Later this week, the first official Eye of Judgment tournament in North America will begin. The “Children of Juno” tournament will be starting on July 17 at 6:00 PST and will run through July 24. The top two players will earn special online ranking titles, which simultaneously seems pretty cool and pretty insignificant for proving you’re one of the top two players in the country.

There will be some additional rules, none of which make a lick of sense to me: such as no biolith cards, no ultra rare cards, and no cards over 7 mana cost.

It’s pretty easy to get in on the action. Just follow these steps and you’ll be able to fight to death for one of those two fancy titles:

• Log in to PlayStation Network and go online with The Eye of Judgment in the usual way from Thursday, July 17th (6:00pm PST)
• Select ‘Online Tournament’ from the Online mode select screen.
• Players will be matched up with another player to battle just the same as the regular way of Ranked Match.

You can find out more at PlayStation.Blog.

Sony has announced that patch 2.01 is up for Eye of Judgment. The patch fixes some issues with the recently released set 2. There are changes to several cards including the ”Visvar Vaas Zealot” (#154), “Tolicore Zealot” (#169) and “Biolith Battleship” (#184). There’s also some clarification on the use of “Scion’s Revelation” (#208), “Seer Vizak’s Cleansing” (#209) and “Benediction of Juno” (#210).

The Battle Arena has a new feature. Players can now use new feature for Battle Animation’s detail settings from SET 2 (SELECT button during a replay) in “Show replay” mode in Battle Arena mode.  In order to use the new function, you must have the SET 2 download installed on your system.

You can get the full details on the changes implemented with patch 2.01 on the PlayStation.blog.

Sony has announced the official Play Station Network Eye of Judgment Tournament. The competition is scheduled for Friday 30th May (12:00 GMT) for all players in the PAL region. Scoring for the tournament is the same as for regular matches.

Our first tournament, ‘Natural Power’, will call upon players to create their own super-deck of cards to beat all comers, but there’s a catch. No Biolith cards will be allowed. The top 2 players won’t just receive the joy of being victorious, they will also receive an exclusive online ranking title on the global leaderboards for their eternal glory!

Contestants have until Friday 6th June (12:00 GMT) to battle it out for the top spot on the leaderboard. Instructions on how to enter the tournament follow the break
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With the new Set 2 cards now out in the wild, problems were inevitable and the developers of The Eye of Judgment are looking to address some of them, as well as improve the overall game, with a new update. Version 2.01 will bring about several improvements and additions:

• An additional feature of Battle Animation’s detail settings
  • If you own the Set 2 Expansion pack, the next update will add a feature to the Battle Animation’s detail settings (SELECT button during a replay), which is currently implemented to “Show replay” mode, to the duels on Battle Arena mode. This addition allows players to set more detailed Battle Animation settings, such as “OFF ([R2] ON)”, “Ultra rare+”, or “Singles Only”, etc… in Battle Arena mode.
  • * This update only applies if you own the Set 2 expansion pack download
• Errata notes to some of the SET.2 cards
  • In order to improve the quality of duels, a modification to some of the creatures’ abilities will be made. The modification will improve the game play experience for EOJ players. The adjustments are planned for the following 5 creature cards: Noram Zealot (#121), Aluhja Zealot (#137), Visvar Vaas Zealot (#154), Tolicore Zealot (#169), and Biolith Battleship (#184). More detailed information on the adjustments would be released through Errata notes on our EOJ forums and Official Community Sites as soon as the modifications are finalized.
• Additional feature for intentional disconnections in Online mode
  • An extra measure which disturbs online play will be added. When a player disconnects in any way during an online duel, in addition to the current system that imposes a penalty on the player who intentionally disconnected, the new system will grant Honor and Rank points to their opponent whose duel was disconnected against their will.

If you haven’t previously, now would be a fine time to read The Eye of Judgment Analog Gamer feature.

Next Friday, PlayStation.Blog will be giving away free Eye of Judgment cards – the (supposedly) hard to find Set 2 Promo cards, no less. Provided you live in North America, all you’ll have to do is visit the blog next Friday afternoon, and they’ll post a link for where you can sign up to receive a few freebies. You’ll have to be one of the first few hundred people to register, though, so be prepared to mash your refresh button if you’re interested.

In the meantime, enjoy those Set 2 cards that were recently released.

Def Leppard’s Guitar Hero III outing and the obligatory weekly dose of Rock Band tracks (now finally with a full album!), there’s a ton of great new content now available on the PlayStation Store. The biggest release is certainly the Variety Map Pack ($10) for Call of Duty 4 which naturally includes four new multiplayer maps.

A new PS one Classic was also released today with R-Types ($6), ending that particular drought. (Even though you and I both know we probably won’t see another Classic for weeks.) There’s also the Biolith Rebellion 2 expansion set for The Eye of Judgment, whichs adds more than 100 new creatures, spells and abilities, so that sounds like a must-buy for fans of The Eye.

There’s also plenty of videos, demos of both echochrome and Iron Man, a map pack for Army of Two, downloadable songs for Karaoke Revolution, and more. So hit the break and check out everything now available for download.

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The release of the Eye of Judgment: Biolith Rebellion 2 Theme pack Set 2 Summoner’s Companions is imminent and Sony has part one of a preview up of some of the new cards. This new set from Wizards of the Coast will supposedly offer players more complexity to their game.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the theme decks, they are pre-constructed decks of 30 cards that offer specific strategies to the player. Not only do they offer a great selection of cards, but each comes with a Summoner’s Companion booklet that offers great content. All the Set 2 Theme Decks will now feature not only more in-depth stories about the EOJ universe, but also a full glossary of game terms, specific gameplay strategies and even card highlights to give players that extra edge.

Players can look forward the new Biolith Battle Master. Its Attack and Defense Zones let you lock out four fields; negating enemy creatures’ Dodge attempts and crippling their Activation Cost. It does 2×3 points of physical damage which can be boosted with Clare Wil’s Banner to deliver an extra “undodgable” 10 points. When summoned, you also have the option of pulling Scion, Biolith Lord from you library directly to your hand.

Fire based decks will get a boost with new tactical creatures that reduce Summoning Cost. Flameheart is one such creature granting 2 points of Magic Protection to your other allied creatures and reducing the Summoning Cost of allied Fire creatures by 1. Any Earth fields in front of Flameheart are treated as Fire fields.

Water creatures are more subtle and have many abilities which give you greater deck control. They can evade physical attacks and seize control of enemy creatures. Admiral Belta reduces the cost of Invocation and Summoning Cost for water creatures. His unique power allows players to fieldquake all Fire fields during your Resolution Phase.

The set is already hitting some Gamestop/Eb Games stores and was previously released in Europe. There still is no option in the US PlayStation Store to purchase the $15 patch that makes the new cards available to US players so even those who score these new cards will have to wait to get them into play.
via PlayStation.blog

Today is Thursday, and like every other Thursday, GameTap is offering up a slew of cool dowloadable games that are sure to entertain even the most die-hard gamers.

Today, the following games were added for purchase:

• Ice Land 2: You are Morimer, a blue penguin, tasked with retrieving fish for your pink-hued, ribbon-wearing sweetheart. You may have heard somewhere that penguins are powerful, swift swimmers, capable of hunting for fish beneath the freezing waves. Well, not Mortimer. You’ll have to carefully avoid falling in the water as you collect fish mysteriously floating above the ice floes.

• Uru: Ages Beyond Myst : A continuation of the award-winning Myst series, URU sends you into the book-worlds of the lost D’ni race on a mission guided by Yeesha, the daughter of Atrus — the man who created the Myst Age in the first place. URU isn’t your usual Myst adventure, though. It takes place in a 3D world and offers new perspectives on the series’ devious puzzles.

• Sam & Max Season Two Episode 5: What’s New, Beelzebub?:Judgment day is at hand, and it’s time for a showdown with the guy downstairs to bargain for Bosco’s soul. But in the corporate wasteland known as Hell, not even Sam & Max are safe from eternal damnation. Can the pair fight free from Satan’s grasp, or have they reached the end of the line?

• Tank Battalion: This arcade maze-crawler from 1980 places players at the helm of a one-man army — a single tank under attack from an entire enemy battalion. Your goal is to patrol the streets, destroying every single rival tank while protecting your base from destruction. The mission begins easily enough, but soon the entire screen is swarming with the enemy, your headquarters beset on all sides.

In the way of free games, GameTap also welcomed these to the fold, which brings the total of free games to a whopping 117:

• Fastlane Pinball :One table, three balls, four flippers, and as many points as you can come up with. Fastlane Pinball has all the trappings of modern pinball, from a digital readout to skill shots and bonus games. This is one experience pinball fans won’t want to put down!

• King of Monsters 2 :SNK takes us back to a world of giant monsters and building-busting brawls. Choose from three different monster movie faves — radioactive lizard Super Geon, robotic ape Cyber-Woo or superhero Atomic Guy — and commence with the smashing. King of the Monsters 2 adds a touch of side-scrolling beat-’em-up to its wrestling action, but retains two-player co-op mode for double-the-fun destruction.

Eye of Judgment players in the US need only wait a few more weeks to get their hands on the Set 2 Eye of Judgment cards – April 28 is when you’ll find them in stores. As the PlayStation Store is only updated on Thursdays, the Set 2 download will be made available on the Store a few days earlier, on April 24, for $14.99.

You can check out the video preview that Shawn posted a few weeks ago here, and if you haven’t already, you should check out the Eye of Judgment’s spotlight on The Analog Gamer.

As Jonathan reported earlier, the new (free!) map pack for Unreal Tournament 3 is now available for download from the PlayStation Store. You’ll get Facing Worlds and two other maps I couldn’t care less about because Facing Worlds is the greatest thing ever, courtesy of Epic Games and Midway. That sure is awfully nice of them, and it makes me wonder if we’ll get to see a similar pack for free on Xbox 360 once the game gets moved over to Microsoft’s box.

Turok also is getting the downloadable content treatment today, although it’s not free. $4.99 will net you five new maps (although that statement might not hold true if you don’t view changes in time of day as constituting a “new” map).

$8.99 is the asking price of the new flOw bundle, which simply includes the full game and its expansion pack. Nothing new about the actually content, but if you want to take the plunge with flOw, this is the way to do it.

For the next two weeks (until April 15) you’ll find Warhawk on sale for just $29.99, $10 cheaper than it normally costs. You can use that saved money to buy some of the downloadable content that’s been released for the game since last August, or maybe you can just change paces and pick up that flOw bundle.

Videos, themes, Rock Band tracks, and an update to High Stakes: Poker Edition are also new on the Store. Hit the break for the full list of content. Read the full article