Archive for September 9th, 2010

If "The Devil's Playground" really did it for you during your romp through campaign mode in "StarCraft 2," Blizzard's first official custom map for the game should be a good fit for your 3v3 matches. The "Burning Tide" map requires you to race against an opposing team to gather mineral resources in much the same way you did as a single player, and it's now selectable through the game client.

Blizzard announced the map's arrival via the "StarCraft 2" blog on Battle.net, citing "greed" as your fundamental motivation for completing the challenge. "Players hoping to achieve victory on this map will need to work together, carefully managing their team's unit production and safeguarding their vulnerable workers as they defend against enemy forces," the post explained.

From the looks of it, air units are going to be your best friends here, but the timed lava flows will really put the pressure on players to cooperate and coordinate their strategies, since the map will basically create a new ground war every time the tide goes down.

"Burning Tide" looks like it good be good fun, but watch out for those Protoss black hole attacks. I'd imagine seeing a flock of your foot soldiers and SCV's caught up in its pull just as the lava starts to rise would be a major source of frustration on the road to victory.

Have you checked out the "Burning Tide" map yet? Are you glad to see Blizzard breaking out some new multiplayer challenges? Share your reactions in the comment section below.

EA Sports broke out good news for Dwyane Wade and Joakim Noah fans this week, but anyone expecting online multiplayer matches for "NBA Jam" on the Wii can just forget about it. As the game's October 5 release date get closer, EA's "exclusive" solo release for the Wii and "NBA Elite 11"-bundled perk for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 is starting to get fleshed out, and Wii owners will have mixed feelings aplenty to sort out as they figure out whether or not to pick it up.

Full NBA Eastern Conference rosters for all three editions of "NBA Jam" appeared on ESPN's website. Justin Bieber and John Madden do not appear there, though the rundown does confirm legends like Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman, and mascots such as Bango The Buck and G-Wiz. Drazen Petrovic has returned to the Nets, and even Manute Bol will be brought back for the Washing Wizards.

Online multiplayer games, meanwhile, will be dead on arrival if you buy the game for Wii, as confirmed in a report on Kotaku citing EA Sports Vancouver. You were being really optimistic if you expected to play "NBA Jam" with your Wii friends over Wi-Fi. Nonetheless, the functionality has now been officially assigned to the 360 and PS3 alone.

The Wii will still get its "exclusive" Remix Tour features with boss battles and co-op challenges, but the whole idea that this title was presented as a Wii exclusive as recently as E3 and now is not only coming out for other systems but has expanded gameplay options that won't be available on the Wii will tie your brain in knots if you try to piece the whole timeline of announcements together.

Which system do you plan on grabbing "NBA Jam" for? Were you expecting to see online multiplayer modes for the Wii? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Microsoft stepped in to alter their Code of Conduct earlier this year and finally allow Xbox Live users to identify as gay in their profiles, but that change still left a ban net capable of catching 26-year-old Fort Gay, WV resident Josh Moore. He got the boot last week, but the people at XBL have since seen the error of their ways and reversed the call.

Microsoft's agent made a mistake, Xbox Live chief enforcement officer Stephen Toulouse acknowledged, according to a report published by the Associated Press. The ban came as a result of another user's complaint, which forced Moore to spend multiple days convincing XBL that he actually did live in Fort Gay, but Toulouse said training would be updated going forward.

It's nice that the system worked in Moore's favor in the end, but still, it's a shame that he'd have to see his account suspended for simply stating his place of residence. He can probably blame the legions of foul-mouthed youngsters on XBL who use his city's name in much more vulgar, less tasteful ways every day on the service. It's always great to hear that MS has figured out a new way to combat those users, but the ratio of offensive city names to juvenile hate speech uses I've heard tossed about playing "Modern Warfare 2" is almost non-existent.

Are you glad to hear that Microsoft decided to apologize? Where would you like to see them focus their XBL bans in the future? Share your responses in the comment section below.

Whether you're a first-time Xbox 360 buyer or an experienced owner who recently received a red ring and needs to pull a hardware replacement, you may have looked at the $299.99 4GB Xbox 360/Kinect bundle and thought that a little more memory could go a long way. Well, Microsoft has a solution for you, and it's come in the form of a 250GB bundle that will make its way to stores on November 4 for the new control system's launch day.

The box includes one of those newly redesigned 250GB Xbox 360 consoles with built-in Wi-Fi, a Kinect sensor and "Kinect Adventures" for $399.99, according to the press release. Pre-order listings have accompanied the announcement, too, so if you're afraid supplies may run out, options are currently available to you.

If DLC, Xbox Live Arcade games, or other media downloads are anything you're remotely interested in along with your Kinect investment, this is probably the package you want to look at. 4GB isn't going to hold all that much, and extra memory is going to cost you more in the long run and require you to remember where you've stored it all.

Of course, if you like your memory to be mobile or stick almost exclusively with disc-based games, the 4GB box will be the way to go. And if you love your current 360 like I do, you'll save more money than all other Kinect buyers because you'll only have to throw down $149.99.

Are you going to buy Kinect on Day One? Which bundle do you think you'll pick up? Share your intentions in the comment section below.

"Final Fantasy XIII" director Motomu Toriyama revealed many months ago that his team had already prepared DLC to come out at a later date, but the story seems to have changed. Now, it's more of a case of there once having been DLC ready to ship out, and those plans have since seen a paradigm shift to the point that there is currently no DLC coming out for "FFXIII."

"We had plans for DLC, but those plans disappeared," Toriyama told a Japanese game magazine, according to a translation provided on Kotaku. "Apologies!"

Theoretically, there was extra content lying around somewhere, so it's a shame all around if Enix decided to seal it up in the vaults where it can't be sold or experienced with no plans to let it loose into the wild. At best, I guess "FFXIII" players can hope that two decades down the road when we're all complaining to children about how big the pixels were on Blu-ray movies, they might decide to releases a remastered Final Fantasy boxed set that includes new material from the Square Enix vaults.

Or, maybe we'll just see some fancy "Game of the Year" edition or something like that in the next couple of years. If you felt like "FFXIII" didn't take away enough hours from your life out of the box, my sympathies are with you today.

Were you hoping to see some DLC come out for "FFXIII"? Would you like to see Square Enix rethink their plans? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.