007seems fresh now that Bizarre Creation has got their hands on it. I got to check outJames Bond 007: Blood Stonelast night and came away with the feeling thatBondis in good hands. The preview had a surprise ending that I’ll ruin right now: The whole demo, which consisted of several different types of gameplay, including boat driving and car racing, turned out to be the game’s introduction. It worked out to be a very cool way to show off the varied game play as well as one of the most seamless training/tutorial segments I’ve ever seen....

At Capcom’s booth at San Diego Comic-Con 2011 they have a screaming contest booth that measured how loud you could belt one out. The loud screams won anAsura’s Wrathhair headband. The loudest screams get the screamer entered in a drawing for tons of Capcom goodies. The ones not quite loud enough just got laughed at. Most of the guys sucked. It was the girls that made the meters peak, as you’ll see above....

Mars continues to grow. The next piece ofRed Faction: GuerillaDLC is on the horizon, and unlike the previous release, this pack aims to sate those with a taste for smacking real players with sledgehammers and camping with sniper rifles. Dubbed “The Multiplayer Pack,” the content is said to add eight maps and two game modes to the core multiplayer component. The two new modes are called Bagman and Team Bagman. The objective in both is to capture abagand hold on to it for as long as possible....

SEGA has been known to send me rather …unique things, usually as a form of revenge for a past transgression. So, it’s particularly heartwarming to get a Christmas card that is actually pretty f’n awesome. Seriously, just imagine a Christmas party hosted by Sonic, Bayonetta, AiAi and a bloodyXenomorph. It would the greatest Christmas party of all time. The thing I can’t show you is the selection of messages inside the card that are actually incredibly lovely and nice....

Neato. Thanks. We heard a bit about this last year. Sega teased that they were working on Natal and PlayStation Move games, but they didn’t say exactly what they were doing. Now we have a better idea from an interview IndustryGamers conducted. It seems that Sega is jazzed about “the fact that Move and Natal will bring in more of what I’d call the PS2 type of consumer for those platforms, which then suits very much the IP that Sega has....

The Guardianhas aninteresting articleup at the moment which discusses the review performance of DICE’s high profile first-person-runnerMirror’s Edge. Comparing the review scores to this year’s biggest releases, writer Keith Stuart expresses frustration that a game as innovative asMirror’s Edgewon’t receive near perfect grades from the gaming press. The reason? Game reviewers are not enough like film critics, and its flaws should be overlooked simply because it’s innovative. “… If it were a movie,Mirror’s Edgewould be critically lauded by the specialist film press – it would be considered a forward-thinking masterpiece,” Stuart argues....

Skyrimcan go ahead and come out now. Seriously, the potential to have a same-sex vampire couple? It’s unbearable. I was already excited for the newElder Scrollstitle to finally hit my disc tray, but Max and Jim’s sheer joy at having played it once more is making me more than a little jealous. They got some hands-on time at PAX and were given the coolest hats I’ve ever seen.

Here it comes, ladies and gentlemen — the onslaught ofGrand Theft Auto IVcoverage that’s guaranteed to both anger you (because you don’t have it) and spoil all of the good stuff (because you don’t have it … yet). IGN hasposted their full review of the game, which spans seven pages, and ends in them awarding the game a 10 out of 10. I refuse to read the review myself — playing the game for a few hours was almost enough of a spoiler for me....

Those itching for a free-to-play MMO to drop onto PSN will have to scratch and steel themselves for a bit longer. If current plans hold, the PS3 version ofFree Realmswon’t launch until next year. Replying to a question at GDC Austin earlier this afternoon, SOE president John Smedley pegged the MMO’s console arrival as mid-2010. “It’s next year sometime, toward the middle of the year,” he said after initially giving the questioner a tease of a response....

I’veoftenprofessed my love for Australia (usually in the form of horrid references to the untimely death of Michael Hutchence), and today, I would like to proclaim once again, that Australia is my very favorite continent populated solely by the surprisingly beautiful descendents of criminals. The Aussie version of the ESRB, known colloquially as the Office of Film and Literature Classification, recently updated its website to include some very interesting upcoming releases for the Wii’s Virtual Console....

Sony’s UK managing director Ray Maguire has written a very interesting column over atMCV, discussing the recentChange4Life controversy, and how the games industry itself has perpetuated a negative stereotype in the past and is now reaping seeds of past indiscretion. “Clearly, the ad targeted many people’s paranoia, the kind that is often amplified by media such as theDaily Mail,” he argues, “but anyone who knows anything about games, which is half the population these days, will have immediately dismissed the ad as irrelevant....

If you don’t spend 45-minutes (minimum!) customizing your character when you finally get your hands onSkyrimthis November, you’re doing it wrong. But if you’d rather Bethesda hold your hand, you’re at least going to have some options. Bethesda has released screenshots of the preset variations for the game’s ten races. Skyrim will be playable at PAX this year, so check these images out and figure out who you want to me....

As you may have spotted earlier in prolificcommunity member Brad Nicholson’s Cblog, Square-Enix is hosting an exclusive little shindig this August 2nd and 3rd. Apparently admission is more exclusive than the velvet rope bars I watch people stand in line for every weekend in Miami Beach — only 2,400 people have been invited, and all were picked from the Japanese Square-Enix Members website. Fancy, indeed. The party is going to be called DKΣ3713, which could be the only name for it I might like less than “wang exposition”, and attendees get to watch trailers and play demos for the following upcoming Square titles:...