Need for Speed NITRO features a variety of licensed cars which can be fully customized to let the game reflect the player’s taste and personality.

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.

Biart has released a new movie for Underwater Wars, an action shooter set to be released in Q2 2010, for PC, Xbox 360 and PSP.

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!

Today EA LA officially announced the conclusion to the Tiberium series, Command and Conquer 4. Players will finally witness Kane’s master plan come together or fail utterly as the bitter rivals Global Defense Initiative (GDI) and the Brotherhood of Nod race to save mankind from destruction.

“Command & Conquer is a powerful franchise with an amazing 15-year legacy. We are thrilled to bring the dramatic Tiberium saga to a conclusion in Command & Conquer 4. This game is designed to give fans all the answers they’ve been looking for,” said Mike Glosecki, Lead Producer of Command & Conquer 4 at EA Los Angeles. “With its objective-based multiplayer mode, persistent player progression and all-in-one mobile base, players will experience Command & Conquer like never before.”

Much of the information on C&C4 is being kept under wraps and doled out as exclusive content. For more details on Command & Conquer 4 make sure to catch BattleCast PrimeTime on the July 24th episode. They’ll be revealing exclusive information C&C4. The first glimpse of the game will be the premier cinematic trailer aired exclusively on the July 23rd episode of Gametrailers TV on SPIKE TV. The ETA for Command & Conquer 4 is sometime in 2010. Read the full article »

This week’s Rock Band Unplugged DLC is quite an eccentric mix with a little of everything from Stevie Ray Vaughan to the Dixie Chicks. All offerings are master tracks from the original artists. Harmonix is throwing in the song used as the end credits of Portal, “Still Alive” by Joathan Coulton as sung by GLaDOS, as a free download.

Tracks:

Dixie Chicks                                           “Sin Wagon”
GLaDOS and Jonathan Coulton                  “Still Alive”
The Pixies                                             “Here Comes Your Man”
R.E.M.                                                 “Losing My Religion”
Stevie Ray Vaughan                               “Pride and Joy”

All tracks, except for “Still Alive” which is free, are available for purchase for $1.99 each on the in-game Rock Band Unplugged music store.

As an aside, if you like “Still Alive” I highly recommend checking out Jonathan Coulton’s website. He specializes in comedic songs based on videogames and gaming culture. Some of our family favorite are “Re: Your Brains“, “Creepy Doll” and “Code Monkey“. A dedicated fan and World of Warcraft player, Mike Spiff Booth has made a whole series of very funny and well done WoW machinima to Coulton’s songs.

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.

EA Sports has released the Season Preview for Madden NFL 10. Predictions are based on a combination of individual player and overall team ratings.

You can find team roster ratings and over all team ratings for the Cowboys, Eagles, Giants and Redskins online at the Madden NFL 10 Season Preview website.

AFC North will be the next division rated leading up to the Madden NFL 10 predictions for the 2009 NFL division winners, season MVP, and more August 3rd. Madden NFL series has been uncannily accurate at predicting the Superbowl winners for 6 years running. It predicted Pittsburgh Steelers’ win over the Arizona Cardinals this years at Pitt 28, Cards 24. The actual score was Pitt 27, Cards 23. I wouldn’t bet against  Madden NFL 10’s prediction that’s for sure.

Look for Madden NFL 10 on the Xbox 360, PS2,PS3, PSP and the Wii.

This week 2K Games is giving baseball fans the chance to play THE BIGS 2 before the release date. These two big community events run June 30th, 6:00 PM PST at the Wilshire Grand in LA and July 1st, 6:00 PM EST at the Hilton New York in New York City.

For those of you who want a play by play but can’t attend, keep tabs on the events on the THE BIGS 2 forums. The full details on how to get signed up for these THE BIGS 2 party events follow the jump.
Gamers can pre-order THE BIGS 2 for Xbox 360, Wii Ps2, PS3 and PSP. The game launches July 7th. Read the full article »