Whew, that was a close one. We were really hoping to get another opportunity to purchase Batman: Arkham Asylum again, but it seemed Rocksteady and Eidos had planned to keep the game's Game of the Year edition exclusively overseas. Fortunately, it seems they've changed their minds -- an Eidos press release just confirmed that the expanded version of the game (which includes four extra challenge maps and 3D support) will be getting a stateside release.

Whether you missed out on 2009's surprise superhero smash hit, or whether you were just disappointed by its lack of extra dimensions, you'll be able to get your fix when Batman GOTY ships sometime in May.

Though we don't have any new gameplay details on upcoming grappler EA Sports MMA for you today, we do have a whole mess of new screenshots. The images feature everything from the usual "two sweaty dudes staring each other down" to the brand new "dude walking down a runway with fire shooting in the air" -- there are even several images of MMA rings with the audience seated at dinner tables, presumably in the VIP section, watching the fight. Nothing says "Roman Colosseum" quite like eating dinner while watching two meaty gents beat each other into the mat!

These stills beg the obvious question: Could the MMA game engine, with its crowd-eating technology, be used to create a fully-realized "Medieval Times" game? We think so.

Looking to add 85 new songs to your Guitar Hero library? Want a game that's made for "Party Play?" Oh, sure. Admit it -- you just want to make the ghostly Cobain avatar do your musical bidding. Well, whatever the motivation, you can pick up Guitar Hero 5 (the game only) for a pretty reasonable $28.99 today, thanks to Amazon's Deal of the Day.

While supplies last (or through the end of the day), the discount is applied to the Wii, PS3, Xbox 360, and PS2 versions of the game. Guitar Hero 5 is worth investing in especially if you're loaded down with PS2 instruments and don't want to buy new ones for another console -- there won't be any more Guitar Heroes for PS2, after all. So, if you want more music, this is pretty much your last chance, all you PS2 holdouts!

[Thanks, Jared]

We don't yet know precisely what to make of Rockstar's upcoming L.A. Noire (not that that's necessarily a bad thing), but after poring over a new Edge piece on the game, we think we may be getting a clearer picture.

"With traditional adventure games, everything is based on what the designer wants you to figure out," Jeronimo Barrera, VP of product development at Rockstar, told the publication. "We've kind of gone for a different approach, which is more like real-world detective work."

Developer Team Bondi isn't coming right out and putting it this way, but L.A. Noire sounds like a new genre, caught halfway between the open-world action of a Grand Theft Auto and the brainteaser pacing of a classic adventure game. Could we be witnessing the birth of the true "detective" game? Figure that one out.

Do you remember the last time you fell in love with a game? I don't mean "really liked," I don't mean "played a ton," I mean loved.

I remember the moment it happened with me and Metro 2033. I hit the Back-button to check my objectives and was surprised to see my character, an everyman named Artyom, pull out a physical clipboard with notes scribbled on it and a built-in compass. Not only did I need to pull the Right-trigger to look at it, I needed to pull the Left-trigger to ignite a lighter because the dim glow of the Moscow subway tunnels in which much of the game takes place wasn't enough to read by.

It was a little thing, but such a clear indicator that this was a game Ukranian developer 4A Games had put its heart in to and, in a sense, it gave me permission to put mine in as well.

Continued →

A few things in this life are certain: Oprah will have a new book for you to read every month and you can bet there's a new Gears of War in the works. Edge says a source has put a pin in April 2011 as the release window for the third entry in Epic's series -- and we should expect the first teaser trailer next month, on April 8, with a full-on reveal at E3 in June.

"Microsoft's keen to avoid a clash with Halo: Reach and wants Natal to own Christmas," alleges Edge's source. "That's why we won't be seeing Gears Of War 3 until next year, but expect a major marketing push ahead of its release."

Recently, Epic prez Mike Capps hinted at a major game announcement to be made by the studio during E3. Additionally, EA has teased a "Shooter from Epic" due just before April in Q1 2011.

I have an admission to make: I haven't played the original Risk board game. For hardcore fans of the game, that fact alone may discredit my opinion. However, after playing the upcoming XBLA adaptation, I wish I had discovered the board game sooner.

Risk Factions looks and feels like a Penny Arcade game: the art style is similar, and the writing is just as irreverent. As evidenced by the shorts released by EA so far, the world of Factions is animated (in more ways than one). The Colonel, who's fully aware that he's in a game, is one of the funniest characters I've seen in recent memory. Knowing his audience well, he promised that if I kept playing, I'd see tons of nudity in the game. (An EA representative hurriedly reminded me that it was just a joke, though.)

While Factions will allow players to play classic style Risk, newcomers will undoubtedly want to play through the main campaign first. The campaign does a good job of easing players into the basic rules of the game, and offers shorter, focused, objective-based challenges to conquer. The level I played didn't take place all over the globe: instead, it was a rather small map comprised of about a dozen tiles. One tile offered occupation of a missile silo, allowing you to launch a devastating area-wide attack against enemies.

Continued →

While Metroid director Yoshio Sakamoto may not have played Shadow Complex, the XBLA darling's creators definitely played Metroid. During a panel titled "Designing Shadow Complex," Chair Entertainment Creative Director Donald Mustard encouraged the audience of prospective downloadable game makers to embrace genre limitations. "So, genre is one of your limitations because you aren't just competing against other games that are released in the downloadable space," Mustard said, pacing across the stage. "You really are competing against Gears of War, Mass Effect 2, Uncharted 2. That is the real competition and you need to find a way to differentiate yourself from those kinds of games. And that is an awesome opportunity."

For Mustard, that meant moving "orthogonally" from what the "big $60 retail games" are doing. Mustard said, "For us, what that ultimately meant is target an old and abandoned genre. Which to us was kind of this Metroidvania side scroller adventure genre that had been abandoned. No one was making games in this genre. And we said, 'What if we took that genre and fused that with some of the modern sensibilities that had come out; some of the modern ideas of AI and physics and graphics? That would be a really cool combination.'

Continued →

Fact: there are 16,164,886 guns in Borderlands according to Gearbox Software developers Matthew Armstrong and Jimmy Sieben. That's a lot of guns. Remember that scene in The Matrix where Neo says "Guns. Lots and lots of guns."? It's a lot more than that. That's also the number of guns before the DLC, which has inflated it even further. So how do you have someone design each one of those firearms and build out the specs? Even if you only paid 25 cents per gun, that would still chew into your development budget to the tune of over four million dollars. So what do you do, hotshot?

Easy! You make a system that does it all for you. In an SXSW panel, Sieben and Armstrong spoke about the systemic development tool named Gearbuilder that they developed, going into detail about how they created the system to handle the creation of that many customized guns. It generates the guns based on one of 12 different manufacturers, giving each one a different grip, body, cylinder, barrel and accessories. Based on those, that same system determines how much damage the gun will deal. But what's surprising is, as impressive a figure as 16 million is, it's still only one gun. Shoot on through the break for more.

Continued →

This May, Wii owners won't be alone in shooting their way through scenes reminiscent of classic action movies in glorious, anaglyph 3D. Majesco has announced that it will release Attack of the Movies 3D on Xbox 360 as well.

Attack of the Movies sends groups of up to four players (wearing up to four pairs of goofy 3D glasses) through movie-themed worlds, rich with hostile sea creatures, aliens, and robots. Don't have your own glasses? No worries -- the game comes with four sets. Not only will you get to shoot stuff with your friends, you'll all get to look like that one guy from Back to the Future when you do!

Not only does the Game of the Year edition of Batman: Arkham Asylum add TriOviz 3D, it comes with Batman and Joker-themed 3D glasses. They're not exactly what you would imagine Batman and/or the Joker wearing to watch something in 3D, but they are decorated in the style of the two characters. They're like one of those old Halloween costumes with the picture of the character you're supposed to look like printed on the front.

In case you haven't heard about this Arkham Asylum thing until now, you can see a trailer for the Game of the Year edition after the break. You'll be able to pick it up on March 26 -- but only if you're in Europe, Asia, or Australia, as those are the only regions for which this edition has been announced.

Continued →

During a one-on-one conversation with writer Frank Rose at South by Southwest titled "The Emotion Engine: Can a Video Game Speak to the Heart?," Lionhead's Peter Molyneux offered some early details on the episodic potential of Fable 3, citing the serial nature of Charles Dickens' novels.

He began by comparing Fable 3's industrial setting to the mid-19th century setting of Charles Dickens' London, calling it a "brilliant time to set a game." "You look at the characters and the world that someone like Charles Dickens developed and you think, 'Well, it would be brilliant to feel like you're walking through that Dickensian version of London with a little bit of darkness.' Those novels, if you don't know them, are very, very dark," Molyneux explained. "They're written in a way that breaks the story up into these episodes. So why don't we do a similar sort of thing?"

Though Molyneux told Joystiq just last week that Fable 2's episodic experiment had been "massively successful," he stopped short of promising similar functionality for Fable 3; however, yesterday, he seemed to suggest they would be doing just that. "So what we're thinking with Fable 2 to start off with, and with Fable 3, we're going to give you the first big episode and then allow you to continue to download new episodes," Molyneux said. "And that's analogous to the way Charles Dickens wrote his books."

Asked if he would be developing these episodes "as you go along," Molyneux responded, "This is the new world of computer games where in fact, a lot of us are now saying, is, 'If we can have a really strong digital relationship with people then that means you don't have to entirely finish your game or your universe or your experience on release.'" Now, before you get upset, appreciate that Molyneux knows how "strange and bizarre" that sounds, so he's got two examples to help you better understand.

Continued →

Last week, we brought you the incredibly exciting news that a Splinter Cell: Conviction demo was confirmed for release on Xbox Live. That thrilling news just got too awesome to bear: the demo will be out this week. March 18, in fact, according to a new Inside Xbox video.

If you're not worried about spoiling the demo for yourself (which, we suppose, would lead to spoiling a very tiny portion of the game by extension), you can see some of the gameplay the demo covers in the video. Or you can wait until you get to put yourself into Sam's goggles for yourself. Oh, did we say Sam's in it? And that there would be goggles? Whoops, spoilers!

[Thanks, Daniel!]

Eleven days ago, Harmonix delivered on a concept many of us had fantasized about since the very first time we ever played Rock Band: It democratized the track-making process. For the first time in the franchise's history, any schmo off the street with a bit of MIDI engineering experience and a song in their heart could put that song on the Rock Band Store for the world to see (and hopefully purchase).

At GDC, Harmonix senior sound designer Caleb Epps and Rock Band Network producer Matthew Nordhouse sat down to speak about the challenges that came with opening up the game to user-generated content, and how its dedicated community has organically evolved the song-sharing process.

Continued →

It's another week of putting up with a sub-par Richard-less Xbox 360 Fancast, we're afraid, made even worse by the fact we're down two people this week -- Xav won't be joining us. Alexander and Dave try to make a show for you all still, but without the love and guidance of the other two, things kinda go off the rails: both figuratively and literally. So buckle up, it's going to be a bumpy ride filled with more Battlefield: Bad Company 2 gushing, some John Cleese chit-chat and even a surprise phone call -- maybe. Enjoy!

[iTunes] Subscribe to the Podcast directly in iTunes (MP3).
[Zune] Subscribe to the Podcast directly in Zune Marketplace (MP3).
[RSS MP3] Add the Xbox 360 Fanboy Podcast feed (in MP3) to your RSS aggregator and have the show delivered automatically.
[MP3] Download the MP3 directly.

Hosts: Alexander Sliwinski (Sli Xander) and Dave Hinkle (KnifefightYaDad)

Produced by Dave Hinkle

Music: Intro/Outro: "Electromooq" by Uma Floresta. Break: "Rat is Dead" by CSS

For fans: Xbox 360 Fancast Facebook group

Continued →