Team Superfriends|Fighting the good fight

PlayStation 3 exclusive interactive-fiction/puzzle/adventure game Heavy Rain may be a complete story, but Heavy Rain's DLC will allow you to play extra chapters from the characters' lives, in case you didn't get in enough foreboding and/or brooding. The first piece of downloadable content, The Taxidermist, details an encounter between Madison and a serial killer who, I'm guessing, enjoys stuffing and mounting dead animals.

Creepy possibilities, no?

The first screens are collected in a gallery for your looking-at pleasure.

As I’m writing this, there are several little green army men in a Mexican standoff about a foot from my keyboard. Why? Because toy soldiers are inherently awesome. So naturally, when the Xbox Live Arcade title Toy Soldiers was announced, I was instantly intrigued. Well, based on X-Play’s review of the downloadable title, it looks like there are plenty of reasons why this game should go from potential purchase to all but guaranteed purchase in the minds of Xbox 360 owners in the mood for a unique twist on the traditional tower defense structure:

"Shooting or blowing up enemies will earn you cash to purchase new units, upgrade existing units, or repair damages. What sets Toy Soldiers  apart from just about every tower defense game you've played is the level of interaction after establishing your defenses. Suffice it to say you won't be bored."

If you're looking for a new XBLA game to pass the time, be sure to check out the full review to see if this is the one.

Feeling a bit overwhelmed by our massive PlayStation Move coverage? You're in luck as Sony's PR drops a slick trailer recapping all of the new motion controller details.

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Nintendo knew exactly what they were doing when they bundled the Wii with the ridiculously popular collection of simplified, motion-based sports games, Wii Sports. Not only were the games satisfying in their own right, they also served as the perfect introduction to the Wii’s revolutionary control scheme. Throw in the massive sales of the beefed up sequel, Wii Sports Resort, and it’s absolutely no wonder that Sony decided to create their own sports-based compilation title to launch with their PlayStation Move motion controller.

Patrick Klepek got both of his hands on the tentatively named Sports Champions during GDC 2010. Sample quote to follow:

"Like Motion Fighters, Sports Champions emphasized what's possible when developers design games with the option to have player's utilize two PlayStation Move controllers at once. The controller in the left hand moves the shield, while the right controls the weapon of choice."

To find out more, be sure to check out Patrick's full preview right here. More GDC 2010 goodness can be found over at our GDC coverage supercenter.

Lionhead Studios just revealed during its GDC 2010 presentation that Monty Python legend John Cleese will appear in Fable III as the player’s butler!

I wish I had more details to share, but that’s I have right now. Lionhead is Tweeting all sorts of info from their presentation, so expect to hear plenty more soon.

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"On the primary Move controller, you point at the screen to direct your aiming direction; the sub-controller’s analog stick is used for directional movement, strafing in particular. Even though this version of SOCOM 4 is still very much a work-in-progress, the effect was achieved as I ran through the war-torn map."

You can find Andrew's full preview right here. And remember to check out our GDC  2010 page for all the latest news and previews.

The Shoot is an on-rails shooter in the vein of old-school arcade cabinets. Check out our screenshots for an idea of the tongue-in-cheek art style of this game. Andrew Pfister got a chance to play this proof-of-concept style game at GDC 2010, and judging from his preview, it may seem familiar:

"There’s a 96% chance that every single one of you reading this preview knows of a place where you live that has had the same arcade cabinet for the past 15 years. And there’s a 100% chance that that arcade cabinet is Midway’s Area 51. So describing the The Shoot demo on display for PlayStation Move should be easy: it’s the concept of Area 51, with more of a tongue-in-cheek approach of being behind the scenes on a movie set."

Check out the full preview for more information. And read our GDC site for all GDC 2010 previews, news, videos and more.

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Hey Green Day fans, grab a pen and flip your calendars to June, because I have some mark-inducing info for you. That’s right. Green Day: Rock Band now has an official release date – June 8.

Similar to Harmonix and MTV Games’ previous The Beatles: Rock Band, the Green Day version will feature tons of unlockable band images and nearly an hour of rare and unreleased interviews and performances.

The game will include 47 tracks spanning the band’s career from "Brain Stew" to "Boulevard of Broken Dreams," each of which will be playable with three-part harmonies. Also, all of the songs will be exportable to Rock Band 1, 2, and 3. The Green Day tracks that are already available as DLC will be playable in the new game and will include all of the new gameplay and presentation elements.

Green Day: Rock Band will run you $59.99 on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and $49.99 on Wii. There will also be a special edition that will feature “Special packaging,” track export key and the six DLC tracks already available, all for $69.99.

The world's introduction to PlayStation Move title Motion Fighters (working title) came only a day ago at the Sony GDC press conference, so these screenshots and the first previews are all we know about the game. According to Patrick Klepek:

"The game's making your movements look a hell of a lot cooler than how you'll look to people watching you play a game like Motion Fighters, but in the moment, you can't help but feel cool. That's especially true when you have someone in a headlock and you're fist pumping (hmm, do I smell a Jersey Shore game?) an endless stream of punches into your enemy's bloodied face."

Check out the full preview at this link right here.  And for more GDC info, check out our GDC 2010 compound and website.

OK Go's music videos can become such impressive viral hits because Internet video can be embedded pretty much everywhere. You don't have to visit OK Go's website, it's just there. That's the same for music and photos, too. Heck, it's true of pretty much every form of media that's not video games. InstantAction is proposing a solution: the embeddable video game.

I saw InstantAction about a year ago while still working for MTV News. At the time, InstantAction was mostly a portal for powerful, modern-looking games to run through a browser. I asked them whether the games could ever be embedded like YouTube. The technology didn't exist a year ago, but the team said it was possible. Earlier this week, however, InstantAction showed me what I was hoping for in working form and I'm convinced it could change games and how we all discover them.

The moment it clicked? When I watched CEO Louis Castle (whose name might ring a bell - he used to head Electronic Arts' now-closed Blueprint studio and co-founded Westwood Studios) embed LucasArts' The Secret of Monkey Island remake into an actual Tumblr blog and start playing the game a few minutes later through the blog. Upping the ante, Castle demonstrated the same concept, except it was Assassin's Creed running through his Facebook account. Assassin's Creed through a Facebook account.

I was already imagining being able to write stories and embed the games I was talking about into the story. That's not the point of InstantAction, but it's an exciting byproduct of the tech.

Ubisoft hasn't signed onto the venture yet, but LucasArts has.

"LucasArts is using the InstantAction platform for online distribution of The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition, which is launching soon," said the company in a brief statement.

There are two ways the games are made playable. Castle's steam has partnered with David Perry's OnLive competitor Gaiaki to allow for instant streaming of select games. When InstantAction launches on March 25, the Gaikai technology won't be there just yet, but it's coming in the near future. When it's there, the game will default to checking whether bandwidth is capable of streaming the game instantaneously. If your connection can't handle it, however, it simply starts downloading the game files in the order that will let you start playing as soon as possible. In the case of The Secret of Monkey Island, it was up and running in a few seconds, allowing you to start playing while the rest of the game downloads in the background (it took about 5-10 minutes for Assassin's Creed to download enough data to start playing). There's even a progress meter showing the download in real-time. If you happen to rush through the game and access an area it hasn't downloaded, the game will pause and catch up.

There's much more to InstantAction, especially as it relates to how publishers can take control of the distribution of process of games in relation to brick 'n mortars like GameStop and Wal-Mart, but the biggest takeaway for me was the embedding. It's as effortless as YouTube, too. The HTML code is waiting underneath the game. InstantAction says publishers will dictate if a game can be embedded (and restrict where it can't be embedded), but hopefully most will let gamers go wild with that one.

OnLive has a launch date. InstantAction is later this month. These technologies are moving from potential to real-world applications. Here's hoping they're as exciting to use as they are to talk about.

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