Village Gamer

Ottawa – Fuel Industries has produced a very nice way to say Merry Christmas to all of their friends, and they’ve done such a great job I wanted to share their efforts with all of our readers. Designer Alyssa Munaretto, Producer Braden Brailey, Rob Plowman (Director, Fuel Sounds) and Nick Ianniti (Director of Communications) got together and recorded three Christmas songs for our listening pleasure. The tracks are downloadable, so you can add them to your Christmas playlist. Thank you and Happy Holidays to everyone over at Fuel!

Edmonton – Bioware has added some very cool Dragon Age: Origins clothing to the XBL Avatar Store – players can now dress their Avatars in DAO t-shirts and hats, available in three styles. Now if they would just release the Return to Ostagar DLC expansion on XBL…

Vancouver – The Innovation Camp organizers have announced the dates and location for their next workshop series – Innovation Camp 3. Taking place at Discovery Parks (887 Great Northern Way) in Vancouver, the first Innovation Camp of 2010 will occur on the following dates:

• Tuesday, January 26, 6:30pm to 9:30pm
• Thursday, January 28, 6:30pm to 9:30pm
• Saturday, January 30, 10:00am to 6:00pm

Participants will spend their Camp time practicing techniques to generate new ideas and expanding upon those ideas in order to accomplish a shared goal such as creating a product or completing a project/challenge. There are no lectures, just engaging activities that facilitate learning, interaction and growth. Registration is now open, and at only $150.00 (including sandwiches, fruit and tea, coffee & juice), Innovation Camp offers great value to its participants. I’ve heard plenty of good things about the Camp, so if you have the opportunity to participate, I’d say give yourself a great Christmas present by registering today.

Vancouver – IUGO Mobile Entertainment has put many of their great titles on sale – visit the iTunes App Store and pick up a few – or all – of them and get many hours of fun and challenge for very little money. Sounds like a good return on investment to me!

Guelph – Stir Fry Games has announced that an update for SFG Soccer is now available on XBL. The following changes will be automatically applied next time you sign in and start up the game:

• Hard Difficulty Setting
• Team & Player Stat tracking
• Ability to Edit Any Team
• Use your Custom Teams in Exhibition Matches
• Golden Boot Award
• League leaders section
• and some bug fixes

EA Montreal’s Army of Two: The 40th Day demo is now available for Gold subscribers on XBL in a 2gb download which, according to the developers, allow players to get a head start on their co-op mayhem. This demo is rated M by the ESRB.

Thorold (via IO) – Cerebral Vortex Games and Psi Pi Group Limited are pleased to announce that i-Prioritize, a handy personal organization app, is now available for download on the iTunes App Store for $4.99 USD.

iPrioritize is the perfect app for those with a mountain of tasks to do, and no idea where to start. Using an easy, intuitive interface, iPrioritize lets you add your actions and areas of focus, then asks you a few simple questions to set their priority.  All of your tasks are organized and color-coded for you in order of priority.

“iPrioritize is one of those apps that most people need and anyone can use,” said Keith Makse, President of Cerebral Vortex Games. “Within minutes, people can take the hassle out of prioritizing task lists. You’ll wonder how you ever got along without it.”

“We’re thrilled to be working with Cerebral Vortex Games on this project,” said Simon Hedley. Mr. Hedley is the inventor of iPrioritize and the Founder of Psi Pi Group Ltd. “They’ve given our idea a high quality, easy-to-use product that turns prioritization into child’s play. Psi Pi Group has modelled consultants and coaches that charge in excess of $10,000 hour and with the help of Cerebral Vortex, we have distilled that knowledge into a simple to use app.”

Montreal – Ubisoft has released a new co-op trailer for Splinter Cell: Conviction. This title looked good from the very first trailer, and it’s looking better all the time, however there is controversy sparking once again in regards to the Collector’s Editions which will once again differ among continents – although how much will not be known until North American gamers open their CE packages. Canadian gamers have posted on various sites that they aren’t happy with once again appearing to get fewer items than those who live in Europe, particularly for a game which was developed in Canada. The unhappiness began with the differences between Assassin’s Creed 2 Black (Europe) and White (North America) editions,  and it looks like it will continue with the release of Splinter Cell: Conviction.  I mention above that the true differences will not be known until an actual North American CE is opened, because gamers were lead to believe that only those who had the Black Edition would have access to the Templar’s Lair areas on area maps, and this was even stated in the official Game Strategy Guide – yet I have the White Edition, and can access the Templar’s Lair areas. Very confusing, to say the least. I have, both in the past and recently sent queries to Ubisoft in regards to these differences in hopes of better understanding their decisions, but either got no response or vague, unsatisfactory ones.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS6Wnb1sJvI]