More and more games these days are locking out certain content and online multiplayer access to those that buy used games and don’t purchase a $10 digital Online Pass. Electronic Art’s upcoming SSX reboot will be employing said Online Pass, but you actually won’t need one in order to play online.

In a statement given to Game Informer, EA said that while new copies of their snowboarding game will include an Online Pass, you’ll still be able to play SSX’s Explore and Global Events’ online game modes without one. The catch? You won’t be awarded with in-game credits from Global Events; instead, they’ll be stored away. When you buy an Online Pass, though, you’ll be rewarded with all of your accrued credits, which, according to GI, lets you unlock more character gear.

Additionally, “Economy balance makes it possible to unlock all available content and allows you to participate in all event drops across both Explore and Global Events, with credits earned solely in Explore,“ EA told GI.

Online Passes may be the bane for used game buyers, but what EA’s doing with SSX is much better than the alternative: not being able to play multiplayer at all.

SSX’s Online Pass Doesn’t Sound Too Bad [Game Informer, via Destructoid]

They're like the A-Team but in space. And some are hot aliens.

When people think of February, specifically the 14th, one thought usually comes to mind: Valentine’s Day. Images of flowers, chocolates, cards, and romanticism fill the head, for better or for worse. This year though, Bioware is adding some new thoughts to people’s heads: gunning down hostiles, mass invasion of Earth, and blue-skinned alien boobs.

Bioware’s popular space RPG/FPS hybrid has the third installment coming out on March 6th, but if you’re either too impatient to wait until then or aren’t sure if you want to get in on the adventures of Commander Shepard and his spunky bunch of companions from across the galaxy, then you’ll be delighted to see the demo of Mass Effect 3 appear on Valentine’s Day. The demo shows off both single-player and multi-player gameplay, although if you didn’t get Battlefield 3 you’ll be having to wait until the 17th to dive into the multi-player portion, allowing players to get a taste of both types of play before the game is available on shelves. You’ll also gain access to additional content if you played the Kingdoms of Alamur demo that debuted a few days ago.

In a time when video games are being bought more on a trust basis than if you tried a demo and enjoyed it, it’s nice to see EA and Bioware bringing in a demo to both reassure gamers that their money will be well spent and whet their appetite for more Mass Effect goodness. I’m sure it will also help after the massive backlash that happened when multi-player was first confirmed to be included in the game as well. As for me, you’ll probably find me on my PC playing the demo on V-Day, then immediately running out to Gamestop to throw a wad of cash in their face to pay off the cool Collector’s Edition of the game.

Mass Effect 3 is rated M and will be available on X-Box 360, Playstation 3, and PC.

Even with limited early access to the game for around a week, it seems players of the hotly-anticipated Star Wars: The Old Republic are having to deal with long wait times for access to the game’s servers.

CVG reports that server wait times are ranging from 45 minutes, which seems to be the most common, to as long as two hours, despite Bioware’s efforts for a smooth game launch by letting pre-order customers gain early access to their MMORPG on a wave-by-wave basis.

“In order to ensure that the service would be smooth and stable, we staged how we brought people into the Early Game Access program, adding people in waves,” wrote Bioware’s Live Services executive producer Jeff Hickman on The Old Republic’s official forums. “As you know, there are a lot of folks who want to play the game right now and we want to make sure they have lots of people to play with. Balancing this with figuring out when to bring new servers online to help alleviate the size of the queues is part art and part science.”

“On one hand, you do not want people to wait too long – on the other hand, you want to make sure that people have a dynamic, engaging community to play with for long after launch. Either way, we have one clear objective – to make sure folks have fun.”

Continuing, Hickman added, “While we can’t promise that there won’t ever be queues, we can promise you that we are taking this matter seriously and constantly reviewing them to make sure that they are manageable and reasonable.”

That’s reassuring to hear, but if server wait times are this long during the early access period, I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like tomorrow when the game is available to all customers. Yikes!

With about 3.5 million users, Origin which is EA’s online game distribution service will be selling it’s own personalized gaming capable computers. The name of these computers is ORIGIN MILLENNIUM RTS – and they will cost $1799 US and below we have the details on what to expect.

• ORIGIN PC professional CPU overclocking up to 4.5GHz
• ORIGIN PC Lifetime technical support and full hardware warranty coverage
• ORIGIN PC Frostbyte factory sealed, maintenance free liquid cooling
• NVIDIA 580 Graphics Card and a 120GB Solid State Hard Drive
• Fully upgradeable with an SLI ready motherboard and 1050 watt power supply
• FREE Batman Arkham City and FREE Battlefield 3
• Ships within one business day once payment is processed

Here’s a colorful look at Syndicate’s four-player co-op in action showing off a mission titled “New England.” According to the video’s YouTube description, there will be nine different co-op missions in the game.

Syndicate Co-op Gameplay Video (HD) – “New England” [YouTube, via VG 24/7]

A closed beta for Mass Effect 3 was recently leaked on Xbox Live to those testing the Xbox Live dashboard update. While it’s now offline, the speedy folks who downloaded and played the beta still managed to videotape its single-player campaign.

Above is the first 14 minutes of that in action, showing off a Reaper invasion as well as three gameplay mode options: “Action Mode,” “Story Mode,” and “RPG Mode.” Apparently, these adjust the game’s difficulty and dialogue inputs, giving the player the option to have an experience that’s either more action-oriented, story-driven, or both.

Note that what you’re seeing in the above video is a ME 3′s non-final build, so there are some technical anomalies.

“We’d like to stress that the leaked code is in a rough, unfinished state and was not meant for public release,” BioWare’s Jesse Houston wrote on BioWare’s forums in response to the accidental leak of ME 3’s beta. “The content is not final, and is not reflective of the quality of the finished, polished game due for release on March 6, 2012 (March 9 in Europe).”

With the launching of Battlefield 3 just hours from now and one lucky winner being announced tomorrow, we thought that the least we could do is compare the two launch trailers to see what’s best in our opinion. Looking through the votes on our Modern Battlefield contest it seems like most of our readers voted in favor of Modern Warfare 3.

Battlefield 3 Launch Trailer: Loser

After looking at the official trailer and playing the open beta for BF3 I can admit that Battlefield feels different. In the trailer you get to see some of the single player campaign action and being that this is probably going to be the most technological advanced of the series we’ll have to wait and see how the actual game feels. In the open beta we didn’t get to fly jets and that was one of the major problems of it’s predecessor controlling the jets and helicopter was a bit challenging. While looking at the trailer what sold us was the MH-6 Little Bird helicopters as it brought great memories of Desert Combat the mod for Battlefield 1942.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Trailer: Winner

What really sells a Call of Duty game is it’s incredibly awesome storyline and a perfect multi-player. The trailer below really blew us away and will probably do the same for you especially if you follow Modern Warfare. If we had to pick from the two trailer the winner in our opinion is the Modern Warfare 3 launch trailer. The only thing though is that with MW3 chances are that gamers will be disappointed, being that the story line will probably be very short.

In case you didn’t know if you are an email subscriber  or a Twitter follower you are automatically entered to win either of the games, so you might hear from us tomorrow if you won the current giveaway. The great thing about the contest is that you get to choose from the two and if you want Modern Warfare 3, well send you a copy of that’s released.

Or subscribe via e-mail to win games from us.

One of the negative things of having an XBOX 360 beside having to pay for XBOX Live is the fact many high end games end up coming out with multiple disks. A new rumor has surfaced with a snapshot that suggests one disk for the Playstation 3 version and two for the 360. In our site it seems like we have more Modern Warfare fans that Battlefield as the voters continue to vote for MW3 in our sweepstakes giveaway. In defense of Battlefield 3 that whole franchise is much bigger in file size than that of Call of Duty. In Battlefield 3 you will get to fly helicopters and jets as well as drive armor vehicles in their huge maps and not to mention their using the new Frostbite 2 game engine.

[Esuteru] – [Google Translate]