Battlefield 3 will not be sold through Steam...

The publisher blames new "restrictive terms of service which limit how developers interact with customers to deliver patches and other downloadable content" - restrictions which it says no other digital platform has. 

It's not over yet though. EA adds: "We hope to work out an agreement where Steam can carry Battlefield 3."

This is the latest in the turbulence between EA and Steam, which kicked off when Crysis unexpectedly disappeared from Steam for similar reasons noted above. EA went on to acknowledge 'conflict' between it and Valve's Steam service because of these new Terms of Service.

Here's the full Battlefield 3 statement: 

EA offers games, including Battlefield 3, to all major digital download sites. In doing so, our goal is to not only reach the widest possible global audience with our games, but also to provide ongoing customer support, patches and great new content. We are intent on providing Battlefield 3 players with the best possible experience no matter where they purchase or play the game, and are happy to partner with any download service that does not restrict our ability to connect directly with consumers. 

Gamers can pre-order Battlefield 3 at Origin.com as well as over 100 digital retailers worldwide. EA offers games to all major download services. Unfortunately, Steam has adopted a set of restrictive terms of service which limit how developers interact with customers to deliver patches and other downloadable content. No other download service has adopted these practices. 

Do you wish to play The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim ?
All sorts of crazy things can happen at QuakeCon, but going into labor probably isn't especially high on most attendees' to-do lists. Nevertheless, that's exactly what happened to one couple attending the show after getting engaged at the event last year.

During a presentation on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim earlier today, a pregnant woman went into labor, Game Informer reports. Rather than leaving immediately, she and her fiancé stuck around until it was over before heading to the hospital. It wasn't entirely because they had to see the whole thing, though that probably didn't hurt.

"During the demo Todd Howard showed off the Frost Dragon. This is what started the whole thing, seeing this must have filled Stevi with so much excitement that it sent her into labor," said the new father, Chaz, in a message sent later to Game Informer. He explained that they decided to wait in case she wasn't actually in labor, meaning they "stayed for the rest of the demo because she is a trooper and LOVES Skyrim."

The couple had intended to get married during this year's QuakeCon following last year's engagement. Obviously they'll have to put those plans on hold. Hopefully everything went smoothly with the delivery of their baby girl, who is to be named Atari Lynn.

Skyrim must be best for you ...

       Team Fortress 2  is a standalone, free-to-play game these days. The series originated almost 

15 years ago as a mod for the original Quake, which itself just celebrated its 15-year 

anniversary in June. With QuakeCon kicking off today, Steam is featuring a different sale 

each day from now through August 7 on various id and Bethesda content.

       To coincide with the sale, Team Fortress 2 is getting a number of new items, the most 

noteworthy of which is a recreation of the original Quake rocket launcher. It's usable by 

the Soldier and includes the old sound effects, just as you remember them. You can get it by 

picking up Quake IV. That might be a lot to spend to get a TF2 item ，so you could instead 

opt for today's deal on the Doom and Quake complete pack。

       Other new TF2 items you can now get include The Wingstick (by pre-ordering Rage), the 

Tamrielic Relic helmet (pre-order Skyrim), a Brink mask (own Brink), and a replica Pip-Boy 

for the Engineer (own Fallout: New Vegas). All of these items are only available for the 

length of QuakeCon, so you'll want to act quickly if you're desperate to have them.

       You can get many of the new items by buying the QuakeCon Pack 2011 and another game. It 

includes 34 items in all including Brink; Commander Keen; all of the Doom and Quake games; 

Morrowind and Oblivion's Game of the Year editions; New Vegas and its DLC, and more.

Diablo III Always-On Reaction "Surprised" Blizzard...

There has been an outcry of frustration since it was revealed earlier this week that Diablo III  requires an active Internet connection in order to play. The news came on the heels of Ubisoft announcing the same thing for Driver: San Francisco, bringing back a DRM policy it had used with past PC games like Assassin's Creed II and Splinter Cell: Conviction.

There is at least one key difference between the two, at least from Blizzard's point of view: Diablo isn't doing it to keep pirates away. And it doesn't see this as a punishment to those who want to play solo.

Blizzard's online technologies VP Robert Bridenbecker admitted to MTV Multiplayer that he was "actually kind of surprised in terms of there even being a question in today's age around online play and the requirement around that." As he sees it, that's the direction the industry is going, and there are many benefits that come along with it.

Those don't matter to many people, though. Crazy as it might be to me, as someone who played Diablo II online for hundreds of hours and maybe a single hour offline, there is a demographic of people who want to play alone, offline. Blizzard counters by saying you can still play alone; you just need to be online. That's unacceptable for some people, either because their Internet connection isn't stable or because they'd like to be able to play while on the go with their laptop, whether it be on a Wi-Fi-less airplane or elsewhere.

"Let's say we want to create an offline capacity," Bridenbecker said. "You're introducing a separate user flow, a separate path that players are going to go down. And, at the end of the day, how many people are going to want to do that?"

It then becomes a matter of having to find a way to deal with those offline players when they suddenly want to go online. Do they then have to leave everything behind? "We said we don't want to look at that [in Diablo III]. Let's just keep everything clean," he explained.

"Internally I don't think [DRM] ever actually came up when we talked about how we want connections to operate," said Bridenbecker. "Things that came up were always around the feature-set, the sanctity of the actual game systems like your characters. You're guaranteeing that there are no hacks, no dupes. All of these things were points of discussion, but the whole copy protection, piracy thing, that's not really entering into why we want to do it."

Aggravating as Blizzard's decision might be, will it really prevent you from playing Diablo III? We all know the image of the Steam group pledging to boycott Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 that was filled with almost nothing but people playing MW2. Some believe we're going to end up in a similar situation with Diablo III; after all, this wouldn't be the first aspect of the game fans have objected to and subsequently gotten over. 

One of the reasons I always enjoyed the Dungeon Siege series is because long, drawn-out plot explanations aren't necessary when beating the crap out of people and collecting loot. That, or I have distorted and fond memories of Dungeon Siege 2: walking up to my character's destroyed farm, and immediately being told to pick up a weapon and kill anything that attacks me. Beat up a bunch of people? 

Dungeon Siege 3 borrows the conversation-driven storytelling approach from Mass Effect, without having as much of an influence on what occurs. Sure, there are moments where you can choose what sort of response is merited, or what action to take on, say, a prisoner of war, but these options are limited. To be frank, the fruition of your choices aren't made apparent until the very end of the game -- and with lifeless storyboard cut-scenes no less. 

Luckily, the pace eventually picks up with the offering of side-quests and interesting boss battles that actually hook me.  It's not until my encounter with a Lescanzi witch that I start to warm up to taking dialogue choices seriously. Another interesting layer is how Dungeon Siege 3 gives players a chance to perform "deeds." Based on the decisions made in discussions with other characters, the game then awards you with additional stamina, agility, and so forth. In the case of the witch, I give her ownership of a manor -- which results in a boost to my will stat.

Strangely though, my most boring experience of the campaign happens during online co-op. I start a new campaign with a friend, and Dungeon Siege 3 surprisingly doesn't accommodate appropriately for that. The tutorial screens never appear unless you are playing alone. I initially had no idea how large of an oversight this is until I have my co-op partner drop out of my game. It's a shame too, because I believe the first few hours I loathed would have been spared of irritation if this wasn't the case. 

 

Obsidian's attempt at adding story elements fails to impress this time -- which stands out even more due to how plenty of other RPGs (especially Obsidian's) pull off a much better narrative. At most, the combat remains as fun as ever, and I enjoy playing the campaign as Katarina -- seeing how quickly she drained health bars with her guns becomes a satisfying experience. 

Dungeon Siege 3 is waiting for us to enjoy...

In an attempt to lure in new players, Blizzard ditched the old trial system in June and began allowing anyone to play World of Warcraft up to level 20 for free. It's now doing essentially the same thing with StarCraft II, dropping the old Wings of Liberty demo in favor of StarCraft II: Starter Edition.

StarCraft doesn't have a level system like WoW to cap free players at, so instead freebie StarCraft II players will be able to play through the game's first four missions (choosing either Tychus or Dr. Hansen's first mission after the initial three), the first two Challenges, and a selection of multiplayer content.

Four multiplayer maps -- Xel'Naga Caverns, Shattered Temple, Discord IV, and High Orbit -- are currently playable, though they may be rotated out in favor of other maps as time goes on. The Starter Edition allows for only the Terrans to be played in custom games, and multiplayer matchmaking is inaccessible. It is, however, possible to play with those who own the full game, making this a really ideal way to bring in a new player who doesn't yet own StarCraft II -- there's no need for someone who already owns the game to download a separate demo just to play with a friend they're trying to convince to buy it

The Starter Edition is available to anyone with a Battle.net account, which can be created for free, and an active Internet connection. There aren't any time restrictions, unlike in the past, and really, this seems to be a smart move to start bringing in new players to a game that was first released last July. Any Achievements and progress made can be transferred to the full game, should you purchase it; there's really no downside to giving StarCraft a try this way.

During an Activision Blizzard conference call today, it was indicated that the new free access to WoW had been successful, which is presumably what prompted Starter Edition's release. It'll be interesting to see if Blizzard decides to do something similar with Diablo III, as will its timing -- would it be available at launch or six to 12 months down the line? 

StarCraft || is waiting for you to play...

Diablo 3 will allow players to make real-world currency sales for in-game items.

Activision's somewhat controversial auction house feature in Diablo 3 that'll allow players to make real-world currency sales for in-game items could eventually make its way to StarCraft 2.

Speaking during an investors conference call today, Activision said that some of the back-end tech being developed for the Diablo 3 auction house can be leveraged for its globally popular PC RTS game, StarCraft 2.

Rather than item trading as players will be doing in Diablo, Activision suggested that players would be able to create put their own custom-made maps up for sale to other players. 

Blizzard executive VP Rob Pardo said after the announcement earlier this week that Diablo 3's auction house will help prevent players from inevitably resorting to the illegitimate black market to buy items by providing a safe and secure system for such trades to take place within the game itself.

Diablo 3 is waiting for you to play...

Black Ops 'Rezurrection' DLC detailed, dated, screenshots

Microsoft first off the block with the all-zombies update - first screenshots

Following Activision's announcement earlier today, Infinity Ward has released a shed load of details on the 'Rezurrection' map pack coming to Call of Duty: Black Ops this month.

Unlike the previous CoD DLC releases, Rezurrection will be an entirely Zombies affair, adding five new Zombies maps to the undead shooting portion of the game. 

"Four are remastered and upgraded versions of the World at War Zombies maps that started it all - Nacht der Untoten, Verruckt, Shi No Numa and Der Riese," revealed IW. "If you were introduced to Zombies gameplay with Black Ops, these are the historical maps that will fill in some of the backstory for you - and in addition to updated weapons and polish, they each still have their own surprises to offer."

A fifth map takes the zombie action to the 'Moon', where "the rules of engagement will apparently be changing", according to IW, who says further details on that are a "surprise".

There's more: "Rezurrection will include a special Moon Xbox 360 Dashboard theme and the official Zombies soundtrack, featuring three new tracks." Sweet.

The all-important release date: It'll arrive first on Xbox Live Marketplace (of course) on August 23 for 1200 MS Points. No date has been announced for the other platforms. 

IW has also confirmed that 'Rezurrection' will be free to Black Ops Hardened and Prestige owners, "as a thank-you to the hardcore fans for their support from the start". IW explains: "You'll be able to go into your Download History and re-download the classic pack you already own, and the fresh download will include the new Moon map. And you'll also get the soundtrack and theme, too."

Call of Duty Black Ops is really good ...

Dirt 3  got its second DLC track this week. Whereas the previous pack, the Monte Carlo Track Pack, was about expanding Rally offerings, the X Games Asia Track Pack is about RallyCross. The addition clocks in at 400 Microsoft Points or $5 and adds two tracks with four course variations set in Shibuya, Tokyo. 

Each track variation gets placement in the Dirt Tour, so four new events pop up throughout the seasons, all under the RallyCross discipline. The X Games Asia Track Pack also brings three additional Achievements/Trophies for winning races, taking on a time trial, and playing the track online. 

For hardcore Dirt 3 fans, I'd recommend giving this RallyCross track a look. It's drift-heavy and not much to digest, but it's both a classic and a fun track. For anyone worried about the price, there isn't a lot of content to quench your racing needs. It's half the price of the Monte Carlo DLC – but contains roughly half the content. 

A familiar starting line.
Each track variation gets placement in the Dirt Tour, so four new events pop up throughout the seasons, all under the RallyCross discipline. The X Games Asia Track Pack also brings three additional Achievements/Trophies for winning races, taking on a time trial, and playing the track online. 

For hardcore Dirt 3 fans, I'd recommend giving this RallyCross track a look. It's drift-heavy and not much to digest, but it's both a classic and a fun track. For anyone worried about the price, there isn't a lot of content to quench your racing needs. It's half the price of the Monte Carlo DLC – but contains roughly half the content. 
Each track variation gets placement in the Dirt Tour, so four new events pop up throughout the seasons, all under the RallyCross discipline. The X Games Asia Track Pack also brings three additional Achievements/Trophies for winning races, taking on a time trial, and playing the track online. 
For hardcore Dirt 3 fans, I'd recommend giving this RallyCross track a look. It's drift-heavy and not much to digest, but it's both a classic and a fun track. For anyone worried about the price, there isn't a lot of content to quench your racing needs. It's half the price of the Monte Carlo DLC – but contains roughly half the content. 
For hardcore Dirt 3 fans, I'd recommend giving this RallyCross track a look. It's drift-heavy and not much to digest, but it's both a classic and a fun track. For anyone worried about the price, there isn't a lot of content to quench your racing needs. It's half the price of the Monte Carlo DLC – but contains roughly half the content. 

The release of this pack coincides with the 17th X Games. The Shibuya track previously appeared in Dirt 2, but Dirt 3's Shibuya eschews the sunset and drapes the action in an overcast morning scene. Shibuya is a great ride, but after the first time around each track, even the variations feel familiar. To compare it to the offerings already in Dirt 3 (for those who missed it in Dirt 2), it's reminiscent of Monaco's streets, but packed in between the advertising-clad buildings of Tokyo's famous ward. There are some excellent transitions -- sliding from cement to dirt and vice versa -- and the track's full of jumps and corners to lose control on. I prefer Shibuya to Monaco, to be honest, but it's familiar territory with a $5 price tag. 

Infinity Ward creative strategist Robert Bowling recently tweeted an image of the Hardened edition of Modern Warfare 3. The picture was accompanied by text, which reads, "Hardened Edition, literally on the factory line."

Additionally, Bowling said that more details concerning the Hardened edition of Modern Warfare 3 will arrive at Call of Duty : XP, the themed convention landing in Los Angeles in early September. Tickets are currently on sale for $150 each.

If the Hardened edition of Modern Warfare 3 falls in line with what was offered in Black Ops and Modern Warfare 2's Hardened editions, fans can expect to pay $80 for a steel-book casing and pack-ins that have included co-op maps, avatar outfits, and an art book.

Bowling made no mention of a top-tier edition of the game. Activision had not responded to a request for comment as of press time. For more on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3--due out on November 8--check out Gamaspot's latest preview of the game.

In particular, Blizzard talked up its line of novels based on the Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo franchises. Though nearly all of this information had been previously announced, Blizzard's senior VP of story and franchise development Chris Metzen said that the studio plans to release an official source book for the Diablo franchise alongside Diablo III's as-yet-unestablished launch.

The Diablo compendium is being positioned as the journal of Deckard Cain, the wizened advisor to characters in the game. The book includes an extensive rundown of lore and history for the Diablo franchise, ranging from class descriptions to notable people.

THQ sent word today that the new content will arrive first on Xbox Live at a to-be-announced date in the future. It will be part of THQ' agreement with Microsoft that sees Homefront map packs arrive first for the Xbox 360. THQ did not offer a more precise release date other than "soon," and the publisher also did not indicate if or when it plans to release The Rock on the PlayStation 3 or PC.

As for the content, The Rock bears a 400 Microsoft point price tag ($5) and includes two new maps: Alcatraz and Bridge. Alcatraz takes place inside the San Francisco Bay's iconic island prison and will offer gamers close-quarter combat.

As for Bridge, that map has players battling near the North Tower of the Golden Gate Bridge and the surrounding area. In addition to the new maps, THQ said that new Team Deathmatch areas Waterway and Overpass will be included in the DLC.

Hi-Rez Studios announced today that Tribes: Ascend, their upcoming free-to-play FPS that is based on the Tribes universe, will be featured at QuakeCon and playable by the public for the first time at the annual gaming convention.

Tribes: Ascend is a new generation of the online multiplayer shooter, incorporating classic Tribes elements such as fast-paced jetpack enabled combat, skiing, and vehicles, combined with teamwork and strategy. Tribes: Ascend is being designed by Hi-Rez Studios as a AAA free-to-play title.

Although the game is still in Closed Alpha, conference attendees will get the first public hands-on with Tribes: Ascend at Booth 333 of QuakeCon, held in Dallas, Texas from August 4th-7th 2011. Attendees can also register to win a limited number of keys to the Tribes: Ascend Closed Beta.

Todd Harris, Hi-Rez Studios COO said:

“QuakeCon has been called the Woodstock of gaming and we’re thrilled to introduce Tribes: Ascend at this show. QuakeCon has always delivered exceptional, competitive multiplayer gaming… for free; and that’s our mission with Tribes: Ascend.”

Mega Man Battle and Chase for the Playstation was Capcom's answer to the gaming phenomenon that's officially known as Cute Mascots Driving Pimped-Out Karts. The Blue Bomber saddled up his "Rush Roadster" and took to the kart tracks with his friends and enemies. Good times and low polygon counts ensued.

Game ads are supposed to sell games, hence the name of this column. But Mega Man Battle and Chase presented a very interesting scenario: North Americans took notice of the game's ad in their favorite magazines, but their local game merchants would ultimately send them home with empty hands. Mega Man Battle and Chase hit Japan in 1997, and it zoomed into Europe in 1998, but the North American release sputtered and died before it even hit the starting line.

There's no clear reason why America was left out of Mega Man Battle and Chase, but it's theorized that Sony killed the mascot racer at the last minute because it didn't want racing fans dying of mascot kart glut. The game finally made its stateside debut in 2006 as part of the Mega Man X Collection for the GameCube and Playstation 2. By then, it was a little too late for the Battle and Chase ad to hold sway over potential buyers, but the ad is well worth a brief tribute.

The advertisement features original hand-drawn art of Mega Man, a bonus that's appreciated by all fans of the Blue Bomber and every other human being with a soul. Mega Man is totally chillin' in his souped-up Rush rig--his hands aren't even on the wheel--and he's showing off his new license along with his two-question driver's test. The questions include:

To pass a slower-moving vehicle:
A) Change lanes quickly
B)Honk twice
C) Blast him off the road.

Before starting your vehicle:
A) Tune radio station
B) Place car in park
C) Check weapons and load ammo.

Mega Man marked the right answers, both of which are obviously "C". If you disagree, get off the road, you bum.

Seriously, it feels a little foreign to see Mega Man smiling with pride over a test that advocates hurting other robots on the road, especially since two of his rival racers are his sister, Roll, and his brother, Proto Man. I suppose robots just revel in rabid road rage instead of bottling it up and giving themselves uranium ulcers and battery-acid heartburn.

Test Drive Unlimited 2 puts the world's most desirable vehicles in the players hands. These ultra-limited edition masterpieces are flawlessly replicated with Eden's finely tuned driving technology. Players define their online persona through the customization of their vehicles, and the acquisition of property, clothing and all the accoutrements of a luxurious car-based lifestyle.

Continuing down the same path as its predecessor, Unlimited 2 purports to be a "massively open online racing" game which seamlessly blends the single-player and multiplayer components. We'll reserve judgement, but can a Test Drive game really win out against the likes of Split/Second and Blur? Check back this fall to see who stalls and who pops a turbo.

Wanna take one these for a Test Drive?

If the rights issues all work out, the project would bring on Hollywood fixtures Mark Gordon, Jason Blum and Guymon Casady as producers. Gordon is a film veteran with experience at the big-budget art house ("Saving Private Ryan") as well as the big-budget commercial ("The Day After Tomorrow"). Blum is best known for producing horror breakout "Paranormal Activity," while Casady is a manager-producer with a slew of high-profile clients.

According to Tatio, the Space Invaders franchise has generated nearly $500 million in revenue to date. And in 2008, Guinness World Records listed it as the top-rated arcade game in terms of technical, creative, and cultural impact.

• 1. West and Zampella creative authority over the development of any games under the Modern Warfare brand or any Call of Duty title set in the post-Vietnam era, the near future, or the distant future.
  
  
• 2. Complete control over the Infinity Ward studio.
  
  
• 3. The right to choose to develop new intellectual properties after completing Modern Warfare 2.
  
  
• 4. Standard bonus and royalty compensation for Modern Warfare 2 as well as additional compensation, including a pool of Restricted Stock Units, stock options, a royalty for any Call of Duty game sold, a technology royalty for any Activision game using the Infinity Ward created CoD game engine, and rewards for Infinity Ward employees.

Vince Zampella, second from left, and Jason West, fourth from left, in better days.

Zampella and West allege they held up their end of the MOU, delivering Modern Warfare 2 five days early. Immediately after the game was delivered, Zampella and West say Activision began to renege on its promises:

This lawsuit is solely and regrettably the result of the astonishing arrogance and unbridled greed of defendant Activision. Plaintiffs Jason West and Vince Zampella are among the most talented and successful videogame developers in the world. They created for Activision two videogame franchises, Call of Duty and Modern Warfare, that became the most successful in the company's--indeed, the industry's--history, lining Activisions pockets with billions of dollars in revenue and creating a die-hard fan base in the millions.

Just weeks before Messrs. West and Zampella were to receive the royalties for their hard work on Modern Warfare 2, Activision fired them in the hope that by doing so, it could avoid paying them what they had rightfully earned, and to seize control of the Infinity Ward Studio, to which Activision had previously granted creative control over all Modern Warfare branded games and had, apparently, decided it no longer wanted to live with.

The complaint alleges that Activision launched an investigation against the studio heads on February 3, stating, "From the very beginning, it was clear that the purpose of the investigation was not to uncover any facts concerning any actual wrongdoing, but to manufacture a basis to fire West and Zampella." Activision refused to reveal what specific acts were being investigated, the pair state, instead being told they "already have a clear understanding of what they have or have not done."

Activision's investigation allegedly included a six-hour interrogation of West and Zampella in a windowless conference room. The plaintiffs state numerous Infinity Ward employees were also questioned and some even brought to tears during the interrogation. When West and Zampella refused to turn over their personal computers and cell phones, Activision's attorneys allegedly stated the pair was being insubordinate.

West and Zempella's complaint then states the studio heads were summoned "to a sham meeting" at Activision's Santa Monica headquarters "during which they were fired on the basis of false and trivial charges, and then quickly escorted out the back door." The pair stated Activision refused to confirm that it would make the payments for Modern Warfare 2 agreed upon in the MOU.

Activision has adopted the corporate strategy of forcing Messrs. West and Zampella to sue for their pay -- in the hopes of either getting away with not having to pay them anything, or maximizing its leverage to reduce that pay. Such actions are not surprising, given that Activision is run by a CEO who has been publicly quoted as believing that the best way to run a videogame studio is to engender a culture of "skepticism, pessimis, and fear," and who prefers to pay his lawyers instead of his employees.

In closing, the complaint states West and Zampella were terminated in bad faith and without proper cause. Activision refuses to pay compensation owed and refuses to recognize Infinity Ward's rights to exercise creative and other contractually-gained control over the Modern Warfare brand. The developers are seeking damages "to be determined in court" but in excess of $36 million.

Daedalic Entertainment won the German Developer of the Year award in 2009, due in large part to The Whispered World. Viva Media most recently published STALKER: Call of Pripyat.

The game is up and running at http://apps.facebook.com/poxnora. SOE, publisher of EverQuest, Champions of Norrath, Untold Legends, PlanetSide, and Star Wars Galaxies, said additional Facebook games based on existing franchises and new IPs are in the works.

Steam on the Mac will behave just like Steam for Windows, but through Steam Play will add cross-platform ownership. That means if you own Left 4 Dead 2 for Windows, then you already own it for the Mac. There's no need to buy it twice! Unless you want to buy it twice, in which case, as long as you're feeling so generous, why not buy it five times?

Plus, Mac and Windows players can go head-to-head, since both Left 4 Deads are cross-platform compatible. Mac owners can even host their own servers and create their own maps, just like Windows users.

The post also notes that the Mac versions of the popular shooters are being written in native Mac code, and will not run under emulation.

More head-cracking coming to Mac later this year.

"Downloadable content is a key part of our efforts to continue to entice the fans that have made 2K a household name -- we intend to deliver single and multiplayer content that respects and expands upon one of the greatest fictional worlds ever created," Hartmann said in a statement after the BioShock 2's big launch.

Two new masks, a higher level cap, and three new achievements are also included. The Rapture Metro pack will be available "soon" on Xbox Live and Games for Windows Live for 800 Microsoft Points and on the PlayStation Network for $9.99.

Along with Doppelganger and the advanced graphics, Dark Mirror includes new badges, new player emotes, and animated player tails. Epic Archetypes are now unlocked for both heroes and villains at level 20, and new maps and monsters offer greater customization with the game's Mission Architect feature.

"In six years of heroism and villainy, City of Heroes players have created tens of millions of characters and hundreds of thousands of allied forces called Super Groups," Paragon stated. "Now with the upcoming arrival of the City of Heroes Going Rogue expansion, players will have the chance to walk the line between good and evil as their heroes and villains face moral choices that could change them forever."

By Sunday afternoon, the MekMatch server was back up and running, and the free downloads were once again flowing from the web site.

The free download promo bodes well for the BattleTech franchise. In 2009, the developer announced a complete MechWarrior reboot is being made for the PC and Xbox 360. Based on the response this weekend, it's a reboot Mech fans have been waiting for.

In announcing APB's release date, Realtime also revealed how gamers will pay for the MMO. Purchase the game and receive 50 hours worth of online action out of the box. Once the 50 hours are up, players can purchase an additional 20 hours for $8 or an unlimited 30-day package for $12.

In addition, players can actually earn playing time simply by playing the game. APB includes challenges that award gamers with rewards, including game time. "We wanted to provide a simple and flexible way for occasional and core players alike to pay for their play without being financially tethered to the game," Jones said. "The model also provides an opportunity for customers to subsidize their costs by leveraging their talent or market savvy in the 'points' Marketplace. Highly talented players could potentially even play for free in this way."

The report adds that one-third of Xbox 360 owners use the console to stream online video, and the number of consumers that connect their PCs to their TVs to watch online content was up 36% last year.

However, don't expect to extend your web experience on the Xbox 360 anytime soon. In a recent interview with Edge magazine, Microsoft Director of Product Management Aaron Greenberg said there will never be a web browser added to the console even though one is available on the PS3.

"We recognize that BioWare has a global community, and the Bazaar this week was originally intended to be an international event to reflect our truly global fanbase. Unfortunately, we encountered some last-minute legal complications around how contests can be structured in different parts of the world that prevented us from including all territories in this first event, even though that was our original goal," bosses Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk stated in a post on the BioWare forum. "And for that, we sincerely apologize - our goal with this sort of celebration is to show all our fans worldwide how much we appreciate your support! BioWare definitely really values all members of our worldwide community, no matter where you live."

BioWare Community Moderator Christ Priestly also issued his own apology, saying he went about marketing Bazaar the wrong way. "We used the word 'Epic' before we had proven that it was. Sorry. We also used the Countdown timer to generate interest. In hindsight, this allowed rampant speculation which caused disappointment. Again, sorry. While I won't promise we will never use a timer like it again, I can promise we will make sure that such a timer is worthy of the interest it will attract."

The BioWare bosses concluded their apology with a promise of future events exclusively for areas excluded from the Bazaar.

In all fairness to Activision and Infinity Ward, the VIP 2 map pack included new modes for existing maps, but did not bring any new battlefields to Battlefield. Further, as part of EA's Project $10, those that buy Battlefield: Bad Company 2 used do have to pay $15 for the additional DLC.

Bach added that a generous portion of DLC is slated for Bad Company 2 in the future. We'll see if EA can hold DICE's promise.

"Set your TiVos! And your Xboxes," Fallon wrote. "Game designer Cliff Bleszinski debuts his new game on Late Night next Thur." What game will we see? All signs point to Gears of War 3.

The timing coincides with a rumor we reported on two weeks ago that the Gears of War 3 teaser trailer would make its debut on April 8. That's the same night Bleszinski has scheduled a play date with Fallon. So if you're anxious for a first look at Gears 3, tune in to Late Night next Thursday.

Unfortunately, that might not mean we'll actually be playing the next installment in the Marcus Fenix adventure soon. The same rumor that seems to have accurately nailed the teaser trailer debut also said the game itself would not be released until spring 2011.

The big ability gamers will carry with them in Reach multiplayer is Armor Lock. A distant cousin to the bubble shield, Armor Lock is available to players three times on one charge and when engaged will render the Spartan temporarily invulnerable. Said Hamrick:

It's kind of like a block. If your opponent closes on you with a shotgun or is about to land a melee blow or run you over with a vehicle, you can engage Armor Lock and become temporarily invulnerable. You can't move, aim, or shoot. You're stuck there, but you can't be killed... There is also a knockback and EMP blast component. The longer you hold your Armor Lock, the more pronounced the effect will be. There are three different tiers – if it's just a short lock, I'll get a small knockback and a tiny bit of EMP up to the max level, which is a much larger knockback and EMP blast. It's really intended to say, 'Hey, you better not mess with me, I'm extremely dangerous even though I'm trapped in here!' It's particularly effective against vehicles as well. Also, if you're stuck with a plasma grenade or have needles in you, they'll be knocked off when you engage Armor Lock."

The Reach multiplayer beta opens on May 3 and can be accessed through the Halo: ODST menu. Halo: Reach is scheduled for a fall release.

PopCap has said that they're interested in supporting the iPad, and now that interest may be coming to fruition. PadGadget has noticed a few unannounced iPad launch games among the iTunes App Store listings, including Plants vs. Zombies HD.

The new HD Plants vs. Zombies is included with several other titles, including Worms HD and Labyrinth 2 HD. Apple has since removed the listings from the iTunes Preview site.

Assuming Plants vs. Zombies wasn't just a glitch in the system, it should be one of the launch games when the iPad arrives next month. It's also available on Steam and the iPhone.

The iPad will be launching in just under a week. Look for it April 3.

IGN AU: If you will, please give us the rundown on what Portalarium is all about.

Richard Garriott: So, I think I've had the good fortune to live through what I'll describe as three major upheavals in the gaming industry – the first was it coming into existence at all. I was there at the beginning of gaming, where they were mostly solo-player games. Then I was around, and, I feel, instrumental in the beginning of the second phase, which is, broadly, online gaming, or massively-multiplayer online gaming. And now I think there's a third major era that's beginning, which is social media games.

IGN AU: Why do you think the social media game market has expanded so quickly?

Richard Garriott: Well, just as the power of online games – that is, playing with people you discover online, but who are mostly strangers - made the online games industry tenfold bigger than the solo-player industry ever was, social media games - where everyone now has a digital presence online, and you can play with people who are your friends in real life, and where you can casually share a link to a game that doesn't require an install or an up-front charge - that's even more powerful than traditional online gaming. And if you look at the growth rates of the segments, that's what we've tried to capture here with Portalarium. We want to take high-quality production values, state of the art tools, and skills, and bring it to the dominant growth within online gaming, which is friends networks.

IGN AU: What's amazed me in my tentative forays into the hideous miasma of social networking is the types of people who play these games, most of whom wouldn't be caught dead with a copy of Modern Warfare 2.

Richard Garriott: Yes, it's very interesting. And there is a huge demand – so much so that if you look at all those people playing farming games at the moment, those are games that are written in Java and Flash. Their quality and production values are really not very good, but in spite of that, people are playing them. I wouldn't call them "casual", either – they are hardcore, if you know what I mean. It would be very easy to oversimplify these people and say they're non-gamers or casual gamers, and can't be "hardcore" and won't appreciate games with greater depth. What appeals – what, in my mind, is essential – is that games find people through viral networking, they immediately play, and they don't cost anything up front. In my mind, every game would be better done that way. Look at Ultima Online – imagine if you could just click on a link and it started playing. No install, no up-front payment. That would have made it available to an even broader audience.

The Portalarium team.

IGN AU: Are you concerned that there's a point where you can raise production values and gameplay complexity to the degree that it will scare these people away, though?

Richard Garriott: That's two questions. I think raising production values is universally desirable. Everyone likes a clean, clear user interface. Everyone prefers a smooth frame-rate. Everyone likes an art direction that is unified and aesthetically appealing. And those are things that Flash and Java do not allow, and only higher-quality production values and tools can attain. But can you make a game that's too complex? Absolutely. The people who are interested in these social media games absolutely do not want to face a huge amount of complexity, at least at the outset. It's possible that they will, over time, come to appreciate some additional depth and maybe even a lot of it, but that is yet to be seen. Hardcore gamers are the opposite, obviously, but they will also like the idea of just being able to click on a link to play their games, so there will, I think, be significant overlap between the two markets. Although we'll be happy even if there isn't.

The focus of the trailer is the use of optical camouflage, a piece of technology that does, in fact, exist in the real world. The prominence of active camo has sparked some controversy among long-time Ghost Recon fans, who need to relax and learn to have a little fun in life. This is, after all, based on real life technology that any Future Soldier worth his snuff would use if given the chance. "The real life development prototypes use it to disrupt the enemy's vision using an array of cameras to film the direct surroundings and project it onto your body armour and clothes," Lacey explains. The intent is not to make you invisible, but to "break up the players silhouette for the enemies, making wearers a tougher target to aim for."

The HUD in the trailer is similar to the one we'll see in game, but has been tweaked somewhat to fit gameplay needs. Those with a keen eye will notice that some characters are labeled with classes in the live-action trailer. This represents different gear loadouts in the game. Lacey promises that these loadouts will be available in single-player, co-op and competitive multiplayer.

Did you pick up any other gameplay hints from watching the live-action trailer? Offer up your theories in the comments below.

Grand Moff Kilran
The Butcher of Coruscant
Homeworld: Dromund Kaas
Accomplishments: Hero of the Battle of Coruscant, Pacifier of Togruta Uprising
Personality Traits: Patriotic, Charismatic, Genius-Level Intellect, Oenophile

Cultured, cunning and utterly ruthless, Rycus Kilran may be the greatest naval strategist the Empire has ever seen. Born to a wealthy family with a proud military tradition, Kilran proved himself (to no one's surprise) a capable right-hand man to the Sith during the Empire's early assaults on the Brema Sector. When his Sith superior died during the Battle of Ord Ibanna, however, Kilran showed that he was more than an able tactical advisor -- he assumed command of the ragged Imperial fleet and led them to a swift and decisive victory.

In the years that followed, Kilran's authority grew with his list of triumphs, and both the Sith and the Minister of War learned respect for his unorthodox strategies. His brutally effective strikes during the final days of the war earned him the nickname "the Butcher of Coruscant" among Republic civilians (a name he adopted with characteristic irony), and his heroic stand against a Jedi boarding party earned him his scars. After the war ended, he was granted the honorary title "Grand Moff" in recognition of his contributions.

Nem'ro the Hutt
Crime-King of Jiguuna
Homeworld: Hutta
Business Interests: Shvash Gas Mining, Spice Dealing, Weapons Trafficking
Known Enemies: Fa'athra the Hutt, "Huttsbane," Black Sun

When a Hutt reaches the pinnacle of his career, it is his right and privilege to let his mind and body atrophy -- to turn away from menial concerns and strictly indulge his appetites. So it goes with Nem'ro.

Decades ago, Nem'ro was a scheming and ambitious leader among the gangs of Jiguuna, one of Hutta's prominent industrial towns. Block by block, factory by factory, he took control through brutality, blackmail and sheer business savvy. He paid his henchmen handsomely, and overthrew Jiguuna's previous ruler in a bloody coup. He never did get rid of the competing gangs; he just cowed them and demanded a share of the profits.

Now, comfortable and confident, Nem'ro is free to let his lieutenants run the show while he concentrates on what makes life worth living: food, arena fights and reveling in the respect of his peers. Only the rise of Fa'athra, a Hutt upstart and would-be rival, threatens to force his attention back on business affairs. Locals worry that when Nem'ro inevitably decides Fa'athra is a threat, the gang wars could get bloody indeed.

Jedi Grand Master Satele Shan
Leader of the Jedi High Council
Homeworld: Brentaal
Accomplishments: Rediscovered Tython, Youngest Jedi to ever become a Grand Master
Active Bounty: Dead or Alive: 100 million credits

Renowned for her wisdom and powerful connection to the Force, Master Satele Shan is the voice and conscience of the Jedi Order. She is a direct descendant of Bastila Shan, the legendary Jedi who battled Darth Revan centuries ago. Unlike her brash and arrogant ancestor, Master Satele -- who prefers being addressed by her first name -- possesses a warm demeanor and approachable personality. This relaxed and unassuming attitude belies her true strength and determination. Master Satele is a veteran warrior who has repeatedly confronted the power of the dark side and survived.

Master Satele bravely fought the resurgent Sith Empire when she was a Padawan, playing a key role in several major battles during the last war. She cemented her position among the Jedi when she rediscovered the long-lost world of Tython and helped found a new Jedi Temple there to replace the one destroyed on Coruscant. Since the Republic signed the Empire's treaty, Master Satele has worked tirelessly to preserve that fragile peace, preventing multiple attempts to reignite the conflict. However, Master Satele knows all too well that light and dark cannot coexist forever. A new war with the Sith looms on the horizon -- and this time the Jedi must be victorious.

IGN: You come from a gaming development background, right?

Mark Skaggs: Yes. I started my first game company in 1993 [then] went to work for Virgin and Westwood and got lucky enough to get the chance to do Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2. [In 2005 I] started another company called Trilogy, and that was about online downloadable MMO games that maybe you could play on a console. It was kind of an interesting idea, but a little bit before its time.

IGN: So what's been the biggest change in going from traditional games to Facebook games?

Mark Skaggs: It's a whole different way of making games. It's fast, quick releases...

IGN: I know FarmVille took five weeks [to make], but what's the average development cycle?

Mark Skaggs: It really depends on the game. I don't think we've made anything that's taken more than six months.

IGN: And the team size?

Mark Skaggs: It's much smaller than traditional games. It's a shorter dev cycle, because we're not making a big product. We're making the minimum viable product. What can we put out there to know if it's going to work? Then we iterate afterward. With traditional games, it took us maybe two years to do most of the work up front. If it's console, you release it, maybe you patch it, but if not, surprise, see if it's going to sit on shelves, and you're off to the new thing. In this business, you do a little bit of work, and then everything comes after.

IGN: How long do you think it's going to be before we start seeing some of these lessons creeping into traditional games?

Mark Skaggs: Traditional games are moving at a much slower pace.

IGN: When God of War III started development, [Facebook game development] wasn't going on.

Mark Skaggs: Right. Which is just crazy. It's like talking about kids to people who don't have kids. They say, "Oh, I get it," but they don't get it. When I talk to people in the traditional business about how they've got to change, this is a good thing, they say, "Yeah, yeah," and then they say something that shows me that they don't understand yet. So I can't tell how long it's going to take, but I know some critical factors. You have to be able to iterate the game after it goes out. The [current consoles], you can download stuff, but until it becomes as easy to do that as it is to put it on the disc, it's going to be hard.

"Facebook games allow us to time-shift and location-shift our social group."

IGN: There's a sense from [hardcore gamers] that Facebook games are going to hurt the traditional games that they love.

Mark Skaggs: I think that they're different markets. FarmVille, Caf茅 World, and FishVille, they're going after a different market. That said, I think it's going to help, and here's why: because this new influx of ideas, this new iteration on a business model, turning around faster, finding out what works, is going to bleed back.

People are going to stop saying "social games." Any game that doesn't have a social component is going to feel old-fashioned. That's where I think traditional game companies, console game makers, are going to say, "Hey, wait a minute, we can add this social element that's been worked out en masse by all these social game companies, and that's going to make our games more successful." That's where I think things are going to change.

IGN: Do you see Facebook being replaced by something else? Or do you think Facebook's going to be like Google, which has been the default search engine for several years?

Mark Skaggs: I don't know if they're going to be replaced. Certainly Facebook is an insanely great partner for us. They create an ecosystem that we all need and they manage it very well. But I know that people like alternatives. If you just look at what's there right now, Facebook is good for some stuff, but LinkedIn is good for other stuff. You see that evolving, everybody says, "Hey, I like this social thing, but one size doesn't fit all."

IGN: Zynga has done some experimenting with FarmVille and moving it off Facebook. Do you see more developers trying to do that, having it live outside?

Mark Skaggs: Yeah... Facebook's really smart. They said, "Not everybody's going to want to sit and have their app inside of Facebook." So they created Facebook Connect, which is kind of like the plumbing. So you can have an app that's not on Facebook and just say, "Hey, here's all the friends." They do all the social work there. I think what's going to happen is we're going to see, not just games, but other apps adopt and add this really social feel.

IGN: What's the benefit to doing that?

Mark Skaggs: Just business opportunities, trying to reach more players. It's sort of like saying, "Why would a company go on both Xbox and PlayStation and Wii and PC?"

IGN: So, in this new world of games-as-service, instead of games-as-product, is there room for sequels? Since you're constantly iterating, a game isn't static anymore. Will there be a FarmVille 2?

Mark Skaggs: How do you do a FarmVille 2 when FarmVille 1's not done yet? Mafia Wars has this great example where they do new locations -- Cuba, all those kinds of things. So I think that's probably the direction it's going to go. At least that's one we've seen that works. But let's flip it around and say, "Is there going to be a World of Warcraft 2?" I don't know. Why? Why not just open it more? Would you have to throw away all your experience and everything, can you just port it to a new character?

Keep your friends (and bloggers) close...

What is there to say about a game you feel you've played multiple times before? I suppose the biggest attraction to the game for me personally is the setting, the whole 40's vibe. The music, as strange as it sounds, is probably the thing I enjoyed most (I'm a sucker for vintage jazz). The controls are your all around basic third-person schtick, all of which are perfectly suitable. However there are some wonky driving controls, which as far as I know resulted in the participants in this preview feeling like they had failed a part of the demo because of the controls, when in fact, it was impossible to catch the car in question. Fortunately, the all important aiming controls are pretty sharp.

What really sells a sandbox game for me are the missions, side missions and story; as far as I can tell, all of that is all going to be fun in Mafia II, and I suppose that's what really counts. Minus some small visual fixes that need to be made before launch (still four months away), it's a good looking game for sure, though it could use just a little more stylistic flare to stand out. If you're into this sort of game, you'll probably like it, or you may feel like you've played it one too many times before.

I only had one payment left!

With the 30-minute demo I was able to play with some fellow bloggers, I found that Mafia II is shaping up very nicely. One of the first things I noticed is that the voice acting is one of the strong points in the game. You can clearly see that 2K Games put a lot of effort into the characters and creating a great 1940s atmosphere.

The graphics are solid but nothing spectacular. The same could be said with the controls. One of the biggest drawbacks is that the game brings nothing new to the table. This is a perfect example of a game where the story can make or break it as mafia games are rare to find and good ones are almost non-existent. After only 30 minutes, I must say I was impressed but it needs to show me more depth before I consider it a purchase.

Dunham promises this is just the beginning, and more DLC is in the works. It does raise an interesting question about MAG, though. This first pack is explicitly called free, so we can probably expect that most other packs won't be. Since MAG is an MMO-styled shooter, we have to wonder what will happen once the player base is split by downloadable packs. Zipper may be planning mandatory updates to the game so that everyone can still play together, but we'll have to wait to see.

Not only that, but -- as seems to be the trend these days -- they also threw out a handful of absurd statistics gathered from the game's servers. EA's stats show over 2.9 million hours of multiplayer have been racked up during the last 24 hours alone, and that players have earned a total of more than 81 billion points, unlocking over 43 million pieces of equipment in the process. The publisher tallied a peak-concurrent-users figure of around 230, 000 -- a number that's caused EA's multiplayer servers to buckle on more than one occasion.

DICE's Karl Magnus Troedsson chimed in to address the game's on-again, off-again server stability issues. "In the first 48 hours we had such a tremendous rush to multiplayer gameplay that our servers experienced overwhelming demand. This is a testament to the massive response players have had worldwide for the extraordinary action experienced in the Battlefield sandbox," explained the game's executive producer. "DICE and EA have brought more servers online. We now have enough capacity to handle all BFBC2 connections seamlessly and we continue to monitor online play daily."

Bad Company 2's sales are already on track to make it EA's best-selling March release on record. Now if we could only determine the exact percentage of those players who go Recon and spend the entire match ignoring the objectives from the comfort of their favorite shrubbery...

So what's up with the delay? Apparently Rockstar opted to make some "minor content changes" to the PS3's PAL version of the game at the request of Sony Europe. What these changes are, exactly, remains unclear, but a representative from Rockstar assured us that the alterations won't affect players' enjoyment of the games. They also noted that the adjustments have nothing to do with the requirements of any local ratings boards.

We'll let you know as soon as we know anything more about whatever it is Sony wanted cut from (or added to?) Episodes from Liberty City.

The pack will feature five new missions based on the brand-new Hammerhead. It will be free to those who have the Cerberus Network.

It will be followed shortly after by Kasumi's Stolen Memory, which is slated to launch April 6. It will introduce the thief Kasumi along with her loyalty mission, and will be the first paid DLC.

The Firewalker DLC will be out March 23.

"We're planning for 17 games," joked Dr. Ray when asked how many Dragon Age sequels to expect. "Well, both Dragon Age and Mass Effect are franchises so they have different strategies and different kinds of story arcs but we plan on continuing to make games and worlds and expanding on those worlds in both franchises," the CEO added, continuing, "Both in different ways, but we want to continue to provide content to fans, whether that be separate games or new adventures that have very different kinds of gameplay. So we have some cool stuff for both of them that we're exploring that'll be fun and different for the fans, and yet in a familiar setting at the same time.

Dr. Greg tossed in his thoughts on sequels, as well. "In the case of Dragon Age, it's exciting because there's this whole timeline and geography," explained the Bioware creative officer. "So with Mass Effect, we're constantly thinking about the trilogy. But with Dragon Age, it's more open and you can put more all over the place. Seventeen... Sixty-six? Infinite! Infinite games for the Dragon Age universe! (laughs)"

The devs went on to offer an exceedingly brief tease of what's to come with Mass Effect 3. When asked whether or not the sci-fi sequel -- like Mass Effect 2 before it -- would allow players to change their character's appearance and class from the game's outset, Dr. Ray responded, "We've got some tricks up our sleeves. We have new tricks."

What that means, exactly, is anyone's guess, but it seems fairly certain that Bioware won't recycle the same twist from Mass Effect 2's intro. Unless they do it again anyway, in which case: What a twist!

Developed by a staff that includes veteran FF art designer Yusuke Naora, Chaos Rings is set around a battle tournament, Arca Areina, where five two-person teams must fight each other to the death. You control each team in their own separate storyline, all of which tie together at the end. None of the people involved know why they're here or what they're fighting for -- all they know is that a shadowy "spokesman" has summoned them, and that if they win, their prize will be eternal life.

"I was surprised at how smooth the 3D graphics were," Famitsu magazine wrote in a preview published in this week's issue. "I honestly didn't think that the iPhone was capable of such pretty 3D visuals. The controls are also innovative -- you can touch and drag your finger anywhere on the screen to move your characters around. It doesn't rely on using one hand over the other, so it's really easy to play."

The game's team-based premise is reflected in the battle system, which divides your attacks between "solo" and "pair" moves. Attacking as a pair unlocks special combo skills and lets you potentially punish the enemy harder, but also puts both team members at risk of taking damage. "The strategic battle system is the most interesting part of the game," Famitsu wrote. "Your HP is refilled after each battle, but each individual fight is pretty intense. If you're short on HP, you have to agonize over whether to attack solo or in pairs. It's a lot of fun!"

Square Enix hasn't announced a release date for Chaos Rings.

"I certainly did some preliminary pre-production work on Black 2 once we finished Black, the first three or four months," Black said. "I moved on quite quickly after that."

He continued, "A lot of the guys on the team I'm working with here now carried on with that and did a lot of pre-production for about a year or so on Black [2], before that kind of bit the dust."

"So, I don't really have personal knowledge about how that all played out. But there seemed to be overall a kind of general lack of direction. I'd be surprised if they managed that again."

Stuart Black was the 2006 shooter's senior designer alongside Criterion's Alex Ward. He's since moved on to Codemasters, where he is working on Bodycount. That title is currently slated for a Q1 2011 release on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

"Although Jagged Alliance 2 was published over ten years ago now, the game still represents a milestone in the genre and boasts a huge following of loyal fans," said bitComposer Games CEO Wolfgang Duhr.

"We are delighted to acquire this classic game for bitComposer, and want to continue the success of the previous titles in the series, while giving the new version a contemporary look, bearing in mind the strong features of its predecessors."

This is actually the third time that Jagged Alliance 3 has been announced. After picking up the license from original developer Sir-Tech Software, Strategy First announced Jagged Alliance 3D and Jagged Alliance in 2004. After development conflicts resulted in their cancellation, Strategy First partnered with Russian Studios Akella and F3games, which likewise didn't work out.

Nevertheless, the series continues to a devoted fanbase. We'll see whether bitComposer succeeds where Strategy First failed when it launches next year.

With Ferrari having finally returned to the Need for Speed stable of automobiles, Electronic Arts is releasing even more DLC for last year's Shift.

The new Exotic Racing Series Pack will be launching next week on Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Network, and will run you 800 Microsoft Points ($10.00). It includes the Honda NSX and the BMW M1 Procar, among others.

You can find the full list below. The pack will be available March 18.

• Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione

   

• BMW M1 Procar

   

• GUMPERT Apollo

   

• Honda NSX

   

• McLaren MP4-12C

   

• Maserati GranTurismo S

   

• Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren Stirling Moss

Battlestar Galactica is over, but that doesn't mean NBC is done cashing in. They're teaming up with Bigpoint to launching Battlestar Galactica Online, a browser-based massively multiplayer game set in the popular universe.

"Battlestar Galactica is a supremely gameable intellectual property, with compelling character classes, a fantastic array of ships and weaponry, multiple worlds, and a dramatic storyline," said vice president and general manager of digital platforms for Universal Partnerships & Licensing Bill Kispert.

"We are excited to work with Bigpoint - and our partners at Universal Cable Productions and Syfy - to bring an epic, accessible, and 'always on' BSG experience to fans of the franchise and online gamers alike."

The new game will feature tactical space combat and mission-based gameplay, bringing to mind Cryptic's Star Trek Online. It will also apparently be possible to choose between Cylon and Human, though whether you can play as one of the humanoid models is unclear.

The title is currently being shown at GDC, so expect our impressions soon.

Trouble is brewing in Rapture. The recently released Sinclair Solutions multiplayer pack for BioShock 2 is facing upset players over the revelation that the content is already on the disc, and the $5 premium is an unlock code. It started when users on the 2K Forums noticed that the content is incredibly small: 24KB on the PC, 103KB on the PlayStation 3, and 108KB on the Xbox 360. 2K Games responded with a post explaining that the decision was made in order to keep the player base in tact, without splitting it between the haves and have-nots.

"The way our engine and game structure works is that people need to have the exact same content for people to play together," wrote community manager 2K Elizabeth. "One of the challenges with post launch content for MP is that it can split the player base, and we want to avoid that whenever possible. For this content, creating the DLC package the way we did allowed for us to not split the player base - so whether you purchase the new content or not, you can still play with your friends." The answer may not be enough to satisfy upset fans who would've preferred on-disc content unlocked from the beginning. But as Shacknews notes, it's possible this content was made on a separate DLC budget. That would essentially force the company to recoup the development costs through DLC charges.

It does raise the question of what will happen with future DLC. This pack is a large boost to the multiplayer, but 2K has promised more packs coming in the future, which could include more multiplayer expansions. If this move was made to keep from splitting the player base, one has to wonder if future multiplayer DLC is already on the disc as well. The effort to keep everyone playing together is noble, but if it leads to more instances like this one months down the line, fans will probably grow increasingly annoyed.

For their part, 2K is handling this pretty modestly. "I know some of you have strong beliefs about DLC, and I'm not here to sway your opinion or convince you to buy our stuff," wrote 2K Elizabeth. "If you like what we're offering, I hope you get it and enjoy it. If it's not your speed, enjoy BioShock 2 as we released it." Unfortunately for 2K, since these controversies tend to ruffle feathers, some potential buyers might just enjoy BioShock 2 as it was released out of principle.

Pre-orders for the PC and Mac versions are now available on Telltale's site for $34.95, and as a limited time bonus, you'll be able to get a free episode from the Telltale library -- including Sam & Max, Strong Bad, Wallace & Gromit, Bone, or Texas Hold'em. You'll also get membership to the "Freelance Police Elite Forces," which grants you such perks as access to a special forum where you'll be able to chat with the developers, including Steve Purcell; first look previews at the upcoming episodes; special offers on the Telltale store through September; and exclusive downloads. That's not a bad haul of pre-order goodies, especially if you're a Sam & Max fan that is certain to buy all five of the monthly episodes.

An FAQ on the game's official site summarizes the story of season three, entitled The Devil's Playhouse:

Sam and Max face a mysterious otherworldly power for controlling matter and space that calls to the strongest and strangest who might wield it - intergalactic warlords and eldritch gods, under-dwellers and scholars of the arcane. It's Sam's and Max's biggest case yet.

If the debut trailer above doesn't provide you with enough information, even more can be found on Telltale's website.

[Editor's note: Below you'll find a news column idea we're testing out. Instead of just recapping the big stories that you've probably read already, we're having Mike pick out some of the most interesting and bizarre headlines of the week and have fun with them. Is this something you'd read? Would you want things covered differently? Let us know in the comments as we give this new format a shot.]

Sit down with your favorite flavored God of War 3 Slurpee -- 'tis time to recap another week in gaming news. We'll be doing this every Friday until I'm fired or bored, so strap in.

Final Fantasy Is A 3-Disc Package... [Insert Penis-Envy Joke Here]

For fans of the Final Fantasy series, bigger is apparently better

.

Just as the marketplace prepares to crown Modern Warfare 2, Mass Effect 2 and soon, BioShock 2, as the new Dream Team of this Generation, the marketing geniuses at Square Enix have reverted to an age-old strategy that has helped a millennia's worth of dweebs with socks-in-their-pants get a second look from Crystal Bettencourt over at the cheerleader table.

Not two discs, but three.

Sure, sure, Square. Your game will be huge. Huge.

That's Weird, My Business Plan for Selling Used Underwear Is Doing Just Fine

A sign of the recession tragically struck the game industry when it was announced on Tuesday that Best Buy and Wal-Mart's attempts at worming through GameStop's cold, dead grip on the used-games market failed harder than Haiti's emergency infrastructure.

Here's the thing. They tried executing this masterful plan by putting a big kiosk looking thing outside retail facilities that have people like this trolling its aisles. I don't have a Master's or anything, but I'm not sure Joe Consumer would expect a good return on his trade-in transaction with asylum-escapees walking all around.

The used-underwear stand I opened outside my apartment is a far better business idea. My fellow entrepreneurs and I tell our consumers that the used underwear was worn by none-other than Lady Gaga, itself. From there, a few strategic smudges of Ketchup and Milk Chocolate inside of the undies and boom!, we've been selling authentic Gaga-Diapers like gangbusters.

Without Natal, Halo Fanboys Must Find New Ways to Stroke "Reach"

In a session of "Halo: Reach Mythbusters," Bungie confirmed that Halo: Reach will not be Natal'd.

The announcement comes as a massive blow to fanboys nationwide who were saving hard-earned Hot Dog On A Stick wages to shell out for Natal. The opportunity to use Microsoft's new motion-sensor technology to literally jerk their favorite franchise off will now be siphoned into PlayStation Arc budgets...who but forlorn Halo fanboys have the soft-hands and mild imaginations to give Drake the proper happy ending he deserves?

Sonic Returns...Up Next on the Resurrection Express: Pac-Man, and after that, Your Dead Grandpa

Sonic is back, in 2D, and as a sequel for a game that released in 1994. Hold that drool, as your copy of Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1 should be downloadable later this summer, just as Sega needs to fatten the cash-flow statement when its new console pretender crumples like a recalled Camry (they're crashing into funeral homes now).

This follows on the heels of Activision selling off its properties for $5.99 and Mega Man continuing to go Costco on the world by collecting their properties into handy dandy Mega-Bundles.

Have games fallen into Hollywood's model of trusting only those who have succeeded before? Remakes and reissues are defensive maneuvers. They lack confidence. They're akin to crawling back to Crystal Bettencourt after she dumped you. She might take you back tonight, but you haven't solved any of the underlying problems.

Six Words to Solve the VGA's Meager Ratings Problem

Give out achievement points for watching.

EA Sports Need to Step Up Their Nostradamus'ing

EA Sports has long-since cornered the market on virtual simulations. This week, they announced the New Orleans Saints will win this weekend's Super Bowl. By doing so, they don't risk hurting their monopoly on the sports-video-game market so much as their own shiny success-record in this guessing stuff.

It took me a long time to spell Nostradamus'ing, and in return, I'd like EA to do me a favor. Assuming you folks at EA Sports read anything but box scores, I'd like you to take your outrageously accurate simulation software and tell me when some harder-to-guess events will occur:

1. When will a 1UP reader become President?
2. When will my precious Chicago Cubs break their curse?
3. Will more than five people comment on this thread?
4. What will Infinity Ward's next game be about?
5. When will your company be sold, given you are near financial ruin?

Yeah, keep on guessing; that'll keep stockowners at bay. My guess? If Dante flops, you're all in Bankruptcy Inferno, assuming, of course, your whole free game and iPad strategies don't save you.

Godspeed, and Go Saints!

BioWare Owes Brett Favre A Collectible Art Book or Two

Mass Effect 2 has sold 2M+ units. On one platform. In one week.

I believe this is in part due to its mega-successful sponsorship of the Vikings-Saints playoff game two weeks ago. For the uninitiated, this was the game that that left Brett Favre clutching at his graying scalp after throwing an interception to end his career.**

I, along with many of you, I'm sure, purchased ME2 as a way of saying thank you to BioWare for sponsoring the moment that banished Brett from the spotlight. Had he made it to the Super Bowl, we all would have been reinserted in that ESPN-fueled southern-drawl purgatory. Instead, Commander Shepard can now afford spinning rims for his Neptune.

**"...to end his career" cannot be guaranteed due to Favre's incredible douchebaggery.

If you're still scratching your head at the user-made levels in Echochrome, the game's creators are preparing to unleash a new round of puzzling challenges on you with Echoshift. Though the title still hasn't nailed down a release date, a recent post on the PlayStation.Blog mentions that a demo is coming later this month. Demos for small, quirky releases like Echoshift don't tend to precede the game's release by a huge margin, so we would wager a guess at the game coming soon after in spring.

The blog also shed some new light on the game modes, called "cast," "key," and "illusion." Cast is the standard mode with a timer, and it unlocks the other two modes. Key, true to its namesake, involves finding a key to unlock the door to finish the stage. Illusion, meanwhile, lets you freeze time and move around the stage, while your echo remains still. Apparently DLC of additional levels will be made available after release as well, for those who have gigantic brains and breeze through the challenges at a pace mere mortals cannot comprehend.

The focus of the puzzles is on creating multiple copies (or echoes) of yourself to progress through challenges, similar to titles like Braid, The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom, or even the Clank portions of Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time. Check out our preview for first-hand impressions of the puzzler. We'll let you know when we hear any official release details.

Expose a crooked police officer; help stage an accident for an inmate; steal a van of medical supplies and then sell them; attack a paramilitary police post. That's just a selection of some of the new jobs you'll find available to you in Bangkok as part of the latest expansion to Mafia Wars, marking the fourth locale available to visit in the game and the first to cater to both low- and high-level players.

The Mafia Wars unacquainted should be aware -- before they race off to Facebook expecting to see Grand Theft Auto running in their browser -- that the game is entirely text based. You're not actually coordinating the accident of a prison inmate or searching for evidence to expose a crooked cop. Instead, you're clicking various links on a page with missions listed that require energy and certain items and yield experience and money (to buy those required items, invest in businesses, etc.). It's not a game for everyone, but developer Zynga has certainly found a successful formula -- more than 6.5 million people play Mafia Wars every day, and over 23 million play each month.

Bangkok isn't a departure from the norm, so if Mafia Wars hasn't entertained you in the past, this latest expansion isn't likely to change your mind. For anyone who does enjoy the game, or former players who simply ran out of things to do, Bangkok is a welcome addition. It brings 90 new jobs and six boss fights, as well as faction-specific missions. At regular intervals throughout the six episodes (only two of which are available now in the beta), you get to choose between helping either the Yakuza or Triad. Doing so builds up reputation with the group you help and lowers your reputation with the other, so obviously it's advantageous to pick one group from the outset and stick with it throughout. Reaching certain milestones gives you access to perks, like buying high-end items or otherwise unattainable businesses from a faction-exclusive store.

New businesses are included in the expansion as well, allowing you to start accumulating money in the local currency: the Baht (just as with the previous expansions, your foreign money holds no value in Bangkok). They function exactly the same as businesses you may own in any other city -- you can upgrade them in three ways (capacity, output, and quality), and are required to manually collect your earnings.

And there are other new additions, too, like new items and collection sets. But as you may have begun to notice, this is an expansion of "more" versus "new." True, all of these additions are new, but what you're getting is essentially more of the same. For that reason, the Mafia Wars devout will be pleased to know the game isn't being changed dramatically, and should provide something to do for both low and high level players (Bangkok becomes accessible at level 18).

But, by that same token, Zynga isn't likely to lure in any new gamers, either. The new faction alliances give you a little something to think about rather than mindlessly hitting the "Do Job" button, but it doesn't dramatically alter the basic formula in any way. Fighting is now faction-based, but that was unavailable in the beta, so it's unclear if the player vs. player aspect of the game will see more of a change than the single-player has. Even if it hasn't (and that seems like the safe bet), you can't blame Zynga -- with so many millions of players actively playing Mafia Wars, it's clearly doing something right.

So you've purchased Mass Effect 2, but you can't read the tiny text on your SDTV. Don't laugh -- more people are playing Xbox 360 in standard-def than you think. Unfortunately, it looks like BioWare won't have a fix for those silent legions anytime soon.

In a recent post on the official forums, BioWare's Michael Gamble wrote, "We understand that on some Standard Definition TVs the smallest text in Mass Effect 2 can be difficult to read. While this was not an intentional result, it was a byproduct of enhancements to the user interface."

"After investigating potential solutions, we have determined that while this issue does affect a small portion of SDTV owners, we are unable to resolve it for Mass Effect 2 through a title update. However, we have taken note of this issue and will take it into consideration as we plan future games in the Mass Effect franchise."

Tiny syndrome has affected other high-definition games, most notably Dead Rising. Capcom opted not to release a patch for that game either.

Looks like SDTV owning Mass Effect fans will just have to make do. There's always the PC version, right?

There have been plenty of instances in which we've had to report that a game has been delayed, but not enough where we get to report that one has been moved up. For Phoenix Wright fans though, we bring happy tidings.

Capcom has announced that the WiiWare release of Phoenix Wright: Justice for All has been moved up a month from its March release date. If you missed out when it hit the Nintendo DS back in 2007, this is your chance to play it on the big screen.

Originally developed for the Game Boy Advance in Japan, Justice for All is the sequel to 2005's Ace Attorney. The original game is already available on WiiWare, with the rest of the series slated for later this year.

Justice for All will run you 1000 Wii Points ($10). Expect it February 15.

In the footsteps of another Sony published property in Little Big Planet, ModNation Racers is making the move to the PlayStation Portable. In this case though, the PS3 original hasn't even been released yet.

Instead, the PSP version of ModNation Racers will be released alongside its console brother, and will feature the same emphasis on user-generated content. That also includes kart customization, track creation and online multiplayer supporting up to seven players.

The PS3 version was announced back during E3 2009, and has been called a "thoroughly modern take on kart racing." The PlayStation Blog has promised more info on the PSP game starting next week.

Expect both games this spring.

Ist ThomasG der 'Champion' für GaB?

Das neue Spielsystem der WCO verspricht viel Spannung für die Fans. Für einen Clanwar werden vier Spieler benötigt, drei werden als Challenger und einer als Champion eingesetzt. Alle drei Challenger müssen im Best-of-One gegen den Champion des anderen Teams antreten, danach kommt es gegebenenfalls noch zu einem Ace-Match zwischen den beiden Champions. Insgesamt wird es somit sieben 1on1s geben, ein Unentschieden ist demnach nicht möglich.

Auch die Auswahl der zu spielenden Maps ist einzigartig. An jedem Spieltag ist eine Karte aus dem Mappool für das erste 1on1 der Champions festgelegt. Danach dürfen diese zwei weitere Maps entfernen, wodurch noch fünf Karten für die verbliebenen Sub-Matches übrig bleiben. Aus diesen dürfen die Challenger selbst eine noch nicht gespielte Karte auswählen. Ein gut aufgelegter Champion kann also das komplette Match im Alleingang entscheiden, allerdings wird es sehr schwer werden alle drei Spiele hochkonzentriert und fehlerfrei zu bestreiten. Hinzu kommt, dass durch die Mapwahl jeder Spieler seine eigenen Vorlieben einbringen kann, um dem Champion das Leben noch schwerer zu machen.

Auch im Mappool gab es im Vergleich zur letzten Saison Änderungen. Mit Forgotten Garden, sowie Frostbite Trail sind gleich zwei neue Maps im Mappool vertreten. Dafür musste die beliebte Zweispieler-Karte Terenas Stand weichen.

Mappool:

Twisted Meadows
Turtle Rock
Melting Valley
Echo Isles
Secret Valley
Ancient Isles
Forgotten Garden 2.0
Frostbite Trail 2.5

VoShiX ist mit Raptor-Gaming am Start

Der erste Spieltag:

Keepers of Destruction vs. x6tence
Geh aB Clan vs. Millenium
aRirang vs. Raptor-Gaming
Betsson Voodoo Gaming vs. Infernal Gamers

Championsmap: Echo Isles

Zum Abschluss war der Spanier VortiX so nett und hat verraten, was er von dem Match gegen KoD, sowie vom neuen Spielsystem der WCO hält:

Statement Juan 'VortiX' Moreno Durán:
"Die neue Saison der WCO hat nun endlich begonnen. In Runde 1 spielen wir gegen KoD. Ich bin froh das wir gegen sie spielen, da sie ein unheimlich nettes Team sind. Es wird schwer sein diesen Clanwar zu gewinnen, da sie über gute Spieler verfügen, allerdings gehen wir gut vorbereitet in dieses Match, damit wir den ersten Sieg holen. Alles in allem wird es eine sehr schwere Saison für uns, da viele gute Teams vertreten sind.

Ich mag die WCO sehr, was an dem innovativen Spielsystem liegt. Die 1on1s sind nun wesentlich wichtiger und man kann nicht durch ein verlorenes 2on2 das Match verlieren."

Shortly over a year after The Lost and Damned debuted on the Xbox 360, Grand Theft Auto IV's Episodes from Liberty City will no longer be exclusive to Microsoft's console. Rockstar just announced plans to bring both The Ballad of Gay Tony and The Lost and Damned to PC and PlayStation 3 this March.

The two episodes were temporarily Xbox 360 exclusives thanks to a little encouragement on Microsoft's part -- $50 million worth, to be precise. That deal appears to have run its course, however, and with all the talk of lower-than-expected sales of the expansions on Xbox 360, it shouldn't be too surprising to see them turning up on other platforms.

Look for both GTA Episodes on the PlayStation Store, the Games for Windows Live Marketplace, and at retail on March 30.

Fans of Kojima Productions' work are probably accustomed to inexplicable weirdness by now. Case in point: Metal Gear Solid 4's shaved monkey in a diaper, Little Gray. Now the Metal Gear developers have launched a new, browser-based, multiplayer... puzzle game?

Yep. Part of Konami's promotional efforts for Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker include this new, free-to-play game called Metal Gear Solid: Piece Walker. It's a puzzle game in the most literal sense, tasking players with guiding tiny men in painted cardboard boxes to the appropriate spot on a grid -- eventually forming an image of something from the Metal Gear universe. Pearl Jam fans might find it a bit reminiscent of the tie-in that showed up around the rerelease of Ten last year.

The real kicker here is that there's a full multiplayer mode, which allows up to four players to compete to solve the most pieces of the same puzzle. Victory earns the user points, and they can spend those on special items to help turn the tide of battle. There's even stat tracking and a leaderboard.

Yeah, it's a pretty weird way to promote a videogame. But is it any weirder than The Pain from Metal Gear Solid 3 turning a swarm of bees into a Tommy gun? Didn't think so.

Wondering how Mass Effect 2 is selling just three days out from its January 26 release date? If EA's internal figures are to be believed, things are going just fine over at Bioware. The publisher announced that Commander Shepard's spacefaring sequel has moved over 2 million copies this week.

Bioware co-founder Dr. Ray Muzyka seems pleased with the news. "Mass Effect 2 is poised to be one of the biggest games of 2010," gushed the general manager of EA's RPG and MMO division. "We could not be more proud of the game's universal acclaim and early commercial success."

Sure, these aren't exactly Modern Warfare 2 sales numbers. Then again, you can't expect every blockbuster to hit 4.7 million in its first 24 hours.

Sam & Max developer Telltale Games once again has free episodes of their adventure series up for grabs today, but they're asking for a little more work than usual this time around: In order to receive your free downloadable episode from any of Telltale's series, simply fill out their brief survey. Redemption codes for the free games will be sent via email within a week or two of completing the questionnaire, though our friends at Telltale would like us to note that supplies are limited. So if you don't mind exposing yourself to a little overt marketing to secure freebies, then you'd better act fast.

Electronic Arts is leaving no stone unturned in their quest to make the most of the upcoming World Cup. Hot on the heels of the announcement of 2010 FIFA World Cup, we have FIFA Online, which will be free-to-play this summer.

Players with a broadband Internet connection and a decent computer should be able to access the title, which will contain more than 30 licensed leagues and 500 clubs. As with the mainline FIFA games, players will be able to acquire players, upgrade skills and build up their dream team.

Like most "free" experiences, there is a micro-transaction angle. Users will be able to acquire unique apparel for their players for a little extra cash, and "additional content will be designed for the game based on feedback by fans."

Beta testing for FIFA Online will kick off February 3, with an English language version scheduled to launch in June -- just in time for the World Cup.

If you want to register for the closed beta, you can do so via the official site.

The classic Aliens vs. Predator Gold Edition is now available on Steam, but fans have had to forgo multiplayer until now. That changed today, with a brand new patch that brings back the original game's online component.

The re-integrated multiplayer enables players to invite and join friends via the Steam Overlay, and will also use host migration. At the moment, dedicated servers are not supported or planned.

If you're planning on jumping into some classic AvP, be warned -- certain weapons like the Marine Smartgun are murder on the poor Xenomorphs. With luck, things will be a little more balanced when the new Aliens vs. Predator hits next month.

As an appetizer though, it's hard to beat the original. You can find it on Steam for $4.99, and it should be more than enough to hold you until the new game hits February 16.

Apocalypse Shock?: "The original story had the player going to a spaceship to assassinate a character similar to Colonel Walter Kurtz from Apocalypse Now."

Zero-G vs. Technology: "Originally, the level that would become The Many had the player traverse from the Von Braun to The Rickenbacker on the outside of the hull."

F'ing with the Player: With the help of Randy Smith, who was on loan from Looking Glass Studios, the script that Levine wrote was built into the sequence in DromED (the tool used to create levels in System Shock 2). Levine remembers, "That was a very challenging task and ended up being the most complex sequence in the game to script, with the multimedia presentation where the player finds out that Shodan has been posing as Polito the entire time."

Different Ending: "Due to miscommunications or differing ideas, a different cinematic video was created from the one that I originally scripted," says Levine. "It had this elaborate sequence where Shodan would attempt to kill you in a double-cross, as this 'cyber stinger' that was in view provided tension of your impending doom."

900 Square Feet of Amateurs: "System Shock 2 was made in single room, which was around 900 square feet," Levine recalls of the original office space that Irrational Games called home.

There's a lot more over on the site, so fans of System Shock 2 should head over and check it out.

Evil genius.

It's time for another Madden cover announcement. But wait, while previous entries have seen fans begging EA to omit their favorite players, this year presents the opportunity to inflict the so-called Madden Curse on the other team.

Electronic Arts and Doritos have teamed up for a promotion that will allow fans to vote for who will appear on the cover of Madden NFL 11. The candidates are New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees, Colts receiver Reggie Wayne and Vikings defensive end Jared Allen.

Last year's cover actually depicted two athletes -- the Steelers' Troy Polamalu and the Cardinals' Larry Fitzgerald. As it turned out, Polamalu was the one who bore the brunt of the "curse," as he was injured for much of the 2009 - 10 campaign.

Vote will also earn you a chance to see the NFL Draft in New York City this April. If you want to participate, just click the link above and sign up.

The survey was conducted by telephone as part of the Internet & American Life Project, and found that 89 percent of young males own or have access to a console. Girls at a similar age come in at 70 percent.

The survey also showed 56 percent of males and 47 percent of females owning a Nintendo DS or PSP. Ownership also drops for older teens, with 44 percent of those aged 14 - 17 owning a handheld compared to 66 percent for kids aged 12 and 13.

"Beyond the age and gender differences in ownership, portable and console gaming platforms are equally likely to be found in households regardless of race, ethnicity, household income or parent's education," Pew said.

The survey was based on interviews with 800 teens from June to September 2009. Lots of other statistics through the link above.

This is pretty awesome news for anyone who prefers the full-album approach to DLC over singles, as there hasn't been a release of this magnitude for several months now. Pricing on Rust in Peace is still unannounced, but it will likely fall in line with previous albums that have turned up on the platform -- $1.99 (160 Microsoft points) per song, with similarly-sized albums going for around $14.99 for nine tracks.

Read up on the full tracklist for the album that frontman Dave Mustaine calls "the quintessential Thrashterpiece" below:

• "Holy Wars... The Punishment Due"
• "Hangar 18"
• "Take No Prisoners"
• "Five Magics"
• "Poison Was the Cure"
• "Lucretia"
• "Tornado of Souls"
• "Dawn Patrol"
• "Rust In Peace... Polaris"

Look for Rust in Peace on the Xbox Live Marketplace and the Wii's in-game music store next Tuesday, February 9, and on the PlayStation Store that Thursday, February 11.

In what seems to be becoming something of a trend, THQ is packaging an older game with the upcoming shooter Metro 2033. In this case, last year's Red Faction: Guerilla

.

Pre-ordering the upcoming post-apocalyptic shooter on Steam will net you the surprise hit as well, which was highly praised when it debuted last year. We gave it an "A" in our review.

On the face of it, Metro 2033 doesn't have a ton in common with Red Faction, apart from the publisher and maybe the atmosphere. But the shooter based on the dystopian novel of the same name does look to be an interesting dark horse release for March.

Metro 2033 will be out March 16 on the Xbox 360 and PC.

You might have heard that a little band called The Who will be playing during the half-time show at the Super Bowl this weekend. You also may have picked up on the news that the band plans on performing a special, condensed medley of their greatest hits during Sunday's big game. Now developer Harmonix has announced that Rock Band owners will be able to download a previously recorded version of that performance immediately after the game.

The track, which they're calling "The Who Super Bowl S-Mashup," will be priced at the standard $1.99. It's coming to the Xbox Live Marketplace and the Wii following the game this Sunday, February 7. The PlayStation 3 version is listed as "coming soon" -- if we had to guess, that'll be next Thursday, February 11.

Judging from a recent Billboard interview with guitarist Pete Townshend, the performance sounds like it should push all the right buttons for fans of The Who:

"We're kinda doing a mashup of stuff. A bit of 'Baba O'Riley,' a bit of 'Pinball Wizard,' a bit of the close of 'Tommy,' a bit of 'Who Are You,' and a bit of 'Won't Get Fooled Again.' It works -- it's quite a saga. A lot of the stuff that we do has that kind of celebratory vibe about it -- we've always tried to make music that allows the audience to go a bit wild if they want to. Hopefully it will hit the spot."

Fight for your life.

I'd love to boil down the tale of Dark Void to a sentence or two like I do in most reviews, but presentation is one of this game's most obvious flaws. You're Will, a guy who was a pilot in the service but got "dishonorably discharged" for something, and you're now running courier missions. A gal named Ava shows up for one of these missions, and it turns out you have a history with her. You take off, go down inside the Bermuda Triangle, and are suddenly in another dimension filled with tribal people and alien slug creatures in robotic suits... well, some are slugs in suits, others are robots who are just robots and then there are these aliens with lisps that are hard to understand. Here, a guy who looks like Walt Disney gives you a jetpack but never introduces himself or explains his actions. Things only get weirder and more convoluted from there, and unless you're willing to read the instruction manual and do all the legwork, the story will never come together.

Dark Void's hook is that it gives you the chance to be the Rocketeer. You'll get the jetpack early on and be able to leap into the sky to hover over the bad guys or fly around at breakneck speeds. When you're hovering you'll have access to the same two weapons you're allowed to carry when you're on foot, and when you're flying you'll shoot with the unlimited machine guns on your pack. Neither mode is all that spectacular.

When you're flying you're going to be up against ships that are only programmed to get behind you. You'll start to get shot at from behind, do a 360-loop to get behind that ship, and try to get a few hits in before it falls behind you again. When you're close to a ship you can perform a "skyjacking" and hop onto the aircraft to try and bust in, but the process of doing this is a drawn out, repetitive affair. By the end of the game, I had gotten so sick of taking ships down this way (and getting cheaply killed while doing it) that I found the equally repetitive mission of trying to dogfight them to the ground to be the better alternative because it seemed faster.

Die, UFO No. 213.

Although you can fight while hovering, the ability is just kind of there as a transition between the ground and the sky and vice versa. When you're down on the ground and obeying the laws of gravity, you'll find that Dark Void is your typical, generic third-person shooter. You take cover on objects, blind fire, hurl grenades, and so on. These robots you're up against take a ton of shots to take down in the early goings of the game, but that really shouldn't matter because you can one-hit kill most of the jerks with your melee attack.

Of course, in true Dark Void fashion, there are only a few melee animations, the one where you shoot the robot in the back rarely lines up to look correct, and most of the enemies will stand there while you swing at them. Even if you're shooting them from a distance, many of your enemies will just sit there and take the beating until they're dead. Combat's just there -- it's not exciting or fulfilling.

Capcom tries to put a new twist on the action with "vertical combat," but this is both absurd and the part where most people start getting motion sick. Here, our hero will hover up to a hanging platform ledge, grab on, and somehow make his body parallel to the ledge. Imagine standing flat against a wall -- that's how he's hanging from the underside of these overhangs. It's physically impossible. Anyway, while hanging from this perspective, you're looking up at the action and popping out to shoot baddies and advancing to the next platform with a button tap. This whole shimmying, jetting, rotating, and shooting part gave me a headache. I was able to adjust to it, but I know some IGN editors have not.

A whole new world!

These "eh" moments of dogfighting, melee attacking people, and vertical combat might not be so grating if Dark Void didn't beat the concepts into the ground. This three-episode game isn't that long (two solid play sessions should polish it off), and you will do these same things over and over again. By the time I reached minute 30 of escorting a massive slow-moving ark down a tight corridor -- I was blasting UFO after UFO from the ark's turrets, dogfighting anti-aircraft guns, and a whole bunch of other annoying stuff -- I was on the verge of tears. When I was using vertical combat to make my way down a hangar and escape the alien base, I was praying for the level to end. These are not the feelings one has when playing a good videogame.

Beyond all the presentation and gameplay fumbles there are actually a few "eww" moments on the technical side. Lip syncing is off, shadows look bad, cutscenes don't run very well on the 360, bland environments are all over the place and sound glitches pop-up quite a bit (the PS3 had a couple of segments of choppy, in-and-out sound while the 360 had static on some of the voices). Although it's nice to have Nolan North on board for the voice of Will, North sounds exactly he does as the lead in the Uncharted franchise and the fact that Will looks just like Nathan Drake does little to distract from the fact that you should be playing that game instead of this one. Do these issues sink the game? No, before this stuff popped up I knew it was a lackluster experience, so this was just par for the course – another cog in the machine of "meh" that is Dark Void.

It's Nate and Chloe... wait a minute...

Closing Comments
Dark Void is all over the place. The story’s never explained adequately, the combat’s pretty much always a chore, and flying isn’t nearly as fun as it should be. I don’t hate Dark Void, but I don’t care for it, either. This is one of those titles that just exists; I doubt few will remember it this time next year.

Alongside the new gameplay features, the team has focussed on producing the best visuals ever seen for a flight game on PSP while also significantly ramping up the online functionality. Multiplayer gameplay lets ace pilots get even with their foes in the eight player online versus mode, or cooperate with up to four friends in the co-op campaign mode. Let the tracers fly.

Namco reckons that Ace Combat: Joint Assault will deliver visuals that are second-to-none for the PSP when it hits this summer. Check out all-new screenshots below.

Clear skies.

Bryn says: I like the Ace Combat series. Over the years its managed to keep itself entertaining while at the same time not stepping over the boundary between arcade-style play and hardcore sim play. Having said that, I've recently been enjoying IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey on the 360 -- now that's a blast. Are you more of a simmy flyer?

Namco Bandai Games' Japanese headquarters announced today that Ivy the Kiwi?, a touch pen-based action puzzle game from Yuji Naka's Prope studio, is coming to the Wii and Nintendo DS. Both versions will go on sale April 22 in Japan for 3990 yen; special "Mini" versions will also be available on WiiWare and DSiWare for an unspecified amount of points.

Originally released for Windows Mobile platforms last year, Ivy is a puzzler that stars a young kiwi as she navigates through a series of 2D side-view stages. Ivy runs back and forth by herself; you must use the DS stylus or Wii remote to stretch out vines for her to walk on, carrying her over walls and past spikes and other dangers. Ivy isn't completely helpless, either -- if she's standing on a vine, you can use the pen or remote to slingshot her forward, drilling through walls and other enemies.

Check out a gameplay video from the Windows Mobile version to get a better idea of how the game works.

What will 2010 be like for Japan and its smaller (but nevertheless relevant) game industry? Famitsu asked a few of 'em in this week's issue, and here are some choice quotes:

- "In a way, video games are getting more 'extreme' than ever before. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is the spearhead of that movement. Seeing the sheer amount of detail put into portraying a modern battlefield really gave me a perspective into where video games are going in the future, I think. They aren't 'approaching' films; instead, video games are horning in on the stage movies have set and actually surpassing it. Uncharted 2 had the same effect on me." -- Goichi Suda, head of Grasshopper Manufacture

- "In Ace Attorney I created the games I believed were the funnest out there, and I appreciate the gamers who agreed with me on that. I'm taking the same stance with Ghost Trick; I always want my games to be simple and fun enough that they never get old, not even 10 or 20 years from now." -- Shu Takumi, writer for the Ace Attorney series

- "One of the charms of the Yakuza series is that it's not focused on women, or children, or Western gamers -- all those concepts are thrown out, and instead it's fun because of what it really is at the core. I don't want to dull that by deliberately focusing on the overseas market. Of course, that doesn't mean I don't care if my games don't sell in the US -- if they can, I'd love them to. As a game designer I have my eyes on other markets, but that will be a job for another game." -- Toshihiro Nagoshi, game producer for Sega

- "I think 2009 was the year that the iPhone and iPod Touch really made a name for themselves. There's been a massive amount of apps released, and the software's just been growing and growing since last year. In Japan there's still this division between cell phones and portable systems like the DS and PSP, but we might see some killer title on the iPhone that really starts making waves in the industry. The iPhone's CPU and memory aren't exactly robust compared to dedicated game systems, but once it catches up with the PSP and DS, I think there's a chance the industry will naturally flow to handsets like that." -- Hiromichi Tanaka, producer of Final Fantasy XIV

- "It's true that there's a great deal more attention paid to the [Metroid] series overseas than in Japan. Unlike before, though, this game will portray a lot of the internal human aspect of Samus. She's a strong woman, but a fragile one, too, and I want the game to express both aspects of her humanity. It may be 'just' an action game, but I want gamers to put their hearts into it." -- Yoshio Sakamoto, producer of Metroid: Other M

Namco Bandai has announced that, as part of a new "group reboot plan" for the company, they'll be looking to cut around 630 jobs or roughly 10 percent of their workforce.

The massive round of layoffs -- or, in corporate parlance, soliciting employees for "early voluntary retirement" -- follows the publisher's announcement that they expect to post a 31 billion yen ($343 million) net loss for the fiscal year ending March 2010 (via GameSpot). The staff reduction should account for around a 3.5 billion yen ($38.7 million) saving by the end of the next fiscal year (ending March 2011).

In explaining what the publisher itself called "extraordinary losses" for this fiscal year, they attributed it to home software sales falling "below projections given weak market conditions for most of major home game software." Tekken 6, evidently, was their only release in the fiscal year that met or performed above expectations.

But it's not just games that hurt their bottom line, as Namco Bandai also pointed to "sluggish sales" from their "Visual and Music Content" and "Amusement Facility" divisions.

In the pages of Famitsu magazine this week, Team ICO head Fumito discussed the current state of The Last Guardian, his team's latest title and one that touched off a flurry of excited coverage at E3 and the Tokyo Game Show last year.

We haven't heard much about Ueda since those events -- mainly because he's been too busy working to say a lot. "I concentrated mostly on game development in 2009, so I don't have much of an impression on which way the industry went last year," he told Famitsu. "There were titles I was looking forward to as a gamer, of course, but I don't think there was anything that really surpassed my expectations. That may just be me getting old, though."

Part of Ueda's relative reclusion is due to the way he's approaching his current project. "I really appreciate the great response [The Last Guardian] has received overseas, but I admit that I'm trying not to listen to too much outside commentary right now," he said. "I want to avoid putting more pressure on myself than I need. With this project, especially, our studio's getting a lot more fan support than we had with Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, which in turn adds to the pressure. Lately, as a result, I've just been trying to keep my head in my work instead."

What's Team ICO working on now, then? Primarily, getting the eponymous guardian's look and feel down to perfection. "The presence and lifelike-ness of the creature is the most important aspect of the game, so that's what we're devoting ourselves to right now," Ueda commented. "Wrangling such a huge creature in HD resolution is harder than anything we've done before, but we're gradually getting it where we want to be. I'd also like people to pay attention to the player character and how he moves, too. His animation is extremely deep and fits in with the physics engine in ways we haven't done before."

That's great and all, of course, but when are we gonna see it? "I can't say much now, but I'd like to get more info out during the year," Ueda said. "We have yet to decide whether that'll be at E3 or during the Tokyo Game Show, however."

And as for a release date? "We're pinning one down at the moment. Once we decide upon one, I think it'll get into stores pretty quickly."

After being acquired by Take-Two and before the release of BioShock, Irrational Games' name was changed to 2K Boston. However, after repeatedly being referred to as "2K Boston (formerly Irrational Games)," the team members recognized a value in the previous identity and the legacy that was tied to it. So, the name was changed again; 2K Boston is no more, and Irrational Games is back.

A rational conclusion.

Click above to watch a clip of the orcs against chaos.

My real issue with the title is in its technical shortcomings. Graphical detail is relatively low unless you zoom the camera in, but that limits your view on what players are doing on the field. Slowdown creeps into the experience, often for no reason at all. Other IGN employees mistook the game for an original Xbox title and once you see it, I think you'll agree with them. Thankfully this brand of game is in no way dependent on pleasing aesthetics, so Blood Bowl gets a pass of sorts in that regard.

Sadly there's also an abundance of text to wade through and plenty of guidelines to memorize to be able to enjoy the feeling of victory. It all harkens back to a previous era of gaming that seems like it would be better left in the past. I understand that some players enjoy the abundance of statistics and rules to be memorized, I'm just not one of them. It doesn't help that everything was clearly designed for the PC, with little attempt to pretty it up or smooth out the menu navigation.

Click above to watch goblins take onthe elves.

If the turn-based gameplay is a little too slow for your taste, there's also the option to play a real time version. Sadly that quickly degrades into entering into a "concentration mode" every five seconds that pauses the game, thus everything feels very similar to the mode that you were trying to get away from. There's also Xbox Live play available for two people and, in my experience, everything ran smoothly.

Closing Comments
Blood Bowl is a respectable attempt at bringing the ideals of a board game to a videogame. It has decent elements of personality, but the abundance of text and rule memorization can be a downer when all you want to do is get into a game. With so many other great games from the holiday and early in 2010, it’s difficult to recommend Blood Bowl unless you have a serious hankering for a board game on your TV screen.

Rating	Description
out of 10	click here for ratings guide
4.0	Presentation So much text to get through before getting into a game is a real drag. D&D fans will be right at home thanks to the amount of rules.
3.5	Graphics Muddled character models and texture work make this one look like it’s from a generation gone by.
6.5	Sound Some cool quips from the two goons providing commentary help add personality. Music and effects could be more lively.
6.5	Gameplay The translation from board to screen goes fairly smoothly for Blood Bowl. Sadly the design and nature of the source material hold it back.
5.0	Lasting Appeal The real time and turn-based modes aren’t all that different from one another. Xbox Live play helps if you can get the rules down.
6.4 Passable	OVERALL (out of 10 / not an average)

Tyler says: As Gus Mastrapa of Game|Life points out, while we may feel a burning fire inside because our favorite game wasn't nominated, a more apt outlet of our agitation would be Entertainment Weekly critic Owen Glieberman. Glieberman reacted to the inclusion of videogames in the Guild Awards the same way you and I would react if we found a rat's head in our box of chicken nuggets. He also takes the time to lob a few jabs at former PC Gamer founder and Game Theory podcast host Gary Whitta for his "Book of Eli" screenplay (he's currently penning the live-action "Akira" screenplay).

As for the actual WGA nominations: Wet, are you kidding me? I realize the WGA only accepts guild members, but damn the pickings couldn't have been that slim. Let me give you a sample of actual Wet dialogue:

(voice of a stereotypical Asian man): "Want to try some of my secret sauce?"

This represents the best game-writing of 2009?

Compared to current movie production values, the first Mortal Kombat looked like it was shot on the SyFy Channel's backlot. And in 1995, the only CG special effects they had were Raptors and the watery gateway from Stargate, the latter of which MK uses for, well, everything in Outworld.

Now, thanks to the wonderful world of present day, more money can be poured into the production to give us a scale that is, at the very least, on par with Doom's studio budget, but hopefully 70% less sucky.

A bigger budget equals bigger Kombat arenas, which means no more Liu Kang vs. some guy from Only the Strong, next door to Jeff Probst's tribal council. The arenas should also represent some of the fan favorites (Bridge over the spike pit, please) and should allow for as dynamic a fight as possible. How cool would a fatality-ending brawl be if it happened in the coolest ring the games ever had, all in one take, with Matrix-esque sensibilities now?

Impalements are also a must.

And as for the special effects, we think even the movie's die-hard fans would agree that Goro needs an upgrade. Full photo-realistic CG, please. That way, we can actually get a Fatality worthy of the four-armed brute, and not just a shoulder punch to Cage's friend.

No more Highlanders for the new MK movie. Maybe even cast some real martial artists to make the fighting more real and visceral, as the first movie is quite guilty of cutting away from the action on key hits, in favor of random close-ups of Liu Kang kung fu yelling into camera.

Raiden performs LASIK on himself.

And if the film can get some "big name" stars in the roles of Johnny Cage, Raiden (Chow Yung-Fat FTW!) and Shang Tsung, all the better. We suggest casting a relative unknown as Liu Kang, as most of our proposed story hinges on him being in nearly every scene. If the actors can participate in as many of the fights as possible, then that would lend the reboot a better chance at connecting with its audience through the action set-pieces, which will no doubt be wall-to-wall in the reboot. Even the first movie gave a lot of the actors a chance to show off their moves.

If anyone from the first MK opus should return, or provide a bridge between film series, we suggest Bridgette Wilson. Mrs. Pete Sampras hasn't done a whole lot of anything movie-wise. So if she can get some time off from her job at Pinkberry, we hope the script can afford her a cameo.

The Mortal Kombat franchise has a rocky history when it comes to Hollywood. The first MK film is one of the few videogame adaptations to actually strike a chord with moviegoers. The sequel, however, is decried as one of the worst movies ever made. It's been a while since Mortal Kombat: Annihilation stumbled into theaters, and finally the franchise is going to get another chance at glory.

It was recently announced that Mortal Kombat will be receiving the reboot treatment. Given that Hollywood still can't seem to wrap its collective head around videogame projects, we feel it's time we offered a few suggestions for ways to improve the series. If the new MK film can follow thee guidelines, we should hopefully be able to avoid a repeat of Annihilation.

You want to know one thing that bugged us about the Mortal Kombat movies? Well, clearly there were many things, but it was frustrating that the movies so rarely relied on the iconic moves and fatalities of the characters seen in the games. Other than Johnny Cage's Split Punch and the occasional blast of ice from Sub-Zero, there isn't much in the fighting style of the movies that evokes the games. (But we do give credit for featuring Liu Kang's first horizontal bicycle kick attack in the first movie.)

"Give us a kiss!!!"

That needs to change this time around. We want Liu Kang to unleash his full arsenal – flying jump kicks, bicycle kicks and even a few fireballs for good measure. When it comes to Scorpion, we don't want to see his signature harpoon turn into a bird-like monster that lives inside his hand. We merely want to see him impale an enemy, scream "Get over here!", and go to town on their vital organs. Is that too much to ask?

Conversely, we'd like to see the fighting take on a more brutal and violent tone. Mortal Kombat shouldn't be full of characters who look more like actors sparring than real fighters. We want every burst blood vessel and broken bone to be seen, felt and heard on-screen. If that requires the movie be given an R-rating, then so be it. When a franchise prides itself on excessive violence like Mortal Kombat does, there's no point in cutting corners for the movie.

A man wearing a Goro skin suit is not Goro.

The movie, ultimately, will live and die by the fight choreography. Bring in Yuen Woo Ping and his unique brand of Wire-Fu, but also bring in some blunt-force action, a la the fighting style of the Bourne films. The more the film can present the fighters' unique fisticuff styles, the more variety the combat will have, and the happier audiences will be. (Basically, watch the leaked Tekken trailer online, share the laugh with your colleagues, and do the exact opposite of that.)

Arguably, the best thing Paul Anderson's MK had going for it was it's "In" to the story; how we managed to kinda sorta buy Liu Kang and Johnny Cage's reasons for answering Tsung's e-vite to Outworld's Octagon.

Liu Kang's Pantene Pro-V hair has gots to stay.

We suggest taking a similar approach, and keep Liu Kang as our main protagonist. In fact, we pick up with him like we find Wolverine in the first X-Men movie – fighting for money and purpose. Swap out a bar in Canada for a makeshift fight club, though, as our world is populated with young Turks and quick kicks who have heard of the infamous Outworld tournament, and thus participate in fight clubs around the world to prove themselves worthy of participation in it.

Liu Kang's brother (or maybe his lover) lost their lives in the tournament, and Kang lives the rest of his days introducing opponents to a permanent state of FUBAR. Along comes Shang Tsung's Mystique-like emissary to make Kang an offer he can't refuse – to fight in Outworld for revenge, for meaning – and cue the techno "Mortal Kombaaaaaaat!" music.

Follow a similar recruitment process for Johnny Cage, Ms. Blade and the rest of our heroes. Or maybe Raiden sets out to assemble an army of Kombatants to take down Shang Tsung.

Just over Liu Kang's shoulder is the Flight 815 survivors' camp.

Another possible take could be to follow a plot similar to the MK game Shaolin Monks, and have Liu Kang and Kung Lao take point as they head off to Shang Tsung's Academy for Soul Swallowing. The core purpose for all of this would be to showcase the world and why these people fight in the first place. (And yes, kids, there will be plenty of opportunity for Sub Zero, Scorpion and Goro to deliver some hurt.)

Liu Kang: It doesn't matter which MK fighter of the 2700 available you prefer. Liu Kang will always be the main hero of the franchise. Especially since this new movie is going to be a reboot, Liu Kang's presence is absolutely mandatory. The other fighters may be there for their own personal reasons, but Liu is the one with the strength of character and the fighting skills to actually win the day and topple Shang Tsung. The alternative is one really depressing ending for our heroes.

Kung Lao: One of the disappointing aspects of the movies is that Kung Lao's role was greatly

downplayed. The character died within the first moments of the original film, with his death

serving as Liu Kang's motivation for entering the tournament. This time, we'd like to see Kung Lao actually join his brother in kombat. Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks proves the franchise is often at its best when these two join forces. 

Sonya Blade: Sonya Blade needs to be present, if for no other reason than we don't want the next MK movie to be a total sausage-fest. But that's hardly the only reason. Sonya provides a nice no-nonsense attitude to complement her good looks. If Sonya defines what it means to "fight like a girl", then we consider that a very high complement.

Scorpion: What is Mortal Kombat known for if not its plethora of multicolored ninjas? And which of these ninjas is more beloved than the demonic Scorpion? Forget Liu Kang, we bet fans would be lining up with torches and pitchforks if Scorpion didn't make the cut. With his memorable moves, tragic backstory, and his rivalry with Sub-Zero, Scorpion is the complete package.

Sub-Zero: You can't have Scorpion without Sub-Zero. It's a law of nature. Check your physics textbook. These two ninjas are as inseparable as Snake-Eyes and Storm Shadow, and their rivalry is at least as heated. The first MK movie failed by not pitting these two against one another in any significant way. This time, we expect Sub-Zero to unleash the full force of his icy powers against Scorpion.

Johnny Cage: Every movie needs a dose of comedic relief. That's where Johnny Cage comes in. This world-famous actor also happens to be an accomplished fighter with an impressive repertoire of moves. He's self-confident and full of swagger. And he's also not afraid to bust out a Shadow Kick when appropriate. Just in case the next movie is in danger of taking itself too seriously, Johnny Cage will be there to save the day.

Raiden: Mortal Kombat is full of heroes who get way in over their heads. That's where Raiden comes in. This Elder God controls the power of lightning and manipulates humans like pawns on a chessboard. But unlike many of his brethren, Raiden generally has Earth's best interests in mind. MK has many gods from otherworldly realms. For now, however, we think the franchise should stick to Raiden and slowly work its way up the ladder.

Shang Tsung: Shang Tsung may not be the biggest bad guy in the Mortal Kombat ranks, but he's still one of the most popular. It would just be wrong to reboot the franchise and not have Shang Tsung waiting in the wings. This master warrior and devourer of souls has made many enemies over the years, and any MK saga must begin with the story of how Earth's greatest topple this tyrant.

Goro: Where Shang Tsung wanders, Goro looms behind him. This hulking beast is Tsung's bodyguard and the ultimate MK champion. Colorful ninjas and escaped convicts are one thing, but sometimes we need our MK fighters to clash with something truly out of this world. With today's CG technology, we can finally get the epic Goro fight scene we've been waiting to see.

Reptile: At some point the franchise went a little overboard with palette-swapped ninja characters. Does anyone actually play as Ermac? But Reptile came in before the trend got old. This green ninja may look human, but underneath he's cold-blooded and ruthless. The battle between Liu Kang and Reptile is still one of our favorite scenes in the first movie. Fifteen years later we expect even more from this scaly villain.

Watch the first Rush in action.

San Francisco Rush 2049 is actually the third game in the series for the Nintendo 64. The original San Francisco Rush was released as a first-generation game on the console. The N64 edition was a port of the coin-op edition in 1997, featuring track designs based around locations in and around the city of San Francisco. This already struck the right nerve with me, as in 1997 I had made the big move from New Jersey to California, and I was just learning the streets of the City by the Bay. Now, Atari Games took incredible liberties with its track layouts but the recognizable locations were there: the Golden Gate Bridge, Embarcadero, Twin Peaks...it's almost like the city was made for intense high-speed chases as seen in a wide variety of popular films, and Atari Games took all that energy and put it into an over-the-top racer with equally over-the-top physics.

Now, the Nintendo 64 version of the original San Francisco Rush suffers a bit in presentation: its game progression is nearly non-existent as it's just a port of a pick-up-and-play arcade game. You simply choose your track, choose your vehicle, and you're off trying to beat the clock, the computer AI drones, and – if you're playing in split-screen mode – a human opponent. It's also not exactly what you'd call a "pretty" Nintendo 64 game: due to cartridge space and system memory restrictions, textures are muddy and low resolution, and the soundtrack is absolutely dreadful.

But taking this "first generation" mentality in mind, there's a lot to love about the original San Francisco Rush. The track designs are incredibly fun with some really spectacular shortcuts. My favorite: the ramp that takes you airborne to an unseen track on a rooftop, shaving precious seconds off the clock if you can manage to make it up there unscathed…and it was a amazing feat if you managed to pull it off.

The game encouraged exploration – finding the hidden points to shortcuts that are more fun to accomplish than they are helpful to access. There were also hidden keys that unlocked secrets within the game, but they weren't exactly easy to find.

The game was successful enough for an original sequel on the Nintendo 64 in 1998: Rush 2: Extreme Racing USA. The follow-up used the same engine but built racetracks in locations all over the country instead of lingering around one single city in one single state. Cities like Las Vegas and New York were used as a backdrop to the over-the-top racing. The result is a game that lacked a bit of focus and creativity, as the track designs failed to offer the same wild jumps and shortcuts that made the original so much fun. There were some nice ideas here but it just didn't come together as a noteworthy addition to the series.

The original stunt track.

But Rush 2 did introduce a mode that seemed ripe for expanding: stunt mode. Outside of the races, you could simply drive in a sandbox of sorts, launching your car off of inclines and speed bumps to see if you can pull off some spectacular moves using the game's crazy physics engine. This mode was a welcome addition, though it definitely felt like you were simply driving around the programmer's debug sandbox because the visuals are horrible.

Then San Francisco Rush 2049 was born. The game had already seen incredible success in the arcades: the original San Francisco Rush concept was turned on its head with a fresh take on the design. The track designs revolved around a crazy, futuristic version of San Francisco, so while areas were recognizable, the designers took even more liberties with the locations. This was the city in a fictional "fifty years later" scenario that'll never happen, but it's still fun to see the interpretation.

When Midway West (the renaming of Atari Games after Midway scooped them up) brought the game home it went all out. It wasn't just about recreating the arcade experience, it was about expanding upon it.

First of all, the track designs were brought over and enhanced with newer shortcuts and branches that were also enhanced for driving in the opposite direction. There were zip strips added to the roadways to help or hinder racers who were ahead or behind the pack. The designers even added switches that could be driven over that would affect the track in some way: switches could cause shortcuts to open temporarily, or have huge pylons thrust outwards to get in the way of your opponent: time it right and you could cause your competitors to screw up by throwing a wall in their way.

Stunt mode was even given a shot in the arm, and enhanced with the new "wings" addition to your vehicle. At any time during a race, you can pull out wings that will stabilize your car and give you full control over rolls and flips. It makes things a bit more fair during races as in previous versions of Rush (and the original Rush 2049 arcade game) subtle bumps and jumps would cause your vehicle to tumble out of control.

The Stunt Mode offers a much more elaborate sandbox to zoom around and calculated the score based on how much – or how little – you used your wings for assistance. Points rang up for every turn, spin, flip, and time spent on two wheels, but you only secured the points if you landed it safely.

And Battle Mode may seem like a throwaway mode at the start, but there's a surprising amount of depth and strategy to this four player car combat deathmatch. There's something incredibly fun about zooming around with Rush physics while blasting opponents with an assortment of wild and crazy weaponry.

Twin Peaks, in the future!

The game even had a fantastic time-trial mode that recorded ghost data to the memory card, and you could play back as many as three ghosts during a time trial race to see how well you stack up against the competition on any given track.

This was a long way to go to simply put a plea out there to whichever company currently holds the rights to San Francisco Rush: it's time to give this game the revival it deserves. Atari Games and Midway are no longer around, with Warner Bros Interactive buying up most of the assets from Midway. There's a good chance that WB has retained the rights to Rush, and if so, please bring it back.

Keep in mind that I don't think the game is perfect, San Francisco Rush, to me, is a better "driving" game than a "racing" game. The design lacks a bit of personality in the racing portion: opponents are just generic cars with no names attached to them, so when you're working through the basic progression it's tough to find yourself competing against anyone specific since they're just mindless drones. But with a stronger focus in the racing progression, I think Rush could find a place among the arcade racers of this generation: Burnout Paradise on the Xbox 360 is my current favorite in the genre, but an updated Rush could easily trounce it.

Both the arcade version of San Francisco Rush and the Dreamcast version of Rush 2049 (superior to the N64 version mind you, but not by a whole lot) made a brief and very affordable return in the Midway Arcade Treasures 3 bundle on the GameCube – which is fully playable on the Wii – but the bundle is a little difficult to find nowadays. The easiest way of bringing back the franchise is to hit the Virtual Console – start with the original San Francisco Rush then work your way in. Rush 2 and Rush 2049 are a little heavy on the in-game advertisements, but with a small development budget you could have someone dig into the source and pull out the ad textures in the same way that Nintendo handled the Kawasaki banners in Wave Race 64. The ten year old cartridges still play well even when they're upscaled on the newer widescreen displays.

Midway dropped the ball with the PlayStation and Xbox game spin-off L.A. Rush released a half-decade ago, taking the name but not the concept of the original arcade, N64, and Dreamcast editions and building a poor underground racing game around it. What I want is a return to what made the arcade games so great, with a current generation polish. It's something that would make a great Wii-exclusive: the Dreamcast and arcade versions still look great compared to today's games, and those graphics are a cakewalk to recreate on the Wii hardware.

Rush 2049 machines are still taking in money in active arcades ten-plus years after their debut. The series may have been retired with the downturn of the coin-op era, but I think there's still a place for a Rush refresh. Whoever's got the rights, make it happen.

It's more than likely that Vanquish will wind up being either a first-person or third-person shooter, hopefully with some interesting online multiplayer components. Very little is known about the game at this point, and other than the movie (which can be seen above or at the Platinum Games site) fans of Platinum's former works -- Bayonetta and MadWorld -- will just have to sit tight.

Master Chief's long-lost cousin?

We're expecting E3 2010 to be the place where Sega and Platinum Games lift the lid on Vanquish, but if it's not, then surely the next Tokyo Game Show will reveal all.

Bryn says: Mikami is a great developer, and I have no doubts that Vanquish will turn out to be something special. If I could choose, I'd stick my neck out and ask for a slightly different twist on the action genre. Remember Capcom's P.N.03 (also a Mikami game) on the GameCube? I liked that game, and while the vast majority of critics were split on it, I'd like to think that Vanquish will try something different like Capcom did. The last thing we need is another Halo knock-off.

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Gaming Gear

Xbox 360 Elite with Madden '10 and Extra Controller - $309.97 (Normally: $399.99)

Get it at: Best Buy

Life as an Xbox 360 gamer has not entirely been fun and games. As of last week I am now on my third Xbox console as the first two were claimed by the red ring of death and committed to the sea. My other dilemma is that I am still stuck with the original 20GB hard drive that came with the first-run units, meaning that half of my play time is spent deleting old content to make way for new demos and premium themes of Marcus Fenix in boxer shorts. I needs me an Elite system, which Best Buy is now offering at a discounted rate complete with sweet extras.

Instead of the regular bundled titles like Lego Indiana Jones, this package comes with a copy of Madden '10 and an extra black controller to boot. You'll need to add all the items separately in order for the reduced price to show up in the final cart, but the link above will make that easy on you, sweetheart.

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Home Theater Gear

Vizio 42" 1080p LCD HDTV - $799.00 (Normally: $849.00)

Get it at: Dell

Vizio built their entire legacy on cheap LCD televisions between the sizes of 32"-36" inches, long considered the perfect girth for smaller entertainment centers and bedroom gaming/movie setups. However, the company is starting to edge into the realm of slightly larger TVs, including this 42" 1080p LCD HDTV that is carrying a price cut of $50.

All of the technical aspects for this set are your standard, run-of-the-mill stuff, though it is nice to see a Vizio display boasting full 1080p. Another nice surprise is that a full quartet of HDMI inputs comes included, which is not something you see on too many 42" televisions. Combine that with the company's sterling reputation and overall quality and you've got yourself a cheap yet reliable winner.

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Computer Gear

HP 17.3" Laptop - $579.98 (Normally: $749.99)

Get it at: Staples

Most of the IGN staffers are card-carrying laptop users, with tastes ranging all the way from the super small netbook models to the more common 15" setups. The only problem with the standard-size laptops is that the screen is just a shade too small for maximum lap-based media entertainment, which is why we're now on the lookout for bigger and badder units like the 17.3" HP G71 Series Laptop.

For less than $600 you're getting some pretty beefy features including a Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T6600, 4GB of memory, 320GB hard drive, DVD-R/RW drive and the centerpiece HD LED BrightView widescreen display. It isn't too large for the casual web surfers at Starbucks, yet it can still be considered a desktop replacement if you're looking to consolidate down to just one computer.

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Threads

Respawn Tee - $10.00 (Normally: $18.99)

Get it at: Split Reason

A lot of the shirts we feature here often feature a character or theme associated with one particular game or console, which tends to alienate anyone out there that isn't interested in Pac-Man, World of Warcraft, or Halo. So this week we went looking for a shirt that could unite the entire gaming word under one banner, and what we found was the Respawn tee.

In the age of first-person shooters galore, respawn has become one of the most commonly used words in the video game lexicon, despite barely being uttered at all even just ten years ago. Heroes no longer die and start back all the way at World 1-1, they just warp to their base camp with a fresh set of ammo and shields. Now only if we could get something like this going in real life, even getting ice cream would become 1000% more violent.

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Gadgets

Insignia 1080p HD Digital Camcorder - $99.99 (Normally: $149.99)

Get it at: Best Buy

Personal video recording devices have really come a long way in the last fifteen years or so. Back in the day the only people manning the bazooka-sized family camcorders were Mom and Dad during the holidays so that they could document the disappointment on our faces when we got clothes as presents. Since then, recording embarrassing and incriminating footage has become something that all ages are interested in, with prices on powerful recorders like the Insignia 5MP HD Digital Camcorder dropping sharply.

This particular Insignia model is capable of shooting full 1080p, with 90MB of internal memory built-in. You can watch your masterpiece unfold through the 3" LCD screen, or even shoot high-resolution still images. All the normal additional trimmings such as image stabilization come standard in case you don't want your birthday party footage looking like a deleted scene from Cloverfield, and then transfer all the magic over to your TV or computer for immediate viewing.

A truism has existed for decades – software is king. It's how consoles thrive and it's why the iPhone has proven to be an unstoppable beast in the smartphone marketplace. The iPad is going to live and die by its software, and I haven't seen what I want yet. By the time I do, we'll be near second-gen, and I suspect that's when Apple gets my money.

A great initial blueprint to what ultimately may reshape the publishing industry. But we're not quite there yet.

Greg Miller
Editor
On the one hand, I want one. On the other hand, I think it's stupid. Oh, the iPad. I have an iPhone and love it. I actually write the first draft of many of my reviews and previews on the device while riding the train to work. I see how the bigger, cooler iPad could be useful, but in the same breath, why would I need it? Again, I do everything this expensive thing does on my expensive phone. Why buy a tablet I need to carry around?

Elias Slater
Director, Mobile Products
I think that touchscreen-centric games will invent new gameplay and genres and that the iPad has the potential to compete with the PS3, X360, and Wii. You could have family drawing games on the family TV that competes with the family Wii night, everyone has a tablet or passes one around to contribute to the portrait.

FPS and RTS gameplay can take on a whole new level of interaction. Dual-screen shooters where the TV shows the action and the iPad is your controller and map all-in-one. It seems like the RTS genre will fit perfectly to touchscreens. From a device standpoint, I don't see why anyone would buy a PSP, DS, Kindle, portable DVD player, GPS, etc… when a iPad does so much more. All it will take is a few killer Apps to make this thing take off.

Matt Casamassina
Editor at Large
The super megaton hype bomb exploded and now we're sifting through the messy fallout. Seems everyone's a cynic, whether decrying the tablet's similarities to the iPhone or parodying its seemingly feminine hygienic moniker -- but my iLust hasn't yet abated.

There are two ways to behold the device. It is either a Kindle competitor -- killer, rather -- or an alternative to the traditional netbook. By the standards of the former, the iPad is pretty incredible. It is simply the best ebook reader ever created -- the display is amazing, full color, backlit, and fully multi-touch, all with an alleged 10-hour battery life and a month of standby time. Meanwhile, the economic model barely costs more than a Kindle DX. That's all pretty impressive.

But as a netbook replacement -- well, that's where iPad's feature set is counterbalanced by its shortcomings. As Steve Jobs himself said, netbooks don't do anything well. By comparison, the iPad offers magnificent Web-browsing, photo editing and sharing, and video watching experiences, but if you intend to write the next great American novel on the computer, it might take you a half century on the virtual keyboard. Also, if you seek the Internet to research something for said novel, you'll have to fully close down Pages before you load Safari because the iPad doesn't allow multitasking. I think my heart actually wept when I learned that little doozy. That it actually lacks some of the features of the iPhone -- never mind the ability to make phone calls; where's the camera? Even netbooks have cameras -- is also disappointing.

iPad is a master of some trades -- for all the skepticism and for all the cynics so happy to trounce the hardware -- I very much doubt you will find a better way to surf the Web, browse photos or read ebooks anytime soon. However, it also strikes me as a contradictory piece of hardware -- designed to simplify, but accidentally complex in some very fundamental ways; like an add-on keyboard for people who type a lot or an optional camera for chatters.

Circling back to my first paragraph, though, I still think it's a sexy piece of hardware and I've already got plans to buy the high-end 3G version for both myself and my wife when it ships in three months. Under normal, off-hours circumstances, I browse the Web, take and share photos, play games and read books. iPad is very well equipped to handle all of these tasks -- even games. I'm an avid games player on iPhone and expect the same will be true of its big brother. And it's incredibly portable.

RIght now, apps for iPad are -- Apple's suite aside -- glorified high-res iPhone downloads and nothing more. But even that will change in time. It only took two and a half years for nearly 150,000 apps to flood the iPhone. If iPad numbers are even one tenth as strong, there should be plenty of variety going forward.

Phil Pirrello
Editor, IGN Stars
Being one of only three people who do not yet own either an iPhone or an iMac, the iPad didn't do much to inspire me to go full Apple anytime soon. Why? Hey, I like flashing lights and shiny objects as much as the next geek, but it's going to take more than a turtle-necked Steve Jobs to convince me to buy a device that can do that which computers and smart phones can already do.

I want an iPhone. I am this close to rewarding myself with a Mac Pro. But I am not sure why I need an in-between like the iPad – talking on that thing would make the Zack Morris phone look new age. Moreover, I don't think those who already own an iPhone or Mac believe they need an iPad for the aforementioned reasons.

Craig Harris
Executive Editor
I love my iPhone. I think it's one of the coolest, most versatile gadgets around. So it makes sense that Apple wants to expand on that concept with a larger device with more screen real estate – when I gave my dad an iPod Touch for Christmas a year and change ago he told me he wished there was a bigger device that did the same thing. So there's obviously a market for the idea.

However, the reveal was a whole lot of missed opportunities. All it is is an iPod Touch with a bigger screen. We waited two years for that? No cameras for video chatting – come on, Apple, iChat on the Mac is awesome and you still haven't managed to get that running on a mobile device. And the interface looks like they rushed a port of iPhone OS and called it a day. The home screen simply spreads out all the App icons and leaves a bunch of vacant space? That's not very elegant for Apple standards.

Things can advance leading up to the release, but I'm not holding my breath. I will wait for the iPad 2.0, and then pounce on the device. Until then, my iPhone 3GS will do just fine.

Chris Roper
Executive Editor
I'm an iPhone developer in my spare time, so I'm buying an iPad just for that end of things. If I wasn't, though, I'd still be torn on the purchase right now. In fact, even though I already know I'm picking one up, I'm not sure what I'm going to be doing with it beyond development, so I'm having a hard time figuring out which version to buy. Do I go with the minimum spec and pick up a 16GB with no 3G to get in on the cheap, but pretty much only use it at home? Or do I wait for the 3G versions and pick one of those up? I don't even know how much media I'm going to consume (or perhaps even create at some point), so I'm not even sure what to do about the storage size.

The point is that there are a lot of questions regarding how robust its usefulness will be and exactly how much I'll be using it, particularly in the long run. A lot of people are just calling the iPad an oversized iPod Touch. I think that's the wrong way to look at it. Instead, I think the iPod Touch (and even iPhone) is just a scaled-down iPad; in other words, the iPad (or a future version of it) was the end goal, and the iPod Touch was just a preview of what was to come.

The larger screen size and faster processor adds a lot more functionality to the device. More screen real estate means more work room, more easily-accessible features and a generally better experience in total. Just looking at the demos for iWork shows that it's capable of doing things that the iPod Touch and iPhone simply cannot handle. That's what has me excited. If I can eventually get a portable (albeit stripped-down) version of Photoshop or a similarly capable graphics app on there, and Pages from iWork winds up being completely useable while on the road, it could replacement my laptop for most tasks outside of development.

I do have two main issues with it though. One is that the lack of multitasking is a big letdown. Now, what's curious is that I don't think most people aren't looking for true multitasking across the entire system. They just want to be able to go between apps and not have them start from scratch. If iPhone OS 4.0 adds either true multitasking or complete state saves (when you open an app it'll be right where it was), then I think most people would be happy. Being able to run something like an instant messenger in the background would obviously be a benefit though, so even if you only had the option to run one or two apps in the background, and then use saved states for everything else, I think most folks would be OK with it.

Secondly, and this is kind of the bigger one for me right now (though the above point would be mandatory to fix this), is that you're still required to have a real computer to manage your content well. By that I mean that you can't (at least right now) edit video on it, truly manage a photo library, record music or any of those other things. If you also have an iPhone or iPod Touch, you can't manage that device with the iPad; you have to use a separate machine. In other words, it's still an accessory to your setup rather than a full-stop computer. What I want, and what I think most people want, is for the iPad to be the thing that manages all of your other gadgets, and not just be one itself. I'm hoping iPhone OS 4.0 brings it closer to that status.

The much anticipated release of Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City for the PC and for PlayStation 3 computer entertainment system is coming this spring – on March 30, 2010. For the first time, PlayStation 3 and PC players will have the opportunity to experience the last two thrilling chapters of the Grand Theft Auto IV saga together on one disc.

The two action packed episodes, The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony, will also be available for download via PlayStation Network and Games for Windows-LIVE on March 30, 2010.

Coming to an ignored platform near you this March.

Tuesday, as always, brings with it a new addition to the Games on Demand catalog on the Xbox Live Marketplace. This week, those in North America will find Dance Dance Revolution Universe 3 ($29.99 in the U.S.) has been added, while those outside of North America and Asia will instead see Medal of Honor: Airborne. DDR might not be the best purchase from Games on Demand unless you already own a DDR mat; if you don't, Amazon has a new copy of the game with a mat for the same $30 price you'd be paying for just the download.

If dancing isn't your thing, tomorrow will bring with it the new Xbox Live Arcade game Chime. Visually, it's very reminiscent of Lumines. And much like Lumines, it also has a pretty big emphasis on the soundtrack, featuring songs from both Moby and Paul Hartnoll, among others.

The goal is to create groups of 3x3 by rotating and placing shapes before time runs out. At only 400 Microsoft Points ($5), this sounds like a bargain at a time when seemingly every XBLA games fall in the $10-15 range. Dropping your money on Chime will not only get you a copy of the game, but also the knowledge that you're doing something helpful. According to the game's official website, developer Zoë Mode will donate all of its royalties -- "a minimum of 60 percent of the purchase price" -- to the OneBigGame charity. They will in turn donate the money to a variety of charities, with at least 80% going to the Save the Children and Starlight Children's foundations.

A game the size of Final Fantasy XIII has been bound to come on multiple discs for the Xbox 360 incarnation, and we've now learned just how many discs will be included. After online rental service GameFly listed it with three DVDs last night, Square Enix officially confirmed the news to VG247. The game will consist of two disc swaps, so it seems the content on the three DVDs will follow in regular sequence. The PlayStation 3 version is still set to come on one Blu-Ray disc.

While it may ignite fights among console loyalists, this isn't terribly surprising. We've known three discs was the target since August, and to our own eyes it looks just as smooth as the PS3 version. Most 360 RPGs have required multiple discs, including the recently released Mass Effect 2, and it hasn't harmed their reputation. It might bother some people to get up and swap discs every 10-20 hours, but as long as the game runs well, we doubt too many will complain.

Back in May and June of 09 respectively, both Wal-Mart and Best Buy -- two of the biggest videogame-selling retail chains in the nation -- began experimenting with used games sales by using automated kiosks for consumers to trade-in titles and receive credit card or store credit. And now only a month into 2010, both experiments are over as kiosk-provider e-Play has closed its doors.

The reason for e-Play's shut down isn't clear, as their website offers the less-than-informative message, "e-Play, LLC has suspended operations. Thank you to all our customers." But according to IndustryGamers, analysts never expected Wal-Mart's or Best Buy's experiments to make much of a dent in the used games market, and apparently that turned out to be the case. Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia called their business "underwhelming," and said the kiosks would be turned off and "removed from the locations over the next few weeks."

So does this mean Wal-Mart and Best Buy are done with the used games market for good? Hard to say, but as Bhatia noted, "it is clear the used games business is not an easy one to execute."

You can count at least one game out of the upcoming crush of March releases. Koei has decided to move its third-person action shoot Quantum Theory from late March to a nebulous date in the future.

The publisher confirmed the delay in a statement to Videogaming247, "We feel the game deserves optimum development time, and we aim to deliver the very best title we can."

Quantum Theory stars a warrior-marine named Syd and a woman named Filena as they explore an evil, shape-shifting tower. As you might expect, Koei says the title will be all the better for the delay.

It now has a nebulous "TBA" attached to it, so no idea on when it'll be coming out. At a guess, we can expect it on both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 this winter.

If Iwata's claim is true, then Asahi Shimbun was accurate in their initial report, but that accuracy was based on a bit of a leading question, and the paper was actually quoting its own reporter instead of Iwata. Also, they seem to have left out a piece of Iwata's reply that he feels was important. It seems he wants to stress that features like better graphics and a motion sensor are obviously going to be included, but Nintendo is looking to introduce more than just that. This could close the book on this particular media fight, unless the newspaper comes back with a comment of its own -- which is entirely possible.

Like all of Microsoft's weekly bargains, this deal is set to expire precisely one week from today. So if you're at all interested in a game in which every face button on the controller causes the main character to explode, then you should probably hit up the Xbox Live Marketplace immediately.

The only remaining question is what to do with the extra five dollars in your wallet after you've downloaded the game. And the answer is pretty obvious: Go buy a box of donuts. Everybody loves donuts, right?

Team-Captain FoCuS
führt Korea durchs Turnier

In der Gruppenphase sind allerhand Topteams vertreten. Neben den aus dem ENC bekannten Nationalteams wie Schweden, Dänemark und Ukraine, sind auch Länder wie die USA und Australien mit am Start. Ein Highlight dürfte allerdings die koreanische Mannschaft sein. Auch wenn Spieler wie June 'Lyn' Park oder Jang 'Moon' JaeHo fehlen, hat der deutsche Team-Manager Barnet 'sOOnMaNiAc' Bredlau ein gutes Team zusammengestellt. So werden unter anderem Eom 'FoCuS' Hyo Sub und Hyun 'Space' Park Sueng ihr Land bei dem Turnier vertreten.

Schweden (Effect, DowaQ, LiiLD.C, ThorZaIN, ZoZ, Fhra, Skutt)
Spanien (Lucifron, MaCk, VortiX, Arius, EviL, Calvin, DoKy)
Belgien (FisT, Ojune, KOPITZ, Reave, FeasT, JungsU, RgR)
Kasachstan (VeryB1gman, Evanescence, Zealot, Protose, Gamer, Classic, Armgeddon)
Deutschland (HasuObs, HLA, dArk, ReiGn, yAwS, VoShiX, Dolorian)
tbd

Russland (Nicker, Cash, JadeDark, Roll, Please, KemPeR)
Australien (Oors, HandFish, Kernal, JaVrs, Forhelen, Amensiac)
Südkorea (FoCuS, viOlet, Michael, Space, Shy, Yange)
Slowenien (Klerna, Amater, Commander, ShowMe, Cimo, TriGriceK)
Großbritannien (DeMuSliM, MaGe.Hun)T(er, Shad, WeAkUD, iDentiFy, Bassfly, NiNjA)
tbd

Ukraine (Majestic, Sonik, Tresh, SnaKe, Bly, Ser, Kas)
Dänemark (ThomasG, MyWa, Ciara, Rosenkill, Gahh, Serups)
Rumänien (Kramer, NightEnD, goliat, norvaS, MIsTKY, Fishlips, Cyclone)
Polen (Paladyn, Show, Zapek, Almost, sLh, Valer)
Serbien (Padash, Aca, Weakskill, AJK, Rudan, Virus)
tbd

Finnland (Naama, Satiini, Sein, elfittaja, Cast, Surrey, Peterra)
Niederlande (noch unbekannt)
Frankreich (hG, Wolf, Stephano, PsYkO, Mak0z, YoGo)
USA (Axslav, LongWalk, HolyHuman, SonKiE, Cruncher, aCidrAin, Archibald)
Bulgarien (Thrall, Sword, Joe3, Los7, Leader, DeloreX)
tbd

Qualifikationsspiele:

Gruppe A
Latein-Amerika vs. Vietnam

Gruppe B
Algerien vs. Weißrussland

Gruppe C
Türkei vs. Griechenland
Lettland vs. Österreich/Schweiz

Gruppe D
Chile vs. Kanada

Auch dArk ist für Deutschland mit dabei

Im Team Deutschland rund um Team-Captain Dennis 'HasuObs' Schneider sind einige EPS-Spieler versammelt und auch Tim 'HLA' Gebel, der vor einem halben Jahr aus der Pro Series ausstieg, da er in Schottland studiert. Dieser wird wohl einige Matches absolvieren dürfen. Neben dem aktuellen deutschen Meister Marc 'yAwS' Förster erhält auch Aufsteiger Eduard 'VoShiX' Ebel die Chance, zu zeigen, was er kann.

Statement Nikolai 'Nik' Ginthör (Team-Manager Deutschland):

Lineup Team Deutschland:

Dennis 'HasuObs' Schneider (Team-Captain)
Tim 'HLA' Gebel
Marc 'yAwS' Förster
Stefan 'dArk' Lehmann
Tobias 'ReiGn' Muth
Eduard 'VoShiX' Ebel
Toni 'Dolorian' Bulitz

Infi, Sky & Co. vor einer schwierigen Aufgabe

Einige Akteure wird man allerdings nicht zu Gesicht bekommen. Auf Seiten von WeMade FOX werden voraussichtlich Neuzugang Lyn und Moon zum Einsatz kommen. Leidtragender ist einmal mehr Soccer, der zum Zuschauen verdammt ist und nur die Daumen drücken darf. Vor allem Lyn, der bei seinem Debüt für WMF beide 1on1s im Spiel gegen den Koreaner viOlet verloren hatte, steht unter Druck. Er muss nun beweisen, dass er den Erwartungen gerecht wird. Bei World Elite wird Infi nach den zuletzt gezeigten Leistungen einen sicheren Platz im Line-Up einnehmen. Wer das zweite 1on1 spielen wird, ist hingegen unklar. Allerdings ist es wahrscheinlich, dass WE kein Risiko eingehen wird und Sky seedet, um so dem Match-Up Undead vs. Orc aus dem Weg zu gehen. Im 2on2 werden womöglich die langjährigen Clanmates Like und TeD zum Einsatz kommen, die durch ihre Erfahrung gute Chancen haben sollten, gegen das 2on2 von WMF zu bestehen.

Ein weiterer Verlust für mystical Lambda. Das ehemalige Lineup, das in der vergangenen Saison noch erfreulich stark aufspielen konnte und die Finals erreichte, scheint nun vollends zu zerbrechen. Nachdem bereits Direnc 'seraph' Öz vor einiger Zeit das Team verlassen hatte und auch Vinh 'ninja' Bui Thanh einen kurzen Ausflug als Stand-In zu n!faculty unternommen hat, kehrt nun auch Leistungsträger Filip 'RSK68' Filipowski my* den Rücken. Wohin es ihn allerdings in der bevorstehenden Saison ziehen wird, ist unterdessen noch nicht bekannt.

..durch pred ersetzt.

mystical Lambda hingegen hat schnellstmöglich einen Ersatz für RSK68 gefunden. Nach dem Umbruch beim EPS-Teilnehmer hoorai konnte man einen der scheidenden Spieler, namentlich Marius 'pred' Förster, für die kommende Saison verpflichten. Der 21-jährige pred ist damit der erste von drei Spielern des alten hoorai-Aufgebots, der sich über einen neuen Arbeitgeber freuen kann. crash und foolisH fanden mit mTw bereits ein neues Zuhause; die Zukunft seiner ehemaligen Mitspieler mason und vio ist zu diesem Zeitpunkt allerdings noch ungewiss.

Sinan 'bauzka' Cavus
Burak 'coLLy' Dogramaci
Engin 'e pato' Demir
Milad 'Milad' Zamiri
Michael 'sephra' Zimmer

Aron 'HABESCHA' Belay (Team-Manager)

Statement von Tobias 'overkill' Steinmann - Management hoorai:
"Die heutige Bekanntgabe mag für viele sicherlich überraschend sein - und auch wir bedauern, einen erneuten Wechsel bekanntgeben zu müssen.

Bedingt durch die Abgänge wichtiger Spieler mussten wir uns dem Aufbau einer neuen Mannschaft stellen, der sich schwieriger gestaltet hatte als zuvor gedacht. Als sich dann mit Patriots ein Team mit Ambitionen vorstellte, wurden auch wir auf diese sehr vielversprechende Konstellation aufmerksam.

hoorai nahm die Möglichkeit war, mit einem Mix aus erfahrenen Spielern und jungen Talenten befreit aufspielen zu können. Ohne Anforderungen, ohne hoch gesteckte Ziele. Wir sind uns dennoch - oder gerade deswegen - sicher, dass wir und unsere Fans in der kommenden Aufgabe der ESL Pro Series nicht enttäuscht werden. Vielmehr möchten wir uns erneut etablieren und weiter auf die Leistung unserer neuen Schützlinge aufbauen.

hoorai ist erfreut, mit Sinan, Engin, Burak, Milad und Michael sein neues Lineup in Counter-Strike 1.6 vorstellen zu können und ich heiße unsere fünf Frankfurter im Namen aller Mitglieder und Mitarbeiter herzlich Willkommen! Auf eine gute Saison, ich freue mich auf die Zusammenarbeit!"

Oleksii 'White-Ra' Krupnyk vs. Eugin 'Strelok' Oparyshev

In dieses innerukrainische Duell geht White-Ra als Favorit. Sein PvT gehört außerhalb Koreas zu den besten, während Streloks TvP nicht außergewöhnlich hervorsticht. In den ukrainischen WCG-Qualifiers erringt White-Ra regelmäßig vor Strelok den ersten Platz.

Gregory 'IdrA' Fields vs. Marcin 'kogeT' Nowak

IdrA bekommt den dritten Zerg in Folge vorgesetzt und dieser könnte sogar noch eine Stufe unter dem letzten, ToT)Mondragon(, stehen, ist kogeT doch aus der TSL bereits ausgeschieden und weder als generell starker Spieler, noch für sein ZvT bekannt.

Damit sind die Chancen auf eine erneute Begegnung von White-Ra und IdrA im Finale als relativ hoch einzuschätzen. Dies wäre unter anderem ein Rematch des letzten ESWC-Finales, in dem sich der aus dem Loser Bracket, in das in vorher White-Ra selbst geschickt hatte, kommende IdrA, ohne ein Spiel abzugeben, durchsetzen konnte; auch in der Gruppenphase dieser EMS spielten die beiden schon, wobei sich IdrA ebenfalls durchsetzen konnte.

TyLoo
PinCho|Wings
UNiTED
Arbalet UA

Gruppe B:

WeMade FOX
forZe
ArLine
TyLoo.raw

Preisgeldübersicht Arbalet Cup Asia:

Die Gruppenphase startet am Samstag um 7 Uhr morgens und soll bis zum Nachmittag ausgespielt sein. Die Playoffs werden am Sonntag gespielt. Außerdem findet auf dem Event ein Allstars-Turnier statt, zu dem vier Teams, Feuer, Wasser, Erde und Wind, aufgestellt worden sind. Der Cup soll am Samstag Nachmittag nach der Gruppenphase beginnen und der Sieger gewinnt 2.500 Dollar.

Preisgeld Arbalet Cup Asia Allstars:

Fire:

Ioann 'Edward' Sukhariev
Yegor 'markeloff' Markelov
Mihail 'Dosia' Stolyarov
Roman 'ROMJkE' Makarov
Thomas 'Thommes' Yasyukyavichyus

Wind:

Dmitriy 'hooch' Bogdanov
Aleksey 'HEL1' Novikov
Dauren 'AdreN' Kystaubayev
Alexandr 'beAst' Yakovlev
Sergey 'starix' Ishuyk

Earth:

Zhen Wei 'alex' Bian
Chao 'GoodRifle' Xue
Keun Chul 'solo' Kang
Seon Ho 'termi' Pyeon
Jiang 'virgo' Qian

Water:

Sung Jae 'bail' Lee
Mon-Soo 'glow' Kim
Huang Biao 'Rita' Hong
Yi 'zy' Zhou
Xue Feng 'xf' Lai

The turn-based strategy genre seems to be a good fit for digital distribution platforms like Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network. The genre has a cult following, but the slow pace of combat and dated gameplay mean even the best entries in the genre will likely enjoy only modest sales -- which is perfectly fine in the low-risk digital realm.

Back in the days of the original PlayStation, there was a cool little strategy RPG called Vandal Hearts (IGN gave it an 8 way back when), perhaps most notable for the geysers of blood that erupted from fallen enemies. Dormant for a decade, the series is back on XBLA and PSN with Vandal Hearts: Flames of Judgment. Fans will find the solid strategy gameplay they remember and the only real blemish with the return is a terrible art style that looks like a Saturday morning cartoon reject.

This isn't a remake of the original Vandal Hearts, but rather a prequel. You are the typical young fantasy hero, destined to save the world with your ragtag group of adolescent friends. Cut scenes are fully voiced (although the animation is ghetto) and some light voice acting on the battlefield lends to your team some personality. The story of war and betrayal is engaging but the ridiculous caricatures make it hard to take seriously. When a person close to you is brutally murdered by someone you trusted, the moment is less poignant when the characters look like they were drawn by a street cartoonist at Fisherman's Wharf.

It is a bizarre stylistic choice considering the mature subject matter and the healthy amounts of blood splatter all over the game. Flames of Judgment was developed by the same studio that handled Konami's Frogger Returns, which featured some of last year's worst graphics. I can't help but imagine the great anime artwork this prequel might have received had it been developed by a Japanese studio, as the original was.

"I demand to be taken seriously!"

This is a grid-based, tactical affair in the style of Final Fantasy Tactics or Disgaea (although not as complex as either). Players are escorted from battlefield to battlefield where they move their characters one at a time like pawns on a chessboard. The usual commands are at your disposal, such as 'attack,' 'magic,' and 'defend,' but Vandal Hearts has a couple unique tricks. Each character can hold two weapons at a time, which is very handy for covering your melee and ranged bases. You can swap between the two equips without the action counting as a turn.

One of the most intriguing aspects of Flames of Judgment is the skill system by which you can customize each character's abilities. Every action they perform will better their melee combat, magic, reaction time, and a handful of other skills. This way you can improve on your team's weaknesses and mold each unit to your liking.

But most of Vandal Hearts is rooted in genre conventions, so while it's sure to please fans, it isn't likely to win over anyone who finds SRPGs tedious. Characters are more vulnerable on their sides and rear, so you'll want to keep your team facing the enemy and try to sneak around to the back side. A unit will be open to a counterattack if the enemy is equipped with the same weapon type. Allies that are close together have a chance of triggering team attacks against the enemy. Attacking from higher ground will give you the advantage and certain objects lying around the battlefield can be interacted with.

Is all of this fun? Well, sure, to me it is because I really like turn-based strategy games. But if you've taken the genre for a spin before and it didn't grab you the first time, Vandal Hearts won't convert you.

Apart from the appalling artwork, there are just a couple interface issues that keep Flames of Judgment from being as smooth an experience as it could have been. Items in the shop are just presented in a long list. When you're comparing weapons and armor and trying to make wise purchases, it would be nice to have all this stuff sorted into categories. Also, some of the background noise audio bits don't loop seamlessly so you'll hear a little hiccup when it starts over again (granted, this is a very small detail that most won't notice, but I'm a bit of an audiophile).

Closing Comments
It's great to have the Vandal Hearts series back but this art style was a mistake. Truly, these characters look like ugly munchkins. Thankfully the strategy gameplay is good enough to convince fans of the genre to overlook the visuals and dig into some old school turn-based battles. The skill system is a great way to customize your team and those geysers of blood never get old. Flames of Judgment might not win over gamers who find SRPGs tedious, but if you're a fan of the genre you'll get your fix here.

Rating	Description
out of 10	click here for ratings guide
6.0	Presentation The return of a classic SRPG series. Doesn't bring anything new to the table except an awful art style.
5.5	Graphics There is nothing technically wrong with the visuals, but they trigger my gag reflex.
7.0	Sound The soundtrack is suitably rousing and voice acting lends your party personality.
7.5	Gameplay It feels a bit dated, as SRPGs tend to, but this is a solid strategy game for fans of the genre.
7.0	Lasting Appeal Multiple endings to see but no multiplayer.
7.3 Decent	OVERALL (out of 10 / not an average)

Sony and Nintendo aren't too worried about the new Apple iPad.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, SCEA's Director of Hardware and Marketing John Koller said Apple's inclusion into the haldheld space has been beneficial for the company.

"Apple's entrance into the portable gaming space has been a net positive for Sony," said Koller. "When people want a deeper, richer console, they start playing on a PSP."

Nintendo, meanwhile, is less than impressed.

President Satoru Iwata said the new iPad delivered "no surprises" and added the new device was too similar to Apple's other products, the Associated Press reported.

"It was a bigger iPod Touch," Iwata said.

The company recently released the Nintendo DS XL in Japan, and like the Apple iPad, is also just a bigger DS Lite with no new surprises.

Nintendo reported worldwide life-to-date sales of its current hardware. The Wii console has sold nearly 70 million units, while the Nintendo DS has top 125 million units sold.

After seeing LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 in action for the first time, two things stand out to me. First, the game is really visually appealing. I know LEGO games have always used cute characters and bright colors as a whole, but this one has some great set pieces and detail. Diagon Alley is popping with color and twisted buildings; there are the familiar paintings on the walls of Hogwarts, but they've been LEGO-ized; and Hogwarts looks pretty slick as you run through its stone corridors and assemble LEGO suits of armor. Second, LEGO Harry Potter feels more like a traditional game than any of the LEGO games I've played before.

Now, that's not a subtle shot at the Star Wars, Batman, or Indiana Jones -- games that have paved the way for this title. It's just pointing out how much this format has evolved. Back when you'd put LEGO Star Wars in, you could just jump into whatever episode of the movie you wanted. Batman amended this a bit because it was an original story, but you still had the large overworld where you'd run around with little direction as to where things were and why they were there.

Click and watch Harry in all his glory.

That isn't how it works in LEGO Potter; you're going to play through the events of Harry's first four years at Hogwarts, covering the events of Sorcerer's Stone, Chamber of Secrets, Prisoner of Azkaban, and Goblet of Fire. As you do, you're going to mature just like the young wizard. You'll need to go to classes to learn spells, those spells will get more and more powerful as you keep studying, and you'll gain access to otherwise inaccessible parts of Hogwarts as the years go by.

Basically, you're playing Harry's life... but it's all told via LEGO blocks.

The norms you'd expect from a LEGO game are all here. When the cutscene of Dumbledore, Professor McGonagall and Hagrid dropping Harry on the doorstep of the Dursleys plays, the characters stick with LEGO tradition and don't speak outside of grunts and groans. There were plenty of jokes as Dumbledore stopped to talk to a cat that he thought was McGonagall only to have the shapeshifting teacher walk up next to him.

The uber-secret red bricks are back and hidden around the levels and when you find them here, you have to get them to the Owl Post. Once the owls fly the goods back to Diagon Alley, you can return and buy them with the studs you're earning. Stud-packed Gold Bricks are here, too, but to get them, you'll have to pull off little tasks throughout the world and unlock quarters to the Hogwarts crest. Assemble an entire crest, and you'll get the goods.

Look at those skills!

What do these tasks entail? Well, during my hands-off preview, Harry and Hagrid stopped in Diagon Alley to hit up the bank and buy some school supplies. While running around collecting studs and working on co-op platforms that used Hagrid's magic to lift picnic tables carrying Harry into the sky, the duo came across a cauldron in the middle of the street. Now, you'll be able to make potions in these pots, but seeing as how Harry's been raised as a Muggle, he has no idea how to make anything. You run around picking up spiders and other ingredients before tossing them into the bubbling stew, and when the stuff's all in there, the pot erupts and hurls green goo all over the street. Switch back to Hagrid, and you can use the little bit of magic he knows to assemble a walking broom contraption that Harry can ride. Clean up the gunk, and you get your first puzzle piece.

There are going to be oodles of little tasks to do like the goo clean-up. At one point, a student was sleeping in the Gryffindor common room, Harry waved his wand at him, and the couch ate the snoozing student before spitting him back out like a compacted cube of trash. This was an example of a "student in peril." These events are all over the school, and Harry can earn studs by saving the day. With the couch kid, Potter waved his wand and restored him to glory. When Harry came across some kids zapping a first-year in the courtyard, he defended the little one and the bullies ran off.

Look at how young they were!

Making the most of your magic is what this game is all about. Harry can lift things with Leviosa (there's a mini-game where you pick up, spin, and hurl gnomes all over the Weasely lawn) and freeze baddies with an immobilize spell (key to getting by the pixies in Hogwarts). These charms (and a whole bunch more) will always be with Harry after he's learned them. That is, rather than have to find a special suit or something in a level to get past a section a la Batman, Harry has all of his spells with him. You come to something that needs to be levitated, bring up your spell wheel with the click of a button, choose Levisoa, and aim at your target with the scar icon on the screen. It seems like it'll be a breeze, and eventually, you'll have the power to run around turning other kids into frogs and rats.

Take that, Luna!

Outside of general charms classes and such, each year will consist of six touchstone missions you'll recognize right away. Advancing from our trip down Diagon Alley, my demo jumped to Hermione crying in the bathroom. A Mountain Troll appeared from a stall, walked to the sink, washed his hands, and then roared at the little lady. Harry and Ron showed up, and the fight was on.

At another point, we relived Harry and company learning to use their broomsticks. Yes, you'll fly in Harry Potter, and it seems pretty solid. The camera stays anchored in one spot and pans to follow the action. You'll move Harry left and right, and if you want to ascend, you'll hit the jump button, but gravity will be pulling you back down if you don't keep hitting it. This wasn't the breakneck speed you see in the movies -- of course this was his first lesson, so who knows -- but it seemed like a welcome change of LEGO pace to me.

Here is as good a point as any to tell you that like the LEGO game that came before Harry Potter, you'll still be able to switch around onscreen characters at will. Thing is, these wizards all have different talents and magic. Young Harry's pretty weak in terms of spells and such, Hermione isn't the best broom rider (she'll spin around in a circle during that first lesson if you take control of her), and Hagrid's umbrella can only do so much. Luckily, there are more than 100 characters unlock and play as – villains included – so it should be interesting to see who rounds out the roster and just how powerful they are.

Although Warner Brothers and Traveller's Tales weren't willing to confirm who those bad guys would be, I did get to see Harry begin reading Tom Riddle's diary and get put into a flashback. Here, Riddle's talking to Dumbledore and Harry's listening in. Everything happening in the flashback has a grainy filter on it so that you know it's the memory while Harry is in the LEGO trademark popping Technicolor to signify he's from the present. In this throwback level, Harry has to work with Tom to finish the tasks at hand and advance the story.

Of course, LEGO Harry Potter supports local co-op play so you can have a friend drop in and out of you game at will; the game uses the new split-screen option from LEGO Indy so that players can run around on their own and not get in each other's way like when they shared one screen. If you're playing on the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360, online co-op is supported as well, but this feature isn't in the other versions of the game. A nice addition to this iteration of the LEGO franchise is that Traveller's Tales has the soundtrack from the Harry Potter movies on hand, so expect to have the full Hogwarts experience even on the audio level.

If it's shiny, you want it.

I played a bit of LEGO Batman, but never went nuts for it like I did LEGO Star Wars. Meanwhile, I kind of avoided LEGO Indy because I wasn't that into the Harrison Ford franchise. However, I like Harry Potter quite a bit, and this game seems to have it down pat. The humor is there as the Sorting Hat puts kids in the houses they need to be, the ability to have all of your spells with you sounds great, and the game really looks slick and colorful. Fans will have to wait until May to get their hands on Hogwarts, but LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 looks like it might be worth the wait.

Microsoft's biggest gaming title of 2010 won't be taking advantage of its new motion camera this coming fall. Bungie Studios denied rumors through its weekly update saying Halo: Reach is being developed with traditional controls and will not incorporate Project Natal.

"Halo: Reach is NOT a Natal title and is being developed expressly with the traditional Xbox 360 controller in mind," it reads.

Speculation began to fly last June when Bungie president Harold Ryan told the New York Times the title could be enabled to use Project Natal, though the studio had yet to clarify until now.

Microsoft recently stated Project Natal will cater towards both the hardcore and casual gaming markets, though the only major title confirmed for 2010 to use Natal is Fable III. Other exclusive titles, such as Crackdown 2, Alan Wake, and Splinter Cell: Conviction, appear to only be using the standard controller input.

The company recently stated that over 70 percent of publishers are developing Natal-based titles, including Electronic Arts, Activision, Capcom, Bethesda, and Square Enix.

Project Natal is set for release this coming Holiday.

Xbox 360 Dragon Age fans can feel a little relief today as BioWare's announced that the Return to Ostagar DLC will return to the Xbox Live Marketplace today. The DLC package has had a troubled start, with delays and a buggy release that had a number of players experiencing major issues. The developer claims the newest release should take care of all the issues.

Unfortunately, PC players will have to wait until next week to get their hand on Ostagar, and PlayStation 3 owners are subjected to the dubious "sometime later" timeline.

• Some players were unable to unlock the four achievements from Warden's Keep and the Stone Prisoner during the first four days of launch.
• These achievements will unlock properly once you sign in to your Xbox Live and EA accounts.
• The previous Xbox 360 update introduced an issue that relocked class specializations. This title update will resolve that issue.
• After loading a previously saved game, specializations that have been unlocked through gameplay will be available again.
• All book-based specializations will now automatically unlock once the Warden reaches level 14. Books will still be available from vendors so you can unlock these specializations before level 14.
• The Hopeless Romantic, Perfectionist and Recruiter achievements were not unlocking for some players. This issue has been resolved. To update and unlock these achievements automatically, load a saved game where the Warden has completed the requirements for these achievements.
• The Recruiter achievement will still require a recruitment to occur after the save is loaded. If you have completed all the requirements for Recruiter, and the achievement is still locked, load an earlier saved game where you are still able to recruit any party member. Once you have recruited a party member, the achievement should unlock. This should work even if your current saved game still has unrecruited characters, but you have recruited all of them in previous play.

Watch the first Rush in action.

San Francisco Rush 2049 is actually the third game in the series for the Nintendo 64. The original San Francisco Rush was released as a first-generation game on the console. The N64 edition was a port of the coin-op edition in 1997, featuring track designs based around locations in and around the city of San Francisco. This already struck the right nerve with me, as in 1997 I had made the big move from New Jersey to California, and I was just learning the streets of the City by the Bay. Now, Atari Games took incredible liberties with its track layouts but the recognizable locations were there: the Golden Gate Bridge, Embarcadero, Twin Peaks...it's almost like the city was made for intense high-speed chases as seen in a wide variety of popular films, and Atari Games took all that energy and put it into an over-the-top racer with equally over-the-top physics.

Now, the Nintendo 64 version of the original San Francisco Rush suffers a bit in presentation: its game progression is nearly non-existent as it's just a port of a pick-up-and-play arcade game. You simply choose your track, choose your vehicle, and you're off trying to beat the clock, the computer AI drones, and – if you're playing in split-screen mode – a human opponent. It's also not exactly what you'd call a "pretty" Nintendo 64 game: due to cartridge space and system memory restrictions, textures are muddy and low resolution, and the soundtrack is absolutely dreadful.

But taking this "first generation" mentality in mind, there's a lot to love about the original San Francisco Rush. The track designs are incredibly fun with some really spectacular shortcuts. My favorite: the ramp that takes you airborne to an unseen track on a rooftop, shaving precious seconds off the clock if you can manage to make it up there unscathed…and it was a amazing feat if you managed to pull it off.

The game encouraged exploration – finding the hidden points to shortcuts that are more fun to accomplish than they are helpful to access. There were also hidden keys that unlocked secrets within the game, but they weren't exactly easy to find.

The game was successful enough for an original sequel on the Nintendo 64 in 1998: Rush 2: Extreme Racing USA. The follow-up used the same engine but built racetracks in locations all over the country instead of lingering around one single city in one single state. Cities like Las Vegas and New York were used as a backdrop to the over-the-top racing. The result is a game that lacked a bit of focus and creativity, as the track designs failed to offer the same wild jumps and shortcuts that made the original so much fun. There were some nice ideas here but it just didn't come together as a noteworthy addition to the series.

The original stunt track.

But Rush 2 did introduce a mode that seemed ripe for expanding: stunt mode. Outside of the races, you could simply drive in a sandbox of sorts, launching your car off of inclines and speed bumps to see if you can pull off some spectacular moves using the game's crazy physics engine. This mode was a welcome addition, though it definitely felt like you were simply driving around the programmer's debug sandbox because the visuals are horrible.