Eurogamer in blog format - Xbox 360

War's road to redemption begins.

Croteam's high-def update of the PC blasting classic gets a formal release date.

On the fourth Thursday of every November, Americans celebrate Thanksgiving by feasting and frolicking. That time is upon us again, and so Microsoft has put some seasonal Xbox Live deals together for all regions to benefit from.

This weekend (starting today and ending Monday) the new social features - Last.fm, Facebook, Twitter and Zune HD - will be usable by Silver Xbox Live members.

Next week Microsoft is going to snip the price of Fable II DLC See the Future from 560 MSP to 400 MSP (£3.40/€4.80), and the Death Tank cost from 1200 MSP to 800 MSP (£6.80/€9.60). The following week, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 will be available for just 240 MSP (£2/€2.80)! Read more...

Microsoft is seeking talented people to bolster the Natal team at MGS and help "drive the success of Gears of War and Shadow Complex".

That's our first glimpse of a future for Chair's triumphant Xbox Live Arcade game. Mind you this isn't surprising given its critical (9/10 on Eurogamer) and commercial success.

Even less surprising is news of more Gears of War, a series Epic has long talked of expanding. Read more...

Rock Band gets light-hearted with the minifigs.

Dotnia experiences an expansion into an entirely new dimension.

Wheee! We're suckers for a bit of dog-fighting, especially with those crazy rear-prop driven Japanese planes.

Sneaky tactics and sharp headshots in the sequel to DICE's jolly battlefield romp.

Blood Bowl gets its first new race in the lithe and dangerous form of the Dark Elves.

As an ancient and powerful Umbra witch, Bayonetta has a few handy tricks up her tight sleeves. Here, learn about her flashy, demon-powered killer moves.

Gyromancer is PopCap does Puzzle Quest. If reading that sentence doesn't strike fear into your heart, then it probably brings an involuntary twitch to your left eyelid and an unplanned release of saliva. The developer's talent for Pavlovian player-slavery, exhibited in some of the world's most appallingly moreish casual and puzzle games - Bejeweled, Peggle and Plants vs. Zombies, to name just three - has been married with a levelling, dungeon-crawling, monster-hunting, card-collecting RPG. This sort of thing ought to be illegal.

However, although Gyromancer exhibits all of PopCap's famous fine-tuned perfectionism, don't expect this download title to look or sound like a PopCap game. That's because it's an unlikely collaboration with the Japanese RPG kings at Square Enix, who have contributed the RPG framework, some beautiful static artwork depicting sexy mages and strange monsters, cheesy MIDI music, a nonsensical but strangely beguiling storyline in gauche fantasy-speak, some familiar names and some unmistakably bright, stinging sound effects. Gyromancer isn't just Puzzle Quest, it's Final Fantasy too. Oh, and Pokemon. And maybe even a little bit of Demon's Souls.

It is one game over and above all these others, though, and that game is Bejeweled Twist, PopCap's, well, twist on its world-conquering gem-matching game which it released last year. The colours and shapes of the jewels are the same, and the basic mechanics are identical - a blend between Bejeweled's straightforward match-three and the group rotation of Alexey Pajitnov's classic Hexic. Read more...

Video on demand streaming is coming to the PS3 very soon, with a massive wedge of entertainment waiting at your digital fingertips.

When you're heading into a life or death battle against uncaring robotic overlords, you want to be wearing the right dress.

Ever wanted a zebra-striped AK-47? Of course you have.

The PSP title slips out, somewhat in the shadow of its big brother.

Kalypso Media has popped a Tropico 3 demo on Xbox Live Marketplace. Gold members have access today but Silver members need to wait until Wednesday 25th November.

The sampler guides you through the tutorial and then offers one of two missions. The first is called Bananas and revolves around exploiting your new land and people to grow and export the fruit. The second mission, Second Chance, follows you onto a new island after your twin overthrows your government and drives you out. With only rich iron ore deposits to exploit, your new home looks, on the surface, rubbish.

The Tropico 3 demo weighs 1GB and can be queued for download on the Xbox website. Read more...

Meet the two opposing forces of the Avatar world, and choose which one you'll be fighting for.

Series creator Chris Taylor discusses his sequel, and what improvements have been made over the original.

Two short CCTV vignettes with those lovable, psychopathic rogues, Kane and Lynch.

Tecmo KOEI offers a first look at Again, a DS game made by Hotel Dusk developer Cing. Story and contenxt are explained in this clip.

"After 10 years, you become pessimistic that nobody's going to buy the game," says Antti Ilvessuo, creative director at RedLynx, but with a laugh. He's talking about how he felt going into Trials HD, this summer's big success story on Xbox Live Arcade. He's relaxed because Trials HD has sold over 500,000 copies, which translates to about five million quid.

RedLynx, not entirely surprisingly, turns out to be an office of petrolheads, where lunch-breaks consist of stunt-biking and hospital visits. Nestled in a stark, concrete portion of an otherwise picturesque Helsinki, Finland, it's a quiet place. The building used to house architects, so the small team of 25 people is spread around half a dozen rooms, some for iPhone teams and others for other things. Trials may be the game RedLynx is mostly widely known for, but the developer has done a lot more than the bike stuff.

The studio, co-founded in 2000 by Ilvessuo, has made more than 100 games, most of which are interactive TV, mobile or web games. Notable development time was poured into Nokia's ill-fated N-Gage (Reset Generation, Pathway to Glory, High Seize), and the studio worked with THQ on Warhammer 40,000: Squad Command for DS and PSP. Trials was simply one of many games - an experimental Java effort built around a love of physics, not motorbikes. Read more...

The best two Japanese action games of the year are diametrically opposed in approach. Demon's Souls is a brooding traipse through the corridors of purgatory, fair but relentlessly unforgiving. It teaches that modern videogames have made us weak and stupid, that our gaming muscles have atrophied through the efforts of so many mollycoddling developers. Every sword strike must be carefully considered, and button-mashers are not so much ridiculed as downright abused for their lack of sophistication. The result is a tense but ponderous experience, one that demands supreme trepidation before each step taken, careful contemplation before every input made. In Bayonetta, meanwhile, you press a button and your television implodes. Read more...

A fantastic job of a sequel, building on strengths and addressing weaknesses - AC II hits the shops this Friday.

The perpetually confined simians return in their first balance board title, jonesing for bananas like the dirty little potassium junkies they are.

Microsoft has released a new batch of DLC for Forza Motorsport 3 - and it's free to download.

The Hyundai Genesis Coupe Car Pack gives you the Rhys Millen Racing Red Bull Hyundai Genesis Coupe, the HKS Genesis Coupe and the special edition Forza 3 Genesis Coupe.

Plus as of 8th December you'll be able to download the Hot Holidays Car Pack. It will feature ten hot super cars coming in 2010 such as the Ferrari 458 Italia. The pack will cost 400 Microsoft Points (£3.40 / €4.80), but you'll be able to download the 2010 Audi S4 for free as a taster. Read more...

With social network integration a hot topic, Sony pumps up its Facebook app.

The hub of all starship activity, the bridge is where the important stuff happens. That and engineering, but engineering is far less glamorous and doesn't have the comfy chairs.

Microsoft has distanced itself from reports last week on alleged launch details for Project Natal, claiming they "weren't accurate" and insisting there remain "a lot of things to get decided".

The comments came last night at the London launch of Microsoft's Xbox 360 autumn update, which launched today, bringing Twitter, Facebook, Last.fm and Zune Video Marketplace to Live users.

Asked if reports on pricing and shipments for its motion control technology were correct, Xbox UK boss Neil Thompson replied: "No. They weren't accurate, they were rumours. I've got nothing more to say about it." Read more...

Mad Catz has told Eurogamer that its Wireless-N Gaming Adapter could not and would not be blocked by Microsoft, despite having the same functionality for a lower price.

"Let me make a couple of things very very very clear," explained Alex Verrey, Mad Catz spokesperson. "A lot of sources have been commenting that Microsoft are going to come and lock it out and stop it working or whatever. Well it doesn't work like that because it plugs into the Ethernet port of the Xbox 360 or indeed the PS3 - both consoles pick it up as a wired connection.

"There's absolutely no way that Microsoft could conceivably lock it out," he said. "They can't lock it out and nor would they want to." Read more...

Once The Last of the Bedroom Programmers, the Robin Hood of Independent Forest, the David to the industry's Goliath, the [that's enough metaphor - Ed], Introversion nowadays finds itself beavering away on an Xbox Live Arcade version of Darwinia+. It's quite the transformation for a tiny studio that won the Independent Games Festival's grand prize a few years ago and celebrated by sticking two fingers up to publishers. Following the developer's turn at Eurogamer Expo 2009, we spoke to managing director Mark Morris to get the whole story. Read more...

Capcom's Seth Killian has demonstrated the confirmed new characters in Super Street Fighter IV in a series of videos over on IGN.

All-new Juri is "frankly just not a friendly girl. She's definitely evil. She's got a cybernetic purple eye," according to Killian.

She's a Korean Tae Kown Do fighter favouring kicks over punches. As well as traditional TKD moves, she has a fireball attack "with some hit frames on startup" that the player can store while moving around and then unleash as a surprise attack. Read more...

The second full album add-on for The Beatles: Rock Band is released this week. The seminal 1967 work Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is out on Xbox Live and the Wii Shop today, and will appear on PlayStation Network as part of Thursday's update.

Five songs from Sgt. Pepper are already on the game disc. On 360 and PS3 you have the option of downloading the remaining eight tracks in a "Complete the Album Pack" for £7.49, €8.99, $13.49 or 1080 Microsoft Points. Each song is available individually for 99p, €1.39, £1.99 or 160 MSP if all you want is to see how on earth When I'm Sixty-Four works out.

On Wii, there's no pack, so you'll have to buy the tracks individually. They cost 200 Wii Points each - about £1.50, €2, or $2. Read more...

The mega-popular and oft-adapted Diner Dash joins Gyromancer on Xbox Live Arcade this Wednesday, 18th November.

The game follows Flo, whose diner is full. Naturally, then, she has to see to all the customers, keeping track of tables, orders and payments as time teasingly trickles away. Diner Dash XBLA adds head-to-head and team multiplayer, and the game costs 800 MSP (£6.80/€9.60)

Gyromancer, as you know, is a joint effort between RPG master Square Enix and puzzle perfecter PopCap to create a Puzzle Quest clone. The results should be interesting even at a higher price-point: 1200 MSP (£10.20/€13.96). Read more...

Reports suggest the Russian government has recalled all Xbox 360 and PS3 copies of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 due to objections to the controversial airport terrorism scene.

According to Hellforge - citing Russian site GotPS3 - only the console versions have been recalled and the level, titled "No Russian", has simply been patched out of the PC version in the country.

A censored version of the console game, minus the "No Russian" mission, is expected to be released pending government approval, GotPS3 claims. Read more...

Building an openworld game around the concept of chaos is a super-smart idea. Chaos is the reason a lot of people play these sorts of things in the first place, but at best, games often make you hunt for your precious moments of anarchy within rigid mission templates, or, at worst, you're actually punished for going bonkers with a rocket launcher. It's a bit like turning up at Disneyland and being told that the rides are all brilliant, but they're being kept underwater at the bottom of a poisoned lake, and if you want to try them out you'll have to fight an orang-utan first.

In Just Cause 2, however, chaos is your raison d'etre (pretentious, I know, but in English it's 'reason for being' which is even worse), and the game never misses an opportunity to remind you that it's your god-given right to blow the whole world to pieces.

Parachuted into the chirpy totalitarian hell-hole of Panau, it's Rico Rodriguez's job to take down the local dictator Baby Panay by any means necessary and, given the hilariously unstable tools which are put at his disposal (the standout is Rico's double-ended grappling hook, which can be used, as a single example, to tether unfortunate test subjects to passing jumbo jets), "any means" may well translate to putting a tanker truck through Baby's head. Read more...

Time.com has put forward Project Natal as one of The 50 Best Inventions of 2009.

The online arm of the famous US magazine said traditional controllers have stood as a "barrier between gamers and total Tron-like immersion" since the invention of Pong.

"This year Microsoft demonstrated a technology codenamed Project Natal that enables players to control games using only body movements and voice commands, no controller required - the gamer's body becomes the controller. Read more...

Following a third-place console finish, Microsoft has chosen to focus on US Xbox 360 third-party software and peripheral sales as well as yearly sales growth.

"Xbox 360 remains the only console showing year-to-date growth," boasted Microsoft, "and consumers spent $289m on Xbox 360 hardware, software and accessories in October - more than any other platform."

The Xbox 360 sold 250,000 units during October in the US. Microsoft said sales for the period from January to October were up 7 per cent from 2008. Read more...