It’s Thursday, which means the PlayStation Store has been flooded with new downloadable games, demos, videos, and all sorts of other goodies. The headliner content for PlayStation 3 owners are two new demos: Mercenaries 2 and Fracture. Anyone who’s played Mercs 2 or read 1UP’s review can tell you the game is undeniably fun, but what about Fracture, LucasArts’ new shooter centered around destroying terrain? Give the demo a try, and then come back and see if you agree with Anthony Gallegos’ preview of the game from Leipzig.

PSP owners are in for a real treat compared with the usual slap in the face they see in the downloadable space — in addition to a demo and trailer of NBA 09, both Cube and PQ: Practical Intelligence Quotient have been released for $10 each. These are the first two of six games being released on the PlayStation Store by D3 Publisher, with some classics like Dead Head Fred and Puzzle Quest still to come.

Much like this past weekend on Xbox Live, this upcoming weekend is a Double XP event in Call of Duty 4, and to celebrate the price of the Variety Map Pack has been cut in half from $10 to $5. Complimenting that is a new Rock Band album from Megadeth, and a ton of new videos from the AST Dew Tour. Hit up the PlayStation Blog for the full list of releases.

One industrious modder by the name of Qrysalis has apparently uncovered a lost level from Call of Duty 4 that was abandoned later on in the development process. The new level is basically an extended version of the first training mission, which features some extra tasks between the indoor firing range and the timed obstacle course that determines your difficulty setting. The developers apparently decided to keep the final version of this mission short and sweet, so you could get right to the meat of the game — and the spectacular cargo ship level — much more quickly. If you want to give the extended training run a go for yourself though, you can download it through some posts on Infinity Ward’s forums.

Via FourZeroTwo

Multiplayer betas have proven to be very popular even on consoles, with Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4 proving that public beta tests aren’t just for PC games. Now Call of Duty: World at War will be following its predecessor’s example by releasing a multiplayer beta on both Xbox 360 and PC in October. Those looking to get into the 360 beta can register at the game’s official website or pre-order the game at GameStop.

The open beta announcement also reveals that World at War is scheduled for release on November 11 (confirming what we had previously heard). A release date this close to the beta means that the beta will have little to no impact on the version of the game that ships, instead working more like an online demo that’s being passed off as a beta. Still, an early shot at some intense Call of Duty multiplayer is difficult to pass up.

Unfortunately, PlayStation 3 and Wii owners who don’t have access to other platforms will have to pass it up. Those unfortunate gamers can check out our recent preview of the game and cross their fingers that Treyarch will have managed to top their most recent mediocre COD offering with the help of the Call of Duty 4 engine and some extra development time.

Affectionately known as IAMfourzerotwo within the gaming community, Robert Bowling, the Director of Communications and Community Manager for Infinity Ward has stated on his blog that Call of Duty 4 fans should expect another “Double XP Weekend” realtively soon.

In the past, Activision has stated Call of Duty: World at War would be heading our way in the Fall, but always failed to pinpoint a release date. Enter the folks over at Only the Games who were told by an Activision rep at the X’08 event in Toronto that Treyarch’s shooter would hit retail shelves in November. How they enticed the PR rep to give up the goods is unknown, but I am thinking it was either some nice chocolates or they dragged the poor soul into a bathroom stall and gave them a swirly. Maybe they had pictures of the Activision employee in a compromising position with John Edwards dressed as Master Chief – who knows really. They got the job done, apparently, and that is all that matters.

Activision has yet to confirm November as the release month for the next installment for the PC, PS3, Wii, and Xbox 360, but what other month would they release the game in if “Fall” is the time frame? Certainly not October because of the massive amount of AAA games already heading our way; December is pretty much Winter despite the first day of it “technically” being on the 21st. Regardless of Activision hem-hawing around with an actual date, November would indeed be the prefect month to release the game because it is just in time for the holiday shopping extravaganza, and we all know how well games do during the season to be jolly.

Finally we get to see some actual ingame footage of the co-op mode in Call of Duty: World at War (aka CoD5). It looks pretty sweet, and on top of that, you can hear Jack Bauer Kiefer Sutherland giving commands to his comrade.

It took much longer than some would have liked, but the first wave of Greatest Hits game for PlayStation 3 have finally arrived. Starting today, this line of budget games can be picked up in extremely ugly red boxes for the price of $30, which puts it $10 higher than the PS2’s Greatest Hits, but also $10 less than where Microsoft tends to discount its first-party 360 titles.

The nine games are Warhawk, Motorstorm, Resistance: Fall of Man, Call of Duty 3, Fight Night Round 3, Need for Speed Carbon, Rainbow Six Vegas, Assassin’s Creed, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and Ninja Gaiden Sigma. Not a half-bad assortment, but which ones are worth buying?

PS3 Fanboy has assembled a buyer’s guide for the nine titles, giving you a quick rundown on what to expect from each game and which ones are worth buying. Unsurprisingly, Warhawk and Oblivion get a thumbs up, while Motorstorm should be avoided with the sequel, Pacific Rift, not that far off.

They do however refer to Ninja Gaiden Sigma as “THE definitive NG experience,” something that I think Itagaki-san would disagree with.

For the first time since the last week in January, Halo 3 has regained the its number one spot in the Xbox 360 top Live titles list. The list is based upon the number of unique users playing each game.

Halo has trailed behind Grand Theft Auto IV and/or Call of Duty 4 every week since the week of January 21. The July 7 release of the Cold Storage map (which was free of charge) likely helped, as did the pending E3 announcement about Bungie’s next Halo project — one which never came. Microsoft has said it will instead be showcasing the mysterious new Halo game at a dedicated event where they can do the game “more justice.”

Anyone want to guess if the game will hold onto its lead for a second week? I’m gonna go ahead and guess that it will, based on my expert analysis of absolutely nothing.

If you like the Call of Duty games, and you like explosions, then you will dig this trailer that was shown at E3 for the upcoming Call of Duty: World at War from Activision and Treyarch. I know that the WWII shooter genre has been done to death, but this looks pretty damn cool.

The game will utilize the CoD4 engine and in the game you will have the ability the burn down the buildings and foliage within the war-torn pacific. Gamers will be up against Imperial Japan this time around and thanks to Gulf War Veteran, and military adviser Frank Kearsy, the way the Japanse fight suppose to be authentic, brutal, tenacious and shocking.

Some news screens for Call of Duty: World at War have landed in our laps, and they are much more interesting than some of the ones we have received recently, if only because they show off some interesting air battle scenes. This looking at lot better than the last time Treyarch had a hand in a CoD game, so they are probably trying to make up for such a stinkfest by providing us with a nice solid title. Then again, I have not seen any actual gameplay other than the trailer posted last month, therefore I could be very wrong. Very wrong indeed.