Standees in your rooms are kind of cool, but they’re cardboard. Your visitors look at them and appreciate them, but in the end, they’re disposable. What you really need is a full-blown statue to show your level of fandom and geekdom. Skittles and toilet paper headquarters Sam’s Club has the perfect item for the obsessiveFallout 3fan: a 7′ 10″ tallBrotherhood of Steel statue. They only have one for sale as they worked with Bethesda to get this exclusive item....

You didn’t thinkLittleBigPlanet 2was going to launch without getting a public beta, did you? According to Media Molecule Community Manager Spaff, expect one to begin “soon.” “We will have some more news on how we will recruit for this beta soon,” he said on theLittleBigWorkshop forums, “but in the meantime I wanted to drop in and say that you will all be in with a chance to get in.” “More news soon,” he adds....

Logitech has announced today its PlayStation 3 “Premium Drum Controller” forGuitar Hero, a $229.99 monster kit that will be available this July in the U.S., and August this Europe. The drums will also work with PlayStation 2 versions ofGuitar Hero. Officially licensed by Activision, the wireless drum kit features three adjustable drums head with recessed rims, making sure you hit the mark every time. The kick pedal has a stainless steel surface and what Logitech says is an “adjustable spring”; but looking at the image, it looks awfully similar to the official, out-of-the-box kick pedal....

Can’t wait to start running milk bar speakeasies and telling that no-good Detective Mulligan to go soak his head? I don’t know if any of that is featured inMafia II, but Idoknow that 2K is releasing the game on July 26, 2025. Fans of Italian-American stereotyping and 50’sPlayboymagazines are in for a treat.Mafia IIlooks set to deliver all our honorable gangster fantasies. If you’re going to PAX East (unlike the poor schmoe stuck typing this, alone in the office all morning) thenMafia IIwill be playable....

Remember that “augmented reality” Nintendo DSi titleGhostwire? No, well Majesco has snatched up the publishing rights for the game, which is set for release in late 2010. Now let’s get you caught up:Ghostwire: Linked to the Paranormaluses the DSi camera to allow players to scan their own environment in order to find spirits “above the standard Wi-Fi range.” The ghosts are each said to have their own personality — some shy, some nasty — with some requiring you to bring them “gifts” just so they’ll interact with you....

I’ll be frank: I haven’t downloaded any of the paid add-ons forMass Effect 2. Perhaps I’ll buy the whole lot down the road if I ever decide to do another full playthrough, but for now, I will say that “Lair of the Shadow Broker” seems like the most ambitious — and worthwhile — add-on. Before this trailer, I wouldn’t have been so positive; it’s nicely cut. While it wouldn’t be too shocking if most of the best moments are shown in this video, it’s going to be a strugglenotto give $10 to BioWare come September 7, when “Shadow Broker” hits PC and Xbox 360....

Our second proper peek at Microsoft’s Games on Demand service was provided by a pre-emptive launch ofMass Effect. Around 4 AM this morning, the Xbox LIVE Marketplace RSS feed listedMass Effectas a title available for download. Naturally, Microsoft pulled the title (Games on Demand doesn’t launch until this August), but the RSS listing and its juicy details remain. Oh right, we didn’t mention the juice:the listinghas a curious line (as spotted by360sync)....

My first thought when I heard that aMass Effect prequel would be coming to the iPhonethis morning was that it might be a little hard to see. At least for me, considering I’m mostly blind, and in my mind I imagined something that looked a lot like the originalMass Effect. Not so, in fact: the game has a crisp animated style and places you in the role of super soldier Jacob Taylor, who apparently “who stumbles across a plot to terrorize civilization’s greatest beacon of hope....

Theofficial Web sitefor soon-to-be-hyped PlayStation 3 exclusiveMassive Action Gamelaunched today, courtesy of Sony, and I have to say that I am quite annoyed. After almost a year of nothing, we’re treated to a … bit of a map, and nothing else. Granted, the map flashes something very briefly if you roll the circle over the right parts and click it a bit, but otherwise I don’t know what, exactly, is supposed to be going on....

You know how most gamers seem to think that EA has gone too far with milking its franchises? Yeah, well something tells me this story isn’t going to be helping to change that reputation. The senior producer forMirror’s Edge, Owen O’Brien,has divulgedEA Dice’s plan to turn the colorful parkour simulator into a trilogy by saying, “the story we’re telling at the moment is kind of a trilogy, a three-story arc.”...

Last month’s topic was a huge success — we got tons of great entries to promote, and a lot of people admitted that 2010 was actually a great year for games, even though they couldn’t find anything positive to write about back for December’s musing. Now that February’s here, I have a new Musing for you. Rather than do the cliche thing and have you write about love for Valentine’s Day, I’ve instead decided to turn to Bill Murray for inspiration....

I rarely envy the people who have to live on the eastern coast of the United States. But with MAGFest starting today, I’m feeling a little green. Now, Joystiq reports that Twisted Pixel will be bringingMs. ‘Splosion Manand an as-yet-unannounced title to PAX East and letting the plebes play them both. Curse the luck! No further details about the new game have been made available, but we can probably expect that an announcement will be made prior to the event in March....

Once again, I thought we were done with new playable characters, but nowI find outthatWarriors Orochi 2will feature agiant playable boar. Only playable in Vs Mode and Survival Mode, the giant boar is slow, but super powerful and cheap as hell. The above video shows the porcine pugilist in action, as well as a little of Taigong Wang and Shin Orochi, two of the other new characters. I’ve said this before, butWarriors Orochi 2is looking to be the best of theWarriorsgames yet....