via Eurogamer


Electronic Arts has explained that forum moderators will not be able to ban people from playing EA games.


The publisher was responding to an EA moderator - supposedly community manager Aaron Kaufman - who told Red Alert 3 fans that game and forum accounts were linked, and that a ban for one meant a ban for the other.

Furthermore, this Master EA Account was said to be linked to all of the publisher's games requiring an online sign-in, resulting in an EA-wide ban for misbehaving on a forum.

The fate of the misguided EA forum moderator is undisclosed. Perhaps he is among the 600 losing jobs as EA cuts costs to combat diminishing retail demand. ...

via 1Up


LittleBigPlanet will be getting another tool to make its user-created stages even more customizable, reports PS3 Attitude. Alex Evans, co-founder of Media Molecule, commented at GameCity in Nottingham recently that an image importing tool was pulled from the game due to time constraints, but it will be patched into the game by Christmas.

Crafty players have found ways around the lack of an image importer by using the PlayStation Eye, but true image importing should help players use higher-res pictures in their created stages. PS3 Fanboy speculates it will involve memory and USB sticks, along with a possible size limitation to keep stages from getting too large with photographs. We'll be waiting for word on when exactly this patch will come, along with the promised online creation patch announced before the launch of the game. If you haven't picked up the game yet, check out our positive review, in which a chin-stroking Nick Suttner refers to its "infectious joy, infectious creativity, and an infectiously excited community." ...

via Gamedaily


VideoGamer.com today published an excerpt from an interview with Stephen McGill, Microsoft's head of gaming and entertainment in the U.K. When asked about any price cuts for the Xbox 360, he indicated that the price will not be reduced beyond the recent cuts for the foreseeable future.


Sony recently confirmed that there will be no price cut for the PS3 for the Holiday 2008 season. ...

via Gamespot


Nintendo followed up on yesterday's financial report with an operational briefing from president Satoru Iwata recapping the company's performance and offering a peek at some upcoming games, including the first downloadable titles specifically created for the recently revealed DSi system.

Iwata revealed that Nintendo is prepping a slate of WarioWare titles for release as downloadable DSiWare games. A variety of minigames from the Game Boy Advance and DS installments of WarioWare will be sold as DSiWare titles, and some original games making use of the system's camera functionality will be packaged together as WarioWare: Photograph.

Iwata said that for WarioWare: Photograph, players will place the DSi on a table and then step back so their silhouette appears onscreen (thanks to the camera implanted in the system's hinges). Simply moving their bodies will allow players to complete simple activities. One nose-picking minigame shown called for players to line up their extended fingers with a pair of floating nostrils. WarioWare: Photograph is scheduled for release in late December, around the time the DSiWare store goes live.

For WarioWare fans with legacy DS hardware, Iwata announced WarioWare Myself. The standard DS game will let players create their own minigames for the series and then share them with other players. Nintendo is also working on a WiiWare counterpart version of the game that will let players try out the created games on their home consoles, but it will lack the minigame creation tool.

WarioWare games weren't the only new products Iwata talked about. In addition to a series of six DSiWare ArtStyle puzzle games, Nintendo is contemplating releasing downloadable utilities for the system, like a clock and a calculator featuring the publisher's popular characters, or public transit route maps. ...

via Computer and Video Games


New Battlefield: BC maps are available today for PS3 and tomorrow for Xbox 360.

The downloadable 'Community Choice Map Pack' features four brand new conquest multiplayer maps, "gameplay enhancements" and PlayStation 3 Trophy support.

Fans of the game will probably know that players previously had the chance to vote on which two single-player levels they wanted to see as multiplayer maps.

Par for the Course and Acta Non Verba received the most community votes, while the game's development team chose Ghost Town and Crossing Over, coinciding with the community's third and fourth choices.

The game's been out since June so new maps are definitely a welcome addition. Get downloading now if you're lucky enough not to be at work. ...

via Eurogamer


An American Football cheerleader has said playing Wii balance board game All Star Cheerleader "felt like I was directing traffic or something".

Natalie, a dancer for the New York Jets, was invited by the New York Daily News to offer her professional opinion on the THQ title, which launches here on 14th November at the budget price of GBP 14.99.

The unsurprising idea of the game is to match the pompom swishing on screen, using a mixture of arm movements and leg arrangements. But despite her lifelong dedication to the sport, poor old Natalie found this rather hard going.


All Star Cheerleader uses over 300 moves created by choreographer Tony Gonzalez, who thought up dances for Jessica Simpson, Alicia Keys and Paula Abdul. He also did the moves for the "Bring It On" films, where cheerleading squads go head-to-head to be crowned the best.

There's a video of Natalie putting All Star Cheerleader through its paces on the NY Daily News site. We'll probably just get Ellie to review the game. ...

via Gamasutra


At its Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles this week, Microsoft Research unveiled its project Boku, a PC and Xbox 360-based icon-driven tool designed to let users create their own games and using only an Xbox 360 controller.

The tool, which was itself created using XNA, appears to bridge the gulf between Microsoft's more complex XNA Game Studio language and the user-created content of games like Media Molecule's LittleBigPlanet for PlayStation 3, which is governed by the game's stricter parameters.

Boku has been created to be compatible with both Xbox 360 and PC. Though it's not yet been announced when or how the project will be delivered to users, Gamasutra's sources have indicated that it's planned for an Xbox 360 release of some kind in 2009. (Coincidentally, Microsoft is about to open the Xbox Live Community Games download portal, which will showcase XNA-created titles of all kinds.)

Microsoft Research's page for the project says, "It is designed to be accessible for children and enjoyable for anyone." The programming language is completely icon-driven, with programs saved as logical lists of instructions -- in a manner that is vaguely reminiscent of Final Fantasy XII's Gambit system, which allowed for simple character A.I. programming.

However, Boku's rules will govern entire, original games, as it allows for more complex sets of rules -- for example, Boku has icons which cover concepts such as character movement and collision, item pick up, and control pad input.

A video presentation of Boku can be seen below:



The inspiration for the project was, according to a Seattle Times weblog post, Microsoft project manager Matthew MacLaurin's desire to bring the same fun he had writing games on his Commodore PET to the kids of today. "It was really this message in this moment that programming is actually a fun activity all on its own," MacLaurin said.

The program was originally demonstrated in a low-key manner in March 2007, and at the time, MacLaurin "said he was motivated to create the software by a desire to get kids away from passive TV-watching, and getting them to exercise their brains, in their very early, formative years."

According to Seattle Times' official inquiries, though the "specific roadmap" for the research-impelled product has not yet been decided, Microsoft has indicated that the product will have some form of trial in 2009. ...

via IGN


The announcement that the DSi would have built in music playback support no doubt perked interest in the new hardware. Given that it has an SD slot, and that you're carrying it around anyway, the new system seemed like it could make for a great primary music player, or possibly a backup for when your main music player runs out of batteries.

Of course, Nintendo killed all hopes for either of these by also announcing that the player would not support MP3. So does this make the free DSi Music program a completely worthless addition to the system? This is one of the first things we attempted to find out after getting our hands on our import DSi units.

The DSi Music program is actually split into two modes: voice recording and music playback. Both offer plenty of entertainment value thanks to the tools and gimmicks Nintendo has included.

The recording mode lets you record at most 18 clips of maximum 10 seconds length. Once you've recorded a clip, you can play around with it in various ways. You can make the clip play backwards or forwards, isolate small sections using A-B repeat, and modify the speed and tone by dragging a pointer around on a 2D graph.

You can also apply twelve effects to the clip: parakeet, fan, low harmonica, trumpet, robot, tunnel, high harmonica, whistle, helium, transceiver, three-person harmonica, and buzzer. These effects do a great job on transforming the sound, and we imagine people playing around in this mode just to see what their modified voice sounds like.

If you want to hear what your voice sounds like as a parakeet, you won't need to even enter into the recording mode. The main menu for DSi Music features a parakeet mascot who, as you'd expect from a parakeet, likes to repeat what you say. This little feature has proven to be quite addictive. The parakeet does a good job of repeating lengthy phrases in high-pitched parakeet talk, although you need to make sure and speak slowly. This diversion will likely draw lots of attention especially when introducing the DSi to your non-gamer friends.

The music playback mode is also full of fun play options. Once you have a song loaded up (more on that in a bit), you can change the speed and tone just like with the recording mode. You can also overlay the recordings that you made in the recording mode to songs at any point. Nintendo has also provided a set of sound effects which can be selected quickly by using the stylus, then inserted freely using R and L. Effects include percussion instruments, record scratches, and even Mario coin and jump sounds!

This mode also has four pre-set filters: radio, echo, 8-bit, and karaoke. The radio and echo work fine, but we've found the the 8-bit and karaoke filters to be pretty much useless. The karaoke filter promises to remove vocals from songs, but we haven't found one case of it working effectively yet. The 8-bit effect promises to make your library sound like 8-bit music. Most songs that we tried ended up sounding like a complete mess. Even the original Super Mario Bros. Level 1-1 theme didn't hold up well under the filter (see the videos we uploaded today for some samples).

One of the coolest features of the music playback is the visualization schemes that are shown on the top screen along side information about the current track. Some of these are loosely interactive. There's a Super Mario Bros. visualization where Lakuta (the cloud dude) goes about setting coins against a scrolling Level 1-1 backdrop, with the height of the coin placement affected by the music. Mario runs about and picks up the coins on the ground automatically, but you can tap the L and R buttons to make him jump up to reach higher-up coins. The visualizer keeps track of your coin count, making this into somewhat of a game.

With all these fun tools, DSi Music looks like it will have the same relevance as DSi Camera. With DSi Camera, you probably won't use it as a real camera (and certainly not as a method of keeping track of your child's growth, as Nintendo's Japanese pamphlets suggest you do). However, those who want to take some pics and play around with them using graffiti and other effects, will have lots of fun with the program. The same holds true for DSi Music. For playing with sounds and music files, DSi Music is packed with features, and could likely be updated with future downloads.

Those who are interested in using this as a serious music player will find some good points. First up is improved sound volume over the DS Lite. The DSi doesn't lets you go as loud as your typical MP3 player, but we found the sound output through headphones to be adequate, even in a noisy cafe setting.

Unlike the DSi Camera program, which wouldn't read any files that weren't generated by the DSi itself, DSi Music doesn't appear to be too picky ...

via Kotaku


I knew LittleBigPlanet was versatile, but I didn't realize it was this versatile. Japanese PSN member RRR30000 has managed to recreate classic shoot-em up gameplay within the game, using a spaceship sticker and massive amounts of free time. It's truly an amazing accomplishment, recreating the entire first level from Gradius, complete with a boss fight at the end should you make it that far. The level name is Libidius.jp, and it's available for play as we speak. Go rate the hell out of this guy, he really deserves it.


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