With the release of Mass Effect 3 last month, I decided to sit down and play through all three games. I'd heard a lot of good things about the series, and there was a sale on Steam for the first two. This will be the first of a three part review of the Mass Effect franchise. So I powered up Steam,...

Today during congressional testimony Dr. Gene Spafford revealed the Sony was using outdated version of Apache web server was unpatched and had no firewall installed.  Sony was alerted to the the security flaws at least two months prior to the security breaches.  It seems like Sony is taking its playbook from tepco in this. 

Many of you have probably heard of the game Magicka, developed by a small group of Swedish students under the name Arrowhead Game Studios that released back in January. The game revolves around a Wizard or group of Wizards, if you're playing multiplayer, who can summon and mix elements and cast them...

There is no reprieve for Sony in the continuing saga of the "external Intrusion".  Yesterday Sony announced that the breach was much worse than it previously had led on.  They have had 77 million customers and their personal information and  the personal information of the Sony top management including information about their families stolen.  Just when it seemed it couldn't  get any worse, Sony yesterday said that the compromise also included Sony Online Entertainment Customers as well.  Information about subscribers, such as names, gender, email, passwords etc.  were exposed.  Also an old database of credit cards from 100,000+ customers.  Sony claims the database contained non-us customers.  Sony also claims that the main credit card database was stored on different servers and therefore wasn't compromised.  But with the credibility of Japanese companies especially Sony after failing to disclose the intrusion in a timely matter waning, there is not a lot of credence in their reassurances.

There is still no eta when the PSN network will be back up.

The PlayStation Network is still down for the 5th consecutive day. Sony still has not given an exact reason why the network is down, only stating an "External Intrusion" is the cause. There have been a few rumors as to what that "External Intrusion" may be, some say the hacking group Anonymous launched another attack on Sony and brought down PSN in the process, it could be the recent Steam integration on the PS3 with the release of Portal 2 last week, and the most recent and most believable is that a PlayStation home-brew group have found their way onto the developer network for PSN and have figured out a way to download anything without paying.

If the last one is true they also state Sony themselves shut down the network to prevent anyone else from using the exploit, but in turn have blocked out 20+ million PSN users. Sony has stated that they are not entirely sure how long PSN will be down but they are working around the clock to get PSN back online.

Another interesting question is if PSN users will get any sort of compensation for the downtime, since PSN is a free service it is hard to figure out what or rather how to comp the users. While there is a payed service extension of PSN called PSN+ all that does is allow early access to betas and special promotions such as free games.

As a gamer myself I am greatly disappointed in Sony for this, I recently have gone out and purchased all of the PlayStation 3 exclusives that I have missed over the past couple years and now I can't even get online to play MP or download updates and DLC.

So I plead with you Sony, get your act together and get PSN back up.

Today Nintendo announced that they have a new home entertainment console that is in development. The formal reveal of such console will be at this years E3 that takes place June 7th-9th in Los Angeles. Not much information is currently known about the next console, what we do know is that Nintendo plans to release the console sometime after March 31st, 2012, that could also mean holiday 2012 which has been the general rumor around the industry.

They have also confirmed that the new console will not have any 3D capabilities, their reasoning behind this is that they can not control the way 3D is handled unlike their new handheld console the Nintendo 3DS.

Rumor has it that the new console will be more familiar than both the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. Rumors have also stated that Nintendo will be ditching the motion controlling for a more traditional game-pad design with one major difference, their may be a touchscreen directly on the game-pad, much like a Nintendo DS.

We will be onsite this year at E3 reporting all the latest news and also giving first hand impressions on the new Nintendo Console, what ever it will be named, we are personally hoping for either the Nintendo Dolphin Revolution or the Power Nintendo Entertainment System a.k.a. the P-NES.

BRINK an FPS developed by Splash Damage has been previewed by a couple of news sites at Bethesda's pre-E3 event that was held in Utah last week.

VG247 has some video footage and a small interview with the CEO of Splash Damage, Paul Wedgwood

You can get your hands-on BRINK at this years Insomnia lan in the UK, click here for more info

and the best for last, Bethesda recently announced that BRINK is releasing a week early specifically May 10 in the US and May 13 in the EU

So there you go, a roundup of some of the exciting BRINK news that was released in the last couple of weeks

Just minutes ago, Portal 2 was released on Steam. But not before Valve rewarded all of the people who strove hard for those Potatoes. People with the Gold Potato (awarded for getting all 36 Potatoes) got the game about an hour early, and it has slowly been expanding to the people with fewer Potatoes. I got the game about five minutes early (I have 3 Potatoes).

Enjoy Portal 2.

Earlier today, GLaDOS began overclocking the CPUs from which she was drawing power for an early boot up, using the Potatoes we had all collected. The Potatoes are very quickly draining, so make sure that you play the five games yet to be completed (Defense Grid: The Awakening, Killing Floor, Amnesia: The Dark Decent, Super Meat Boy, and The Ball).

In the meantime, the number of active subjects at GLaDOS@Home has changed from ZERO to NINE. At least eight people have been confirmed to be playing, right now. No leads yet as to who the ninth will be.

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