First of all, I loved the look of it. The name certainly describes what the map was like, looking like something out of Disney's Big Thunder Mountain railroad ride. Lots of wooden structures, water towers and mine car tracks. But the map isn't just a new area, it also features a new gameplay type called Payload. Basically how it works is this: the map has three separate areas and players are split into offensive and defensive teams. The goal of the offensive team is to push a mine cart loaded with explosives through the map, capturing the defensive team's bases as they go. The cart moves faster depending on how many people are surrounding it and leaving it unattended will cause it to start rolling back towards the beginning again. The other team of course, tries to stop the payload from reaching it's goal.

The map wasn't the only thing going however. We were also privy to the new item system that will be instituted with the next update. This also ties in with the thirty six new achievements for the Medic class. By gathering some or all of the new achievements, you can gain three new unique items. One third of the achievements will net you The Blutauger, a new syringe gun. This weapon does not give critical damage, but instead sucks health from the enemy on impact. Earn two thirds of the achievements and you will get The Critzcrieg, a new medigun that will rapid fire critical rockets. Getting all the achievements will see you receiving The Ubersaw which takes melee combat damage and converts it into Ubercharge. Four direct hits with it will charge up whatever Medigun your Medic has currently equipped.

Team Fortress fans are going to have a field day with this new map and if you want to get all those new weapons (and I know you do) take a gander at all 36 achievements after the jump!

First Do No Harm: Play a full round without killing any enemies and score the highest on a team of six or more players

Quadruple Bypass: Heal a teammate who is taking fire form four enemies at once

Group Health: Work with two other medics to deploy three simultaneous Ubercharges

Surgical Prep: Have an Ubercharge ready before the set up phase ends

Trauma Queen: Deploy three Ubercharges in less than five minutes and assist in five kills during that time

Double Blind Trial: deploy an Ubercharge within eight seconds of a nearby enemy medic deploying his

Play Doctor: In a team with no Medics, be first to switch to Medic after a teammate calls medic and heal 500 health

Triage: Deploy an Ubercharge on a teammate less than a second before they are hit by a critical explosive

Preventative Medicine: Block the enemy from capturing a control point with an Ubercharged teammate

Consultation: Assist a fellow Medic in killing five enemies in a single life

Does It Hurt When I Do This?: Kill fifty Scouts with your syringe gun

Peer Review: Kill fifty Medics with your bone saw

Big Pharma: Assist a heavy in killing thirty enemies where neither of you die

You'll Feel a Little Prick: Assist in killing four enemies with a single Ubercharge on a Scout

Autoclave: Assist in burning eight enemies with a single Ubercharge on a Pyro

Blast Assist: Assist in exploding five enemies with a single Ubercharge on a Soldier

Blunt Trauma: Assist in punching out for enemies with a single Ubercharge on a Heavy

Medical Breakthrough: Assist in destroying eight enemy Engineer buildings with a single Ubercharge on a Demoman

Midwife Crisis: Heal an Engineer as he repairs his sentry gun while it's under enemy fire

Ubi Concordia, Ibi Victoria: Assist in killing five enemies on an enemy control point in a single life

Grand Rounds: Heal two hundred teammates after they have called for Medic

Infernal Medicine: Extinguish one hundred burning teammates

Doctor Assisted Homicide: Assist in killing twenty nemeses

Placebo Effect: Kill five enemies in a single life, while having your Ubercharge ready but undeployed

Sawbones: Hit enemies with your bone saw ten times in a row without dieing or missing

Intern: Accumulate seven thousand heal points in a single life

Specialist: Accumulate ten thousand heal points in a single life

Chief of Staff: Accumulate ten million total health points

Hypocritical Oath: Kill an enemy spy that you have been healing

Medical Intervention: Save a falling teammate from dying on impact

Second Opinion: Ubercharge two teammates at once

Autopsy Report: Provide an enemy with a freeze cam shot of you taunting above their ragdoll

FYI I am a Medic: use a bone saw to kill five enemy spies who have been calling for Medic

Family Practice: Ubercharge ten of your steam community friends

House Call: Join a game that one of your friends is in and then deploy an Ubercharge on him

Bedside Manner: be healing a teammate as he achieves an achievement of his own

You can get complete instructions on how to load up this special map her on the GameInvasion website.

There's A Fawlty Towers Counter-Strike Map [Cathode Tan]

Not Nintendo licensed software, but DIY and amazing nonetheless. It's a map of the Tokyo Subway system, and the program looks incredibly easy to use. Just look how it scrolls! Brian Ashcraft

SD Card Goodness [Electrosphere]

I hate mall crowds. Wandering about my local consumer labyrinth, I find myself eternally stuck behind some pimp-strutting teens, or a long line of girls with their arms linked in an unbreakable chain, even as some hirsute cromagnon besides me loudly wheezes and smashes his feet down on the back of my Achilles' Heel, impatient at my slow progress. The effluviate mundanity of a reprehensible, stinking humanity surrounds me. "Hey baby, how's about's the digits?" a sunken chested moron says to the right of me, talking to a fat girl in a baby t-shirt languishing seductively against a trash-can, slurping at a smoothe. I hate these people so much, I just want to grab each and every one of them by the sides of their heads and continue to exert pressure until their eyes squirt onto my face like the whites of a couple of soft-boiled eggs.

Dead Rising allows me to live out this fantasy in real-time. After all, as Romero taught us, the fetid throb of humanity is a perfect analogue for the soulless reanimated corpse, except you can kill them with zero moral or legal qualms. Zombies are the same as consumer zombies.

So what's this post about? Christ if I know. I went off on a tangent there. Actually, now that I think about it, it's about this interactive map for Dead Rising's mall that I found. It's pretty swank... an expert simulacrum of your local mall's "You Are Here" overhead, with each shop alphanumerically labeled and a hovering word balloon describing what you can find there. Extremely useful. Florian Eckhardt

Interactive Dead Rising Map [Cybermike]

While I love this idea because it lets you really decide if you think the maps are worth the money. What I don't like is that map pack one is just a collection of maps from SOCOM II. That's right, Sony's charging for old maps. I don't mind finding a couple of "classics" mixed in with original stuff, but don't make the whole thing rehashed maps.

The pack includes After Hours, Liberation and Last Bastion. Brian Crecente

SOCOM 3 News Flash [SOCOMBLOG]

Achieve360Points.com crawled through the Xbox 360's labryntine Marketplace to dig out everything on the system you can download. Turns out there are 933 downloads available on Xbox Live Marketplace and that it would cost you 71,790 Microsoft Points or $897.38 to get them all.

The cool part about the list is that you can click on any of the items for a full description. So, for instance, clicking on the Marketplace Content for Optional iPod Support gets you this description:

1. Optional iPod Support (176.00 KB, Free) Lets you play unprotected music (AAC format) from your iPod on your console. This update is distributed by Nellymoser, Inc.

I recommend anyone with a 360 to check out the full list. There are bound to be some surprises buried in there for everyone. —Brian Crecente

Xbox Live Marketplace Content [Achieve360Points]

They are conquering the World and making games! This neat map, called *are you ready?* gamedevmap, shows where game companies are located around the globe. Click on the little red dots to pull up a list of companies and their webpages. It's a fairly complete list, though somebody might want to add Capcom and SNK. They're kinda famous.

Map Here [gamedevmap] Thanks, DannyJ!

Alexis over at The PSP Nation emailed to remind us of their site which helps Playstation Portable owners find people to game with. Coincidentally, The PSP Nation just kicked off their Frappr site. So now you can check out a map of where other PSP owners live. Sadly, none of them are in Colorado. Not one single gamer. Dammit, if it's the last thing I do, I will make Colorado a gaming hub.

The PSP Nation [Official Site]