Sunday is usually a day for football, chores, or church, but Ripten wants to make it easier to fit in your gaming news as well, in case you were busy during the week. Here is our first “Week in Review” for the week of November 11, 2007.

We recently reviewed Fury for the PC, which scored a dismal 4 out of 10. Well, several days later we noticed that one of the Auran developers resigned and cited our review in his resignation letter.

Hellgate: London for the PC came out this week, and our own Josh Pankratz seemed to enjoyed it as he gave it a 9 out of 10 in his review. A few days later we got word via Kotaku that players in Asia were going to have their characters completely wiped due to weary servers. Those players will be compensated with a free month of play, but there will definitely be some unhappy Hellgate gamers in Asia regardless.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was released on Monday, and in addition to obtaining a comment from Infinity Ward's Associate Producer regarding the PS3 version of the game, our managing editor gave it a 9.8 in his review. We also announced the winner of our "Rank Up - Win Big" COD4: Modern Warfare contest earlier today.

Street dates aren’t usually broken, and when they are, it is usually by accident and immediately rectified. Best Buy, for example, recently broke the street date for Super Mario Galaxy, but unfortunately only one of the two customers who noticed the game on the shelf was able to purchase it before the store realized their mistake, leaving the other customer empty-handed. We contacted several Best Buy managers to find out about the rumored break, and back that they had received no official statement allowing their store to break the release date of the game. In addition, we were told that any store breaking the game would be fined.

Other treasure hunters looking for Mass Effect on the Xbox 360 at their local K-Marts were similarly disappointed. It’s hard to find K-Marts in the U.S. since they downsized several years ago, and readers on Kotaku were reporting a no-go at their locations.

In other early release news, Amazon is listing Metal Gear Solid 4 for Europe a month earlier than the U.S. release. Expect many players to import their copy if this happens, but this is not confirmed and Amazon placeholder dates are often nothing more than placeholders.

Sony released firmware version 2.0 for the PS3 this week, adding new features like a scrolling Playstation news ticker and the ability to customize your XMB.

Activision seems to be giving gamers a lot of love this week with COD4, and now XBL and PSN users can download Guitar Hero 3 song packs by the Foo Fighters and Velvet Revolver. The competition this year between GH3 and Rock Band may mean tons of extra downloadable content for musically inclined gamers. This will surely extend the life of your latest $60 purchase.

Xbox 360 outsold the PS3 in Japan, with a little help from Ace Combat 6. Sony sales continue to be the lowest of the big three even after the release of the 40 GB version several weeks ago. What’s ironic is that Sony will release a new PS2 model in Japan later this month after noting that the 40 GB PS3 won’t be backwards compatible.

Electronic Arts closed its Chicago office this week and laid off 350 employees. EA’s Chicago office is responsible for the Fight Night and Def Jam games. Last quarter EA lost $195 million and things don’t seem to getting any better for one of the world’s biggest third-party publishers.

That’s it for the Week in Review this week, but look forward to our upcoming Deals of the Week, Preparation for Black Friday, and Holiday Season Buyer’s Guide soon!

Tags: Week-in-review

• Gaming Deals of the Week: Best Buy offers LittleBigPlanet, Wall-E free with PS3
• Gamespot’s Gerstmann Gets The Axe Over Kane & Lynch Review
• Gaming Deals: Circuit City Offering Xbox 360 20 GB HD/Controller Combo for Dirt Cheap
• More Signs Uncharted Releases Early, Plus First Magazine Review
• Ubisoft Launches $10 Milion Ad Campaign with Help From South Park, Family Guy, and the NFL
• Gaming Deals: Xbox LIVE’s Deal of the Week
• Economic Slowdown? Gaming Industry Suffers Not
• Left 4 Dead Demo Available Next Week for Pre-Order Customers

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