In a vast open world environment, Assassin’s Creed II invites players to incarnate Ezio, a privileged young noble in Renaissance Italy who’s been betrayed by the rival ruling families of Italy, and seeking vengeance.

Maybe I’m dating myself a little, but I can remember classic turn-based RPGs well enough that I get a little offended when I hear myself call them classics. (Does that mean I’m officially old now?) It’s a genre that I’ve gotten away from in years past, as I moved into shooters, MMORPGs, and other types of games. So I am sure you’ll forgive my skepticism of a little game I got my hands on last week, Nostalgia for the Nintendo DS. After all, how well will a classic, turn-based JRPG appeal to me now?

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This trailer shows the different games available in Touchmaster 3.

This trailer contains about a minute and a half of in-game footage from Dementium 2.

In this dev diary, developers go in depth about the sequel with the changes made, the differences in the character, and the setting.

Get it at FileFront!

The first glimpse of Mini Ninjas box art has been captured for the upcoming game. Guide Hiro, the world’s littlest ninja on an adventure of massive proportions as you save the world from evil samurai turning animals into mindless minions. Having ninjas as heroes versus evil Samurai seems backward to me but the trailer looks good.

The Mini Ninjas -
Where have the animals gone?
September comes soon…

Mini Ninjas will sneaking up on the PC, PS3, Wii, Xbox 360 and the DS September 8, 2009.

This week’s Zero Punctuation takes on Ghostbusters The Videogame. Yahtzee’s not afraid to take on games and films with a deeply devoted and sometime rabid fan base to task. It’s an ugly brawl and he manages to pull Star Trek and Dr. Who into the fray.

Although I may not always agree with his opinion, I always enjoy it. Yahtzee isn’t afraid to cut anyone down to size including himself.

You can view the Zero punctuation videogame review archives on The Escapist.

John Harris, a writer over on the industry news site/blog Gamasutra,  writes a regular series of articles entitled Game Design Essentials. These long and exhaustively researched story discusses his position on many topics important to modern game design and the lessons learned along the way.

His latest installment discusses 20 RPGs that all designers should be familiar with and why. The feature article is interesting from the perspective of someone who has studied game design and as someone who has been using RPGs for storytelling and  enjoyment over the years. Aspiring designers could do far worse than to dig through this fairly dense statement of information covering RPGs from the classic pen-and-paper Dungeons & Dragons through the evolution of Wizardry, Ultima, Wasteland and more contemporary games like World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy and the Elder Scrolls titles.

You can check out the entire article here.

Nintendo has a habit of making games that aren’t always games. Electroplankton was one of these experiments – more light and music simulator the title gives players control of a sparkly little wireform creature with a happy face in it that you move around creating an interactive musical experience. Originally released for the Nintendo DS handheld as 10 unique electroplankton, the title is getting a re-release of a sort thanks to Nintendo’s new DSi download service.

Beginning this week (July 8th) in Japan the software giant will be releasing 4 of the available creatures/levels at a bargain price of 200 Nintendo DSi points. The plan reportedly is to expand the offering to include all 10 creatures, which even at 2000 points is a bit of a bargain since the game, now out of print in the US, Europe and Japan is going for a fairly high price on eBay. No word on if the downloads are guaranteed for the US DSiWare store yet.

One complaint I always had during the limited time I spent playing the game before the next shiny bauble or explosion caught my jaded eye was that I could not save the music I created while “playing” with my plankton. I’ve been unable to confirm if this feature is included in the new download capable handheld.

MapleStory is wooing main stream American youth with videos to air on television networks and as previews for the latest Harry Potter movie this summer. This brings MapleStory into the American public eye, the realm only pierced by  Halo 3 and World of Warcraft so far. The 2D side-scrolling MMORPG is already pretty popular enjoying a 6 million strong player base in North America alone. It’s aimed at kids 10 and up, but has a very wide age range of players, most of whom seem to take their cute super-deformed characters pretty seriously.

MapleStory is a free to play MMO with a cash shop that allows players to purchase Nexon Cash to trade for premium items. MapleStory Nexon Cash cards have been available at local retailers like Target, CVS and Best Buy for a few years. The MMO has also spawned the MapleStory card game and videogames for the Wii and DS. Still MapleStory seems to be simmering just below the surface of casual gaming culture. Perhaps these new videos can tip MapleStory into the mainstream spotlight. Look for the video shorts to start appearing on tv and in theaters later this month. Until then, you can check it out for yourself at http://maplestory.nexon.net.