players that I play in ‘Top Spin.’ … And I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, the character should have automatically dove!’ I find myself phantom-tapping a controller, like: ‘I hit R1 not R2!’"

I think of that phenomenon as "video game vision," when gamers see games as realer than reality. The entertainment industry eventually will cater to video game vision. In the future, I think, Efron and the rest of us will be able to watch real-time football games through the graphics of our modem-synced "Madden" games.

John Madden says, at the very least, sports broadcasts will have to let TV viewers pick which camera angles to watch.

"These players who grew up as gamers, they want to play the game," he says. "They don’t want to just sit there like a blob and watch. They want it to be interactive. It’s going to be like that someday."

Not every celeb gamer is a pro. Masi Oka, who portrays Hiro on "Heroes," rocks on "Madden" football games during solo PS 3 outings, but isn’t fantastic against real-live opponents, he says.

"I thought I was good until I played someone else and said, ‘Oh, wait. I guess I’m not that good,’" Oka, 32, says.

Meanwhile, other celebs are digging into the super popular, interactive Nintendo Wii. But a Wii mishap sent Zachary Levi to the emergency room.

Levi, 26, plays a dorky, accidental spy in NBC’s new TV show, "Chuck." ("Dork is the new cool," he says.) He injured himself while serving a tennis ball against a buddy in "Wii Sports."

"So I go for this overhead smash, and I put my hand through this light fixture in my living room, and literally glass showered the entire living room," Levi says. "There were shards of glass in the wall, I hit it so hard.

"I bring my hand down with the Wii controller dangling from my wrist by the safety strap — the SAFETY strap, by the way — and blood starts dripping from my hand."

You can see Levi’s 14 stitches if you look closely at his hand in the first episode of "Chuck."

"I didn’t sue," Levi says. "I’m hoping Nintendo hears about the story and gives me some free stuff!"

 

("Resistance: Fall of Man" retails for $60 for PS 3 — A pretty, basic sci-fi shooting game. Plays well. Looks good. Moderately challenging. Rated "M" for blood, gore, intense violence, strong language. Three stars out of four.)