Sony has gone ahead and updated their Playstation Network service with a whole slew of addons, videos, and pretty much every other piece of virtual content you could think of, well, besides games.

Rock Band and Guitar Hero World Tour get an updated song list like always along with a bunch of add-on packs for games like FEAR 2 and LittleBigPlanet.

Hit the break for the full update courtesy of Joystiq:

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If you didn’t know, RadioShack has been running an online trade-in program for some time now — Due to its success they have recently made an anncouncement that they are expanding this program their 4,400 of their stores. Depending on which items you bring in, which could include games and consoles along with other electronics, you will recieve a certain amount of store credit in return.

Add another one to the “accepts trade-ins” list.

Read (GayGamer)

The above video has recently hit the internet showcasing new vehicles to be included in Burnout Paradise’s Cops and Robbers DLC pack.

The Criterion dev does a good job giving you a full break of all 15 cop cars to be included in the pack. Just imagine seeing a pickup truck cop car in real life.

Unfortunately, there’s still no word on when the Cops and Robbers pack will be made available for download, we’ll keep you posted.

A few years ago the trash talking and constant speculation about whose gaming system was superior was limited to consoles. The Nintendo DS and PSP had for the most part kept to their own audiences, releasing games and brightening the commutes/lines of gamers everywhere. Recently a self proclaimed competitor has arrived and has ushered in a whole new wave of inflammatory statements.

If you hadn’t guessed I’m talking about the iPhone (and iPod Touch). Since Apple launched the device and its App store they’ve been saying that the handheld will eventually push both Sony and Nintendo out of the portable gaming market. Now another company is jumping in on Apple’s side. Digital Chocolate’s CEO Trip Hawkins has said that the iPhone is more than capable of challenging the DS and PSP and says that he thinks the unit is “freaking out” Sony and Nintendo since it has “ only penetrated one half of one percent of its total market.” However with some simple calculations given the 30 million iPhones sold he’s including the more than six billion people on the planet as possible iPhone buyers.

Unfortunately as with everyone proclaiming the iPhone as the doom of all other handhelds, he’s neglecting the fact that the lack of buttons limits the number of possible control schemes, thus limiting the possible range of games. The games offered on the Apple App store are just too simple to hold the attention of serious gamers for long. We thirst for strategy, complexity and storylines, not another block breaker game.

Ninja Blade, one of the newest titles out right now for the Xbox 360–at least until later this year when Playstation 3 fans will get their crack at it, proving once again that Sony’s marketing divisions are run by some type of lower primate who’s probably drunk on tequila twenty three hours out of every day.

The plot requires an extensive background in science fiction, horror movies or Japanese culture to fully understand, because this sucker is a nightmare of overcomplexity.  In Japan, in 2010, a small village was attacked by…creatures.  That’s really about the best description for them.  Anyway, those who survived the creature attack were moved to a central research facility for further examination, and the village, or what was left of it, was declared “Alpha Site”.  The surviving villagers, undergoing that further examination, are revealed to be suffering from a flesh-eating disorder, caused by some kind of hookworm.  This hookworm, not surprisingly, is dubbed “Alpha Worm” (Alpha Site, Alpha Worm, yeah yeah, we get it), and it had some surprising effects on the infectees–it made them super-strong and resistant to damage, but it also made them violent and insane.

The infectees broke out of their research-based containment, and both do a whole lot killing as well as spreading their infection around.  Thus, Japan sends its greatest natural resource to take care of the problem–ninjas.  Yes, ninjas.  Actual geniune honest-to-god NINJAS.  Now, most other places would’ve sent their army, or perhaps a dedicated squad of special forces types like SAS or Green Berets or even the French Commandoes, but not Japan–when the insane superpowered hookworm-infested monsters break loose and start running amok in Tokyo, Japan calls out the NINJAS.

See what I mean?  This is WAY too much plot for this game, which is basically run around from point A to point B and then all the way to point Z where you’ll fight a gigantic monster and then repeat the process on the next level.  You’ll have a collection of unlikely weapons to accomplish this not so stellar feat, including the Twin Falcon Swords that can be used as grappling wires with their extendable blades (no, it really doesn’t make much sense to me either) and a gigantic sword that’s extra heavy meant for breaking open monster armor.  And my description isn’t so glib as you’d think, either–all you do in Ninja Blade is run around a level, killing whatever infectees show up, and then continuing on until the end of the level, where you’ll fight some huge infectee that’s quite possibly several infectees melted together.
Yes, as a matter of fact, I DO enjoy typing the word “infectee”.

I will give Ninja Blade some credit for pushing the envelope by also including periodic action sequences that depend on timely button presses to be passed successfully, because this really adds a note of high energy to otherwise drab proceedings, but frankly, it’s too little too late as the rest of the game around these great sequences is just another drab run, jump and slay platform beat-em-up.  There’s not a whole lot to distinguish this game from others in its classification, and frankly, I can’t abide by that.  Thus, Ninja Blade turns out to be way too dull to get any kind of recommendation from me.

One of the most recent additions to the Xbox Live Arcade lineup comes in the form of The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai, a fun little action platformer that involves all the greatest parts of gaming–reducing people to little pools of blood and fighting gigantic (relative to you) monsters.

In a future ruled by cyborgs and AI and assorted dystopian whatnot, you play a humble dishwasher, who finds himself killed by the cyborgs and yet, strangely, not dead.  Despite the fact that he’s had his HEART removed by the cyborg menace, the Dishwasher goes forth to claim revenge against the cyborg horde and also get revenge for the murder of his mentor, the Chef.

You’ll have a variety of weapons to use to extract this revenge, and you’ll face down a whole lot of enemies in various gameplay modes, including a guitar minigame that you can play with your Guitar Hero / Rock Band peripherals.  There’s a surprising amount of depth to this game, and even the basic quest has a lot of fun to it.  Considering you can get the whole thing cheap on Xbox Live, you’ll likely wind up just as surprised as I am.

Following up on the teaser image of Borderland’s new “concept art style,” Gearbox has finally released a proper screenshot of their upcoming shooter-RPG.

The image is said to be completely in-game by the studio. The game is being powered by Unreal Engine 3. It is being developed for release on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 later this year.

No one likes people who talk too much. Nor do the people at Atari, who have released a patch for Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, fixing a crashing bug, solving one multiplayer issue and a case of too much talking.

Below is the patch note. Grab the patch from the developers.

• Multiplayer – User is unable to join an online session hosted by a patched game or a game with downloaded content and message "Blahblah" is displayed.
• Multiplayer – User is unable to join an online session if the port is not forwarded to 30000. This causes the message "session no longer exists" to be displayed.
• Assault on Dark Athena – Game crashes on throwing the guards body into the rotating fan.

Seeing as how the launch for Demigod was a disaster for Stardock, all thanks to GameStop breaking the street date, the publisher has put forward an update from its CEO Brad Wardell, detailing the problems facing the RPG-RTS hybrid and the steps that are being taken to resolve them.

Multiplayer has been an issue for the game, as many players are facing difficulties getting online and connecting to games. Stardock notes that they are still working on the game’s multiplayer backend.

As penance for the problems, Stardock offers players the opportunity to play against its employees, who will offer tips and advice on how to better play the game.

With the internet abuzz with hype for Assassin’s Creed 2, Ubisoft has announced that the sequel will arrive on “all current-generation platforms” this holiday season.

In development for over two years, the game is said to have “more variety in missions, surprising and engaging new gameplay elements, diverse weapons and a profound character progression," the company noted.

The game was officially revealed in the latest issue of Game Informer magazine.