This week sees everyones favorite sponge making his Big Band Blowout debut, of course I refer to Mr Squarepants.  There will be 3 tracks from Nickelodeon cartoon made available this week, which is sure to fit right into that setlist between At The Gates and Battery!

Joining Spongebob this week will be another of GH:WT’s tracks, in the form of ‘Heartbreaker’ by Pat Benatar as slowly but surely the majority of Activision’s songs are finding their way into Harmonix game.  On top of that we will also get the timeless ‘Don’t Stop Beleiving’ by Journey and the theme tune to the TV show Rescue Me ‘C’mon, C’mon’ by the Von Bondies in addition to ‘Geraldine’ by Scottish rockers Glasvegas.

The Spongebob pack will be available for the cheap price of 240/$2.99 or 80/$0.99 each, whilst the remaining tracks will set you back the usual 160/$1.99 each when they are released on Xbox Live today and PSN on Thursday.

Full tracklisting with video links after the break.

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It seems the idea of ‘cloud computing’ has taken the gaming world by storm since the announcement of the OnLive gaming platform at the GDC last week and Sony are the latest to jump on the bandwagon.  SCEJ has trademarked ‘PSCloud‘ for many uses, one of which being:

‘ENTERTAINMENT SERVICES, NAMELY, PROVIDING AN ON-LINE VIDEO GAME THAT USERS MAY ACCESS THROUGH THE INTERNET’

Of course, like any good company they could be doing this to protect their own interests and stop another company taking the name, but I would not be surprised if we see at least a Steam like ‘cloud’ based service appearing for the PS3 in the near future, maybe leaving the door open for a rival to OnLive with the PS4?

The name Rock Band was not an instant choice for Harmonix after them and Activision went their separate ways.  In fact, as they recently revealed at GDC, it was not even on the original shortlist!  What was originally suggested was far funnier than that, including such gems as ‘Big Band Blowout’, ‘My Little Concert’ and ‘Metal Lords’!  All of which were (rightfully) dismissed for good reasons.  Here’s the full list:-

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Nothing like ratings boards to ruin surprises, and they have been on top form this last week with no less than 4 classic shooters being listed for release across XBLA & PSN.  The first to surface was the grandaddy of them all, the original Wolfenstein 3D from way back in 1992, which appeared on ESRB last week listed for both PS3 and Xbox 360.  If that was not enough, hot on the heels of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2′s announcement it seems that the original installment of the Call of Duty series could be coming soon if PEGI can be believed, who have the game listed and rated on both XBLA and PSN.

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Here’s a kid’s slide in an unnamed playground in Poland. As you can see, all who ride it are guaranteed a happy ending thanks to the mysterious… er… Jap’s eye that awaits them at the exit. The soundtrack to this video just adds to the awesomeness.

Here’s a picture of the offending attraction:

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Release dates and costs have been announced for 4 upcoming major chunks of DLC on the Xbox 360, the first being Fallout 3‘s ‘The Pitt’ which after being pulled due to some major bugs is now back live again for the princely sum of 800.  ‘The Pitt’ allows you to travel to Pittsburgh, now know as The Pitt, which managed to avoid the nuclear war only to have its population ravaged by disease, infection, mutation and slavery.  Whilst there you will discover a secret that will send shockwaves across the wastelands and decide the fate of the Pitts population.

Next out of the trap is Gears of War 2‘s ‘Snowblind Map Pack’ on March 31st, also costing 800.  Snowblind will introduce 4 new winter themed multiplayer maps to Epic’s blockbuster, ‘Grindyard’, ‘Under Hill’, ‘Courtyard’ and a frozen version of the original GoW favorite, ‘Fuel depot’ which will allow you to unlock the recently added achievements.

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Since I started reviewing games in a semi-professional manner I’ve avoided reading other reviews until I have written my own but in this case I’m happy I made an exception. I just read a review on a reputable online game site in which the author skimmed over the quality of books on offer and focussed on what they viewed as poor functionality and ultimately awarded this with a laughable score of 4/10. It’s at times like this, when I have the opportunity to offer an alternative view, that I’m most passionate about writing reviews.

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The results of the 2nd annual XBLA awards are in and it’s good news for The Behemoth’s mighty Castle Crashers which scooped 3 awards including ‘Game of the Year’ and ‘Best Original Game’.  Capcom’s Super Street Fighter II: Turbo HD Remix also picked up 3 awards including ‘Best Remake’ and ‘Best Graphics’.  The other winners on the night were Braid, A Kingdom for Keflings and Portal: Still Alive.

The XBLA awards are voted for by the community, with over 185,000 votes for the 9 categories in this years awards.

See the full results  and press release after the break.

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This weeks sees the long awaited release of Pearl Jam’s amazing debut album Ten as DLC for Rock Band, minus Alive which was included on the RB2 disc.  Featuring some of Pearl Jam’s biggest hits like, Jeremy, Alive and Even Flow, Ten has sold in excess of 12 million copies worldwide since its release in 1991.

The 11 tracks, including the secret track from the album Master/Slave, will be available as a single download for 1440/$17.99 or individually for the usual 160/$1.99 each when they release tomorrow via XBL and on Thursday on PSN.

Full tracklisting with video links after the break.

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It seems as if Sony is digging deep to increase the profitability of the PS3 with 2 new moves.  Firstly, they have ceased sales of the PS3 in South Korea in order to stop Japanese tourists taking a quick trip to SK and picking themselves a cheap PS3 up. Seems a bit over the top to be honest, as the PS3 is region free and so when they were released in the USA there was an influx of people who imported them to the UK, taking advantage of the very generous exchange rate at the time to get the console much cheaper than the UK retail price.  So regardless how hard they try, Sony will not be able to prevent this from happening by stopping selling the machine in certain countries, as the customer will just find the next cheapest source and move on to there and in addition to that they just lost the population of South Korea as far as potential user base goes.

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