New game enemy takes a solid day to defeat

If it's good enough for Cartman, it's good enough for Square-Enix.

The developers of the online role-playing game Final Fantasy XI seemingly borrowed a page from the Emmy-winning South Park episode "Make Love, Not Warcraft" by updating the game with one of the longest - and most physically grueling - video game fights ever. Introduced in the game's latest downloadable update, the boss monster "Pandemonium Warden" remained perfectly fit after a group of high-level adventurers wailed away at it nonstop for over 18 hours straight.

FINAL FANTASY XI SCREENS

Though the seemingly unbeatable boss will not prevent people from 'completing' the game -- persistent online games typically do not "end" like most single-player games -- it has sparked debate over what exactly the game's developers, Square-Enix, expect out of their devoted fan base. Message boards have lit up with disgruntled players calling out the company for failing to respect its very own in-game warning telling players they have "no desire to see your real life suffer as a consequence [of playing]. Don't forget your friends, your family, your school or your work."

Easy for them to say. While the beast continually healed, the gamers weren't so lucky.

"People were passing out and getting physically ill," leaders of the player guild said in a forum post. "We decided to end it before we risked turning into a horrible news story about how video games ruin people's lives."

New PSP headlines Sony's Leipzig offerings

Facing an onslaught from the Xbox 360 and Wii, and stiff portable competition from the Nintendo DS and Iphone, Sony fired off a barrage of surprise announcements at this week's Leipzig Games Convention in Germany. Top of the list was a redesign of its PSP portable platform, but a new PlayStation 3 model and a keyboard controller are also in the works.

The PSP-3000, which is the second redesign since the PSP launched in 2005, sports a new integrated microphone, while a new PS button replaces the old Home key, matching the branding of its bigger brother the PlayStation 3. The microphone will be used for the machine's Skype voice-over-IP telephony application, and should allow for voice chat in online multiplayer games.

SONY HARDWARE GALLERY

Leipzig also brought news of yet another entry in Sony's long, long list of PlayStation 3 hardware configurations: it'll hit US stores in November, sporting with a gargantuan 160 GB hard drive, by far the largest in the range so far. It'll retail for $499.99, bundled with a copy of the excellent Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, a voucher to download PAIN from the PlayStation Network, and the ubiquitous DualShock 3 rumble-enabled controller. No official word yet on whether this new top-of-the-line configuration will be backwards-compatible with earlier PlayStation models, but if the scuttlebutt is to be believed, probably not.

Lastly, if you're fed up with struggling with the PlayStation 3's clumsy on-screen keyboard, there's light at the end of the tunnel. Sony also unveiled a keyboard attachment for the regular DualShock controller, which will give text-happy gamers a full QWERTY-style selection of keys with which to enter passwords, browse the web, and send rude messages to defeated opponents. It also supports a touchpad mode for mouse-like functionality.