14 DAY TRIAL // Hello and welcome to another edition of A Gamer's Week, the roundup of all the most important news from the gaming industry that unfolded in the last seven days. This week was a pretty interesting one, as it is leading up to the start of the E3 conference, so companies were working overtime to reveal some details about their upcoming games, but carefully leaving a lot of details to chance in order to reveal them at the conference. Without further ado, here's this edition of A Gamer's Week.
Monday started on a big note as Activision revealed the first gameplay trailer of Modern Warfare 2. Filled with explosions, gunfire and overall warfare, this sequel to Call of Duty 4 is looking stunning to say the least. The day continued with some details about Mass Effect 2, and how it would bear a darker tone than the first title, similar to how The Empire Strikes Back brought some darker action to the Star Wars saga.
Tuesday saw some news on the infamous Duke Nukem Forever, and how its former developer, 3D Realms, had stated that it had invested over 30 million dollars in it. This is in retaliation to the claims of Take Two, to have loaned 3D Realms 12 million dollars. The battle of the companies will continue, though in court. An analyst took the stage afterwards and revealed that UFC 2009: Undisputed would certainly bring a lot of money to its publisher, THQ, which desperately needs it, after suffering from the economic depression.
The third day of the week saw a big announcement coming from Rockstar, which revealed the first details on the second DLC episode for the Xbox 360 version of Grand Theft Auto IV. Entitled GTA: The Ballad of Gay Tony, this new expansion will tell the story of Luis Lopez and his endeavors for Tony “Gay Tony” Prince. Dragon Ball Z fans were also happy on Wednesday as Attack of the Sayans and Revenge of King Picolo were announced for the Wii and the DS, respectively. Get ready to fight alongside Goku and friends once more, Nintendo fans.
Sticking with GTA, Rockstar announced on Thursday that the two DLC episodes would be released on a single disc, in a retail version exclusive for the Xbox 360 platform. If you haven't purchased the Lost and Damned and plan on getting the Ballad of Gay Tony, then this offer is for you. Analysts also took the stage on this day to reveal that Electronic Arts, one of the biggest publishers in the world, was quite ripe for a takeover, because it hadn't managed to meet its own financial goals. Time Warner or Disney might have already manifested their interest.
The last day of the week saw a piracy alert as, a full week before its launch, The Sims 3, one of EA's biggest titles this year, was already pirated over 180,000 times. Hopefully, this won't affect the huge sales that this title is presumed to have and which are supposed to give a boost to EA in the process. This day was also host to an inside source from Sony, which revealed that both the PSP-Go! and the PlayStation 3 Slim were real and that we would see them at E3 next week.
This week saw me spend one hour with Harmonix's Rock Band Unplugged on the PSP. For all the latest news, reviews and demos, check out the dedicated Games section here at Softpedia.