Christmas is not far around the corner and with that comes the video game release rush – all the big names staking their claim for the biggest success over the holiday period. Whilst Electronic Arts have their yearly sports releases, THQ have their own baby – the WWE franchise. Indeed, since securing the rights to WWE in 2000, there has been at least one WWE video game released every year. The next upcoming release, WWE ’12, shows even further signs of improvement on last year’s Smackdown vs. Raw 2011, which was a lot of fun.

Since Rare developed the Avatar system for Microsoft, giving any user the ability to change their avatar’s appearance, clothes, even expressions, it has branched out even further with the creation of the Avatar Marketplace. I personally feel that the items available for purchase, whether it be designer clothes from Adidas, or a WWE Title belt accessory (guilty as charged), are excellent additions to an already very user-friendly Xbox dashboard. The items available on the marketplace appeal to all; sports fans, COD fans, even John Cena fans (sigh).

The latest round of WWE avatar items are welcome additions to the catalogue, which began with SVR 2011 and WWE All Stars. We’ve had the WWE Title belt, now the Stone Cold Steve Austin Smoking Skull belt is available for those nostalgic fans out there. There is the choice of single official t-shirts, another variation of Rey Mysterio’s mask, and even Jerry ‘The King’ Lawler’s crown. For fans, this is a very strong collection of accessories.

However, as with many of the avatar items, I feel strongly about the prices. Some of these items are particularly high; a CM Punk t-shirt is 240 points, which is £2, roughly. Most t-shirt items are 80 points, so this feels like a significant slap in the face, even though they will be very popular items. Indeed, it’s only 80 more points to purchase one of the full outfits available, so makes little sense to me. Surely if all the items were half the price they currently are at, they would sell more quantities? I personally would consider purchasing more.

What are your views? Do you purchase avatar items? Are you, like me, a Ghostbuster with a WWE Title belt? A John Marston with a Portal gun? Isaac Clarke with a collection of Chaos Emeralds? Anyone?

Calibur cases bolt around the outside of a slim console, with holes and airvents all over you don’t overheat your pricey machine or void your warranty for the sake of looking good. They also come with some well-designed feet. For those of you who prefer to have your console standing upright then the feet will prevent it from falling over, though they will double the width of shelf-space you need.

The case holes serve a dual purpose. As well as cooling, you can hook on additional accessories, like the circular saw Apocalypse pack or a controller holder that looks strangely like a duck’s bill. Despite it’s bizarre appearance, the holder is actually pretty solid. I spent a good few minutes prodding one of the demo consoles – the controller will stay on through most of your typical bumps and nudges. You’d have to be actively trying to knock the thing off before it will go, so it does the job. The plastic is sturdy as well. You’d practically have to sit on the thing before it breaks but personally, I’d remove it as soon as possible. Do you really want to turn your console into a mutant duck-billed monstrosity? Unlikely. I keep my controllers in a basket by the sofa anyway.

No, I’d much rather go for one of the themes that Calibur 11 were showcasing – the red and black Gears of War 3 case looks great and, as a nice touch, the lighting is tied to your health status. When you go down in Gears of War 3 and are bleeding out on the floor, the case light dims as you slip into unconsciousness. Yes, okay, it’s a bit naff but I like it :P

The other one on display is their Major League Gaming case, again with the ominous skull-light motif. It’s as if all games are about killing (oh, wait). Check out the pics below.

Calibur 11 Xbox 360 Slim cases are available now on Amazon from £39.99. PS3 Slim cases will be available later this year as well.

Test system:

• UK Wii Console – set to 60 Hz 4:3 screen mode
• Sony CRT TV (handles 60hz mode)
• RGB SCART lead
• COMPONENT lead – For CARNIVAL game test
• Wii FreeLoader – EURO version (£9.99 from Play.com)

Games tested and results: (GameCube unless otherwise indicated)

• PIKMIN (JAP) – Works fine
• PIKMIN 2 (JAP) – Doesn’t work
• PN03 (JAP) – Works but has squashed display
• SUPER MONKEYBALL (JAP) – Works fine
• METROID PRIME (US) – Works but with some pre-game menu issues (in game ok)
• ZELDA – WINDWAKER (US) – Doesn’t work
• ZELDA – WINDWAKER BONUS DISK – OCARINA OF TIME (US) – Doesn’t work
• RESIDENT EVIL 4 (US) – Works but has squashed display
• WAVERACE: BLUE STORM (JAP) – Works but with thin flickering band near the top of the screen. Gameplay unaffected but flickering band is annoying
• VIEWTIFUL JOE (JAP) – Works but with squashed display and playback issues with pre-menu movies
• DOBUTSO BANCHO (ANIMAL LEADER) – Works but has squashed display
• CARNIVAL (US – Wii Version) – Works but need to use COMPONENT lead otherwise the colours are all screwy (red and black)

As you can see, most of the games tested worked, but a number suffered some sort of issue. Tikipod didn’t test any JAP Wii games, as he didn’t have any available. According to one of the comments on the Play.com Freeloader product page Super Smash Brothers Brawl (US) works just fine so you can all rest easy.

Oh, and the recent reports that the latest Wii firmware update (called IOS37) disables FreeLoader is a hoax. However, with all the Wii firmware updates that Nintendo rolls out there’s no guarantee that FreeLoader won’t be disabled by one of them in the future.

Update 24th Mar 08: Carnival is a Wii game, so updated the post accordingly.

All that changed when my friends bought the game. Voice communication is essential for a game like Guild Wars where quick reactions can make or break a battle. It’s far too easy to miss instructions as they whizz past on the screen.

Being the cheap-arses that we are, my team couldn’t be bothered to sign up for a dedicated team VoIP system. There were only four of us so we used Skype’s conference call feature. It has problems but it did the job. I can’t imagine ever going back to typing out tactical discussions. Less typing means I can spend more time on perfecting my penis-drawing skills reacting quickly in the heat of battle to save my fellow guildies.

There are many, many companies providing VoIP services suitable for gamers. DallasXtreme offered me a small payment for an honest review of their Ventrilo server services, via the ReviewMe program. They have a server based in London so hey, why not?

Sign-up:
Super easy – it took about 15 minutes. That includes the time to log in to PayPal and make my first month’s payment.

Service:
Speedy – I signed up at 11pm on Sunday. My Ventrilo server login info was emailed to me an hour later.

Voice-chatting experience:
Hmm… not so good. Surprising, for a ping time of 15ms on my end.

TheFluffyFist and I both downloaded Ventrilo and logged on to our DallasXtreme server. This bit was easy considering neither of us have used any similar software. After lots of unashamedly lame hilarity involving the text-to-speech recognition, we sorted out our Ventrilo configurations and logged onto Guild Wars to test-drive it properly.

Totally Unplayable.

We had a 7-second lag between speaking and hearing the response. After fiddling with codec options and shutting down absolutely everything except GW and Ventrilo we got it down to 4 seconds but that’s still too much if you’re calling for backup in a busy battle. Or even just trying to have a coherent conversation among friends.

Rather sad, because US$4.95 (£2.60) a month isn’t half bad if you have a small group. We tried out another VoIP method in case the delay was down to a localised Internet malaise but it showed no such lag.

Verdict:
Not great performance. One good thing came out of the test – we tried all their online test servers. I’m happy to report that we got exactly the same performance from the test servers as we did from our paid server. You could always try out DallasXtreme’s test servers if you need Ventrilo server hosting. You may get a better performance than we did.

Edit: Cancelling is very easy as well. I cancelled the subscription in PayPal and within minutes I received an email from DallasXtreme to inform me that my account was scheduled for cancellation. They have excellent basic service. Pity about the lag.

GAME call them mittens and they looked a bit dodgy in the shop but are actually really well-designed. The material feels like a thick sock, so keeps things reasonably protected. The mittens themselves are a few centimetres longer than a DS Lite – there’s no danger of your shiny finish being exposed to keys or other pointy hazards.

They’re designed along the same lines as those iPod socks that you may have already seen. The case is made of ribbed cloth and expands to fit around everything you shove inside it. I can comfortably jam 2 GBA cartridges, 2 DS cards and a cleaning cloth in with my DS Lite.

Yeah, it’s basically a sock. I’m not sure why they called it a mitten. It’s not like there are thumb-holes.

You get 2 for £4.99 (+£1.50 P&P); a bargain compared to most cases. They’re much more stylish than those horrible-feeling nylon or smelly EVA “Official” DS cases, as well. They’re also machine-washable. Even better, they’re just stretchy rectangles so I can keep my PDA in one and my DS lite in the other. No scratched gadgets for me.

On the downside, they’re not waterproof so don’t be putting them on pub tables. They’re also not very padded; no dropping your DS. In other words, all they do is protect from scratches and don’t take up much space in a bag or jacket. Perfect for me.

Nice fingerprints, huh?

DS Lite mittens are currently sold in packs of Dark Blue/Light Blue (pictured) and Cerise/Pink from GAME’s website. They had black and white ones when the DS Lite launched but I haven’t seen them recently (see update below). GAME don’t have plans to release any other colours yet but have spoken to their suppliers about releasing other colours in the future.

Do you know of any other space-saving DS Lite cases available in the UK? I know those silicone skins are popular but I don’t like the possibility of keys sneaking into the gap and damaging my screens.

Links:
Blue mittens on GAME.co.uk
Pink mittens on GAME.co.uk

Update 30th Oct 06: The mittens aren’t just online now. My local GAME is selling the blue and pink packs. They also have the black and white mittens back in stock as part of their “essential protector kit”. The kit is £12.99 and has a spare stylus, screen protectors, two cartridge cases, a cleaning cloth and either a black or a white mitten.