There is no need for an E3, Tokyo Game Show, or GDC in 2010, or any year that follows. Gamestop should cut its losses and close all of the company branches, as no future games need to be released. The epitome of interactive art has been reached, and it is in the form of Cream Wolf.

Developed by the prophets at Adult Swim Games, this Citizen Kane, if you will, contains genius that cannot be described, only experienced. What begins as a simple werewolf / ice cream man simulator evolves into something so much more.  Play the pixilated revolution now, and get ready to see FOREVER.

Prepare yourself, Cerebrate.

The first wave of invites for the closed beta of StarCraft II were sent out a couple days ago to selected PC opt-in users and BlizzCon attendees.

As you can imagine, the Internet was quickly bombarded with livestreams, screenshots, replays, and even the client itself (which still requires a beta-flagged Battle.net account to use).

The beta has been rumored to last for a period of 6 months, giving the long-anticipated StarCraft II a late Q2/early Q3 release date.

For those of us unlucky enough to not receive a first-wave invite, don’t call it quits just yet — sources say that the second wave of invites will be hitting next week, though how many will be sent/who will be receiving them is unknown.

Here’s an official response from Blizzard’s Avarius, an SCII forum moderator:

(^Thanks to http://www.sc2pod.com/’s blue tracker)

Hopefully this news will help to ease some of the anxiety over the invites. I’m hoping to get a chance to test out the Mac version, personally (not that I’d be remotely opposed to having the chance to play StarCraft II on Windows).

If you did register for the opt-in, make sure to check your Battle.net account - emails weren’t sent out to notify those who were selected.

My condolences to the hardcore fans that were left hanging. Looks like we’ll just have to wait a little longer.

Well if X10 has shown us anything, 2010 is going to be one hell of a year for the 360. (As it hasn’t been already with Bayonetta, Mass Effect 2 and Bioshock 2. The review for the third is on its way, by the way.)

But one game that stands out for me is Alan Wake, the so called “Psychological Thriller.”

Hit the jump for the latest news about Alan Wake, including release date, limited edition details and more.

Most importantly, Alan Wake will be available for the Xbox 360 on May 19^th. (The PC version was cancelled because of atmospheric reasons.)

The game will have a limited edition, pictured below.

Most importantly, Alan Wake will be available for the Xbox 360 on May 19th. (The PC version was cancelled because of atmospheric reasons.)
The game will have a limited edition, pictured below.
The limited edition will contain the following:
- Unique box art
- Exclusive in game audio commentary
- A 144 page book titled “The Alan Wake chronicles.” This will contain stories written by Alan Wake himself (remember, he’s a novelist) and a dossier filled with FBI investigation notes about the events that occur within the game.
- Soundtrack and Score
- Some exclusive in-game content (details hazy)
- Exclusive dashboard theme and avatar downloadables
Too top it off, the games packaging makes the entire thing look like a hardcover novel. Pretty novel idea if you ask me. (Derp derp)
This limited edition will cost you $80.
Below is the new trailer showing off some great visuals and some really cool gameplay moments.

That was one of the coolest videogame previews that I’ve ever seen! Everything about it was incredible. At first, I didn’t know what it was that was so appealing. It was only after watching it a few more times online that I began to unravel the masterful scheme that the game’s advertising department pulled off. Let’s take a look, shall we?

The opening shot is what grabs the attention of the target demographic for slice-‘em-up games. Give teenage males a look at a knockout like her, and you’ve got them in your pocket.

So... you from outta town?

The dame in question is Beatrice, the beloved of Dante, the game’s protagonist. Just as you’re getting acquainted with her flowing white gown and soft eyes, however, a black mist envelops her and drags her down into a fiery chasm. The perpetrator? It’s none other than the Prince of Darkness himself, who has taken Beatrice as a prize into the pit of Hell.

Dante: In the next shot, we see Dante roar Beatrice’s name and throw himself into empty space, in hot pursuit. His descent into Hell manages to include some of the coolest things I can think of: after the swan dive, he combat-rolls off of a demon’s back, slides down its shoulder while dodging flames from its mouth, hacks away at multiple other demons (all while in midair), and finally lands easily from a thousand-foot freefall, cracking the stone beneath his feet. He has a moment’s glance at Beatrice, and then it’s back to work, whirling Death’s scythe and eviscerating onslaught of damned souls.

Even Chuck Norris would get vertigo from a fall like this. Please don't tell Chuck Norris I said that.

Wow. A chiseled Beowulf-style warrior, armed with a blade of absurd proportions and a fierce, chivalrous determination to rescue the woman he loves from the horrors of the underworld? It’s every testosterone/adrenaline-crammed kid’s dream.

It gets even better for the guys of that kind that paid at least some attention in high school English. The game is taken from a poem of the same title, written by Italian poet Dante Alighieri in the early 1300’s. His Inferno is a tale of his descent into Hell, filled with grisly descriptions of each every kind of sinner and each ensuing punishment to which they are subjected. According to Dante, there are nine circles of the Devil’s lair, each reserved for different types of criminals. As the game’s Dante, you will travel through each of these, searching for dear Beatrice while struggling with your own less-than-spotless past.

So a hack-and-slash game coupled with literary context? That’s the pièce de résistance for us bookworms. Throw in “Ain’t No Sunshine” by Bill Withers, and you’ve got a piece of advertising rivaling Modern Warfare 2’s recent promo video. Dante’s Inferno hits stores tomorrow, and it’s been getting scores in the high 8’s and 9’s by reviewers. So pick one up, then please invite me over to play. It’ll give me something to do besides watching this trailer all day.

What shows up next to "badass" in the dictionary.

Lightin' shure is purdy!

College allowed me to make a slew of new friends, including some seniors who have recently returned abroad from Japan.

With a copy of Final Fantasy XIII.

Obviously, I wanted to play it, and they let me (for free no less!)

So here is my first look at Final Fantasy XIII.

Final Fantasy XIII tells the story of Lighting and her pals as they play the role of fugitives because they are special or something. (Please bear with me; the entire game was in Japanese)

The story spans across multiple worlds and areas as certain things are accomplished. The story begins in a really confined narrow space with only one path to follow. It takes a lot of investment to find the huge open-worlds that are so often shown off in previews.

The graphics of Final Fantasy XIII are unbelievably good. There were moments in which I confused the gameplay for one of the games many CGI cutscenes. (Which look even better than feature films such as Advent Children)

All the enemies are incredibly detailed — the character models are near flawless — but the areas leave a little something to be desired.

Graphics in combat are also amazing, but sometimes there is so much going on, I often just found myself pressing buttons hoping something good would happen.

The combat of FFXIII is a little complicated to explain.

You see, like X-2, characters are assigned jobs,  which give characters various abilities such as offensive capabilities, status-inducing magic, stat-buffering magic and the like. These jobs can be changed mid-battle, which creates for a really fun “adapt or fail” tension to combat, but FFXII lacks the sense of self-loathing that X-2 brought to the table.

Oh god whats happening I dont even --

As the battle rages on, a bar fills up, which allows your character to perform actions (attacking, magic, items etc., etc.). Watching and waiting for this bar to fill always kept me on edge.

Something I noticed: enemies in this game have insane amounts of HP. While I loved seeing all the numbers fly above their heads, I noticed that 30,000+ damage was barely denting their actual HP bar.

I had a chance to mess around with all the summons as well. With a few exceptions, they are nothing short of epic. Except for when they transform into vehicles. That definitely took me by surprise.

One particular summon definitely stood out from the rest, as he was what I can only describe as a white Megazord fused with the Great Wall of China. (Also, lasers.)

One thing I particularly enjoyed is the fact that HP is automatically recovered on all characters once a battle is over (assuming you won or ran away successfully).

My main complaint is that the entire game world feels very desolate and lonely. Seriously, you don’t even see your party members running behind you or anything.

Now, I’ve never been a huge fan of the series but I am definitely picking this up once it releases stateside. Still waiting on a collector’s edition, though.

Be on the lookout for our full review sometime after the game’s release on March 9^th!

Ke$ha loves the 360. And by Ke$ha (God I cringe every time I replace the “s” with a “$”) I mean this random kid. While his singing is beyond atrocious the lyrics are kinda witty. Maybe. Sometimes.
We are sharing this because of a lack of any real news or anything. But seriously, I am working on a preview of Final Fantasy XIII. So be on the look out for that. In the meanwhile, watch this music video. Do it.

The trailer has everything a good Fallout teaser needs: robots, Frank Sinatra, and post-apocalyptic wasteland. Personally, I’m pretty excited to see any new Fallout content, Bethesda-made or otherwise. Fallout 3 was one of my favorite games of the past couple years, and I’m eager to get back in the old Power Armor again.

Check out the full trailer, along with some Bethesda Twitter contest information, after the break.

For those interested in some extra New Vegas content, Bethesda is giving Twitter users a chance to win a signed poster just for retweeting a specific message.

Mass Effect 2. what is there to say about Mass Effect 2 that hasn’t already been said? Game of the year in January, amazing, incredibly personal yadda yadda yadda.

Although a bit redundant, this is my review for the second part of Bioware’s Sci-fi epic.

Hit the jump to read more.

When I played the first Mass Effect, I was a little underwhelmed. While I truly enjoyed the story and Shepard’s connections to his various crewmates, the combat situations I was put it were less than thrilling.

However, when I discovered that my choices made in this game were in fact going to shape the world in the second game I was incredibly excited.

I sacrificed Hayden, was able to save Wrex, I killed the council and had sex with Ashley. And seamlessly, all these decisions shaped my world in Mass Effect 2.

In part two of the three part epic, a new race of aliens known only as “The Collectors” have been abducting entire human colonies and doing god knows what with them.

But you see, there’s a problem: Shepard died. Cerberus, an extremist human progression group, brings Shepard back to life in an experiment subtly known as the Lazarus Project.

Now, you are out to recruit some of the best of the best, to finally take down the Collectors.

Your party members are easily the best part of the entire game. Some highlights of your merry band of space-men are old-time veteran Garrus, awkward yet strong techie Tali, the bloodthirsty Grunt and my personal favorite: the sentient multi-AI’d geth, Legion.

Shepard’s interactions with these characters truly reveal that drama is possible in a video game.

Not only does every party member bring a different set of skills and powers to the table, they also bring about a loyalty mission. These missions usually consist of some loose end in the members past that they would like to settle. These are easily the best missions and the entire game.

"They call us Legion, for we are many"

These unlock a fourth bonus power, gains the members’ loyalty (which helps with dialogue options among other things) and an achievement.

The graphics of Mass Effect 2 are absolutely beautiful, especially for the various characters’ facial expressions during conversations with other characters.

The combat has also been completely re-done, with more Gears of War style cover-based shooting. Medi-gel is now only used to actually revive your teammates as opposed to healing yourself; health and shields automatically regenerate as long as you hold cover for long enough.

Depending on your character class, you can map powers on your right or left bumpers and the Y button, which is  reserved for your class-specific power. The Vanguard’s charge is awesome.

Zombies in space.

Mass Effect 2 isn’t a game — it’s an experience, and a personal one at that. It is barely the first few months of 2010 and I’d say we already have a contender for Game of the Year.

But the game is not without its faults. Bugs, glitches and system crashes occur, although uncommon, but they are definitely there. Luckily the autosave feature usually stops data-loss frustration before it even begins.

Also, there are no Hanar that I can actually interact with. What the fuck, Bioware? I’m expecting a Hanar party member in Mass Effect 3. Get to it.

Collectors’ Edition Contents:

The Collectors edition is a two-piece package. Inside the coveted shiny box is the game’s two discs plus a bonus disc with trailers, making of featurettes and the like.

In the second box lies the Cerberus card to access DLC, an art book and a copy of the first issue of the Mass Effect comic. It also comes with a code to download some exclusive armor and a rifle. While clever, the bug-like “Collectors” (PUNS) armor is ugly as hell. All this for an additional ten dollars.

Nothing in it is a “must-have,” making it very easy to pass up.

Mass Effect 2 is a must-buy, so stop reading this and go buy it.

After all, you do only have less than a week before BioShock 2 is released.

C+P Score: 5/5

BLOODWING NOOOO

Well it looks like that lovable scamp Hugo Chavez is up to his usual shenanigans again.

While I am in fact a Venezuelan gamer, I must say this really didn’t get a rise out of me, as it probably should have.

Read about my thoughts on the entire situation after the jump

On the 17^th or so, Chavez was quoted to have said “Those games they call ‘PlayStation’ are poison. Some games teach you to kill. They once put my face on a game, ‘you’ve got to find Chavez to kill him.”

He also scolded Nintendo for promoting “individualism” which is down right hilarious.

But what I found even funnier than this was the Internet caps-lock fueled anger that I encountered when people shared their thoughts about the subject at hand.

Everyone was up in arms, calling him an idiot and becoming generally outraged — over something that literally did not affect them.

Want to know why?

Because gamers, for some reason, have this annoying tendency to rage all over the place like Bruce Banner after chemo. They feel this “threat” or “insult” to their hobby and will fight for it to the death.

Even more common, they’ll somehow tie the two and bring about a message of greater justice. Trust me, the last place I would have thought to look for a debate about the politics of Venezuela would be in the comment section of the Destructoid article about the same subject.

People discussing oil exports, poverty rates, the legitimacy of socialism as whole. All this political intrigue because someone said something bad about video games? Jesus.

Now I’m not against political discussion.  In a way I’m happy that there’s a sudden surge of interest in Venezuela, my home.

But I don’t know, maybe the fact that Chavez has an unrelenting vice-grip on the media (he makes all the radio stations play his talk show for an allotted hour almost everyday) or his shady dealings during the numerous elections he has run in would be enough to inspire discussion.

Or maybe the fact that he got into power in the first place via military coup?

I dunno, I guess calling the Playstation “poison” is pretty important too. Sometimes. Maybe.

I mean, maybe I’m just used to hearing his stupidity that it doesn’t even faze me even more. Hell, we are talking about a guy who has obviously become more drunk with power than Tony Stark as he claims that the recent earthquake that struck Haiti was caused by a weapon developed and deployed by the U.S Navy.

This makes sense, considering Barack Obama did recently elect the Cobra Commander as the new Secretary of Defense.

So this is a message to both Hugo Chavez and gamers everywhere, especially gamers that find themselves state-side;

Chill the fuck out.