The major game releases of the holiday period will officially come to a close with the releases of Mass Effect 3 in a few weeks (I think), and it’s clear that we are at war. At war with aliens, not illegal aliens (up yours Hudson!) but google eyed, saucer flying, anal probing aliens.

Almost every major game release for the last few months has featured humankind locked in a species wide battle for survival against implacable alien forces. You know what that means? It means we are slowly and deliberately being indoctrinated by the government into the idea that we will soon be at war with aliens.

Recently a number of gameblogs, followed by the associated press with the usual three day lag, reported that workers at a Foxconn plant in China had stood on the roof and threatened to jump off if they didn’t get a compensation payment they were promised. Itsounds a little extreme but the circumstances were a bit extreme as well.

There are two stories, first that the employees asked for a raise and were told to quit and receive compensation or continue to work with no raise, or second that the manufacturing line for Xbox 360’s was being relocated to another plant and given a similar,relocate for no wage change or resign and accept compensations. In either case many staff opted to resign. Then Foxconn reneged on the deal and refused to pay severance packages to the staff that resigned. As a result somewhere between 100 to 200 staff stood on the roof of the Foxconn plant in Wuhan and threatened to jump to draw attention to their poor working conditions.

Sometimes when you meet someone new, you instantly fall in love. They are charismatic, hilarious, super intelligent and reliable. It doesn't matter that they are a man and you are a man because of the word bromance. It's no longer 'gay' to say 'I love you, man'. But I bet Aaron Mitchell gets that lot.

From what I know about him - and considering I have met him twice and he lives on the other side of the country, that ain't much - he is a hard-working family man and hardcore geek. The good kind of geek. Not the ironic kind of geek and not the deviated septum kind of geek. The normal, internet-using, comic-book reading, cinema-loving, 21st century male human being. I also know he is a brilliant writer, and if I didn't know what the word 'prolific' meant before Aaron Mitchell started writing for That Aussie Game Site, I sure would now.

As indicated by the chart above, and certainly not to detract from our entire team of brilliant, past and present writers, the man is a writing machine with the uncanny ability to tell me whether I should or shouldn't play a game without boring me into a coma. He puts together weekly recaps of the gaming world full of information that I could get anywhere and EVERYwhere online. I am well informed when it comes to videogames, but I still read Aaron's articles. I'm sure a lot of you still read Aaron's articles.

So, it is with great pleasure that I announce stage one of a That Aussie Game Site re-brand - our revised logo in the top left-hand corner. One that centres around Aaron Mitchell. One that shines a spotlight on an electronic entertainment writer who deserves it.

From all of us at That Aussie Game Site and on behalf of our reader base we say, Thank you Aaron Mitchell...now say, "Have you tried turning it off and on again?"

So, my Fiance is turning 31 this year and while we try to establish birthday 'budgets' every year, I can never stick to them. I feel money spent greatly outweighs effort put in. Further to that, she's turning 31, which is way worse than turning 30...it's 30 plus 1 year. Her birthday is March 8. Mass Effect 3 drops March 8.

I will either be stone broke or dealing with a very emotional birthday girl. Oh, who am I kidding? I will be both. What I won't be doing, is playing Mass Effect 3.

For all you lucky people out there who have nothing better to do than to play my most anticipated game for 2012, below is the latest trailer for Mass Effect. It's the extended cut Take Earth Back trailer that you may have seen earlier in the week.

I haven't watched it yet. I just can't do it to myself.

It’s Tuesday again and my year has settled into a familiar pattern. My obsession with planned regularity means I must be getting old; I’ll probably start timing how long it takes me to poop soon. Old people do that right?

Anyway, playing Darkness 2 this week, the above image is one of the many hugely gruesome execution moves that are as violent as they are hilarious.

In non game related news my 10 year old daughter finally conquered her fear of bicycles and let me teach her how to ride a bike. After an hour she was riding up and down the street on her own. Sorry, you probably don’t care about that but I’m excited, I’m telling everyone, even the grumpy gas station guy I thought was a woman until he/she grew a beard.

Anyway, moving on, game news. Go!

Off The Record may go down as one of the weirdest game expansions of all time, and not just because of the normally high weirdness factor present in Dead Rising games. Initially I thought Off the Record was the PS3 version of the previously Xbox exclusive Case West expansion that tacked on a Frank West story to the end of the story in Dead Rising 2. Not so.

Off the Record is a complete reimagining of the entire Dead Rising 2 campaign with Frank cast as the hero and elements of the plot altered to suit this new character. It’s an altered universe version of Dead Rising 2, where Frank is the hero of the story and previous hero, Chuck Greene, is relegated to dangerous psycho status. As I said, weird.

Twas my birthday this past Saturday, I turned 33. That’s the age when young people think you’re really old and old thing think you’re still a whinging youngster. It’s also about the age when you start to think that birthdays are kind of stupid but you still get really pissed if no one calls and you don’t get a cake (they did and I did). Also it's Valentines Day! So if you're home all alone, just remember that your games love you, now and forever. Why not go and play some. It's all commercial rubbish anyway right? Now I need to type fast, I have a romantic dinner with my wife to get to.

Some exciting and interesting stuff also happened in game world. So lets get to it.