A lot of people originally described Geometry Wars as being like Asteroids on drugs. I feel like that’s a pretty appropriate analogy for Geometry Wars 2, only replace ‘Asteroids‘ with ‘Geometry Wars‘ — this looks absolutely insane. If you thought the action in GW was chaotic, you haven’t seen anything yet.

As if that would be enough to make GW fans happy, it looks like this is going to be a much more fully featured game than the original Retro Evolved was, with multiple modes and multiplayer support for up to four players.

Talk about a killer app for Xbox Live Arcade.

If you watched Sony’s press conference earlier this week, you probably appreciated the way in which Sony presented its various bragging numbers. While Nintendo and Microsoft did it in boring PowerPoint slideshow style, Sony opted instead to have Media Molecule’s Alex Evans play through a level of LittleBigPlanet that was specifically designed to help illustrate the numbers that Sony was presenting. Yeah, it still comes down to a “look at how awesome Sony is!” type of ordeal, but you’ve gotta give them credit for being creative with it.

PlayStation.Blog got to quickly interview Evans afterwards, which you can watch above. You can get a glimpse at the level Evans was playing, too, if you didn’t get to watch the press conference and don’t want to bother downloading it to watch one part.

Next year, Microsoft or Nintendo should steal the idea and present their numbers in terms of number of Master Chiefs or Marios. Sound lame? It is, but anything beats the hell out of PowerPoint.

Well, E3 has officially ended, and our team is preparing to wing their way back home. Before they started packing, they sat down to give you guys one more podcast detailing their final day at this year’s conference.

You can look forward to hearing Shawn, Jonathan, and Daniel discuss the games they saw on Thursday, their hands-on experiences on the show floor, and what they were most impressed with at the show as a whole.

This special episode is available for direct download here.

As always, you can send comments, snide remarks, or suggestions to podcast@filefront.com. You can check out the entire File-N-Forget back catalog of episodes at http://podcast.filefront.com.

You can also check out the File-N-Forget Podcast on the iTunes Music Store.

Dawn of War II ushers in a new chapter in the acclaimed RTS series – taking players to the brutal frontlines of war to lead an elite strike force on a mission to save the galaxy.

It’s the 41st Millennium in the Sub-Sector Aurelia – a cluster of worlds on the edge of the Galaxy – where a battle of epic proportions is about to commence. Ancient races will clash across the planets that dot this section of space, battling for the greatest of stakes – not only the claim to the land and its bounty – but the fate of each race.

With a focus on fast-action RTS gameplay, Dawn of War II brings to life the science fiction universe of Warhammer 40,000 with the intimate brutality of battle as you play through your chosen race’s epic campaign. Clash with enemies on battlefields ablaze with visceral melee and ranged combat. Lead and develop your squads from raw recruits into the most battle hardened veterans in the Galaxy.

BioWare demonstrates some of the gameplay features for Dragon Age: Origins in this video which is just over three minutes long. Being called the spiritual successor by the devs, I am thinking those are some big shoes to fill – in my opinion anyway, but if they can match the fun dungeon crawling experience of the original BG than it will be a good thing.They still need to put the finishing touches on the game, but they have more than enough time until release to shine it up.

Anyway, here are some features from the game along with the gameplay video.

• Epic Party-Based Combat – Dragon Age: Origins will introduce an innovative, scalable combat system, as players face large-scale battles and use their party’s special abilities to destroy hoardes of enemies and massive creatures.
• Powerful Magic – Raining down awesome destruction on enemies is even more compelling as players apply “spell combos,” a way of combining together different spells to create emergent unique effects.
• Deep Customization – Players will develop their characters and gain powerful special abilities (spells, talents and skills) and discover ever-increasing weapons of destruction.
• Your Story, Your Way – With its emotionally compelling story, players choose with whom they wish to forge alliances or crush under their mighty fist, redefining the world with the choices they make and how they wield their power.
• Origin Stories – Players will select and play a unique prelude that provides the lens through which the player sees the world and how the world sees the player. The player’s choice of Origin will determine who they are and where they begin the adventure, as they play through a customized story opening that profoundly impacts the course of every adventure.

Dragon Age: Origins is scheduled to ship for the PC in early 2009.

Eidos is offering fans a sneak peak with the unveil of an exclusive, behind the scenes trailer of Tomb Raider: Underworld. Join the team as they go beneath the surface by taking players on a dark journey revealing new, exciting information along with developer secrets about the biggest and most ambitious Tomb Raider yet.

This new trailer takes you through the developer Crystal Dynamics’ vision for the game, with commentary from team members: Eric Lindstrom (Creative Director), Dan Neuberger (Lead Artist), Rob Pavey (Lead Programmer) and Harley White-Wiedow (Lead Designer). The trailer reveals new assets including early footage, screenshots and concept artwork from several of the game’s levels.

Tomb Raider: Underworld represents a new advancement in exploration-based gameplay. As Lara Croft, explore exotic locations around the world, each designed with what seems to be incredible attention to detail and a new level of challenge and choice.

The title ships on November 18th in North America and 21st November in Europe, across all platforms: Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, DS, PS2 and PC. I am really digging what I see of this game, and I think I may just have to have it.

Sony president Jack Tretton will readily admit that UMDs have struggled, particularly as a movie format. As a result, Sony has been thinking about the potential of packing in a hard drive, or some kind of internal storage, Tretton revealed yesterday at E3.

“I think we definitely thought about it,” he said. “I think that’s the trend moving forward.”

He expanded on that by talking about the dropping cost of memory is increasing the likelihood of a PSP with built-in storage, which I would be a big fan of, as the owner of five Memory Stick Pro Duos (three of which are 2GB or larger).

The new video store on PlayStation Network has already impacted sales of movies on UMD, which e described as a business model that equated to “let’s see if we can get people to pay $20 or $30 for crappy movies with less content.”

“I think the UMD has struggled,” he said. “And that’s an understatement. That’s been a very frustrating thing. I don’t think [UMD movies] were handled very effectively.”

via Kotaku

Unhappy that the new Halo hasn’t made an appearance at E3? Well, don’t hold your breath for a last second showing to steal the show on its last day — Microsoft is waiting to now show the game at a dedicated event where they can do it more justice, according to Don Mattrick.

Originally clocking in at 2 1/2 hours, the game’s removal from Microsoft’s press conference helped to cut that time down to 90 minutes. “We had an embarrassment of riches,” Mattrick told the LA Times. “We felt we could do this game more justice with a more dedicated event.”

“Two big kahunas were left out of the show, and we were still able to deliver a strong performance,” Mattrick said, referring to the exclusive content Rockstar has in store for Grand Theft Auto IV.

Luke Smith has also posted some answers to the most asked questions over on Bungie.net:

1. OMG! The announce was posted at 7! This is all part of the plan.

The news was broken to us shortly before 7 p.m. and we decided to keep with tradition to make a clean break.

2. Why leave the splash page up if it’s not happening?

We left the splash page up for the folks who didn’t see the message or were planning on tuning in the following morning before the news vanished into Bungie.net’s ether.

3. But Harold Ryan is only a TESTER this has to be fake!

Harold was a tester, but assumed the position of President a while ago. Crazy Wiki’s and their misinformation.

I get the feeling that we’ll be hearing more about this new Halo once Sony starts building up more buzz as we get closer to the release of Resistance 2 and LittleBigPlanet.

Don’t color me surprised — but you can color me as pleasantly surprised. Wait.

Damnit.

You may have noticed the lack of anything Halo-related at Microsoft’s press conference earlier this week, as well as Bungie’s sudden backtrack on their website regarding an announcement they were planning to make at E3. The message above was posted on Bungie.net’s splash page by president Harold Ryan, apologizing for the lack of any announcement. Combine that with the unusual wording — “our publisher” and not “Microsoft” like you’d expect — and it was unclear what was going on.

But in an interview with MTV, Stephen Totilo managed to get word out of Microsoft exec Don Mattrick that Bungie is at work on a new Halo game separate from both Halo Wars and Peter Jackson’s Halo project.

The explanation Mattrick gave for why the game was absent from the press conference was that Microsoft felt they already had more than enough to show, and a new Halo game wasn’t needed.

Maybe, but as someone who remains a Halo fanboy at heart, it would have made me a very happy camper to see what Bungie is working on.

PlayStation Portable owners should be happy to see so much content released on the PlayStation Store for PC, which oftentimes finds itself with only a single background or video each week. Unfortunately, today’s content is only going to make you envious of others unless you own a PS3, because all six videos focus on (almost exclusively) the PlayStation 3.

But if you do have a PS3, you should fill up your PSP with these new videos and go grab about what you’ll soon be playing to all of your friends at work tomorrow. At the very least, you’ll get a swift punch to the upper jaw — and there’s nothing quite like a clean fist to the upper jaw to remind you that you’re not dreaming.

• PS3 Compilation Video
• PSN :30 Second Sizzle
• PSN Sizzle Video
• PlayStation Family Video
• DC Universe Trailer
• Valhalla Knights 2 Trailer