Week of October 5 – October 11, 2008

1. Spore
2. Nancy Drew: The Haunting of Castle Malloy
3. Warhammer Online: Age Of Reckoning
4. Civilization IV: Colonization Expansion Pack
5. The Sims 2 Apartment Life Expansion Pack
6. World Of Warcraft: Battle Chest
7. The Sims 2 Double Deluxe
8. World Of Warcraft
9. Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway
10. Crysis: Warhead

The ESA is giving E3 another go in 2009, still trying to find the sweet spot between the ear-splitting boom of the old E3, the painful, panicked confusion of E3 2007 and the dry as dust E3 2008. With the most recent E3 Media and Business Summit suffering from executive and public criticism that the show was an unqualified dud, the ESA may be looking to shift the show back to early June, a time that industry planners think is better compromise between the original E3 and the previous two iterations.

It would not only give publishers more time to spread out announcements between the show and Games Convention and Tokyo Game Show, it would give developers time to ready more polished demos without cutting into the critical development time of the approaching holidays.

An investigation led Memphis police detectives to Technicolor employee Rodney Gray, according to a police affidavit.

Detectives watched Gray leave his room Thursday at the InTown Suites, 3533 Hickory Hill, with a red bag.

They pulled him over for several outstanding driving offenses and found 31 games in the bag.

Detectives went back to the room and found a number of games and DVDs there. He told them he works at Technicolor and took the games and DVDs to sell, the affidavit states.

Developer Epic Games bills "Gears of War II" as the sequel to a "third-person tactical action game" featuring "reluctant war hero" Marcus Fenix. It's scheduled for release Nov. 7.

"Fable II" offers players the chance "to live the life they choose in an unimaginably open world environment," according to developer Lionhead Studios. It's scheduled for release Tuesday.

Officers recovered a total of 97 copies of the games, according to the affidavit. Another 807 DVDs were confiscated. All together, the games and DVDs were valued at more than $100,000.

Spending endless hours in front of a computer playing virtual fantasy games can ruin real lives and wreck real marriages, and surprisingly, the average player is 35 years old.

If video games can wreak havoc in adult lives, imagine the effect they could have on children. Dr. Phil challenges parents to audit the video game situation in their home. How much money are you spending on these games? Could you or your child be addicted?

A preview of the episode and its participants can be seen here, Phil's self-diagnosis checklist asks if you are addicted, and how to tune in can be found here.

Regarding many of the “reviews” on Sega’s Golden Axe: Beast Rider: Be wary. The majority of these people (can’t call them critics) either didn’t complete a fraction of the game, don’t understand game design, or just plain suck at games. The words “Hack ‘n’ Slash” are an instant red flag. Beast Rider is anything but. Mindlessly flailing in frustration because you can’t get the game's simple controls/timing down is no way to play the game. Most gamers out there who would buy Beast Rider are far better players than the people rushing through a level or two to write these sad reviews; a sad but ever pervasive sign of the times.

3D Realms is of course the company that helped back Remedy during the game's development.

After issuing a statement that LittleBigPlanet would be released in Europe no later than the week beginning November 3, Sony Europe has confirmed to GamesIndustry.biz that the game will be available in the UK on Wednesday November 5.

The game was officially delayed last week from its original launch of October 24 due to soundtrack lyrics which referenced the Qur'an.

Although games in the UK are usually released on a Friday, some titles are released mid-week to mark the occasion as a retail event.

There are problems, of course, but they tend to be minor annoyances. Context-sensitive prompts can be a little too sensitive to context, requiring a spot of shuffling back and forth to activate, and dialogue often takes a millisecond too long to load, resulting in a few stilted and unnatural conversations. There's a fair amount of backtracking, too, although fast travel is easily available, and an empty stretch of road is often a chance to enjoy another brief dust-up anyway. And despite the ambition of the game, I encountered precisely two bugs along the way: at one point I found myself trapped in a room I'd just looted when a hat-stand fell across the doorway and I had to fast-travel out, and on another occasion, a prostitute I was talking to got herself wedged in the wall of a townhouse, only to emerge out of the front door a few moments later looking faintly confused by the whole experience.

But these are quibbles compared to the grand scope. It took me two solid days of playing to scramble to the end of the narrative, and during that time, and due to a handful of particularly nasty choices - I had murdered innocents, I had laughed at a few funerals, I had Kicked a Chicken a Good Distance - I had somehow transformed from a nubile cutie in gypsy rags into Oliver Hardy's zombified older sister, bloated and saggy, my rotting skin covered in scars from inept battling, and the remains of my hairdo splattered unappealingly over my sweaty forehead. I had become distinctly unlovable, and yet the game was still willing to show me a good time.

IGN UK gave the game a 9.5/10, despite individual gameplay elements rarely excelling, or exciting:

Invest in Albion, its inhabitants and its history; embrace the power you’re afforded to shape yourself and the world around you and Fable II is an astonishing achievement. It’s not an easily definable, singular vision but an impressive, unparalleled attempt at empowering the player in ways no other game has before. While individual elements might struggle to shine on close scrutiny, it’s their harmonious integration that makes Fable II such a captivating, unforgettable experience. Yes, it breaks little new ground by traditional RPG standards but no game has come close to offering the kind of surprising, compelling, emotional immersion that permeates Fable II. It’s a game that rewards experimentation and exploration, not dogged single-minded persistence, in subtly brilliant ways. And while it’s true that my fat, greedy whore-killing hero has probably had his time in Albion, the world’s constant flux means the game still has other stories to tell – and I’m looking forward to hearing them all.

First, the entire key authentication / master server paradigm is changing for the first time in a Call of Duty PC title. In CoD:WW, you will be authenticating in-game against a more global master server. This server will keep track of and maintain unique Profile names (like a screenname) which will be tied to your CD Key. So while username / passwords will not be required to play our game, you will have globally unique profile names.

Why are we doing this? Because also for the first time ever in a Call of Duty PC title, we're bringing Friends and Invites (which are typically console staples) to the PC. So we have built-in Friends functionality. You can add friends, filter your servers by Friends (see which servers your friends are playing in), join their servers, etc. You can also invite any online friends to come join you in your current game. We didn't want the new Squad mechanics we've developed to get watered down on the PC, which is ultimately why we decided to bring you Friends & Invites, and thus globally unique profile names.

Now we understand that clan tags can change frequently, and it would be obnoxious and not very user friendly to keep changing your profile name. So we've added in clan tag prefixes, which will show up in-game. This should allow you to take full advantage of our Friends & Invites features, and still be able to make yourself more uniquely identifiable in-game.

So what does this have to do with the BETA?

You will be required to enter a CD Key for the BETA, much like you will when you get the full game this November. These PC keys will be available to all registered users of CallOfDuty.com, including any new users who sign up after the PC BETA releases. These keys aren't intended to limit the BETA to a certain number of players; they are here to allow you to create these unique profile names for our Friends and Invites features.

How will BETA servers work?

The PC BETA will pretty much be a limited MP distribution of our game. So you will be able to host your own servers, and GSP's will be able to sell BETA servers and put up as many dedicated servers as they'd like. All of this will function as if it were a regular Multiplayer game. It's important to note, that for the BETA, the dedicated server will be Windows only.

Will our XP / accounts / friends transfer over from the BETA?

No, all accounts will be deleted after the BETA, just like on the Xbox 360.

More specifics on when the BETA will be released, how it will be released, and where you'll be receiving your keys will be made available in my next update. Rest assured, we want to get you this BETA just as badly as you want to play it, so your patience is appreciated.

The new system will also help prevent rank hacking and other shenanigans.

"That's not an educated answer. In the last several years there have been at least 100 million PCs sold that have the capabilities or better of an Xbox 360. It's ridiculous to say that there's not enough audience for that game potentially and that it falls into this enthusiast extreme category when ported over to the PC. That's an uneducated response."

"LucasArts hasn't made a good PC game in a long time," he said. "That's my opinion. They make some pretty good games for the Wii, you know those little sticks you wave in the air, that seems like a natural fit for a lightsaber game, sure. But I think the last good PC game they made was probably Jedi Knight 2, and even their strategy games weren't that great. So I can understand why they would make that call."

Action-packed "Max Payne" shot its way to the top of the North American box office, grossing $18 million during the video game adaptation's first weekend in theaters, according to studio estimates on Sunday.

The dark, atmospheric film, which stars Mark Wahlberg as a cop in search of the men who killed his wife and child, outshone Oliver Stone's much-talked-about "W.," which debuted at No. 4 with a take of $10.6 million.

"The estimates for 'W.' were all over the place," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Media By Numbers. "You can't really expect that a politically charged movie like that would take the weekend over a big video game adaptation with a movie star in the lead role."

Download here.

OCMS: Roughly how long is the game and how many new maps will players get for multiplayer?

Chet Faliszek: Left 4 Dead was created to be replayable, so in that sense it is as long as people have been playing de-dust in Counter-Strike. Each campaign takes from one to two and half hours to play in co-op mode. In versus a campaign can take hours to complete as each side plays through the campaign.

The next game update brings with it a major new game-play feature – a new consequence system for PVP. Off the back of the PVP leveling system introduced in the last update, this new system aims to bring even deeper meaning to PVP and introduce real consequences for your actions. Players will be now run the risk of becoming a criminal or even a murderer depending on their actions in PVP.

If you take part in anti-social actions in PVP, picking on weaker foes and such you will find yourself accruing ‘murder points’ that will eventually mean the attitudes of NPCs in the world will change towards you! Murderers will be outcast from society and will have to depend on new outlaw camps which can be found at remote locations in various different playfields. You will still have access to vendors and travel through these camps, but that will now come at a cost! A consequence for being a dangerous individual!

It will be possible for those evil doers to redeem themselves however. Murderers can try to solve specific quests to lower their murder points to one day receive amnesty and loose the status of a murderer. Until that time other players can hunt down and kill murderers to punish them for their crimes. We think this system will introduce a great new dynamic to PVP game-play. Do you dare to try and live a life outside of the laws of the land? Do you have what it takes to be infamous, or indeed become famous for hunting down these most treacherous of player targets!