The headline is far from a lie.  Disney has just purchased Marvel and all it’s wonderful super heroes/characters for 4 billion dollars.  While Time Warner now owns DC Comics it might be possible we will see a Wolverine and The Little Mermaid movie.. just kidding.  Although Disney does intend on putting their newly bought Marvel characters on the Disney Channel, ABC Television, in video games, theme parks and of course movies.  The young male audience wasn’t really as grabbed in by Hannah Montana as much as Disney may have wanted.  As of right now Disney has said they don’t feel the need to take over Marvel video game development but has said “As these licensing deals [with other game publishers and Marvel characters] expire we have the luxury of considering what’s best for the company and the products.”  Tom Staggs, Disney’s senior executive vice president did also mention that this new ownership does present opportunities to bring Marvel and Disney characters together.  While that doesn’t even sound right in any way, shape or form, Disney would definitely make bank on a Kingdom Hearts game with Marvel characters.  As a fan of Marvel I can only hope for the best on this one.  It’s not that I don’t like Disney.. it’s just that they just bought my own free will for 12 bucks.  Disney also owns the ESPN Network but I doubt we will be seeing Spiderman on there any time soon.

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Sony Computer Entertainment America(SCEA) brings us news that God of War and God of War II will be arriving on the Playstation 3 as The God of War Collection.  The God of War Collection will be in blu-ray form this Christmas and are completely remastered as well as bringing new trophies to the game.  Read the official press release over at VG247.

Pre-Ordering Brutal Legend at Gamestop will net you some cool things if you’re excited about the games release.  With your Gamestop pre-order of the game will come an in-game guitar that possesses a ‘unique, sexy body inspired by the members of Tenacious D’ which should be interesting to see what the crazy duet have come up with.  Also pre-ordering it will get you early access to the demo on September 17th while the demo will be released for everyone for download on September 23rd.  Check out the ad below from the official site.

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Alright well considering Guinness has kind of just made up an award for ‘Most Critically Acclaimed Superhero Game Ever’ to put Batman Arkham Asylum in the Guinness Book of World Records and other reviews for the game I’m sure you can kind of tell how this review is going to go so I will also make sure I point out some of the con’s of the game.  Right away I’m going to give this game two thumbs up as far as single player games go.  The game was very enjoyable and would be enjoyable to hardcore fans of Batman comics to people that only know of Batman from The Dark Knight film.  The story was creative and kept you interested while the gameplay was for the most part very easy to get used and flowed well.  I personally wound up having my ‘detective vision’ on most of the time to help find collectibles/riddles/progression paths which also puts the game in cell shaded mode and that doesn’t really show the hard work put into what I think were very good graphics.  Not the best graphics, but very good.  One thing that did get annoying at times but wasn’t too bad was the fact that the action buttons(jump over wall/drop off ledge) only worked properly if your camera angle was pretty much directly behind Batman.  The game can be pretty short depending on how much you play it, but it took me about 10 hours including collecting all of Riddler’s Challenges which I must add are much more fun to find than any other collectibles I’ve searched for in other games especially with the ability to find a ‘Secret Map’ with all the locations of Riddler’s Challenges.

Challenge Mode is exactly what it says, it is challenging.  There are 8 Predator Challenges that you must be stealthy in and complete objectives in to gain medals, which is hard but very possible to master.  The other 8 challenges are Combat and are very difficult to attain all the medals in.  You will fight an onslaught of enemies throughout 4 rounds and to get all three medals for one of these your going to have to keep your multiplier/combo up.  You will also get bonuses and the end of the round for things like not taking any damage in that round.

The game was really amazing and the story really had some awesome surprises in it that I won’t spoil but expect to see things outside the normal perspective of Batman.  The enemies design was really good too, Poison Ivy was sexy and Scarecrow was scary.  There was also at least a little something that related to almost every enemy in the Batman series in the game, whether it be from the comic or one of the TV shows.  Once again two thumbs up but you might want to rent this one if your only going to play through it once.

Sonic & Knuckles is coming to the Xbox Live Arcade to join all the other previously released Sonic games and will be available on September 9th.  We have come a little way since game cartridges and the famous Sonic & Knuckles Game cartridge stacking ability which allowed you to plug the other Sonic game cartridges into the Sonic & Knuckles cartridge for bonuses for the Sega Genesis.  Well if you have already downloaded Sonic the Hedgehog 1, you will unlock the Blue Sphere Chaos level from Sonic 3 and if you downloaded Sonic the Hedgehog 2 or 3, you will be able to play as Knuckles in those games.  Playing as Knuckles will get you to different areas seeing how he can like fly… or glide.. what the hell is Knuckles  anyway?  Oh well, make sure the original Sonic games are actually on your hard drive for the bonuses.

Thanks Destructoid

Here is the full demo of Mass Effect 2 recently shown at this years GamesCom.  Mass Effect 2 comes out for the Xbox 360 and PC in early 2010.

Mass Effect 2 – Grunt Trailer

Oscar Winning Composer Hanz Zimmer will be handling the score for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.  If you don’t know who he is then I’m sure you have heard the excellent music he’s done in movies like The Dark Knight and Batman Begins.  This will be Mr. Zimmer’s first go at composing for a video game by only good things are expected none the less.  The picture above was tweeted by Infinity Ward’s Robert Bowling and that is a screen shot of multiplayer footage, part of the new multiplayer video for Modern Warfare 2 that will be here on Tuesday.  Keep it here to see it as soon as it’s available.

‘An unstoppable force of darkness, the Sith Warrior is entrusted with the task of destroying the Empire’s enemies and enforcing Sith domination across the galaxy. The Warrior channels the destructive emotions of fear, anger, and hatred to purge weakness from body and mind and become a being of pure, brutal efficiency.’

‘Ultimately, the destiny of any Sith Warrior is his own to choose… and woe to those who would stand in his way.’

That is just a short snippet of the bio of the Sith Warrior Class that will be in Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO.  You can read the full thing including Field Recon, Outfitting, Combat Tactics and see more pictures right here at the official site.

The Achievement list for Brutal Legend has been sent out and a lot of them require you to do certain things in multiplayer.  An achievement called ‘Six Degrees of Schafer’ requires you to either play with Tim Schafer himself or play with or against someone that has the achievement, making it a viral one.  Brutal Legend will be rocking out on October 13th for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.  The always lovable Jack Black will voice the main character and there are many metal veteran cameos along the way.  A demo will be available sometime in September through XBL and PSN.  Finally a game about metal.  View the full list of achievements for the game here.

IGN got a preview of all the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 accessories set to hit stores this November.  Probably the best one in my opinion is the controller that you can re-map the normal COD sprint button to another extra button in the back of the controller saving the sticks from being click to high hell.  More details can be found in this post and pricing is as follows:

Modern Warfare™ 2 Combat Controller – Xbox 360
$49.99
Modern Warfare™ 2 Throat Communicator – Xbox 360
$29.99
Modern Warfare™ 2 Faceplate and Console Skinz – Xbox 360
$29.99
Modern Warfare™ 2 Wireless Combat Controller – PS3
$49.99
Modern Warfare™ 2 Wireless Bluetooth Headset  – PS3
$39.99
Modern Warfare™ 2 Controller Faceplates – Xbox 360 & PLAYSTATION 3
$14.99
Modern Warfare™ 2 Combat GamePad – PC
$24.99
Modern Warfare™ 2 Sniper Mouse – PC
$49.99
Modern Warfare™ 2 Combat Keyboard – PC
$49.99
Modern Warfare™ 2 Elite Keyboard – PC
$99.99

An advertisement for a 250GB Xbox 360 was spotted on the German Amazon site and was quickly taken down.  Along with the larger hard drive, also came  bundled with 2 wireless controllers and Forz Motorsport 3 for $400.  We don’t know if the ad was just put up to early or it was a never meant to have been put up.  Judging from the recent price drop of the normal Xbox 360 it would seem the ‘Super Elite’ is on the way and to push that notion further, another add has been spotted by a retailer in Africa call BT Games.  Check out the source link for a pic of the ad.

The Tatooine Mission Pack for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is now available for download on the Xbox Marketplace for 800 Microsoft Points.  Playing as Starkiller, you will fight Jawas, Tusken Raiders, Boba Fett and run into Jabba the Hutt’s minions.  The new mission will be included in The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition of the game as well as the previous DLC and a mission that is currently not available for DLC where you must fight Obi-Wan Kenobi.  This new DLC Pack is also available on the PS3. The Ultimate Sith Edition of the Force Unleashed will be released November 4th.

The title really says it all.  The footage is from the Game Crazy Convention on August 25th.  Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 comes out November 10th, 2009 for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC.

Robert Bowling has revealed that you will be able to unlock a better ‘Pro’ version of certain perks while ranking up in Modern Warfare 2’s multiplayer.  Robert has stated that they have ‘made extensive additions to the perk system and create a class system as a whole.’  The multiplayer video revealed the addition of unlockable killstreak rewards including controlling  an AC130 for a short period.  Robert gave an example where he likes to forgo any 3 and 5 killstreak rewards to save for ‘bigger payoffs’ for longer killstreaks in the GamerZines interview.  Most perks are returning including Bandolier and Sleight of Hand as well as new ones.  Robert has also said that there will be no vehicles in Modern Warfare 2’s multiplayer and that IW’s game is strictly an infantry based one online.  There was another statement made by Bowling saying that ‘We’re not taking any pages out of World at War’s book.’  TreyArch admitted to crafting World at War’s multiplayer from Call of Duty 4 and Infinity Ward will not be ‘returning the favor’ as the beef continues between the two game developers within the same franchise.

Whether you were aware or not, there has already been a Fight Night Round 4 and Fear 2 demo available for download for a little while now.  Now there is a new demo available for each of those games on the Xbox Marketplace.  The Fear 2 Demo is actually a demo for the new DLC for the game while the Fight Night Round 4 demo will now let you use the face buttons to punch.  Not really sure if Fight Night needed another demo just for that but it here and currently available.