Namco has told IGN that a patch for Mr. Driller Online (which should currently just be called Mr. Driller) is coming by the end of this month. When the game released in early April the online feature was fundamentally broken, as is evidenced by the video from X3F we've placed after the break.

As for the game's less-than-HD quality presentation? Don't expect a patch for that. The fix is pretty much designed to allow the game to keep the Online portion of its name without becoming a case of consumer fraud.

[Via X3F]

EuroGamer reports that a patch released five days ago, which intended to fix the issues in the Xbox 360 version of Bully: Scholarship Edition, may have caused more problems than it resolved. Reported problems include freezes, along with audio and graphic glitches. Rockstar explained that the issue is with older consoles, but EuroGamer states its (relatively new?) office Elite locks up.

We're still waiting to hear from Rockstar about what's really going on, but the company seems to have locked itself in the teacher's lounge and refuses to come out. So, what's the word on the virtual streets? Are people still having problems with their copy of Bully on the Xbox 360?

According to their website, much of Ubisoft's technical support staff has taken this weekend off in observation of Good Friday and Easter. That's all well and good -- but perhaps, when they aren't draining Cadbury eggs or enjoying fine roasted hams, just one of them could take the time to Google their latest release, Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, and discover that a good portion of the console gaming world is ready to swear off all things Clancy.

Our tip box has exploded with complaints from owners of the PS3 version of the game -- apparently, a majority of those who try to play online either can't connect or have to suffer staggering amounts of lag. We'd expect a bandwidth epidemic such as this to be patched post-haste -- we guess Ubisoft didn't anticipate we'd actually want to play their game on the first weekend of Eastertide. What, did they think those terrorists would hunt themselves?

The much-improved Rock Band store announced to the world yesterday is now available on Xbox Live and PSN. A 30-second download and installation gives players access to the streamlined song-buying interface, which features audio previews and individual instrument difficulties for each song, as well as a much simpler way to sort and browse through the growing selection of music.

Besides the cool new store, we're also extremely gratified by the much-needed faster loading of DLC provided by the patch. After a one-time file creation upon the first post-patch load, the annoying little "loading additional content" animation was reduced from roughly ten seconds to about one second in our tests on Xbox Live. The physical "download data file" that actually speeds up the process takes up a paltry 112KB on our system, meaning there's no reason not to rock out faster!

A patch for Bully: Scholarship Edition has been released on Xbox Live in lieu of the "broad worldwide announcement" expected today. But what does it fix? We don't know for sure, and various readers have reported the technical problems are either not fixed at all or in some cases worse. We've contacted Rockstar for more information. If you've downloaded the patch yourself, feel free to give your impressions below.

[Thanks, Mark]

Remember when buying a console game meant living with whatever bugs and gameplay glitches got inadvertently shipped with the game? Well, the folks at Epic want you to forget all about those days with a patch for the PS3 version of Unreal Tournament coming down the PSN pike on March 27.

The fixes included in the free, downloadable patch include support for character mods, an easier method for downloading mods from the web browser, and basically a lot of other stuff related to mods (in addition to some other incidental tech fixes). The patch will also bring the European and U.S. editions of the game into alignment, allowing for online matches across the Atlantic. A nice feature, but we hope all that data going across the transatlantic cables doesn't cause too much lag.

Check out the full list of bug fixes after the break.

As if five great games in one little box wasn't enough bang for your gaming buck, EA has just released a mysterious 128MB patch for the PS3 release of The Orange Box. That's like a whole PSN game in patches! We say "mysterious" because, well, it seems like nobody has any idea just what's included in that patch.

If you'll recall, EA took care of porting The Orange Box to the PlayStation 3 while Valve concentrated on the PC and Xbox 360 platforms; unfortunately, the PS3 release was not only delayed but it also suffered from some (perhaps exaggerated but nevertheless serious) framerate issues. While everyone is waiting for some sort of official changelog from EA, we figured we'd ask if any of you have noticed an appreciable difference following the update. Well, have you?

[Update: Official changelog from EA posted after the break, for your edification.]

The Rock Band music store won't be the only thing added by the forthcoming patch, with several fixes to the game included as well. Harmonix states that the patch fixes "some of the common issues" it's heard about on Rockband.com.

• Fan cap revision -- Increase on number of fans possible before cap. Easy players can travel across Atlantic, Medium players have a wider range of venues and Hard players on the Xbox 360 can unlock "One Million Fans" achievement.
• Increased diversity in Band World Tour song selection.
  
• Improved phoneme recognition -- Improved detection and scoring for phoneme recognition. Examples are songs like Timmy and the Lords of the Underworld and Blitzkrieg Bop.
• Microphone latency on PS3 improved.
• Xbox 360 band logos now visible through Xbox LIVE -- Parental controls prevented band logos from being visible over Xbox LIVE.
• Faster loading of DLC -- Songs are cached for a one time wait.

The company admits that this does not fix every issue out there and states Harmonix is "listening to all of your requests, and actively want to get these features onto the Rock Band platform in the future."

Yeah, yeah, Burnout Paradise is the bees knees, the cat's pajamas, the, um, minimalist work of art. But that doesn't mean it's perfect, a fact that developer Criterion both admits and works to correct with a new patch that fixes many game-crashing and/or experience-altering bugs.

The problems fixed by the patch range from the urgent ("Some online race start points face the players in the wrong direction") to the goofy ("Surround sound fix - Centre speaker was 4dB louder") to the just plain weird ("Hammering the A (360) or X (PS3) after unlocking a car can cause the game to hang.") But only one listed bug truly made us sad: the one that caused "total time driven in player stats [to] stick at 145 hours." We can't help but feel sorry for those poor souls who spent over six whole days playing the game, only to have the game's statistics cruelly low-ball the amount of time they spent crashing virtual cars. Thankfully, because of this patch, their long national nightmare is over.

We've been hearing a lot less about Valve's cel-shaded, humor-tinged multiplayer shooter since the release of another wildly popular FPS of a more serious nature. Thankfully, Valve isn't using their lighter server load as an excuse to let Team Fortress 2 go to the dogs -- they just released a patch upon an unsuspecting populous of TF2 junkies, adding a number of new matchmaking features and tweaking a few minor gameplay quirks.

We've got a complete list of changes after the jump, but here's a few highlights: A Tournament mode has been added, complete with a team creation UI and win/loss tracker. Sorting through custom games is now easier, as server hosts can now add searchable description tags to their rooms. Most importantly, players who tire of being on the receiving end of high explosive weaponry will be pleased to hear that the maximum ammo capacities for the Soldier and Demoman classes have been sharply reduced (much to the chagrin of rocket-jumpers and Scotsmen, no doubt).

A teeny-tiny Rock Band patch will be available this week which only affects a few DLC songs. Harmonix is apparently doing some early spring cleaning as it fixes some genre tags for songs and one vocal bug. The songs can simply be redownloaded today for Xbox 360 and Thursday for PS3 to receive the new version.

Affected songs and release date:

• Can't Stand Losing You - Nov. 20
• Roxanne - Nov. 20
• Synchronicity II - Nov. 20
• Police Pack 01 - Nov. 20
• Brass in Pocket - Dec. 18
• Limelight - Jan. 1 (The one with the vocal bug)

Details on how to redownload can be found at the Rock Band forums. Once again, if you didn't download any of these titles, keep on rockin'.

Earlier today Derek French, a member of the Live Team at BioWare, gave a talk on the process of supporting the company's hit roleplaying games. He explained what exactly a Live team is, and marked some of the BioWare success stories that can be tracked back to that group; initiatives like the Premium modules were developed entirely in this little-known area of the company. He also hinted at some fascinating future plans for the team, like the potential of an interactive website not unlike the World of Warcraft 'Armory' site.

In the process of talking about the team, French offhandedly mentioned the end of an era. The upcoming patch to the original Neverwinter Nights game, 1.69, will be the last the company releases. After seven years of tweaks and corrections, official support will be ending for this venerable game title. Beta patch notes for the 1.69 patch are available on the official forums. Though this is hardly news for the vibrant community still playing this game, it's worth noting the passage of one of BioWare's landmark titles.

Read on for more on the BioWare Live team - including a lesson in why you should never post to forums angry.

The Joystiq network is host to the best place on the 'net to get all the World of Warcraft news you can handle, and then some: our own WoW Insider delivers a daily dose of the best Azerothian news you can find, in convenient blog format. Whether it's brand new info on the upcoming patch 2.4, what WoW's community managers have delivered in their precious blue words on the forums recently, or just the latest insider news from around the community itself, WoW Insider's got you covered. Here's our most popular stories of the past week, right here on Joystiq (sure, you could type "wowinsider.com" into your address bar and see what all the fuss is about, but why bother when we package this stuff so conveniently for you?). And yes, should you feel the need to post a comment that you don't care about WoW, we choose to remind you: haters to the left.

We can't tell you how many sessions of Crysis were ruined for us by the rampantly unclamped water tessellation. Of course, the primary reason for that may be that we actually... don't know what water tessellation is. It has been thoroughly clamped though!

So say the notes released alongside the 139MB Crysis 1.1 patch, now available for download. Other issues dealt with (listed after the break) include improper water droplets, motion blur, FSAA optimization, animation bugs and memory leaks. If you've been having a blast with Crytek's visually stunning first-person nanosuiter, be sure to grab the first patch for tomorrow's game today.

It's hard out there for an medieval assassin. Yeah, you always have the man breathing down your neck, tellin' you that you're not allowed to run around murdering people - but there're little hassles that come with the job that nobody tells you about. For instance, a little thing called assassin's chafe; the result of a long, warm day of parkour in a time before Gold Bond. That wrist blade brings enough problems of it's own - how can you trust that spring loaded, razor sharp steel when giving a friendly handshake, or using a urinal?

Well, being a virtual hitman is going to get a lot easier very soon -- a patch was recently announced for the PS3 version of Assassin's Creed which will improve the stability of the game, and fix a few freezing issues which plague the title. We're sure Altair would also appreciate it if they would fix that duplicity bug and the far more disturbing "humping guard" glitch. Nothing can ruin your day quite like a sex-crazed sentinel.