Playing Quarrel for the first time is one of the strangest gaming experiences I've had for a while, and it was definitely unrelated to the 12th cup of tea of the day. Sometimes games feel so familiar and perfectly formed that you assume that you must have played them before in some nascent form, possibly sometime in the late 1980s before mullets were officially outlawed.

But no. Despite concerted internet searches and experimental primal scream therapy, it turns out that Quarrel wasn't some sort of gaming deja vu, but was thrust, fully formed, onto the unsuspecting App Store on August 25th 2011. Its unheralded arrival immediately galvanised the clever swines of the world into trying to describe it adequately. The best one yet ("Scrabble x Risk x Countdown") is also one of the most irritatingly concise, and also sums it up perfectly. As Denki amusingly points out, words (11 points) literally speak louder than actions (8 points).

There I was about to blather haplessly about its ingenious mixture of Scrabble wordplay and land-grab turn-based board game strategy, while some one else pressed the buzzer and won the internet. This also possibly explains why I am not very good at Quarrel and don't sip champagne on a yacht while dolphins pirouette in the background. But general inadequacy has never been a problem before, and it isn't here either. With Quarrel it really isn't about the winning but the taking part - at least not for habitual losers like me that enjoy flustered wordplay punishment. Besides, it's fun to tell you all over again why it's ace and thoroughly deserves a place in Eurogamer's hallowed Christmas games of the year selection.

For those of you still unaware of its BAFTA award-winning charms, the crux of Quarrel is, like Scrabble, all about trying to craft the most valuable word out of a collection of letter tiles, each valued in precisely the same way that you'll be familiar with. That alone might not be especially interesting, but grafting these core mechanics onto a time-pressured head-to-head game of turn-based strategy most certainly is.

Whether you elect to sidle up for an elegant two-player quickie or opt for a sweaty Krankie-sized four-player marathon, it plays out the same way, with each of you in possession of an equal number of territories on an island map. To win, obviously, means capturing all of them by crushing your opponent with your devastatingly fast word formation skills - and the occasional piece of desk-thumping, temple-throbbing luck.

As simple as it sounds, it's always a wickedly finely balanced affair, and therefore a game that you never seem to want to stop playing. Like Risk, you have a finite number of troops (automatically) dished out across your territories at the start of the game, and once it's your turn to dish out the pain, you have to weigh up which territories are most advisable to invade.

Unless you positively sweat confidence (in which case, get in line for the next Old Spice ad), the most obvious thing to do is be a bullying git and win via weight of numbers. The basic gist of the battle is that the number of units you have on each territory translate to the number of letter tiles you'll get to fight with in that battle, so for instance, if you've got the maximum eight units, it'd be easy enough to claim a territory defended by a paltry five units. That said, it's still possible to pull off a flukey win if a) you're quick and form the word before your rival and, and b) you're lucky enough that the options are horribly limited.

Eventually, though, you'll either push your luck or run out of steam and play then passes to the next player in clockwise order. But even when it's no longer your turn, the fact that the game keeps you involved by allowing you to prove that you've got the fastest fingers. Apart from anything else, it's good practice, and sharpens the mind to keep training yourself under pressure.

Even if all of this was presented with all the panache of an errant child, it'd still be extra-brilliant. The fact that Denki has bothered to infuse it with such slick, characterful professionalism makes an absolute mockery of its £2.99 price tag. You're probably as bored reading about amazing cheap games by now as we are banging on about them, but, bear with me, Mr Impatient. A few years ago no-one would have batted an eyelid about paying £25 for a game with as much replayability as this. There's even a free version to check out if you're averse to the idea of prescribed fun.

The fact that Scottish geniuses Denki had one hell of a faff even getting it to market probably tells you all you need to know about the kind of dunderheads responsible for bringing games to market in 2011. Go back 18 months, and the developer was forced to lay off most of its talented staff just to stay afloat. But with an equal portion of resolve and persistence, they've not only turned around a really bad situation, but shown what a ridiculous rejection it was in the first place.

Back then, on its Black Easter Monday, Denki's managing director Colin Anderson commented bleakly, and accurately: "This industry doesn't value good games. Players do, but the games industry doesn't." At the time, he was reminded exactly why it got out of the traditional publisher-funded model in the first place and escaped to the Siberian salt mines of interactive television games. But now, like so many of the world's best developers, the company has figured out, wisely, that going "straight to the people who play games and value games" is the way forward. With a bit of help from UTV Ignition, it has essentially flicked the Vs at those who wouldn't know a classic game if it personally fellated them in their own homes.

And if you've got some sort of pathological aversion to enjoying games on iOS platforms, then, worry not. Despite the XBLA version having been seemingly written off earlier last year, it's back on the agenda again, with PSN and Steam version to follow sometime in 2012. In generations to come, all but the beard-stroking sages of gaming lore will know of the struggle that Quarrel had, but as long as the cream rises to the top, it matters not.

It feels very appropriate to be writing about Mario in the run up to Christmas. Even though his games make no explicit reference to The Most Wonderful Time of the Year, and in fact are often blatantly summery with their primary colours and warm blue skies, there's just something inherently festive about the squat plumber and his surreal world.

Maybe that's why it's been Super Mario 3D Land that has kept me coming back, alternating with Skyrim for my gaming attention these past few months.

Obviously, the game features a jolly fellow with a bulging tummy and a fondness for red clothing. That he clearly takes great pleasure in descending down enclosed spaces - green pipes, chimneys, whatever - is the icing on a Santa-shaped cake.

About once a year, a game makes me want to write.

I don't mean criticism, a review or even a cutting tweet about how long it takes to open a bloody chest in Zelda. I mean fiction. For - er - money. Since I've been completely out of games journalism for over a year, it's fairly likely you won't know me, so I'm going to have to write a bit about myself. I'm sorry. That said, if you do know me, you won't be surprised that I'm going to write a bit about myself. I'm sorry.

Basically, I write comics for Marvel starring characters that even my mum has heard of, as well as a bunch that she hasn't. And while I enjoy games' genre fiction, it rarely does anything that screams that there's further novel stories in its world. Or, at least, further stories that wouldn't boil down to reheated genre pulp. The last game that made my writing instincts twitch was Arkham Asylum, which reminded me of the sheer physicality of the Batman in a way I'd previously forgotten. The latest, if the title at the top of the page hadn't given it away, is Saints Row: The Third.

Saints Row: The Third is apes**t.

It's not the story that I found most affecting this year. (That would probably be Bastion, which managed to find a perfect aesthetic nestling somewhere on the previously unexplored boundary between SNES action games and Cat Power.) It's not the best-designed narrative game of the year. (That would probably be SpaceChem, which is such a masterclass in design that it makes everyone else look a bit thick. Including the player, because it makes such enormous demands of you.) It's not the story which actually made me write a big ol' rambly rant about metaphors and stuff and things. (That would be Deus Ex: Human Revolution.)

But it is apes**t. And blither-provoking interesting apes**t, at that.

Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes is a game. You know, like chess, or backgammon, or tic-tac-toe, or, heck, Kerplunk. There are two sides in play, you take it in turns to make your move and success demands skill, concentration and, occasionally, a dash of luck.

Why am I pointing out such an obvious truism? Well, in a year when most of the big AAA duckhunts doggedly insisted on leading the player by the hand from one scripted, retina-scorching set piece to the next, it was mightily refreshing to see a mainstream console title really explore the millenia-old science of play and offer the grey matter some nourishment.

In a similar fashion to, say, Advance Wars before it, Capybara's phenomenal puzzle RPG reveled in the primal thrill of competition, of using your smarts to slowly grind down a seemingly more powerful opponent, of gradually mastering a rule set that at first sight seems bewilderingly complex.

If golf is a good walk spoiled, StreetPass Quest might be the exact opposite. It's a good walk enhanced: a simple amble across town rendered tactical, speculative and even quietly thrilling. "Gather heroes, fight ghosts and collect hats," says the blurb that introduces the 3DS' unlikely killer app. Sold. As far as I'm concerned, that's pretty much the entire appeal of modern video games boiled down into a single sentence.

On some level, of course, it's all just a smart piece of strategizing. Paul Auster once said that if you wander around with a pencil and paper in your pocket all the time, there's a chance that, one day, you'll actually use them, and Nintendo clearly thinks the same is true for a handheld console - although, happily, there's a reduced chance that anybody will have to slog through The Book of Illusions as a result.

Nintendo might be onto something, too. Because of StreetPass Quest, I've been taking my 3DS everywhere with me for the last nine months. It's a large part of why I came to love the weird little device even before Super Mario 3D Land turned up and gave us all a much more legitimate reason to.

If you haven't played StreetPass Quest, the basics are pretty simple. At heart, the game's a rudimentary and entirely rigid dungeon crawler in which you work your way through a series of different rooms, battling monsters and unlocking treasure chests, all of which contain hats for your Mii. The twist is that you need to harvest adventurers to do the actual fighting for you, and you do this either by collecting other people's Miis via StreetPass - the exchange system that allows 3DS owners to passively trade data in public - or, if you happen to live in the sticks or are surrounded by the Amish, by buying them with the coins you earn with the console's on-board pedometer.

Each time you encounter the same Mii on your travels, they'll level up when they next appear within your game. This is handy, because StreetPass Quest is astonishingly grindy. Not only do most low-level heroes inflict only the tiniest amount of damage on the enemies they come across before sloping off with fatigue, you'll have to play through the entire suite of dungeons multiple times if you're going to collect all the hats on offer. And you are going to collect all the hats on offer, okay?

It's around this point that I should probably admit that, when you get down to it, StreetPass Quest is a pretty terrible RPG most of the time. Levelling's taken out of your hands, the environments are fiercely repetitive, and your sole choices amount to whether to use a melee attack or magic when laying into the next monster. Sure, the colour-coded adventurers, each with their own powers, bring a surprising tactical depth to your decision at times, but you're hardly looking at Nintendo's answer to Dark Souls, or even HeroQuest.

The more you play, though, the more you'll start to realise that the RPG isn't actually the main event. Rather, each tiny sliver of the RPG you're given is your reward for successfully playing the true StreetPass Quest - and that turns out to be a game about carrying your 3DS around wherever you go, changing your walking habits so that even the shortest stroll takes you past as many shopping malls and densely populated areas as possible, and maximising every single chance you can get for that little green light on your 3DS - Gatsby would understand - to start glowing. It's like fishing, really, or dowsing. Or Pokémon.

It's also a reminder, should you need one, that StreetPass is probably the most Nintendoish element of the 3DS, a device which, with its gimmicky lenticular screen and horrible battery life, isn't exactly drowning in the kind of Gunpei Yokoi-style leftfield thinking that brought us the Gameboy or the original DS. The console's a bit of a cludge, perhaps, but at least its sharing aspects are brilliant. StreetPass enlivens titles like Mario and Street Fighter with regular tiny bursts of new content, and, even outside of other games, it seems wonderfully in line with its creator's playful ethos. Everyone's a generous stranger in the world of StreetPass, and everywhere you go is a place that something weird and sweet and modestly rewarding could happen. It's nice to have a game that is always playing by itself in the background. It's nice to have a game that makes you wait for things - a rarity in the current landscape.

So, slight as it is, StreetPass Quest is my game of 2011. Looking back, it's also been a game about 2011: an accidental diary of the places I've been to and the people I've met there, written in all the faces that are lined up in Mii Plaza. So there are the cluster of ludic geniuses I met at the Develop Conference in Summer, there are the bearded programmers from that studio visit in Autumn, and over there is fellow Eurogamer contributor Will Porter, collected during a drink we had in Brighton a few weeks' back. (Not sure the Kirby beret really suits you, Will.)

If you love games, you'll already know that they're more than the mere distraction they're often made out to be. At their best - when you're gathering heroes, fighting ghosts and collecting hats, let's say - they can occasionally break through the technology barrier completely and become a genuine companion.

For PC owners, recording game footage is a piece of cake. You buy FRAPS or check out a free alternative (like the intriguing MSI Afterburner) and a few mouse clicks later you're on your way. But what are the cheapest options for console enthusiasts looking to capture their gameplay on a budget?

Digital Foundry's entry-level recommendation is the Blackmagic Intensity Pro, readily available for around £130-£150. There are alternatives of course, which we'll cover later, and the Blackmagic tech has a series of limitations that could put some people off, but for the average gamer simply looking to record his own gameplay, upload to YouTube or archive off for future reference, the Intensity Pro will do just fine - as long as it's configured correctly.

Taking the form of a PCI Express x1 expansion card, the Intensity Pro is compatible with PCs and desktop Macs, allowing users to record footage from analogue component or HDMI. The range of supported resolutions is limited, but for the purposes of recording game video from PS3 and 360, 720p is really all you need.

Its other major drawback is that you cannot acquire HDMI video from a PlayStation 3 or any other HD source that utilises the HDCP content protection system. This limitation is in effect for a couple of reasons. Firstly, while the utilisation of HDCP encryption on PS3 gameplay is pointless and baffling (Xbox 360 doesn't use it at all), capture card manufacturers are not keen on their equipment being used to create digitally perfect copies of content such as Blu-ray movies or TV transmissions. Secondly, Intensity Pro wasn't really designed for games consoles. It's primarily made for use with HD cameras, none of which have HDCP encryption active at all.

Blackmagic's Intensity Pro is getting on a bit - it's been around for a few years now - but it's still our pick for the best-value capture card for users looking to record HD gameplay on a budget.

Component vs. HDMI

The solution here is obvious: capture Xbox 360 from HDMI and use good old analogue component for PlayStation 3. Yes, there is a quality difference between HDMI and analogue component and personally we wouldn't use it for our Face-Off coverage, but the differences are not extreme and if your aim isn't reference quality but simply to create good-looking video, component is certainly good enough. To illustrate the quality difference such as it is, in the shots below we've used the Intensity Pro to capture the same image using both component and HDMI connections.

The component signal's colour balance is a little off and if you look really closely you may notice that the definition is not quite so pin-sharp, but the fact is that overall quality of both signals isn't a million miles apart: you're feeding the card 720p and that's what it's giving you in your captured video.

So does utilising HDMI give a true 100 per cent digitally lossless image? When running from an HD camcorder, it can. In fact, the Intensity was originally designed so film-makers could record direct from the camera, bypassing the lossy compression systems like AVC-HD used to store footage on memory cards or hard disk. Indeed, the first release of the Intensity didn't work with games consoles at all, the functionality only being added in a later firmware update.

Intensity Pro down-converts the pure 24-bit RGB signals that emerge from your PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 into a lower-fidelity digital component format, and it's a pretty close match for good old analogue component. These Forza 4 shots demonstrate how close analogue and digital are on this card. Click through for lossless PNG 720p shots.

Why? The explanation is simple: cameras use a different digital signal format compared to the 24-bit RGB output of the consoles. It's a lower-quality colour-space, and the solution Intensity uses (in common with all entry-level HD capture cards) involves downscaling RGB to this so-called YPrPb 4:2:2 or YUY2 format, downsampling the chroma resolution, meaning that bright primary colours like red and blue can display noticeable artifacting.

A 30 per cent downsample in chroma resolution may sound rather harsh but the fact is that if your end-game is to encode your video to WMV, h.264 or encode to YouTube, the downgrade is insignificant compared to what happens next as the footage is compressed into its final form - indeed, chroma is downsampled again to an even less precise format. HDMI is still the best input to use overall on this card - it's just important to bear in mind that digital capture doesn't necessarily mean a completely lossless transfer - and the high-end purists looking to preserve video output in its entirety probably won't be looking at sub-£200 capture cards anyway and will be pursuing a solution capable of native 24-bit RGB support.

Getting the Most Out of Budget Hardware

So with the bad news out of the way, let's concentrate on the good. First up, the Intensity has excellent video passthrough capabilities. This means you can monitor your gameplay on your PC screen but also attach an HDTV to the card and continue gaming as normal. The passthrough is flexible enough that you can capture from the component input but have your main gameplay display attached by HDMI - or vice versa. Very useful.

Intensity is also supplied with DirectShow drivers, meaning that it usually interfaces fairly easily with any type of PC capture or live-streaming program. For recording gameplay, we would recommend AmaRecTV for the job, because the supplied Media Express tools you get out of the box are limited.

The main challenge in capturing HD footage is the sheer size of the files you'll be acquiring. Uncompressed HD video from Intensity offers a good quality level, but 720p60 weighs in at around 110MB/s or thereabouts - that's beyond the sustained writing capabilities of most hard drives which slow down as you fill them. Blackmagic's only alternative is to compress with MJPEG, literally a motion version of the compression tech used for shrinking down pictures. This introduces a lot of compression artifacts and kills fine detail, so while it'll allow you to capture onto "normal" hard drives with ease and is functional enough, too much quality is lost for our liking and footage looks oddly washed out too.

The basic rule of thumb with video destined for YouTube or other streaming media is that the cleaner the source you supply, the better the quality of the final presentation. Giving their encoders video that has already been compromised by macroblocking and other artifacts is not a particularly good idea - it'll just make them even worse in the final presentation.

AmaRecTV is our choice for recording video using the Blackmagic Intensity Pro, or indeed any other entry-level HD capture card that supports the DirectShow interface. It's simple to use and the author even provides a readily configured Intensity version.

By opting for a third-party solution like AmaRecTV you can bin the lacklustre MJPEG codec and instead opt for lossless and less aggressive lossy compressors: top candidates here are the freeware UT Codec Suite and the $10 AMV Codec, which offers both lossless and great quality lossy compression. File sizes remain large, but at the very least a standard hard drive can cope with the throughput without dropping frames during capture.

The other plus point of these alternative codecs is that they are better optimised for multi-core systems and are relatively light on CPU resources compared to MJPEG. Just about any dual-core CPU should be able to cope with 720p60 compression.

Another advantage AmaRecTV offers is that you can record at 30FPS even from a 720p60 source. Bearing in mind that YouTube and most video streaming services only support 30FPS anyway, and indeed that most games operate at 30FPS, this is a useful way to save space and make captured files easier to work with.

Both the supplied Media Express software and AmaRecTV produce AVI files that you can then edit in your package of choice. We'd recommend exporting your final edits using one of the lossless codecs we've recommended to maintain the quality level of the original capture all the way through to your final video. If you're transmitting to YouTube at this point, we'd recommend encoding into h.264 using a program such as Handbrake or StaxRip. Use a "RF" or "CRF" profile (18-20 for the quality level should provide an excellent picture). These profiles allocate bandwidth according to the complexity of the image, so macroblocking will be minimal - the encoder ensures that each frame is compressed to the same quality level.

Intensity Variants and Alternatives

While we recommend the Intensity Pro PCI Express upgrade, other versions of the same technology are available. The Intensity Extreme appears to be exactly the same product in an external enclosure using a Thunderbolt interface for Mac. More intriguing is the USB 3.0 Intensity Shuttle, which appears to offer more features - such as support for 480p, which is potentially of use to gamers for Wii and legacy console capture. 1080p60 recording - the preserve of high-end cards - was also initially mooted in advertising, but never worked and is now excised from Blackmagic's promo materials.

The issue we have with USB 3.0 is that bandwidth spec is equivalent to 4x PCI Express, but many USB 3.0 implementations only support one lane's worth of throughput, resulting in the Shuttle not working on many USB 3.0 setups. This isn't the fault of the product but of the implementation of what should be a "standard" interface. We've also seen some cases of the PC DirectShow interface not working properly with the Shuttle, meaning you may be stuck with the Media Express software that comes with the unit - a tool we can't in all honesty recommend.

The Intensity Pro has two stablemates - the USB 3.0 Shuttle and the Thunderbolt-based Intensity Extreme, for Mac only. Both are more expensive than the standard PCI Express card and aside from working 480p support in the Shuttle, achieve the same results.

Other enthusiasts aren't so keen on the Intensity and instead favour the Avermedia AverTV HD DVR upgrade card (specifically, the C027 model). In combination with a specific driver revision, HDCP-encrypted video can be captured by using a tool like AmaRecTV, while running the supplied "media centre" software (which is awful by the way) in the background. Bizarrely, this results in decrypted video which DirectShow can then access. The Avermedia card also supports 480p component capture which had no problem getting to work, in theory making it a superior choice to the Intensity Pro for gamers looking for an all-encompassing solution.

We found it to be an adequate performer and the HDCP bypass trick with the specified driver revision certainly works for recording PS3 gameplay. However, the chipset this card uses has a bug that sees HDMI colour balance compromised to a certain extent, and there is no video passthrough, though AmaRecTV's excellent real-time preview window compensates this to some degree with just a 50ms latency. The real problem is one of availability, as the card no longer seems to be widely available in the UK.

Live-Stream Your Gameplay

Both Avermedia and Blackmagic's DirectShow interfaces are also helpful for a growing offshoot of capture capabilities: live-streaming. As far as your PC is concerned, a capture card is just another camera source, meaning that you can use the technology to beam your direct feed gameplay across the world. The key issue here is the state of your upstream connection, and the quality of the link to the server you choose to stream from.

The typical ADSL connection only supports around 800kbps to 1mbps of bandwidth, which we wouldn't recommend for trying to stream live gameplay at 720p. On the other side of the equation, those with meatier upload capabilities will probably be stymied by bandwidth throttling server-side. During our experiments, we typically found it hard to stream above 2mbps, even with a 100mbps fibre-optic connection.
XSplit is the software of choice for live-streaming, with Twitch.TV and the remarkably named Own3d.TV proving to be very popular for game-streaming. While the default settings will go some way to getting up and running, for those with powerful connections, here are our preferred settings. Adjusting resolution to 480p and maxing out bandwidth to 1mbps would be preferable for ADSL - XSplit can resize the video for you so you can leave the capture hardware running at 720p.

The settings below, in concert with this preset (put this into XSplit's ffpresets folder) should be good for 720p30 live encoding, and even utilises the periodic intra refresh technologies used by Gaikai and OnLive for improved picture quality on restricted bandwidth.

For those with substantial upload capabilities, these are the settings we use with XSplit. Our connection is capable of easily exceeding the 2mbps limit we've imposed but bandwidth server-side seems to be throttled. An i5/i7 quad-core CPU is really needed for live-streaming as h.264 compression is carried out on the fly as you play.

In the past, HD capture was an expensive proposition - and for high-end applications along the lines that Digital Foundry itself specialises in, it still is - but the emergence of cards like the Intensity Pro has made high-def recording much more of a commodity. Prices have been driven down, with enthusiasts ready to fill the gap left by lacklustre "in the box" tools with cut-price or even free alternatives that in many cases provide superior quality. For gamers looking to share content - be it via screenshots or videos - there's never been a better time to get capturing.

Maybe I'm being wilfully perverse. It wouldn't be the first time. If the game of the week were determined by buzz or importance or sheer weight of numbers - of players, of man-years of effort, of many millions of dollars in budget, of hours of queuing for a precious spot on a live server - then this week it would unquestionably belong to Star Wars: The Old Republic.

BioWare's behemoth isn't just (very likely) the most expensive game ever made, it's the most challenging online game launch ever - and that from a developer with limited experience in the field. Hats off to the studio and its partners, then, because this titanic construction has slipped from the dockyard into the waters with grace and ease. Those queues and a certain bureaucratic fussiness about access are really the only things to complain about.

It's a totally solid, smooth-running and full-featured game, an unprecedented achievement in online world launches. By comparison, its inspiration and rival World of Warcraft stumbled badly at birth, and that game's North American and European release dates were months apart. But that was before it had redefined everyone's expectations of the demand for a new MMO. Of course, it went on to redefine our expectations of just about everything else to do with the genre as well. That's one of many reasons why it will take a while to review The Old Republic, and why I don't want to pre-empt that judgement here.

As a work of game art and design, and as a new standard-bearer for a genre that has been all but crushed under WOW's heel, The Old Republic has still got a lot to prove. It will continue to long after I manage to stick a score out of ten on it. But as a work of engineering, online logistics and commercial enterprise, it's off to a terrific start and has erased at least one of the black marks against MMOs' name. Congratulations to all involved.

Conversely, our actual game of the week is one that, thanks to a friendly developer, we managed to review several weeks before its release.

A US superior court judge has denied EA's request to throw out Activision's $400 million contract-interference suit relating to the departure of Infinity Ward co-founders Jason West and Vince Zampella last year.

Judge Elihu Berle ruled that Activision had offered sufficient evidence to uphold its claim and ordered the case move on to trial, which is scheduled to begin on 7th May 2012. A related summary judgment motion put forth by West and Zampella was also denied.

Activision is alleging that West and Zampella breached their contracts and duty of loyalty to the publisher by conduct that was "insubordinate and otherwise improper", adding that pair's actions were caused, at least in part, by EA's "unlawful tampering".

West and Zampella, who have since set up Respawn Entertainment and secured a publishing deal with EA, filed their own suit against Activision in March 2010, shortly after they were sacked by the publisher, claiming wrongful termination and missing royalties. That case is also set to go to trial some time in 2012.

Sony has confirmed official RRPs for both the first wave of Vita games and the system's proprietary memory cards.

As detailed on the EU PlayStation Blog, the following first party launch titles are priced as follows:

• Uncharted: Golden Abyss - €49.99/£44.99
• ModNation Racers: Road Trip - €39.99/£34.99
• Everybody's Golf - €39.99/£34.99
• WipEout 2048 - €39.99/£34.99
• Unit 13 - €39.99/£34.99
• Little Deviants - €29.99/£24.99
• Reality Fighters - €29.99/£24.99

As previously reported, you'll need one of Sony's proprietary memory cards to play most of those titles. Here's how much those will cost you:

• 4Gb Memory Card - €19.99/£17.99
• 8Gb Memory Card - €34.99/£31.99
• 16Gb Memory Card - €49.99/£44.99

These prices tally with what online retailer Play announced earlier this week.

In addition, Sony has also priced various official accessories available from launch:

• AC adaptor - €9.99/£8.99
• Portable charger - €49.99/£44.99
• USB cable - €9.99/£8.99
• In-ear headset - €19.99/£17.99
• Starter kit - €24.99/ £21.99
• Travel kit - €29.99/ £25.99

It also confirmed that every Vita will come bundled with six augmented reality cards and a voucher to download three AR games - called Table Football, Cliff Diving and Fireworks - for free.

Meanwhile, the US PlayStation Blog has published a full list of titles that will be available in North America on launch day. This may not tally exactly with Europe, but for what it's worth:

First party:

• Escape Plan (PSN Only)
• Hot Shots Golf: World Invitational
• Hustle Kings (PSN Only)
• Little Deviants
• ModNation Racers: Road Trip
• Super StarDust Delta (PSN only)
• Uncharted: Golden Abyss
• wipEout 2048

Third party:

• Army Corps of Hell - Square Enix, Inc.
• Asphalt Injection - Ubisoft, Inc.
• Ben10 Galactic Racing - D3 Publisher of America
• Blazblue: Continuum Shift EXTEND - Aksys Games Localization, Inc.
• Dungeon Hunter Alliance - Ubisoft, Inc.
• Dynasty Warriors Next - Tecmo Koei America Corporation
• F1 2011 - Codemasters
• EA Sports FIFA Soccer - Electronic Arts, Inc.
• Lumines Electronic Symphony - Ubisoft, Inc.
• Michael Jackson: The Experience - Ubisoft, Inc.
• Plants vs. Zombies (PSN Only) - Sony Online Entertainment LLC
• Rayman Origins - Ubisoft, Inc.
• Shinobido 2: Revenge of Zen - Namco Bandai Games America Inc.
• Tales of Space: Mutant Blobs (PSN Only) - Drinkbox Studios
• Touch My Katamari - Namco Bandai Games America Inc.
• Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 - Capcom Entertainment, Inc.
• Virtua Tennis 4: World Tour Edition - Sega of America

In addition to that lot, the following are marked as "launch window" titles:

First party:

• Gravity Rush
• MLB 12 The Show
• Reality Fighters
• Unit 13

Third party:

• Lego Harry Potter: Years 5-7 - Warner Bros. Interactive Ent. Inc.
• Disgaea 3: Absence of Detention - NIS America, Inc.
• Ninja Gaiden ∑ Plus - Tecmo Koei America Corporation
• Ridge Racer - Namco Bandai Games America Inc.
• Silent Hill: Book of Memories - Konami Digital Ent. America, Inc.
• Supremacy MMA: Unrestricted - 505 Games

UPDATE 2: Breathe easy, seems it was all a mix up. GameSpot just issued the following statement:

"The Last Guardian has not been cancelled by Sony as we incorrectly stated in an automated call to reservation customers.

"Because the game did not have a specific release date, GameStop made the decision to remove the game from our system. The Last Guardian will be reinstated for pre-order when a firm launch date is known."

UPDATE 1: Sony communications chief Patrick Seybold has told Kotaku that GameStop's assertion that The Last Guardian has been canceled "is not true".

ORIGINAL STORY: US games retailer GameStop has pulled M.I.A. PlayStation 3 exclusive The Last Guardian from its release schedule and informed customers who've placed a pre-order that the game has been canceled.

According to a Joystiq report, a number of customers have received an automated phone message from the store stating that "we've been notified by the vendor that The Last Guardian has been canceled" and offering a refund.

There is currently no listing for the title on GameStop's website, though both Amazon and BestBuy still offer the game for pre-order.

We've contacted both Sony and GameStop to find out exactly what's going on here and will update when we hear back.

Last month Eurogamer learned that creator Fumito Ueda had left developer Team Ico and was reportedly completing the game on a freelance basis. Soon after, news broke that executive producer Yoshifusa Hayama had also left the company.

Team Ico's follow-up to Shadow of the Colossus was first announced back in 2009, though precious little new information regarding the title has emerged since.