Not a bad week for game releases, well, that is for every console but the PSP. Sadly, no PSP releases this week, but DS fans will be happy to hear that they’ve got a few options to choose from with Trauma Center: Under the Knife 2, Journey to the Center of the Earth, 1 vs. 100, AMF Bowling Pinbusters and Ducati Racing.

Guitar Hero: Aerosmith hits all the home consoles and Hail to the Chimp hits both the Xbox 360 and PS3. Gears of War Refresh also comes out this week, just in time to get gamers ready for the sequel this fall. Check out the full list on the next page. Read more…

User NiTiz over on the N4G forums has posted a very intriguing image showing PS2 titles available from the PSN store. According to NiTiz, his friend at Sony London sent him the image and also told him that the PS2 store will be announced at E3. Read more…

Oh, puppies! I’ll save you from the evil lip balm and the nasty scientists! I’ll climb mountains and parachute off cliffs for you! But Rescue: The Beagles, by nenad, comes highly recommended (as 1st place in TIGSource’s Procedural Generation Competition and from me) not only because it’s adorable, not only because of the audio-visual nostalgia wave, but also because it’s just really fun. The controls are tight in a way that makes every death feel like a player error. Read more…

SNK Playmore announced today that Metal Slug 7 will be released for the Nintendo DS this fall. Continuing its 2D, arcade-shooting roots, MS7 will contain seven brand new missions, six playable characters, and a heap of new weapons. Read more…

Rejoice PS3 gamers — Sony has finally released official videos detailing the long awaited Firmware 2.40, and boy was it worth the wait.” The new firmware update will include the infamous in-game XMB and a new trophy system. Feature highlights and videos available after the jump. Read more…

An Australian man was arrested recently after he convinced a 15-year-old girl he met while playing World of WarCraft to run away from home to be with him. He even paid for the trip. How sweet. Read more…

That watermark reminds me of trying to watch scrambled HBO as a kid…

The website Total Mortal Kombat (the ones who put a giant watermark over the boobs) claim to have received an advance render of Catwoman from the yet to be released Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe game.

While this could very well be a fake, Owen Good, over at Kotaku, says that he did some extensive research on the in-ter-nets in an attempt to disprove it before posting, but was unable to do so.

Fake or not, the watermarks in this photo couldn’t have been in a worse place. Just a hair higher and this photo would be worthless. Seriously, who thought that would be a good idea? There is no good reason to do this. Not even if you are on the receiving end of an exclusive video game render. Find somewhere else to put the watermark and let those kittens breathe!

From this point forward, we need to unite as gamers and bloggers alike — promising to live by the following golden rule — Thou shall never watermark a perfectly good set of boobs! Words to live by my friends.

Get a closer look at the twin kittens after the purr….errr jump. Read more…

Will gamers look past his extended absence and help him in his quest for the White House? Can they forgive his lengthy history of broken promises? Let’s find out.

In response to this video several other well known gaming icons have responded with bids on the oval office themselves. Enjoy. Read more…

Don’t you wish your Wii was as cool as this concept design by Elliot Ortiz? The console itself is hidden away inside a beautiful and eye-catching pink shell. A shell designed specifically to become the focal point of your room.
Read more…

Marcus Fenix would not be caught dead wearing that shirt

I have been busy adding some new features to the site based on your feedback as readers, so please continue sending me your feedback about annoying ads, broken links, and pretty much anything you think can help us to improve the site.

That said, I am just NOW getting a chance to sit down and watch the leaked UT3 Xbox 360 Gears of War 2 exclusive multiplayer video. The footage was originally intended to be a bonus, available only to those who bought the upcoming Unreal Tournament 3 game for the Xbox 360, however as things often do, it found its way on to the web.

If you haven’t seen the video yet, here’s your chance to process it along with my impressions after the jump. Read more…

The steady flow of information about the units in the upcoming RTS, Halo Wars, is slowly beginning. Ensemble Studios have now revealed the Warthog and the Fire Base (above). Read more…

Even though “development is swimming along nicely,” 3D Realms has no intentions of showing Duke Nukem Forever at E3. Hit the jump to find out why. Read more…

This happy asteroid is on my team now

This game is seriously tripped out when you zoom way in and watch the plants grow. “Is it growing? I think so. I can’t tell. Is it getting bigger? It might be,” and then the little fireworks go off.

The game Dyson, by Alex May, Rudolf Kremers, and Brian Grainger for TIGSource’s Procedural Generation Competition, is a slick and pretty, real-time strategy game about colonizing an asteroid belt. Although your minions look like fruit flies, they are actually tiny mining machines that attack the eggy looking rocks like a pack of winged sperm. Read more…

Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard is a fantastic RPG for dedicated players and a fine homage to the classic dungeon crawling RPGs like the PC Wizardry games. Players are given the opportunity to create a guild filled with characters from classes of their choosing, and then can explore a labyrinth at their leisure - mapping things out, leveling up, and fulfilling quests from the Duke and citizens of Lagaard.

It is a game that requires a lot of imagination and dedication on the part of the player. The only real stories in the game involve the labyrinth and its origins, since the characters in the party are all created by the player. Read more…

Got the (deep breath) Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix Beta (phew) up and running on the 42 in LCD and roped my roommate, Josh–a gamer and game programmer–into sharing his thoughts along with mine.

It’s really barely a taste of what the final product will be like, but you at least get a sense of what the shiny HD will look like. Click through so you know what you are disagreeing with before you post nasty comments. Read more…

So much for a slow transition via the ice hole. Blizzard.com now features a fancy-shmancy flash animation announcing Diablo 3 — ice nowhere to be found. Who knows, maybe they had a good reason for all that frosty goodness.

Perhaps you will be able to ice your enemies with Sub-Zero like swiftness, or perhaps it was nothing more than a marketing attempt which, in the end, appears to have no logical connection to the fire filled reveal that was Diablo 3.

However, while we here at Ripten are a little miffed over the lack of connection between the two, we realize that things could have been worse. The reveal could have given birth to the monstrosity below. Enjoy a glimpse at what could have been after the jump. Read more…

As my fellow writers and I discussed back and forth the possibilities for Blizzard’s upcoming announcement, we decided to hit up the Blizzard site again, and noticed that the image had been updated since our last post.

A few sites are reporting on a confirmation of sorts, from an unnamed source, stating that the mystery game is in fact Diablo 3. However, we have spent a few hours discussing and browsing reference images, all the while making comparisons to the slow reveal image on Blizzard’s site. While Blizzard very well may be announcing Diablo 3, we do not believe that the image on their site is necessarily directly related to that release. Read more…

With E3 fast approaching, we’ve decided to put this video up to demonstrate the awesomeness that we will never see there.  The following should be considered “not safe for work,” but it might be worth the risk to watch it right now anyways. Read more…

A couple days ago, we reported that Valve would be showing the next Half-Life installment at this year’s E3. It wasn’t just us, either. The internet was abuzz with the story. Well, now it looks like that isn’t true. Read more…

Earlier this month, details of LucasArts’ staff reductions began to surface around the web. One ex-employee has spoken up and said that key members of the team working on The Force Unleashed have been included in the cut.
Read more…