Week In Review: 02/06

Welcome to the second edition of Week In Review, the best place to catch up on the most important and entertaining stories from the past week, as well as our GI-related shenanigans.

Normally I’d start on Monday, but last Saturday marked another second installment of a new GI series: Replay. Replay is a new video feature where our editors go back and play a favorite game from the past, while offering valuable insight on the series, as well as less valuable jokes. The first in the series was Twisted Metal. This week's offering was Bushido Blade, during which Jeff Cork showed off his amazing falling down skills.

With that out of the way comes Weekly Roundup, which details all of the awesome new stuff that came out this week. As far as games go…not so much awesome – except for Star Trek Online, of course! I’ll leave it to you to decide if that was sarcastic or not, but if none of those games are doing it for you, be sure to check out Miller’s Impulse Weekly for this week’s downloadable offerings.

Our biggest story from this week was the reveal of our March cover story, L.A. Noire. It’s a massive ten page feature that details what the team has been doing the for the past couple years (besides not telling gamers about L.A. Noire). We had some other interesting online stories this week as well, including our Wish List for Assassin’s Creed III, and a look at Bioshock 2’s Big Sister.

The GI offices are still feeling the reverberations of Mass Effect 2’s greatness. We’ve got some exclusive Tidbits about the game's development, and Adam detailed some of the reasons he loves Bioware’s latest creation. Then Joe came along and peed on everyone’s parade with his rant about mineral scanning. Thanks a lot, Joe!

But Mass Effect 2 wasn’t the only game the staff critiqued this week. We also posted our reviews for MAG (mediocre), Dante’s Inferno (so-so), and White Knight Chronicles (pedestrian). Thank god that’s over – I was running out of synonyms for average! We also had a somewhat special review: Matt Miller stepped into Ebert’s shoes to review the eight short films that make up Halo Legends. The verdict? Actually, Miller really enjoyed it. Take that, mediocrity!

So we didn’t review any games we liked, but we did play some. Like a preview build of Super Street Fighter IV, which Dan has been playing and posting videos of ever since. Similarly, Reiner has been live blogging about MLB 2K10 the past couple days, and I wrote about how stupidly fun the Bad Company 2 demo is. Finally, Nick posted more in-depth impressions of the iPad. Yeah, it doesn’t really count as a game, but it’s got to go somewhere, right?

And now for some release date mayhem: The C&C 4 Beta went live, complete with a trailer. Nier got a release date, and Kojima got all upset about Peace Walker getting delayed. How upset? He called it a “great crime.” Yikes.

A couple of new games were announced this week. Like a new Pokemon game. And not just some Platinum Liver edition – this one is going to be a new style of Pokemon game. The news came from Bulbagarden, so you know it’s legit!

We also found out this week that a new Red Faction is in the works! I can’t wait to see how the game’s destruction engine is going to evolve – here’s hoping you can blow up all of Mars into tiny little pieces like it's the Death Star! We also found out Mass Effect is getting some more free DLC in the near future, and that the PSP is getting its own little version of ModNation Racers.

And finally, a new Sonic game has been announced, and Tim Turi reported on it. I am 99% convinced that Tim literally willed this game into existence with his mind.

Sure, reading words about games is great, but we all know a picture is worth a thousand of them. That’s why we have new screens of the upcoming Dragon Age expansion, as well as screens of a little game called Diablo III.

But if a picture is worth a thousand words, than video must be worth 29,970 words…per second! I’m talking about trailers, and this week brought us a ton of them. Like a trailer for the aforementioned Dragon Age expansion, as well as a Bioshock 2 launch trailer, a Trauma Team trailer, a Fallout New Vegas trailer, and an Iron Man 2 trailer.

If you’re tired of staring at a computer screen after watching all of those videos, give your eyes a break and listen to this week’s Game Informer Show. This week’s episode covers MAG, No More Heroes 2, and questions from the Game Informer Reader Mailbag. You can also listen to our special edition podcast with Irrational Games, which details some of the developer’s biggest influences and inspirations. When you’re done listening to those, check out this week’s edition of Crafty Gamer, which features hip hop remixes of FFVII from Team Teamwork! 

Now how about some news out of Japan? We learned this week that Final Fantasy XIII was originally going to be a PS2 title, and that development took an extra year to figure out the new PS3 hardware. We also learned that the 360 version of FFXIII will come on three discs. That’s a lot of discs.

Also new in the East: After the reception of Bionic Commando and Dark Void, Capcom announced it's now developing new games primarily in Japan. Meanwhile, when asked if a new Wii will support high definition, Nintendo’s CEO Satoru Iwata said it will take more than just HD to remain competitive. That’s better than a no…I guess. Finally, Grasshopper Manufacture hired some new blood…or old blood, as the case may be.

There was also plenty of news coming out of the West this week too. The Independent Games Festival named this year’s top 12 finalists. We also found out that NBA 2K10 sold over 2 million copies, and Darksiders sold 1.2 million. Meanwhile, Popcap lost a total of $7.3 million after being sued by MumboJumbo.

Now how about some quirky, only-in-America news? There’s a real world WoW auction house opening up soon. Also, the ESRB felt the need to update its description of the PSP version of Dead or Alive: Paradise, from hilariously descriptive, to just plain descriptive. I liked the first draft better myself.

If that’s not quirky enough, how about this: EA Sports used Madden NFL to play the Super Bowl game, and is predicting the Saints are going to win. The company also says the Cyberdyne Systems-esque football sim has been eerily accurate in past years. I can’t wait until Madden NFL is so smart that it starts predicting player injuries based on the cover model for the game. Speaking of, the candidates for next year’s cover have been revealed. Good luck guys!

And finally we have the stuff for which there’s no possible segue:

You can buy a zombified Meagan for 99¢; Reiner posted a story about mechs that includes video of a break dancing robot; Adam talked with Joe Mauer about skintight mo-cap suits (as well as baseball); Microsoft is calling time of death on the original Xbox Live servers. So long, Halo 2!

And that was the week. If you’re looking for even more, slightly crazier content, check out this week’s edition of blog hearding. See you next week!