Reviving one of the features that Stephen used to do, since people have been asking for it. Every Friday I'll be pulling out our top stories of the week, giving you a one-stop-shop for what you may have missed in Multiplayer. This week we have the battle between EA and the UFC, some interesting "Battlefield 1943" numbers and a nod to the on-going Tour de France.

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The race to 43 million kills has ended, with Xbox 360 players reaching the milestone in less than a week. Impressive! The PS3 fan base is still lagging a bit, with around 23 million kills, but they should hit the big number just in time for the weekend.

So what does this mean for you? Well, I'm not too sure. In THEORY you should see a new selection on the main menu screen of "Battlefield 1943" which says, "Air Superiority." Selecting that will drop you into Coral Sea, which is basically a giant air-to-air map where players in fighter planes try to clear portions of the map of enemy fighters.

Worth noting that Coral Sea won't be part of the normal map rotation, as they don't want people to be forced into playing an air-only map. Also worth noting that I'm not 100% sure it's going to work, as "Battlefield 1943" has seen its fair share of problems since launch. Fingers crossed!

Today's LTP is near and dear to my heart, 'cause I very nearly shattered by 360 controller this weekend when "Battlefield 1943" crapped out on me for the 7th time. And yet I kept playing. Oh, the irony. Anyway, here are some of your most recent controller-breaking moments:

TheRotArm @multiplayers Playing Dash of Destruction. Easy 200 gamerpoints my arse.

SeanBeanland @multiplayers The weird floaty physics in LIttleBigPlanet made me throw my controller after dying in one story level over and over.

jrafacz @multiplayers Last week...COD4 MP match against co-workers...my lop-sided keyboard slipped...couldn't dodge an opponent...got killed...argh

tylerstyle @multiplayers Easy. Shadow of the Colossus. I held onto a Giant so fierce, that my R1 Button broke. I just didn't want to let go.

cbranger @multiplayers when playing call of duty: world at war I broke three sixaxis contollers. One "unfixable" two sold to Gamecrazy... Hah

Getting solid numbers on how many people are playing a given downloadable game based on platform can be tricky. Sure, you can look at the number of people on the leaderboards, but that doesn't count the innumerable people that play offline.

Thankfully EA's novel promotion for "Battlefield 1943," which will unlock the Coral Sea map on a given platform once that platform hits 43 million global kills in the game, is giving us some interesting new insight.

Right now the global kill count sits at 29.5 million kills on the 360 and 16.1 million kills on the PS3, meaning there are nearly double the number of 360 players as there are PS3 players. That's making the assumption that 360 players aren't just a lot better at the game.

At this rate we could very easily see the new map unlocking on the 360 in the next couple days, whereas the PS3 shouldn't be much farther behind. Hopefully by then all of the server woes (which persisted through the weekend) will be worked out.

There aren't too many ways to describe the launch of "Battlefield 1943" other than clusterf*ck, so we'll just go with that. I played right when the game launched with little-to-no problems, but once more and more people starting signing on the servers quickly hit capacity and everyone was just left helplessly hitting "Join Game" with little to no effect. Last night at around 11PM EST things seemed to get more manageable, I was able to get into a game with friends on my first try, but that first day was a mess.

Despite all the issues, a lot of people still played that first day. According to EA's ongoing forum post detailing the tech efforts to get the game fixed, 29.45 years (or 258,153.19 hours) of gameplay were experienced. Hopefully that doesn't count the time you spent sitting the menu.

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UPDATE: Apparently 90,000 MS Points is what Silver Xbox Live members see. Since it's an online-only game, I guess it's a clever way to prevent folks from buying it if they can't actually play it.

Original Story: Since launch, apparently the demand for "Battlefield 1943" is much greater than anyone anticipated. Personally I didn't have any problems playing it, but a lot of folks are in the other camp. EA is frantically trying to get more servers for regions around the world, but in the meantime it looks like they've gone to other methods to bring their player numbers down...

(image via VIP0R's TwitPic)

"Battlefield 1943" is a bit of an experiment in the world of downloadable games. It's basically a carved-down version of "Battlefield 1942" with fewer maps, classes and features. And yet it manages to capture everything that's great about the franchise, and make it much more approachable than any of the "Battlefield" games before it. It's "Battlefield" for everyone, and its online following will be enormous.

The Basics

"Battlefield 1943" is a multiplayer-only game set in the Pacific theater of World War 2. You'll join teams, either the US or the Japanese, with up to 12 people on either side. You'll also choose from 3 different classes, each with their own specialties. From here the game plays out as a first person shooter, with the important addition of vehicles, letting you jump into any tank, plane or jeep that you come across.

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Once again another relatively slow week at retail, especially if you're not a big fan of sports games. But, like last week, a great downloadable game comes to the rescue!

Pick of the Week: "Battlefield 1943"
For 15 bucks you get 3 maps (a 4th will come later, for free) set across the Pacific theater of World War 2. If you've played a "Battlefield" game before, you'll be able to hop in pretty much instantly. If you haven't, the simplified class structure and new squad supports should help you to learn the ropes. Just don't try flying for a while, it'll only piss people off.

Runner-up: "The Bigs 2"
Generally the audiences for games like "Battlefield" and games like "The Bigs" don't mix and match too much, so if you're not into "1943" you may want to look into "The Bigs 2." It's every bit 2K's answer to "NBA Jam," albiet with baseball, and it trumps the original with better visuals, features and ridiculous home run-saving minigames.

I've already extensively played "Battlefield 1943" on test servers, but I'm still pretty pumped about it's release to the world next week. The game's dropping on XBLA on July 8th, and PSN on July 9th. Whether it's the "extraordinary value" that the press release claims is a little up in the air (just 3 maps at launch, simplified feature-set compared to recent "Battlefield" releases), it's still a lot of fun and for 15 bucks a dedicated player could very easily get a few weeks of very late nights.

It's kinda cool that the downloadable game release schedule picks up in the normally-slow summer months. Xbox still has its "Summer of Games" event planned, where they'll release a handful of anticipated XBLA games in July and August, and PSN has some gems coming out, as well. And with DLC like "Point Lookout," the lack of solid in-store games doesn't hurt quite as much as it used to.

Over the last week I've been hopping onto my test Xbox 360 to play a round or two of "Battlefield 1943." Initially I had dismissed the game as a retread of past glories for the franchise. Granted, in a lot of ways it is just "Battlefield 1942," but lots of little tweaks and touches do wonders to make it a fascinating and enjoyable experience.

Custom Squads
A feature that was added in later "Battlefield" games, but never made it in to "Battlefield 1942." Joining a squad means you don't have to listen to the chatter of your 11 other teammates. Instead you can just group with your friends and try to take flags on your own.
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