Not much is happening right now any where in the realms of game industry, or gamdustry as no one calls it. It’s the holiday season! No one’s doing any work, so as our thoughts turn to massive dinners, drunken relatives, expensive gifts and some Jewish kid who was born a while back, lets recap the scant news stories of the past week.

In keeping the messianic focus of the season we open with the tale of a game, that died for the sins of exorbitant subscription price models, but was resurrected as a free to play title. Are you sitting comfortably children?

Then I shall begin.

APB was a game I was at one time excited for, an open world, massively multiplayer, third person shooter setting cops against crims and promising an unprecedented level of character and weapon customisation as you levelled.

It was delayed for years, cut back from a console and PC game to just PC, then when it finally launched it barely managed to maintain its registered userbase of a paltry 130,000. Not great numbers. The game lasted a ridiculously short 90 days before Realtime Studios pulled the plug. The first time I’d even heard it was released it had literally just died.

Not that we were deprived of an undiscovered gem, early observations of APB decried a game with sloppy driving controls and a lack of really fun gameplay. Beta testers involved in development told sordid tales of their comments and input being completely ignored. Overall the reception to the final game could be best described as ‘mixed’.

Well now it’s back, with a new owner and a new model available, renamed APB Reloaded the game is available as a Free to Play title over Steam. Off course that means free to play until you want it to stop being crappy, as soon as you want something fun to happen you need to cough up some dollars. On the upside you get to try out a game that’s the closest you’re currently going to get to an mmo version of GTA or Saints Row.

What’s really interesting about this tale is that APB was a massive failure by all accounts, no players, no profit, no positive feedback; it was a huge and ambitious mmo, years in the making, that tanked in less than three months. Even among the rotting killing fields of mmo’s who strive to steal the crust of Warcraft’s mighty pie, few deaths were as quick and brutal as APB. And yet it’s back and playable again, bought by another company and relaunched. There’s not many entertainment industries in which that would happen.

Feeling the holiday spirit yet? No? Oh well, on with the info bites!

Here’s some other stuff:

Lego is making a Lord of the Rings series which I will be buying the shizit out of, and although it’s not official a Lego Lord of the Rings game by Telltale Games is most likely a lock.

Syndicate has been RCed, Refused Classification, in Australia, in other words: banned. This is apparently due to the fact you can shoot limbs off people, then continue to shoot limbs of them after they’re dead. Games the OFLC has approved that contain exactly the same content include:

• Fallout 3
• Borderlands
• Left 4 Dead 1 and 2
• Prototype
• Ninja Gaiden 3
• Gears of War 1, 2 and 3
• Viking
• Mortal Kombat Deception and Deadly Alliance (although admittedly not the most recent one)

And i’m sure plenty of others. Why this particular game was banned remains another OFLC mystery. But of course now that the game has been refused classification I MUST own it, and will import it from a country more sensible than Australia, ie. any country (other than China, North Korea or Iran who seem to share our classification standards). Well played Syndicate, well played.

Jetpack Joyride is available for free right now. If you didn’t read my review a few weeks ago here’s the short version, download it immediately!

An Iranian spy has claimed that a company in the US called Kuma Games who makes war based first person shooters, is a front propaganda company that makes games to sway public opinion on a Middle East invasion. As stupid as it sounds there’s some evidence this crazy Iran news story might be true. First, the Kuma Games products are all cheap and crappy, exactly like a product funded by a government organisation, and two, the CIA actually did this before in the eighties and nineties, setting up a dummy Hollywood production company to fund movies that mostly made the CIA and poor international foreign policy like the war on drugs and the Iran Contra scandal look awesome. Of course it was a massive waste of money as the films were cheap and crappy. Remember kids, just because nutty conspiracy theories don't actually work doesn't mean they're not true.

Kim Jong Ill just died, reminding me that it’s been too long since I last watched Team America. But the really creepy game related element? In the game Homefront the events take place after the diminutive crazy ruler dies in 2012, so if he’d kicked on for just another two weeks, Homefront might be a prophetic game! Any press is good press for the ailing title.

The PS Vita preview kits have appeared in various unboxing videos across the interwebs. No I haven’t received mine yet Sony, did it get lost in the post? Anyway, the PS Vita boat, that two guys were rowing across the Atlantic, sank and it’s two occupants, both named Tom, needed to be rescued by the coast guard. Why the boat sank, or why they named their boat PS Vita, or why they are both called Tom, is unclear at this time.

Kinect Star Wars will apparently feature Twi’lek dancers who dance suggestively. The US classification group the ESRB mentions booty shaking and revealing clothing highlighting 'cleavage and buttocks' and presumably those sexy, uh, I mean strange head tentacle things) When you’re not force shoving storm troopers and deflecting laser bolts, you’ll be dancing to as part of a mini game. I’m actually slightly interested in this game now. Dance Central 2 has given me the boogie fever baby and my temperatures rising.

As a Christmas present from its creators Demon Souls (not its recent sequel Dark Souls) will be just a leetle bit easier from now until January 2. Enemies will be less crushingly indomitable and secret areas previously inaccessible will become uninaccessible.

That absolutely sweet looking Star Wars Xbox, the one with the R2D2 design motif and C3P0 controller, may be going on sale in April. This is the preorder you’re looking for. /waves hand

Hideo Kojima is working on another game, maybe MGS related maybe not, all we know is it will feature realistically transparent fabric so you can totally see women’s bra straps in games as per the image below. Truly these are the days of future past.

Star Wars Galaxies, the other MMO that fans were playing before Stars Wars The Old Republic, has officially shuttered it’s windows, locked the doors and gone home, making way for the new shiny Star Wars mmo. Sunrise, sunset.

Asura’s Wrath, which I very much like the look off as an Eastern God of War title with Street Fighter IV type graphics, has a demo dropping on the 10^th January next year. So far it’s only confirmed for Japan, but let’s hope they expand that.

Square Enix has revealed that over 1.8 million of its users account details may have been stolen from a server accessed by both Japanese and US account holders.  Between this, Steam, Xbox Live and PSN, I think it’s pretty safe to say that everyones account details are now available to everyone else. It’s clearly an indication of the end of the world, lakes of acid, fire raining from the sky, dogs and cats living together, read your revelations people! (or watch Ghostbusters)

Need For Speed World, is trying to sell a DLC item, a single car, for $100, or if you buy it quickly you can get in on special for $75. I have to say, if you do buy this piece of DLC, then you are, without a shadow of a doubt, a complete idiot. No offence, but you are and should be prevented by law from working with animals and small children.

Max Payne 3 will, like most games, have a multiplayer component. Unlike most games it sounds like it could be really interesting. It will feature standard multiplayer modes, but lace them together into a plot over several rounds of gameplay. For instance, a game might start with a criminal meeting that goes bad, one team has to grab as many duffel bags of cash as they can and drop them off at a waiting truck while the other team tries to stop them, then after an animated segway the game might change to a bounty mission with the highest scoring person in the last round being the target and one team trying to kill him while the other protects him. These multiplayer matches will organically develop plots with certain win conditions triggering events that lead to the next round and game type. That sounds pretty damn good to me. Rockstar, once again, here is my money.

Sorcery, a game utilising the PS Move that appeared as a teaser and then disappeared again, has reappeared and looks pretty amazing. This could be a reason to bite the bullet and get a PS Move set if you haven’t all ready. It’s certainly swaying my decision. Here's a video and some pics below.

So I'll see you after the holidays with some new reviews and other tasty content, have a merry christmas!