Weekly Report: Emblemiacs

Featured User Videos

- Ultimate Forza 3 Crash Montage by The_Game21x
- Penumbra: Requiem Speedrun by ChristianKiss

Staff Fingerprints

- Ricardo Torres checks in with you all on the latest happenings.
- Shaun McInnis has Modern Warfare 2 on his mind.
- Luke Anderson posted some pictures of Sony’s UK MAG event.
- Justin Calvert shares thoughts about preorder bonuses and Star Trek.
- Kevin VanOrd thinks about genre.
- Dan Chiappini shares behind-the-scenes coverage of GSAU Burger Challenge 2010.
- Guy Cocker has numerous topics worth reading.

User Reviews

- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: Reflex Edition (Wii) asian_pride69
- Overlord: Dark Legend (Wii) zh66
- Shattered Horizon (PC) Domstercool
- Iron Man (PS2) ebbderelict
- Honoo no Kakutou Banchou (PS2) loopy_101
- New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Wii) Garrison_Fordn
- Code of Honor: The French Foreign Legion (PC) Azghouls
- Left 4 Dead 2 (X360) white_sox
- Borderlands (X360) xboxrulze

Blog Bunker

- gfile shares some PC Gaming thoughts.
- yeah_write wonders about pointless attachments.
- gdw0908 shares his top annoying game design innovations.
- so_hai has a Star Fox analysis.
- Resistance_Kid remembers what game started it all.
- buft highlights five boring in-game jobs.
- Kman8909 has lots to say about cheating.
- OrkHammer007 would like there to be at least one console game for adults only in 2010.
- classic7 would like to know why Fallout 3 received more attention by Bethesda.
- WeaponXY likes to think about confident versus cocky game characters.
- Samson089 highlights the top 10 downloadable games in 2009.
- canana shares his perfect first-person shooter.

Tip of the Week

This week's tip will help you learn how to create images to participate in the Valentine’s Day e-Card workshop. Here are five tips originally provided by Teekal.

1) If you don’t own any fancy image editors, she suggests downloading the 30-day free trial of Adobe Photoshop.
2) Cropping images is self-explanatory: Drag the crop box to outline the image you want to keep, then double click in the middle to quickly resize the image to fit within the proportions.
3) When adding text suggestion, make sure that the letters are outlined in a darker color to make sure the words don't get lost in the background image. There is a good video tutorial that describes how to do it using Photoshop.
4) Some consoles do not have an easy way to take screenshots, but laptops and other PC games have a "Print screen" function.
5) Lastly, YouTube tutorials and free trials are your friend.

You can check more of what she has to say, along with links in the Valentine e-Card workshop discussion.

We are a bit short on any feature enhancements and other related announcements, but we have some hot news about emblems! - The Valentine E-Card workshop will grant a participation emblem to those who submit an e-card! If you have any image designing tips for new image designers, please help them out by sharing in workshop discussion. - Best of 2009 emblem was granted to everyone who has voted as of yesterday. Staff will do another emblem push on January 27th so get in your votes prior to then. Also, if you look at your profile and notice that the Best of 2008 emblem is missing please send me a PM with the subject title “Best of 2008 emblem” and I’ll grant the emblem at my earliest convenience. - The The Forza Paintshop union , established by Justin Calvert, hands out the emblem after scheduled race weekends. You can view the latest creative paintjobs by viewing the discussions in the union. - The TheHotSpot homework emblem has been granted to REgrl4life. If you’re interested in this emblem become an avid listener of TheHotSpot. - The soapbox emblem was granted to gfile for his interesting blog about PC games in 2010.