“Finish Him!”.

Everybody knows the game, it was Midway’s signature videogame series. Sadly, the once proud studio is now dead, with Warner Bros Entertainment paying out $33 Million for the bankrupt Mortal Kombat developers.

Many of the younger amongst you may not realise just how sad this passing is. This isn’t a company that just gave us fatalities and Sub-Zero, for they have been about for over fifty years. Midway is, and always will be an important part of the history of videogames. They are intrinsically linked to the Golden Age of arcade gaming.

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Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet has certainly blind sighted me, I had never heard of the game before seeing this trailer. It’s certainly my favourite video for July, maybe even for this year.

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I went into Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince telling myself to have an open mind. I thought I was probably five to ten years older than the audience the game is aimed at, and all the wand work is probably designed for the Wii so playing it on my Xbox 360 may be a chore. As it turns out, I shouldn’t have bothered with all that open mind business, as the game was genuinely enjoyable from the offset. Read more… »

I would love to start this review by stating that the days of rushed games, as movie tie-in cash cows, are over. I would love to say that like the Wolverine game, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is sitting in a category of “games that are greatly better than the movies they are based on.” However, none of that is true. I could say this is a below average game that reeks of rushing to meet the movie’s release. That would be true. Read more… »

When I first heard about MAG I was immediately interested, not only the massive scale of the battles but in demo videos there seemed to be some very distinct and interesting classes to choose from. These PMC classes seem to be very similar but still different enough to attract different kinds of players to them.

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The Pirate Bay, one of the internet’s most notorious bittorrent trackers, has done the unthinkable by getting itself sold, essentially removing the foundation for its “Pirate” name. Now it’ll probably need to be called “The Bay,” or “The Perfectly Legitimate Merchant Ship Bay.”

Swedish software group Global Gaming Factory X AB will be acquiring it in August for nearly $8 million. The group promised to find a new – and legal – business model for the site to go by. Hit the jump for my reaction.

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Kotaku was able to nab some screens of Blizzard’s employee library, and as you would assume…its epic.  Not only is it filled with all of the necessary programming and computer savvy texts, but it has more PC games, and a smidgen of console games, for you to shake your jealous fists at.

Hit the jump to see more.  Warning: I’m still picking up my jaw. Read more… »

Our first bumpy week since the blogs launched has almost concluded. Interested in what we have to show for it? Well check out after the jump for this week’s picks.

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New details regarding Blizzard’s upcoming RTS title Starcraft 2 have recently hit the web, including some unexpected revelations, developer interviews, and a shiny new gameplay video. Hit the jump for a rundown the noteworthy bits, a video interview with Lead Designer Dustin “Terrible, Terrible Damage!” Browder, and the aforementioned gameplay footage.

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Over on Reddit, there has been quite the stir regarding the Dancing Zombie from PopCap’s latest game, Plants Versus Zombies.

The general gist from their discussion is, while previously the Micheal Jackson zombie was humorous, yet now, since his death, it looks a touch distasteful.

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Relic’s Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War series is one of the longest-legged franchises in the whole RTS genre. At this point only Starcraft rivals it for online extensive online longevity. Now, Relic hopes its sequel will achieve the same timelessness. Dawn of War II‘s next major update, impressively titled “There is only War,” will be bringing a boatload of balance changes, bug fixes, and eight shiny new multiplayer maps. Most significant of all, however, is the addition of World Builder, a full-service map maker, allowing devoted Space Marines, Tyranids, Eldar and Orks to construct battlefields to slaughter each other on.

The builder will hit beta in early July, with the update making its glorious debut later this summer. Expect much carnage…and only war.

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Fans anticipating the release of the Starcraft 2 beta have identified that a minor change has occured within their Battle.net profiles. A small icon reading “SC2 Beta” has appeared, and the “Beta Profile Settings” text has changed to bright green.

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