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It’s official: the final bit of Mass Effect 2 DLC, “Arrival” is a real and true paid add-on for the lauded sci-fi RPG. Publisher EA confirmed Arrival this morning, announcing that it’ll be available this March 29 across the PC, Xbox 360 and PSN. It’ll retail for the price of 560 Moon Dollars across the former two platforms and 7 dollars in Earth currency on PSN.

Did the rumors happen to peg what you’ll be doing in Arrival? Maybe. This morning’s press release teases that Arrival will take Shepard to the “edge of the galaxy” in order to aid an operative who has evidence of an impending Reaper invasion. Leaks suggest that you’ll be travelling to the Viper Nebula and meeting up with the Batarian Hegemony, an organization that has beef with the Alliance.   
 


Admiral Hackett, voiced by Alien's Lance Henriksen, will play a “prominent role” in Arrival, which appears on paper, at least, to be that long-awaited bridge content that will seek to connect the events of Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3. 

“Mass Effect: Arrival is an exciting extension to Mass Effect 2 and will show players just how close the Reapers are to returning and completing their deadly harvest,” Mass Effect lead producer Casey Hudson said in a written statement.

A few new images have appeared since our update yesterday, two of which are from today’s reveal. The third image, just below, is another teaser that BioWare pushed out after receiving the impressions it needed from the second Arrival image. 
 

    


 
Needless to say, but I’m as giddy as a schoolgirl about Arrival. Will you be checking it out, too?

#itsadate Commander Shepard travels to the edge of the galaxy to rescue an undercover operative that could have evidence about an impending Reaper invasion in Mass Effect 2's Arrival downloadable content, coming March 29 to the PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3. More »

Hungry-hungry news hippos VG24/7 have posted the date for the climactic last piece of Mass Effect 2 downloadable content, which will supposedly pave the way for Mass Effect 3. In case you missed it in the headline up there, beaming out at you like some kind of… big… date, it’s March 29th. You want details? I’ve got details. (more…)

BioWare has dated the long-promised and recently teased final Mass Effect 2 DLC mission, "Mass Effect: Arrival," for release across Xbox Live, PlayStation Network and Bioware.com (for PC) on Tuesday, March 29. The add-on will be available for $7 (£5.49) or the equivalent platform currency.

Leading players into this holiday's Mass Effect 3, "Arrival" will see Commander Shepard "sent to the edge of the galaxy to rescue an undercover operative who may have evidence of an imminent Reaper invasion." Admiral Hackett (voiced by Lance Henriksen) will make a return appearance.

It’s hard to tell if BioWare actually wanted details of its final bit of Mass Effect 2 DLC to get out before the studio announced it, but it’s plain that the studio is embracing the “leak.” On Monday, a screenshot of the content, dubbed “Arrival,” appeared on the game’s official Facebook page. A second image has since been shared with the promise of a third to hit this afternoon if it secures 750,000 impressions. Neither image reveals too much, but I’d imagine those numbers on the latter says something meaningful to someone:  
 



 
The word on the street is that Arrival has something to do with Shepard answering a distress call during an Alliance and Batarian Hegemony conflict nestled somewhere in the Viper Nebula. Previous entries on the Cerberus Daily News seemingly back this setting up. 

Rumor of Arrival and its content arose from the PS3 version of ME2. Once patched, the game teased the content with three mysterious Arrival trophies. The PC version’s “Alternate Appearance Pack 2” DLC also has some details packed within its TLK files. Destructoid has an awesome post with all the contents of the files, but be warned, there are spoilers inside the various dialogue snippets and codex stuff within.

Since there’s no word on Arrival’s actual existence, I’ve no release date for you. But, if you remember, Cerberus Daily News will end its hiatus for a total of five weeks in 2011, one week of which will “precede a downloadable content” release. If you keep staring at that computer monitor on the game’s main screen, all day, every day, you may just get a heads up before too long.

Ah, yes, the BAFTAs. The annual UK awards gala aimed at showcasing the game industry's many talented developers by giving them mounted gold masks. Aside from Lionhead Studio's Peter Molyneux receiving a Fellowship this year, BioWare's sci-fi opus Mass Effect 2 took home top honors as "Best Game," while Super Mario Galaxy 2 snagged the award for gameplay.

Like last month's IGF awards ceremony, Cut the Rope once again beat out competition in the "Best Handheld" category, while Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit somehow beat out Battlefield: Bad Company 2 for "Best Multiplayer." Can we demand a recount? Because we totally do.

Check out the full list of winners after the break.

Ah, yes, the BAFTAs. The annual UK awards gala aimed at showcasing the game industry's many talented developers by giving them mounted gold masks. Aside from Lionhead Studio's Peter Molyneux receiving a Fellowship this year, BioWare's sci-fi opus Mass Effect 2 took home top honors as "Best Game," while Super Mario Galaxy 2 snagged the award for gameplay.

Like last month's IGF awards ceremony, Cut the Rope once again beat out competition in the "Best Handheld" category, while Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit somehow beat out Battlefield: Bad Company 2 for "Best Multiplayer." Can we demand a recount? Because we totally do.

Check out the full list of winners after the break.

The British Academy Of Film And Television Arts held its big video games awards night last night, and Mass Effect 2 walked away with "Best Game'. Here are all the other winners. More »

#humor Hipsters. The scourge of modern times. And also scourge of the distant future, if this wonderful Mass Effect page is anything to go by. More »

#masseffect If there's one thing you can't say about BioWare this week, it's that they've been slack on downloadable content for Mass Effect 2. Over a year after the game's release, and more is still to come. More »

Behold, a brand new Mass Effect 2 screenshot, posted on BioWare's Facebook page. But wait -- this is no ordinary capture! The word "Arrived" has been stealthily capped in the pic's description, hinting that this is from the rumored new DLC. Which tells us... not much, really. It's still coming out?

#cosplay Which is tougher, the female version of Mass Effect 2's Commander Shepard, or the female version of Dragon Age II's Hawke? When costumer extraordinaire Holly Conrad and crew take on both BioWare sequels, everybody wins. More »

#ps3 One of the great unfulfilled dreams of the present hardware generation is the ability to buy full, retail console games online. On the day they're released in stores. More »

According to a now deleted forum post on BioWare's official site, Mass Effect 2's action figures have been once again delayed, this time until April. Google, however, caught the quote from a BioWare spokesperson, who said "Once we get the ME2 Action Figure shipped we will not be working with DC Direct again ... Their handling of this issue has been extremely unprofessional and disrespectful to fans."

It also appears that a proposed second set of characters from Mass Effect 2 that were on-track for action figure treatment have been canned, as the figures have been removed from DC Direct's website. As such, the continuing battle for Planet Your Shelf will only be fought by Default Shepard, Grunt, Tali, and Thane when the figures launch on April 27.

[Thanks, Ryan]

EA sees positive results with day and day release.

#screengrab More »

#gdc2011 Of those who started Heavy Rain, 72 percent finished it, according to the president of the studio behind the game. That's a rather striking number for any video game, especially compared to another major hit released about the same time. More »

#bioware Plans for even more downloadable content for Mass Effect 2 is hardly surprising, given BioWare's extended post-launch support for the role-playing game. Somewhat surprising is how we've learned about Arrival, via a patch for the PlayStation 3 version. More »

The PS3 version of Mass Effect 2 has been patched, and in the process, has revealed details on an upcoming DLC pack called "Arrival." Featuring three new Trophies, the BioWare forums have been abuzz with theories on what the expansion will entail.

One of the Trophies, "Covert Action," refers to a Dr. Amanda Kenson, who was previously mentioned in a recent Cerberus Network update:
Historians and astronomers alike are abuzz tonight over a new paper published by Dr. Amanda Kenson of the University of Arcturus ... "Only a small fraction of the mass effect relays date back 50,000 years," she writes, "The majority are far older, indicating they were created by a species predating even the Protheans." ... What civilization could have spanned the galaxy for not thousands, but millions of years? If this were the case, we should have found mountains of evidence of their passing. Where is this species now?"Some believe that "Arrival" can refer to the arrival of the Reapers, setting up events for the upcoming Mass Effect 3. Others, however, are more fixated on figuring out how to acquire one of the more ominous Trophies for the DLC: "The Ultimate Sacrifice." Wasn't dying once sacrifice enough?

[Thanks, Shane!]

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts has announced the nominees for its GAME British Academy Video Games Awards, which manage to be prestigious despite the inclusion of a sponsor's name in the title. Even before any winners are announced, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood is representing well, with nominations in seven categories including Action, Artistic Achievement, Gameplay, Multiplayer, Technical Innovation, and, of course, Best Game. Call of Duty: Black Ops is also nominated in seven separate categories.

Other nominees include Heavy Rain (six nominations), Mass Effect 2 (five), and XBLA favorite Limbo, receiving nods for Audio and Artistic Achievement. Best Game nominee Super Mario Galaxy 2 is also nominated for Technical Innovation, an area in which that game is not typically lauded. In addition, the first Social Network Game award includes Bejeweled Blitz, Farmerama, FIFA Superstars, My Empire, Zoo Mumba, and Zuma Blitz as nominees.

Winners will be announced at an awards ceremony on March 16. Until then, you can vote for the GAME Award winner online.

Red Dead Redemption rides off into the sunset with five IAAs, Angry Birds snags Casual Game of the Year.

Gamasutra has obtained NPD data that puts a new filter on last year's US box-copy software sales, ranking the top ten bestselling 2010 releases for each console and handheld platform (PC excluded). Like the monthly NPD breakdowns, these rankings don't include actual sales numbers, but they do reveal some interesting trends.

By omitting Nintendo's so-called "evergreen" titles (i.e., games released before 2010), Gamasutra found that -- perhaps unsurprisingly -- Just Dance 2 was last year's top-selling 2010 release for Wii, and among six additional third-party games that made the top ten in sales for the platform. On DS, however, Nintendo games filled out half of the top ten, and Pokemon SoulSilver and HeartGold were the only titles to surpass sales of one million units each.

At first glance, PSP software sales look even bleaker, with Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep on top and, according to Gamastura, the only PSP title to break 300K units sold; with the other top ten games each falling below 200K. Of course, these rankings don't include digital sales or box-copy games bundled with hardware, so it's unlikely that Birth by Sleep (which isn't available on the PlayStation Store) was the true #1 bestseller among 2010's PSP releases -- let alone the most pirated.

What is certain is that Call of Duty: Black Ops dominated torrents, as well as the games legitimately sold for PS3 and Xbox 360 in 2010. Still, both Sony and Microsoft saw two first-party releases make their console's respective top ten sales charts for the year; though each publisher's most critically-acclaimed release of 2010 -- at least, from Joystiq's perspective -- was not present. Perhaps telling of the two console's core player bases, Madden 11 beat out God of War 3 for the #2 spot on the PS3 chart, but fell to #3 beneath Halo: Reach in the Xbox 360 ranking.

Finally, we have to wonder just what were they thinking? They, of course, being all those Xbox 360 owners that purchased Fable 3 and Fallout: New Vegas instead of Mass Effect 2. Three and a half stars plus four still doesn't add up to the Game of the Year, people.

Check out Gamastutra for the complete breakdown of 2010's bestselling releases by platform.

#art These pictures are the work of artist Jason Martin. If you've played Mass Effect 2, Force Unleashed II, DC Universe Online or taken an interest in the upcoming Batman game, you may recognise his amazing work. More »

Fine, fine. We'll tell you.

It was worth the wait.

Earlier this week, we approached EA and BioWare and asked about workarounds for a nasty Mass Effect 2 save file corruption bug, occurring in the recently launched PS3 version. An EA representative tells Joystiq that the publisher is aware of the issue and is finalizing a patch that will be submitted to Sony for approval shortly.

According to BioWare's patch notes, which we've placed after the break, the corrupted save games are caused by a "crash related to memory fragmentation." For now, the developer's suggested workaround is to "simply restart your game every few hours." It's good to take a break every now and then ... though save file erasure is tad draconian when used as encouragement.

[Thanks, Nizam A.]

#masseffect2 The 2011 PlayStation 3 version of Mass Effect 2 is superior to the 2010 Xbox 360 in many ways, but not in the way of the printed instruction manual. More »

Don't look now, but Mass Effect 2 on PS3 is having a little trouble saving some people's games. Be cautious! More »

The very pretty, Britty build-a-palooza LittleBigPlanet 2 grabbed itself the top spot on Chart-Track's UK sales chart last week. According to the chart masters, the sequel's premiere numbers were "almost identical" to that of the original, being "only 95 sales short" of it.

Call of Duty: Black Ops and the magical Just Dance 2 took silver and bronze, respectively. While we're on the subject of the resilient dance game genre, Harmonix's Dance Central slipped one spot from 12 to 13, while Ubisoft's original Just Dance moved up two spots from 13 to 11.

LittleBigPlanet 2 wasn't the only game to have a big debut on PS3 last week, our top game of 2010, Mass Effect 2, premiered in the seventh spot overall and in second on the PS3-specific chart.

#gameoftheyear Because I tried to please everyone, my Commander Shepard didn't get laid the first time I played Mass Effect 2. Because BioWare tried to please everyone, Mass Effect 2 could be our Game of the Year. More »