A Gamer's Week: April 17

This week we managed to put up a full review for Yakuza 4, a video game which includes a variety of Japanese themes and is pretty different from the Western action adventure genre, and also a Quick Look at Darkest Hour, a strategy title that is created using the Europa engine and makes World War I an attractive economic, tactical and political puzzle.

We also have two Weekend Reading features, one about the joys of the Total War series and the ways it has remained fresh over the years, and one about the rumors that have been linked lately to the Nintendo Wii 2, which might be out in 2012 and announced before the end of this year.

We also have an EndWeekGame piece detailing our gaming choices for the weekend and a selection of the most important news of the week that passed us by.

On Monday, the development team at Crytek offered more information on their future plans for Crysis 2, saying that the patch which will deliver DirectX 11 features is in certification and will be out soon, while the team at BioWare speculated about the possible creation of a Mass Effect-based MMO.

On Tuesday, Treyarch confirmed that the rumored Escalation map pack for Call of Duty: Black Ops would be launched on May 3, with the double experience weekend linked to it coming on the sixth, just as another global phenomenon, Pokemon, got a new Global Link feature.

Wednesday brought news from Sony about the PlayStation Portable, with a new version of firmware out and little information on the changes it makes for the handheld, with the Obsidian team announcing that their Fallout: New Vegas will only get new DLC after a major patch launch.

On Thursday, the developers at Valve stated that they saw Portal 2 as the best single player experience they had ever created while Treyarch talked about modding tools for Black Ops, planned for May.

On Friday, a new Starcraft II patch appeared just as the NPD Group released its March numbers, with the 3DS and Pokemon came on top.