Codemasters has announced DiRT 2 and apparently the game’s going to include loads of off-road events, taking you all over the world and ill have you competing in aggressive multi-car and solo races at a variety of new locations.

New events include the edge-of-control canyon racing of Utah’s “Creek Trailblazer” event, the muddy tracks of the “Rawang Rally Run”, set in the rain forests of Malaysia, and the “Battersea Battle”
of London, where rallycross night races are staged in and around Battersea’s power station, transformed into an industrial amphitheater of racing.

The game will be powered by the third generation of the EGO Engine’s award-winning racing game technology, which will benefit DiRT 2 with a tuned-up car-handling physics system and new and improved damage engine effects.

Expanding on the variety of race styles, players can also expect a wider selection of race formats, inspired by authentic contemporary off-road solo, multi-car, and multi-class racing. “Rallycross” returns for close battling racing in new settings along with “Raid”, the reinvention of DiRT’s Rally Raid, will offer wide open point-to-point stages for multiple competitors to race the heavier off-road
vehicles on terrain filled with natural obstacles. “Trailblazer” is the new hill climb event that will take drivers downhill and there will be faster, more powerful cars to choose from.

Covering seven vehicle classes, gamers will get the keys to powerful vehicles right away.For example: the opening drive in the game is the “Group N Subaru” which essentially takes the ultimate car from the original game and making it the starting point in the sequel. You can also travel the game’s world in your very own RV with “World Tour” and view the races from the windows of it, and while you are traveling around, DiRT 2 will come complete with full online functionality with head-to-head competitive online play and new social features.

DiRT 2 is expected to be released for the Nintendo DS, PC, PSP, PS3, Xbox and Wii sometime in January 2009 and although race fans and gamers lost Colin McRae back in September 2007 during a helicopter crash, his name will still appear on the game as a tribute. Well played Codemasters, you are a class act all the way.

With Thanksgiving on Thursday, Sony’s decided to release this week’s PlayStation Store update today — and I don’t think anyone will be complaining. The release of Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix ($15) is the biggest news and anyone who has read 1UP’s review knows that it’s worth both the hype and the wait. Brain Challenge ($10) joins it as the week’s other downloadable game release and features 25 different brain-teasing minigames.

Should neither of those games interest you, a temporary sale on five older PSN games is in effect until December 4. The Last Guy, PixelJunk Eden, Echochrome (PS3), Novastrike, and Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando 3 are all available for just $5 while the sale lasts.

Little Big Planet once again gets new costumes, with the free costume celebrating the holiday — a turkey head costume. For $2 you can also get the Chimera costume for Resistance 2 fans.

Music gamers get another dose of DLC this week. Rock Band adds nine new tracks today — three from The Killers ($2 each or $5.49 as a bundle), three from Yngwie Malmsteen ($2 each of $5.49 as a bundle), two from Soundgarden, and one from Lamb of God ($2 each). Guitar Hero World Tour calls that with three different songs from The Killers at the same price scheme. And Karaoke Revolution Presents: American Idol Encore 2 adds six new songs to sing along to for $1.49 a piece.

The promised demo of Dead Space rounds out the end of the list of PS3 downloads, although you can of course find new wallpapers, themes, and videos, as well as five free tracks from Street Fighter HD.

PSP owners, who have likely become accustomed to getting zilch after the past month’s worth of lackluster updates, can find two new pieces of content today. A trailer for Everyday Shooter is the less significant of the two, as the other new download is a new downloadable game, PBR: Out of the Chute ($15), which is the first professional bull riding game on PSP I can think of. It might not be what you were hoping for, but it’s better than another empty week on the PSP front.

Hhgregg is shoving over the big boys and getting into the game, business that is. Starting Black Friday, November 28th, customers will find console bundles, portable platforms, videogames and accessories lining the shelves of the Indianapolis-based appliance and electronics retailer.

“As hhgregg continues its disciplined growth, we are committed to continually assessing our product offerings to best meet the needs of our customers,” said hhgregg Chairman and CEO, Jerry Throgmartin. “We are pleased to now offer our loyal patrons some of the most popular merchandise in the gaming market today. hhgregg will provide our customers with a convenient, one-stop gaming solution, packaging gaming consoles with its respective games, controllers and other accessories. This customer-friendly gaming package will make a great gift for the upcoming holiday season.”

In case you have any concerns that the staff will be completely unable to help you, according to the press release on Business Wire, hhgregg has started running it’s employees through a training program to educate them about games and accessories. Hopefully they’ll also go over ESRB ratings in detail since the general public seems to not quite grasp them.

Celebrate, homebrew fans — while Sony had managed to evade the attempts of hackers to crack into the latest iteration of the PlayStation Portable, the PSP 3000, it’s finally been accomplished. Sure, we knew it was inevitably going to be cracked since it was released in October, but with the talent of hackers these days, I’m surprised when things aren’t hacked as soon as they’re released.

Of course, this comes at a price — $30, to be exact. A new battery from the England-based maker of Action Replay, Datel, enables users to put the PSP in service mode, reports Maxconsole.net. From there, you’ll be able to downgrade the system’s firmware, thereby allowing you to access all of those wonderful (albeit typically illegal) tools, apps, and emulators you’ve no doubt heard of. The battery features a convenient switch to allow you to jump between service mode and normal mode and functions with both the PSP 3000 and 2000.

The Datel ‘Lite Blue Tool’ battery is being released on November 28 for $30 in North America and $20 in the UK. A technical explanation (containing fancy words such as “de-capsulated”) of how the feat was accomplished can be found at Maxconsole. Those interested in picking up the new battery can find it’s now available for preorder from Datel’s online store.

Your move, Sony.

Undoubtedly the highlight of this week’s PlayStation Store update (which, once again, ignores PSP owners altogether) is the release of the long-awaited BioShock challenge rooms, as promised earlier. For $10, you’ll be able to work your way through three separate scenarios: Rescuing a Little Sister from a carnival, killing a Big Daddy without any weapons, and tackling a series of rooms containing wave after wave of enemies.

Also new this week is downloadable content for Dead Space (various skin packs and weapon packs, ranging from $1-$4) and new costumes for Little Big Planet (a free Sack in the Box costume and a $3 LocoRoco pack which has five different costumes). Rock Band and Guitar Hero World Tour square off, with GH adding three tracks from The Raconteurs ($2 each of $5.49 for a bundle of all three), while Rock Band 1 and Rock Band 2 get three songs from Mission of Burma and three from the Dead Kennedys (both artists’ music costs $2 each or $5.49 for a bundle of all three songs). There are also four other songs from Crooked X ($1), Lacuna Coil ($2 each), and In This Moment ($2), which you can get in a bundle for $5.49. Karaoke Revolution Presents: American Idol Encore 2 also gets five new songs, each for just $1.49.

Aside from that, there’s a demo of MotoGP ‘08 (which you can check out on PC at FileFront) as well as some videos, trailers, and themes of everything from NBA 2K9 to Hancock.

Sorry, PSP owners. I wasn’t teasing you — there really is nothing for you this week.

This cycled through the internet a bit yesterday when most people believed these transparent PSP billboards were real (via Toxel). Sadly they’re not; just concepts for an ad campaign from an artist called “Skizo.” There’s no doubt however that this is one damn creative idea. I’m not sure quite how well those ads would work after some exposure to the elements though (plus that one with the sniper would probably result in a few calls to the cops). Still, I sure wouldn’t mind looking out my window every morning to see Spider-man outside.

The rest of the concept images can be seen after the break.

Read the full article »

There’s just a single standalone downloadable game this week — Age of Booty ($10), the Capcom RTS featuring pirates that was released on the Xbox Live Arcade in October — but there’s no lack of downloadable content for other games. First and foremost is Pain Movie Studio Lot ($6) and the David Hasselhoff character to go along with it. But do you love/hate The Hoff enough to pay $2 to throw him around the world of Pain?

Little Big Planet gets six new costumes ranging in price from free to $2. The Lilly Pad, Hugo, Great Blue, and Frost E costumes all cost $1 each — or you can get the Animal Costume Bundle with all four for $3 — the Sack-Eating Plant costume — which was an SCEE contest winner — is available for free, and the MotorStorm Stormers costume will cost a pricey $2. Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds also gets new costumes, although they come in the form of a single pack for $3 and include five new costumes with six variations each. And Star Wars: The Force Unleashed also gets in on the costume fun with seven new characters and three new Secret Apprentice costumes for $5. The new characters include Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Luke Skywalker. Star Wars fans should be plenty pleased with these additions. If your favorite character wasn’t included, there’s still hope — this is “costume pack 1,” which suggests there are more on the way.

FIFA 09 has a plethora of free commentary packs for various languages — everything from Portuguese to Swedish to new English commentary is included — that will allow you to hear your favorite soccer commentators from around the world in their native tongue. Depending on which you download, you’re looking at a file from 423 MB up to over 1.1 GB.

The weekly dose of Rock Band content features 12 tracks from the Foo Fighters. Each track will cost you $2 or you can get all 12 in “The Colour and the Shape” album for $20. If Guitar Hero World Tour is your thing, you can find three new tracks from R.E.M. for $2 a piece, or you can get all three for $5.49 as a bundle. Jimi Hendrix also makes an appearance with a bundle of three songs for $5.49.

Need for Speed: Undercover isn’t even out yet, and there’s more DLC than I’d care to count available, all of it in that “would have been cheat codes last generation” class. Prices range from $1.75 on up, with various bundles available for as much as $10. They’ll unlock things for use in the game that you’d otherwise achieve by playing through the game.

And what would an update be without some new trailers and videos? There are a handful of new things to check out… unless you’re a PSP owner, in which case you’re pretty much out of luck for another week. The only thing for you this week is a demo of Neverland Card Battles.

Following the merger between Activision and Vivendi to form Activision Blizzard, it was announced that a number of games — including high profile titles like Ghostbusters and Brutal Legend — were being dropped. Disappointing as it was, it was a mind-boggling decision to many gamers, given that Activision decided to retain the rights to other Vivendi franchises like Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon. We’ve theorized that this was simply a matter of being able to milk those franchises more than you could the new Riddick, and sure enough, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick admitted as much during yesterday’s Activision Blizzard earnings call.

According to MTV Multiplayer, while answering a question on why some of Vivendi’s games were dropped, Kotick laid out the reality of the matter — albeit without referring to any specific games:

“[Those games] don’t have the potential to be exploited every year on every platform with clear sequel potential and have the potential to become $100 million dollar franchises. … I think, generally, our strategy has been to focus… on the products that have those attributes and characteristics, the products that we know [that] if we release them today, we’ll be working on them 10 years from now.”

It’s a fair point given that Activision is, after all, a business, but it’s easy to be upset with that sort of strategy. Luckily, Kotick did say original properties are important, but they need to be careful with which properties they pursue. Of the 15 properties Activision Blizzard is planning to release next year, “three, maybe four” of those will be “exciting new intellectual properties.”Too bad none of them will be Ghostbusters or Brutal Legend.

With the PlayStation Store now (finally) accessible directly from your PSP, the PlayStation Store for PC has become largely superfluous for many. But those with a PSP who don’t have wireless internet or can’t get online their PSP for whatever reason still have need for it. Sony has been busy reworking the store recently, which has been unavailable since the most recent PSP firmware update was released. It’s finally back and in a completely new form; rather than working through your browser, you’ll now have to download Media Manager 3.0 (available here), which will allow you to directly access the store without your browser.

Media Manager is only compatible with Windows XP and Vista and, according to the system requirements, will not function with the 64-bit version of either operating system. I did manage to get it working on Vista 64-bit without any hassle, but your miles may vary when it comes to achieving the same result.

The store now looks a lot like the version PlayStation 3 owners use, which is a major thing. But I’m not sure that requiring you to have a standalone program is really a good move — while you did have to install a small program with the previous version of the PlayStation Store for PC, it was extremely basic and easy to use. You clicked download and the file was automatically downloaded to your PSP, provided it was connected via USB. Media Manager is fairly simple, but there’s certainly some more work involved when using it. I guess I just have another reason to be happy with the direct access on PSP.

Back in August when Sony announced the newest iteration of the PlayStation Portable, the PSP 3000, they announced two bundles that it would be available in: the Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters Entertainment Pack and the 4GB Memory Entertainment Pack. The Ratchet bundle, which is already available, includes a silver PSP, a copy of Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters on UMD, a 1GB memory stick, a copy of National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets on UMD, and a voucher to download Echochrome for free from the PlayStation Store. The 4GB bundle was scheduled to release in November and included a black PSP, a 4GB memory stick, and a voucher to download Everyday Shooter from the PlayStation Store. The price on both bundles were set at $200, with a standalone release of the PSP 3000 slated for $170 later this year.

Sony today announced that, after seeing the demand for the Ratchet bundle, they’ve decided to streamline their hardware lineup and kill off the 4GB bundle before it ever sees the light of day. A post on PlayStation.Blog says those interested in a 4GB memory stick can find one this Fall for an MSRP of $45 (or, for industrious folks who want a bargain, much cheaper and available right now). Beginning in December, the Ratchet bundle will begin to be offered with the standard ‘piano black’ PSP inside rather than the current silver system.

While the recent scan line issues have had me a bit nervous about investing in a PSP 3000, I was interested enough in the 4GB bundle that I planned on buying one anyway. After all, I already own Echochrome, I don’t care about movies on UMD, and I want a black PSP. Judging by the comments on the story on PlayStation.Blog, I wasn’t the only one holding out for the 4GB bundle. Looks like I’ll be sticking with my PSP 2000 for a bit longer than I thought I would be.