You can't see it any of these screen shots, but the star of God of War is pretty good with a spear and shield, one of the angry Spartan's newest tricks in his new PSP adventure.

God of War: Ghost of Sparta is the follow-up to God of War: Chains of Olympus, a PSP game that somewhat remarkably captured the intense action and epic story of Kratos' struggle against the gods. Developer Ready At Dawn has upped the ante in the PSP sequel, set after the original God of War, with bigger bosses, like the massive Scylla, supposedly bigger in scale than anything Chains of Olympus could muster.

While Kratos still has his trademark chain blades, which I used to dispatch the Scylla in a multi-stage boss battle, he also has a new Spartan shield and spear at his disposal. The shield, of course, can block incoming attacks while Kratos has it raised. It also slows his walking speed, so you may want to use it sparingly. The shield can also reflect projectiles, a trick that will be employed in solving some of the game's puzzles.

The spear can be used as a stabbing weapon, or it can be charged and thrown (in energy form) at foes at a distance.

Kratos will also pick up new weapons and artifacts throughout his journey. In the demo I played, he found an Eye of Atlantis. A tap of the PSPgo's crosspad to the right and the Eye would fire a bolt of energy. That bolt could be aimed while moving around, making it easier to take out a group of foes.

In addition to a new arsenal, Kratos has a new set of attacks dubbed "Combat Rush." It'll let Kratos pummel his foes to the ground and throw them around. All of these varied combat moves have been well implemented onto the PSP's smaller button count, with weapon switching and spell casting performed on the crosspad.

God of War: Ghost of Sparta looks visually improved over its predecessor. In the waterlogged level I played, rain slicked across the floors of a ship and rooms filled with enemies, all of which animated smoothly.

In short, if you like God of War and loved the PSP take on the series, Ready At Dawn is giving you more of what you want. It looks sharp, plays well and adds some new tricks to the franchise. Plus, it may skip the tiresome harpy riding from God of War III! That's a bonus!

God of War: Ghost of Sparta will hit the PSP and PSPgo this fall.

While we've seen pictures of the Nintendo 3DS in black, red and blue, there are two other colours on display on E3's showroom floor: a garish shade of orange, and a garish shade of purple.

They look more like the kind of colours Sony would use on a Japan-exclusive PSP, but then seeing as these are just display units - with a final, retail colour range expected to be both smaller and more basic - I suppose they can get away with it!

[Image credits: Famitsu & Randorn]

It's tough to beat the wow factor of the dizzying dictionary of usable words in last year's Scribblenauts for the DS. This year's followup: Super Scribblenauts, doesn't try to outdo that as much as perfect other aspects of the game.

For starters, the controls. A loud, frequent request of Scribblenauts devotees, Maxwell gets D-pad controls, and the DS' stylus plus the D-pad moves the screen's camera. He also won't take off at a dead run to a stray touch on the screen, because A) that control has been disabled and B) developer Fifth Cell have slowed him down.

"Some of the improvements were things that we knew were in the last game and had no time to fix, some of it came from feedback from the community," Fifth Cell's Brett Caird told me in my 15 minutes with Super Scribblenauts.

Adjectives are the big upgrade, allowing Maxwell to summon even more creative items, animals and personalities to help him solve the puzzles. Modifying something with an adjective requires you either to use the adjective when it is summoned or, after it's summoned, creating a potion that imbues it with that modification. (A winged potion gave my astronaut a set on his back). Yes, you can create an Atomic Ninja. You probably won't want to. Mine stood around pinging off radiation until he exploded, annihilating everything on the screen.

A more sensible application was demonstrated in an easy level - Maxwell standing at the back of a very long line, needing to create a distraction for everyone standing in it - in this case gifts that would appeal to each one. The first one I approached was a delivery person (as described by the game's identify tool.) What would she want? Stamps? A box? A dog whistle? Caird suggested that "postal" plus anything would do the trick.

I gave her a set of scales - which looked like traditional desk-ornament balance scales but because they were "postal," she was happy and got out of the way. The next character was a soldier. I could have put a military adjective on something (military binoculars?) but tried giving him night vision goggles instead.

Caird said the game features 120 levels - 100 of them the puzzle variety, 20 of them the platform-style action levels that he vowed are much harder than in the original. Caird said they wanted to get the game away from summoning God/T-Rex/Cthulhu to get out of every jam. The modifiers are a nice touch but what I saw was just as simple in execution.

There's nothing to suggest it's not as good or better than the first game. Given more time (it's amazing how put-on-the-spot you are trying to think of a gift for a soldier) I'm sure I could have come up with some zany objects to solve the level and serve the Scribblenauts spirit. Ultimately, this looks like a sequel delivering more levels and better controls. To be fair, it does have a tough act to follow when it arrives in October.

Initial estimates had the amount of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico at 25,000 barrels a day. This clip, made using the same engine that powers many of today's biggest games, shows how much oil that really is.

And that's only 25,000. When you consider that, a few months later, the best guess is that the total is at least twice that amount, things get really scary.

[via Gizmodo]

Real-world size comparison, sent in by early-bird purchaser DigitalHero. Maybe we should call it the "Xbox 360 Shiny" instead?

Rage to me feels like one of those sneaky games. Like Arkham Asylum, or Red Dead, where you're mildly interested in it before it comes out, then when it's out, it blows you away.

I've got nothing to base that on, of course! It's just a feeling, based on that fact this is id and the prospect it looks like a more polished Fallout. With dune buggy racing.

Here's the E3 trailer for the Scott Pilgrim game. It just...yeah. It looks like the kind of game you only dream about.

The "Red Ring Of Death", the symbol of a catastrophic system failure that has become an icon of the 360's lifetime, will soon be no more, as the new model of the console won't display a ring of red lights.

Deciding to take the opportunity for a clean break, Microsoft has not included any red lights in the console's "ring of light", only green ones, so if something goes wrong this time around, you'll get a ...green ring of death. Which is surely more calming! red dot of death (see below).

The Red Ring - or RRoD - had become less common in recent years as Microsoft gradually improved the quality of the Xbox 360, but it was still an issue in the general consciousness, so it's understandable the company would want to clean the slate. Let's just hope the new console has the reliability to really put the RRoD to bed.

UPDATE - According to Microsoft's support team, while the console won't display a "red ring" in times of hardware failure, it will still clearly indicate an error by switching its power indicator (the light in the centre of the ring) from green to red. So we'll get a red...dot of death instead. RDoT. It has a certain ring about it, no?

Xbox 360 slim 17% smaller than original, incapable of RROD-ing [Joystiq]
E3 2010: No More Three Red Lights [IGN]

flOw and Flower developer thatgamecompany is making something new, Journey, a game that's about singing, sand, hiking, cloth, surfing, astronauts and feeling small. And, in a radical departure for the team, it uses two whole buttons.

Journey is a multiplayer online adventure for the PlayStation 3 that aims to explore the emotional palette that its peers don't, said thatgamecompany game designer Jenova Chen. He says he was inspired by a player's feeling of empowerment, both in real life and in video games. In the real world, human beings are capable of knowing so much and being in constant communication, thanks to technology. In video games, players feel godlike in the way that they wield power, whether by firing a rocket launcher or the invulnerability of playing as a virtual character.

It was further inspired by the works of Joseph Campbell and a lunch with astronaut Charles F. Bolden, Jr. Bolden, says Chen, relayed stories to the game designer about the spiritual awakenings of some of his Space Shuttle colleagues—previously "hardcore atheists"—after having spent some time on the moon, seeing Earth from such a great distance.

Chen called it "awe towards the unknown."

There are many unknowns in Journey. Chen wouldn't tell us much about the game's story or ultimate goal, but he did tell us about its key mechanics. Journey is a game about exploring a world covered with and flowing with sand. Players, as the spindly character wearing a red robe, can walk, run and jump around the world. They can "surf" down sand dunes, ride waves of rippling sand and even draw sketches in it with their feet. Chen confirms that people have already drawn penises in Journey's sand.

Journey, Chen says, is as much a virtual hike as it is a story-driven adventure. It's a story told without language, through symbols and secrets and glyphs. Those symbols can be seen on stone pillars and banners scattered throughout the world, and some will be delivered by other entities.

The PlayStation 3 game's other big gameplay system is cloth. The player's robes flow naturally in the wind, as do banners, flags and floating strips of fabric scattered throughout the world. Some are puzzles, some are clues.

In one sequence, we watched Chen jump up onto a trio of long ribbons flapping in the wind. They acted as platforming devices, turning from white cloth to red, covered in glyphs, when the player stepped on them. After walking across all three, a stream of fabric poured out of a rocky relic, forming a bridge.

In another sequence, Chen guided the player behind a series of sandy waterfalls, finding a huge banner, covered in glyphs. How all these items will inform the player is something of a mystery.

Near the end of the demo, in an area that wasn't so sandy and featured a blue sky, we ran into one of Journey's helpers. It was a white statue that emitted chunky, floating glyphs made of light. Those glyphs then redecorated the player's robe with a new design. Chen didn't clearly explain what this meant, saying it could be related to aging, your score, a status symbol or some type of new ability.

One ability that we haven't addressed is the singing. It will help the player collect strips of fabric that are nearby and will "harmonize with other cloth players in the world," Chen says.

Journey's journey is one toward a mountain. It's a brightly lit goal far in the distance that you'll reach by observing and figuring out surfaces. You'll ride sand and fly in getting to the mountain, Chen says, with the game's enemies consisting of "obstacles that are proposed by nature."

Along the way, you'll see side attractions, run into fellow hikers in the world of Journey and solve puzzles together. You won't verbally communicate with them. The game can be both competitive and cooperative, Chen says, if players choose to play it that way. There's an end goal to Journey, it's persistent and the hidden mysteries of the world encourage multiple playthroughs.

Chen described Journey as many things, including a "very good gallery or museum" and a way to form a "genuine connection" with other players.

While it sounds like Journey is still in the process of figuring itself out, in some ways, the game isn't due until (hopefully) next year.

Remember that video of the huge stampede of people we posted earlier today? The one showing all of those folks running to get to Nintendo's booth to check out Nintendo's 3D portable? They never stood a chance!

Why?

Because the line already wrapped entirely around Nintendo's booth before the floor was open. And it was a line made up almost entirely of other developers. Developers from Microsoft, Sony, THQ, Activision, EA. You name it, they were there.