It seems that a bill currently under review over at the Texas House of Representatives may potentially require sex offenders to make their online game usernames known.

This of course would help protect other gamers from falling victim to a sex offender disguised from an otherwise unmarked online username.

GamePolitics reports that this bill came to existence due to the increasing number of pedophile arrests where the offender met their victim over an online service.

I feel this is a great because it could only serve to further protect those who choose to game online. What do you think?

Gears of War 2 is one of the Xbox 360′s biggest moneymakers so the onslaught of map packs and the like are no surprise. In fact, hype surrounding the game was so big that it recently managed to surpass a 5 million copies sold milestone.

In leui of this announcement, Epic has announced that they will be releasing a retail only content pack entitled All Fronts which includes all Gears 2 map packs released thus far. However, All Fronts will also include the all new Dark Corners map pack complete with 7 multiplayer maps and the deleted campaign chapter Road to Ruin.

All Front is set to hit retailers on July 28th. If you have a fear of leaving your house or just purchased all of the map packs already, you can buy just Dark Corners off of Xbox Live for 1600 Microsoft Points.

You can hit the read link for a description of the 7 multiplayer maps, courtesy of Joystiq, included in Dark Corners. READ ON »

The film studios are finally figuring out a fact of making video game movies; choose modern popular titles to draw in the gamer crowd and choose games that allow you to throw together enough explosions and special effects to draw in the rest of the prospective audience.

Talk has been going around regarding a Gears of War movie for quite some time now, but reports now suggest that it’s not as much of a pipe dream as many thought. Chris Morgan, screenwriter for the film as well as Wanted and Fast and Furious has turned in a draft of the script and somewhere in a dimly lit board room the hazy, ill-defined figures who decide what gets to be a film and what ends up as lining in a bird cage are meeting to discuss budgets.

The epic nature of the story (a world being overrun by hostile aliens) means there’s going to be a big price tag attached to the project, which is generally the stumbling block for pitched projects. Morgan says that he’s convinced there’s no way to make the film without addressing its epic nature and that gamers will be happy with it since they put in all the things they want to see and “blow it out a little more, even”.

Only time will tell though, since thus far there haven’t really been any video game to film conversions that made the fans happy.

Sometimes I wonder how Sega sleeps at night.

And then I realize it’s probably on huge piles of money.

This is the inescapable conclusion I reached after playing Sonic the Hedgehog for the Xbox 360. Looking back at that sentence I still can’t believe I typed it without having an embolism or something. Yes, I played Sonic the Hedgehog for the Xbox 360 and I’m still alive to tell the tale. Yes, I’m also amazed by this.

Because once again, good old Doctor Eggman (whom I can’t stop thinking of as Robotnik for some reason) is back for more action with far more robotic minions than he should have (where is he getting the materials for all these robots, anyway?), to this time harass the citizenry of Soleanna, steal their princess, and attempt to seize something called the Flames of Disaster. This continues on for some time, with Sonic grappling with Eggman’s robotic hordes, until eventually Sonic’s counterparts Shadow and Silver get involved and the whole mess gets even more ludicrous.

While the plotline is so sufficiently convoluted as to be unrecognizable without a score card handy, there will be plenty of problems with this game. One, they built a Sonic game around this, which means you will spend a lot of time running around collecting rings. A LOT of time running around collecting rings. That’s sadly most of what Sonic does, and you’ll be playing Sonic a good chunk of the time. The controls will be woefully inadequate, and you’ll spend more than a little time trying to stick a jump or angle your fall correctly.

The first mission does a fantastic job of illustrating just how lousy this game is. See, in order to reach the first full level, you’ll have to have a special move that allows you to run along a string of rings. To get that special move, you’ll have to roam around town until you find a man who needs a pair of shoes tested. Once you test those shoes, you’ll then be allowed to PURCHASE the special move that allows you to reach the first stage.

Seriously, what’s the deal with that? It’s like they were trying to artificially pad the game in order to make it less like a complete joke. Believe me, I was getting REALLY sick of trying to get people’s permission to go on to the next stage. And the next stage wasn’t really all that fun either, so more and more, trying to save Soleanna and its princess seemed less like an epic adventure and more like a lousy day job.

Even worse are some of the game elements—for instance, playing as Sonic and carrying the princess with you allows you, somehow, to access some kind of force field. Carrying the princess of Soleanna around in your arms allows you to generate energy sufficient to deflect objects. Is she some kind of dynamo? A mutant, perhaps? Spending a little too much time near the large hadron collider in her hometown? Or just really craptacular Sonic setup? I’m going with the craptacular, myself.

Perhaps the final nail in the coffin is how, as you’ve probably heard, Sonic and the princess will be carrying on a quasi-romantic relationship, despite the fact that she’s a human being and he’s an anthropomorphic hedgehog. When asked about it, the princess’ voice actress Lacey Chabert gave us this little gem: “Ha! No, you’re just being silly. It’s not an inappropriate relationship. Let’s just say Sonic and Princess Elise have an attraction for each other.” Um…Lacey…that would be exactly the problem. The human being is attracted to the anthropomorphic hedgehog.

That’s bestiality. The textbook definition, in fact.

This is just sad, really—unless you’re absolutely desperate for a Sonic game, you can do vastly, VASTLY better than this.

In the beginning video games usually had two endings. Only one was satisfactory, with the other being the frustrating “game over, you lose” screen. In their evolution and growth (games might be stuck in adolescence according to some, but that’s definitely some growth) they’ve been exploring the idea that not everyone wants to hear the same story. Some people want the hero to fall prey to his baser urges and defeat the villain only to assume his throne, or any number of other outcomes. Bioshock 2 is going to be continuing this proud tradition of customizing your own gaming experience.

In an interview with OXM Jordan Thomas, creative director at 2K Marin said that they’re going to try and improve upon the ‘binary’ ending of the original. He also pointed out that in the original (as with most games) you can end up on a particular path relatively arbitrarily so Bioshock 2 is aiming towards making you aware of what sort of ending you’re heading towards as you play and make more choices.

READ ON »

Tie-in games and licensed IP games are usually published for as many systems as possible, going for a quick round of sales in as many markets as possible. Ghostbusters: The Video Game is no exception with versions coming to the Xbox 360, PS3, PS2, PSP, Wii, DS and PC.

Sony has cornered a small part of the market for this highly anticipated game however as non-Sony platform versions of the game will only be launching in North American markets. For Europe and PAL territories it’s going to be a Playstation exclusive title, with the PS3 and PS2 versions launching on June 19th along with the re-release of the film on Blu-ray. The PSP title will be available for those territories in Autumn of this year.

Electronic Arts Inc. has released a new competitive pricing for gamers regarding its real-time strategy game Battleforge. For $29.99, gamers can experience the magical realm that comes with four ready-made faction decks based on the four elements in the game – Fire, Frost, Nature and Shadow and 3000 BattleForge points.

The BattleForge Points allow players to buy an additional 12 booster packs bringing the box total to 160 cards. Players can use BattleForge Points to purchase new cards in booster packs. Booster packs contain eight cards – 5 common, 2 un-common, 1 rare or ultra rare, all for just 250 BattleForge points. This dynamic system allows players to customize their RTS experience with content that can be purchased at their own discretion.

“BattleForge is a specialized RTS which has so much more to offer to the players whether they are straight up RTS fans or collectible card gamers. The battles are becoming more epic as the players’ skills are advancing,” said Producer Michael Krach, “There has never been a better time to get into the action on BattleForge.”

(Source) Press

On the Team Fortress 2 blog, more news on the upcoming Sniper Update are revealed, however, not the kind of news we expected. TF2′s Robin Walker explains what kind of thoughts the team went through when designing a new unlockable weapon for the Sniper. In particular, they highlight how players feel angry when they get killed from long range by a sniper (who doesn’t?), and therefore decided to create a new weapon where the Sniper would get closer to the enemy, like the rest of the team. The TF2 blog has a lot more details here.

Blizzard has revealed that the tickets for this year’s BlizzCon, held on August 21-22 in Anaheim, CA, will be on sale this month.

The first batch of tickets will be sold on May 16 at $125 per ticket, while the second batch will be sold on May 30. The tickets are sold on a first come, first served system, where tickets will be available to purchase via Battle.net accounts.

The second largest game publisher in the world, Electronic Arts, just posted a massive $1 billion loss for the year of 2008. This amount almost doubled from last year, when the company lost just under $500 million.

Revenues however, grew 15 percent, to $4.21 billion. EA also revealed forecasts for the current fiscal year, which ends March 31, 2010. The expected revenues are between $3.7 billion and $3.85 billion, while expected losses range from $274 million and $469 million.