To give some background on Dead Rising 2, Capcom and Blue Castle Games has been working on an XBLA prologue for their upcoming sequel to the popular zombie sandbox game. Dead Rising 2: Case Zero offers a quick look into what you should expect from Dead Rising 2 as you get to explore a remote desert town that is infested with zombies, which is a good proof of concept and is well worth the $5 for this XBLA game.

Case Zero is more of a way to set-up the story of Dead Rising 2 than to close the story of the original. You learn of the zombie outbreak in Las Vegas that has prompted a military response to quarantine a 50 mile radius around ground zero, which includes the town of Still Creek as Chuck Greene and his infected daughter Katey pull into the town to get some gas. Their truck is stolen when they have their backs turned, so they need to find some Zombrex to keep Katey’s infection at bay, a way to get out of town, and they have only until 9 PM to escape before its too late.
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While 2009 saw five Guitar Hero games released, two within three months of each other, the need for new titles in 2010 has some gamers feeling worn out.  But with new instruments (keyboard, advanced drum kit) and a new take on the Guitar Hero franchise, both Activision and Harmonix are looking to make 2010 the year that their respected franchises go beyond just simple button presses and branch out to include gamers of all ages.

The selling point of both games is the songs for which you can play and both titles have their fair share of solid tracks.  While Nine Inch Nails, Rush, Anberlin and Flyleaf are putting out popular songs for Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, Rock Band 3 is bringing more tracks designed to encourage group play, with songs from Them Crooked Vultures, Anthrax, Whitesnake and the ever-popular song, Bohemian Rhapsody.

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With Dragon Age II quickly appearing on the horizon, Bioware has not yet ended the adventures of the Grey Warden in the original Origins storyline.  Although the previous quest with Leliana was charming fun, the latest trek through the underground city of Amgarrak is a complete waste of time.  With a forgettable story, dull characters and an insanely hard difficulty that will even have veteran players yelling in anger; Golems of Amgarrak is not worth the price of admission, even at $5.

Golems of Amgarrak begins with the dwarf Jerrik Dace writing a letter to the Grey Warden asking for help in finding his brother, Brogan, who has disappeared beneath the Deep Roads into Amgarrak.  You might think this is the beginning of a moving story, one that Origins expertly displays in all of its various missions, but unfortunately the best moments of the DLC are in the first two minutes of cutscenes.

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Though Gamescom hasn’t been a place for many publishers to make big announcements, Sony has followed up their PS3 Slim and price drop announcements at 2009′s Gamescom Convention in Cologne, Germany with two big games announcements from Insomniac Games and some other interesting bits of news during their press conference today.
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What can you get for $2.50 these days? A pack of chips? A cup of coffee? How about a potentially limitless amount of replay value? Would you be willing to pay $2.50 to expand a game that already offers hundreds of hours of fun with even more content? That’s the question Zen Studios is asking with their add-on tables for Zen Pinball. Coming up I’ll go through the five add-on tables that have been released thus far, and I’ll let you know which I think are the best ones to get.

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When you think of the game BioShock, naturally many think of that underwater utopian society that tragically fell to the pressures of genetic splicing and the mind of Andrew Ryan.  While the sequel focused its sights on new characters and events, Bioshock still took place in the fallen city of Rapture, a beautifully created city filled with Big Daddies, Little Sisters and plenty of other dangerous things looking to kill you quickly.  But Irrational Games’ latest project is taking the Bioshock series in a new direction, one that will have players leaving the confines of Rapture for the flying fortress known as Columbia.

What is Columbia you ask?  It’s a giant fortress hovering in the skies above the United States in the early 1910’s.  Columbia is the idea of a post Civil War American destined to show off his excellence and love for the United States to the world.   But like Bioshock, one man’s idea soon becomes trampled as Columbia becomes known as a giant floating fortress of terror in the eyes of all those watching from below.  As Ken Levine, creative director of Irrational Games and project director of the original Bioshock, explains: “Something terrible happens, this is not a floating world’s fair. Columbia is a Death Star.”

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We’ve known for a few months now that GameStop has been planning to upgrade the Edge card program into a fleshed-out rewards program, but it has only been in a testing phase in a few areas within Ohio, Tennessee, and Missouri until now. I was told by some clerks at the local GameStop that they would be switching people over to the PowerUp Rewards program tonight during the midnight launch of Madden NFL 11, which I can confirm when I just received my own card after paying off the Madden NFL 11 pre-order to possibly be the first customer to do so at this location. The question I still have is whether this will be launching across the nation or if this is still a limited expansion of the program in a few more parts of the country, though picking the night of the Madden NFL 11 launch here in Canton, Ohio makes it seem like this may be a bigger thing despite my research confirming nothing.

Scouring as much of the internet as I could stand, I didn’t see much discussion between anybody that has shopped at GameStop recently that heard of the PowerUp Rewards switch, so maybe I’ve stumbled upon the “No Homers” club for PowerUp Rewards. Despite picking a big launch to roll these Edge cards over to PowerUp Rewards cards, there are no press releases from GameStop, no signs of the program’s existence on GameStop.com, and the lack of discussion on the number of forums I would look to for word on Madden or GameStop discussions, so I’m forced to believe that it’s a local expansion here in the home of the Pro Football Hall of Fame to take advantage of the Madden NFL 11 launch. If you’d like a bit more information about the card, the website, and what comes with this new program, just keep reading past the jump for more details and impressions of PowerUp Rewards.
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Madden and the Wii; it’s a match made in heaven. The Wii is the best-selling console in the United States, and Madden has always been the best selling sports game for quite a few years now.  Year after year, EA Sports has done what they can to make the Wii version of the game stand out, and this year’s entry stands out once again, with emphasis being put upon what’s arguably the most important mode in the entire series. Read the rest of this entry »

With the NFL Hall of Fame ceremonies beginning to fade out, the pre-season has just begun and with that comes another year of Madden football.  The release of Madden is always one of the most anticipated releases every summer, and it’s not a surprise considering the sport’s growing popularity.  While the league may be entering a lot of uncertainty going into next season—we do know one thing for certain and that’s whether or not this year’s version of the game is worth picking up. Read the rest of this entry »

We always like to see developers reward their fans with free things, even before their latest game has even come out. Shank developer Klei Entertainment spread word earlier today that they would release the soundtrack for their upcoming XBLA and PSN brawler once the amount of fans on their Facebook page surpassed 1500 fans. The only problem is that Klei underestimated the response they would get, so the soundtrack was not ready for release when they passed 1500 fans.
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