Patch details:

Many of the fixes affecting balance, gameplay, or plot scripting are already included in the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of Dragon Age: Origins.

Balance

Daggers now apply 0.5 points of damage per additional point in dexterity and 0.5 points of damage per additional point in strength, as originally intended. This increases dagger damage for high-dexterity characters.

During combat, mana or stamina reserves now correctly regenerate more quickly when reserves are low. This allows players to occasionally use an talent or spell in the later stages of lengthy fights.

When exploring, mana and stamina now regenerate more quickly at higher character levels. This reduces downtime between fights.

The spells Force Field, Crushing Prison, Cone of Cold, and Blizzard now have shorter durations and/or longer cooldowns. This ensures that combatants can no longer stun-lock each other by repeatedly casting the same spell.

The cooldowns for several low-level sustained abilities are now shorter. This ensures that players are not penalized for accidentally deactivating them.

Certain battles were not scaling properly, resulting in excessively difficult fights. They now scale as intended.

Enemy corpses now drop health poultices and money more appropriately, resulting in less clutter in the player's inventory.

Gameplay

In rare cases, enemy corpses were selectable when they contained no loot. This no longer occurs.

Party members whose combat tactics were set to defensive behavior no longer stop attacking after using a spell or talent.

In rare cases, combat tactics conditions could fail to determine whether a character had enough mana or stamina to use an ability. This no longer occurs.

The Rally talent no longer repeats its audio effect if it is active during certain conversations.

The Rally talent no longer deactivates upon area transitions or conversations.

The Shimmering Shield spell now deactivates when the character is out of mana.

PC Specific

Controlling a summoned creature (like a ranger's pets) during certain special area transitions no longer results in odd behavior.

Creating a character in a custom module did not create a folder for saves. This could result in corruption of main campaign saves. This no longer occurs.

In some cases, the class icon was set incorrectly for characters imported from the downloadable Character Creator. This no longer occurs.

The options menu now includes a setting to automatically download previously purchased content that is not currently installed.

After installing new downloadable content, the game now always reminds the user to restart the game.

The icons for some promotional downloadable content items were missing. They now appear correctly.

The screenshot upload GUI would stop working from time to time on the client. There was a memory override that was fixed. It is a client fix. It doesn't affect the other problems we have seen on the server.

Plot *Spoiler Warning*

Promotional downloadable content items now remain in the player's inventory when standard items are removed at the end of the dwarf noble origin.

Repeatedly talking to Duncan after gathering the vials in the Korcari Wilds but not the treaties no longer provides duplicate experience.

Leliana's personal plot can now be completed if the player substantially increased her approval (through gifts) before talking to her.

During the siege of Redcliffe, enemies are no longer able to spawn in locations that would break the plot.

Bann Teagan no longer disappears when he is supposed to be accessible during Urn of Sacred Ashes.

“We have been working on the expansion for ‘Age of Conan’ for quite some time now, and everyone on the team is eager to lift the veil and include the public in what we are trying to bring to life,” says Game Director and Executive Producer Craig Morrison who will be hosting the live gameplay demonstration together with expansion Lead Designer Joel Bylos. “Development is coming together nicely, and we are really excited to see the empire of Khitai coming to life! Doing a live demo on Xfire is a brilliant way for us to reach out to a broad audience and show just what they can expect from ‘Rise of the Godslayer’ as we continue to move closer and closer to launch.”

1. Modern Warfare 2 PC, PS3, Xbox 360
2. FIFA 10 PC, PS2, PS3, PSP, Wii, Xbox 360
3. Assassin's Creed II PC, PS3, Xbox 360
4. New Super Mario Bros. Wii Wii
5. Wii Sports Resort Wii
6. Wii Fit Plus Wii
7. Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games DS, Wii
8. LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues DS, PC, PS3, PSP, Wii, Xbox 360
9. Forza Motorsport 3 Xbox 360
10. Mario Kart Wii Wii
11. LEGO Batman DS, PC, PS2, PS3, PSP, Wii, Xbox 360
12. Professor Layton and Pandora's Box DS
13. Need for Speed: Shift PC, PS3, PSP, Xbox 360
14. Left 4 Dead 2 PC, Xbox 360
15. WWE SmackDown vs. RAW 2010 PS3, PS2, PSP, Xbox 360
16. F1 2009 PSP, Wii
17. Pro Evolution Soccer 2010 PC, PS3, Xbox 360
18. Pure PC, PS3, Xbox 360
19. Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training DS
20. Batman: Arkham Asylum

• Aion @ MMOGamer [4/5]
• Rogue Warrior @ IGN [1.5/10]
• The Saboteur @ Eurogamer [6/10]

Console Reviews

• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 @ AtomicGamer [94%]
• C.O.P. The Recruit @ Gaming Nexus [B]
• Avatar @ IncGamers [4.9/10]
• Dragon Age: Origins @ OC Modshop [5/5]
• Modern Warfare 2 @ Metku.net [Silver Award]

Previews

• Age of Conan Update 6 Preview @ IncGamers
• EverQuest: Underfoot @ IGN

Articles

• Mass Effect 2 Interview @ Gaming Nexus
• Hatin' on Hate @ Game Central

Lots going on in the EQII world! We are just about to release our next update, Will of a Tyrant. With this update you are going to see a few hundred lingering bugs fixed in EQII. Some of these bugs date back to launch and are being knocked out before we gear up for the expansion. In fact, we have taken to calling this update our “bug bash” as we pulled out our hammers and smashed them into oblivion. As for content in this update, well it is a little lighter than recent updates, and there is a reason for that, well actually a couple of reasons. The first is that it was a shorter cycle for us, with only about two months of time between this update and last. The second is that we are starting to shift many of our resources over to expansion work as that gets closer to launching. In addition, we have some as yet to be announced surprises coming. They’re some rather large features, which we hope will excite many of you. More on those in the months ahead.

One feature we have been receiving a lot of questions over, is the Item Ratings system. I know that since it was announced, there has been a great deal of confusion over the system and what it is intended to accomplish. After many internal discussions, and listening to feedback from you, we have decided not to move forward with this system. We are exploring alternatives that would allow us to continue to grow items and allow your gear to advance in meaningful ways, without giving the impression that you are going backward.

Another long announced and long awaited feature has been the rework on the “fighter revamp”. This is another project that is going to fall by the wayside as we now focus on small changes, rather than sweeping revamps. Fighters are going to see some love here in the near future, thanks to Xelgad, who is taking on some of the class balance responsibilities. First and foremost, we have identified a problem with a couple of abilities for Crusaders; Holy Ground and Grave Sacrament. Those abilities, rather than generating an amount of hate toward the hate list, were in fact moving the crusader up by ranks; thereby practically guaranteeing that crusaders would dominate agro. We are modifying those abilities to generate raw hate, as well as a much more modest rank increase., so that they are still very viable for tanking, but not an automatic pass to the top of the hate list. Additionally both abilities will have other bonuses added to them. We want to make sure these are abilities that the Crusader classes will want to keep on their hotbars.

Other classes will be seeing improvements and tweaks as we take a hard look at how each class performs in solo, group and raid play. Our goal is to make sure every class has a role and will be wanted in groups and raids, as well as being able to successfully solo, for those of you who play these Massive Multiplayer games all alone, like me. =P

Shader 3.0 work is pretty much complete at this point, with all of the shaders being converted to the new system. However we will not be releasing it with Will of a Tyrant. We are not seeing the performance increases that we had hoped so we will continue to optimize and tweak until they provide not only a visual boost, but a performance boost as well. We do not want to take a step backwards in performance just to make things look shiny. Currently it looks as though this feature will land with the next game update, on expansion launch day.

I know you are all excited about the upcoming expansion, or at least I hope you are. We are very excited as a lot of hard work has gone into making Sentinel’s Fate. We still have a lot to do but the time for release is getting close! So close, in fact, that you can now sign up for beta which should begin admitting folks in under two weeks. You can sign up on the EQII players site, so if you are interested in joining in, make sure you sign up soon.

Pandemic's relocated skeleton crew is investigating the problems in conjunction with ATI, and in the interim offers the following intermittently-working workaround:

In some of our tests we have found one workaround that seems to allow users to run the game. Some have posted adjusting the affinity process via “Task Manager” but our fix truly puts the system in a 1 core mode and will allow you to run the game. Overall this is not a final fix, nor a perfectly stable fix, but it will allow you to run the game.

This work around is entirely base upon CPU processing power & will possibly only work for certain systems.

Steps to turn off cores: (For Windows 7)

1.) Open MSCONFIG (You can open it by entering MSCONFIG in the search bar)
2.) Select the “Boot” tab
3.) Click on “Advanced Options”
4.) Check “Number of Processors”
5.) Select “1” from dropdown menu
6.) Click “Apply”
7.) Restart machine

Steps to turn off cores: (For Windows Vista)

1.) Open MSCONFIG – Start> Run > Type MSCONFIG
2.) Select the “BOOT.INI” tab
3.) Click on “Advanced Options…”
4.) Select the check box for /NUMPROC= set it to 1 & click “OK”
5.) Click “Apply”
6.) Restart machine

Unfortunately, the game's poor coding resulted in the recommend system requirements suggesting the use of a 2.8GHz Quad Core CPU, and as such The Saboteur runs abysmally when you disable three of the CPU's four cores, making the 'workaround' beyond useless.

Today, PC gaming enthusiasts with an eye for the latest and greatest tech can register to become the first to experience The PEREGRINE gaming glove - the new, faster, more precise alternative to the clunky keyboard that lets you simply touch your fingers together for the win.

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“I've talked to a lot of gamers about The PEREGRINE and they are just as excited as we are about becoming the first to instantly improve their game speed and accuracy by donning our glove – rather than fumbling with their tired old keyboard!” Said Brent Baier, CEO of Iron Will Innovations, the think tank founded to bring revolutionary products like The PEREGRINE to life. “The pre-order program gives those most fevered to get their hands in The PEREGRINE a chance to snag one before any of their friends and competitors so they can literally Touch for the Win!”

Demonstration movies can be found here.

Syndicate, once called Cyber Assault, first took shape during a liquid lunch. “It really just evolved,” reveals Corpes, the former Bullfrog uber-coder who went on to found Lost Toys and is now about to release his first iPhone game. “I have very vague memories of a lunchtime design meeting in the pub, talk of multiple characters. I think it was an overhang from an older game. Flood – a 2D platformer for the ST and Amiga – originally had four players with their own cameras, and you could switch any camera to the main screen. It didn’t work at all, and Flood evolved into a completely different game, a cutesy platformer. But a few people were kind of attached to the four character thing…”

Actually, Cooper tells us, Syndicate once had eight on-screen charges for players to control. With all but himself and Trowers apparently finding this large number of heavily armed cyborg agents unwieldy, the decision to reduce the number of agents was to prove pivotal. “The eight players versus the four… that was a big transition,” Cooper admits. “It didn’t feel that good with eight, but we reduced it to four and, all of a sudden, it really worked. And you could set them up differently – you didn’t really have time to do that with eight.”