Yesterday Activision gave us an update on their Guitar Hero Encore: Rock the 80s game playlist, and now they're kind enough to give us an update on Guitar Hero III. Here's the songs they confirmed will be in Guitar Hero III when it releases this Fall:

• ORIGINAL RECORDINGS:
• "Cult of Personality" by Living Colour
• "Paint It Black" by the Rolling Stones
• "Cherub Rock" by Smashing Pumpkins
• "Sabotage" by Beastie Boys
• "The Metal" by Tenacious D
• "My Name Is Jonas" by Weezer
• "Knights of Cydonia" by Muse
• COVER SONGS:
• "Rock And Roll All Nite" as made famous by Kiss
• "School's Out" as made famous by Alice Cooper
• "Slow Ride" as made famous by Foghat
• "Barracuda" as made famous by Heart

"Knights of Cydonia" here I come. Activision also confirmed that Guitar Hero III will introduce two new wireless controllers -- a Gibson Les Paul guitar controller for the 360, PS3, and Wii, and a Gibson Kramer guitar controller for the PS2. Neversoft is also working on an online multiplayer battle mode that includes what some are calling "boss battles." With more songs and features than ever before, this series just keeps getting better and better. Which song are you looking forward to rocking out on the most?

Every Spring, Summer, and Winter break I always end up starting a new PC game and playing it all night for a few days in a row, and then dropping it cold, and not touching it again until the next season, if ever. I was planning on going back to Ragnarok Online next week, but I've now found its replacement: Silverfall. Developed by Monte Cristo Games, the company honestly hasn't made anything very interesting to date, yet this action RPG looks top of the line. The huge set back is that it's not an MMO game, only a 1-8 player game with friends, but if you can get over that there's an impressive amount of positive gameplay traits.

To make their game stand out in a flooded market they adapted a subtle cel-shaded character style that helps make the points of interest on the screen pop out at the player. Outside of the character and creature silhouettes are great looking environments - since they don't have to deal with the complications of coding MMO gameplay, it allowed them to put World of Warcraft and other MMOs to shame, using nice textures and normal maps to make everything look more real. Interfaces are pretty weak though.

This is all interesting, but it's the way they structured their plot that's the most intriguing to me. Monte Cristo has put together half a dozen "behind the scenes" episodes showing off how the game will work, and I chose episode three to display above. I've got a feeling their character player system might be too limiting, but their world and quest system draws on a lot of clever ideas performed successfully in the past. Instead of a single linear plot, they've setup a world split between nature and technology ideals. So as you progress through the game you can sculpt the world similar to how KOTOR gave players the choice to grow evil or honorable. Taking it a step further, to an extent you can also recreate towns like in Dark Cloud. This opens up a ton of possibilities and most likely invites disastrous gameplay, but Monte Cristo keeps it simple. As you perform quests you're given the choice to pursue nature or technology at each turn on the map, letting you slowly create your own story as you play through the game.

Here's the Quicktime links to each episode:

• Episode 1: Birth of a World
  
• Episode 2: Creation of a World
  
• Episode 3: History of the World and the Quests
  
• Episode 4: Developing the Characters
• Episode 5: The Companions
• Episode 6: Technical Challenge
  

The episodes are all very short, only two minutes each, so we don't get many examples of how this gamplay works, but you get to see a multitude of concept art, environments, battle, and creature designs coupled with explanations fro ma narrator. They've even managed to put together their own lighting system to make Silverfall exploration unique. Where the fuck did you come from Monte Cristo? Well done team, hopefully my old computer can run this game when it comes out on March 27th. Here's some more scenery.

We've seen the game's cover art, and more previews, but until it finally comes out on May 22 this is the closest we can get. Every one of the new screenshots is a great example of awesome textures combined with expert color theory design in a video game. There's a lot of characters that I think look lame in design, but they still look awfully damn good. The robots in a few of the pictures show further shiny Star Wars design inspiration, but the creature looks a little too shiny. I can't wait to see more of this game's environments, I hope the plot doesn't rush you through each area, I want to take my time with this game.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comes out in one month for PS2, PSP, DS, GameCube, Wii, and even PC, and this is the first real good look at what we can expect to do in the game as the four shelled hellions. I love the trails that your weapons and headband strips leave on the screen as you move around the enemies. And the wall climbing moves is like Assassin's Creed come early.

The only thing I didn't like about the old school arcade game was that it didn't do the movies justice by focusing too much on daytime fights that never would have happened out in the open in the show or films. Not unless Vanilla Ice summoned them anyways. I always wanted more levels to explore the sewers and make me really feel like I fit my Halloween costume as a true cowabunga cadet. If this new game's trailer is a good representation of what the game will be like, then we'll be able to explore the sewers at great lengths, as well as take part in plenty of believable night time battles. Although I never knew Michaelangelo could hover by spinning his nunchucks like helicopter blades - I'll be sure to try that the next time I'm playing my Wii and then sue Ubisoft for the resulting disaster.

Virtua Fighter 5 just came out today for the PS3, and ScrewAttack went out and bought it to show us what it's like before spending the money ourselves. Luckily he skipped past the seven minutes of load time when you first start the game up. After that it wasn't completely smooth sailing either - he brings up some small annoyances with the player select interfaces, but emphasizes that the only real issue is that the load times before matches are longer than he expected.

Once the match starts the game definitely delivers with the next gen details - the snow level he focuses on has exactly the type of advancements we need to see more of on PS3 and 360. Although, the game does pull a Wii - there's no friggin online play. That's supposed to be the one thing we can count on only Nintendo fucking up on, it's sad to see a multiplayer game like this only offline. There's some fake arcades in the game that you can travel to and fight fictional players at, but I've got better things to do with my time. If you don't have a PS3, it'll also be out later this year for Xbox 360, but that won't be until autumn at the earliest, so don't expect to be playing any time soon.

Annnd I'm back from Vegas - minus $400 on Da Bears and a broken laptop as well. Last time I listen to The BBPS about the Super Bowl outcome! Before I left though I emailed Nibris asking for some info on Sadness - what looks to be like the only especially good upcoming Wii game aside from anything Mario related. They said that's still top secret, but they were willing to give me an update on their DS exclusive game Raid Over The River, which they have renamed simply ROTR. The picture above has been public for a while, but I think the picture below is new. Here's the updated details about their handheld vertical shooter that will release some time this year: 

• 6 campaigns, each with several missions
• 6 different vehicles to be driven in 6 different time dimensions
• very extensive weaponry
• fuel and ammunition management requiring strategic approach to missions, defending transhipment bases
• cooperation and synchronisation of actions with other units
• extensive, full of action, multi-thread scenario putting the player in an intrigue spanning hundreds of dimensions
• 3D graphics on both screens
• set of dodging and special attacks taking advantage of special features of NDS
• hidden missions, vehicles, bonuses enabled in the course of playing
• extensive multiplayer mode allowing to enjoy the game longer

Looks better than the Wii flying game to me, I'll glady take this DS game. I wonder what the six different time dimensions are though, they should make one of them a prehistoric flying game where the goal is killing all the dinosaurs with nukes. They could copyright the idea before the next Turok game comes out and declare royalties.

EvilAvatar just got ahold of 23 new high resolution photos of God of War 2. Half of the pictures are from the Colossus of Rhodes boss battle that we watched yesterday, but the rest are of Kratos grappling indoors and outdoors in combat. The textures are pretty nice for the PS2, but most of the geometry of objects looks simple - it'll be fun comparing this game's graphics to Final Fantasy XII. The Rhodes statue has some fugly fingers, but his under construction arm looks awesome when lightning is surging through it. If this is one of the early bosses then I can't wait to see how impressive the last boss is.

I can spot the differences between a bushbaby and a loris in the middle of the night, but I can barely tell what I'm looking at in these videos. The interface does look like the one seen a few times in Halo 3 coverage, with the four grenades in the upper left corner and the weapon details in the upper right, but with the quality of the videos it's just too hard to tell. But for all you die hard Halo fans out there, enjoy. Here's part two, and part three if you enjoy blurriness induced migraines. Perhaps another I Love Bees ARG is beginning to form slowly.

I made it! Guns were ablaze, but I am on the plane! I just blamed the whole cop ordeal on some guy who went tanning too much for the Vegas flight to impress the girls. Convincing people he was Arab was a piece of cake, and speaking of food - here's the peanuts. And there they go, all gone, sigh . . . Well, while we get settled in and continue to rise in altitude, enjoy the video above. It's not true flight, but a Dragon game is the best I have for you for now. But I'll be back in 30 more minutes - I've already got my eye on the hot stewardess. The brunette one, not the fugly blonde.

I've been following Blue Dragon for a while now, and this preview video is the best look yet now that the game is out in Japan. Sofar, I've gotta hold on to my predictions, I still see this game as being highly disappointing. Some of the battle system looks really solid - using the dragon shadows for fighting should be cool, and using the attack circle radius to include enemies that are also enemies of one another should be awesome as well. The story even starts off with an exciting beginning that matched the fantasy mood greatly. But beyond that? There's some robots and another 100 or so levels of running around in empty environments. I hate how empty it looks - look at the battle environments too - a big white box? Could we at least put a bump map somewhere? Every game hypes itself, we always assume there's a lot not shown that we have to buy the game for. The preview mentioned a ton of cinematics, so that should be fun, but that's also to be expected. I have a gut feeling that I won't very impressed.

Don't believe me? Then what was Halo 3 doing over in Iraq in the past week? Hmm? A game of murder just so happens to cross seas straight into a land of war at the exact time Saddam dies? Bungie's gonna need quite the alibi to get out of this one. Too bad Saddam's father never taught him how to wear a Halo - it's not too comfortable when worn around your neck. Here's two videos showing quick clips of Halo 3 gameplay, with a few pictures below too. 

Not a single swear word, how disappointing. Maybe Halo 3 isn't even fun?

Hmm, perhaps Bungie is pulling another I Love Bees alternate reality game on us? Something smells fishy. And deserts don't often smell fishy.