Bizarre Creations, the high-octane team behind racers Project Gotham Racing and the recently released Blur, are at the helm of James Bond 007: Blood Stone, and — from the looks of the game’s brand new reveal trailer — are infusing it with as many explosive boat and car chases as an HD-gen console can process.

Daniel Craig will be reprising his role as the titular spy, with Judi Dench returning as series staple M, and soul songstress Joss Stone debuting as the game’s fittingly named Bond girl. Bond screenwriter Bruce Feirstein (Tomorrow Never Dies, The World is Not Enough) will be penning an original story for the game.

“James Bond 007: Blood Stone captures the cinematic intensity of a Bond film by immersing players in an intriguing conspiracy that will require them to think and act like James Bond,” said David Pokress, Activision’s Head of Marketing for Licensed Properties in the announcement. “In addition, the game will feature a diverse array of multi-player modes and debut strategic objective-based gameplay that will allow Xbox 360, PS3 and PC players to battle as teams of spies and mercenaries through authentic Bond locales.”

After producing an arcade-based soccer game last year with Academy of Champions, Ubisoft is going serious with this year’s soccer game, Pure Futbol. The announcement touts dynamic camera angles and sound, moving the experience away from the undynamic camera angles that you usually see on soccer broadcasts. True soccer lovers need not concern, since Ubisoft is promising 230 selected players, 17 teams up, and 17 soccer legends when the game brings out on the PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 in May. You are able to see the first images of the game in the Pure Futbol screenshot picture gallery.

61 is the new level cap
44 new Missions (both story and side missions)
20 pages of new dialogue for DLC characters
10 new Achievements
3 new drivable vehicles (and you can drive them in towns)
2 times the size of The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned

I may not be all that familiar with Borderlands, but I know as far as DLC goes, this is a pretty sweet deal. By knocking up the level cap and adjusting the world to have a new level of rarity for weapons (Pearlescent), the endgame in Borderlands gets a whole lot longer – and even lower-level characters can cash in on it too, because there’s nothing to stop you from venturing out to the new area added by Secret Armory.

The new area is called the Parched Fathoms, a dry-lake-turned-desert with a lone outpost called T-Bone Junction situated toward the middle of the area. In this new town setting players encounter their old friend, Scooter, who has blueprints for new vehicles that you have to find components for. Moxxi and Athena also return to the cast for a lot of new dialogue, and a slew of new enemies crop up almost as a soon as you set foot outside of T-Bone Junction.

During my guided demo with Lead Designer Paul Hellquist and Vice President of Martketing Steve Gibson, I first watched as each got his ass handed to him first by Lance Assassins (which are pretty much what they sound like), Lance Probes (little robots that spout propaganda and shoot your vehicle to pieces), then by Lance Rocket Troopers (think Boba Fett). It was particularly painful to watch all of this because Borderlands is meant to be a multiplayer experience and I just know I could’ve shot off a few of the Rocket Troopers and bought Gibson time to get back in the dune buggy and run over a probe or two. Sadly, technical difficulties kept me out of that first fray.

I got my chance later, though, when Hellquist skipped ahead toward what I take to be the end of the new story section. I won’t spoil any of it for you, but there were midgets riding Skags with some incredibly clever A.I. – and I wound up leading them, plus a couple of fire-breathing Skags into a boss fight with mechs and a rocket-pack-sporting villain. It was a real treat to watch the three different A.I. factions duke it out amongst themselves while I hid in a corner with my ammo-less rocket launcher and watched. Needless to say, though, I died horribly and alone when one of the factions remembered it was me they wanted to kill in the first place.

Even so, I got a good grasp of some new combat tweaks developer Gearbox has worked into Secret Armory. Aside from the Rocket Troopers that add a whole new dimension to combat (because they can go above or below you while shooting), new A.I. for enemies has created a different battle dynamic in encounters. For example, the Skag Riders are two independent A.I. units working together – the Skag will run at you while the midget shoots from his back – and when you kill one, the other breaks off and keeps attacking you with a new set of tactics. Hellquist also told me that they’ve added a raid boss-style enemy called Crawmerax in the game that teams of four can seek out and bring down together for a chance at Pearlescent weapon drop.

The more I see of Borderlands, the more I’m convinced it’s going to get the World of Warcraft experience onto consoles in the best way possible. Assuming The Secret Armory of General Knoxx doesn’t somehow sabotage the amazing multiplayer introduced in the base game, this is one DLC pack you won’t want to pass up.

Capcom’s highly anticipated sci-fi shoot-em-up Lost Planet 2 found an official release date at Microsoft’s X10 media event in San Francisco, slated to hit store shelves on May 18th, 2010 for the PC, Playstation 3, and Xbox 360.

Gamers have already found themselves equally thrilled and confused with the follow-up to action-packed 2007 title, especially since Capcom let slip that Gears of War’s Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago would be making cameo appearances. Also appearing is legendary Resident Evil 5 mastermind Albert Wesker, who will be bringing his own unique brand of sunglasses-themed mayhem to the Akrids.

Thanks to a apparently leaked video appearing on French video game site Playscope, details of a planned downloadable content pack for Dante’s Inferno have emerged, revealing cooperative multiplayer and customizable content creation for the game, set for release on April 29. According to senior producer Hans ten Cate in the video, “you can custom create trials adding waves of enemies from the core game as well as enemies like The Summoner which are exclusive to the Trials of St. Lucia.” These levels will then exist on the game’s servers and will be able to be shared with other players who can rate and rank the creations.

The co-op play allows players to play as Dante or St. Lucia. So…who is St. Lucia? “St. Lucia of Syracuse is a third century Christian martyr who has her eyes plucked out because she refuses to marry her pagan suitor,” says Jonathan Knight, the executive producer on the game. “She’s mentioned in The Divine Comedy a couple of times, including at the beginning of Inferno and she’s kind of Dante’s guardian angel.”

Siliconera reports today that a Tales of Vesperia anime movie called The First Strike is being bundled with downloadable content in Blu-Ray, DVD, and UMD form for a May 28 release. We asked Namco Bandai about a possible US release and were told that currently the company has no plans to bring the PlayStation 3 port stateside.

“As for First Strike, it is possible that an anime publisher in the US may pick up the license as there have been Tales anime releases in the US,” a Namco Bandai America publicist told GamePro, “but NBGA have no details regarding this issue at the moment.”

Namco Bandai previously released a PS3 port of the 2007 JRPG Eternal Sonata in the US which included new story content and playable characters. Similarly, the PS3 Tales of Vesperia features new content and a new character named Patty Fleur.

The First Strike anime serves as a prequel of the game’s story, covering the years main character Yuri Lowell spent as a knight. Siliconera warns hardcore fans who want to import the anime that “PSP/PS3 games are region free, but not Blu-ray discs or UMD movies. You’ll need a Japanese PS3 or PSP to play these.”

I don’t think I’m alone when I say that it felt like Resident Evil’s “pure horror” roots were ripped out of Resident Evil 5. To be fair, the game was a lot of fun and the series’ dramatic transformation into a more Gears of War-style cooperative action shooter worked for the most part. But as a fan of horror movies and Resident Evil’s survival-horror origins, I felt oddly betrayed by the game’s emphasis on explosions over suspense. When I sat down to play the first of the two new episodes coming soon for Resident Evil 5, titled Lost in Nightmares, Capcom explained that the return to horror in the episode is a direct response to fans’ reactions to RE5’s departure from the genre.

“A lot of fans thought Resident Evil 5 was too much action and not enough survival horror,” admits Capcom’s product marketing manager Matt Dahlgren. “And Lost in Nightmares (the first new episode available) is our response to that. After the original game shipped, we took a lot of fan feedback into account before creating the new episodes. There are two main ways people play Resident Evil: there’s the slow and suspenseful way, which is the more traditional Resident Evil experience, and there’s the more action-packed experience, which was featured in Resident Evil 5.”

My time with Lost in Nightmares kicked off in the middle of the episode, where Jill Valentine and Chris Redfield stormed the sinister-looking mansion of Umbrella CEO Ozwell E. Spencer, a decrepit, but evil old man in a wheelchair. You may remember Spencer and his creepy mansion from Resident Evil 5 where they were shown briefly in a cutscene. It’s here that Jill and Chris have a particularly memorable encounter with Resident Evil antagonist Albert Wesker. Lost in Nightmares will allow you to play that previously non-playable scenario and everything leading up to the fight with Wesker.

Playing as Chris with Jill by my side, we worked our way up the mansion, starting with the cellar, which turned out to be infested with rats, rotting corpses and hunchbacked killers wielding massive anchors. The hunchbacks, the main villains in this scene, proved to be lumbering but extremely powerful enemies that were harder to slay than the chainsaw wielding freaks from Resident Evil 5. The first time he leapt out of the cellar’s shadows, he instantly killed me and my partner with a single devastating blow.

Something that I noticed right away while playing Resident Evil 5: Lost in Nightmares was the overwhelming sense of claustrophobia I got due to the narrow, dimly lit hallways of the mansion’s basement. The cramped nature of the cellar combined with the scarcity of ammunition available convinced me that this episode is definitely more “horror” than RE5 — I genuinely felt like I was running through a haunted house from a cheesy, old horror film. And that’s a good thing. I only got to play ten minutes of Lost in Nightmares, but the full episode will take you about two hours to complete.

Lost in Nightmares will be available for download on February 17, 2010 on Xbox 360 and February 18, 2010 on PS3. Costume packs will also be available at that time, and if you can wait a bit longer you can get Lost in Nightmares plus the second new episode, Desperate Escape, on March 9, 2010 when they’ll be packaged together with the full game for retail in the Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition.

The Mass Effect universe is vast and complex, and to fully immerse yourself in the sequel, releasing January 26, it’s important that you have a firm grasp on the fundamentals. You need to know which races hate each other, which characters you might have stumbled upon before, and who did what to whom in all of the currently available fiction. What follows is a quick primer to get you up to speed on the essentials so you’re prepared for the bulk of what Mass Effect 2 will throw at you. It’s by no means an encyclopedic resource on the lore of the franchise, but it should help demystify some of the complexities you’ll face.

Spoiler Alert: If you’ve not played the first game through to completion, but are intending to do so before playing the sequel, you may want to approach what follows with caution.

Location The Citadel

The Citadel is a massive space station constructed over 50 millennia ago in the heart of the Serpent Nebula. The Citadel serves as the center of the galactic community and acts as its political, cultural, and financial capital. It is also the seat of the Citadel Council, the primary governing body in the galaxy. At the end of the first game it came under attack from the Reaper known as Sovereign, and any reverence toward Commander Shepard in Mass Effect 2 is due to his efforts to save it. There are challenges associated with the location in the new game however, as human efforts to help rebuild after the crisis have been seen as politically motivated, and have resulted in anti-human sentiments among many alien races.

Race :  The Protheans

An extinct alien race that disappeared 50,000 years prior to the events of the first Mass Effect. They were the only known species to achieve intergalactic spaceflight of their time, and it is widely (and incorrectly) believed that the protheans constructed the Citadel and the network of mass relays that allow space travel across vast distances. Humans were introduced to the galactic community after discovering prothean technology on Mars, and were subsequently introduced to the “element zero” resource that, when subjected to an electrical current, releases dark energy that can be formed into a “mass effect field” – something that affects the mass of anything within it. Mass effects are used to generate artificial gravity, create super-tough alloys for armor and spacecraft construction, and to build engines that can propel space craft at speeds faster than light.

Race : The Reapers

Revered as gods and referred to as “the old machines” by the geth, the reapers (which is the name given to them by the protheans, it is not their actual name) are an advanced race of vast synthetic creatures (they’re like gigantic, scary Lovecraftian space monsters) that reside in an unexplored region of the galaxy known as dark space. The reapers hibernate for 50,000 years at a time before returning to harvest all sentient life from the galaxy. They do this by manipulating developing sentient species with the technology they have left behind as a form of trap; notably the Citadel and the mass relay network that affords intergalactic travel. By dictating the technological development of the galaxy, they are able to “impose order on the chaos of organic evolution.” The story of the first game was essentially that of the reaper vanguard referred to as Sovereign and its attempts to signal its brethren and usher in the next reaper invasion.

Character : The Illusive Man

First introduced in the novel Mass Effect: Ascension, the Illusive Man (voiced by Martin Sheen) is the leader of Cerberus – a rogue, pro-human group considered by many to be a terrorist organization. The group’s core belief is that humans deserve a much larger role in the galactic community and that the Alliance is prevented from making the necessary moves to assert more control over other Citadel races by mindless bureaucracy. The Illusive Man states that Cerberus’ goal is for humanity to take its “rightful” place ruling over all other species. His justification is that “if humanity is to survive, sacrifices must be made for the greater good. The Alliance doesn’t understand this. Cerberus does.”

Over the course of the story in the original Mass Effect, Shepard discovered that Cerberus had conducted horrific experiments on a variety of alien creatures in order to create “super soldiers.” These included experiments on rachni and thorian creepers, and destroying a colonial settlement by turning the inhabitants into husks (the lumbering zombie-like captives that the geth leave behind in the wake of their attacks.)

Race : The Krogan

The krogan are a species of militaristic reptilians that serve, essentially, as the “Klingon” style race of the Mass Effect universe. Their history is an important part of the overall mythology, but in Mass Effect 2 it’s helpful to know their recent plight, as their fate is intertwined with that of both the salarians and the turians.

After being used very effectively by the salarians to bring an end to the Rachni Wars (an event often referenced in both games) the krogan were free to spread their influence beyond the harsh conditions of their home world of Tuchanka. Outside of the nuclear winter and tough environment on their own planet, the krogan swelled in number and began to settle on other worlds by forcibly removing resident Citadel races. Fearing that their numbers would swell to uncontrollable levels, the turians partnered with the salarians to engineer and unleash a bio-weapon that made it almost impossible for the krogan to reproduce. The weapon, known as the genophage limited the birth rate among krogan to just one out of every 1,000 offspring.

Race : The Salarians

A race of fast-talking, fast-thinking, and technologically advanced amphibians, the salarians were the second race to join the citadel council, and are an important part of the Mass Effect mythology for both their political dominance, and their role in engineering the genophage to control the krogan race.

Race : The Batarians

If you didn’t download the “Bring Down the Sky” content for Mass Effect, chances are you’ve never seen them before. They were mentioned in a few planetary scans during the main game, but it wasn’t until the DLC that they were introduced properly into the canon. The batarians are a race of four-eyed humanoids that are generally considered to be bad news. They are invariably associated with pirate activities, slavery, and drug-running. Needless to say, they’re up to no good throughout the events of Mass Effect 2.

Race : The Asari

Arguably the most powerful race in the galaxy, the asari were the first beings after the protheans to achieve interstellar flight, and the first to inhabit the Citadel. The asari is an all female species known for their unique physiology (which allows them to mate with any gender of any species,) millennia-long lifespan, and biotic ability. Reminder: Biotics are Mass Effect’s analog to the “Force” in Star Wars.

Race : The Turians

Respected for their disciplined culture, the avian turians were invited to join the Citadel council as a reward for their role in defeating the hostile krogan by partnering with the salarians to unleash the genophage. There is considerable animosity between humans and turians, though for many players the turian C-Sec (Citadel Security) officer Garrus Vakarian (pictured) was one of their favorite companions in the original Mass Effect.

Race : The Quarians

A nomadic race of technologically advanced humanoids, the quarians were responsible for the construction of the geth, and have consequently been exiled from their homeworld and now live aboard a migrant fleet that they refer to as the “flotilla.” Needless to say, they’re pretty sensitive when it comes to the geth, and any associated technology. Because of their space-faring existence, the quarians’ immune systems have deteriorated over the past 300 years due to the sterile environment in which they live. As a result quarians live their lives in hermetically sealed environment suits and hide their faces behind visors. They are able to remove these masks, but rarely do so.

Character : Miranda Lawson

Lawson was first introduced in the iPhone game Mass Effect: Galaxy as an informant assisting Alliance Marine Jacob Taylor. Currently a Cerberus operative, she is supervising the 4 billion credit Lazarus Project which is designed to bring Commander Shepard back from the dead. Lawson is voiced by, and modeled upon actress Yvonne Strahovski, who stars as Sarah Lawson in the NBC show Chuck.

Race : The Geth

Constructed by the quarians as laborers and soldiers, the geth are a network of artificial intelligences that ultimately rebelled against their masters and attempted to exterminate them. In a word, they’re Mass Effect’s cylons. As a consequence of the geth uprising, artificial intelligence is strongly regulated in the Mass Effect universe – something that’s important to remember when you first board the Normandy SR2 in Mass Effect 2.

In the first game, rogue turian Saren Arterius commanded an army of geth in an attempt to overrun the Citadel with the assistance of the reaper known as Sovereign. Ultimately their goal was to open a “conduit” to dark space and unleash their “gods” the Reapers.

Race : The Collectors

The bug-like Collectors are the primary bad guys in Mass Effect 2, but this isn’t the first time they’ve been introduced into the franchise. First seen in the Drew Karpyshyn’s second novel, Mass Effect Ascension, they are regarded by many in Citadel space as a myth. Confirmed sightings have revealed them to be highly advanced, and known for strange trade requests. They share their advanced technology in exchange for unusual biological samples – such as “pure” quarians, or human children. The Collectors are known to live beyond the Omega 4 relay, and all expedition parties to locate their homeworld failed to return.

Character : Jacob Taylor

Jacob Taylor is the first character to join Shepard’s squad in Mass Effect 2, and is a human biotic that formerly served as an Alliance Marine. Taylor was first introduced to the Mass Effect canon as the main protagonist in the iPhone game Mass Effect: Galaxy. In that game, he was first seen on vacation aboard a passenger liner before it was attacked by batarian terrorists. After the events of Galaxy he was recruited by Miranda Lawson to join Cerberus.

Capcom introduced a new character and some more info on its upcoming Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition this morning with some screenshots and a press release.

Excella Gionne will join the lineup of playable characters in the Mercenaries Reunion mode. Note the fashionable wrap dress and high-heels paired with the syringe.

Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition is a repackaging of all the Resident Evil 5 downloadable content plus some new episodic campaign gameplay. Episode two, “Desperate Escape,” features Josh Stone and Jill Valentine as playable characters out to assist Chris Redfield and Sheva Alomar’s mission. We don’t know much mroe about this new episode besides a quick bit of info from today’s press release that tells us Josh can “elbow drop injured Majini.”

Interestingly enough, Gold Edition on PlayStation 3 is compatible with Sony’s new motion controller and was originally going to hit shelves in Japan right around the spring 2010 release date for the new controller. However, as of yesterday, Sony’s pushed back the motion controller release to fall 2010.

We’ve asked Capcom if that means Gold Edition will be delayed as well and haven’t heard back at time of press.

UPDATE: Capcom got back to us and said that the delay of the motion controller will have no impact on the Gold Edition March 9 release date. Furthermore, “Capcom has not announced any compatibility between Sony’s motion controller and Resident Evil 5 in North America.”

Longtime Square Enix composer Masashi Hamauzu is leaving the company after a 15 year career, Square Enix Music Online reports.

Square Enix seems to be having a hard time hanging onto composers for the Final Fantasy series. Famed series composer Nobuo Uematsu left the company in 2004 after having passed the torch to Hamauzu and Junya Nakano for FFX and to Hitoshi Sakimoto for FFXII. Sakimoto actually composed the FFXII score as a freelancer, having left Square Enix in 2004. Nakano left in 2009.

Square Enix Music Online goes on to say that Hamauzu isn’t the only composer leaving the company. “Further departures from the remaining four composer team[s]” are expected in the coming months.

We’ve contacted Square Enix to request confirmation and will update this story with any information they may have for us.

The official Final Fantasy XIII soundtrack goes on sale in Japan January 27. The game comes out in the US March 9.