Update: The changes weren't made live last night, so we're going offline at 11 a.m. PST this morning. Sorry!

Start saving any drafts you have open in the Article Editor: Bitmob will be going down for some much-needed maintenance this evening, starting at around 8:30 p.m. PST. The process should take about an hour, and when we're back up, hopefully most of the performance issues we've been experiencing lately will have been banished to the darkest nether regions of the Internet. Fingers crossed!

Thanks for being patient with us.

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And so we come to the epic conclusion of my epic trip to Disneyland. Well, it's a conclusion, anyway. I'll let you decide how epic it is. The important thing is that it's over, and now I can go and actually play Epic Mickey.

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Broad swaths of the video-game media depend on the mantra “all versions are created equal” in order to cover the insanely tight schedule of major releases every holiday season. Sites like GameSpot, with the requisite manpower and budget, can choose to review a game across all three primary platforms, but other enthusiast websites and magazines may only have time for one version of a game. What happens if the conventional wisdom fails and one version of a game is markedly different from the others?

What raised this question is Jim Sterling's Call of Duty: Black Ops review published on Destructoid. Unable to get a copy of the console version of the game before deadline, Sterling reviewed the PC version of the title -- and found the multiplayer broken and pretty much unplayable.

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Kudos to the Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) for asking the general public for their stance on the Schwarzenegger vs. Entertainment Merchants Association court case. At least, that's what I hope all of those people freezing in front of the Supreme Court building are there for.

Video Blips:

• The ECA picks the brains of G4's Adam Sessler, game designer Daniel Greenberg (Vampire: The Masquerade), Jolly Mario, and regular gamers on violent video-game regulation. Had I known about this rally sooner, I would've shown up in my blood-drenched Splatterhouse costume armed with legions of signs.

Continue after the break for some massively multiplayer episodic gaming in CrimeCraft, a trio of downloadable expansions for Final Fantasy 11, and one disturbing debut trailer for The Cat Lady.

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I was in the music section of Barnes and Noble when it hit me. I was looking at a copy of Neil Young’s Le Noise, and I told my girlfriend that I could borrow or download it rather than pay $17 for the album. As we walked out of the music section, we saw the store's board-game selection. I eyed two items that cost $35 each. It was then that I realized I was willing to pay twice as much for something I might only be able to play once a month. If I bought the album, I could listen to it whenever I please.

I still really want this album.

It dawned on me that the reason I devalued the album is because I saw it as something I would consume -- listen to it a dozen times and forget about it. The board games are experiences. This distinction is important because it explains the direction my video-gaming habits have gone. I don’t buy games often. And it's not because I don’t have the money. It's because new, must-have experiences rarely present themselves to me. Mount and Blade and Men of War generally scratch any interactive itches I get. And my Steam account features more than half a dozen shooters I can play any time I please.

While both video games and board games are consumer products, the culture surrounding the former has become consumption focused. Games are disposable: We buy them, eat them up, and throw them away, either metaphorically or literally.

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Somehow, the full-motion-video game Mad Dog McCree slipped out of the chains binding American Laser Games products in the mid-'90s and ended up on the Wii last year, a relic of a past where these cheesily "acted" titles were supposed to portend the future of gaming. People paid actual money to play them in arcades, along with many of the FMV titles American Laser Games put out on the Sega CD. 

Be sure to check out the gameplay footage after the jump.

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You can blame this puzzle on the guy who passed me in the green Camaro this morning that had a license plate that read: "PICKLE."

The concept here is simple. I've created a series of vanity tags. You need to decipher them and match them to the appropriate video-game character. If you get CNFSD, you can find the ANSWRS on P2.

1)		A)
2)		B)

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It's 2 a.m. at the Abstergo Headquarters (also known as my bedroom). I have to be at work in seven hours, but I don't care. I'm in a virtual renaissance environment, hunted by an unknown assassin while trying to locate and kill my own target. I know that to survive I have to blend in, so without a second to spare I move in on a crowd with two other characters who look like me.

Moments later my target drops down from the rooftops. He had just murdered someone above and then made a somewhat reckless getaway. He glances about, content in his safety that no one saw him fall.

I did.

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I’ve spent a fair amount of time playing the new Pro Evolution Soccer 11 and FIFA 11 games this past month. Pro Evo is my favorite of the two -- I find myself on the pitch of Pro Evo late into the night for the first time since the series' heyday on PlayStation 2.

All that soccer on the brain has me thinking about past footy titles I absolutely love -- especially the wackier ones. Here’s my list -- in no particular order -- of the best offbeat soccer titles. They all seem to feature three things: power-ups, fighting, and…role-playing stats.

So dive in -- studs down, please.

Sega Soccer Slam (PS2, Xbox, GameCube)

Best Mexican national team ever.

Sega Soccer Slam is hands-down the best soccer game ever made. This three-on-three title features zany cartoon characters that play to their team’s nationality in a hilarious, almost insulting way.

Equipment can be bought to boost the skills of your players as you embark on your campaign to beat every team. This part of the game is similar to any sports title, really. The thing that sets it apart as one of only two titles I found myself playing before high school at 5 a.m. is the sheer fun of playing with two buddies -- and the fact that you can punch people.

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So the other week some idiot asked Stephen Toulouse, director of policy and enforcement for Xbox Live, if he could use a swastika as his personal insignia in Call of Duty: Black Ops. To which Toulouse replied “No, of course you can’t, we’ll ban you.”
 
I find that interesting. Oh, not because of the swastika’s thousand-year history outside Nazi dogma as a religious symbol used by Hindus, Christians, Native Americans, blah blah blah...I dismiss such arguments as stupid. "Swastika" means "Nazi" and all that connotes. You’re not gonna reclaim that one, pal. Maybe you’ve also noticed a lack of people named Adolf in the last 70 years.

BANNED!

No, it’s interesting to me because of the swiftness and surety of Toulouse’s response...and the unexplored issues it raises. Issues, like the swastika query itself, that wouldn’t come up if Live’s policy and enforcement had two things it desperately needs: consistency and teeth.

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Nintendo went out to the shed and found their bright-colored paints to give the Wii and DS shiny new coats as a way to drive up sales. You know, that's actually a pretty good idea. Be on the lookout for a neon-pink version of Bitmob coming in the not-so-real future.

News Blips:

Warren Spector now comes in trading-card form. The famed game producer behind Deus Ex has been immortalized by artist Len Peralta as part of the Geek-A-Week challenge, where he must connect with 52 famous geeks over the year and create a trading card for each of them. Peralta honored Spector this week to mark the release of Spector's Epic Mickey, which explains the mouse ears on the card. Other geeks-of-the-week include Wil Wheaton, the cast of Rifftrax, and Jonathan Coulton.

Nintendo sells 900,000 DS handhelds and 600,000 Wiis during the week of Black Friday. Nintendo pumped out a press release this morning trumpeting internal estimates that their hardware sold more than 1.5 million total units from November 21-27. Many of the Black Friday "Door Buster" deals -- deals which people are likely to line up for -- included discounted Wii systems or Wiis with gift cards. The house of Mario was also celebrating the plumber's 25th anniversary with special red DS units and Wiis. Both of the special packages came bundled with a Mario title and likely helped to spur sales. 

World of Warcraft gets an interactive fiction -- sort of. A thread on the World of Warcraft message boards that began with the subject "0. You awaken in Razor Hill" continued for dozens of pages with different posters commenting commands to a single, human narrator. The thread was started by forum user Dusk, who acted as dungeon master for a large group of players who inputed commands for the player character -- an Orc Hunter named "Tednugent" who had a pet cat named "Scratchfever" -- by replying in the thread. It's an interesting read, if only to see Dusk's deft humor in dealing with trolls and people who wanted to grief the experience. To see a cleaned-up version of the entire text adventure, check thelittlemurloc.com. 

Internet broadcaster Games Cast TV hopes to capitalize on growing e-sports market. E-sports like competitive first-person shooters and Starcraft probably won't be able to find a home on cable television in the United States, but nothing is stopping those competitions from finding a viewership online. Games Cast TV hopes to be the home for people looking for that type of live gaming, with a lineup of professional and amateur players feeding livestreams of them playing anything from Call of Duty: Black Ops to Starcraft 2. The feeds are strangely entrancing to watch. For a schedule of upcoming live events, check the Games Cast TV website. 

Got any hot news tips? Send 'em over to [email protected].

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When I heard that Telltale Games had released a downloadable poker game featuring Max from Sam & Max, the Heavy from Team Fortress 2, Strong Bad from Homestar Runner, and Tycho from Penny Arcade…well, you might say I went all-in.

Fortunately, the jokes in Poker Night at the Inventory are much better than what I just delivered. (Not that that's saying much but trust me.) Bitmob community writer Alex Martin has a great write-up on the game and why it succeeds where other card-style games have failed -- specifically, because the players banter with each other in hilarious ways.

Unfortunately, Poker Night is the exception, not the rule, when it comes to humor in games. Outside of Telltale's adventure games, Portal, and anything by Tim Schafer (who we had on our Mobcast a few weeks ago discussing the topic), the pickings are pretty slim.

So why is it so hard to make a genuinely funny video game? Here are a few reasons, along with some ideas for improvement.

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The Engish-language Yakuza 4 trailer confirms my suspicions: Bad deeds done by bad men are universal -- nothing is lost in translation.

Video Blips:

• I just watched this Yakuza 4 trailer, but I'm not really sure what happened. The narrator gave me a tour of the shady Tokyo underworld...and I think he then recruited me to join the gang.

Continue after the break for the debut trailer of the latest Double Fine Productions game, Stacking, a preview of the "Pigsy's Perfect 10" downloadable content for Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, and the launch trailer for the ultraviolent Splatterhouse.

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In this episode of the Mobcast, Gamasutra's Christian Nutt joins Bitmob's Dan Hsu, Demian Linn, and Brett Bates. The group discusses the things in games that they're thankful for, under-the-radar titles, how enthusiast and public reactions to the Kinect differ, which 2009 titles they won't get to until 2010, and the best (or worst?) moments in video-game griefing.

Have a community topic you want  to hear the crew discuss? E-mail your suggestions to [email protected], subject: Mobcast.

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The latest World of Warcraft patch has forever changed the face of Azeroth. Lands have been torn asunder and cities sieged by the mighty Deathwing. Sounds like the workings for a pretty bad day.

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Counter-Strike: Condition Zero: Deleted Scenes is one of my favorite games of all time. Falling through the cracks of PC gaming, it was more than forgotten and extremely rare to hear about. Being a part of such a huge online franchise, it's kind of peculiar that many pay almost no attention to this title. 

While the graphics are somewhat not up to date, it's mechanics seem to mirror that of the Modern Warfare series. Being completely single-player, the game has an advantage by taking the player on many different journeys through many different areas. That variety only adds to it's strong core in which the gameplay implements a wide array of technology. Developer Ritual Entertainment fleshed out the maps out with tunnels, alleys, and improvised doors. 

Not to mention that there is a lot of content. Although coming with Counter-Strike: Condition Zero and Counter-Strike (both multiplayer-based titles), I pay no attention to anything other than Deleted Scenes in this package. 

It's clear that this game is very special to me. The fact that it's unknown to many helps it define what I look for in this medium. 

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With the holidays just around the corner, this week is bustling with game and console launch activity, as well as one of the most talked about cases of a game journalist being fired -- before the 1up-ocalypse, anyway.

November 29

1972: Atari ships the first coin-operated Pong machines to bars and convenience stores. 

2007: Jeff Gerstmann is dismissed as Gamespot's reviews editor. He never spoke publicly about what happened, but speculation was he lost his job because publisher Eidos complained to the website's higher ups over his low score (six out of 10) for Kane & Lynch: Dead Men.

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Remember when you rearranged your furniture so you could have enough space to play with Kinect, only to find your living room is pathetically small? Well, EA Sports Active 2 for Kinect is only going to make you feel worse. The following review explains why.

2 Days of EA Sports Active 2 for Kinect
By Devon N. Campbell

I won a copy of the original EA Sports Active from a Bitmob contest earlier this year, but I only played it once. Its attempts to set itself apart from Wii Fit (mostly with rubber resistance bands) appealed to me at first, but the game didn't amount to much more than a sloppy knock-off. It looks like the follow-up isn't much better.

Devon N. Campbell spent a couple of days with the Kinect-enabled version of EA Sports Active 2 and found its added features come with added requirements. According to Campbell's review, the game requires nearly 15 feet of distance for the camera to detect the player's sweat and toil. If you have that kind of space to work out, I imagine you also have the money to hire a real personal trainer.

Read the full review to learn what else makes this sequel so sloppy.

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When MASH surgeons need to do something with their hands, they play cards. It's cool, it's tense, and it adds some action to dialogue scenes. Gambling is full of bold-sounding terms like "no limits" and "aces high," and it's inherently more exciting than drinking or smoking (two activities which directors rely on for visual seasoning).

Card games have found their way into Red Dead Redemption, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and just about any other game big enough to fit them. But instead of adding some activity to character-driven sections, they usually isolate the scenes and block out the worlds surrounding them. Red Dead Redemption's outside tables were an ideal setting for Texas Hold 'Em, but the witty writing from the cut-scenes had gone.

Do you remember playing pool with your cousin Roman in GTA 4? You'd pick him up, drive him somewhere, play some pool, and then drive him back. In the car, you'd share a natural conversation and learn a little about him. In the pool hall, you'd both turn into robots that barely spoke. It was awkward and alienating.

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The Community Spotlight highlights some of the best articles that didn't quite make the front page.This edition is a little on the light side -- probably due in part to turkey comas and early-morning-sale-induced hangovers.

For Love of the Games
By Chris Cosmo Ross
Chris' only hobby is playing video games. As he gets older, and attempts to conquer the mysteries of game development through school, he wonders if he spends too much time with his hobby. This is a question many gamers over the age of 20 ask themselves, and the answer is often the same. 

Interview With Indie Developer Race-Away Studios
By Anthony O'Brien
Anthony interviews Race-Away Studios founder Marty Green about his new puzzle game, Bounce. They discuss the ups and downs of indie development. 

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