Activision and Raven Software present the first graphic novel look at the storyline of nazis, espionage, action and supernatural experimentation in the latest Wolfenstein chapter.

Spoiler: Quad-Minigun totin' Hitler ahead!

Wolfenstein Graphic Novel Trailer Part 1

Wolfenstein launches August 4 on the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

The iconic screen and voice actor Lance Henriksen returns in the next chapter of BioWare's story-heavy, gameplay-devoid  Timeline videos fleshing out even more backstory to the Star Wars: The Old Republic universe.

In the latest installment, the Mandalorian warrior race is profiled by the ever gruff-voiced Henriksen.

Star Wars: The Old Republic Timeline Record - The Return of the Mandalorians

The MMORPG is set for sometime in 2010 exclusively on the PC.

The summer is a fantastic time for all sorts of things: hosting barbeques, lazing ‘round the old waterin’ hole, losing pie-eating competitions because you refuse to succumb to the pressure to be an absolute pig, and so on. Sadly, the summertime is traditionally far more uneventful for gaming. If you’re looking for proof, look no further than this week’s new releases list.

If it’s over-the-top, juiced-to-the-gills baseball action you’re after, then 2K Sports’ The Bigs 2 should do the trick. Although, be sure to check back for Mr. Andrew Pfister’s review of the high-octane baseball title later this week to see if the game walks off victoriously or if it pops out to the catcher with bases loaded in front of its mom.

And for those of you who missed out on either 2K Boston’s anti-utopian masterpiece Bioshock or Bethesda Game Studios’ epic RPG The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, you will definitely want to check out the new Bioshock/Oblivion bundle. Two incredible titles for less than the price of a new game? You’re welcome.

PS3

The Bigs 2

Wii

The Bigs 2

Xbox 360

The Bigs 2
Bioshock/The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Bundle

Click through to see full list

LucasArts is really reaching back to their roots lately. In addition to revealing a visual makeover for The Secret of Monkey Island and an all-new episodic Tales of Monkey Island adventure from Telltale Games, today LucasArts has announced their catalog is now coming to Valve Software's Steam service. The games start dropping July 8.

Additionally, LucasArts has confirmed Tales of Monkey Island will debut on the PC on July 7 (the WiiWare installments are promised in the "coming weeks," which could be as soon as next week) and The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition will arrive on both Xbox Live Arcade and PC (including Steam!) on July 15.

What games are coming to Steam in the first wave? Keep reading…

Sega may be permanently out of the video game console business, but the company has cornered the market on one very important part of the electronics industry. I'm speaking, of course, about sentient robotic cats.

Sega's Yume Neko Smile is the world's foremost android cat, and the newest iteration, Yume Neko “Dream Cat” Venus is a life-sized Norwegian Forest Cat that comes with with more possible movement than the original Smile and the ability to respond to your voice.

Movements include laying down, reaction to touch from a number of hidden sensors, reaction to light from a hidden forehead photo-receptor, and the ability to move her paws around, and if you say "here here" in Japanese, it will purr at you. Presumably, if you say "Stop puking on everything!" it will respond with, "I'm a fake cat, idiot."

Please look at this youtube video and try not to go mad:

While I'm sure you'd love to have one of these in your home, they come with a warning: I've seen enough cheesy 1980s sci-fi flicks to determine the robot cats' real purpose. Once you've let it into your home and become comfortable with it, your robot cat friend will access its real programing and begin beaming details about your day-to-day routine to its robot overlords. This will aid them in their plan to enslave humanity and force us to toil endlessly in outer space diamond mines.

Also: Robot Cat will take pictures of you naked.

Source

Undoubtedly, there are quite a few gamers out there who would love to see Sony drop the price of the PlayStation 3, if only to prove that analysts can still make solid predictions every now and then. Well, it seems gamers aren't the only ones hoping Sony's heart (as well as its install base) grows three sizes sometime soon.

In a recent interview with CVG, publisher Tecmo Koei's CEO Kenji Matsubara reveals that he's been consistently pressing Sony for a "welcomed" PS3 price drop for some time now.

However, Matsubara explains that while a price cut would obviously expand the PS3 market, "It's Sony's strategy, and I don't know their cost structure. Sony introduced cutting-edge technology in the PS3, that's why people in the industry accept that the PS3 cost is so high, but we'd welcome a price cut."

Matsubara's is an unsurprising position, but it's also one that reflects the feelings of most gamers who have yet to make the PS3 plunge strictly because of its price point. A price drop is coming sooner rather than later, so now it's really just a waiting game to see when exactly Sony wants its hardware sales to skyrocket.

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Sackboy crosses the streams as Media Molecule releases the first image to presumed upcoming Ghostbusters DLC for LittleBigPlanet. Not much else to go on yet, but we'll keep you posted.

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Above is a reportedly official PSP promotional image from Sony Europe.

I don't condone playing with video games in the tub, but, yeah, I play games in the bathroom, but not in the bath. More like on the throne, baby. But I guess that isn't as visually appealing in promotional image form...

Part of me thinks: "What the heck is Sony doing here?" but the other part of me realizes that if this was a hot chick playing a PSP in the tub, I wouldn't be complaining, and there are lots of girl gamers out there, not to mention gay gamers. Plus, it's European, and they do things a little differently over there. What do you think? Is this kind of promotional image acceptable? Or should Sony tone it down a bit?

No matter how you feel about Bathtub-PSP-Dude, there is no excuse for the messed up Photoshopping on the side of that dude's head, though -- it looks like he has a divot taken out of his skull!

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Ben Heckendorn is some kind of weird genius. The man creates the greatest computer and video game case mods on earth, including the one you see above: A fully portable, fully functioning 360 Laptop. That's Revision 5 of the project, and it now includes an ethernet port, wi-fi adapter, remote control support and "more airholes."

Check it out in youtube video form below:

Source

Hope everyone had a nice 4th of July. Here's some console-war flame-bait to get the week started right!

According to Valve head Doug Lombardi, the PlayStation 3 version of The Orange Box is inferior to the 360 and the PC versions. "If we were customers of that product on PlayStation, we'd feel like we sort of got the stepchild version of the product while the guys on the PC and the 360 got the sweet version of it," Lombardi said.

 Furthermore, Lombardi says his company isn't interested in releasing inferior versions of its games, so until Valve gets a PS3 team together, they won't work on that platform:

"We've run a couple of experiments over the years of PlayStation in general; we did Half-Life on PS2 with an outside company and then we did Orange Box PS3 with an outside company. We weren't able to deliver the same type of product on PS3 and PS2 for that matter that we were on the 360 and PC. Until we have the ability to get a PS3 team together, until we find the people who want to come to Valve or who are at Valve who want to work on that, I don't really see us moving to that platform."

These quote echo things Valve's Gabe Newell told us. Gabe said:

"Until we can do a better job than we have [with PS3 games], I’m sort of hesitant to go back and screw them again. So, I want to make sure when we have customers on the PS3 they don’t end up in the sort of second class citizen that I feel that they’ve been by what we did originally with The Orange Box."
 

Welcome to "Morning Hangover" -- an excellent way to start your day with the crew at TheFeed...no matter what you're recovering from. Every morning you'll hear musings from two of TheFeed's editors and have the chance to share  your thoughts on what's going on in the gaming world. So buckle up, wipe the barbecue sauce off of your face, and keep reading!

Raymond Padilla: I played a bunch of Fight Night Round 4 over the weekend. As a boxing video game, it's pretty excellent. As a boxing simulation, it's a bit lacking. I love the actual sport and I'd love to see the most accurate simulation possible, but certain aspects of the game are altered in order to make it more appealing to the masses. For example, in a couple of heavyweight bouts I played, my fighters averaged well over 150 punches per round. Anyone that watches the sport knows that heavyweights do not throw leather at a rate that high; the norm for that weight class is well under 100. Being able to let your fists fly like that makes for a more enjoyable time, but that's not what the actual sport is like. The same goes for the new emphasis on counterpunching. Counters are way too powerful in Fight Night Round 4. It's an interesting and fun game mechanic, but doesn't accurately reflect the sport. I totally understand that the features I'm looking for don't appeal to a mass audience, but as a boxing fan, I'll keep dreaming.

Welcome back to The Hot Sheet, G4tv.com's light-hearted look at the industry. As always, data and analysis is unscientific, and facts may be slightly altered for comedic purposes. Let's get in touch with our feelings, shall we? (Oh, and happy 4th of July!)

What People Can't Wait To Get Their Hands On

People have got summer fun on the mind, which explains Wii Sports Resort being on top of this week's Amazon.com snapshot of top pre-orders. Nancy Drew is an odd one, from our core perspective at least. And in the distance, the faint sounds of tuba, trombone, and creative student cheers can be heard...

Amazon.com's Top 10 Pre-ordered video game items, as of 1:43PM, Saturday July 4, 2009

1) Wii Sports Resort
2) Nancy Drew: Ransom of the Seven Ships
3) Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box
4) Dissidia Final Fantasy
5) Metroid Prime Trilogy: Collectors Edition

Oh, hello. I didn't see you there.

I'm Andrew Pfister, your new Senior Games Editor. What I'll actually be doing for the site is in that nebulous and exciting "planning stage," but it will definitely involve writing words about videogames. That much I can promise you.
 
If you've seen or heard my name before, you're either a long-time reader of Electronic Gaming Monthly, a listener of the 1UP.com podcasts (of which I was producer), or you went to high school with me. Sadly, I am not the heir to the Pfister Pfaucet Pfortune, I am unrelated to Academy Award-nominated Director of Photography Wally Pfister, and I am unaffiliated with the Pfister Hotel in downtown Milwaukee, though it is indeed a lovely hotel.
 
Who I am is a guy who paid close enough attention in school (go Bucky), made the right friends, wrote the right things, and found myself with excellent jobs, working with excellent people in excellent places: now that list includes G4tv.com. I'm platform-agnostic (everyone has high points and low points), terrible at real-time strategy but can hold my own in nearly everything else, and I can grow a wicked beard in a matter of weeks. My favorite game is your favorite game -- how crazy is that?!?
 
Oh, I'm also incapable of answering interview questions seriously.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen has somehow wormed its way into America's collective heart, earning mega bucks at the box office. Don't hold it against us that we were a little hesitant at first to check out the movie's video game sibling. We've been burned in the past by movie spin-offs (yeah, Wanted, I'm looking at you) and didn't know if we could take having our fragile little hearts broken again.

However, X-Play's Transformers expert Matt Keil reviewed the game and it wasn't all that bad. From his review: 

"If you loved the movie, and for some reason a lot of people did, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is worth a weekend rental. It gets more things right than the first film’s game, but still doesn’t quite rise above the “average” threshold. There’s clearly a good game to be had out of the Transformers property, though, so here’s hoping Activision keeps trying while they have access to the license. Spider-Man: Web of Shadows proved that you don’t need a movie tie-in to make a good licensed game, so maybe next year’s recently announced Transformers title will follow suit."

Click here to read the rest of the written review and watch the X-Play video!

Are your thumbs totally over Street Fighter IV? Are you looking to put your joystick to better use on new fertile ground? 

X-Play's Justin Fassino has a review of BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger which brings the popular title to consoles for the first time:

"As a fighting game, it hits all the right buttons: the action is furious, with combos stringing well into the double digits. The character design has that unique Arc System Works flare, from the morphing demon Arakune to the Hellboy-ish Iron Tager. In fact, one of the strengths of BlazBlue is the differentiation between characters; the roster runs the gamut from sword-wielding anime hero to vampire princesses to ninjas."

To read the rest of the review and watch the X-Play video, click here!