The peeps over at Eidos must really love the holidays. First they gave us the classic-themed outfits for Lara Croft in her new adventure, Tomb Raider Underworld, just days before Christmas. Now, on the eve of, well… New Year’s Eve, the company has provided fanboys and girls fortunate enough to own a 360 the chance to dress Lara in some fancy new wetsuits.

Thanks again to the Tomb Raider News Channel for the pics. (They’re on the official TR site as well, but just thumbnails. We know you like your Lara pics supersized, so we went through the hassle of searching for you. You’re welcome.) Enjoy, and Happy New Year to everyone!

Summary: Take Lara Croft around the world searching for Thor’s hammer, so she can “kill a god” and finish the story arc started in Legend.

Setting: Thailand, the Mediterranean Sea, Mexico, Croft Manor, and a few others I won’t spoil.

Systems: Xbox 360 (reviewed), Playstation 3. Different versions on the Wii and DS, and a Playstation 2 version forthcoming.

Genre: Adventure/Action.

Mood: Dark and, after a while, vengeful.

Read the full review by Darthziggy.

The good folks behind Lara Croft have given us a special holiday bonus. Next time you boot up your copy of Tomb Raider Underworld, head to the DLC section and check out the new classic outfits pack, allowing you to dress Lara in her garb from the previous two installments of the series - Legend and Anniversary.

Legend

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In their never-ending quest for world domination via the unlikely process of accumulating all of our precious Microsoft Points, Bungie is scheduled to release a new map pack for Halo 3 alongside the release of Halo Wars in the late Winter/early Spring. To stir up anticipation in the new maps (as if that were even necessary), today the crew at Bungie.net released some new images from two of the maps, Orbital and Assembly.

We’ve brought a couple of shots to share here, but you can view the rest over at Bungie’s site. And keep an eye out this weekend, as the team has promised some extra goodies in their post-Christmas Weekly Update, due on the site at some point on Friday. Of course, if anything big breaks, we’ll keep you posted.

Summary: A great follow-up to one of the best RPGs of all time. Contrary to what some would have you believe, it doesn’t re-invent Fable, but then sheer fun doesn’t really need re-inventing.

Setting: Fantasy universe reminscent of medieval Europe.

Systems: Xbox 360

Genre: RPG, of the non-cliché kind.

Mood: Adventurous and fun, with bits of both drama and comedy sprinkled in.

Read the full review by Vaga.

Nothing, and I mean nothing is worse for a game reviewer than losing a console in the middle the fall/winter game releases. For no reason that anyone can fathom, publishers still think it’s fair to release everything  worth releasing between September and mid-November. So for us gamer writer folk we have a short period of time to review basically all the games that will eventually duke it out for game of the year. When you have a bunch of new titles to get through, and your primary console breaks with no way to fix it other than sending it back, it just blows. So was the case with my 360.

If you’ve never heard of the Red Ring of Death (RROD) it’s this lovely hardware failure that happens to 360 consoles causing the entire machine to essentially stop working. The colorful acronym relates to the fact that when this malfunction occurs the normal green ring you see around the power button becomes three red rings. And when you see that … well that’s the end of that.

It happened to me right around the beginning of November in advance of several new titles with massive hype and expectations soon to be released. Suffice it to say I panicked. My first thought was, “Maybe there are some dudes who fix this cheap.” So I go on Craig’s List and lo and behold there are dudes who fix the RROD problem. Of course this means that if something else happens to your 360, your warranty becomes null and void. See they can fix it, but they have to mess with your console’s inner parts to do it. While the idea seemed like a great solution, ultimately I opted not to do it. In fact, one of the “dudes” even suggested that I send it back as well — that way, if Microsoft screws up the fix, I’m covered. If Johnny Xbox fixes it and something goes wrong — oh well.

Bath towels, 40 minutes and a prayer

I had not completely given in to sending off my console just yet. During my problem solving Internet search I came across two other solutions. One involved a step by step guide that involved using tools, taking the motherboard out and messing with the insides yourself. If they say it’s easy, but it doesn’t look easy then chances are it’s not easy and you just gave some guys $10 for a guide you’re afraid to use. Several others offer walkthrough videos and there are even alleged kits you can pay for. Each of those methods involved some kind of tinkering with computer parts that made me queasy. Not queasy like operating room queasy, but more like would you do that with you iPod Touch if you had instructions queasy.  What method did I experiment with? The one that doesn’t involve tools — the infamous towel trick. Keep in mind — I was desperate.

The towel trick is based on some theory that says that if you overheat your machine on purpose and then let it cool down, then everything resets itself and you’re back in business. This is not a technical or mechanical explanation but just something that people online said. The trick involves wrapping the console (with the hard drive removed) in several towels and leaving it on for about 20-40 minutes. Then after it’s nice and hot — let it cool off for an equal amount of time. Magically when all of this is done, the red rings are gone and it’s game time again. Here’s the problem with the trick. It doesn’t last more than a few hours at best. Some people have done it multiple times, other people have it as part of a standard routine, and yet others prefer to use their towels for things like showers instead — it varies. Now that I’ve actually tried out this gaming urban legend, here’s what you should know — save yourself the 90 minutes you’ll waste and do something else. It was neat to try it out and the scant few hours I had to play through my fresh copy of Gears of War 2 was well worth it, but when those red rings were staring me in the face again, I knew it was time to submit.

Sending It Back — Game Cold Turkey

The reason so many people are reluctant to send their machine back to Microsoft is because it used to take a really long time and you would basically be without a console so long you could build another one.  The company is now so used to this problem, though, that they’ve streamlined the process and you can now do it all without even talking to one of their outsourced workers on the phone. Back in the day, they would send you a box and a shipping label and you send it off and hope to get it back in a month. Now they just send you a label through e-mail, you provide your own box and if you’re lucky you’ll get it back in 2 1/2 weeks. Not too bad considering you just have to pay for a box. For owners who have a warranty, sending your machine back is still the best bet. Yes, it sucks — especially when you have a stack of fresh games and no way to play them — but it would suck worse if you played Dr. Frankenstein and killed your $300 machine pretending you know what you’re doing. Just suck it up, send it back and become a Zuma master on your PC while you wait.

It’s also buggy as hell right now, but hey, it’s still early.

Nintendo’s fan service division, Club Nintendo, has finally launched in the U.S., bringing with it coins and surveys and registrations galore.

Club Nintendo replaces the old My Nintendo service that we used to have here in the States. The process is simple - buy Nintendo games, register them online, complete surveys about the games, and earn coins. Sure, the survey is the same one every time, just about a different game, but at least it’s only 6 questions - mostly dealing with how you were influenced to buy the title and where you purchased it - and you only have to write something for one of them (the others are multiple choice, for the slow pokes out in the audience).

What can you do with these coins, you ask? Well, they don’t give you extra lives, unfortunately, but you do get to use them for some pretty cool giveaways, not the least of which is the rumored Game & Watch collection. Other goodies include DS cases and extra styluses (even though some of us *coughmecough* have enough pens to last for years to come already), playing cards, and a really cool set of red Mario “M” hat-shaped bookends designed to hold your DS game collection upright.

It’s nice to see this fan service finally hitting our shores, after it had been in Japan and Europe for years. Now we’ll just wait and see what other giveaways they have in store (come on, DSi!) and what new ways they think of to have us earn more coinage. Head here to start earning.

Summary: If you have 1 or 2 local fans of RPGs and party games, this is the ultimate, right here. Just don’t play it by yourself.

Setting: A stereotypical RPG kingdom under attack by monsters, but with an economic board game twist.

Systems: Wii, PS2

Genre: Party/RPG

Mood: Light-hearted and silly, sort of a parody of an epic tale.

Read the full review by Bran.

GameInformer online has word that a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fighting game from Ubisoft - exclusively for Wii - should be out in September of next year. Ubisoft did a pretty good job with last year’s movie-adaptation game (at least on the 360 - haven’t played the Wii version), and while that game lacked the fun of mulitplayer Turtle action, a fighting game could help the game side of the franchise out.

Lean, green, fighting machines!
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Summary: Maxis’ beautiful, flawed masterpiece lacks the depth to be a work of real substance, but makes for an exciting change from the competition anyway

Setting: The galaxy. All of it.

Systems: PC

Genre: Massive universe simulators

Mood: Colourful upbeat creatures in the vastness of the universe.

Read the full review by Meirion.