Sony has announced a special edition Heavy Rain package, which features a nice box, some artwork, a promo code for DLC and a little origami piece — soaked in blood, of course. No words on price, but expect at least a $10 premium over the usual $60.

Torchlight is nothing short of an homage to Diablo — it’s even made by developers who worked on Diablo and Diablo 2. Featuring stylized “World of Warcraft” looks, a long campaign and a cheap price, it seems like the obvious game to play for all those waiting for Diablo 3. And guess what? It certainly is.

In Torchlight, you play as either a Destroyer, Vanquisher, and Alchemist. The Destroyer is your usual “warrior” the Vanquisher the “ranger” and the Alchemist the “mage”. It’s simple and to the point, and this is the same case with the story, as it basically serves as the only purpose and connection between the different dungeons.The game features a wonderful steampunk art style, where swords and axes coexist with not just alchemy and magic, but shotguns as well. It’s also one of the most surprisingly good PC games to be released in a long time. Read the rest of the review

Do you remember the amount of publicity Halo 3 got right around its release date back in 2007? There were drinks, amusement rides and promotions up the wazoo. Not much looks to be different with Halo: Reach considering Microsoft has just went on record as saying the game will be the biggest game of 2010:

“Our hope for Halo: Reach is to be the biggest title of 2010 not only for Xbox, but across all platforms – a forecast which has been mirrored by industry professionals. Halo: Reach takes the legacy of Halo’s rich multiplayer gameplay to an entirely new level, delivering experiences that we think old and new players alike will enjoy for years to come.”

Will the game live up the hype? Unfortunately we won’t know until the fall when it hits store shelves.

Read (CVG)

For most current gen MMORPGs you usually have to pay monthly or with a prepaid game card, a la World of Warcraft. However, Cryptic is doing things a bit differently with their latest offering, Star Trek Online.

Sure, you can pay $14.99 a month, $41.97 for 3-months or $77.94 for 6-months but if you want to go all the way up to 1 year, you’ll only be paying $119.99. And if you plan on playing even longer than that, you can buy a lifetime subscription for $239.99. If you go this route, you will be given a playable version of Borg along with 2 additional character slots. Of course, if you buy the 1-year subscription you will also be given the 2 additional character slots, but no Borg.

So what do you think potential Star Trek Online players? Which subscription suits you?

via joystiq

Other than Street Fighter IV, BlazBlue is undoubtedly my favorite fighting game. Its fast paced hectic gameplay make for hours of entertainment. However, there is currently no portable offering of the game. Luckily, Arc System Works has just announced that they will be bringing BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger Portable to North American shelves this March.

Included in this portable BlazBlue will be an all new game mode called Legion Mode which has been described as a sort of survival mode. In addition to that there is a Shop Mode where you can buy new things with your accumulated points that you get from fighting.

The best part of all is that the same moves featured in the console edition will be ported to the portable edition. Those hours of mastering those crazy combos will not go to waste!

via kotaku

Dark Void is finally ready to be sampled: the much anticipated title has a PC demo available for download, exclusively at Fileplanet (get it here). However, downloads are quite slow — we get only around 50 kb/s, meaning it’s gonna take a while to download the 1GB demo.

While game sales (games and consoles) decreased by 8% in 2009, the total sales still reached almost $20 billion, at $19.66 billion USD. The sales figures include software, consoles, and accessories, but do not include PC hardware.

PC game sales reached $538 million — a decline of 23% compared to last year. However, this figure does not include sales of downloadable games, like those on Steam.

For more sales figures, head over to GameSpot.

The upcoming shooter Metro 2033, somewhat STALKER inspired (at least in looks), has received official box art, which you can see above. The game will be released later this Spring.

Valve has revealed a new TF2 feature, called “Contribute”, offering players to make their own items and share with the community (after of course, they’re approved by Valve). Check out the Contribute TF2 page for more details and tips on how to make and submit your own stuff.

Gran Turismo producer Kazunori Yamauchi has revealed that Gran Turismo only uses around 80% of the power of the PS3, saying,

“Gran Turismo 5 uses about 80 percent of the processing power. The PS3 hardware has a very high peak performance. The better you manipulate it, the better it performs.”

Gran Turismo 5 has been in development for a good 5 years (and at a cost of $60 million), so they’ve had enough time to tinker with the hardware and software.