To my complete lack of shock and horror almost nothing happened in the mysterious limbo week between Christmas and New Years. When you’re a kid this week buzzes past in a haze of sensory overload brought on by sugar and new toys, but when you’re a grown up you find yourself sitting in a nearly empty work place wondering why you didn’t have the foresight to takes a week leave and reading incredibly boring ‘Best off 2011’ Lists.

So there’s not a lot of news for the last whole fortnight, but if you’re hungry what I could scrap from the jar is below.

Old news now but announced the day after the last TTC was posted, EA has clarified the banning of Syndicate is to do with the ability to maim and mutilate (mostly shooting of limbs and heads) dead bodies. They have also confirmed that they’re not going to bother with the costly process of editing and reissuing the game for approval of the OFLC. Thank the stars for grey imports.

Those lovable anonymous scamps Anonymous have publicly stated that past and planned attacks against Sony and the Playstation service are in protest against Sony’s support of the almost dystopian level evil of the Stop Online Piracy Act (or SOPA) currently before congress in the US. Apparently user information won’t be stolen or exploited as part of official anonymous attacks but service interruptions and general harassment of Sony executives will occur.

The little indie game that could (and one I’m sadly yet to experience) Bastion has sold 500,000 units across Steam and Live. Pretty impressive for a game that’s not a sequel, prequel or reboot in 2011.

Star Wars the MMO has been running for a few weeks and seems to quite popular so far. There’s all ready tentative talk of the game going multiplatform with a Mac version rumoured to be in the works.

Valve has officially said that any Half Life 3 information or rumours is pure trolling by the community for the community. But then they would say that wouldn’t they?

I’ve often pointed out that the Halo Theatre tool is one of the most exciting and interesting elements in modern console games. I’ve used the tool to create almost every Halo screenshot I’ve ever used in a review or news article and had a helluva a fun time doing it. Now a gentleman named Phillip Chang has created an entire short film, twenty freaking minutes long, showcasing the level Eye of the Storm from Halo 3. He had to play through the game over a 100 times to trigger the specific AI reactions he needed for each scene. Behold the swollen fruit of his work!

In case you were still dismissive of the idea that Diablo 3 was being secretly developed for consoles, Blizzard are advertising for a heap of jobs related to console development. The most recent one is for a Console Senior Software Engineer. Too ambiguous for you, well here’s a snippet of the position description: “This position is responsible for ensuring the best implementation of sophisticated networking systems on consoles”. Riiiiiight, it might be for one of Blizzards other games, like the incredibly complex real time strategy game, or maybe the world’s biggest, densest MMO? Seriously Blizzard, stop teasing, I want to preorder my Xbox 360 Diablo 3 collector’s edition now.

David Jaffe says that the new Twisted Metal will have a one time use download code for Twisted Metal: Black, the original 2001 PS2 game, partly to say thank you to fans and partly to stick it to the second hand market. This is why everyone loves David Jaffe.

The PS Vita is having a hard time in front of its home town crowd in Japan. In its second week the console was outsold by the 3DS and the original PSP as well as the Wii and PS3. Not surprising when the 3DS has games like Mario Kart 7 and Monster Hunter Tri-G in the top five games slots. No Vita title has appeared in the top 20 so far.

Gran Turismo 5 is getting an XL edition as the item has popped up on retailer websites like Amazon. Not sure what an XL edition is, but let’s just assume it’s the game with all the DLC thrown in. Any way, it’s a good enough reason to get into some technically and aesthetically stunning racing if you haven’t all ready.

IO Interactive have filed trademark on something called Hitman: Profession. Some kind of companion tie in for their big 2012 (and long overdue) release of Hitman: Absolution. No idea what Profession is, but I’m going to bet cookies it’s an iOS/Android game.

One of my guilt pleasures in 2011, the flawed but fun Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine, is getting some kind of expansion this month. No idea what this expansion will be, nut according to this leaked picture it involves the heavily armed and mobile sarcophagi known as Dreadnoughts.

And that's it for another week. Here's a bonus, any idea what game the screen shot from the title image is. Post your answer in the comments under the Tuesday Cap thread.