Shacknews is reporting that in an effort to keep Tomb  Raider Underworld High on the rankings on Metacritic, Eidos has a PR firm tasked with trying to convince publications and websites to hold off on their reviews if the scores are below a certain score. A story on 1up refers to the story first being broken when GameSpot U.K. journalist …

I have always been part of the school that believes testing is a waste of time and if it compiles we can ship it. However it seems that Eidos share the same thought seeing as that the Nintendo Wii version of Tomb Raider is virtually unfishable. Apparently there is a glitch on the Coastal Thailand area of the game that …

While the original games were your straight-up platformers (not that that's a bad thing), this next title changes everything up somewhat by introducing as well as focusing on building and using vehicles to complete missions and explore new areas.... I never had the chance to play any of the franchises previous titles but in all my time as a gamer I had always heard such great things about them so when I got my hands on a review copy of the game I was quite excited to see what all the fuss was about.... From the word "go", Rare make it very clear that they had decided to approach the game from a rather different angle by taking us into the gameworld where game characters live and introducing us to the "Lord of Games" or "L.O.G" who basically runs the show.... The game is very self-referential and the humor is quite bizarre as the L.O.G explains to the (now fat and lazy) washed up video game characters that he has decided to scrap the original concept of the games and change things up a little by having them build and utilize vehicles to complete their objectives. All in all it's kind of funny although I find that the self-mockery gets to a point where you actually start believing that the characters are in-fact useless, which isn't a good thing. While the game is going to be played by a whole horde of new gamers who never played the originals, I think that a lot of the jokes are just going to fly over their heads.... This sort of thing may have been acceptable when the original games came out but this is the "next-gen" folks, people don't want to sit and read dialogue all day long anymore, especially kids.... What you do is use your vehicles to complete missions, ranging from races, to tasks such as collecting items, dropping items off or even just getting somewhere within a certain amount of time.... You are given access to a workshop to build your own vehicles in a way not unlike that of a Lego set. You slowly get access to more and more parts that allow to build the most weird and wonderful contraptions to use in your missions. On the whole the system may feel quite basic at first but once you get into it, the building can be quite fun, especially when you later get to tear around in your very own creation.... Multiplayer is included with the game and can be played over Xbox Live as well as splitscreen and while most of the modes are quite fun and the ability to use your amazing contraptions are there, I don't see it as being anything that will add a significant amount of playtime to the title.... It's too much for children and at the same time, too little for adults so I really don't see who Rare expects to play this game. It really is a shame because if there is anything that the Xbox 360 lacks and has always been lacking was a decent library of fun platformers on the lines of something like Super Mario or even Crash Bandicoot.... With hard-hitters like LittleBigPlanet on the PS3 and the wealth of platforming franchises on the Wii, Microsoft and Rare have really done themselves a disservice by falling short on a game that could have really pulled a lot of younger and more casual gamers towards their console. Scoring: Gameplay: 7/10 [ Missions lack a certain fun factor ] Presentation: 6/10 [ Framerate and boring load screens hurt a decent looking game ] Sound: 6/10 [ Decent sound but there is no excuse for the complete lack of voice work ] Value: 7/10 [ There is a lot to do and collect in the game, so it could keep you busy for hours if you enjoy what it's offering ] Overall: 6.5/1 0 [ Children will feel disappointed and so will adults.

The Gears map pack debacle has once again raised the issue about us not being an officially supported Xbox Live country. Now instead of going into the details of why we are not supported and how we can become supported lets just look at the raw facts. According to Microsoft themselves over 12 million people are on Xbox Live and …

  So I was just about to post the news about how to unlock the funky hair colours for you avatar on the NXE and I stumbled across this video. So I thought I would take the lazy way out and just post this instead of trying to explain the complicated procedure… Enjoy and I hope to see a lot …

Microsoft somehow managed to make one incredible mountain of a screw-up this weekend involving exclusive DLC. Basically, Microsoft was running some sort of promotional event thing (?), which ultimately allowed some gamers to get a free DLC code for the original Banjo-Kazooie on Xbox Live. The problem was that a gamer found out that exclusive DLC such as Gears of War 2 Golden weapons for example, were available and free from the site due to a mess up from Microsoft's side. What's also interesting is that the gamer who found it, known only as RedRex32, went to the Epic Forums to blow the whistle and let everyone know. Not once, but twice. Although he swears that he only went onto the forums to talk about it and not spread the word, he has been permanently banned from the forums. Not only was his account banned but he was given the full IP-blocked treatment. Pretty harsh if you ask me, considering that he wasn't the one that made the screw-up.

You would think that with the price of the Xbox 360 Arcade SKU being what it is, even police officers with low salaries could afford one but it seems like that isn't the case. This video posted by CNN tells the story of a man who was pulled over by the police for speeding and then had his car searched because the police claimed that they smelled Marijuana. No drugs were found but the police did find an Xbox 360 Arcade Console with 8 games. The police officers told him that they were confiscating it because they suspect that it was stolen and that when he has the receipt he can meet them somewhere and they would give it back. What the heck is that all about? The guy even got his receipt and took it in to the police station but wasn't able to get his console back. Why? Well, because it had not even been transferred to evidence room. Seems like we are going to need to start organising some special discount for the Po-Po because things might start getting ugly.

Microsoft has always been big about online gameplay as a key feature of its Xbox systems. In fact as far as console go Microsoft are the responsible for bringing online play to the mass market. The multi-billion dollar investment in the Xbox Live online game service is what is supposed to distinguish Microsoft systems from the competition. Xbox Live hit …