Phil Kollar

We've known about original superhero MMO City of Heroes going
free-to-play for a while now, but the day has finally come. City of
Heroes Freedom has gone live, opening up the world of Paragon City to a
flood of new, non-paying players.

Yesterday
we mentioned that it was Castlevania's 25th anniversary in a post about
the franchise's mysterious future. We may not know what Konami has
planned next for this legendary series, but that won't stop us from
celebrating its wonderful past.

The violent, 2D action game Shank came out on various download services a
little over a year ago to fairly strong buzz. Now EA and developer Klei Entertainment have revealed Shank 2, an equally bloody sequel planned for early 2012.

ith Virgin Gaming for an online tournament
that will be rewarding $1.6 million to the best players.

Nippon Ichi may be best-known for its long string of solid turn-based
strategy RPGs, including the Disgaea series, Phantom Brave, and more.
The next PlayStation 3 game from this developer will be breaking outside
of that comfort zone a bit, though.

guest star roles
from both of these models.

one of the most
deviously designed levels in any game ever.

Someone else has decided to take on the
ultimate challenge for Dark Souls' first boss encounter: killing him
without using any weapons.

Soulcalibur V is being developed by Namco's internal Project Soul team,
but apparently the publisher is looking outside the company for support
with the game's story mode.

nding server support for
Demon's Souls into 2012.

vered a
shockingly efficient way of taking this beast down.

We don't often report on review scores from other publications, but one
set of scores for Gears of War 3 stood out to me, and I felt the need to
share it with you tonight.

...but From Software is
fighting back.

Ever since beloved designer Keiji Inafune left Capcom almost a year ago,
gamers have been eager to see what his next project is. As it turns
out, we almost found out at Tokyo Game Show...and will hopefully be
hearing something soon.