Erik Salvador Ayala is a name that should be familiar with many of you by now. The 24-year-old depressive lies at the center of a shooting in Portland, Oregon, where he killed two people, injured seven more, and then put a bullet in his own head. In the suicide note left for his roommate,strangely thorough instructionsfor dealing with the killer’s PS3 were left among location details and important personal information. The note informed the roommate of the best way to sell the machine....

I have to admit that I love me a good tank battle. Shredding treads and busting out armor-piercing rounds on some underarmored fools is my idea of a good time. In fact, that I don’t care if there’s no context. Just gimme a tank battle, dammit. Good thingGratuitous Tank Battlesis on the way. It’s coming from Positech Games, the one-man studio that brought youGratuitous Space Battles,a game I likedthat just so happened to be about designing a fleet of well-armed spaceships and sending them against other fleets of well-armed spaceships for a big ol’ orgy of beam lasers and plasma torpedoes....

Ok, that’s not true.Everything you need to know aboutBayonettais that she hasguns on her feet. Since that’s the most badass thing I’ve typed all week, it should count as enough impetus to pay attention to thePlatinum Games-developed title. In caseslender-waisted witch-heroineswithgunson theirfeetaren’t your thing, here’s something a bit more convincing: Hideki Kamiya is the lead direcor. To refresh your memory, he’s the man responsibile for some of Capcom’s most critically acclaimed games of late:Resident Evil 2,Viewtiful Joe,Devil May Cry, andOkami,par ejemplo....

I’m all for acrade-like sports games, but I only have vague memories of playingNBA Jamand I skipped last year’s franchise reboot. Getting my hands onNBA JAM: On Fire Editionat EA’s Summer Showcase was an interesting foray back into the realm of arcade sport games, and about what I expected from the game — easy to pick up and play, over the top gameplay and a heck of a lot of silly, giant heads....

Compile Heart has a countdown page going. There’s one day and 22 hours left on the countdown. At first I had no idea what that thing in the picture is. It looked like an ’80s version of a Bang & Olufsen on-wall CD player. Now I know. More on that later. The URL has “np_countdown” in it, so we’re guessing this is for upcoming PS3 role-playing gameNeptune. What’sNeptune? It’s from the makers ofRecord of Agarest Heart, and it’s coming to the PlayStation 3 this summer....

I’m not entirely sure how this flew under everyone’s radar, but timestamps don’t lie. On Monday of this week, Volitiongave an updateon the state ofRed Faction: Guerrillafor PC, and things are looking up. First, the release date: September 15 for the United States and September 11 for everywhere else. Since digital distribution differs from region to region and not all of the deals are finalized just yet, the company is remaining quiet on which services we’ll seeRed Factionappear on....

LittleBigPlanetjust gotits “Game of the Year,” so why notFable II? According to listings found onPlay.comandShopto.net, Microsoft is set to release aFable II: Game of the year Editionon September 18. The game includes the two post-release expansion packs, “Knothole Island” and “See the Future.” Oh, and also the entirety ofFable II, presumably. Not convinced? Shopto.net even has some fancy looking box art that pretty much seals the deal on this one being announced shortly....

In those halcyon days of the early 1990’s, before the MTV machine had infected all other networks with the scourge of reality programming, the channel was really making a push with animated series. Liquid Television, their late-night program of cartoon shorts and general weirdness, spawned several new shows and marked the turning point between being a network that played music videos to becoming a more traditional media outlet. It was during this golden age where everything at MTV was in balance between original programming and music-content thatBeavis and Butt-headrose to prominence....

It’s criminal that Nintendo let 15 years pass between the Super Nintendo release ofSuper Punch-Out!!andPunch-Out!!on the Wii. Between then and now, there have been plenty of opportunities to drag Little Mac out of retirement — the Game Boy Advance, the Nintendo 64, and the Nintendo DS, to name a few. What was the God damned hold up? So when Nintendo finally decided to pull it out of the closet for the Wii, it raised a few red flags for a longtimePunch-Out!...

According to those ever-shiftyANONYMOUS SOURCES, Microsoft is working on a system update that will quadruple Kinect’s accuracy, allowing it to detect hand rotation and even finger movement. The rumored patch bumps up the camera’s resolution to 640×480 and allows for a higher amount of data to pass from the Kinect to the Xbox 360. Kinect’s USB controller interface can transmit 35MB of data, but currently only does 15/16MB. The limit is in place because Kinect supports multiple USB devices, but Microsoft is said to working on freeing that restricted data up....

Yet more rumors of PlayStation Network premium services have risen from the foamy ocean today, lending extra weight to the theory that cross-game chat will be part of a paid service, instead of the standard addition that it most assuredly should be. The last time cross-game chat and subscriptions were mentioned, it was ina Sony consumer survey. That survey already indicates that Sony is thinking of charging for the feature, so this new rumor adds fresh fuel to an already sizzling fire....

According to a mysterious source, Atomic Games’ controversialSix Days in Fallujahhas been finished and is ready for release this year. This source has promised that the gamewillbe released as well. Now, if only they could find a publisher with more balls than Konami … “I can promise you that game is still coming out and it is finished,” claims the source. Six Dayswas torn apart by mainstream media within 48 hours of being announced, and Konami chickened out of publishing it because it somehow wasn’t prepared for backlash from a game set in Iraq....

Slant Six is a busy developer. After squashing bugs and dishing out numerous patches for their hobbled PlayStation 3 multiplayer shooterSOCOM: Confrontation, the studio is allegedly moving on to downloadable content. According to aRipten“inside source” five new maps, a new faction, new guns, new attachments, new character models and two additional game modes are all in the works. It sounds preposterous, however one item stands out among the bunch: The source person indicates that of the five “new maps,” only two will be fresh for the series....