After the success of the Resident Evil Afterlife at the box office, Capcom and Sony Pictures have announced that they’re working on a sequel for the CGI movie Resident Evil Damnation, which will be released in 2012 and in 3D. Capcom revealed that the first movie sold over 1 million copies on DVD, which is certainly not a bad feat.

Steam has announced a new service called Steam Wallet, albeit in a beta. As the name suggests, Steam Wallet gives Steam users the ability to put money into your Steam Wallet from your credit card, and use it to buy games, instead of having to use and punch in your card details every time. You can add money in $5, $10, $25, $50, and $100 increments to your Steam Wallet. Well, at least they didn’t switch to a point system like Microsoft.

In order to celebrate the 25th anniversary of video game icon and legend Super Mario, Nintendo has announced the Super Marion Collection, which includes a Wii port of Super Mario All-Stars, a booklet with the history of Mario, and a soundtrack CD. It will be available in Japan next month for $30.

Ubisoft has delayed the upcoming beta of Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, which was supposed to be released on the PS3 today. However, Ubisoft has announced that it’s been delayed, while not giving it a new date. The world wide beta is expected to be released in the beginning of October, and it seems the American beta will be pushed to that date as well.

The fourth movie based on the Resident Evil game franchise has won the weekend box office war, pulling in almost $28 million. Resident Evil Afterlife features 3D, and looks to become the highest grossing film in the series. The reviews however, have been less than stellar. In fact, they’ve been quite crappy, as Resident Evil Afterlife only has a 17% rating on RottenTomatoes. Which is bad, in case you don’t know.

Dead Space 2 is getting what the original lacked greatly: multiplayer. EA has released the first trailer of the game, which, while not showing much gameplay, confirms that the multiplayer certainly looks interesting.

There was a big fuss when Modern Warfare 2 didn’t offer dedicated servers, which was no surprise, the PC version was just a port of the console version. For Black Ops, Activision has decided to offer dedicated servers, however, it will only be limited to one server provider: gameservers.com. Servers can be had for $15 a month for 18 players (ranked) or $1 per slot unranked. Yes, quite expensive indeed. The player limit on Black Ops is 24, a slight improvement over Modern Warfare 2. You can check out and pre-order servers here.

Back in the day, there was no way of patching console games once they shipped, which meant quality testing was crucial. However, it appears one cartridge containing Zelda: Majora’s Mask was heavily glitched. Almost haunted. Like Link wold spontaneously burst into flames. And songs would play backwards. We got two more videos after the break. READ ON »

Ubisoft and developer Eugen Systems are trying to re-invent the strategy game on the consoles. And while the succeed for the most part, they don’t re-invent anything. What RUSE does do, is provide some interesting and fresh game mechanics to RTS games in general.

RUSE is set in WW2, where you command the Allied forces against the Nazis, and unlike many of today’s RTS games, strategy is actually emphasized. You’re not going to accomplish anything by charging at the enemy with all your forces. Instead, you need to use tactics, act and counteract what your enemy does. The story — yes, there actually is one — follows Major Joe Sheridan, from his battle in Tunisia to a rank as General in charge of the whole war. There isn’t much story to RUSE, and what there is of it, it serves as to mainly advance you from one battle to the next.

The gameplay in ruse, while real time, is tactics based, and battles take a while. If you’re used to rushing in StarCraft 2 and other RTS games, it won’t do you any good here. Instead, battles are often slow, and you’re expected to anticipate what the enemy does, then act accordingly. A great new aspect of the game is “intelligence”, where you can decrypt enemy’s intel and know where they are going to move their troops. On top of this, you can send spies to the enemy to gather intel — this is almost required, as it will give you an advantage. You can zoom the map all the way out to see the individual battlefield and all the way in to see the individual units. This works rather seamlessly, and so do the controls — there’s no mouse cursor here, you control a camera with your controller and select the units as you want.

Technically, the game looks decent, and the audio and soundtrack complement it well. The great thing is that it manages to run smoothly regardless of how much action is going on on the screen. One of the few downsides might be that it’s slow — too slow at times. If you’re into fast paced RTS games, which have become popular the past few years, you’ll find RUSE too slow for your taste. But if you want an intelligent strategy game, you should check it out.

The Good:
Emphasis on tactics and intel
Smooth gameplay
Lengthy and solid campaign

The Bad:
A bit too slow at times
Visuals could be more detailed

Overall score: 8/10

If you’re into console modding, you’ve undoubtedly heard of Ben Heck, the master hacker who can stuff an Xbox 360 in a laptop (among many, many other things). Now he’ll be getting his own show on Revision3, which will premiere on Monday, September 13. In the pilot, Ben will mod a controller “for an avid gamer with a serious disability”.