Mr Sackboy was the best teacher ever

We've just received three brand new screenshots from Dead Island, the four player co-op survival horror game set in a tropical paradise.  There's something really intriguing about the dichotomy of the screens - the beautiful landscapes combined with the bloody, rundown objects from a zombie apocalypse.  

Sometimes, the announcement of a title seems to be the answer to your prayers to the video game gods. LotR: War in the North was one such case for me. I’d been whining for some years about how the current generation of consoles suffers a shortage of truly great dungeon crawlers and fantasy hack-and-slash games. I think many of you share my lament in this area, and we’re quick to point to titles such as Balder’s Gate: Dark Alliance and Champions of Norrath (both developed by Snowblind) as great games of this type on the last generation of consoles. When Snowblind announced they were working on a new title in the LotR universe, I was pretty darn happy. After getting some hands-on time with the title PAX East last weekend, I can safely say this game is living up to my extremely high expectations.

This s#!t like Tribes yo. That was the official one sentence description given by our own Mike Katsufrakis after playing Red 5’s upcoming free shooter Firefall. It should come as no surprise then that the game’s lead designer, Scott Youngblood, was also the lead designer on Tribes 1 and 2. Trust us when we say this is a really good thing.

LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars is not only rivaling the SOCOM series in lengthy and complicated names...it's also bringing out the big battles. Along with these epic landscapes and sprawling leagues of combatants Traveller's Tales is including more driveable vehicles than any previous LEGO game.

A new trailer is out this morning for Battlefield 3 that looks just as tasty as the first.  The trailer is called "Fault Line Episode 2" and follows our fireteam onto the roof of a building under fire from a hidden enemy sniper.  The tense trailer continues as our team works their way across the roof from cover to cover only to...well - I'll leave you to watch the video to see what happens.  Lets just say a lot of potted plants were harmed in the making of this video.  Oh - and one building.

This is somewhat of a pleasant surprise.  Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime, the four player co-op downloadable title from Atari, will be releasing next week - March 23rd  - on XBLA, PSN and PC.  Originally slated for "Spring"  - the game is hitting that target almost right on the nose.  

Demiurge Studios has been around for quite some time, working closely with companies that we adore from a co-op standpoint, such as Gearbox for Borderlands. Recently the studio took a break from working for others and has decided it’s time to make their game - Shoot Many Robots. Their message here is simple: Robots are bad, we should shoot them. In order to deliver that initial message, we get a plethora of tools to help us out aside from plain old guns. It’s Borderlands meets Metal Slug on a drinking binge as Demiurge describes it - and that’s scarily accurate.

Magic: The Gathering Duels of the Planeswalkers was one of the biggest hits of 2010.  Turns out being a new-player friendly, inexpensive downloadable video game version of the world's premiere trading card game is a recipe for success.  The game spawned three expansions, and appeared on Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and PC.  You don't have to be a powerful wizard to foresee a sequel, do you?

Most of the experiences at PAX are “All right! I finally get to play this game I’ve been hearing about,” but this isn’t the first time we’d seen Slam Bolt Scrappers. Last year an early version of the game was present on the show floor, and Nick and I tried it out. In the last year, the games developer Fire Hose Games has grown by leaps and bounds, and so has Slam Bolt Scrappers.

So I decided to give Saints Row 2 another try this past weekend, and honestly: I'm not sure what made me get rid of it the first time. Probably the fact that the Xbox was in the main living room and the game's less-than-family-friendly content was wafting into the kitchen and play areas. Now that the loft is the main location for gaming, my family scruples can be less...scrupulous.

I would be a bloody liar if I said that Guild Wars 2 wasn’t one of my major reasons for going to PAX East. I’ve been playing the original Guild Wars since the launch of GW: Factions back on April, 2006. Guild Wars is the game I always fall back on when I’m in-between games, and as a result, I’ve logged over 2,000 hours in the game. It’s safe to say I’m pretty darn excited about the sequel. That may or may not have come across in the preview I wrote up last fall. Mike and I had the opportunity to have an interview/demonstration with the developers and Mike, Nick, and I all had a chance at other times during the event to try out the game for ourselves.