Now that that’s out of the way, let me take some time to have a little heart-to-heart with the developers. That multiplayer chatter? Never going to happen. What you gave us was a bunch of game-centric chatter coming from the mouths of level-headed, mature gamers having a great time just playing Killzone 2. The thing is, that never happens! Where are all of the squeaky-voiced pre-teens yelling into their headsets about my mom, their penis, and “a good time last night”, huh? There isn’t even a single random act of teabagging in that whole video! Guerilla, I can see that you’ve got what could be a fantastic game on your hands, but don’t tease us with some kind of FPS utopia that the rest of the internet won’t ever be able to find and destroy, one shred of decency at a time.

In 2004, Starbreeze Studios made a name for itself with the original Xbox hit, The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. After successfully launching into a sea of critical praise, Starbreeze shifted gears to the next generation of consoles. In 2005 they announced their next game, a first-person-shooter based on the comic book series, The Darkness. A FPS starring a mobster possessed by demons? It was a risky move, to say the least, but Starbreeze managed to pull it off. Continue reading to find out what makes The Darkness one of the first hidden gems of this generation.

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What? A Gears of War sequel? That’s a shocker.

You have probably already heard, but Gears of War 2 is going to feature more of the same gameplay, with some add tweaks to the cover system, weapon-specific executions, and the ability to take meat shields. Above, you’ll find the E3 walkthrough video from just this morning.

In the video, Marcus and his allies are trying to escape a burning sideways building. Inventive level design? Possibly. To me, though, it still feels like more of the same, simply because of the color scheme. Developers have a trend of associating dingy colors with realism, and every game is just starting to blend together. The graphics do look quite polished, however.

Some of your favorites weapons, such as the Hammer of Dawn, will reappear, but another turret-like gun also makes it’s debut. Hopefully, this sequel won’t just be more of the same.

This is the first trailer footage that we’ve seen of the next installment in the insanely successful Call of Duty franchise, Call of Duty: World at War. While the fourth game in the series, developed by Infinity Ward, did incredibly well, this next game is going back to Call of Duty’s roots with developer Treyarch, creator of the extreme let-down Call of Duty 3. The trailer, however, looks pretty enough and features enough explosions, gun-downs and flamethrowers to make any FPS fan’s pants tighter. Let’s just hope that Treyarch stays true to the fundamental gameplay elements that made Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare so great.

On another note, I said “Call of Duty” five times in four sentences. I didn’t think it could be done. Mom always said I was special.

Valve has just released a new trailer for another character, The Sniper, in their Team Fortress 2 “Meet the..” series. That these two-minute-long trailers provide more personality than most games with full-fledged storylines is certainly a testament to TF2’s character design. I wish I had an Australian accent.

Check out previous trailers after the jump.
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When Aces of the Galaxy, an Xbox Live Arcade game developed by Artech Studios and published by Sierra Online, touted itself to be a “non-stop, old-school arcade thrill ride,” I was somewhat skeptical. How many times have we heard awesome descriptions just to discover the game is worth less than the surprise my dog leaves in tightly-coiled piles in my [neighbor's] yard? Does this game live up to the picture the description paints, or will this be just another mediocre Xbox Live Arcade title? Hit the jump to find out!

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Everybody loves contests, and here at MEGATONik, we totally get that. That’s why we’re committed to giving as much as humanly possible to our readers.

Today, the guys at EA were nice enough to provide us with a batch of demo codes for Battlefield: Bad Company that let you play the demo before it’s officially released onto XBL and PSN on June 5th.

So, what I’m going to do is, until I run out, pick one or two people who comment on this post every so often over the next day and hook them up with these codes. Just make sure your comment says whether you want it for 360 or PS3.

Easy enough, right?

WINNERS:

When it comes to purchasing Xbox Live Arcade games, I am always quite frugal. Personally, I won’t pick up an XBLA game that is anything short of stellar. (I like to save my money for the big retail games … and booze, too, I guess.) Unsurprisingly, Rocketmen: Axis of Evil is one of those games that I would not buy … never in a hundred years.

Why is Rocketmen so utterly horrendous? Hit the jump for the rest of my review!

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In a recent conference call, Activision gave out a handful of details on its upcoming franchises. The most interesting facts out of the pool of information were regarding the Tony Hawk series, as well as Call of Duty 5.

Actvision has FINALLY decided to not produce a Tony Hawk Pro Skater game this year, and to totally reinvent the franchise. This breaks the nine-year-long tradition of releasing a game every year, although there is a THPS game that is planned to release on the Nintendo DS later this year. Activision CEO, Mike Griffith, commented:

“We’re inventing Tony from the ground up. For competitive reasons we’re not going to talk about it today, but we’re very bullish on the kind of innovation it will bring, and it won’t be your father’s Tony Hawk.”

The conference call also spoke upon Call of Duty 5, giving us the only information we have about the game: it’s going to take place in “a new military theater.” Note, however, there is a rumor flying around CoD 5 saying it’s going to take place during World War II…again.

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Wow, did you guys see all those Locusts on the screen at one point? This game is going to be amazing when it releases in November.

Activision has announced that there will be a re-release of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare to celebrate its awesomeness. Call of Duty 4: Game of the Year Edition will be released in April, and will feature the full, original COD4 game, new boxart that shows all of the awards COD4 has won, and an Xbox Live token that will allow gamers to download an upcoming map pack from the XBL Marketplace.

The map pack will be available for separate download for those of you who already own the game, for 800 Live points.

According to IGN, Activision CEO Bobbi Kotick said that the company is considering launching a massively multiplayer online game based off of its Call of Duty franchise.

Kotick stated that Activision looked at five years of data at publisher attempts to break into the MMO market and noticed that most of them resulted in failure or cancellation. Now that Activision and Blizzard are together, it’s a sure thing that will not be the case for the company. Kotick says that Activision will not only be able to get some World of Warcraft subscribers, but also learn from Blizzard’s half how to comprehend newer projects.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was no doubt one of the greatest games of the year 2007, and an MMO game will definitely attract several gamers. Please note, Kotick did NOT confirm that there will be an MMO game based off of the CoD franchise, but rather said it’s being talked about right now. He only briefly mentioned it in his speech at the 2008 Morgan Stanley Technology Conference, but still, this is pretty exciting speculation.

Somone forgot to tell Capcom that third party titles aren’t selling well on the Wii. We just got word that Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles has shipped 1 million units worldwide in a little over three months time. This makes the second million seller for Capcom on the Wii, the first being the Wii version of Resident Evil 4, which is by far one of the best ports the Wii has recieved. Capcom also brought us the cult hit Zack and Wiki for the Wii so it looks like they’re doing pretty well on the Big N’s system. Guess it does pay off to actually think about the games you bring out for the Wii, even if they are simply ports.

It’s heartening to see a third party doing well on the Wii even if it’s with the same franchise. Hopefully, we’ll start getting more and more press releases like this from third party Wii developers. It would be especially awesome if they were about WiiWare games.

Watch the above YouTube video. Did you catch it? Near the end there. That’s right, 0708. What does that mean? Why are they covering it up? Could that be a release date for an upcoming Insomniac game? Sure looks like it. And what upcoming game does Insomniac have? Oh yes, the sequel to Resistance: Fall of Man. Would be a pretty awesome present around that time of year when games aren’t always flooding the market per se.

In more important news: How amazing would it be to work at Insomniac? Pinball machines, putting greens, weekly massages! How do these guys find time to make games, and really amazing games at that? Plus they write some pretty catchy music too. Of course, keep in mind that this is all rumors, especially the weekly massages, those couldn’t really happen. Hit the jump for a screen cap of the date in question.

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One of the wonders of XBOX Live is the feature for developers to immediately release a fix for any in-game bugs anytime they deem appropriate. The insanely popular FPS Halo 3 has seen its share of patches, and will see another one the next time you try to jump in an online match. Bungie.net has the full list of updates, with the most notable ones listed below:

• Simultaneous melee battles have been tweaked to be more fair
• If you die during a melee, no longer will you fly across the level
• The Elite Commando shoulder armor is now unlocked to all players
• The “Prefer Good Connection” option is now more efficient
• Problems were fixed in Theater mode concerning watching films on DLC maps which the player doesn’t own