So, the other night we were playing a game of Gears of War 2 and we were all destroying each other on a map called Day One. I have taken quite a liking to the photo mode that came with the game, so after my death, I was having my usual fun taking photo's of the action. On the Day One map there is a small street corner arcade, in which I found something rather interesting. You may remember that the infamous anti-videogame lawyer Jack Thompson always referred to the Grand Theft Auto series of games as a "murder simulator". Now looking at that header image will show you that Epic decided to poke a bit of fun at that whole mess by creating an arcade game by the name of "Murder Simulator" and placing it into the map. I live easter eggs like this and I think it was really cool that Epic took the time to take a quick stab at an industry story that has caused a lot of grief for gamers worldwide. At least Jack is barred for life now, so until another lunatic comes along and tries to pick up where he left off, we can all rest easy knowing that we can play our violent games in ironic peace.

By now you are all very obviously aware that the NXE dashboard update has been released and is impressing a lot of 360 owners the world over. Lazygamer reported earlier today that there are some issues in the form of an error coming up when you try and view certain pages. It also now seems as though that isn't the only problem. Before the release of NXE, Microsoft promised that the old themes from the original dashboard (OXE?) would work seamlessly and also look great, but the truth is that they just don't. Although I found an article about this on OXM's website, it was one of the first things that I realised when I booted up into the new dashboard. Not only are the background images not suited to the new layout that has windows running through the centre of the screen, but the images seem to also be stretched wider and have a definite loss in quality as a result (see header image). Although I don't feel as though it is a major issue, I am not the type of gamer that spends a lot of Microsoft Points on themes and gamer pictures, so I can understand if those who do are not very impressed with the translation over to the NXE. I'm sure that more little issues are going to be popping up here and there, there are rumours flying around that the NXE is causing RROD's, but until we are sure that it is not just one or two random cases, we won't be saying anything about it just yet.

Gears of War 2’s skill-based matchmaking has now become Epic’s top priority as far as fixes to the recently released game goes and they hope to have a solution soon. Hit the jump to see what Senior producer Rod Fergusson had to say on the official forums Gears forums. Last Updated: November 20, 2008

I have to admit that I had really high hopes for Skate It on the Wii. I am a huge fan of EA's Skate. that was released last year for PS3 and Xbox 360 and so I was obviously holding thumbs that the Wii version would give me a good reason to slide out the Wii balance board for the first time in months. I was excited to see that 1UP had posted it's review of the game, so I clicked through to see what they thought. The result was unfortunately not exactly what I was hoping for as they landed up scoring it with a "D" (using the same system that grades were given in school) According to the review, the controls are incredibly poor, often resulting in different tricks being performed even though the reviewer was using the same motion each time with the Wii-mote. The balance board is apparently pretty much useless due to oversensitivity and the game world empty. I was really sad to read through the brief but straightforward review. Maybe if a sequel is produced, the developers will have a better grasp of the hardware and it's abilities. My last hope is that the DS version comes along nicely, if not, I guess I will have to wait for Skate 2's release in the first quarter of next year.

While the original DiRT from Codemasters barely mentioned Colin McRae's name that much and even had extreme sports athlete and rally driver, Travis Pastrana doing all the in-game voice, Codemasters have decided to keep his name a part of the franchise despite his tragic death in a helicopter crash last year. This was made known when Codemasters announced the upcoming release of Colin McRae: DiRT 2. Gavin Raeburn, producer of DiRT 2 had the following to say: "The decision was made jointly between Codemasters and the McRae family. His ventures into events such as the X-Games, Dakar Rally and the Race of Champions have inspired us to look at events covering the extremes of off-road motorsport. This is where we're taking the series with DiRT 2 and Colin will play a part in that. DiRT 2 will be a great tribute, and we'll be revealing more about this over the coming months."" While they are referring to the game as a tribute, I can't say that I don't feel as if they are abusing his name a little here. I'm not saying that they are purposefully using his death as a major selling point, however they are obviously aware of the extra attention it will receive if the game is marketed as a "tribute". The first DiRT was received fairly well from gamers, although many (including myself) did not like the non-sensical magical driving physics that allowed rally cars to take hairpins at 180km/h as long as you let off of the accelerator. Gavin Raeburn also comments that DiRT 2 will concentrate on "the extremes of off-road motorsport". I hope that they spend enough time polishing the physics before trying to add in some sort of 4x4 lawnmower racing series to the mix, although that would kinda rock.

  One more day until the weekend, well two if you count the fact that this one only just started but it’s exciting anyway. So this week Yahtzee takes on Fallout 3 and you just know he isn’t going to love it don’t you. Last Updated: November 20, 2008

It’s arrived and has now been downloaded by millions of people all over the world and the servers have stood up to the initial strain and everything has kept on ticking over which must make the Engineers in Redmond ecstatic. However it’s not all perfect and along with some freezing issues a new nemesis has raised it’s ugly head. Last …

Capcom has announced that they will have a new branded company storefront coming to the New Xbox Experience today, and according to Joystiq they may have slipped up a bit when it comes to a certain screenshot they released that shows the release date for Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix. The image in question shown above, clearly states …