A quick update on the status of our CAG updates and the upcoming beta test - as you may know we planned to get the beta up and running on February 1st, but due to a few technical difficulties it looks like things will be spilling over into tomorrow. I'll be updating this post with progress of the update and posting again to let everyone know when the beta invitations have been emailed out, check back here to see the latest status.

Thanks for your patience!


Status Updates:
11:41AM: Resolving issues with some of the US data feeds.
10:30AM GMT: Populating Price Tracker data.

Next up on the change list, user profiles. They've always been a bit of a mess on CAG, so we're taking them back to a tabbed view and throwing plenty of new features into the mix! (Needless to say, things in the screenshots below might change between now and the beta launch - I'll likely add a "blog" tab, and maybe a few other bits and pieces.)



Since there's a lot of new functionality throughout the site, a lot of this data will be ending up on the profile pages in one way or another. From the new profile pages you'll be able to see a summary of a user's trading activity, their feedback, games they're currently playing, events they're participating in, awards they've achieved, games they've rated, along with all the usual statistics from before. (I'll be revealing more information about the "games" tab tomorrow when I go over game collections tomorrow.)



Key Features
- No longer a huge wall of text, everything has been...

The second in a series of blog posts leading up to the February 1st beta release of CAG's next big update, this time we're taking a look at the replacement for the old CAG-O-Matic - now known as the CAG Price Tracker.


Please note, everything you see here is likely to change - especially the logo! Suggestions are welcome, but please bear in mind that nothing is final yet.

So, what is the CAG Price Tracker?
The CAG Price Tracker is a new CAG feature that provides users with a list of price drops/increases that have occurred on retailers' websites over the past 24 hours. Unlike the old CAG-O-Matic system that produced a list of Amazon price changes, the new Price Tracker processes data from all major retailers in both the US and UK to provide region specific pricing information.



Key Features
- Scans and processes price data...

I'll be posting updates running up to the launch of the beta, giving everyone a taste of some of the new features they can expect to see. Today we'll be starting off with something you can use on the site right away, it's called "New Post Filtering" and you can get to it through the User CP. (Or here.)

It works by allowing you to choose which forums are included when you click "New Posts" to see what's new on CAG since you last visited. If you're anything like me you're only interested in seeing activity in threads that aren't region specific, or are specific to your local region. (For example, if you live on the west coast, you probably won't be interested in seeing new posts from the Canada deal forum.) To use new post filtering, simply head over to the new post settings page and uncheck any forums you don't care about. Save your preferences and you're done! The next time you use the "New Posts" search tool in the forums it'll be tailored to your custom preferences. ...

Steam's insistence on using the US dollar across all regions has meant us Brits having to put up with some inflated prices if we wanted to use Valve's distribution platform. For example, Left 4 Dead would set you back over £38 after conversion from dollars, £12 more than most online retailers.

Thankfully Valve seems to have noticed this discrepancy and they're doing their best to fix it with their new "European Currency Beta". If you live in the UK you can now enjoy prices in your native pound, with games typically costing the same or less than most online retailers. Once you're in the Steam Store, just click the "Enable European Currency Beta" link in the top right to see these prices.

Left 4 Dead £26.99 (including tax)
Grand Theft Auto 4 £26.99 (including tax)
Team Fortress 2 £6.99 (including tax)
The Orange Box £16.99 (including tax)
World of Goo £16.99 (including tax)

The 138MB PS3 update downloaded on my painfully slow ADSL connection gets me:
- Full screen Flash video playback

I'm on a mad rush to get the new CAG functionality wrapped up, but I've managed to grab a couple of hours of gaming under my belt over the past week. That said, I have to get back to work - so here are my super-condensed thoughts on what I've been playing. (In bulletpoint form, no less!)

Banjo-Kazooie (XBLA)

• Managed to grab it while it was accidentally available for purchase via marketplace.xbox.com for 1200 points.
• The game has framerate issues, usually when an overlay appears on the screen. (Like the air meter, for example.) Really annoying.
• I played the original a lot, and playing it in HD with a much better controller is really satisfying. Makes me wish I didn't hate Nuts and Bolts so much. But I really do.

Lips (360)

• Really nice wireless mics. My analysis: pretty lights + wireless + motion sensitivity = better than my crappy broken Singstar mics. I hope Rock Band adds support for these because they're far superior to any others I own.
• Importing

...

5. "Cool levels" should actually contain cool levels. Right now it seems to be a compilation of trophy whoring stages.
4. Let me import my own images into levels. It seems clear that preventing it hasn't stopped people from breaching copyright laws, so let me import my own artwork into a level instead of forcing me to make something decorated through the eyes of a webcam.
3. More gameplay modes, e.g. a competitive online mode where the two players don't have to remain on the same part of the level. Not tethering two players together online opens up a lot of possibilities.
2. Servers that work. It seems like whenever I try playing LBP, it's a 50/50 chance that the servers will be up.
1. Online multiplayer without the crippling lag. A little lag here and there is to be expected, but when it makes it impossible to play a level that's another matter. Out of my numerous attempts, I've only made it through a level online once without being hampered by connection problems....

... and downloaded/installed the NXE leak that's been floating around lately. All hints from Microsoft so far suggested that they weren't going to ban (just knock you off live for a few weeks), and I decided that was something I could live with on one of my 360s.

If you're thinking about doing the same, there are a few things to consider. Of course you won't be able to access Live until November 19th, and avatar support is also disabled until you perform a system update.


In fact, other than playing with the new UI there's not much to do. The one thing that did make it in was the ability to install games to the hard drive, which in my case made temporarily crippling my console's Live ability worthwhile. While the slight speed boost in loading times is a nice perk, the real godsend is how quiet the 360 becomes when playing a game from the hard drive. It took me a while to get used to hearing the loading screen music in Fable 2 now that...

Moving house and being offline was a great excuse to play something from start to finish, and Fable 2 was my game of choice. Before I go any further I should point out that this post will probably have plenty of spoilers in it, so avoid this if you care about the game being ruined for you.

A few hours after I began playing this game I had a feeling that I would be a rabid Fable 2 fan by the time I was done. Everything about the game was instantly appealing to me - the charming presentation alone was enough to get me hooked, I just hoped the rest of the game was going to deliver. The story started promisingly with a good old fashioned "avenge my 's death" premise, and I was off to find some heroes. So far so good.

My problems with Fable 2 began after I decided to get married. "Ruth" was her name (one of the locals from Bowerstone Market), and after she dropped her third engagement hint I thought it would be an excellent opportunity...

As someone who plays a fair amount of Rock Band on drums I like to be able to hear the music I'm playing along to, something that's made difficult by the loud clacking noise made every time I hit the pads. When I came across these official Rock Band drum silencers in my local game store I jumped at the chance of ending the clacking once and for all. Here's my bullet point review.



Pros

• Well, they make the drums a lot quieter.
• If you like wailing on your drum kit, this'll make it last a little longer. (The rubber is already starting to get chipped off my pads.)
• It makes the drum sticks rebound a little more.

Cons

• These are nothing more than thick, rubbery pads with an adhesive sticker on the bottom. Want to temporarily remove them? You can't. Want to move them onto another set? You can't.
• The base of these silencers are completely flat, so they don't make contact with the entire drum pad. (They cover the entire area of the pad,

...

Earlier today I became the proud owner of a shiny new "Galactic Edition" of Spore. (For a mere £2.50 more than the standard version.) Excited, I scurried home and installed the game only to find that I couldn't authenticate my online account due to an "invalid CD key". (Despite the code being accepted during the installation process.)

It appears I'm not the only one: http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/s...e-invalid.html

There's nothing quite like spending £37.50 on a game to be told your CD key is invalid, I find it astonishing that this kind of shoddy service still seems to be commonplace when it comes to PC games. So far EA has remained pretty much silent on the issue, and my only alternative is to call a national rate tech support line - given the number of complaints on the forums I'm guessing that I'd be on hold for a long time.

Utterly disappointed.

A year and a half ago I was a serious World of Warcraft addict. Some days our guild would have raids that started at 2am and ended at 10am (I played on US servers), and I was there for all of them - sometimes 4 nights a week, often more. It was a tiring routine, but back in those days WoW was so compelling; online gaming doesn't get much better than 40 player co-op with friends.

My WoW addiction came to an abrupt end with the release of the last expansion, The Burning Crusade. Having several level 60 characters and gear that represented a serious chunk of my life from the previous year, it became clear to me that I was in too deep. I had a lot of characters to get to level 70. Gear that had taken me months of raiding to get had become obsolete within a few minutes of stepping into Outland. Raiding in WoW had been a complete waste of time and while I didn't expect any different from the expansion, I found it tough to keep on playing with the same level of enthusiasm. I wasn't...

The CAG Game Collection system has been coming along nicely (along with a bunch of other huge features), but since the collection system is what I hear most requests for it's the current top priority. The basics of the new system have actually been nearly complete since the launch of CAG 2.0, but I haven't considered it ready since there are still too many things lacking. I want to make sure that it's the best game collection system around by far, and for that I'm going to need some suggestions on what you want to see included.

Here's a quick overview of what we've already got in CAG game collections:

Basic Functionality

• A sortable list view of your game collection (or anyone else's, for that matter) - sortable by platform, name, genre, and date added.
• Game browsing - a list of games in the database, searchable by name, platform and genre, and sortable by all the usual fields.
• When adding a game to your collection (or editing an existing record),

...

I should really be working on more important stuff, but I couldn't resist adding Twitter feed integration into user profiles.


I might add them to blog view pages too, I'm not sure yet. Either way, expect lots of changes to the user profile page over the coming weeks - the plan is to make it a useful place to see everything about yourself on CAG, rather than the intimidating wall of text and tables it is now.

Oh, and in case you haven't noticed, we've made some changes so that everything is centered instead of left aligned. Nothing is final yet, no doubt we'll be changing the appearance of major site elements over the next few days.

Buzz has been patched for trophies, let the achievement whoring begin! I'll be updating my preview over the weekend with some new text, screens, and possible some videos.

(Also, keep an eye on the development blog over the next week for some details on what's coming next to CAG.)

From the official Braid blog:

Quote: Many people have been saying they like the music in Braid, and would like to get a hold of the soundtrack. I don’t have the rights to redistribute the music, but all of the songs were licensed from magnatune.com, where you can listen to them for free and buy high-quality versions of the albums they are on at very low prices that you yourself choose (if you really like the song and want to support the musician, you can choose to pay a lot!) Here’s a list of the tracks in Braid and links to the Magnatune pages where you can find them. (These songs are also listed in the credits to Braid). “Maenam”, by Jami Sieber, from the album Hidden Sky. “Undercurrent” and “The Darkening Ground”, by Jami Sieber, from the album Lush Mechanique. “Tell It By Heart” and “Long Past Gone”, by Jami Sieber, from the album Second Sight. “Downstream”, by Shira Kammen, from the album Music of Waters. “Lullaby Set”, by Shira Kammen and Swan, from the album Wild

...

Perhaps I'm just lousy at this mode, but I can't get anywhere near a decent score in Deadline. Right now I'm at 2,115,465 and most of my attempts since then haven't even come close. Is there anything more to getting a high score in this mode other than lasting a long time without dying?

Note: If you've got a score above 17,827,325 in Pasifism add me on XBL - my gamertag is Shaolyen. (I need something to aim for!)

Konami released a new XBLA game this week, "Coffeetime Crosswords".

I like coffee. I like crosswords. I also like my chatpad, which lets me input any letter I want with a single keypress. You'd think this would be the perfect game for me and my chatpad - unfortunately Konami decided that it wasn't worth implementing support for any accessory that would be convenient, so you're left with an awkward selection wheel (with letter selection driven by the shoulder buttons) as your only input method.

Am I being an idiot and missing an option somewhere to enable chatpad support, or has Konami really overlooked this?

Now when you look at the bottom of the "What's New" module, you'll see a new link - "View All Activity". Clicking it takes you to a page where you can see all recent activity related to you or your friends.





Furthermore, you can use the tools in the top right to filter through the notifications that are important to you.