Its time once again for Sony's annual "Spring Fever" Playstation store event which highlights upcoming PSN games including special deals for PS+ members along with special sales on popular franchises. 

“PlayStation fans have been vocal about their desire to see more independent games on PSN, and Spring Fever is the perfect opportunity to show what makes PlayStation the premier destination for new and unique experiences from talented developers. We have made bringing independent games to PSN easier than ever for developers, and part of that support includes making it easier for gamers to discover the best of the best titles.” said Adam Boyes, vice president, developer and publisher relations, SCEA

All games will also offer PS3/PS Vita cross buy so you can buy it on one device and play on both.
 
The games for the promotion are...

April 9th - Guacamelee!
Price: $14.99
Playstation Plus Price: 20% off - $11.99

April 16th - Dragon Fantasy Book 1
Price: $9.99
Playstation Plus Price: 20% off - $7.99

April 23rd - Thomas Was Alone
Price $9.99
Playstation Plus Price: 20% off - $7.99

April 30th - Zombie Tycoon 2: Brainhov's Revenge
Price: $9.99
Playstation Plus Price: Free

The sale starts today April 9th and ends on May 6th. In addition popular videogame franchises will also get weekly discounts offering up to 65% off games and add-ons for major franchises such as Grand Theft Auto and the Resident Evil series. 

For more details about the big even be sure to check out the Playstation blog.

Don’t let the lack of major retail releases fool you, there is plenty to love in this week’s launch list. I, for one, am thankful that the list is primarily digital; that means that our wallets will at least get a little bit of a rest before the games start flowing again next week.

As for our picks of the week, you might want to consider the following titles:

• Halo 4- Castle Map Pack: More Halo 4 maps is always a good thing, I don’t care who you are. The third map pack hits the Xbox Live Marketplace today. The new pack, which costs 800MSP adds 3 new maps to the multiplayer portion of the game: Daybreak, Outcast, and Perdition, as well as 9 new achievements to earn. If you have already purchased the War Games Map Pass, it won’t cost you anything. I guess it is time to pull out Halo 4 once again!
• Shootmania Storm: Finally! Nadeo and ubisoft’s Shootmania Storm is moving out of the beta phase and becoming a “real” game. There has been a little bit of buzz around the game lately with a successful beta campaign on Steam, but now we move into the era of the official, retail release. The game will let you build and share your own maps similar to the Trackmania series and the gameplay resembles classics like Quake and Doom rather than modern, complicated shooters. I can see us booting this one up at a few lan parties in the near future!
• Guacamelee!: Without a doubt, my top recommendation of the week goes to Drinkbox Studios’ Guacamelee! which will launch with tomorrow’s PlayStation Store update. As a masked luchador who is brought back from the dead to rescue the love of his life, this action-platformer pays a lot of homage to classic adventure games. The game plays a lot like Metroid and Castlevania; it’s all about exploration and expanding your characters abilities, along with an insanely responsive and fun combat system. The game is available on both the PS3 and Vita, featuring Cross Buy and Cross save capabilities, meaning you only have to buy the game once and you get it on both platforms and you can share your progress between the two. We’ll have our full review of the game tomorrow but trust me, keep an eye on this one!

Also, those of you in the WWCD listening area will want to tune in to Now Loading this week on Thursday morning (~7:45am) for your chance to win a free copy of Age of Empires II HD for Steam!

The full lineup for this week includes the following:

• Age of Empires II HD for PC (Steam exclusive)
• Age of Wushu for PC
• Guacamelee! for PlayStation 3 and Vita (via PSN)
• Halo 4: Castle Map  Pack for Xbox 360
• Motocross Madness for Xbox Live Arcade
• Shootmania Storm for PC
• Table Mini Golf for Vita

Four months ago, Disney acquired video game developer LucasArts. This week, Disney gave 150 LucasArts employees their walking papers. Roger Ebert, who escalated the "are games art?" dialog, died after an 11-year battle with cancer. But hey, at least there were funny April Fool's jokes making the rounds on the Internet: North Korea threatening to destroy Austin, Texas? Hilarious!

What are you playing?

RUSSELL ARCHEY | Staff Writer | Twitter @neoscyther
Thinking of taking a vacation this weekend.  I recently got a good deal on a travel package that lets me choose from a multitude of cities such as Liberty City, Vice City, and San Andreas. So yeah, I picked up the Grand Theft Auto Complete Pack from Steam over the weekend that includes all of the GTA games outside Liberty City/Vice City Stories, so I have a decent selection of games to go to if I need to cool down after a long work week. I'll likely attempt either GTA 1 or GTA 2 as I've rarely ever messed with them.

SEAN COLLELI | Staff Writer
I finally got around to playing Dishonored, which has been sitting on my Steam list for months, and I wish I would've played it earlier. It's great so far. I love the world and atmosphere, but what else did I expect with some of the top people behind Deus Ex and Half-Life 2 working on it? Discovering Dishonored is also a problem, because I'm still grinding away at Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate for my upcoming review and nothing distracts me quicker than a steampunk Deus Ex. I also started Bioshock Infinite's expert 1999 mode difficulty a couple days ago, so we'll see how long until it makes me chuck my controller through a window.

JEREMY DUFF | Senior Staff Writer | Twitter @duff3c
This weekend will be one of continued fighting in my household via Dead or Alive 5 Plus for the Vita (which I picked up while I was on the road last week). I also intend on pouring a ton of time into the Injustice: Gods Among Us demo so that I can hit the ground running when the game hits in a few weeks.

RANDY KALISTA | Staff Writer | Twitter @randykalista
Double whammy: my gaming PC died, and the disc drive on the old Xbox 360 Pro busted. I know, hearing about other people's gaming platform problems makes me want to yawn too, so, whatever, long story short: I bought an Acer netbook. With its powerhouse graphical capabilities, cough, I'm getting real cozy with my GOG.com shelf and cRPG like it's 1999. Sure, I could complain more about my gaming predicament, but apparently this Planescape: Torment game is...quite good. (You heard it here first, folks.) I'm approaching it like it's a nutrient-rich text adventure that happens to have a few nifty backdrops. Not a moment too soon, what with its successor, Torment: Tides of Numenera, breaking records on Kickstarter.

One staff writer played the first BioShock ad nauseum. Literally. We've also come to a split decision as to whether BioShock 2 is worth your time. And BioShock Infinite has got our collective head in the collective cloud.

What are you playing this weekend?

RUSSELL ARCHEY | Staff Writer | Twitter @neoscyther
I'm out of town this weekend, so no major PC or 360 gaming for me. However, I recently picked up Kirby Mass Attack on the cheap so I'll finally be giving that a shot. I have yet to play a Kirby game I dislike (though I have yet to play Air Ride beyond a quick demo race).

NATHAN CARTER | Staff Writer | Twitter @natedoggcata
I’m still suffering from a post-PAX hangover, so I think I will be taking it easy this weekend and playing some games that I can play while relaxing. I still have Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward to finish. I am about 30 hours into the game now and I have only unlocked about nine or ten of the 24 different endings in the game. I also picked up Dead or Alive 5 Plus for the Vita, a far superior version of the game compared to its console counterpart. Finally, I’ll probably hop into some more Left 4 Dead 2 when I get some spare time. Left 4 Dead 2 is always fun to hop in, play for a bit, then do something else.

NATHANIEL COHEN | Staff Writer | Twitter @seven_hells
Funny BioShock-related story. Way back when the first one came out, I went and picked up my pre-order, then was promptly struck down by some sort of food poisoning. It was the grossest two weeks of my life, but I wasn't going to let something as insignificant as not being able to sit up keep me from BioShock. That had been a really bad summer for games and I needed to play it. So I did. I finished in between bouts of praying to the flush gods. When I was was over it,I tried to play through it again, only to find the experience inexorably tied to how I felt while I was sick. I found I couldn't look at it, let alone play it, without suffering from some kind of really unpleasant PTSD nauseousness. It was so bad I had to trade it in, and it was two years before I could think about BioShock again.

I was not a fan of BioShock 2. I thought that except for the slightly upgraded shooting, everything else was just a pale imitation with worse graphics. I don't expect the same disappointment from BioShock Infinite.  You don't remake the same game for the third time and stick the word "Infinite" in the title unless you know exactly what you're doing.

I'll be playing BioShock Infinite and probably some FIFA Soccer 13. These international breaks are hard on fans of European club soccer. I gotta get my fix somehow. Watching the USMNT just isn't enough even when they have a particularly good couple of games.

SEAN COLLELI | Staff Writer
I'm actually revisiting BioShock 2 to get ready for SkyoShock. I kind of forgot just how good BioShock 2 was compared to the original. Most of the things that annoyed me in the first game--clunky combat, technical issues, a preachy story about a sociopolitical philosophy that hadn't been relevant for decades--was vastly improved in BioShock 2. Dual-wielding guns and plasmids really opened up the combat, and the plasmids and tonics were just overall cooler. Playing as a Big Daddy and escorting the Little Sisters as they harvested ADAM was also a lot of fun. Best of all, the story was just more compelling and didn't fall apart in the third act--it actually got better. Having Sofia Lamb as a foil for Andrew Ryan really helped, because it demonstrated that a philosophy on the other end of the spectrum--in this case super collectivism instead of Ryan's objectivism--could be just as bad if taken to the same extreme. Definitely check out BioShock 2 if you missed it the first time around.

CHARLES HUSEMANN | Editor-in-Chief | Twitter @chusemann
BioShock Infinite is sitting on my dining room table and I think that's going to be my main endeavor this weekend. There is a double XP weekend going for MechWarrior Online, so that will probably find it's way on to my playlist as well.

RANDY KALISTA | Staff Writer | Twitter @randykalista
SimCity is a problem. Losing sleep. Work suffering. Other hobbies collecting dust. Child doesn't even know me anymore. So, I'm grounding myself from SimCity (way to go, me) and heading back into Mass Effect 3 to finish the fight. If for no other reason than to get to bed on time. While I can't not read every single entry that pops up, the Codex should be renamed "naptime."

JOHN YAN | Senior Hardware Editor | Twitter @thejohnyan
So after finishing StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, I'm heading off to the city of Columbia to review BioShock Infinite. I'm really excited about this one as the previews at the past couple E3’s blew me away. I might jump into a quickie session of SimCity, but I'm at a point where I'm out of room. It was pretty quick to run out of room and I don't want to mess with it too much since I'm getting money and everyone's mostly happy. If someone wants to, I'll try out Dead Space 3 co-op, since I got that for free with my SimCity game.

Fighting games are more competitive than ever these days with tons of characters, thousands of combos and special moves to learn, super EX moves, cancels, and a plethora of other tricks to learn its incredibly hard for someone to become a competitive fighting game player without thousands of hours of practice. What if there were a game where almost all of that was removed and was boiled down to a simple tactic based game? That game is Divekick. 

There are only two buttons you use in Divekick and with those buttons you jump and kick. That's it. The first person to land a hit on their opponent wins. Win a best 3 out of 5 and you've won the match. It sounds so absurd and yet it was some of the most fun I have ever had playing a fighting game.

The booth for Divekick was packed all weekend and with good reason. This is one of the most intense and fun fighting games I have ever played. It was hard for me at first to understand how this game could be any fun, but after getting my hands on it I understand how. The game is all tactics, waiting for the right moment where you catch your opponent making a mistake and then dive in the for the kill. 

There is some strategy to the game as well as each character has different attributes for jumping and kicking. Dive and Kick are pretty much the Ryu and Ken of the game each a well character for both jumps and kicks. Other characters such as Kung Pao have slow jumps and kicks but she is a perfect bait and punish character where she can dive in after someone misses a kick. Dr Shoals a female doctor can jump high and has a slow down kick at first but you can hit the kick button again to have her dive quickly straight down to the ground. There were other characters in the game but the developers said that many more will be added in the final release. 

I could easily see this game becoming huge in the competitive fighting game scene and no joke I would love for this game to make it to EVO one day. Its incredibly simple, intense, completive and best of all, fun. 

Divekick is scheduled to be released this summer on PS3 and Vita and if you want the game to be released on PC be sure to visit their Steam Greenlight page and give them and up vote. 

Be sure to also check out their Twitter page for updates on the game. 

SimCity mayors grabbed their free game from EA for surviving a difficult launch, Cogs tweeted more Gears of War tattoos at Cliff Bleszinski, and iOS'ers grabbed their rods and reels for some Ridiculous Fishing. 

What are you playing this weekend?

RUSSELL ARCHEY | Staff Writer | Twitter @neoscyther
For once, I'll actually not be playing Skyrim this weekend (even dragons need a rest from the constant beat downs). I do have a trio of games that I'm working on reviews for, including the latest Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, HarmoKnight, and BIT.TRIP Presents: Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien. The latter two are almost done for the most part, outside of actually completing the game, so I'll be spending most of my time in the next few days with Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity, with the rest of the weekend devoted to HarmoKnight.

SEAN CAHILL | Staff Writer | Twitter @seancahill2
Tomb Raider. I've finally managed to put other things on the shelf and give it my undivided attention. The game has an uncanny ability to really get under my skin in certain parts, but I find myself going back for more. I've been making it a point to unlock as much as I can on the first run before doing a 100 percent accuracy run after beating it for the first time.

NATHAN CARTER | Staff Writer | Twitter @natedoggcata
This weekend I will be playing lots of games. Too many to name, to be honest, because this weekend I will be heading off to PAX East in Boston. Be sure to follow me on twitter (@natedoggcata) to get updates live from the show floor. I will also be bringing my PS Vita will me to the show so in my downtime I am going to play some more Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward, the amazing sequel to Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors which was an amazing game on the original DS as well. There are 24 endings in Virtue's Last Reward and I am about 20 hours into the game. I've only gotten five endings. This game is outstanding. 

SEAN COLLELI | Staff Writer
The girlfriend is busy pet-sitting this weekend, so that means less Killing Floor and Left 4 Dead multiplayer, and more reviewing Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate. I've always felt a little guilty that I missed this one on the old Wii, but now that it's in HD with extra features...I guess he who laughs last laughs the most. I kind of like this strategy--wait awhile until a game's GOTY edition comes out with all the DLC on-disc. Sure I miss out on some big games during the first weeks, but considering my backlog is enormous as it is, and I avoid being nickled and dimed on the DLC, I think it's a fair trade off, at least for the few games I don't need to play on launch day.

CHARLES HUSEMANN | Editor-in-Chief | Twitter @chusemann
Probably a steady diet of MechWarrior Online again. They released a new patch this week with a brand spanking new map, new mech, and a bunch of control tweaks that are pretty solid. I unlocked my first elite level mech ability last week and hopefully will grind enough XP to earn one or two more. I'm somewhat tempted by Gears of War: Judgment, but I probably should be spending more time with the real world version of the dating game.

RANDY KALISTA | Staff Writer | Twitter @randykalista
I've established the SimCity township of Woodburn on the Giovanni Woods plot of the Viridian Woods. (Say "Woods" again.) Fellow Gaming Nexus staffers John Yan and Travis Huinker had broken ground previously with their ceremonial shovels on the oh-so-exclusive invite-only region, though Travis's city stressed him out and he flung a bunch of meteors at it. I'm ironing out details on how to specialize in mineral extraction. Apparently, no one likes living next to a mine shaft. Nobody tells me anything. At least John will breathe in all my pollution heading downwind towards him. Ha ha business!

Things are getting dark for PS Plus members, but in a good way. There are two games coming to the Instant Game Collection Tekken 6 for the PSP / Vita and the recently released the Cave from Double Fine. Once again, Sony is proving that the program isn’t all clearance-shelf titles but also new and popular titles!

In addition to two new free titles, the traditional discounts will also be coming to the store and program. this week’s specials include 40% off of both versions of Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken and 20% off of the new DLC packs for Hot Shots Golf: World Invitational. You will have access to all of these deal when the PlayStation Store updates later this evening.

God of War got slammed for stomping on a female’s face and handing out a trophy called “Bros Before Hos,” EA is giving away a free game to anybody suffering through SimCity’s launch, and the Tomb Raider reboot is so good no one’s even talking about Lara getting threatened with rape anymore. What are you playing this weekend?

RUSSELL ARCHEY | Staff Writer | Twitter @neoscyther
I know I'm sounding like a broken record week after week, but I just love spending quality time in Skyrim.  I almost have enchanting to 100, and smithing is well on its way there as well. Quest-wise, I only have a few story quests to go, so I'm mainly improving the skills needed to gear up for those. Hopefully in about two weeks time I'll have something different to put here. Not that Skyrim is a bad thing, of course.

NATHAN CARTER | Staff Writer | Twitter @natedoggcata
I think I’m going to switch it up this weekend. While I will still have my Left 4 Dead 2 sessions, most of my time this weekend will be spent with the new Tomb Raider which is absolutely incredible and my front runner for game of the year. Everything about this game is just amazing. The storytelling, the graphics, the gameplay--all outstanding and it sounds absolutely amazing with my Turtle Beach headset as well. Finally, I will be hopping back into some Dead or Alive 5 which is pretty amazing in itself. I know a lot of people dismiss DOA because of all the bouncing boobs and bathing suits, but underneath all of its juvenile humor is a deep and fun fighting game.

SEAN COLLELI | Staff Writer
Oddly enough, this is going to be a DS Lite weekend for me. I finally tracked down two elusive JRPGs for the trusty little portable: Rune Factory 2 arrived a few days ago and Infinite Space should be in the mail now. Why is it that these great games that only came out a couple years ago at most, are now sought-after collector's items that run $60 - $70 secondhand, and just the bare cartridge without the case or manual at that? I hate resorting to Amazon and eBay on these things but the publishers aren't giving me much choice--there wasn't a single copy of Infinite Space at any GameStop, Play N Trade or mom n' pop game store within 100 miles of Columbus. I'd much rather pay full retail price for a fresh shrinkwrapped copy instead of the ridiculously inflated secondhand prices for a solitary cart that's been through God knows what in some kid's backpack.

JEREMY DUFF | Senior Staff Writer | Twitter @duff3c
Don't even get me started on the ridiculousness of this GoW "outrage." That being said, I will be spending this weekend putting my bros before my hoes and playing a lot of God of War: Ascension as well as trying to level up the rest of the roster of Phantom Breaker Battle Grounds.

CHARLES HUSEMANN | Editor-in-Chief, Twitter @chusemann
Will be spending some quality time with SimCity and MechWarrior Online this weekend. I kind of wish someone could combine the two as I'd love to run around my city in my Death Knell commando obliterating misbehaving Sims.

RANDY KALISTA | Staff Writer | Twitter @randykalista
Need to brush up on my Mass Effect 3 multiplayer. After a year-long hiatus, I'm consistently ranking fourth (out of four) on every mission, forcing squad mates to treat me like a Ressuci Annie doll with a gun rather than a Reaper killa with attitude. Also, former Gaming Nexus staffer, Charlie Sinhaseni, who's now PR for the embattled SimCity brand, is prodding me to get my inner civil engineer on and tackle EA's newly installed servers. Just have to make sure my wife doesn't "reticulate" my "spline" for dropping $80 on the digital deluxe.

MIKE MAHARDY | Staff Writer | Twitter @mmahardy
I'll be checking out Dead Space 3's Awakened DLC this weekend to see if it really returns to the horror roots of the series. Aside from that, I'll dive into Castlevania: Mirror of Fate to see what I htink about the next portable installation in the series.

JOHN YAN | Senior Hardware Editor | Twitter @thejohnyan
I will be playing StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm all weekend while checking out SimCity and maybe throw in a run or two of Diablo 3.
 

This June, Milestone will be releasing MotoGP 13, the official game of the 2013 MotoGP World Championship.  Just recently they released the first gameplay video that gives a sneak peak at Gran Premio d'Italia TIM - Mugello.  The purpose of the video is to show the improvements in the graphics as well as the enhanced physics.  To help with this, they have included several different camera views during the course of the video to show the potential of these improvements.

Looking to try out Dead Or Alive 5+ before buying? You are in luck as Team NINJA has announced that a demo for the upcoming Vita release will be available close to the games launch on March 19th. The demo will also keep you quite busy as its going to pack in tons of feature to give you a taste of what you can expect in the full retail release.

First off players will be given single player and Touch Fight modes to play around in with fighters Kasumi, Hayabusa, Eliot and Tina. You will also be able to unlock costumes in the demo as you do in the full game and anything unlocked during the demo will carry over to the full game via save files. 

The demo also features a bunch of stages to fight in including.

• Scramble
• The Show
• The Tiger Show
• Coming Soon
• Zack Island
• Dead or Alive
• Arrival
• Dojo

Dead Or Alive 5+ also features a plethora of new features including the ability to break down entire fights and attacks in real time, getting info on damage outputs, effects and other info giving instant detailed analysis on fights, Replay scenes from story mode at any time, first person touch fights, new tutorials and combo challenges.

For more news be sure to check out the following sites.

Official Website

Facebook

Twitter

We also have a new trailer and a batch of new screens for the upcoming game as well.  [READ MORE]

We’re going to do things a little differently this week and from now on with the Now Loading feature. In addition to highlighting the full list of official releases for a given week, we’re going to give our picks of the top 3 titles of the week as well, along with a little more information about those games.

This is a huge week for the industry and simply the start of what will be a gigantic month. March has an incredibly line up and it is coming out of the games swinging! There are plenty of choices for you this week, but you might want to pay special attention to the following games (in no particular order):

Tomb Raider: Everything old is new again, or at least it is this week. The original video game vixen is back this week with the reboot of Tomb Raider for both the Xbox 360 and PS3. Lara is back but not exactly in the way we all remember her. This time around we’re going back in time and learning Ms. Croft’s origin story and seeing exactly what made her into the badass, gun-toting adventurer that took the world by storm on the original PlayStation.

The reviews of the game started hitting last week and have been giving the game constant praise. The new vision of Lara appears to be greatly appreciated as the focus is now on great story telling and excellent gameplay rather than just a hot girl with with guns. Our own review is coming soon and let’s just say that our own Cyril was very impressed. You will definitely want to put this one on your list of games to check out!

SimCity: See, I told you that everything old was new again! The second big title this week is another reboot of a classic series with the relaunch of SimCity on PC’s. EA and the developer Maxis are ready to make the series a staple on the PC platform once again thanks to an entirely new game engine and the inclusion of a new, multiplayer component. John and Travis had a blast with the beta version earlier this year and Travis will be bringing you our official review of the game in the very near future.

MLB 13 The Show: Personally, I love the landscape of the sporting game genre in our industry. Instead of one company producing what are considered the best games with each different sport, we have a variety. Madded / EA are the obvious leaders (and only option) when it comes to the NFL; 2K has a monarchy on the NBA franchise; and Sony may be the title holder for the MLB. This week will see releases of new MLB games from both Sony and 2K but Sony’s “The Show” series has taken the edge in the past couple of years. This year’s edition launches this week with cross save features supported in both the PS3 and Vita versions of the game. We have both versions in-house currently and are running them through the review process, so look forward to seeing those very shortly (heads up, it appears to be as solid as ever).

Full listing of this week’s releases:

• 2K Sports Combo Pack (MLB 2K13 and NBA 2K13) for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3
• The Amazing Spider-Man: Ultimate Edition for Nintendo Wii U
• Atelier Ayesha: The Alchemist of Dusk for PlayStation 3
• Bit.Trip presented: Runner 2 - Future Legend of Rhythm Alien for PlayStation Network
• Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate for Nintendo 3DS
• Dollar Dash for Xbox Live Arcade
• Fuel Overdose for PlayStation Network
• Germinator for PlayStation Network
• MLB 13: The Show for Playstation 3 and Vita
• MLB 2K13 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3
• NARUTO Powerful Shippuden for Nintendo 3DS
• NARUTO Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3
• SimCity for PC
• The Sims 3: University Life for PC
• Tomb Raider for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3

Wow, talk about a game that I never thought that we would here from again! Team17 recently took to Sony’s PlayStation Blog to reveal that they were reaching into their vault and pulling out a classic to be reintroduced for a whole new generation: Superfrog HD is headed to the PlayStation 3 and Vita.

Very few details were given other than the existence of the project. It is worth noting that the original game, release back in 1993, received rave reviews and is known for being one of the best platformers of all time. Hopefully the new vision of the game will be just as good as the old one!

Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes was met with much acclaim when it hit PC and current gen consoles last year.  In the absence of the long rumored Justice League film, Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes has to be the next best thing - maybe not as "next-best" as a non-lego version of the same game with mature production values, but you get the idea.

Anyway, it's going to be coming to the Wii U later this year (right now, they're saying "spring").  The Wii U's GamePad controller will allow players to navigate a fully-explorable Gotham City thanks to an enhanced map, or you can simply play it on the GamePad controller.  You'll even be able to play co-op where one player uses the TV and the other uses the GamePad controller.  That's a nice feature, if you ask me.

To learn more, follow the jump. [READ MORE]