Modern Warfare 3 patch 1.098 will include a fix for the damage proficiency exploit. Bowling revealed that “the ‘damage’ proficiency exploit is already fixed in the next patch. We’re now tracking anyone abusing it and will ban offenders.” He later explained how people have used the exploit, “the exploit allowed you to assign Damage proficiency to primary weapon classes that didn’t have it available. No way to do it by accident.” The patch will be available later this month.

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New Modern Warfare 3 Patch To Fix Damage Proficiency Exploit

Activision released a teaser video for the first Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 DLC. The new DLC will feature two maps, Liberation which is based in NYC and Piazza that is located in an Italian Rivera town.

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Modern Warfare 3 DLC Teaser Trailer Released

GameInformer spoke with Robert Bowling this week concerning Modern Warfare 3′s first DLC. Here’s a brief recap of what Bowling said. “What we’re doing this year is, we have an entire season of content starting January 24th and going through September. How this will work is every month, we’ll have content drops. These are the individual drops that are available first for Elite subscribers. They come out first for Elite subscribers, very first on Xbox Live, they start giving feedback on it, and that will help dictate our future design decisions.” In response to the price point for non-Elite subscribers and the availability, “I don’t have a price point on the collection, but the first collection that includes these drops comes out in March.” Bowling gives information on Liberation and Piazza. “Liberation is all about that different type of gameplay. It’s a more wide open map than what you see in the traditional maps in Modern Warfare 3.” “Piazza is very different, and it’s all about that close range, close quarters combat. A lot of tight corridors, but most importantly, it’s all about that verticality.”

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Details On Modern Warfare 3 DLCs

The story takes place in Sumaru City, Japan, population 1,280,000. Its protagonist attends Seven Sisters High School (“Sevens” for short), whose emblem is considered a status symbol even amongst students from other schools. Soon, though, a rumor that Sevens emblem was actually cursed, and that wearing it would disfigure one’s face, had spread around the city. Even worse, the rumor came true… And it was only the beginning of a string of rumors becoming reality, one after another… Before long, the protagonist discover the power to summon another side of them called “Personas”, which they use to investigate the strange incidents around the city, all while facing their own personal demons as well. Time is once again on the march… Personas are the manifestation of power from one’s other selves lurking within them. These Personas with otherworldly abilities and appearances of gods from worldwide mythos are drawn from the unconsciousness of of Persona-users to appear in the real world, lending their power to the wielder. The “you” that others recognize is only one of the countless selves that exist, and of these innumerable selves, there are those with the compassion of gods, the cruelty of demons, and even those with the capacity to wield swords or guns. Personas are no more or less than “another you”. Up until this point the game was a Japan-only release (12 years had to pass for it to see a release outside of that wonderful island). We DID get the second half of Persona 2 (Eternal Punishment), and back in the day we had no idea we were missing out on a huge part of the picture. How has this game aged during all this time? Let’s find out! There’s a lot of great anime cut scenes in all the game, as you’ll immediately notice right after booting up the game. Animated cutscenes are always a nice extra, and you can watch them in original, medium or widescreen format. Isn’t technology wonderful? There’s also an updated and remixed soundtrack you can choose in case you don’t like the original one. All in all, it’s great music that truly brings this experience to life. The remixed music really shines. The original tracks were taken in for a tune-up and all its intricate elements and nuisances really pop (there’s a limited edition available at retail comes with a soundtrack CD so track down that one!). You also have the option of installing a 200 MB+ portion of the game to the memory stick to reduce load times. Since there’s A LOT of random battles (oh, happy days!) and the install time is only 1-5 minutes at most…the install is time well spent. Before getting started, players have the option of picking between easy, normal or hard difficulty. The higher the difficulty, the harder it will be to defeat the many, many, maaaaany demon’s you’ll run into. But Easy isn’t really THAT easy, as it will still require the player to carefully plan their approach to every fight. Unless they want to die a LOT. This isn’t a simple game, but it is just what we needed. Controls are easy to understand. You can use the analog stick or the D pad to move around. L and R are used to move the camera around (very important since most of the time the camera plays tricks on you and blocks NPCs or items on purpose). X confirms choices and O cancels them. Oh, and the triangle button activates the auto-battle feature during fights, which takes into consideration the last set of actions performed by your party and replicates them until you cancel out of it. You can move around a Town Map to select the next location to visit. You can even talk to people (represented by green arrows) in the town map to obtain new info. You can travel between different zones by exiting the world map and selecting another area you’ve already opened up in the new menu that will pop out. Now, with that out of the way, let’s take a moment to meet our party of intrepid youngsters that will save the world this time around: Tatsuya Suou An 18-year-old young man attending Seven Sisters High. He is tall, handsome, and has a mature, cool demeanor which has won him the admiration of female and male classmates alike. He’s a loner who does his best to avoid getting involved with anyone. Initial Persona: Vulcanus Lisa Silverman A 17-year-old girl nicknamed “Ginko” who also attends Seven Sisters High. She has beautiful blonde hair, blue eyes, and a figure that’s the envy of other girls her age. Because she was born to parents who were naturalized as Japanese citizens, she looks Caucasian, but she speaks fluent Japanese. Initial Persona: Eros Yukino Mayuzumi An active twenty-year-old student at vocational school for photography. She’s grown out her hair and settled down a little since her days at St. Hermelin High. Her goal is to become a professional photographer and she’s now working as an apprentice to a freelancer. Initial Persona: Vesta Maya Amano A 23-year-old reporter for a teen magazine. She’s a beautiful, cheerful woman who naturally draws others to her with her considerateness and affable nature. Initial Persona: Maia Eikichi Mishina A 16-year-old and second-year at Kasugayama High, less flatteringly known as Cuss High, who refers to himself as “Michel.” He is the Boss of a gang of delinquents at Cuss High and also front man in his band. He tends to take what people say too personally, is easily swayed, and is often a bit too taken with himself. Initial Persona: Rhadamanthus Jun Kurosu A 17-year old young man with slender, feminine looks. He transfered to Kasugayama High, but hasn’t been seen attending classes for some time. He loves flowers and always wears fresh blossoms such as an iris or iceland poppy. Initial Persona: Hermes As usual, you can change the name of the characters in your party. You can even decide what nickname to give them. Me? I just leave then as is since it’s how the story was written. No need to add my own name to the mix as I’m pretty sure I’ll remember I’m the one that is playing the game. Want to make something become a reality? Spread a rumor about it and see how it goes! First one is free (mmm, where have we heard that before?) but the others will cost you dearly. Also, you must first HEAR a rumor straight from a rumormonger’s mouth before you can pay the Head of the Detective Agency to start the rumor machine. Rumors play a big part in our adventure, even more so when we remember that this whole thing started because of one single rumor. You’ll be able to decide the type of items sold at each store, how awesome a prize you can get from the lottery, open up new areas to progress the story, etc. Rumors are what makes the world go round! Your first shopping experience will be at the Kameya Alley. Each store has an icon next to their name and this can help you identify at first glance what each one of them deals in. A sword means its a weapon store. A jacket identifies an armor store. A fork and knife means its a restaurant or a food store. A little silhouetto of a man (Scaramouche, scaramouche, will you do the fandango?) is there to let you know there’s gossip to be heard, learned or spread. A red cross sign is for places you can heal your wounds at (HP and SP restore and all status ailments dissapear for the whole party). The characters in your party get hungry from time to time. Buying something to eat will give them a temporary boost to one of their stats which will last until they’re hungry again. Gotta try them all! And you must also remember that some armor is gender specific (a hairpin, for example, is female-only) before you go purchase crazy, and start spending all of your hard-earned money. And yes, hard-earned is definitely the way to describe this. Your Personas grow with every use (even more when using fusion spells), increasing their abilities and unlocking new ones. They go up in rank from 1 till 8. Each character has different compatibilities with the various Personas. If their compatibility is bad, it will cost more SP to invoke the Persona, and especially bad compatibility may prevent the Persona from being assumed at all. Conversely, if their compatibility is good, it will cost less SP to invoke, and especially good compatibility may cause the Persona to occasionally demonstrate special powers. After you complete one of the demonic battles you’ll wage against… demons that are demonic, you’ll be rewarded with experience points and money you can use to upgrade your equipment or for items that can help you in battle. The currency is expressed in Yen and, I don’t know about you, but for me, a Japanese game that uses Y as the in game currency is just crazy and completely goes against the atmosphere and feeling of this adventure. A very intersting element in Persona 2 is the Pacts you can make with Demon’s. You start things of by making Contact (talk) with them while in a fight (and, sometimes, the Demon’s are the ones that initiate things) to try and convince them to give you items, info, tarot cards, money or to heal you. They have for attributes (eager, happy, scared and angry) that increase from each action you select once contact has started (Tetsuya can, for example, do impressions), OR from the answer you give a demon to the question they’ve presented to you. Get them to full eager or happy and they might ask you if you want to enter into a pact… and this is how you get better items, money and other extras from them once you find them again in battle AND fill their eager or happy metes during the new encounter. Should you make them angry they will break the pact (if one existed) and attack you. Tarot Cards, demons, and Personas all have an associated Arcana. A Persona’s Arcana indicates which Arcana of Tarot Cards is necessary to summon it. Negotiating with demons can earn you Tarot Cards of the same Arcana that the demon belongs to. The higher a demon’s level, the more Tarot Cards you’ll receive through negotiation with it. More cards are necessary to summon high-level Personas. Negotiate with strong demons to quickly gather enough cards to summon the better Personas. As is always the case with old-school RPGs, grinding is not an option, it IS a requirement. I grew up with random fight, turn-based RPGs back in the day and I’m very happy to finally get a chance to play Innocent Sin. I own Persona 3, P3 FES and 4 on PS2 as well as the first Persona that was also released on PSP. Thus, I was only missing Innocent Sin and Eternal Punishment (the second released in the Persona 2 world) to have a complete set. Grinding for money and experience, while also increasing my Personas, is just part of the fun experience you can enjoy in this game. Persona 2 has been a long time coming, and we should be happy about finally having it officially released over here. A solid combat system, the crazy but interesting story, the remixed soundtrack, the great 16:9 cutscenes and overall presentation, all contribute to make this a very welcome addition to the still growing number library of the PSP. Any Persona fan should run to buy this right now to tell Atlus that we want more Persona games! Review Pros Cons The game we’ve been waiting for during the last 12 years It’s an Old School JRPG for our portable needs! It’s an Old School JRPG, which some people really, really, really don’t like, for some reason Rating 92% Published by Atlus Cost – $29.99 Disclaimer Total amount of time played: 30 hours (and counting!). This review is based on a retail copy of the PSP version of Persona 2 – Innocent Sin provided by Atlus.

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[Review] Persona 2 – Innocent Sin (PSP)

Square Enix is hard at work on what is going to be their next gen engine. Moving away from past titles art work and into photo realism. Square is hoping to do what the Unreal engine did for this Gen with their Luminous engine next gen. I have to admit the Photo Realism is just what I was hoping for. The studio plans to allow other studious to use the engine which will cut production time in half and lower the cost of game development as a whole. Whether this will allow for cheaper game will have to wait to see. Take a look at a very early sample of what to expect after the jump. I remember the early days of gaming and what Sega CD was doing with FMV and how amazing it was to feel like you were in a realistic setting in Ground Zero Texas. Here’s to hoping Square Enix can pull this off and begin the Next Next Gen with Photo Realistic gaming. Source: Edge

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Luminous Engine & Photo Realisim Next Gen

Square Enix is hard at work on what is going to be their next gen engine, moving away from their past titles’ art work and into photo realism. Square is hoping to do what the Unreal Engine did for this generation, with their Luminous Engine Next Gen. I have to admit, the Photo Realism is just what I was hoping for. The studio plans to allow other studious to use the engine which will cut production time in half and lower the cost of game development as a whole. Whether this will allow for cheaper games, we’ll have to wait and see. Take a look at a very early sample of what to expect after the jump. I remember the early days of gaming and what Sega CD was doing with FMV and how amazing it was to feel like you were in a realistic setting in Ground Zero Texas. Here’s hoping Square Enix can pull this off and begin the next Next Gen with Photo Realistic gaming. Source: Edge

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Luminous Engine & Photo Realism Next Gen

A Reddit user, Fury Hunter, has apparently found a new Modern Warfare 3 map called “coast”. The map screenshot is from an early development stage, and it could be included in later Modern Warfare 3 map packs. The user also discovered loading screens of maps “Strike and Crossfire” which were from Call of Duty 4. There is another map screenshot that was found that was originally called “Plaza”, however it has been renamed to Arkaden in Modern Warfare 3.

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Unreleased Modern Warfare 3 Maps Found

As previously reported Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 will receive its first map pack on January 24th. YouTuber MW3 Stream found some images of the supposed four new maps that will be included in the DLC. Modern Warfare 3 DLC will be available to Xbox 360 Elite Owners first, no announcement has been made for PS3 and PC.

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Sneak Peak At Modern Warfare 3 Map Pack

Year of the Puzzle Game?: There are lots of puzzlers every year, but this year the lineup was unusually good. A handful are worthy of special mention: Catherine, Portal 2, Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes, and Cubixx HD. Catherine had a perfectly integrated narrative. Portal 2 had amazing production values and the best co-op play. Clash of Heroes and Cubixx were hugely addicting. Biggest Disappointment of the Year and Generation: Sony pushes C#/Mono for hobbyist development. As a programmer, this is heartbreaking. With such a vibrant landscape of new languages and runtimes, why would Sony, arguably the biggest competitor to Microsoft, mandate the ultimate in conformist Microsoft only tools on the development community? How about tools like Fantom , Scala (for type theory purists), Google Go (a cleaned up version of C++ for high performance applications), LLVM (adopted by Apple), OpenGL/OpenCL, or the upcoming Kotlin (from JetBrains who create the world’s best IDEs)? The following is a must-watch video regarding Java and .NET: Most Overlooked: Motorstorm Apocalypse. The action racing in this game is the best, the tracks are brilliantly creative and packed with fun art and content, yet most people didn’t even realize that this title existed. Worst Products: Sony’s smartphones and tablets. The Android space is exploding with amazing products. The bar for quality is just so high when you see budget entries like the Kindle Fire and the Nook Tablet and super Tablet products like the Transformer Prime (wow!!!), or premium superphones from HTC, Samsung, and Motorola. Then, Sony and Dell, seem to be making the worst Android products on the market that are both overpriced and using old hardware and software. I can’t imagine why anyone would buy them or what Sony and Dell are thinking. I was chatting with some Dell employees and they definitely didn’t “get it”. They were telling me about Android products have such a low ROI (return on investment), but they really just didn’t fully understand how far behind the competition their Android products really were and how significant that is if you want to have a hot product. Biggest Trend: Rise of the smartphones and tablets. I’m surprised to hear so many predictions for the end of dedicated handheld gaming devices as I see the home-console market at more of a risk. Personal Favorite Game: LittleBigPlanet 2 . The provided levels are the most fun I’ve had all year, they are extremely co-op friendly, and perfect for playing with kids. The level editing tools are a joy to tool around with, and the Move pack is the most fun I’ve had with the Move controller.

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Darrin’s 2011: Year in Review

Sony is throwing down some killer deals across many of its Accessories for everything from move to audio. The following are some of it’s Move Accessories. Sports Champions and Deadmund’s Quest Bundle$ 79.99 LittleBigPlanet Move Bundle $99.99 PlayStation Move Motion Controller $39.99 PlayStation Move Navigation Controller $19.99 PlayStation Move Sharp Shooter $19.99 PlayStation Move Charging Station $19.99 I owned both the Charge station and sharpshooter and both are a solid buy. The Sony stereo headset is on sale for $89 followed by the Bluetooth headset for $39 under their head set sale. Under 3d gaming they are offering the glass’s at a bargain price. Media/Blu-ray Disc Remote Control $19.99 PlayStation 3D Glasses $49.99 HDMI Cable – 6.5ft $19.99 DualShock 3 Charging Station is a solid purchase as well. The sucker charges your controllers within minutes and is on sale for $19. Wireless keypad is going for $29. The following retailers are participating in the sale. Amazon Best Buy Fred Meyer Fry’s Gamestop Kmart Sears Sony Retail Stores Target Toys R Us Source: PlayStation.Blog

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50 Percent Off Select PlayStation 3 Accessories