Scowly antiheroes and sexy, cleavage-packed molls return in live-action cutscenes for Need for Speed: Undercover, the sixth installment of the series since the franchise was reimagined in 2003 and taken underground. Following last year’s disappointing Need for Speed: ProStreet, Black Box and EA went back to a known winner, the cops-and-robbers formula of 2005’s Need for Speed: Most Wanted. You’re infiltrating a stolen auto ring, whose members are blissfully unaware of your cop credentials, and also the larger international ramifications of their car thievin’.

Care to take a spin? Drop it into third and see our review. More »

Azure Palace, which was moderated out of LittleBigPlanet's online play for reasons unnamed, is back up. Thanks to reader Michael B. for that tip. The takedown sparked much outrage among the LBP level-building community, as Azure Palace is one of the better-known levels and a favorite of many, and it was not at all obvious what the offending content was. Not sure if the negative publicity is what got the board back, but it's there. Perhaps moderators were reacting to grief flags without further inspection. That said, they still need to come up with a more transparent policy, because there's still a great deal of tension over the possibility of sudden and unexplained moderation. There's a petition for that still going on.

The Xbox 360 Gift Guide

Admit it, the guilty pleasure of a gift guide is looking for things that you want to get, rather than get advice on what to give. Still, there are some kind considerate souls out there with Xbox 360 gamers on their holiday shopping list, and to them we say: Welcome to Kotaku's Xbox 360 Gift Guide for 2008.

We've broken down the choices into four categories: The value picks that save you some dough, but are still very much appreciated by gamers; the essentials, the It games of 2008 that everyone's talking about; socializers, games that are more fun played among friends or online; and the epics, the whole worlds within a retail box that may take up to a month to fully explore. All prices quoted come from Amazon unless otherwise noted.

Alright, bring on the gifts! More »

Xbox Live is Fixed. [Updated]

Update: There may be a few orphans out there in the great Xbox Live power outrage of November. But Microsoft is stamping out the problems and rooting out the causes as we speak. I just got done with about three hours of very personal service over instant messenger, and I'm back online. If you still can't connect to Xbox Live, your best bet is to test the connection, get the error codes, and call customer service. They're not fooling around, this is a bigtime concern for them.

But bottom line, I have it on reasonably good authority that everything will be cool for NXE's launch on Wednesday despite this. Kudos to the XBL team working through it all on a weekend. My original post is on the jump. More »

This week, Valve's Left 4 Dead makes its grand entrance, ready to delight us with hours of blasting apart leprous, brain-eating zombies. But don't overlook Need For Speed: Undercover on the same day. Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, also out today. Let's not forget Lips on the 360, although the only place I really sing is in the shower, and I don't think they've waterproofed the peripherals for that. The count for this week as we march onward to Black Friday: 26 titles on the Wii; 23 on the DS; 16 for the Xbox 360, 15 on the PC, 11 for PS3 and PS2; just two for PSP. The entire list is on the jump. More »

The PlayStation 3 Turns Two

Two years ago tomorrow the PlayStation 3 had its North America launch. Remember November 2006? Ah, yes, the days of $3,000 machines being sold on eBay and beyond-the-pale mayhem in the midnight line-ups to get one. Sony Computer Entertainment America had a far more sedate affair on Wednesday, toasting the two year anniversary (don't call it a "birthday") of the console.

There were no big announcements or proclamations at the event, but it did showcase Killzone 2 and Resistance: Retribution, kind of apt considering Resistance: Fall of Man was a console launch title. They also had a video depicting the evolution of the console's firmware, which is always sort of trippy to remember what you didn't have two years ago and what you take for granted now. And on that score, of course, PlayStation Home's open beta will hit sometime before the end of the year.

Worldwide sales of the console stand at 16.8 million units at the year two mark. So, cheers and here's to year three.

Fresh from the "Study finds violent video games do X to kids" pile, we now find — shock — playing them results in "a greater variation in Heart Rate Variability." This isn't straight out one's pulse quickening. HRV is "the oscillation in the interval between consecutive heartbeats" — more or less, a measure of minute changes in heart rate.

The research concludes that violent video games can have effects on your body's autonomous systems, without you even being aware of it. In this instance, kids who played violent games had a greater HRV during sleep but still reported they'd slept fine. Makes sense. Games can have effects on your voluntary systems beyond your control, too. Like Dead Space making you shit your pants.

There's debate on whether HRV means anything, but the researchers indicate they're going to use this research to study links between violent video games and aggression and, of course, "video game addiction."

Study Says Violent Games Affect Boys' Heart Rates [Wired]

More Details Emerge on Chinatown Wars

Play Left 4 Dead on Team Fortress 2 Maps

Not much of a surprise this is a possibility, the two games do use the same game after all. But Left 4 Dead hasn't even launched and someone's already modding it (probably the demo, anyway.) Here's nine minutes — reloading! — of Left 4 Dead gunplay on TF2's Dustbowl map (slightly customized). Warning, the volume on this sucker is hecka loud for some reason, with tons of — reloading! — gunfire.

Left 4 Dead Meets Team Fortress 2's Dustbowl [CS-Nation, thanks AproposOfEverything]

Microsoft Exec: It Never Pays to Bash Nintendo

Shane Kim, the VP for business development in Microsoft's game division, was down in Berkeley, Calif. this weekend to show off the new Xbox experience at the University of California's Play conference. Venturebeat's Dean Takahashi writes about Kim's wide-ranging discussion, of NXE, the economy, the development cycle. But we like it when people start commenting on competitors, so let's pull out some choice quotes there. More »