There is a new race available for Blood Bowl, the dark elves. The game started off with eight playable races but has expanded its roster.  It's basically a football-inspired violent sports game that requires both tactics and violent skill.  Already launched in Europe, the game will be hitting the US next week and will be called Blood Bowl Dark Elves Edition since it will contain the new race.  It's not a clever name but gets the point across.

To celebrate the event, Focus Home Entertainment has released a new video showcasing the dark elves.  Enjoy!

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Or rather, you get to play KISS as a Guitar/Band Hero with the DLC that we mentioned was promised for November. The three-track song pack comes with a song from their newest album - "Modern Day Delilah" - as well as "Lick It Up" and "I Was Made For Lovin' You".

As a promotional event, KISS will also be streaming a live concert on Facebook on Wednesday, November 25th at 9pm PST that takes place in LA. [READ MORE]

Take a look at the new video showcasing team racing in Need for Speed SHIFT as well as a look into some of the cars.

The original Army of Two had some nice customization options but it was still fairly limited to muzzles, stocks, magazine sizes, color, and a few other small items.  Well for Army of Two:The 40th Day, the team is really letting you go hog wild and allowing you to go even further with how you customize the weapons in the game as evidenced by this new video from the game.


Personally I like the ability to customize the weapons in the game more than the random drops that you get in Borderlands.  Sure there's probably not a gun that sets people on fire in Army of Two:The 40th Day but the system allows you to get more comfortable with your weapons rather than having to constantly compare what you have to what you just picked up.  What do you think?  Would you rather have random drops or the ability to customize your weapons?  Let us know in the comments.

The relationship has been "in development" for a while now but today Namco Bandai made it official. Tekken 6 has gone gold.  Tekken 6 and the PSP will be able to be joined together at long last on November 24th. 

There are 18 battle stages, 40 player characters, and over 5 game modes to enjoy.  That's not even counting the ad-hoc multiplayer battles.  Let's face it, the series has been around for 14 years.  You should know by now if it is something you are interested in.

Find out more about Tekken 6 here. [READ MORE]

• OnLive will support cell phones
• Be a beta tester, win a trip to Paris
• This week on Direct2Drive
• iPhone Game Review: Flickitty

• AppStore Game Review: Connected
• Slow as Sunday: Reinventing sports franchises

• Harry Potter: Spells available at the AppStore
• The characters of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers
• Weekly downloadable Nintendo fun includes demos
• Capcom unleashes massive amounts of Street Fighter IV assets
• Call of Duty quietly invades the iPhone
• Naruto's ultimate rival revealed in Clash of Ninja Revolution 3
• Darth Vader holds your Wii Sensor Bar for ransom
• Access GameFly directly from your iPhone
• Sgt Pepper's trailer released for The Beatles: Rock Band
• More rolling monkeys and bananas in Super Monkey Ball: Step and Roll  screens 
• Be a part of the DC Universe Online dev team
• Star Trek Online boxart revealed
• A tiny smidge of Grand Theft Auto V news
• PC version of Modern Warfare 2 hacked

• Future Call of Duty going the paid online route
• Hudson fleshes out Q1 2010
• Lost Planet 2 pre-order gets you Albert Wesker skin
• 3D Dot Game Heroes: Retro homage, Zelda homage?
• Pandemic Studios maybe dead but brand continues
• Mystery Case Files getting a Collector's Edition?
• Bigfoot gets $8 million
• Last week's top games on Impulse
• Last week's top games on Gamefly
• Preview of Facebook on PlayStation 3

IGN's Beaterator band competition has narrowed down the competitors to a group of semi-finalists. If your favorite indie band made the cut then head over to the voting website and cast your ballot. The voting ends on the 27th, and the winning band gets $5000 cash and a feature on both PSN and MySpace. [READ MORE]

The Beatles: Rock Band is getting the remainder of Sgt Pepper's next, while the rest of us who only have Rock Band are getting some AFI and Bangles. The AFI Pack 01 will contain five AFI songs, and the Bangles "Walk Like an Egyptian" will be available as a solo song on Rock Band and LEGO Rock Band. All the songs will be available on the Xbox 360 and Wii on Nov 17th, and the PS3 on Nov 19th. The AFI Pack costs $8.49/680 MS points, or $1.99/160 MS points/$2.00 for the songs individually including the Bangles.

• AFI – “Beautiful Thieves”
• AFI – “End Transmission”
• AFI – “Love Like Winter”
• AFI – “Medicate”
• AFI – “The Leaving Song, Pt II”
•  The Bangles – “Walk Like an Egyptian”+

Rock Band Unplugged on the PSP also gets two new tracks on Nov 19th, with some Dead Kenndys and Sleater-Kinney at $1.99 each.

• Dead Kennedys – “California über Alles”
• Sleater-Kinney – “You’re No Rock’n’Roll Fun”

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Silent Hill’s return to its beginnings in Silent Hill: Shattered Memories has officially been announced to be available to gamers on the Wii in December 8th, nearing the holidays. While the PS2 and PSP versions of the game have yet to have an announced release date, Konami has offered up information on the characters instead. Read on for the characters to be featured in the game, specifically their relationship to the protagonist Harry Mason, as well as the respective images and character art.

As I said, the upcoming Silent Hill game is a re-imagining of the original game in the franchise, but with an important distinction. While you will play the story of Harry Mason as he searches in desperation for his lost and beloved daughter, the gameplay will most likely seem unfamiliar. Rather than combating the evil fiends found in the franchise, the game focuses on puzzles and problem solving to effectively avoid them. Your Wiimote will function predominantly as your cell phone for GPS, messaging, and picture taking as well as for your hand dandy flashlight.

There is also a focus on psychological profiling of you, the gamer and protagonist. The game will adjust depending on your specific actions, and you will be visited by a psych profiler (therapist Dr. K) regularly that will include interactive psychological tests. Check out the trailer from E3 for a look at the game.


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I'm not going to try and pretend that I understand the title of the game.  Therefore, I'll just get straight to the news:

Konami has announced that Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's Tagforce 4 is coming to the PSP next week.  The game is set to hit stores on November 17th.  There is no mention of the PSP go so we'll see if it comes to the PSN any time soon.

The game centers around the characters and environments of the animated series.  Compete to protect against and destroy the Dark Signers in this game with 4,000 playable cards.  Play with 3 of your friends in the multiplayer modes. 

Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's Tagforce 4 boasts that there is over 300 hours of game play so there is potential to get a lot of gaming for $30. [READ MORE]

I'm still trying to figure out where I stand on Dante's Inferno.  On one hand I see a game that looks like a lot of fun and that will push a lot of peoples buttons given all the Christian imagery the game is using.  On the other hand I see a game that's seems to be a wanton rip off of God of War with a controversial marketing campaign that seems to be pushing the game harder than it needs to be pushed.  By that I mean that if Dante's Inferno is such a great game, why is EA pushing the envelope so hard with the marketing?  It almost feels like the marketing department is over compensating for something.

We'll get some clue of how good the game is in December when EA releases the first demo of the game.  From the description EA sent over it looks like this is only the first level or so of the game so I'm not sure how much of the controversial stuff we'll see before the game is released in February.

Back to the topic at hand, here's the latest developer diary which shows off the Heresy level of the game.  It's full of fire, brimstone, and burning souls which should remind people a lot of their typical definition of hell. 

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• PopCap bringing Puzzle Role Playing Games to XBLA and PC
• Dive into Dark Void with a new dev diary
• Close Combat: The Longest Day is updated
• Endless free trial for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning up to level 10
• Dragon Age: Origins toolset released
• GameOn! Podcast Interviews Torchlight Creators
• Skaters get served in new Skate 3 trailer
• Digital Distribution hits its first speed bumps
• Rock Band DLC sees some more bands making their debut
• Reggie says New Super Mario Bros will outsell Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on one system
• Patchity patch patch for Dragon Age: Origins
• Jutsu moves featured in clip for Naruto: Clash of Ninja Revolution 3
• Weekly downloadable Nintendo fun – music and old school galore
• Fulfill all your ODST needs at Halo Waypoint
• We are going to have a year without StarCraft II beta
• Rumor of Killzone 3 for 2011 maybe 2010
• EA chopping more workers
• Stardate 63554.5, the release of Star Trek Online
• Zombies to invade Borderlands
• Tekken 6 update coming soon
• Trine demo hits the PSN

Digital distribution is widely hailed as the future of gaming and while it's been relatively smooth sailing for a while the system hit a few major snags on the PC this week.  We've seen bumps in the past with Steam's early days (the Half Life 2 launch wasn't exactly painless for a lot of people) and Games For Windows has been one cluster after another but this is the first time we've seen problems that aren't specific to one service.

The first was all of the hurdles users had to jump through to get Dragon Age:Origins working correctly.  Of course a lot of these issues were created because each entity along the way had their own pass mechanism which needed to be navigated to get the game working correctly.  This is one of those nasty things that will eventually go away as companies figure out how to get their services working together better.

The second big bump was Impulse, Direct2Drive, and Gamersgate refusing to sell Call of Duty:Modern Warfare 2 on their services because it includes a mandatory install of Steam for things like DRM and saved game management. This grants Steam a de facto monopoly on selling Modern Warfare 2 digitally on the PC.  This will be a bit trickier to navigate as Valve has so tightly woven their Steamworks tools set with their online service and there's no way anyone is going to help their competitor sell more of their product.  I don't see this really hurting sales of the game that much but it has to be a bit scary for those who don't want Steam to have a monopoly on the digital distribution market and will further the calls for Valve to start decoupling their various components.

It's not unexpected to see these kind of problems as a technology matures but it is a somewhat painful reminder that we are still in the early days of this new distribution mechanism.  These won't be the last bumps we have but they do represent a small inflection point in the system.

What do you think?  Are these big issues for you or should we just got ahead and welcome our new Steam overlords?  Let us know in the comments.