The collective BioWare brain is an information sponge. As explained by Greg Zeschukin a recent interview withGamasutra, the studio learns something new with each release. That knowledge isn’t just collected from critics, retailers or some in-housething. It comes from fans, too. According to the BioWare head honcho,Mass Effectfan feedback is makingMass Effect 2a better game. Now don’t you feel special? “I would say we always learn,” Zeschuk said. “We always make our games in a way where we’re sure there’s always something to learn from....

December 22! Forget about lead-ins, that’s the day PC and Mac get “It’s About Time,” the first installment in Telltale Game’sBack to the Future: The Gameadventure series. Also worth noting: if you nab the seriesfrom Telltale directly, you can get a Collector’s DVD after everything is said and done by covering the cost of shipping and handling. (Insert snarky remark from Biff Tannen here telling you to not be a chump....

Nintendo of America’s Senior Vice President of Marketing and Corporate Communications, George Harrison, has recently madestatementsthat nod toward his company finally dumping its venerable Game Boy line of handhelds to officially go steady with its younger, sexier sister, the Nintendo DS. After years of being strung along with Nintendo wanting to “see other people,” Harrison has given the Game Boy the message to stop sending flowers with really creepy cards....

Last week’sSuper Smash Bros.Meleeleveldebatewas a great way to get everyone pumped forSuper Smash Bros. Brawl‘s recent release. While I’m tempted to make this week’s debateBrawlbased, I think it would be best to give it a month or so for everyone to get used to all the levels before making their favorite level decisions. As for the winners and losers of last week’s debate, here are the top results from each voting category:...

With October already jam-packed with videogame releases, who’s got room for one more? Eidos, apparently, as the remake ofGauntletfor the Nintendo DS is nowconfirmedfor release during that wallet-draining month. Developer Backbone Entertainment originally intended to releaseGauntletback in June, but the game is still promising a good portable adventure with four-player Wi-Fi co-op, a competitive mode and voice chat support. The graphical overhaul ain’t too shabby either. Who’s looking forward to this one?...

Uh oh, looks like those zany editors on Xbox.com jumped the chainsaw gun. Seven newGears of War 2Achievementshave appearedon the Web site. AsX3Fpoints out, the Achievements have more than likely been added in preparation for that update Mark Reindetailed a few weeks ago. The new Achievements are worth a grand total of 175 points and are unlocked by doing multiplayer things on thenot-quite-exclusiveFlashback map pack and Combustible downloadable content: According to my thorough research (re: these Achievement details) Epic isnotrewarding players for finding new glitches after Rein’s patch is released....

I may know next to nothing about the intricacies of programming, but I do know a minimalist 2D version ofPortalwhen I see it. The above images are examples from the third round problem in Google’sCode Jam, an ongoing competition that gives professional and student programmers the chance to score some cash and a trip to Google Headquarters if they place in the top 100. Rather than trying to escape the empty halls of Aperture Science, this problem has players guiding a portal gun equipped red dot through a maze to reach a cake (that isn’t a lie) in as few steps as possible....

Do you do the Goozex? I was pretty active for a long time and it’s probably time I went through my backlog and traded off a few more games on the service. This month, Goozex is running a special promotion for PS3 users with a bunch of things going on. First, trades for PS3 titles won’t cost tokens, the dollar that you give Goozex for facilitating a trade. And the most frequent traders of PS3 titles in June will get a free PS3 game....

[Every week, we put out a call to our Community for blogs on a specific topic. This week, the assignment was to write a blog about handheld gaming. Our first promoted Community Blog this week is from Luis Illingworth, who talks about the problems Nintendo will need to address for the 3DS. If you want to see your own work on the front page next week, ensure you write a blog for our current topic:Being Social....

The last time we really saw anything of SCE London’sEight Dayswas in 2006 with a trailer. Last week heard really heard about it, the game was “on hold,” potentially even canned completely. Whether or not we’ll ever see the game in a final shipped state is unknown, but some leaked footage at least gives us an idea of what we could have expected. Alleged pre-production footage of the game has appeared on YouTube, and shows off a third-person shooter that relies heavily on cover and said cover getting blown to bits....

Earlier this week, Venture Beat landed itself in hot water with the gamer community after publishing the controversial article, “How Many Ways Can Space Marine Rip Off Gears of War?” The article accused Relic of copying Epic’s shooter series, and the writer wasutterly mauledby readers. He was mauled because, as every school boy knows, the Warhammer 40,000 aesthetic, setting, and characters predateGears of Warby a couple of decades. If anything, Epicowes a tip of the hat to Games Workshop, not the other way around....

[Editor’s note:coonskin05takes a look at theFinal Fantasyseries and tells us how he would change it as part ofMay’s Monthly Musing topic. — CTZ] “Final Fantasy, have a seat. Your mother and me are worried about the kind of game you’re becoming. We know you’ve been … experimenting recently with different gameplay mechanics, and while some of them have made you a better game, others are isolating you from your fans. Is that really what you want to do to yourself?...

In his keynote at Quakecon, John Carmackrevealedthat the entirely free-to-play model for Quake Live isn’t working. The income from in-game advertising has not proven to be enough to support the project, which means that id will be making some changes. That sounds like a nice compromise, provided that there will be enough people interested in subscribing so they can host tournaments and so forth. Hey, don’t we hostQuake Livetournaments? Why,I think we do....