• Torchlight demo released
• Buy a first class ticket to return to Rapture
• Free-to-play weekend in Champions Online with special in-game event
• THQ opens the doors to its World of Zoo new animal center
• Konami announces details for new Metal Gear Online 24-Hour survival challenge
• BioShock 2 box art revealed
• Sony celebrates three years of PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Network
• Return to Ostagar and avenge King Cailan
• 3D Dot Game Heroes: nostalgia comes with a video
• DLC and Gold Edition incoming for Resident Evil 5
• This week at GamersGate
• Star Wars game bundles deals on Direct2Drive
• In case you were wondering what the 8-bit version of Left 4 Dead would look like
• Darksiders dev diary featuring Joe Madureira
• Army of Two:The 40th Day shows off its customizable weapons [with video-ed.]
• A dual core Atom with NVIDIA ION netbook to drool over
• Midnight Riders coming soon to Left 4 Dead II?
• Leaked Witcher 2 footage confirmed as real

• OnLive will support cell phones
• Be a beta tester, win a trip to Paris
• This week on Direct2Drive
• iPhone Game Review: Flickitty

• AppStore Game Review: Connected
• Slow as Sunday: Reinventing sports franchises

• Harry Potter: Spells available at the AppStore
• The characters of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers
• Weekly downloadable Nintendo fun includes demos
• Capcom unleashes massive amounts of Street Fighter IV assets
• Call of Duty quietly invades the iPhone
• Naruto's ultimate rival revealed in Clash of Ninja Revolution 3
• Darth Vader holds your Wii Sensor Bar for ransom
• Access GameFly directly from your iPhone
• Sgt Pepper's trailer released for The Beatles: Rock Band
• More rolling monkeys and bananas in Super Monkey Ball: Step and Roll  screens 
• Be a part of the DC Universe Online dev team
• Star Trek Online boxart revealed
• A tiny smidge of Grand Theft Auto V news
• PC version of Modern Warfare 2 hacked

• Future Call of Duty going the paid online route
• Hudson fleshes out Q1 2010
• Lost Planet 2 pre-order gets you Albert Wesker skin
• 3D Dot Game Heroes: Retro homage, Zelda homage?
• Pandemic Studios maybe dead but brand continues
• Mystery Case Files getting a Collector's Edition?
• Bigfoot gets $8 million
• Last week's top games on Impulse
• Last week's top games on Gamefly
• Preview of Facebook on PlayStation 3

The Beatles: Rock Band is getting the remainder of Sgt Pepper's next, while the rest of us who only have Rock Band are getting some AFI and Bangles. The AFI Pack 01 will contain five AFI songs, and the Bangles "Walk Like an Egyptian" will be available as a solo song on Rock Band and LEGO Rock Band. All the songs will be available on the Xbox 360 and Wii on Nov 17th, and the PS3 on Nov 19th. The AFI Pack costs $8.49/680 MS points, or $1.99/160 MS points/$2.00 for the songs individually including the Bangles.

• AFI – “Beautiful Thieves”
• AFI – “End Transmission”
• AFI – “Love Like Winter”
• AFI – “Medicate”
• AFI – “The Leaving Song, Pt II”
•  The Bangles – “Walk Like an Egyptian”+

Rock Band Unplugged on the PSP also gets two new tracks on Nov 19th, with some Dead Kenndys and Sleater-Kinney at $1.99 each.

• Dead Kennedys – “California über Alles”
• Sleater-Kinney – “You’re No Rock’n’Roll Fun”

[READ MORE]

• Characters revealed for Kamen Rider Dragon Knight
• Dragon Age: Origins video discusses combat system design
• Get exposed with Tera Patrick in Saints Row 2 DLC
• Steam Modern Warfare 2 knocks off a day
• America's favorite Rock Band band to perform 20-hour concert in Times Square
• Hit the slopes with Shaun White and your Wii today
• Sanitarium comes to GoG
• Learn more about Heresy and absolution in new Dante's Inferno dev diary, demo due out in December
• Activision setting up fund for unemployed military veterans
• Xbox 360 Wireless N adapter officially announced and officially overpriced
• The gavel has been dropped, and the best Rock Band group named
• GamersGate goes full scale with its Loyalty Program
• New teaser page for Two Worlds II with video
• Ubisoft announces PC version of upcoming fitness game
• Bittos+ are candy for your brain
• Last week's top games on Gamefly
• Projects being canceled at EA
• All a buzz over Steam only version of Modern Warfare 2 being locked until November 13
• Unboxing the Special Edition Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 Xbox 360 bundle
• Jade Dynasty gets 2 new factions with Ascension expansion pack
• Final Fantasy XI gets ultimate
• Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's Tagforce 4 coming next week
• Feel the adrenaline in the Career Mode of MotoGP
• Modern Warfare 2 sparks controversy (i.e. Chuck was right)
• Eberron Unlimited shows off its Monk class
• Torchlight editor released
• Rumor of Natal launch details
• CEO of EA says Wii weaker than anticipated

Last week I postulated that Modern Warfare 2's terrorist mission "No Russian" would spark a bit of controversy at both the local and national level.  Of course that's like saying the sky is blue as news organizations will always rush to run something without context and without doing ample research and it looks like I was right as Fox News (a bastion of "journalistic integrity") has already come up with their own half assed piece on the game. 

From the local news angle comes this piece from NBC 4 here in Columbus which skips the context of the mission (playing as a secret agent trying to gain the trust of the Russians) in favor of highlighting that you get to kill civilians in the game.  They also manage to pick up the opinions of a few gamers who likewise miss the point and context of the mission.  Are you seeing anything in your area?  Leave us notes in the comments.

Digital distribution is widely hailed as the future of gaming and while it's been relatively smooth sailing for a while the system hit a few major snags on the PC this week.  We've seen bumps in the past with Steam's early days (the Half Life 2 launch wasn't exactly painless for a lot of people) and Games For Windows has been one cluster after another but this is the first time we've seen problems that aren't specific to one service.

The first was all of the hurdles users had to jump through to get Dragon Age:Origins working correctly.  Of course a lot of these issues were created because each entity along the way had their own pass mechanism which needed to be navigated to get the game working correctly.  This is one of those nasty things that will eventually go away as companies figure out how to get their services working together better.

The second big bump was Impulse, Direct2Drive, and Gamersgate refusing to sell Call of Duty:Modern Warfare 2 on their services because it includes a mandatory install of Steam for things like DRM and saved game management. This grants Steam a de facto monopoly on selling Modern Warfare 2 digitally on the PC.  This will be a bit trickier to navigate as Valve has so tightly woven their Steamworks tools set with their online service and there's no way anyone is going to help their competitor sell more of their product.  I don't see this really hurting sales of the game that much but it has to be a bit scary for those who don't want Steam to have a monopoly on the digital distribution market and will further the calls for Valve to start decoupling their various components.

It's not unexpected to see these kind of problems as a technology matures but it is a somewhat painful reminder that we are still in the early days of this new distribution mechanism.  These won't be the last bumps we have but they do represent a small inflection point in the system.

What do you think?  Are these big issues for you or should we just got ahead and welcome our new Steam overlords?  Let us know in the comments.

• No dedicated servers for Rage either
• Experience Nintendo Tour: The Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks
• Valcon Games gives the DS a keyboard [musical that is-ed.]
• Deal or No Deal invades your SMS plan
• Another win for the US with previously Japan exclusive Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey
• Play Spore on Facebook
• Get fancy with Mass Effect 2 Collectors’ Edition and check out the new footage
• Try cleverness next week with Encleverment Experiment
• PS3 instant streaming disk for Netflix on the way
• Gran Turismo 5 cost $60 million to make?
• Explore Fragile Dreams coming exclusively to Wii next year
• Psychonauts, Bloodrayne series, and Advent Rising now available on GOG
• PS3 owners will be able to try the multiplayer of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 on November 19
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 gets a launch trailer, shows space level?
• Do some unreal development with UDK3
• Five new characters and other goodies coming to Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2
• Low level dungeon available for purchase in Dungeons and Dragons Online Store

• iPhone Game Review: Gourmania
  
• Wallace & Gromit celebrate their 20th anniversary
• Darkest of Days…prepare for updates
• Tiger not the only EA Mobile game on iPhone OS accepting cash
• Dodge the cars to check out Frogger Returns screens
• 'Skirmish' DLC available tomorrow for Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising
• PC multiplayer for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 capped at 18 people
• Tiger Woods for iPhone OS gets landmark update: The Pro Shop is open for business
• And then there was light...
• Gratuitous Space Battles released, along with a Gratuitous demo
• Combat Arms: serving explosives since 2008
• New Bayonetta footage released
• Braid finally coming to PSN
• Cities XL now even more XL than it used to be
• Square Enix is now 10% lighter
• NVIDIA hoping to have Fermi for CES
• The return of bonus stages to Street Fighter
• Left 4 Dead 2 demo is now available for everyone

Here's the first trailer for the movie adaption of Prince of Persia:The Sands of Time and it's not bad.  It's even possible to think that after viewing the trailer that the movie won't just be another mish-mash of CGI and corny dialog as it looks like the filmmakers have captured not only the action of the game but the sly sense of humor and personality that made the first game good. 

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.

I'm not sure what's gotten into the water over at Infinity Ward but my enthusiasm for Call of Duty:Modern Warfare 2 has been dying a slow death over the last few weeks.  First we had Infinity Ward killing off dedicated servers for the PC side of the house which I could label as IW trying to own the process a bit more and to make a little extra advertising coin off of PC gamers.  That's certainly their right despite stripping PC gamers of their ability to host and configure their own servers (which is a fairly big deal for that demographic).  I was probably going to buy the Xbox 360 version of the game so this doesn't impact me too much.  The downside is that the door is now open for more PC developers to do the same which would have severe repercussions in the PC gaming community over the next few years

Then came word that the game would allow you to play as a terrorist as part of one of the levels.  You can skip the level if you want
to but the fact that Infinity Ward has the hubris to allow gamers to play the role of terrorists opens the game and the industry up to an enormous amount of criticism.  While I didn't lose anyone close to me during 9/11 (although I know people who did) I did have to live with terrorism on a daily basis while I lived in Germany in the early 1980's.  The windows in my father's office were damaged by a bomb so I'm probably a little more sensitive than others about the topic.  I do see how Infinity Ward is pushing the narrative envelope but this feels like one of those psychology experiments of the 1970's gone wrong.  When this hits the mainstream press no one will hear how you can skip the level and no one will hear how you are playing a secret agent trying to protect their cover.  All people are going to hear is "You play as a terrorist and you get to kill civilians without repercussion in Modern Warfare 2".

Infinity Ward then tops this off by killing team voice chat and releasing a mildly inappropriate video which makes me wonder what exactly is going on at IW HQ.  I don't doubt that the game will sell well and will receive a ton of accolades but I do wonder if Modern Warfare 2 is going to end up harming the industry through the controversial content and if the game's approach to PC gamers will end up harming them in the long run.  Time will tell but I'm a bit worried.

The folks at Faceplate addict are auctioning off a pretty kick ass Mirror's Edge faceplate on Ebay with 100% of the proceeds going to Child Play.  The faceplate has been signed by developers of the game and could make a cool gift for the Mirror's Edge fan in your life.  The bidding is only at $60.99 which seems kind of cheap for something this cool plus it's for charity.

• Check out this bland Band Hero video [needs salt-ed.]
• Another win for Mac owners: Warhammer: Age of Reckoning
• Burn Zombie Burn contest is coming up
• Final Fantasy Crystal Bearers: march of the preorder bonuses
• Finally..... Left 4 Dead 2 demo up!
• What's that mysterious package? Why, it's my very own copy of Dragon Age: Origins for the PS3!
• Playstation 2 turns nine!
• You can now join the Lost Saga open beta
• Luis Lopez, one of Liberty Cities most interesting characters
• NYKO zooming in on DSi accessories
• CrimeCraft is going on tour
• Least secure Stronghold ever, now available
• Patch available for console version of Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood
• Extend your IR capabilities with these little blasters
• Buy District 9 on Blu Ray, get God of War III demo for free
• THQ launches Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter
• Massive MapleStory update
• Majesco announces Ghostwire: Link to the Paranormal for Nintendo DSi