BitSnark

Holy shit.

Link below.

http://www.ea.com/battlefield3/videos/gameplay-debut

That is all.

360 owners have awoken to a nice surprise this morning; a demo of Bioware’s Dragon Age II has found it’s way onto the Xbox Live Marketplace.

Clocking in at a not-very-slim 2GB, the demo is quite a whopper indeed but lets hope that the majority of that space is taken up by actual gameplay and not cutscenes.

Go get!

As an aside, PC and PS3 owners shouldn’t feel too left out; they will recieve their own little slice of the action tomorrow when the demo debuts on their respective services.

With publisher Activision closing developer Bizarre Creations today, a staffer from the popular UK dev outfit has uploaded a tribute video to the company which highlights their creative output over the last five years.

It can be seen below:

Responsible for the Project Gotham Series, The Club and the criminally underrated weapons based racer Blur, they will be a sorely missed force in the industry and sorely missed feather in the cap of the UK games industry.

/salute.

Bears, martial artists, school girls and big, bright colourful sparks that appear on impact; it can only be a Tekken title – in this case, the currently arcade-only bound Tekken Tag Tournament 2.

The trailer linked below is a mix of CG cutscenes and gameplay, with the latter showing off the tag mechanic, character customisation and new ‘fighting team’ gameplay which allows players to join together onto a team and fight for prestige rankings online.

After watching the trailer, gameplay wise it’s so far, so Tekken 6 – but as any aficionado of the series will know; the tag team aspect adds a welcome level of extra depth to the proceedings.

Aside from this, as mentioned previously the game looks every bit like Tekken 6 and fighting game novices and the average joe will be hard put to invest time in a ‘new’ game that on the surface at least, isn’t dissimilar enough from it’s predecessor to justify it.

After being teased and taunted with videos that show how cool and fancy their facial animation techniques were and how this would, supposedly, figure into actual crime-solving gameplay, L.A Noire developer Team Bondi had yet to show us actual in-game footage.

That was, until today.

Tearing through my (admittedly cynical) expectations like a tsunami of awesomness, publisher Rockstar has released just over three minutes of in-game footage from what will likely be 2011’s Red Dead Redemption.

Looking like a cross between GTA IV and if a decent Mafia II was ever made, the game impresses with it’s pleasing mixture of car chases, gun combat, open-world exploration, detective work and smoke-filled room interrogations.

Long story short; if this game still isn’t on your radar after watching this footage then I put it to you that you are in fact a moron.

Of the purest kind.

Linkage to the in-game greatness of L.A Noire can be seen by clicking on the link below:

Publisher 2K has made my day; they have just announced a sequel to one my favourite titles from 2007 – stylishly gothic shooter The Darkness. Development duties on the not-so-imaginatively titled ‘The Darkness II’ will be handled by Digital Extremes, the talented bunch of folks behind hyper-violent shooters Bioshock 2 and Dark Sector.

The Darkness II is due to arrive on the 360, PS3 and PC sometime this Autumn.

Excerpts from the official press blurb are below:

“The Darkness II is a well of dark and imaginative violence, and it’s a stylized and beautiful nightmare,” said 2K boss Christoph Hartmann.

“The Darkness II continues the 2K Games tradition of delivering quality, innovative games that are filled to the brim with atmosphere and deep storytelling.

“The game takes a unique stance on fighting in the dark versus light. Combined with the arsenal of weapons at Jackie’s disposal and the gruesome attacks of the supernatural Demon Arms and Darkness powers, we’re proud to announce another title that delivers on our core values of creating games for gamers.”

Ahh, the sequel I thought they would never make – Thank you 2K.

Simply pop over to the link below:

http://www.iwantoneofthose.com/10307636.html?affil=awin&awc=1202_1296831852_bc4500e7122b6aac998b05fd3c980ff1

Put this code in at the checkout:

HEART16

And voila! Claim your 3DS preorder at over forty odd quid less than the average retail asking price.

I shit you not.

UPDATE: The offer has no expired, so congrats to those of you quick enough to take advantage of it 🙂

And predictably, it does a great job of… teasing.

And while the Terminator-esque is music is stirringly awesome, here’s hoping for something a lil’ more substantial in the near future.

The teaser can be seen at the link below:

http://www.ea.com/battlefield3/videos/bf3-teaser

And there was much rejoycing for Playstation Plus users since they get to download the demo a whole week before the rest of the rabble get their hands on it.

Yep that sure didn’t take long. After inital outcry at the purported £229.99 price, online retailers are starting to slash the price of Nintendo’s 3D wunderkind handheld to sway those initial doubters who were holding back based on the extravagant (read – exploitative) price.

You can check out Play.com’s sweet £202 priced pre-orders at the link below:

http://www.play.com/Search.html?searchstring=Preorder3DS&searchtype=allproducts&searchsource=2&searchfilters=sPreorder3DS%2b