14 DAY TRIAL // The week leading to Valentine's Day was certainly a very busy one in terms of gaming for both the average players and for the companies that have released a lot of new information about their upcoming titles, consisting of both delays and new and interesting details and last-minute tweaks. Without further ado, here's what happened this week.
On Monday rumors began to fly around as Sony Computer Entertainment Europe's president, David Reeves, informed us that the PlayStation 3 would receive a new, smaller and, most importantly, cheaper Cell processor this year. Whether this means that the big black console will receive the much awaited and speculated price cut is still up to Sony though. Fans made their voice heard on that day as speculations as to what main character the second DLC episode for Grand Theft Auto IV would have were cleverly left untackled by a Rockstar representative, who said that they'd just have to wait and see.
Tuesday saw two big announcements from EA and Capcom, concerning some of their most important franchises. In regard to the Japanese company, the sequel to one of the most interesting titles of 2006, Dead Rising, was confirmed. People will once again be able to chop up zombies using a variety of weapons, objects and other things, this time in a casino setting. On the North American shore, EA unveiled the Ultimate Team Mode for its massively successful FIFA 09 soccer simulator, which would take the action from the pitch and onto a virtual table by using cards that represent players and tactics.
The prayers of a lot of Need For Speed fans were answered on Wednesday, when EA finally launched the much awaited patch for the latest iteration in the racing series, NFS: Undercover. Hoping to solve a lot of problems and glitches users encountered, the EA team once again expressed its confidence in the franchise. Also on this day, Blizzard tried to get even more people into its hugely successful World of Warcraft MMORPG, by announcing that the registration process for its 2009 WoW Arena Tournament would start on February 17. If you think you have enough skills in terms of Player vs. Player combat, then the over $200,000 total amount of prize money might make you interested.
A dose of love was delivered to shooter fans on Thursday when Valve announced that the upcoming Survival DLC for its hit Left 4 Dead zombie survival shooter would be completely free. Players will be able to play the last two campaigns in Versus mode, create their own modes by using the Software Development Kit and more, all free of charge. The stage was then taken by Joshua Ortega, the lead writer of the Gears of War franchise, who teased players by hinting at the possibility of the next game being a prequel, and that we would see future DLC packs for Gears of War 2 quite soon.
The last day of the week saw a lot of details being unveiled about the upcoming God of War III title, which promises to bring the saga of Kratos to an end. But this end will certainly be something to remember as battles with Greek gods like Hades, the ability to ride Cyclops, or fights with the Titans will all be part of the action-packed gore-filled God of War III recipe. Hopefully, we won't have to wait a long time for it. One of next week's most anticipated releases, the first DLC episode of GTA IV, entitled The Lost and Damned, saw a few details being slipped about its audio content, as the music supervisor of this expansion said that the radio would play a big part in this release.
In conclusion, it was a very busy week for gamers and gaming companies and it looks like things won't slow down for quite some time. Until then, in order to keep informed you can visit the Games section of Softpedia.