On Saturday the 25th and 26th of November 2006 News0r took it's TV crew down to Matchbox360's inaugral LAN event and as it turned out it was Xtra Large with over 300 gamers from all over the UK and Europe in attendance...

Free Running, the game based on Le Parkour and originally being developed by Core Design, has been sold to Reef Entertainment.

"This is a major coup for us" said Reef's CEO Peter Rezon, "Free Running or Le Parkour, as it's known in France, has been one of the fastest growing underground youth sports over the past two years, gaining massive popularity around the world."

Peter Rezon continues, "With a breakout into the mainstream for it's leading exponents and high profile recognition of the sport through films such as District 13, the new James Bond movie - Casino Royale and Madonna's music video for her Number 1 single 'Jump', everyone is beginning to see just how exciting this sport is. We are expecting great things from the game."

CDV have released a multiplayer demo of War Front: Turning Point, an alternate history RTS developed by Digital Reality.

What would happen if Hitler had been assassinated early on in WWII and the German war engine came under control of a new regime? Digital Reality and CDV aim to answer that question in War Front: Turning Point, bringing gamers an "alternate history" real-time strategy game. Gamers will be exposed to a whole new WWII timeline, new battles and a variety of secret and experimental weapons. Stunning graphics and a refreshing plot will keep gamers pinned to their PCs as they attempt to alter or ensure the outcome of vastly different World War II.

• www.war-front.com
• Worthplaying
• 3D Gamers
• Filefront
• Gamezone
• Gamers Hell
• Internode

Disney's child-friendly MMORPG Toon Town is now playable on Macintosh computers.

The first massively multiplayer online game designed for kids and their families, Toontown invites players to live life as a cartoon character, along with thousands of other players in a continually growing online world. Now both Power PC and Intel-based Mac players can join the more than 15 million PC-based "Toon" characters created in the game by downloading Toontown at www.Toontown.com.

Here is this week's ELSPA all formats, all prices sales chart.

1. FIFA 07
2. Need For Speed: Carbon
3. Gears of War
4. The Sims 2: Pets
5. Pro Evolution Soccer 6
6. WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2007
7. Call of Duty 3
8. Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy
9. Bratz: Forever Diamondz
10. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories
11. Nintendogs: Lab & Friends
12. Canis Canem Edit
13. Tony Hawk's Project 8
14. Guitar Hero II
15. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue
16. Nintendogs: Dalmatian & Friends
17. New Super Mario Bros.
18. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07
19. Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent
20. Buzz! Junior: Jungle Party

Leisure software charts compiled by Chart Track, (C)2006 ELSPA Ltd

Sony Computer Entertainment has announced they will be releasing a free level for the odd yet strangely addictive puzzle game for the PSP LocoRoco.

It's Christmas time, and there's no need to be afraid in LocoRoco land. Gone are the pumpkins, bats and scary things that arrived in time for Halloween. Now the snow is falling, the trees are decorated, the jelly-like choir is singing. In fact Christmas is here and love is in the air!

The elves at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe have been working on a very special Christmas Gift for Santa to deliver to all good LocoRoco fans.

Reviews

• Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War: Dark Crusade - Bit Tech

• Oleg Yavorsky about Heroes of Annihilated Empires - Computer Games Online

Microsoft's recently launched video rental service for the Xbox 360 is groaning under the weight of people trying to use the it, with reports of serious problems starting to appear. A quote from one Microsoft source said:

As you know, we have been experiencing technical difficulties associated with the extremely high number of downloads from the Video Marketplace service over the past 24 hours. We understand these technical issues have resulted in a very unpleasant experience for our members, including extremely slow downloads or not receiving the content they purchased. We’ve made progress over the past 24â€"hours, and the team is dedicated to fixing the issues and continues to work as fast as they can around the clock to get the service running as seamlessly as you have come to expect.

Reviews

• Battlezone (PSP) - GameApex
• Medieval 2 Total War (PC) - Bit-tech
• Lemmings (PS2) - Play.tm
posted by cro on 25/11/2006 at 08:23:32

Research carried out by Atari recently has thrown up the factoid that 92% of British gamers would not consider buying a previously-played MMORPG character, preferring to expend the time and effort themselves. Only 2% of those surveyed admitted to selling characters, and only 6% admitted buying them. The press release also features a quote from our very own Duke:

Luke Newcombe, from one of the UK's biggest online gaming portals, news0r.com, said, "This is a growing and unfair practice, particularly in Role Playing Games (RPGs), where a gamer can spend years developing their online persona. It's more prevalent in the US, but it's good to see that us Brits are more inclined to play by the rules."

Despite only just releasing the 3.0 firmware, Sony have now released 3.01 to address a couple of security holes found in the previous release. We were in the middle of posting about v3.0 when we saw this, so here's the list of changes in 3.0 as well:

• Ability to play emulated PSOne titles bought via PS3
• RemotePlay, which turns your PSP into a PS3 remote.
• Timed recording on the RSS channel.
• New Fast-forward/rewind speeds.
• Camera support for the PSP camera.
• The ability to turn on your PSP without the UMD auto-starting

Recent rumours of the appearnce of Gears of War on the PC have been debunked in a post on the Gamerscore blog.

Here's what happened: These images were created using draft templates for the Games for Windows box art and a variety of Microsoft Game Studios cover images. Gears of War was accidentally included by the artist as one of the MGS titles used as examples to show what our retail setup would look like. This DOES NOT indicate a confirmation that Gears of Wars will be a Games for Windows title -- it was a concept image created by a concept artist, nothing more. In fact, if you look closely you’ll also see that Age of Empires III and Rise of Legends are also branded Games for Windows, and this is not actually the case (Age of Empires III: The Warchiefs is a Games for Windows branded game, but not the original Age III).