Gamers Evolved

Today is the day for all you Halo 3 gamers to go onto Xbox Live Marketplace and download the new Halo 3 Heroic Map Pack – which was released earlier today. Each of the three new maps (Standoff, Rat’s nest, and Foundry) offer a “totally different play style” according to Microsoft.

800 Microsoft points (£6.80) gets you the three maps – which may seem to be a bit expensive – but we all know that Halo fans will be willing to dish out the money. “Standoff’s symmetrical valley, with its entrenched bases and fields of boulders is ideal for mid-sized objective and Slayer game types,” says Microsoft.

Don’t know what to give all your friends for Christmas? Why not buy them a virtual console game for their Wii. Nintendo has created – Gifting – a feature that allows you to use those extra Wii points you have to buy your friends the virtual game they have always wanted.

Virtual Console games are purchased from the Wii Shop Channel at a starting price of 500 Wii Points ($5). Classic NES titles typically start at 500 points, SNES games at 800 and N64 at 1000. Virtual Console games from other classic systems such as the Sega Genesis, TurboGrafx-16, MSX and Neo Geo are also available.

Nunchuck and EA games have banded together to create yet another party game for both the Nintendo Wii and the Nintendo DS. The goal of Ninja Reflex is to test gamers on their martial art abilities to see if they can earn their black belt and become Sensei over everyone.

The game uses a series of martial arts challenges to test gamers’ reflexes as well as measure their response times with millisecond precision. Not only that will gamers work for their black belt – but they will also be able to contend for ninja supremacy against their friends in multiplayer battles with up to four players.

The UK (and the rest of the world) is finally catching up to everything the we here in the U.S. They are finally getting the chance to use the infamous video on demand (VOD) feature that the U.S. has been using for almost a year.

On December 11th the new Xbox Live Marketplace Video Store will be up and running. Xbox 360 owners will be able to rent full-length feature films, such as Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and the Matrix trilogy. Users pay between £2 and £4.50 for each film and have two weeks to watch the movie after download. The service will also roll out in Canada, Ireland, France and Germany.

I’m sure by now most have heard about the loss of Jeff Gerstmann – who was fired from GameSpot only last week. Rumors are flying around the internet that he was fired for giving a negative and low scores. When asked to change it he refused so they fired him. Whether that is true or not hasn’t been confirmed – but that doesn’t seem to stop people from blowing up and getting furious with Gamespot.

Many fans of Gerstmann have commented their anger to Gamespot and have demanded an explanation. They have even gone so far as to boycott the site and cancel their subscription. A recorded 500 customers have already cancelled and more seem to be coming.