All Topics Gaming older than one year ago

Meet the new Need for Speed and its improvements with new components and mechanics.

Microphone peripheral on the way out.

Grab a buddy and protect your brains.

We get it: there is only so much you can pummel Boxcar Billy in Murder Alley before The Fight: Lights Out starts to lose its luster. Thus, we'd like to inform you about some impending DLC, set to drop in December: the Duke DLC pack. Upon downloading, players are able to use all of the boss characters, including Duke, in both offline and online play. No price or exact release date has been set for the DLC, but we'll let you know as soon as we know.

Now for news of the "immediately beneficial" variety: there's a new patch for The Fight: Lights Out. This patch, which will download as soon as you boot up the game, fixes "several small issues reported by players" and gives fisticuffers the ability to turn their fighter translucent, hopefully providing a better view of the on-screen kerfuffle.

The PlayStation Blog has also put together a handy little tips video, which we've taken the liberty of embedding just past the break.

You're about to catch Pac-Man Fever all over again.

#gameface That's So Raven's Kyle Massey and Jennifer Grey of Dancing with the Stars and Dirty Dancing fame show off their moves at the New York launch of Disney's Epic Mickey. More »

#zombies A man is taking a photo in a video game. Yay. But, no! This is Frank West in the new Dead Rising 2 downloadable expansion. This is the return of photography. More »

#dice December will be very generous to Battlefield: Bad Company 2 players, as EA and developer DICE will release all-new ways to play the excellent first-person shooter, including the promised tour of duty in Vietnam. More »

Twelve hours and 15,000 dead zombies later, I finished Dead Nation. Did I feel accomplished? Yeah, sure. But the feeling that I couldn't shake? Relief.

Housemarque's long-awaited follow-up to Super Stardust HD is exhausting, in more ways than one. The body count should be a clue: Dead Nation is suffocatingly dense, truly embodying the term "sensory overload." Zombies will swarm you by the hundreds, and once you've disposed of them -- with bullets, explosives, fire and a giant projectile blade-thing -- their ever-present remains ... remain, serving to remind of the havoc you've wreaked.

There's some spectacular tech powering the experience: atmospheric lighting, uncomfortably realistic audio and a subtle attention to detail that's difficult to encapsulate. But, I doubt you'll stop to soak it all in. In fact, you'll be lucky if you can manage a mumbled "wow," as you try to catch your breath after each level.

Last week’s grueling teamwork challenge pushed the cast to their limits and this week, Episode 5 ramps up the pressure with an intense creativity challenge. With nearly half of the original cast eliminated, the seven remaining gamers are given the opportunity to create a video game concept and actually pitch it to a focus group of real PlayStation testers. Add to the mix the critical eye of this week’s guest panelist, Kotaku reviews editor Michael McWhertor, and you won’t want to miss what does down in Episode 5.

Download Episode 5 of “The Tester 2″ from the video side of PlayStation Store and later today on the games side after the update. Or, watch in PlayStation Home starting on Wednesday when the next ‘Game Over’ shirt is available in The Tester theater.

This Week’s Prize Package

To inspire your own gaming creativity, we’re giving away one of the most innovative products of the year, the PlayStation Move. Along with the PlayStation Move starter bundle, this week’s Episode 5 ‘Download & Win’ winner will also receive Kung Fu Rider, The Fight: Lights Out, and a “The Tester” Limited Edition PS3 system. Entering the ‘Download & Win’ sweepstakes is as simple as downloading Episode 5 of “The Tester 2” from the PlayStation Store. See the official rules here.

More Extra Scenes

Here’s a look at a couple Episode 4’s extra scenes we thought you might enjoy.

Catch all the Season 2 ‘Extra Scenes’ in ‘The Clips’ section on the official “The Tester” website or on the PlayStation YouTube Channel under “The Tester” playlist.

Thanks again for watching. Enjoy Episode 5.

If you still spend a majority of your evenings on the colorful, brutal battlefields of Monday Night Combat, you should brace yourself for the extremely imminent addition of two new areas for you to cover in blood, money and bacon. The "Spunky Cola Special" DLC pack will arrive on XBLA tomorrow, adding the titular Spunky Cola Arena for the game's competitive Crossfire mode, and the Survivitol Arena for the co-operative Blitz mode. Best of all, unlike the game's catalog of upgrades and turrets, the new content will be absolutely free of charge.

Check out a trailer for the "Spunky" pack, as well as a full list of the new modes, gameplay options and class changes therein, just past the jump. There's a lot to read, but make sure your eyes don't absentmindedly pass over the announcement about the new Churros power-up without taking a moment to appreciate how breathtaking said announcement really is.

#musicgames Rock Band and Guitar Hero aren't the sensations they used to be. That doesn't mean they're bad. Not Rock Band 3. But they're not the cultural phenomenons they once were. That's temporary, according to a man who should know. More »

World's Funniest downloadable hero throws down with Santa and his mighty red thong in an all new adventure on PC.

Trundle along.

Square Enix has announced pre-order bonuses and an "Augmented Edition" for Deus Ex: Human Revolution. The Augmented Edition is "augmented" with a 40-page artbook; a bonus DVD with trailers, trailer storyboards, a making-of featurette, and the soundtrack; a motion comic; and, of course, a fancy box to hold it all. It will be released at a $69.99 price point for Xbox 360 and PS3, and $59.99 for PC.

The two pre-order bonus packs each contain a selection of new in-game weapons, all with impressive-sounding names. The GameStop-exclusive "Explosive Mission Pack" comes with a mission featuring "a special cameo appearance of original Deus Ex character," along with the Linebacker G-87 Grenade Launcher and the M-28 Utility Remote-Detonated Explosive Device (yes, "UR-DED"), while the "Tactical Enhancement Pack" offered at unspecified "participating retailers" includes the Longsword Whisperhead Suppressed Extreme Range Sniper Rifle and the Huntsman Silverback Double-Barrel Shotgun. Both include "extra credits for augmentations and upgrades."

Cincinnati, OH – Nov. 30, 2010 – Just in time for the holidays, the Silly Bandz craze is about to reach the next level as video game publisher Zoo Entertainment, Inc. today announced that Silly Bandz for the Nintendo DS is now available. In the game, players take aim and catapult Silly Bandz [...]

All entries get a spot in the lucent heart sneak peak beta.

Meet Cupid and start the matchmaking process! Cupid promises it won't take long.

Wow. Obsidian overlooked a dynamite opportunity to integrate Kinect into Fallout: New Vegas. But! This dance mod for the PC version, courtesy of creator "umpa," gets us halfway there. Now, Kinect hackers, take us all the way!

Pie time.

#science This Thursday NASA is holding a press conference to discuss an astrobiology finding that will "impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life". Have we discovered alien life within our own solar system? More »

Fans of fictional, war-covering photojournalists rejoice, for Capcom has announced that the Xbox exclusive Dead Rising 2: Case West is slated to arrive "next month." As of this writing, it's just barely still November, so it would seem Frank West will return to Dead Rising in time for Christmas. In-game photography will also be making a comeback; presumably, nabbing erotic photos should be much easier this time around.

Unfortunately, Capcom still hasn't announced a price. For now, you'll just have to settle for the new screens in the gallery below.

#bulletstorm Shooting a gun. An experience loved by some, hated by others. During development of Bulletstorm we went to a shooting range and tried out plenty of weaponry. And you know what? WORST. SPECIAL. EFFECTS. EVER. More »

Some unsettling news now for fans of convenience: That Xbox Live Games on Demand title you just bought may not work with its retail counterpart. Specifically, CrunchGear reports that the On Demand version of Rainbow Six Vegas 2 is incompatible with the retail version. When attempting to play a cooperative session over Xbox Live, the game returned an error asking that players insert the Rainbow Six Vegas 2 disc. This error occurred regardless of who hosted the match.

A call made to customer support later revealed that this is apparently a problem with several older titles. Additionally, users on the LEGO Rock Band forum report that the On Demand version of the title doesn't allow songs to be exported to other versions of Rock Band. This is understandable given that On Demand games have no manual (and thus no export code), though Harmonix notes it is "looking into" the issue.

The moral of the story, as noted by Co-Optimus: If you're planning to pick up an XBL On Demand title in order to play online with someone that has the retail version, do some research first.