via Games Industry


In the wake of the Manhunt 2 rating furor, several US Senators have called for a review of the ESRB's ratings process.

According to Game Politics, Senators Hillary Clinton (D-NY), Joe Lieberman (ID-CT), Evan Bayh (D-IN) and Sam Brownback (R-KS) sent the letter to ESRB president Patricia Vance yesterday.

All four Senators have been critics of the videogame industry in the past, with Lieberman generally credited with pressuring the industry to create the ratings system after Congressional hearings in the mid-1990's.

Brownback has legislation pending in the Senate which would mandate that the ESRB play games to their entirety before assigning a rating.

The letter made reference to the BBFC ban on Manhunt 2 in which it found that the game contained "unremitting bleakness and callousness of tone." It also noted that the BBFC refused to rate a revised Manhunt 2 in October 2007.

The Senators expressed concern over the Nintendo’s Wii version of the game, suggesting that the Wii's motion-sensitive controller "permits children to act out each of the many graphic torture scenes and murders."

"In sum, we ask your consideration of whether it is time to review the robustness, reliability and repeatability of your ratings process, particularly for this genre of 'ultra-violent' videogames and advances in game controllers," the letter stated. ...

via Computer and Video Games


Ubisoft has revealed a sequel to last year's Rainbow Six outing in Sin City, Rainbow Six Vegas 2.

The sequel (yes, it's still set in Las Vegas) will be hitting PS3, Xbox 360 and PC in March 2008, with a new single-player campaign and "some surprises" left over for versus and co-op modes. Other than that, Ubisoft is reluctant to reveal any more about the sequel.


The sequel will again be developed by Ubisoft Montreal. We're sure Clancy fans will be delighted, but we'll wait and see how much the second game has to offer before we get excited.


One screenshot here ...

via Eurogamer


Microsoft has announced that Halo 3 will receive its first premium downloadable content on 11th December.

The "Heroic Map Pack" features three new maps and will cost 800 Microsoft Points (GBP 6.80 / EUR 9.30) to begin with, before being made available for free in spring 2008 ahead of another map pack's release.

The three maps in this one are called Standoff, Rat's Nest and Foundry.

The first, Standoff, is described as a symmetrical valley map with bases at either end and a field of boulders in the middle, and is said to be ideal for medium sized objective and Slayer game-types.

Rat's Nest, meanwhile, promises "vast, labyrinthine passages" and an "indoor vehicular paradise" that claims to have been influenced by the Campaign mode, and works well for big team battles.

All three maps are compatible with Forge for editing, but the final map, Foundry, gets a special nod in this sense, with Microsoft identifying its industrial warehouse confines as ideal for tweaking, with every single object manoeuvrable, allowing you to place stairways, walls, bridges and tunnels as you adjust its layout to suit your multiplayer objectives.

Microsoft also says that this week's Xbox Live Arcade game will be Undertow, the much-trailed underwater shooter from Chair, which will cost 800 Microsoft Points when it releases at 9am GMT on Wednesday, 21st November. ...

via Eurogamer


Having gotten ourselves excited about Half-Life 2: Episode Two PC stats earlier, it'd be remiss of us not to remark on the stats fed to the world by Bungie on Friday about how people have been doing with Halo 3.

The headline statistic is that 43.28 percent of people whose Xbox 360s are connected to Xbox Live have finished the game on Normal difficulty, while 15.14 percent have conquered it on Legendary. A (surprisingly large, if you ask us) 2.07 percent of people have unlocked all 1000 points of the Gamerscore.

Bungie's regular weekly update also reveals that 8.68 percent of people have unlocked the Marathon Man Achievement, which involves locating and accessing all the Terminals in the Campaign mode. Those are people. That's the sun. It's going to be all right.

If you want to see how some of your fellow Eurogamers are doing, poke your nose around the Halo 3 gamepage's door and you can check out your own Friend leaderboard, among other things, and note that really quite a lot of you have all 49 Achievements unlocked.

Finally, Bungie's latest update also says to expect some sort of news today, 19th November, claiming that "folks are definitely going to want to check back in here at Bungie.net and keep faces pressed to their monitors like children breathing on school bus windows in November, because there will be news". So more on that later, presumably. ...

via Games Industry


Microsoft has launched a promotion offering 10 free Xbox Live arcade titles to new and existing consumers.

New consumers who buy an Xbox 360 can join with an existing user to take advantage of a 'recommend a friend' promotion, with hit titles including Sonic the Hedgehog, Every Extended Extra Extreme, Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting and Zuma Deluxe on offer.


The promotion runs from October 1 until December 14. ...

via Computer and Video Games


Dynasty Warriors 6, the latest in the brawler series that, for some strange reason, seems to have gamers in the Far East going bananas for it, will be out in British stores from March 7 for 360 and PS3.

DW6 sticks to the same formula of previous games of the series - you run around fields in an ancient China setting and batter the snot out of swarm after swarm of enemy guards.

Koei says that a new graphics engine makes this "by far the most impressive looking Dynasty Warriors yet," not that Dynasty Warriors has ever struck as being particularly pretty.

We've got 12 new screens below anyway, so you can decide for yourself.


Screenshots here ...

via Computer and Video Games


Today's 2.01 PS3 firmware update was released solely to fix instability issues on the console, but it's suspected it may have done the complete opposite for Activision's best-FPS-on-the-platform shooter, Call of Duty 4.

Dozens of angry gamers have hit the official forums to report that, since updating their PS3s this morning, they have been unable to play the online mode in the game. They obviously blame Sony's new firmware.

Some users, however, say they managed around two hours of play after updating before the errors began to occur. So is the FW update at fault? Or something else? CoD 4 servers have been annoyingly temperamental over the past few days...

We spoke with both Sony and Activision, both seemingly oblivious to the problem, but we hope to update with their feedback soon.

Meanwhile, our office PS3, running the new 2.01 firmware, is playing CoD 4 online as normal. It took around 10 minutes to log on (which is still not good), but it's working just fine now.

[Thanks to the friendly reader (we'll guess your name's Dave) for the tip] ...

via Eurogamer


SEGA Europe has offered no comment over reports that a remake of Saturn game NiGHTS: Into Dreams is heading to PS2 early next year.

Word spilled originally from Japanese magazine Famitsu (translated by IGN), which said the iconic title would be getting 16:9 support and upgraded visuals, as well as an illustration gallery and movie viewer.

Apparently the game is set to launch in Japan on 21st February 2008, and it will also be introduced at a budget price point - alongside a Nightopia Dream Pack that has the all important picture book inside.

Whether SEGA Europe's silence suggests it is a Japan-only offer is unclear, but we expect more to become clear as we get close to Wii game NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams release in January. ...

Alright folks, Sony has released version 2.01 for the PS3. You can download direct via your console in System Update or use your computer and place the update packge on removable media (like a flash drive or burnt to a disk). The changelog from 2.00 is as follows:

• New for 2.01: System stability during use of some PLAYSTATION®3 format software has been improved.
• New for 2.01: System stability has been improved for some operations, including the use of the Internet browser and the (Information Board).
• New for 2.01: System stability during output of upscaled PlayStation®2 format software images has been improved.*1
• New for 2.01: Functionality of the [Remote Start] feature has been changed to prevent an unintentional remote start. *2

*1 Applies only to models that support playback of PlayStation®2 format software.

*2 If [Remote Start via the Internet] is enabled, the PS3™ system may turn on unintentionally, depending on the type of router in use. (In this case a remote play connection cannot be established.) To avoid unintentional power-up of the system, [Remote Start via the Internet] may be disabled automatically if a remote play connection is not established within a certain amount of time after the system is turned on. ...