Left 4 Dead Maps Resurrected in Left 4 Dead 2 Over Forty New Final Fantasy XIII Screens Just In Time For The Weekend PlayStation Network Plans To Implement Premium Content Subscription-Based Model Microsoft Game Studios Hiring Epic Liason/Producer For Gears of War & Shadow Complex Madden NFL Arcade Game Changers Video Toys“R”Us Goes Game Stop, Geoffrey the Giraffe Now Accepting Used Console Trade-Ins

Last time I went to the the London Expo, I was quite disappointed with the lack of proper gaming content. This year, however, I was pleasantly surprised. Tekken 6, Borderlands, Bayonetta, and even Left 4 Dead 2 were all playable at the show- which of course meant that I played them as much as I could.

Obviously I wouldn’t be writing this if I wasn’t going to tell you about them, so don’t worry about that. You could read my impressions and watch a video of the games at the same time and pretend that you’re me. This is clearly something that you want to do, so hit the jump to read on.
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I’m not much of a news guy, so I don’t do news.  I can’t keep track of what is going on in my own life, let alone what other people are doing.  Sometimes, however, things come to my attention that just irritate me or people will need to be put in their place.  Since a vast majority of the time I can do nothing about it, I write it out.  My therapist says it’s… therapeutic.  So, at completely random times you can expect to see another installment of Shut Yer Mouth, where I basically complain about how stupid people are.

Today, I want to talk about World of WarCraft.  They’ve recently announced a new expansion pack in the works, which Chad covered the hell out of during Blizzcon.  Fantastic.  I am really looking forward to the new expansion.  When just the name was leaked, Dan and I had talked about how awesome it would be if they got rid of all that old, stale, vanilla content that you have to play through to level up new characters and just erased that whole section.

Well, when they announced the expansion, they said they were doing exactly that.  Well, not exactly, but close enough to make me think Blizzard has tapped my Ventrilo line.  The problem comes from the expansion, and even a little before that.  It’s been especially profound with this latest patch (3.2) that pretty much allowed anyone with even a few minutes of time a day to eventually get high level raiding gear without ever stepping foot in a raid. Read more…

The Desert Eagle and the Magnum have been staples of first-person shooters for a long time now, and I thought I’d create a tribute video to celebrate these glorious weapons. Actually, this serves more as a test of my own video creation skills than anything else, and as such I’d like to ask anyone who watches to provide feedback.

As you can tell, I’m no voice actor, and perhaps for future videos I might require someone else to do that for me, perhaps even a Ripten reader. Email me at sam@ripten.com if you enjoyed this video and would like to read out my bad jokes on future videos. Again, feedback is welcome from anyone, just leave a comment below or email me.

In a fit of laughter, Final Fantasy director, Motomu Toriyama, and producer, Yoshinori Kitase, revealed that the latest installment of the series (XIII) would have a main storyline that lasted around 50 hours long. This bit of information was unearthed during a Q&A session by Spanish gaming site Meristation.

As  someone who loves the FF RPG series, this means that I will have more time to play and less time to do other bothersome things like bathe and sleep.

Looking to buy a PS3 anytime soon? Wanting to get the best deal? Well, Best Buy has got a pretty nice PS3 bundle their offering right now. The bundle includes the 80GB model of the PS3 hardware for $399.99, along with a copy of LittleBigPlanet and a Blu-ray copy of Wall-E for FREE! Quite an impressive package, so if you’re interested in getting a PS3, I’d put some thought into this deal.

Source: Ars Technica

A brief but powerful email just hit our inbox. What it lacks in words, it makes up for in saliva inducing premonitions. Tune in tonight at 7pm ET/PT to see the Olivia Munn Playboy cover revealed on G4TV’s Attack of the Show.

As for all you hot and heavy gamer girls, sit tight, I’m sure G4TV will announce the Kevin Pereira Playgirl cover soon enough.

Press release and video after the jump. Read more…

E3 is back, and so are our glowing and always insightful predictions. These are from the heart people. Grab a Kleenex and hit the jump. Read more…

This week looks like another great one in game releases with inFamous and Damnation both hitting stores, along with the Up, the game based on the Pixar movie. Hit the jump for the full list of games coming out this week and my pick of the week. Read more…

The charm of the Ripcast, as our regular listeners know, is the overwhelming enthusiasm of the Ripcast crew. You can tell we really love what we do. Listen to Beau yawn as John, Dan, and Sam talk about strategy games, and we once again manage to make racism fun!

Marmite. Read more…

A popular criticism of gaming on the PC is the cost of upgrading your machine to meet the specifications for all the latest games. What people who say this tend to forget, though, is there are plenty of games you can play on your PC without needing a hulking beast of a computer to run.

In an attempt at converting more people to PC gaming, I’ve compiled a few of my favourite games that virtually any computer from the last ten years will be able to run without too much trouble. You’re not going to be running Crysis on your old hunk o’ junk, so why bother? Try one of these fantastic games instead. Chances are, they’re better than Crysis anyway.
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I’ve made this point at least three times this year, but if all goes as planned, there will be 20 Guitar Hero games in existence at the end of 2009. Yes, twenty. But since RedOctane and Harmonix sold the series after three games, the other 17 seems to have come straight from Activision, even though they’ve only had the series for two and a half years. And now, with every possible sign, save for an outright announcement, proving the existence of Guitar Hero: Van Halen, it’s pretty safe to assume that this game is coming out. Unfortunately.

It’s no secret that I’m not too fond of Activision’s franchise exploiting, but it could definitely be a lot worse- and we can prove it. We here at Ripten dug deep into Activision’s trash and found a lengthy list of ideas that were cut from their lineup, but for the sake of time, we selected the best five, along with their box arts, and posted them after the jump.

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Sites with user driven content sound great, but are they? N4G can be viewed as an example to many who have used it over the years of a site which started out great and has become little more than a corporate mouthpiece in recent months.

If you have tried to submit a story containing video or images to the site recently, chances are that you have been met with hordes of individuals directing you to embed the video/images. That wasn’t always the case. The site used to be much more laid back and willing to reward the sites hosting the content as long as they had a link to it on their own. So what has changed? Well, one thing that hasn’t is N4G’s official policy regarding the inclusion of video and images (shown below): Read more…

 

The release of the Mass Effect 2 teaser trailer has long passed and the speculation continues. Everyone is vying to prove his or her arguments correct but I believe the most palpable and chief grounds for speculation lie within the Mass Effect 2 teaser website that Bioware provides for us. Read more…

In case you’re new to the site, or just a little forgetful, I’d like to remind everyone that Ripten does actually have forums. Unfortunately, we’ve had trouble with people trying to advertise their products for free (Spammers) in the past. However, I’ve made sure that the forums are completely free of spam, but alas, that meant losing a lot of old threads and posts, as well as users. If you registered after the 30th of August 2008, your account has been deleted. I sincerely apologise for this, as well as for the loss of all the threads, but it was necessary to clean up the damn place. I urge you to sign up again and get the forums going again- they’re a bit bare at the moment, but start some threads, make some posts, and have a good time.

Before you sign up for a new account, though, take a look here. Because of spammers, I’m going to be approving your accounts manually for now, so email me (sam[at]ripten[dot]com) with the info in that post and I’ll approve you within a day.

We’re also looking for community moderators. If you wish to become a moderator, let me know (email, comment, post on forums) and if you’re a pretty cool guy then I’ll make you an all-powerful and respected mod. As a mod, you’ll help us clean out spammers, so we’ll be able to have open registration again, and keep the forums in tip-top condition. Remember, the more people that sign up and socialise, the better the community. The better the community, the better the site!

[Congratulations DarksideClassic! Shoot me an email at demi@ripten.com and I'll send you your code pronto! For everyone else, stay tuned to Ripten, as we'll be sure to have another contest soon, but this time, with a different method of entry. :) - Demi A.]

Although the average human attention span is less than that of a retarded meerkat, Halo 3 seems to have held its own extremely well in the year and a half that it’s been out. Even now, with a multitude of different FPSes, TPSes, and Halo Wars, Halo 3 is pretty popular amongst Xbox Live members, despite the fact that its maps are pretty limited.

We here at Ripten aim to fix that problem, by holding a contest in which you can win the brand new Halo 3 Mythic Map Pack! The map pack contains three maps- Assembly, Orbital and Sandbox, and a brand new Forge experience (you can start on a blank slate!) for more thrilling multiplayer action.

As of now, the Map Pack hasn’t been officially released, and the only way to get a code for the maps is through the Halo Wars Limited Edition. But, thanks to Microsoft and Ron “Greybush” Workman, we’ve got a code for one lucky reader out there. Hit the jump to learn how you can win!
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I’ve never been a RTS fan, especially when the genre tries to break into the console market.  At best there is a distinct sense of a lack of control in the game, and at worst it’s unplayable.  Obviously, any excitement for Halo Wars was lost on me.  Recently, however, I got to reminiscing about the entire Halo franchise and how substantially things have changed over the course of it’s history, many of them in part due to the franchise’s own innovations.

Part of what got me to thinking about all of this was that it’s pretty much the same way I felt about first-person shooters on consoles before I played Halo.  A controller would never hold a candle to a mouse and keyboard.  There is more accuracy with a mouse than a game pad and getting weapons and items would always be quicker on a keyboard when you can just press one button for whatever weapon you needed.  Hell, at that time I was very much not an Xbox fan. Read more…

Unlike some other websites (we won’t name names, but let’s just say it’s all of them), the best time to proclaim the game of the year is not at the end of the year. How can you adequately compare all of 2008’s games when they kept releasing right up to the end of December? How can you publish a ‘Game of the Year’ article before the year is even over? Obviously, the best time to talk about the game of the year is in the last week of February. Obviously…
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Fanboys, they approach leisure activities with religious zeal and defend their console of choice with dogmatic ferocity.  Fanboys have had “gentlemanly discussions” with some of the writers here at Ripten, more or less, but no one fought it out with them like X-play’s Adam Sessler. I caught up with Adam to discuss Killzone 2, gaming journalism, and the fanboy plague that corrupts message boards and comment sections like The Flood.  Oops, Halo reference, here they come… Read more…

2008 was a big year. There were so many great games released that it’s incredibly hard to decide which one deserves to be the Game of the Year… so that’s why we’re going to make you do it. Have a gander at our nominees and let us know which game you think deserves top honors. Additionally, we want to spark some debate as we also want to know which of our nominees is least deserving of Game of the Year.

The best commenter (best arguments, most interesting or humorous comments – as decided by Ripten staff) will also be rewarded with a super awesome prize: a free game! Let your voice be heard! Read more…

Well, this is it. We’ve counted down the best asses in videogames, and I’m guessing nobody recognizes our number one. I’m sure this choice will be much debated, but there is some fairly sound logic why this gets our top choice for the Nicest Asses in Videogames. Read more…