Xbox Live Gamers Actually Spies in Training

They are hated by all, branded as homophobes and racists, as well as spoiled brats, and yet it’s been said that MI5 and MI6, you know, like in James Bond, through Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), are scouting Xbox Live for recruits between the ages of 18 to 34 to be put in to their top secret ranks.

The GCHQ is looking here because their criteria is "reflected in game-play experiences on Xbox, such as quick thinking, problem solving and team work".

Just wait until they meet them in person.

This is getting ridiculous now. I wish someone from those agencies would rather spend time on working as a consultant on making a good James Bond game instead. The last one, they say, was Goldeneye 007.

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Government intelligence organisation targets recruits with Xbox Live ads
British Intelligence recruiting Xbox gamers

Xbox Live Gamers Actually Spies in Training

What Happened to the Old Mouse Ball Ring?

Do you remember once upon a time when we all used those mice with the ball inside, and the ring covering the whole that you put it in, which you locked by twisting? Do you remember how dirt and dust used to get lodged in there and make the mouse so sluggish that you had to open up the mouse, clean it out and then out it all back together?

Nowadays we’ve all moved on to using optical mice and wireless desktops and all that, so it’s been a while since those days. I don’t think I’ve used one of those “analogue” mice in at least 5 or 6 years. And I’m thankful for it, believe me. I’ve looked for one I might have used at one time, but I think I donated it to a museum or something. Or else I just tossed it in the bin.

But whatever happened to my old nemesis, the mouse ball ring thing? I’ve broken at least a couple over the years by slamming the mouse down when it became unresponsive, either because of the dust or because the cable got caught under the keyboard or the tower. There were times when it just came undone all by itself, and the mouse ball rolled off the desk and crossed the room, never to be found again, until it was nearly sucked up by the vacuum cleaner.

Well, I think I found out the answer. It’s been sitting on top of my DVD spindles for the last few years. I just opened up a new spindle of DVDs to make a backup the other day, and there it was- the ring thing fell on the ground and just sat there. That image of the old bugger when it was at the bottom of my mouse just flashed in to my mind right then and there. It looked exactly the same except for the fact that it had lost its legs- those things that helped lock the ball inside the mouse. Besides that, nothing much had changed.

Its new purpose was to stop the DVDs from falling off the spindle. And it fails miserably at this too, just like it did at everything else in life.


There you are! *STOMP*

By the way, is it correct to say "mice"? I mean, it’s one mouse, two mice? Surely the same rules apply? I once heard a woman call the plural of mouse “mices”. Right…

What Happened to the Old Mouse Ball Ring?

Video Game Deals: Direct2Drive Bundle Deals

There's a deal going on at the moment which ends tomorrow, on two game bundles at D2D:

LucasArts There's Action Adventure Puzzles Bundle Download


Star Wars Classics Pack Download

Video Game Deals: Direct2Drive Bundle Deals

Video Games Coming out in November 2009 - 11/22 - 11/28

After last week, it's a little dry, with few titles that anybody really wants. Nothing here I would like to get, so there's no Pick of the Week, then.

Links go to each game's details page at Amazon, GameStop, Steam, etc, if available. Release dates can and usually do change.

PC

King Arthur - The Role-playing Wargame (Steam)
Mystery Case Files: Dire Grove
Serious Sam HD (Steam)
Twin Sector

PlayStation 3

Borderlands: The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned
Karaoke Revolution
Puzzlegeddon
Madden NFL Arcade
Tom Clancy: Double Pack

Xbox 360

Borderlands: The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned
Karaoke Revolution
Madden NFL Arcade
Puzzlegeddon
Stoked: Big Air Edition
Tom Clancy: Platinum Hits Pack (GameStop)

Wii

Bit.Trip Void
Cold Stone Creamery: Scoop It Up
Chicken Riot
Karaoke Revolution
Marines: Modern Urban Combat
Marines: Assault on Terror
Rec Room Games
Rogue Trooper: The Quartz Zone Massacre
Scene It? Twilight
Your Shape: Featuring Jenny McCarthy

Nintendo DS

Fighting Fantasy: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain
Hello Kitty Party
myNotebook

PSP

Tekken 6

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Shacknews
Gamespot: 1 - 2

Video Games Coming out in November 2009 - 11/22 - 11/28

New Medal of Monor: Modern Combat Possibly Coming Next Year

Yes, everyone knows that a new MoH game is in development. We’ve all heard the rumours that have been going around for the past year or so, and I’ve even covered it a few times on the blog.

So, in case you need a bit of catching up to do, here’s the gist of it all. There’s a new Medal of Honor game in development, which may take place in modern times, or in the present, in another way to put it, instead of WW II, like about 100% of MoH titles before it.

Men of Valor was a title by the same people who did Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, 2015 Inc., and it took place in Vietnam, but that’s a different story.

And it’s been somewhat confirmed that there is a new title, and that it isn’t a rumour, by EA. And this title will follow in the footsteps of the Call of Duty series, which branched off into Modern Warfare and the recently released Modern Warfare 2. The new title will be called Medal of Honor: Modern Combat, according to reports that claim that this name has been trademarked, and it's rumoured to come out by the end of Q1 2010, in February or March, allegedly, according to MCVUK.

I doubt with almost zero marketing to speak of except these rumours that it will be that soon, but perhaps we will see more of it next year, hopefully.

The name's a bit unoriginal, for sure, and people are crying out that EA is copying Infinity Ward, but let’s not forget that the Medal of Honor series came first, years before Call of Duty entered the now overdone World War II FPS genre. So perhaps they’re even now.

In fact, some people who formed Infinity Ward worked at 2015 Inc., one of the MoH developers.

Nick Earl of EA had the following things to say about the new title in a leaked memo picked up by Kotaku:

"simply stunning"

"[EALA studio head] Sean Decker and Greg Goodrich have been leading a re-invention" of the first-person shooter series,"

"We couldn't be happier with the focus and progress these teams have shown,"

"The new team at EALA has turned this studio into a showcase for the 'fewer things better' initiative."

All the commenters on this story out there have started a little game, going from news article to news article putting in their thoughts on what the game should be called.

Don't do that here, or your comment will be deleted.

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Medal Of Honor: Modern Warfare incoming
EA Talks Command & Conquer's "New Digital Model," Medal of Honor "Re-invention"

New Medal of Monor: Modern Combat Possibly Coming Next Year

Sunday Times: 40 Years of the Internet, and Doom Mentioned

This past weekend, there was a main feature in the Sunday Times magazine, claiming that sometime in 2009 is the fortieth anniversary of the world wide web, even though this is likely widely disputed, and events did happen before 1969 that led to this wonderful invention called the Internet coming into our homes. By the way, the writers mentioned, and I guess I should too even though I know this, that the World Wide Web and the Internet aren’t the same thing.

Anyway, I think there was one bit along the time-line of the internet, spanning from 1822 to the present, which featured about 19 main events, that caught my attention, and that was “Doom” at number 11.

The Sunday Times writes:

“Not only one of the greatest and scariest games ever made, Doom was arguably the internet’s first killer application. id Software’s bloody and brilliant (and hugely controversial) “first-person shooter” was released via shareware over the internet- meaning that the first seven of the game’s 28 levels could be downloaded free. It is estimated that those seven levels were installed on more than 10 million computers within two years. As well as being the first must-have game that could be downloaded from the internet, it was a fantastic advert for what networked gaming could be. It could be played by up to four people via a local area network or a modem, and introduced the tern “deathmatch” into the language.”

I thought there were more than 7 levels in the shareware episode of Doom (There are 9; 10 in the Xbox version. And there are 27 levels in the full version of Doom; 36 in Ultimate Doom), but anyway. What can you expect?

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http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Doom
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom_%28video_game%29

Sunday Times: 40 Years of the Internet, and Doom Mentioned

Do You Want Thief Ringtones for your Cellphone?

I came across this on the ttlg.com forums the other day. Someone went and made it possible to play sounds from Thief II: The Metal Age on your cellphone as ringtones. All it really is, is a bunch of mp3s, converted from another format, (WAV, I think) which you can also listen to on your PC and so on.

It's fairly easy to do this yourself. All you need is the Thief CDs, and you can extract the sounds in the CRF files. I've done it myself a while back, with Thief II and Thief: Deadly Shadows (different file format) anyway. My Thief: The Dark Project CD isn't working anymore.

I’ve always been a big fan of the Thief series’ music and sound effects, and of games in general, and I downloaded at one point the Thief Gold Soundtrack, which is basically one big long mp3 that you can play.

By the way, you can download the ringtones and such from here. I like mediafire. More people should use it rather than rapidshare or megupload, I think.

Do You Want Thief Ringtones for your Cellphone?