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Hi everyone! Time for this week’s video store updates:

Rent The Disappearance of Alice Creed in HD and SD on your PS3—while it’s still in theaters— and watch it from the comfort of your own home. This intriguing thriller stars Gemma Arterton (Prince of Persia) as the daughter of a millionaire whose been kidnapped by calculating and ruthless Vic and Danny, played by Eddie Marsan (Sherlock Holmes) and Martin Compston (A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints).

Looking for something equally engaging? Relive the latest UFC 117 cage match between Anderson Silva and Chael Sonnen, as well as exciting battles between Matt Hughes, Ricardo Almeida and more!

Also be sure to check out this week’s Deal of the Week, featuring a great sale on anime favorite Death Note Season 1, awesome films from Sony including Charlie’s Angels, Cruel Intentions, XXX, and Last Action Hero, plus discounts on hilarious episodes of Rocko’s Modern Life and Angry Beavers from Nick!

TV and Movie arrivals hitting the US and CA stores this weekend (check back often, new titles roll on every day!):

Just in TV

US Store: Carnivale: S2, Chasing Mummies: S1, Criss Angel Mindfreak: S6, Dark Blue: S2, Ghost Hunters International: S2, LA Ink: S6, Lost: S1, Oz: S4, Man vs. Wild: S5, Master Chef: S1, Plain Jane: S1, Pros vs Joes: S5, Psych: S5, Soul Eater: S1, Surviving the Cut: S1, The Chris Rock Show: S2, The Real World: S24, The X-Files: S1, Todd McFarlane’s Spawn: S2, Top Chef: S7, Tosh.0: S2, X-Play: Season 2010

Canada Store: Sex and the City: S4, Stargate SG-1: S10, The Sopranos: S4, Comedy Central Presents: Stand-Up S1, MANswers: S1, Punk’d: S1 and S2, Shark Week Season 2009, X-Men Evolution: S1 & S2

New Release Movies

US Store: Cruel Intentions, Dancer Upstairs, Date Movie, Epic Movie, Fish Tales (2007), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, High Anxiety, Idiocracy, Jedi Junkies, Karate Dog, Meet the Spartans, Phat Girlz, Reno 911!: Miami, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, The Comebacks, The Silver Streak, Tristan & Isolde, Waiting for Armageddon, XXX, Skullheads

Canada Store: Cemetery Junction, Nitro Circus 7: Country Fried, Sideways, Modern Collective, Drag Me To Hell (Unrated), Temple Grandin, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Land of the Lost, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Out of the Pond, Proof, Role Models (Rated & Unrated), State of Play, The Last House on the Left, The Tale of Despereaux, The Unborn (Rated and Unrated)

And last but not least, be sure to check out the heart-warming trailer for The Last Song, now available on the US video store, starring Greg Kinnear, Miley Cyrus, Kelly Preston, Liam Hemsworth and Bobby Coleman.

Top Movie Downloads (US only)

• Death at a Funeral
• Kick-Ass
• Date Night
• Clash of the Titans (2010)
• Date Night (Extended Edition)
• Idiocracy
• Diary Of A Wimpy Kid
• Hot Tub Time Machine (Unrated Version)
• Avatar
• Cop Out

Top Ten TV Downloads (US only)

• Futurama | Season 7 – A Clockwork Origin
• The Boondocks | Season 3 – It’s Goin’ Down
• The Boondocks | Season 3 – The Color Ruckus
• Jersey Shore | Season Miami – Creepin’
• Naruto Shippuden Uncut | Season 1, Vol. 4 – Bonds
• The Boondocks | Season 3 – The Fried Chicken Flu
• Futurama | Season 7 – That Darn Katz!
• Burn Notice | Season 4 – Hard Time
• Family Guy | Season 8 – Brian & Stewie
• Tosh.0 | Season 2 – Tosh.0 219

The journey through Altago begins.

Welcome Sackboys and Sackgirls! It’s been a few weeks since our last recap and, with gamescom underway, there are lots of new LittleBigPlanet 2 updates to share.

HOT LittleBigPlanet 2 interviews from gamescom (thanks GameSpot)

• Introducing the Creatinator with some frosty goodness.

• Welcome aboard the new U.S.S. Sackboy Spaceship! Play arcade games, experiment with reverse-gravity, and level link to watch cutscenes.
• Alex tells us how to make a top down racing game from the new Music Sequencer (MIND BLOWING).

Raw footage from the gamescom demos

• Gran “Fur”ismo – LittleBigPlanet 2’s latest top-down racing level

• Get a glimpse of one of the new levels with Sackboy and “unicycle-like doohickeys”
• “Low gravity” escape. And yes, gravity is adjustable now…

New on the PlayStation Store

• PS3: All 20 Marvel Sackboy costumes and level kit now available (plus new EPIC wallpaper

• PSP: Robin Hood: Men in Sacks DLC (You know you need some new tights)

Random images from the week

• Magazine cover awesomeness…

• Light writing goodness (cool stuff @Jac_sin)…

• Mt. Sackmore? A LittleBigPodcast exclusive …

• OMG, LBP POD!!!

Dragons, gold, jewels, and princesses — they’ll all be on display at PAX next month when Hoard makes its first appearance to the general public! We first announced the game here.

For those of you that don’t know, Hoard is an arcade action title coming to PSN (both for PS3 and PSP). In this score-attack game, up to four players take the part of small dragons with very big ambitions, and try to amass a hoard of glittering treasure in over 30 different kingdoms.

How do you get treasure, you ask? By BURNING things, of course! And kidnapping princesses for ransom… At the Big Sandwich Games booth (#3012), we’ll have two screens of non-stop dragon combat action, swag, and prizes for a daily high-score competition. Oh, and we’ll also have a real, honest-to-goodness princess*. So come get your firebreathing on!

Since our last post, we can confirm four-player co-op play has been added to the game — thanks for all the comments! That rounds our feature set out with Treasure, Princess Rush, Hoard (Survival), and Co-op modes. We support up to four dragons in any combination of couch and online players.

A few of latest screenshots are above to tide you over until the trailer hits right before PAX. And remember, kids: the only good knight is a roasted knight!

*Not entirely guaranteed to be of certified royal lineage.

#screengrab This is supposed to be a Mario from every game he's ever been in, but predictably, there are a few missing. Can you name them? By kaycircle, as seen on Go Nintendo. More »

#interview One is a fighting game of joystick precision, the other of rhythmic button tapping: Finding a way to meld those two styles is perhaps Capcom's greatest challenge with Street Fighter X Tekken. More »

function getVideo() { var so = new SWFObject("http://cdn.springboard.gorillanation.com/storage/xplayer/yo033.swf", "mplayer", "420", "340", "8", "#000000"); so.addParam("wmode","transparent"); so.addParam("swliveconnect", "true"); so.addParam("allowscriptaccess", "always"); so.addParam("allowfullscreen", "true"); so.addVariable("pid", "goni001"); so.addVariable("siteId", "485"); so.addVariable("videoId", "187079"); so.addVariable("file", "http://cms.springboard.gorillanation.com/xml_feeds_advanced/index/485/3/187079/"); so.addVariable("pageUrl", document.location); so.write("flashcontent_485_goni001_single_187079"); } getVideo(); 7 Wonders II transports you to far away lands to complete an unbelievable mission: Build the 7 Wonders of the World! Match three to help your workers build the unbelievable sights from Stonehenge to the Taj [...]

Doncaster, UK – 20/08/2010– Leading video game accessory manufacturer BLAZE is pleased to announce the latest Fitness First licensed product. Endorsed by healthy lifestyle advocate and global superstar Mel B, the Wii Fitness first Balance Board riser adds another level to your Wii workout. Perfectly designed to sit securely under your balance board, the BLAZE Step riser [...]

#impressions It's hard to not think of Gears of War while playing Hunted: The Demon's Forge. It's hard not to assume the Epic's blockbuster shooter would be superior to the Hunted's upcoming fantasy riff. But Hunted adds a good spice: co-operation. More »

Filed under: Podcasts If you think you're surprised, just imagine how we feel: There are 150 episodes of the Joystiq Podcast. Yeah. We know. Bizarre. We've marked the occasion with our shortest show in months, cause that's how we roll.

Thanks to Alan Black for the 'shop, and apologies to all of you for using a picture so clearly designed to be posted several months ago. We ... we had nowhere else to turn.

Get the podcast:
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Hosts: Justin McElroy (@justinmcelroy), Ludwig Kietzmann (@ludwigk) and Chris Grant (@chrisgrant)
Music: "Gravity (Don't Let Me Go)" by Jon Black, "Like a Hitman, Like a Dancer" by A.C. Newman
For fans: Joystiq Podcast Facebook group
New to the show?: Listen to Episode Zero
The Do It Line!: 1-(877)-JOYSTIQ

See all of this week's links after the jump.

A traditional adventure with a serious sense of speed.

Our story began with your introduction to Ivy the Kiwi?, the new interactive entertainment project from the creator of Sonic and one of the video game industry’s most influential talents, Yuji Naka and his independent game company PROPE. Yuji Naka and publishing partner XSEED Games gave the game’s lead character, a baby bird named Ivy, [...]

#gamescom2010 Behold The Witcher 2: Papercraft of Kings, the world's first-ever non-linear papercraft and a paper cut above the other press kits found at Gamescom this week. Want to see what's inside? More »

Continuing in the sad tradition of Halo 2 and 3 before it, Halo: Reach has apparently been leaked. Modders at Game-Tut.com found a way to trick Microsoft's servers -- which are currently hosting a $1250 download of the game's files intended for game reviewers and meant to only be downloadable with a code. The site has yet to openly leak the files to the general public.

It appears that the game is leaking other places as well -- at least one video shows off a tour of Forge in the game's Firefight mode, and spoilers for the game can be found everywhere from Bungie's official forums to NeoGAF (if you really want to see them, you can find them yourself).

What's most puzzling is why the game is being distributed to reviewers on Xbox Live Marketplace, as Bungie will be holding the usual review events for Halo: Reach that it's done with previous Halo releases. Whatever the reason, it seems to have facilitated an exceptionally early leak for such a high profile game.

#blizzard The devil is in the Diablo details. More »

A portion of a Nintendo Life review… The true beauty of 3D Mahjong is that it is simply the classic game with a lot of variety. There are no gimmicks and no unnecessary plot lines that try to make it feel new and original. If you’re looking for an excellent solo Mahjong experience, or just looking [...]

Last week, Irrational Games introduced BioShock Infinite to the world with a startling cinematic trailer set in the clouds far above Earth. Since then, I’ve seen BioShock Infinite in action, and the first-person gameplay featured numerous hallmarks of BioShock as well as intriguing new elements.

In the gameplay scenario I saw, protagonist Booker DeWitt explored the floating city of Columbia before battling a large mob of murderous Columbian citizens using shotguns and hunting rifles. Booker wielded supernatural powers as well, hurling lightning, telekinesis, and flesh-eating crows ala Hitchcock’s The Birds. After locating Elizabeth, the mysterious young woman at the heart of Columbia’s internal conflict, Booker’s powers grew exponentially. Channeled through Elizabeth, lightning bolts became swirling thunderstorms and telekinesis ripped the environment to tatters.

I spoke with Irrational Games creative director Ken Levine to learn more about BioShock Infinite’s gameplay, similarities and differences compared to the original BioShock, and how the suspended city of Columbia presents new opportunities for first-person combat.

Sid Shuman: You often described BioShock as a shooter first and foremost. Do you consider BioShock Infinite to be a pure shooter? Has it evolved?

Ken Levine, Creative Director, Irrational Games: One of the reasons we were so specific about defining BioShock as a shooter was because it was so strange. It was such an odd beast that we thought [defining it as a shooter] helped ground people’s understanding of what they’d be doing. But I think people now understand what BioShock is, so I’m less focused on that now. People understand that it’s a shooter, but that it’s a particular kind of shooter that’s unique to what Irrational Games and what we do. It’s a shooter that has quite a lot of expressiveness outside of the shooting as well.

SS: On the combat side, will you be keeping somewhat consistent with the ground rules and basic mechanics of BioShock?

KL: The previous games gave players a lot of tools, but there was a tendency for encounters to have a lot of similarities: narrow corridors and one or two enemies. So the tendency was for tools like the Electro-Bolt and shotgun to be commonly used because they were extremely effective. So the sniper rifle weapon (the crossbow) and the area-of-effect attacks were less effective and less used.

We wanted to make sure we had a broad range of weapons and powers [for BioShock Infinite], and that the environments and challenges demanded those weapons and powers. So there are a ton of interior spaces in the game that will feel like a traditional BioShock spaces, very intimate. But we also focus on spaces that are quite different from what you’ve seen in a BioShock game: huge, open, outdoor spaces with broad ranges. And instead of one or two enemies, you might fight 15 enemies at one point.

We’re using an entirely new graphics engine — there’s no shared code or assets with any previous BioShock game, though it’s based on Unreal 3.0 technology. The reason we had to go with a new engine, and one of the reasons development has taken awhile, is because we couldn’t do what we wanted to do otherwise. We couldn’t do this kind of scale, or the scenes on the Skylines where you’re in combat while traveling at 60 miles per hour, or scenes where you’re fighting 15 enemies at once.

And something like a sniper rifle now make a lot of sense! It becomes meaningful now that we’ve changed the dynamics of the environment. Vertical movement across big, broad spaces and multiple enemies who work together against you — these are things you haven’t seen in a BioShock game before.

SS: Who’s the hulking character in the trailer, the one who looks a bit like the Big Daddy from BioShock?

KL: He’s what we call an “Alpha,” I wouldn’t view him as a new Big Daddy. Internally, we refer to three classes of characters: Alphas, Betas, and Gammas. Betas are the more traditional BioShock enemy who sees you and attacks right away. Gammas sort of do their own thing and may get drawn into combat. The Alphas are a class of badasses in the city who are very powerful on their own, but also can augment the abilities of other characters — they can act as leaders for them. We’ll be releasing more information on how they actually work later, but generally, they’re tougher and will work in a strategic fashion with other characters.

SS: It wouldn’t appear that Adam and Plasmids play a role in this universe, and yet we see Plasmid-like abilities, including powers that look like Telekinesis and Electro-Bolt…

KLYou’ve seen a range of powers, and some are intentionally familiar because we wanted to show how they are differently applied in this world, and how they interact with Elizabeth. What Elizabeth brings to the table is her narrative role as a character who is with you. Elizabeth provides opportunities to do things on a grander scale, but none of it will get in the way of you approaching the game with your own tools.

SS: Elizabeth has been trapped in Columbia since she was five. Is she a constant companion during gameplay?

KLShe will be coming in and out of the story at various points. There’s a character who is very focused on keeping the two of you separated. There are various events that bring the two of you together, or pull you apart, during the course of the story.

SS: I saw a poster for “Saltinstalli.” Who is that? Is he a political figure?

KL: Yes, he’s a political figure in Columbia. He’s representative of a certain point of a view in the city — a prevalent point of view. When you first encounter him, he’s giving a speech to nobody.

If you're looking to figure out what this "Tekken" stuff is all about after hearing about Street Fighter X Tekken,-- or, perhaps, if you already like both Tekken and savings -- Best Buy has a deal for you. The retailer has tekken $20 off the current price of the Xbox 360 version of Tekken 6, offering it for just $9.99.

In order to tek (okay, we'll stop) advantage of this deal, you have to be a member of Best Buy's free "Reward Zone," and you must use this printable coupon in-store before August 22. But that's hardly $20 worth of work.

[Thanks, @GeoffH3!]

#gamescom2010 Today at GamesCom I witnessed a monkey touching a pig's penis. Perhaps I should explain. More »

#bioshockinfinite The first his BioShock game had no multiplayer mode, a rarity for first-person shooters. BioShock 2, which was overseen by a different creative team, added multiplayer. The series' next game may not, BioShock's original creator told Kotaku. More »

Remember the bizarrely out of place Xbox News app on the Canadian Xbox dashboard? It turns out that it was bizarrely out of place for a reason: it's actually part of a Halo: Reach alternate reality game. During the second episode of the program, a news ticker at the bottom of the screen clearly shows information related to Halo. According to Shacknews, the information was apparently meant to alert Canadian gamers to the existence of upcoming Halo: Reach preview events in the Toronto and Vancouver areas.

Somewhat more interesting, however, is that the Xbox News program was intended to run for several more episodes before the Halo connection was revealed. A source informed Shacknews that the marketing team behind the ARG skipped ahead to the first Halo-related episode, thanks to the generally negative reaction to the premiere episode. Marketing lesson of the day: make ARGs about something relevant to your audience. Like bees.

#clips This is the officially licensed golden Goldeneye Wii Classic controller which you too can play with if you pick up the special edition of Goldeneye 007. More »