I ran across a few stories in the video game world today that I thought bore mentioning. None of them seemed worthy of an entire article though so I’ll just list a few items of importance instead.

1. If you’ve been looking forward to Bodycount from Codemasters, be patient. Already delayed to 2011, it’s now been delayed until late 2011. The game looked good, but these delays don’t bode well.

2. Following the corporate rebranding plans of companies like Energy Solutions (Envirocare) and XFinity (Comcast), Artificial Mind & Movement is changing to Behaviour. Or actually changing back to it. That was their original name in the 1990s. Why the comparison to two companies that changed their identities after bad press and/or reputation? That’s because this is the company that made Wet and Naughty Bear, two of the worst games that actually looked good enough to buy that have come out in recent years.

3. In other delay news, Metal Gear Solid: Rising, the story of what happened to Raiden between his starring role in MGS2 and his reappearance in MGS4, likely won’t be out until 2012. This isn’t technically a delay as it hadn’t had a release date announced. But it was predicted, in most circles, for a mid-2011 release.

4. If you haven’t heard of Mass Effect, you don’t follow gaming news. If you haven’t played it, or it’s blockbuster sequel, you must be on PS3 (like me). It was announced a while back that Mass Effect 2 would be coming to Sony’s console, but it raised the question of how do you bring the new players up to speed. ME2 had a feature allowing it to read your original save file to load up the decisions you made into your character and universe. Since the first one was published by Microsoft it’s certainly not coming to Playstation. So how are they fixing it? Rumors are that Dark Horse will be making an interactive digital comic, in the Choose Your Own Adventure vein, that will get new players up to speed and still give them the chance to make all the critical decisions for Shepard. The choices you make in the comic will be included in your play of ME2, just like the game save on 360 or PC.

5. I have to include New Vegas news just to make up for the hate it got on the latest BSR! vidcast. Turns out Zombietron and Arse-bot are the only people in the world that don’t like it. Since release, Fallout: New Vegas has sold over five million copies worldwide (including $300million in digital sales) and the strategy guide has become an Amazon best seller. At 60 hours in, and not even touching a single end-game mission yet, I’ve more than gotten my money’s worth. Now if I could just get my companions to stop running full bore into a pack of Deathclaws….