As great as Gameloft’s upcoming Earthworm Jim HD looks, I’d much rather have the ‘ I ♥ Jim’ t-shirt they’re all sporting in the above trailer. Does that make me weird?

Either way, the trailer looks just like I expected it to – the original Earthworm Jim redone in high definition. Would be kind of hard to screw that up.

The trailer also announces a contest to profess your love for Jim on Gameloft’s Facebook page. The winner will receive a trip to New York City and some other neat stuff. So what’s holdin’ ya back? Don’t you ♥ Jim? Check out the trailer for full contest details.

via Joystiq

Seems like 2010 is the year of the leaks. iPhones, Nintendo handhelds and today – upcoming Xbox Live Arcade titles. Thanks to a poster over at the Digiex forums we have an early look at a slew of unannounced Live titles. These include the Dreamcast classics Crazy Taxi and Sonic Adventures, Metal Slug XX, Doom II, Quake Arcade Arena and more. Some of them, including Sonic and Metal Slug, have already leaked onto the net in their entirety, while the others have been confirmed through screenshots. Obviously no official announcements have been made from Microsoft. So we have no idea when these will be released or for how much. Frankly the sooner Quake Arena hits Live, the better. Screenshots after the break.

Digiex via Destructoid

Fans of the long forgotten X-COM franchise may have reason to celebrate this morning. 2K Games has announced that their Marin-based studio, who recently completely the truly horrible BioShock 2, are bringing back X-COM – as a first-person shooter. I would imagine this might cause some groans from fans as X-COM was originally a tactical-based strategy game. Although, its last sequel was a space combat simulator of all things.

2K’s President Christoph Hartmann seems excited: “Players will explore the world of XCOM from an immersive new perspective and experience firsthand the fear and tension of this gripping narrative ride.” He then added “Worked for Fallout 3, am i rite?” and promptly threw his hand in the air looking for a high five.

XCOM is currently in development for the Xbox 360 and PC. No word on a release window, however, you can register for updates at the newly launched XCOM.com.

via Joystiq

Microsoft has just released more information about the recently announced Gears of War 3. Expect the game to drop on April 5th, 2011 in North America (Japan will see release on the 7th and Europe on the 8th). The title will conclude the Gears “trilogy” – however, I wouldn’t worry about the franchise ending anytime soon. Also Gears content will be hitting the Avatar Marketplace on the 20th of this month (We’ve got screenshots after the break).

Likewise, Dude Huge has notified his twitter followers that Gears 3 will include 4 player co-op. Kotaku is adding that at least one player will have to play as the new female character Anya during this mode.

Finally, hit the break for box art, high res screenshots from the teaser and other goodies.

via Joystiq

With no Justin Bieber to stop him this time, Cliff “Don’t Call Me Cliffy B, or Dude Huge for that matter” Blezinski unveiled Gears of War 3 on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon not more than an hour ago. Late Night has already posted the interview and subsequent teaser (dubbed ‘Ashes to Ashes’) on their blog – head on over there to check it out.

Last night was supposed to be Cliff “Don’t call me Cliffy B” Bleszinski’s big appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, where he would announce Gears of War 3. However, due to an apparent scheduling conflict with Justin Bieber, the announcement was postponed until Monday.

Unfortunately, someone forgot to give that information to whoever runs the dashboard ads on Xbox Live. This morning gamers woke up to the above image, confirming that Gears of War 3 is coming and in April of 2011 to boot. Whoops.

Seems like 2010 is shaping up to be the year of poorly planned surprises.

via Kotaku

Although there was nothing particularly wrong with the original box art for Super Street Fighter IV, Capcom evidentially felt it needed less Cammy and more yellow. According to their official blog:

“We brought in color and texture to the background, swapped the placement of Juri and Chun-Li, and dropped out Cammy for the awesome Dudley. We did this because we know you guys love you some Dudley! But the other reason was that we now have three series represented with those three characters. Adon = Alpha / Dudley = 3rd Strike / Dee Jay = Super SFII. Add in SF’s leading man and woman, Ryu and Chun-Li from SFII, and Juri from Super SFIV, we almost have a full SF representation.”

The last part sounds like math, which has no place in video games as far as I’m concerned. We’ve got a high res shot of the new box art after the break.

New and Improved Box Art:

Original Box Art:

via Kotaku

Joystiq has learned that an upcoming Xbox 360 update will give gamers the option to use a USB-based mass storage devices as a means to save their content. The update is expected to land this Spring and will negate the need for Microsoft’s own 512 meg Memory Units – which they’ve been slowly phasing out over the last year. With this update, gamers will be able to download any Xbox Live Arcade titles, Games on Demand, DLC and system updates directly to a USB portable device. And unlike the Wii’s SD backup solution, you’ll be able to access your content from there as well. Hear that Nintendo? There are several caveats, however. Firstly, the USB storage device must have a capacity greater than 1 gig. Likewise, the 360 will only configure a device to store up to 16 gigs of data – meaning, there is no reason to throw out your official Xbox 120 gig HDD yet. Either way, this is a solid addition to the Xbox 360. Head on over to Joystiq for full details and screenshots.

via Joystiq

I’ve developed a new nightly ritual these past few weeks. I get home from work, eat dinner with my girlfriend then get on my computer to see if I can get a good game of Left 4 Dead 2: Scavenge going with a couple of friends.

If you’re not familiar with the game Left 4 Dead 2 or the Scavenge mode of play within, I’ll try to explain the new game mode briefly. (If you are familiar then feel free to skip ahead).

In the zombie infested world of Left 4 Dead 2, two teams, of four players each alternate between offense and defense, in timed best of 3 or best of 5 games.

A round is split in two halves, and begins with one team of four players as the survivors (human characters with weaponry) on offense. Their goal is to collect sixteen gas cans from a surrounding area to pour into a central receptacle before a timer runs out.

Each gas can poured in, scores the survivors a point, up to the maximum of 16.

The infected team (zombies with special powers of their own) begins the round on defense, and their goal is to prevent the survivors from scoring.

The first half ends when either the survivors have managed to score 16 points, or when the infected have prevented the survivors from doing so and the clock runs down to zero.

If the clock hits zero and at least one of the survivors is holding a tank the round goes into overtime. If the score, more time is added to the clock giving the survivors a chance to collect more cans. If the infected manage to make the survivors drop their cans, the round is over.

At the end of the first half, the teams switch roles and continue the round.

The team that scores the most cans in the quickest time wins the round, and the team that wins the most rounds, wins the game.

As you might have noticed, this game play mechanic sounds a lot like a competitive athletic team sport. (If we removed the weapons & zombies, and added balls in place of the gas cans perhaps even more so)

Like a sport, it can get very competitive, and that’s part of what drew me to this game mode.

It also appeals to me, because the goal is very different from the typical team-multiplayer objectives of first person shooter games. It requires great communication with your teammates to score all sixteen points as the survivors, and the same skills to effectively prevent the opposing team from doing so when your team is playing on defense.

I’ve quickly grown to love it, and win or lose, a great game of scavenge is one of the most satisfying multiplayer gaming experiences I’ve ever had.

But this is a rant right? So what’s the problem?

Great games of scavenge are hard to come by, and they shouldn’t be.

Simply put: Too few people are playing this great game mode.

Though most of the fifty or so friends on my steam list have left 4 dead 2 it’s hard to find 8 to want to play when I try to organize a match.

I can usually corral about three friends together. So we create a lobby, team up, and wait for other players to join.

And wait… and wait.

Inevitably a player will join, realize we’re a team, get scared (or bored of waiting also) and leave.

But Ajay… why not use the “Play Scavenge as a team” option in the game? Where you can create a team of four and look for another team of 4.

We’ve tried, and waited for twenty minutes.

Nobody else uses that system it seems.

So we’re back to playing against teams comprised of random people looking to play scavenge.

Occasionally, after waiting long periods of time we’ll get four players to play against and a game will start.

It’s a surprise if one of them doesn’t leave at the immediate start of the game, and an even bigger surprise if they all work together and offer an actual challenge.

Most often, the other team crumbles, people get angry and quit and my friends and I end up wasting a lot of time on an unsatisfying gaming experience.

Sometimes all four will stay, and we’ll kick the crap out of them, scoring 3 rounds of 16 points in a row, which is about as fun as winning a boxing match against a baby.

Rarely do we encounter a team worthy of competition, but when we do, its great fun.

My solution?

Since I didn’t create the game, and I don’t have a connection to Valve’s marketing department, all I can do is advocate that more gamers play Left 4 Dead 2: Scavenge, in hopes that I’ll find more worthy & fun competition out there. If you’re reading this you could become part of the solution.

Get yourself a copy of Left 4 Dead 2, add me to steam & challenge me to a game of Scavenge.

I promise if at least 4 other people out there reading do as well then we’ll have a great game going.

Thank you for listening.

Love Ajay

After playing the latest installment of Final Fantasy for over 45 hours, and having finished it, I’ve realized the crippling shortcoming in the game. Yes, it’s linear. Yes, it focuses too much on looking pretty rather than letting you explore said pretty areas. And yes, there are no towns. But I don’t dislike any of these things. They’re all design choices that make sense to me. They feel complete. But there is something that just doesn’t sit right. Something that felt wrong from the beginning, but took me a day of playing to recognize it. Since noticing it, I can’t look at FF:XIII the same way.

There is no victory fanfare.

Before we go any further, I should state that I love that song to the end of the earth. It’s actually my ringtone — I enjoy feeling like I’ve defeated my unpopularity with each incoming call. It just doesn’t feel like Final Fantasy without that iconic battle winning song. And yet, here we are at the 13th part — and the music has been removed. It’s been a part of the series since the original, had a minor role in FF:XII, and has faithfully guided me through FF:VI so many times that I’m more conditioned to it than a Pavlovian dog. Hell, victory fanfare has become so crucial that when my preferred WoW boss mod got rid of its music, I would forget to update it. (I still hate you Princess Huhuran.)

Amazingly, what did make the game is a song by Leona Lewis!? Didn’t Nostradamus predict this half a millennium ago?