Rockstar have released a new patch for the highly successful title, Grand Theft Auto 4.  It addresses the following: -

• Fixed an issue where players were unable to enter or exit vehicles in GTA Race.
• Fixed an issue where scripted vehicles were causing games to unexpectedly crash.
• Fixed a rare hang some players encountered when moving from a Race or GTA Race lobby into gameplay.
• Fixed a hang that would occur when players were switching teams during the countdown in the lobby.
• Fixed an issue where players were able to get ridiculously high scores from Cops 'n Crooks matches.
• Changed GTA Race and Race so that the last player remaining always receives a reward of $250.
• Fixed an issue where spectating players would prevent the game from finishing.
• Fixed an issue where players were unable to spectate in Round 2 of Cops 'n Crooks games.
• Changed countdown timer in lobby so that it no longer resets when new players join a game.
• Changed the kick option so that kicked players are no longer brought back to single player.

Great... what about the rest of the bugs?

It has been recently announced that the heavily delayed 360 version of Unreal Tournament 3 will hit the platform on the 4th July (I didn't think it would ever arrive!).

However, that is not the best news. UK gamers will get the game 3 days earlier than their US counterparts, which means we might get a few good games before the spawn camping begins.

More here.

My good friend "fourzerotwo", recently posted about a poll carried out by GAME.  Apparently 100000 customers were asked about what they thought the greatest games of all time were.  Topping the list was the latest CoD game, "Call of Duty 4."

Call of Duty 4 managed to beat my all time favourite game (Final Fantasy 7) to the top spot, as well as Metal Gear Solid, Goldeneye, and Zelda: Ocarina of Time (all of which scored top ten places).

Sadly the highest ranked Sonic game, Sonic the Hedgehog, only managed to reach number 19 on the list.

My Facebook friends Natalie Sousa, and Nelson Rodriguez have posted some new screenshots from Fable 2 on their respective websites (Talking About Games & Gamerscore Blog).

I've not really been following Fable 2's development, but these new screenshots really grabbed my attention.  If the game is as good to play as it is to look at, then it's sure to be an absolute hit.  Only time will tell.

  
Fable 2

More here.

Rumours are flying from a number of sources about a possible release of Mega Man 9 for XBLA.  No price, or release date have been announced, after all it's only a rumour, but a little more information can be found here.

My friends over at Evil Avatar recently posted a quote from Gamasutra's developer's prospective on the issue.

"It really doesn't make any sense that they wouldn't just bump them to a lower-profile category... deleting them outright is INSANE. Amazon stocks books with single-digit annual sales, and they have to deal with physical inventory! You'd think digital would be even cheaper to manage.

We both believe that a rating system would be a better solution to this problem. The system implemented on the Wii is working very well, for example, especially since it requires players to have played the game for a certain amount of time before they get to rate it. It's fair, and such an important feature. Cutting down the catalog is not an effective way to manage complexity; user ratings are."

Personally, I can sort of see valid points on both sides of this argument.  However, if MS implemented a little bit of quality control over their XBLA releases, maybe we wouldn't have this problem.  A lot of space is being taken up by a lot of junk, that really shouldn't have been released.  Undertow anyone?

While I'm strictly a writer of Xbox 360 related news, I couldn't pass up the recent news article on BBC news relating to two amazing British developers.

David and Richard Darling, co-founders of game developers Codemasters, were both made Commanders of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).  The Darling brothers were responsible for some of my favourite games while I was growing up, and I regularly melted my brain playing the Dizzy series on my old Amstrad CPC 464 (with it's green screen monitor!).  Congratulations guys.

Read more.

While it may appear that "Confessions of an Old School Gamer" finally croaked, it was merely in a coma.  While I've been away the gaming world has been moving forward at the speed of light.  GTA 4 has been released, and promises to be one of many games scheduled as part of the Summer release (Halo Wars and UT 3 being top of my 360 list).

• News of a movie based on the life of Atari founder Nolan Bushnell has recently surfaced on a number of sites.  With Paramount purchasing the rights, the movie will reportedly star Leonardo Di Caprio... let's hope he doesn't put on a dreadful accent like he did in Blood Diamond.
• With Call of Duty 4 finally taking back the number 1 spot on the Xbox Live list of most played games, Infinity Ward announced to celebrate with a double XP weekend.  Today is the final day of this celebration, so make the most of it.
• MrPointyHead, Editor of Inside Xbox Europe, was recently featured in an interview with Retrozoid.