Take Two has confirmed the official release date for BioShock 2, which will be released in Europe on October 30, while North Americans will have to wait a few more days, as their release date is on November 3. Mark your calendars!

So Pixar’s releasing its newest movie in a matter of days—you know it better as Up.  It’s a foregone conclusion that, at this point, the only thing that could possibly stop it from having an eight-figure opening weekend is a nationwide power outage.  Thus it’s probably an equally foregone conclusion that it’s going to get merchandised out the yin-yang, and I mean that in the literal AND figurative senses.  Of course, this includes a video game, now available for Wii, Xbox 360, Playstations 2 and 3, PC, DS, PSP and of course Mac, and I only hope that the movie isn’t nearly as predictable or as repetitive as the game is.

The game’s plot is, at least in passing, somewhat similar to the movie.  I say somewhat because it’s been rather compressed.  You’ll actually start out flying a plane as Dug the dog, and from there you’ll segue into a series of platformer action sequences where you jump and run and do a few character-specific moves to get from one place to another, while being pursued by a millionaire industrialist who’s spent years in seclusion and emerged only because you kidnapped his “trophy bird”.

I spent an ungodly amount of time as an old man, running through a jungle being trailed by a chubby boy scout-analogue.  And under normal circumstances, I love Pixar movies…but seriously, I truly, truly hope that the movie is a whole lot better than this second-rate wreck that they tossed onto my every system.  Gameplay is almost insultingly limited, with sequences like “Run Through the Jungle”, “Get Jumped By Attack Dogs Every Three Minutes”, “Slide Down A Waterfall”, and my personal favorite, “Repeat”.  You think I’m being funny there, but truly, I’m just being the best kind of accurate that I know how.  Anyone who tries to play this misery detail of a game will be subject to a whole lot of more of the same.  I spent like five consecutively levels just running through a jungle, whacking things with a cane, and occasionally, with a backpack.  The only thing worse than that was that I had to regularly switch from one character to another so that I could do some ridiculous character-specific activity so that I could actually advance.  This was probably intended to provide variety, but what it really provided was a series of massive speed bumps that slowed down the pace of the game to something resembling…well…an elderly gent trying to run the Boston Marathon.

There’s not much sense in commenting on the graphics and sound and such, because this game is so spectacularly broken on the story level as to make the package it’s in, no matter how pretty, utterly moot.

Pixar desperately needs to stay out of the game business, if this is the kind of material they’re turning out.  Oh, sure, they probably had next to nothing to do with it but collect the paychcecks but there’s no two ways about it—Up is easily one of the most awful games I’ve ever played, and considering the sheer amount of foul, buggy crapware I’ve burrowed through in my day that’s saying a LOT.  There are vastly better titles out there than this dreck—I’ve talked about several.  Go enjoy one of those instead.

Video games, television shows and films often have consultants to ensure they’re getting things right. Hospital shows have doctors on call to fact check their treatments and lingo, military shows have advisers to  make sure nothing is depicted incorrectly. In what is bound to be an incredibly controversial game, a former detainee held in Guantanamo Bay on suspicion of being a terrorist has agreed to do some consulting on a game based around the US-run prison.
It’s called Rendition: Guantanamo and it centers around a future version of the jail in which the USA has pulled out and it’s been taken over by mercenaries who are using it as their own private laboratory. Moazzam Begg is a British Muslim who spent three years in the facility under suspicion of being a member of Al-Qaeda and is helping the Scotland based developers when it comes to designing the layout of the facility. They’re being careful with this highly charged topic, making sure that it’s very apparent that the guards are simple mercenaries and have no ties to either the USA or UK governments/military.

Begg has written a book about his time in the facility and is involved in both a financial and creative capacity.

Sega of America has confirmed that the publisher will be displaying another Alien vs. Predator game at the upcoming E3 expo. Sega previously announced the game a few months ago. The game will supposedly be presented with a playable demo, and will should be in stores early next year on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.

Another weekend, another game to be played for free on Steam. Last time it was Team Fortress 2, next weekend it’ll be Unreal Tournament 3. Last time the game received a free weekend player count jumped almost twenty fold, in addition to the game becoming a best seller on Steam.

This is not the regular version of UT3, but Unreal Tournament 3 Black, which is regular UT3 including the new (and free) Titan Pack.

LucasArts’ portable Star Wars Battlefront game has been revealed by ESRB ratings, and will be released this Fall on DS and PSP.

This “leak” forced LucasArts to officially announce the game, confirming its Fall 2009 release date. The game is developed by Rebellion Software, the original developers of Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron for the PSP.

While many gamers consider the Wii to be nothing more than a fancy toy, I think it’s an underutilized system whose potential hasn’t been delivered yet. A few developers tried the sword swinging style previously, but High Voltage, developer of the Conduit has announced their hopes to succeed where others failed with the help of Wii Motionplus.

Their next game after the Conduit is released will be Gladiator A.D., a brutal title which says that it takes its inspiration largely from recent film 300, meaning that we’ll probably see a decent amount of stylized blood and some slow-motion.: “The concept for Gladiator A.D. is to recreate the brutal fighting and high tension of the gladiatorial arenas of ancient Rome,”

As you might expect you’ll be fighting via slashes and stabs of the Wiimote and there’ll be multiplayer as well as several different story lines based on which gladiator you choose. Plotlines will be affected by your choices as after you defeat an opponent you’ll have the option to either kill them or leave them alive. Each character is more than just a slightly different story and background. They’ll all feature customizable equipment with a wide range of weapons and armor, some of which will be unique to each character. Two that have been mentioned so far are a druid and a Egyptian noble girl.

The combat system is still gesture based though, so this isn’t the true 1:1 fighting game that many have been hoping for, but it certainly seems to have the potential to be one of the next big hardcore Wii titles.

Well, congratulate me, folks—I’ve finally managed to lay hands on a Wii, one of those devilishly hard to find little systems with the massive array of games.  And what do I manage to get for it first?  One of the newest games out for it, Boom Blox Bash Party.

I’m discovering right away that Wii games are significantly harder to discuss than, say, Xbox 360 games because Wii games don’t seem to like things like plot.  So I can’t really do a recap on that, and that’s the case with Boom Blox Bash Party.  In fact, for a game developed by Steven Spielberg, you’d think it’d have more of an actual plotline to it, but no.  Basically, in Boom Blox Bash Party, you throw things.  At other things.  And repeat until a whole bunch of things have been knocked down or blown up or you’ve run out of chances to throw things at other things.  Yeah, I know, simplistic doesn’t even begin to describe it.

But here’s where things get weird.  Inside this tiny little framework of a game (throw stuff at stuff, repeat until out of stuff one way or another), they’ve jam-packed it with things to do.  You’ll throw things to try and knock down a huge tower.  You’ll throw things to try and disassemble a fort made out of what looks like wood blocks.  You’ll throw things to destroy a robot or hunt sunken pirate treasure.  You’ll throw things to make certain kinds of blocks disappear or explode or spread a kind of virus to other blocks and make THEM disappear.  You’ll screw around with turning blocks colors and moving blocks and throwing stuff at blocks and even using a kind of slingshot to shoot other blocks at each other.  You’ll play with ramps and drops and chain reactions.  Gravity will be both your friend and your enemy.  At some points, you will get to work a cannon.

You will search for weak points and the best shot and any of a dozen other things that make me wish I’d taken better notes in my high school physics classes, and I got an A in high school physics!

I found myself absolutely baffled.  How is this simplistic little game managing to serve up this much variety and be this downright entertaining besides?   It’s utterly beyond my capacity to explain, but one thing was clear—I had a LOT of fun playing this game.  In fact, it was hard to stop playing this game long enough to write a review about it.  My elbow is still just a bit sore from all the throwing.

There’s a lot to like about this game, whether you want to explore everything it has to offer (completionists be forewarned—this game WILL consume your life if you let it) or you just want some quiet time spent throwing stuff at stuff without a lot of cleanup time or losing your damage deposit afterward.  Boom Blox Bash Party is great and unfettered fun, the kind of fun that gaming used to be.  It’s definitely not the kind of game you’re used to, and in this market, that’s a HUGE plus.

If you’ve been looking to get your mobile Rock Band on today is your lucky day – Harmonix and MTV games have recently released a press releasing stating Rock Band Unplugged has hit North American shelves everywhere.

Priced at $39.99, Rock Band Unplugged will allow players the chance to rock through 41 different songs (with 9 of those available on the PSN) using the PSP.

Unfortunately (or maybe I should so fortunately?) there is no instrument peripheral that serves as a controller for the game; you’re going to be using the PSP’s built in controls for this one.

Thanks to GameStop we now know that the latest addition to the Tony Hawk Pro Skater series, Tony Hawk: Ride, will be hitting store shelves on October 13th for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and Nintendo Wii.

Furthermore, the game will come bundled with the skateboard peripheral that everyone has been talking with a price point of $119.99.

Of course, this date is subject to change as GameStop has a tendancy to do that but when Tony Hawk: Ride does drop the skateboard genre will never be the same. That is, if the developers deliver because EA’s skate is sure to put up a fight to the grave.

Read (GameStop)