The Sims Bustin out is a game that once you start playing you will not want to stop it has many challenging tasks and makes you see how much has to be done just to achieve one of them. Playing in Bustin out mode is excellent as you have a number of tasks to do and you don’t have to stick to only one of them, you have a number of houses that you may choose from and then you can work from there. Free play mode is absolutely brilliant as there is so much to do and you realize that you have to start from the bottom and work your way up, and there is a lot to do just to earn one promotion and makes someone of a young age realize just how much you have to do to make it to the top even though in real life there is a lot more overall I give this game a 4 and a half star rating

Users who went out and traded up for a fancypants Xbox 360 Elite because they wanted HDMI support may be annoyed to hear about a new device from Manufacturer XMC which (if the rumors are to be believed) will offer HDMI upscaling for old-skool Xbox 360s.

Kotaku has what appears to be a rendering of the XCM cable up over at their site, though the original posting appeared over on Comcast’s Game Invasion.
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For the first time in the history of MMO games, CCP Games, creators of EVE Online have announced the appointment of an in-world lead economist for the game. They are commissioning a dedicated real world economist to constantly monitor and make a research for the virtual world. This appointment comes as a real testament to the growing intricacy and strength of EVE Online’s thriving virtual economy.

As the official report says, Dr. Eyjólfur Guðmundsson brings an over 15-years-experience in economic studies and research, and joins CCP directly from the University of Akureyri, Iceland, where he – among several teaching positions – held the position of the Dean of the Faculty of Business and Science. Prior to that, he was a research associate at the University of Rhode Island’s Department of Environmental and Natural Resource Economics where he also completed his PhD. He has also authored or co-authored 15 publications. Dr. Guðmundsson’s first blog on EVE Online economics can be found here. (more…)

Just one day after the announcement that Kevin Durant would be the cover athlete for EA Sports’ NCAA March Madness 08, 2K Sports revealed today that Ohio State superstar Greg Oden will be gracing its own College Hoops 2K8 covers this fall. Oden and Durant are widely suspected to be the first two players chosen in tomorrow’s NBA Draft, though predictions vary on the order of those picks.

After leading Lawrence North to three high school basketball championships in Indiana, Oden made a huge splash in his first and only season at Ohio State, where he averaged 15.7 points and 9.6 rebounds per game in an injury-shortened season. The Ohio State Buckeyes eventually made it to the National Championship game, where they lost to the defending champion Florida Gators.
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Small-scale retail chain has triggered a ‘chain reaction’

Retailers in Italy have broken a very sacred rule concerning gaming consoles: don’t sell before launch date. Not two days early
anyway. Small-scale retail chain Darty took out adverts in national newspapers. They said that customers would be able to get their PS3 at Darty stores from 7pm on Wednesday, even though the official launch date is set for Friday March 23, as everyone already knows.
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Coder submits portable Duke as entry in programming contest.

With all these Duke Forever stories suddenly poppin’ up all over the place like spring locusts, it’s almost starting to look like the Viscount of Vaporware may (finally) see the light of day.

How appropriate then to hear (via DS Emulation) of a recent successful port of the original Duke Nukem 3D to… (wait for it)… the Nintendo DS?

The ambitious effort appears to be the work of a modder known to the Internet as “GPF” — one of the entrants in the 2007 NeoFlash Coding Contest. I don’t know what kind of coding chops you have to have if you plan on going up against a submission of a fully-functional DS Duke Nukem 3D — obviously ’strong kung-fu’. Looks like GPF is set up to win a Wii if the judges take a shine to his handiwork.

The project’s name is Duke3DS. You can check out its homepage here along with some barebones installation instructions. Since the original Duke dates from the “pre mouselook” era, the game may actually play all right on a handheld. As always, don’t expect sympathy from Nintendo Cusomer Care for any broken lampshades, pregnancies or black screens of death which may occur as a result of attempting to bring Duke Nukem into the happy world of Nintendo. (more…)

Sony’s intriguing new game asks what happens when felt creatures come to the PlayStation 3.

Given the abstract nature of the theoretical talk that occurs when the power of the PlayStation 3’s cell processor is brought up, it’s somehow fitting that one of the most intriguing displays of what the system can do should be a unique game from the fine folks who brought us Rag Doll Kung Fu. During Sony’s Game Developers Conference press event last night, Phil Harrison introduced reps from UK-based Media Molecule, who were on hand to show off LittleBigPlanet, an upcoming PS3 title with a funky twist. The demo of the game offered an intriguing showcase for what’s possible with the PS3.
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The quality of a video game is recognized through various observations regarding, gameplay, sounds, visuals, movement, camera angles and of course
story-line. Aaa, story-lines, all good games are based on great story-lines. Sometimes, a great story is what sells a game, like Final Fantasy for example, but then again there are games that sell due to great visuals, like The Elder Scrolls IV(of course everything is great in this game). But what happens when a game depends on both story and visuals, yet the time-line for the game’s development is short? Naturally, the developing company will have to work less on one of these 2 aspects.

In an interview with GamePro, Deus Ex designer, Warren Spector reckons that working on next-gen graphics may result in the hindering of a game’s story-line: “Is there anything specific that next-gen hardware can provide for us? We can clearly…create more believable characters. These new consoles are roughly equivalent to high-end PCs. But next-gen hardware is not the solution to our story problems [in game development]. In fact, it may be that next-gen hardware is going to make it harder for us to work on story development and character interaction.” (more…)

Video game designer David Jaffe says that “ten years from now there will be one console”

In the beginning, there were those Game and Watch devices. Later on came the Tetris, then the NES, the Game
Boy, the PlayStation and before we even knew it, the market was filled with consoles ever more different. Nowadays, there are many companies that make gaming systems like Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft and Sega and each console has a different and intriguing feature to catch the eye of the consumer.

Now, game developer David Jaffe says that all the games should be ported to one universal console, as the result of a nostalgic moment he had some time ago. I know he’s a game developer and all, thus meaning he knows what he’s talking about, but how on earth are any of the big companies going to drop out of the race when the game industry has never been more flourishing?
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The appearance of the Wiimote has changed the definition of gaming

Less than a year ago, people around the world first picked up a Wii Remote and realized Nintendo was changing video games forever. Using the Wiimote’s motion sensitive feature, the realistic game play of Wii Sports turned parents and grandparents into gamers and launched a new Wii-based party and made a fitness machine out of it to.

Nintendo
has built on the momentum with the arrival of Wii Play, a collection of nine new games in the Wii Sports style that lets players fish, play pool or shoot targets with the motion-sensitive Wii Remote. Wii Play joins Wii Sports as the party-game centerpiece at family get-togethers and grown-up game nights. To emphasize the multiplayer nature of the game, Wii Play comes packaged with a Wii Remote.
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