Castlevania is a series near and dear to many fans hearts. As gamers patiently wait for Castlevania: Lords Of The Shadow for consoles later this year. Konami has treated the loyal Castlevania fans with Castlevania: Harmony Of Despair, an XBLA Summer Of Arcade title due to release soon.

Alucard Is Back
Castlevania:HD is an amazing evolution of the classic 2D dungeon crawler type that has been a staple for the series over the many years. It has fun written all over it. Six levels to explore each with its very own unique boss. It allows for player to choose from six different characters that are fully able to use a wide array of magic and weapons as well as armor types which makes Castlevania have plenty of fun factor for the hardcore fans.

Fan Fare
The fans will want to unlock everything in this title as well as try a hand at the harder difficulties, which I suggest taking on with a friend. The game itself is very difficult for newcomers, but if you are a Castlevania purist you will love the title and enjoy every minute of it. It feels that the game was built around the six player co-op ability which is great and makes the levels that much easier. Fans will spend plenty of time trying to find a character that suits their play style.

Coming Soon
So far from what we have had the pleasure to try out, the game has amazing potential to be one of the greatest Summer Of Arcade titles yet. There are so many hours that players can invest. With or without friends you will find yourself knee deep taking on the undead and demonic spirits of Castlevania. Now thats not all that bad is it? Watch out for our full review come Monday for the final verdict on this refresh on a classic.

Much like Nintendo did with the Wii, Microsoft are touring the UK to sell people on the idea of Kinect, interested? Here are the dates and locations.

• 1-30 August to 30 September 2010 Alton Towers
• 7-22 August 2010 London Zoo
• 11-12 September 2010 The Thames Festival in London
• 21-31 October 2010 Chessington World of Adventures
• 2-8 December 2010 Clothes Show Live in Birmingham (NEC)

Well that kinda sucks for me, I live in Leeds! There will also be a special venue in London and you book your place by clicking this text here. At the events you can expect to play Kinect Adventures!, Dance Central, Kinect Joyride and Kinectimals and top of that you upload a 25 second clip yourself looking like a complete fool here.

Phew, that’s a lot of links. Will you be attending the Kinect showcase? Personally I’m not interested in Kinect down to the name, yeah I’ve still got an issue with it.

Dragon Age Origins hasn’t quite gone in my good books for downloadable content as it stands, let’s face it, it’s going to take a lot to take Fallout 3 off the DLC throne. Regardless, after the surprisingly good Leliana’s Song Bioware have announced Golems of Amgarrak to arrive on August 10th for PC, Xbox 360 and Playstation.

Delve deep underground to save a missing dwarven expedition in search of ancient secrets for creating monstrous constructs. Only you can uncover the gruesome fate that befell them.

Put your Warden back in action and adventure through new environments, meet new characters and defeat never before seen creatures. With an engrossing new storyline and challenging puzzles this is one add-on you don’t want to miss!

• Import your character from Origins or Awakening or create a new, high-level hero!
• Face an all-new terrifying creature
• Earn powerful rewards that transfer into your Awakening and Origins campaign
• An advanced challenge for even the most experienced adventurers

Aw, I was hoping I could bring Shale along. So what about you? Waiting for Dragon Age 2? Not impressed with the DLC so far? Don’t even like Dragon Age? Then something must be wrong with you!

EA is known for having everyone pay for DLC from holes in golf, or clubs or even upgrade packs to fully unlock everything without doing the work. Well that has come to change. It seems EA and Black Box have snuck up behind us and pulled a fast one! If you put in your Skate 3 Disc and go to where the DLC is (On the PS3 it is in the pause menu then hit Square) and you will see free DLC added.

Picture That, Now Dark

The DLC is the After Dark Pack. Honestly I’m amazed that EA hasn’t really promoted this. It allows you to now skate in the dark for the first time in the series! Not only that but it brings back the classic San Van DIY park.

No word yet if it is available on the Xbox 360. If someone could confirm this it would be great! Happy Skating!

Microsoft recently announced the price of Kinect and a 4GB model of their popular new Xbox (slim) model. The model itself is very sleek looking like its big brother counterpart but why such the small internal hard drive? So again I ask, why would Microsoft choose such a small internal memory where every good downloadable title is about a half a gig (500+ MB).

For Casuals
Maybe they are doing it for the casual audience, but even the casual audience will need more than 4 gigs if they have a few downloadable Kinect titles (it’s bound to happen) and a few disc based Kinect games and maybe one or two hardcore games thrown in like Halo Reach or Gears 3. It will force the gamer to go out and buy another one or look for an external solution to the problem. Maybe they are trying to put a console on every TV. A 4GB model would be great for your bedroom or casual living room, while you have a main 120/250 for hardcore gaming elsewhere. That sounds plausible but how many families can afford that in this economy?

For Gain
Simply put, they are in the business to make money. $199 USD for a 4GB model is pretty bad in my opinion. The fact there is a HDD ability is great but there is no official Hard drive released or announced by Microsoft. Yet it seems to be having great sales so far. I think Microsoft is preparing themselves to make even more money in the future by putting this console out for $199. I believe they will announce an Official Microsoft Hard-Drive internal or external. They could go two ways, the safe bet of 250 GB  HDD or go for the big profit and do a 300+ or even the Terrabyte which would annihilate the competition. Does Microsoft have it up their sleeves to do so? Yes. As for why…

To Prolong The LifeSpan Of The 360
They would simply go through all this trouble just to prolong the life of the 360. Of course, why not? Why introduce another system when EVERY time they release a new system SKU it sells like hotcakes. Lets remember they just announced a SKU roughly a month ago..and already they announce another one, just to mess with consumers. RAGE looks amazing, we can all agree to this. However, the power it is getting out of the 360 looks tapped. Gears 3 looks like Gears 2 with women, Halo Reach so far looks like Halo 3.5. RAGE is the only great thing coming to their console that is eye-popping. However must we forget it is multiplatform? It will be interesting to see the comparison screens/video to that.

Think Before You Buy
So in the end, think about why you want to purchase a 4GB Xbox before you go ahead and do so. Just be prepared to purchase a HDD in the future. If you want Kinect, its cheaper to go alone than the holiday bundle. As for the additionall HDD, we shall see when and if that comes to fruition. They key of that is the price.

When I was walking around the EA booth at this years Comic Con I was able to spot that they were presenting to the public for the first time Dragon Age 2. The sequel to the surprisingly old school hit Dragon Age: Origins. Immediately when I saw the advertisement I had to run over to the San Diego Hilton to be able to go into the hidden demo room featuring Dragon Age 2 and Dead Space 2 (Dead Space 2 preview will be posted on a later date). Some people from IGN, G4, and TheGamersHub all waited anxiously in line to get our chance on a hands on with Dragon Age 2. All of us were huge fans on the first Dragon Age! So when we walked up in the demo room, saw the Xbox version of the game, and saw what they were trying to do with it, we were all sadly underwhelmed.’

Now to be fair the lead designer of the game, Mike Laidlaw, said the PC version will feature the classic RPG top-down view.  I’ll get right to the point the console version of the game felt like a rejected God of War game. Hell maybe even a Dynasty Warriors game.

The Graphics in the game look 20 times better than what they used to, and that’s still in production! The Darkspawn look meaner, the Ogres look bigger, and the Dragons look badass. The spells visuals are flashier I was able to start an inferno that struck like a mortar bombardment and during this I switched over to another group of Darkspawn and infected one of the enemies with a walking bomb spell. When I cast the spell the darkspawn was thrown in the air, crushed into a ball, and he then blew up. Infecting all the other darkspawn around him causing a chain reaction of exploding darkspawn! Then after I dealt with all the darkspawn minions it was my turn with the ogre! Now for fans of the last Dragon Age you will remember the slow motion finishing moves you can make on the larger enemies, but those only happened when you were a melee fighter. Well that’s not the case anymore! The Mages have some pretty badass finishing moves now. How about lifting an ogre in the air, with two boulders, and then crushing his head with those massive rocks of death; Sound fun? Well it is! The Melee fighters still have there finishing moves, but from what I could tell at the time it was the same as DAO. If anyone was to play this game right now I would have to say, “PLAY A MAGE!!!”

The melee was a huge disappointment in the game. From what I can tell right now the main character in the game is Hawke and he is a warrior. Well at least in the demo this could change later in the games development. As I would switch between the mage and the warrior I could see that the focus was on the mage this time around. The warrior was like a bad kratos rip-off. The team at Bioware was going for the God of War feel for the game, but sadly missed by a mile. All I was doing was button mashing the X button, and used some spells every now and then, that were not needed at all. The animations for the warriors spells were awful. I mean they were just not given any detail. Yet like I said, “It’s still early in development.” I’m praying for a change for the warrior.

You probably remember the classic dialogue system from DAO. You know it the character you would speaking to would say something and your protagonist would have a set of lines he could say to them silently and then the character would understand you perfectly. Well that system is gone. The Dragon Age team brought in the Mass Effect dialogue wheel with a little twist. There is going to he a little warning in the wheel that would let you know which ones are good, neutral, or evil. Not that it was hard to figure that out in Mass Effect:

Top=Good

Middle=Neutral

Bottom=Evil

Nothing new right. Well you absolutely right. I’m not sure if this is a good thing so far. The Voice actors certainly aren’t horrendous. Some of them were actually pretty good, and you might just recognize a few voices from the old DAO, *cough* Flemeth *cough*.  The Cutscenes were fun to watch and great to listen to the lip sync and voices matched perfectly. Something Bioware has never failed to deliver on. Along with great story, which I will not discuss due to SPOILERS.

Now the game is still extremely early and not finished yet, maybe Bioware will fix my favorite warrior class before the game comes out next March 2011. I know for sure right now, that the game isn’t ready to be released yet. But if your going to play the game for story, I can tell you this,”Your in for one hell of a Epic!”

Hydro Thunder was a classic arcade game in the days of yonder. I can remember going to play it at the arcade and feeling the rush of speed and fun it was. A racing game, on water! Who would have thought? Years have past since its debut in the arcades and on the Dreamcast then followed by its ports to N64 and Playstation One. Microsoft have bought the rights to Hydro Thunder and have created with the help of Vector Unit, Hydro Thunder: Hurricane the official sequel to the original. Does the title live up to all of its glory we once had with the title so long ago. Can it withstand the racers of today or is this boat tipped over.

Memories
If you have every played the original Hydro Thunder you will immediately remember the fun you had as you are playing this title. You will be overjoyed at the fact that they are so true to the original it’s superb. The meat of the game lies in the single player. You start out with one track, one mode and one boat. Through playing you unlock more modes, more boats and of course more tracks. The controls are very fluid and give you a great sense of speed with the vibration in the controller. Graphically it is very good for an arcade title. The water is simply great looking, the environments are simply okay with some texture and corner issues. Destructible environments are always a plus though.

Modes
There is the typical Race mode across eight (8) unlockable tracks. Ring Master, where you drive the boat through rings to prolong your time and finish in the fastest time possible. Ring master has 24 scenarios to compete on. Gauntlet which has you avoid obstacles in an attempt to beat the timer to the finish line across the eight different tracks. Finally there is Championship, which has you compete in a set number of races of a mixed gametype to score points on the leaderboard to be ranked #1 and win the championship. Your progress is tracked via a points system. Everything you do unlocks points to your profile and unlocks more races and boats. If only you were able to customize your vehicle it would add to the flair.

Boating Party
Through Xbox Live you can party up with your Xbox Live friends or you can have up to four players in your living room and take them online with you. You can also take your whole online Xbox Live Party with you to race in either Race mode or Rubber Ducky Mode, which has each team pick a player to carry the rubber ducky across the finish line. First team who has the rubber ducky cross, wins. The online is fun and easy to hop onto and do with friends within a party or matchmaking over XBL. If you are a fan of Hydro Thunder this is a great and very welcomed addition to the title.

Hurricane Is Coming
HTH is an evolution of the Hydro Thunder franchise. It feels like a game that we have been missing. The title is not perfect, but it feeds the appetite of the gamers who miss the original. It is a very good investment at 1200 MSP ($15) with all the modes, if you enjoy the game there is plenty to do. So if fast paced water racers with some challenge are your thing, then hop on this boat and come along for the ride.

The minds of everyone around the gaming community have been blown. Rumors have finally culminated to a frothing boil. You will soon see Ryu VS Jin you will be amazed.

At Capcoms Street Fighter Panel, the producers of Tekken showed up and gave away some copies of Tekken and also..proceeded to show a video for their joint title. Street Fighter VS Tekken searing into the attendees the amazement. The tagline, ‘A Time For A New Fighting Era Has Begun’. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Capcom also has announced The Capcom Cup to utilize Tournament Mode on Street Fighter IV. It has already begun in Japan. Speaking of Japan, they teased new characters to be revealed for SSFIV during TGS this year. On another note, a short video was shown of upcoming costumes for existing characters. No shortage of Street Fighter news today.

We will keep you posted once the video makes it’s way online as well as the characters and if they will release this soon after MVC3 or possibly in 2012. Tell us what you think in the forums.

UPDATE: There will be two versions: one by Capcom, Street Fighter x Tekken and the other by Namco, Tekken x Street Fighter. Both are guessed to have different control schemes. VIDEO LINK: http://gamevideos.1up.com/video/id/30596

During the 2010 ComicCon Capcom Panel, Keiji Inafune revealed that Dead Rising: Case Zero, the downloadable game that was supposedly going to be at least 1200 MSP is now only 400 MSP. This has lead me to believe one of two things, Case Zero is pretty much a 30 minute demo or Inafune is feeling generous, and judging by this statement he left, I’ll go with the latter.

“We’re not making any money on this,” Inafune said during today’s Comic-Con panel for the game. “I went against the company’s wishes and went for the 400 MSP price point.”

The idea of what essentially is a paid demo is still growing on me a bit, but having entirely new content just for the sake of the download is definitely a justifiable purchase, still though, I was going to get this regardless of price since Dead Rising still remains one of my favourite games of this generation. You can expect to play Dead Rising 2: Case Zero when it’s released  on the 31st August on Xbox Live Marketplace.

Fresh from one of the  biggest gaming and film conventions is this new fantastic trailer.  A game we loved when we played it at E3 its going to be an exciting game come November 19th.