After years of doling out reviews scored on gameplay, graphics, sound, value, and "tilt"--a summation of the overall game experience--GameSpot is changing its ways. Starting June 25--roughly a month after the site's 11th birthday--GameSpot will overhaul its rating system. "In our quest to make our reviews as straightforward and easy to understand...we've simplified the overall rating process," said editorial director Jeff Gerstmann.

As of next Monday, GameSpot will continue to rate games on a 1-to-10 scale. From then on, though, scores will be awarded solely in half-point increments (i.e. 8.0, 8.5, 9.0, etc.). The five aforementioned review components will be retired, although they will remain with reviews issued prior to June 25. In their place, GameSpot reviewers will award medals and demerits to each game based on said title's high points and shortcomings. The awards will come from a standardized pool akin to GameSpot Emblems, and will not be game-specific a la Xbox 360 Achievements. Examples of demerits include "Slideshow" for poor frame rate and the self-explanatory "Blatant In-Game Advertising."

For more on the new GameSpot review system, check out the Letter from the Editor on Jeff Gerstmann's blog.

Though Halo 3 won't be out until September 25, Microsoft is already trying to artificially manufacture buzz for the game. However, it's the slow trickle of details which are generating real interest in the pre-anointed blockbuster.

The latest drip from the trickle of information flowing out of Bungie Studios appears to be the unveiling of Halo 3's achievements. Xbox360achievements.org, a fan site dedicated to the acquisition of the so-called "nerd cred," today posted a listing of achievements it claims will be awarded for playing the sci-fi shooter.

Microsoft reps could--or would--not verify the achievements list as of press time, but they seem very similar to the PC Halo 2 achievements. If authentic, the list also appears to reveal some new Halo 3 details. Besides receiving rewards for finishing stages--which the achievements name--players will receive extra points when they replay the game and "find and claim" skulls hidden inside each level. The Halo 3 campaign will also feature a meta-game which will award points for performing an as-yet unknown tasks. The "Marathon Man" achievement also hints at some sort of connection with Bungie's classic Marathon series. Check out the full list for more details.

The American Medical Association will be deciding this month whether or not to recommend that video game and Internet addiction should be included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, reports the Wall Street Journal on its Health Blog.

The House of Delegates, the AMA's decision-making body, will vote on the issue later this month. If it decides that excessive gaming constitutes a mental disorder, the decision will then be passed upward to the American Psychiatric Association, which has the final say on these matters.

The decision to vote on the issue comes from a recommendation made by Mohamed K. Khan--chairman of the Council on Science and Public Health--in a 10-page report entitled "Emotional and Behavioural Effects, Including Addictive Potential, of Video Games."

Khan writes that "although video game overuse can be associated with any type of video game," the most common to exhibit signs of addiction were players of massively multiplayer online role-playing games, such as World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XI, or EverQuest. He stated, "Current data suggest these individuals are somewhat marginalised socially, perhaps experiencing high levels of emotional loneliness and/or difficulty with real-life social interactions. Current theory is that these individuals achieve more control of their social relationships and more success in social relationships in the virtual reality realm than in real relationships."

The report states that video game overuse most closely resembles the behaviours associated with pathological gambling. Alongside adults, dependence-like behaviours were also said to be found in children, although it was unclear whether gamers experienced traditional "withdrawal symptoms" when unable to play. The report reads, "Some excessive users do not exhibit any 'cravings' for the games if they are unavailable, while other users insist they cannot reduce the time they spend on the games."

Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training: How Old is Your Brain?--known as Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day in the US--has a lot to answer for. Since the runaway success of Nintendo's DS title which put gamers through a series of daily mental and arithmetic tasks in order to keep their 'brain age' young, there have been a number of similar 'non-game games' attempting to jump on the bandwagon.

First came an avalanche of spinoffs, including MinDStorm on the DS, Big Brain Academy on the DS and Wii, and Mind Quiz and Hot Brain on the PlayStation Portable. In Japan, the craze has gone even further, and a huge variety of non-traditional "training" titles are in the works. Recently discovered projects include DS Therapy, which boasts therapy sessions through your DS, Common Sense Training (Otona No Joushikiryoko), and Duke Sariaie's Healthy Walking Navi, which shows people how to walk properly.

The latest title in the genre, announced by Konami, is called Dream Skincare, and will be coming exclusively to the DS. The game gives beauty tips to users based on their body temperature and hormone balance, reports Reuters. Konami Digital Entertainment corporate officer Naoyuki Notsu told a news conference. "We have developed the software under the concept of getting pretty while having fun," he said.

One of the features of the title is that users can mark a date for a big event, like a wedding, and receive customised daily skincare tips in the run up. Dream Skincare will go on sale in Japan on October 18 for 4,500 yen (approx $37).

Konami will also soon be releasing Doko Demo Yoga on the DS in Japan. The title, aimed at women curious about the meditation art of yoga, illustrates a variety of yoga positions graded by difficulty, for yoga absolute beginners through to experts. Doko Demo Yoga will be released in Japan on July 5, priced at 3,800 yen ($31).

A teenager in Miami attacked a burglar trying to nab his beloved console from his house by swinging a samurai sword at the terrified robber, reports Local10.com.

Damien Fernandez, a karate brown belt, and his 15-year-old sister Deanne were alone in their Miami-Dade County house on the afternoon of June 8 when two men broke in by prying open the front door.

Deanne heard the thieves break in and hid in her closet while the two men grabbed jewelery from her parents' bedroom. The robbers then found an empty PlayStation 3 box, and started searching the rest of the house for the actual console. But when Damien woke up, the pair had a surprise waiting for them.

The plucky lad says, "Once I saw [one of the robbers] take off running back, I jumped off my bed and I grabbed my sword...and I just waited for him." When the teenager swung at the robber in a ninjalike way with his samurai sword, "he freaked out," and fled the premises sans PS3.

The youngster then chased the fleeing robber down the road, where the thief was apprehended by a police dog while attempting to hide underneath a palm tree. The suspect, 21-year-old Javier Cotera, was arrested and is scheduled to appear in court in two weeks. The second man managed to get away.

However, Damian's father, Delio Fernandez, didn't sound too impressed with his son's heroics. He said, "If he would have had a gun, I could have lost one of my children."

Recently, Microsoft-run sites Major Nelson and Gamerscore Blog have successfully put personalities in front of the company's Xbox 360 marketing efforts and offered visitors a steady stream of news on the system. They've also given gamers an open line of communication to complain directly to the company about delayed demos, downloadable-content pricing, and any other problems they have with the system.

It seems Microsoft isn't the only company that believes the benefits of such an operation outweigh the headaches, as Sony Europe started up its own Three Speech community blog in advance of the PlayStation 3 launch last year. Today, Sony Computer Entertainment America finally got on board the blog bus with the official launch of PlayStation.Blog.

"It's with enthusiasm, eagerness and, honestly, a little bit of relief that we lift the cover on our first official Sony Computer Entertainment America company blog," wrote SCEA PR manager Patrick Seybold in today's post, adding "welcome and sorry for the wait."

Seybold calls the site's current form a work in progress, saying he expects it to house news, developer updates, and editorials in the future. A listing of possibletopicsfor the site includes official comments from the company, news about promotional SCEA events, PlayStation Network updates, insight into game development, and discussion of industry trends. While SCEA clearly has ideas of what it wants to put on the blog, Seybold has also invited gamers to add their own suggestions in the comments section of his post.

Grad student working on her master's thesis has specially designed a pair of controllers for couples.

Although they won't be likely to have quite the same wide-ranging family appeal as the Wii Remote, a new pair of game controllers offer a unique way for couples to enjoy video gaming.

"I found out about a phenomenon called 'gamer widowhood' where men essentially abandoned their wives to play video games night and day," said controller creator Jenny L. Chowdhury. "I wanted to create a type of video game play that would centre around a couple's intimacy and where two people would touch each other in order to play the game."

Chowdhury, who started the project as part of her Master's thesis at New York University, describes herself as "artist". She has previously worked on a number of other offbeat projects, including 'The Popularity Dialer'--a web interface which calls people's mobile phones with one half of a pre-recorded conversation so they can appear popular and important. She also designed robots which indulge in celebrity gossip and a cellphone version of the campus game Assassin, where people take photos on their mobiles of people to 'assassinate' them whilst avoiding being photographed themselves.

The controllers work as a pair, and are, as Chowdhury's Web site (WARNING: Semi-adult content) puts it, "built into undergarments." The woman's controller is a bra which features six sensors, and the male counterpart a pair of shorts which boasts another sextet of sensors. The man will then stand behind the woman in front of a screen where the game is displayed, and touch each other's sensors--each of which has a different function--to play the game.

Chowdhury says that she made the gaming undergarments from fSRs, atmel chips, Xbees, and clothing. However, the controllers currently only allow couples to play a flash game made by another NYU student.

In June 2005, Hiroshi Yamauchi stepped down as chairman of Nintendo's board of directors. The move was an end of an era, since he had been at the top of the Mario Factory's corporate hierarchy since he took over as president of the then-playing-card company in 1949. He approved the creation of the original Famicom, better known as the NES, helping usher in the console era.

Since his retirement, Yamauchi has spent his time funding the construction of a poetry museum. The past two years have also seen the game industry statesman become one of Japan's wealthiest people. According to the latest issue of Forbes Asia, Yamauchi, 79, has holdings worth around 580 billion yen, or $4.8 billion.

Yamauchi is now the third-richest man in Japan, behind Softbank Corp. founder Masayoshi Son (worth $5.45 billion) and Tokyo real estate magnate Akira Mori (worth $5.5 billion). The near-octogenarian rose 11 places in the rankings thanks to Nintendo's stock near-tripling in value over the past year on the success of the Wii and DS.

More bad tidings for gold farmers in the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft--not only is one organisation getting its knuckles rapped by operator Blizzard for spamming, now another is being sued by a player--reports The Escapist.

Gold-farming company IGE, based in Hong Kong, has been targeted by long time WOW player Antonio Hernandez, who has hired a lawyer to go after the company that, he says, "made a calculated decision to reap substantial profits by knowingly interfering with and substantially impairing the intended use and enjoyment [of the game]."

The class-action complaint lists a number of reasons that gold-farming is detrimental to the game, including stripping the world of limited resources and materials so other players find them impossible to get hold of, a devaluation of the game's currency, chat spamming, and junk mail.

IGE sells virtual gold for real world money for a number of online games, including World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XI, EverQuest II, and Lord of the Rings Online. It was founded in 2001 by "consummate gamers" to buy and sell in-game items and gold. On its Web site, it states, "Gamers see the secondary market as yet another exciting dimension of the MMOG experience. It not only gives players the advantage of greater flexibility so they can focus on aspects of the game they most enjoy, but it also allows players to receive real world value for the effort and time they have invested in their games."

The attorney representing Hernandez in the case, Richard Newsome, told The Escapist, "Guys like Tony [Hernandez, the plaintiff] have paid their $15 for some entertainment, and IGE is polluting that entertainment. It's kind of like, if someone pays for a ticket to go see a movie, and if someone else comes in behind them and kicks their seat, you can get them to stop doing that."

Newsome stated that he believes that he can win the case--even though gold farming companies have not so far ended up in court--as the suit was not unlike other consumer protection law cases, which had already been brought to court in a variety of areas successfully.