The much anticipated release of Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City for the PC and for PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system is coming this spring – on March 30, 2010. For the first time, PlayStation 3 and PC players will have the opportunity to experience the last two thrilling chapters of the Grand Theft Auto IV saga together on one disc.
The two action packed episodes, The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony, will also be available for download via PlayStation®Network and Games for Windows®-LIVE on March 30, 2010.

In The Ballad of Gay Tony, players explore Liberty City’s high-end nightlife as Luis Lopez, struggling to balance the temptations of money and vice against loyalties to family and friends. The Lost and Damned is a dark trip through Liberty City’s seedy underbelly as outlaw biker, Johnny Klebitz, fights to keep his gang together as a rift in the gang’s leadership threatens to tear the brotherhood apart. Both episodes feature a slew of new vehicles and weapons, and each episode adds new activities including cage fighting, gang wars and BASE jumping.

Well I guess the saying patience is a virtue is true in this instance, but I wonder whether PS3 and PC owners even care. It’s like someone giving you there old toy once they’ve had their fun with it, but then again who can resist more Grand Theft Auto. Who knows when the sequel to GTA IV will be released, if you ask me Episodes from Liberty City was a long time coming to PS3 and PC owners. Not one developer or publisher out there can afford to make their games platform exclusive in this day and age, simply because no one is recession proof.

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In part one, we looked at the gameplay. This time I’ll be looking at features that will should help White Knight Chronicles stand out, which is a fair bit since  Europe and North America will be reciving the international edition of WKC. That means were in for some nice extra treats that shows you how much Level-5 appreciates JRPG fans in the west.

The nifty extras we shall be receiving are over 50 disc-based online quests which can be done on your own or with friends, voice chat so you can praise and insult your team members, and live talking where conversations will take place during your travels (just like those in Dragon Age, which means this will either be entertaining or annoying).

But the most exciting feature is the inclusion of the Georama. Fans of the Dark Cloud series will tell you this is one of the best aspects of the games and it’s so cool to see it come into WKC. This time, Instead of building a village to satisfy the non-player characters, you do so because a) you can show off to your friends and b) more importantly you can go on quests can get some unique equipment.

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White Knight Chronicles is the latest game from developers Level 5 and it’s the company’s first project for the PS3. Despite the PlayStation 3 being just under three years old, WKC will be the first major RPG developed for the console. But it couldn’t come from a better company, since Level 5 have a deserving reputation for producing amazing games. Part one will look at the gameplay aspects of WKC.

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As we only begin to catch our breaths after engaging in some mind blowing modern warfare, Treyarch are already hard at work preparing for the next Call of Duty release to follow the immense experience that was Modern Warfare 2. Although many will be disappointed by the absence of Infinity Ward in favour of CoD 3 and CoD: WaW developer, Treyarch, it is impossible not to get excited by the prospect of another Call of Duty game on the way, especially seeing as rumours suggest that we are saying goodbye to both World War II and the near future, and are saying hello to a new setting and war entirely.

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All your votes are in and counted. So who were the winners of the Game Hub Games of the Year Awards 2009? There are a few surprises amongst the obvious ones.  Fortunately for all the nominees, nobody got zero votes (somebody got one though). So here are the Top 3 for each of the 13 categories:

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Splinter Cell has become one of biggest and most successful of the more recent franchises.  Since the debut title in 2002 there have been 5 games so far and so when the guys at Ubisoft release a new one, it's worth a look to see what it's about and what we can expect.  With a back catalogue of quality Splinter Cell games, we're all waiting excitedly, and, to be honest, we're all waiting with quite high expectations as well. The 6th Splinter Cell game, Convictions, is due for release on 26th Feb for PC and Xbox 360.

Splinter Cell Conviction will feature a story that's more about Sam Fisher, his history and his character.  While investigating his daughter's death he discovers he's been betrayed by his former employer, the agency Third Echelon.  Off the grid and gone renegade you will be in a race against time to put down a terrorist plot and find justice and answers about your daughter.

Game play wise, there's a bunch of things to be getting excited about as Ubisoft turn on the action to accompany what sounds like a gripping thriller of a story.

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Just as Christmas approaches, Rockstar has gifted everyone with the unveiling gameplay trailer, of the highly anticipated Red Dead Redemption. For those of you who haven’t been following, a brief summary of the plot is as follows. 

John Marston troubled by his past is forced to kill or capture Bill Williams, for his family is in danger. Williams was a former associate of Marston, in his criminal days when he led a gang. 

Think of Red Dead Redemption as a Grand Theft Auto formula western. With just 4 months left until release, I can’t wait to see what further gameplay mechanics Rockstar has install for us.

If the trailers haven’t already wet your appetite for Red Dead Redemption, this latest gameplay trailer is sure to justify your decision. This is definitely shaping up to be a promising April release, be sure to watch this space as we progressively draw closer to release date.

It has been announced that Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment will be the worldwide publisher of the sequel to Batman: Arkham Asylum™, one of the year’s most highly reviewed and top-selling video game. The sequel is currently in development with Rocksteady Studios and is based on DC Comics’ core Batman property.

At this years Spike video game awards a teaser trailer of Arkham Asylums sequel debuted. Taking everyone by surprise, it was only 4 months ago that the first installment was released.

Rocksteady Studios seem to be wasting no time in announcing a sequel; they must be at a comfortable stage in development to shock the whole world with a teaser trailer.

Let’s just hope they don’t anxiously rush for a late 2010 release, as there’s a lot of recycled animations and models from the first game seen in the teaser trailer.

With the Joker and Two Face pretty much confirmed, the rest of the puzzle is yet to be revealed. Will the sequel be a sandbox Gotham city or will the city be in quarantine and consecutively explored? The fate of the franchise is in Rocksteady Studio’s hands, there are so many angles of the Batman universe yet to be explored.

There’s a lot of pressure on the developers heads right now after creating what is being called the best comic book video game ever. Just like many other Batman fans I can’t wait to see the result of this sequel.

“We are thrilled to build a global game franchise from Batman: Arkham Asylum, which is receiving an incredible response from gamers and fans of Batman around the world,” said Martin Tremblay President and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment.  “Rocksteady has taken Batman to a new level in the video game space and we are committed to delivering a sequel the fans will love.”

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Prince of Persia : The Forgotten Sands will be on the shelves in May 2010 and Ubisoft are setting the launch gears in motion with a teaser trailer above and some of the first concrete details about the game.

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands is the next chapter in the Sands of Time universe. Visiting his brother’s kingdom following his adventure in Azad, the Prince finds the royal palace under siege from an army bent on its destruction. When the decision is made to use the ancient power of the Sand in a desperate gamble to save the kingdom from total annihilation, the Prince will embark on an epic adventure in which he will learn to bear the mantle of true leadership, and discover that great power often comes with a great cost. Game features will include:

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Ok, so the new PS3 Video Delivery Service has been online in the UK for a couple of weeks now and the collection of titles is fattening up nicely so it’s about time we got stuck in.

First up I tested an SD version of Escape from LA (101 mins) starring Kurt Russell. The file size was 1570MB and my ‘20 Mbps’ broadband was running at its typically poor Friday night rate of around 10 Mbps. Wanting to test how good the film would play while it was downloading, I gave it a few minutes head-start, during which time it got up to 5%.

Fantastically, I managed to watch the whole film without it stopping once, the download itself finished with half an hour to go before the film finished. You can monitor the grey line (like a buffering bar on YouTube) ahead of the playtime when you press Select to see if the film is going to catch up the current download progress. The quality of the visuals and sound was surprisingly high considered it wasn’t the HD version and was more than a match for the PS3’s excellent DVD upscaling.

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Red Dead Redemption is the sequel to Rockstar Games proud successor Red Dead Revolver (Released on PS2 & Xbox). Red Dead Redemption will be available on Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, on April 27th 2010 in North America as well as April 30th 2010 internationally.

Red Dead Redemption recreates the American West at the turn of the 20th century: a violent and turbulent time of rapid growth and change. Players become the partially reformed outlaw John Marston; blackmailed by the government, his family threatened as he is forced to traverse the vast and unforgiving expanses of the Western frontier in search of members of his former gang.

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Medal of Honor will return in 2010 and for the first time in it's 10 year history will leave the WWII battleground in favour of a modern theatre of war, Afghanistan.

Trailing behind similar games in it's genre in recent years (especially Call of Duty), the Medal of Honor series is hoping to reinvigorate itself by releasing a “best in class” single player campaign as well as world class multiplayer.

The single player campaign will follow the operations of today's elite forces, referencing the will, mindset and professionalism required by today's highest calibre soldiers.  Known as a Tier 1 Operator, you will take on missions no one else can handle under the direct control of the National Command Authority.  The development team has been working closely with US Special forces at all stages of the game's construction to ensure maximum realism and will be basing as much of the game as possible on real events.

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Reign of Augustus, the official expansion pack for PC strategy game Grand Ages: Rome will be released in January 2010.  Normally PC game news doesn't figure particularly highly on my gaming radar due to the lack of a rig decent enough to play anything remotely new but flicking through the features of this game and what the expansion pack brings to the party really makes me miss playing RTS games.  I have sunk more hours in to Age of Kings and the Age of Conquerers expansion than probably any other game and kicked off my online-gaming career in ernest.

This is one of the reasons I'm most exciting about the potential of Cloud Gaming. With a bit of luck it will bring back to the masses the ability to play new release PC games on old machines and, for me personally, bring back new release RTS games as a valid persuit.

Failing that a Mouse and Keyboard set up for console RTS games would almost certainly find it's way into my gaming set up.  Finding console based RTS games less than fulfilling, even the most well adapted title doesn't feel or play comfortable enough for any serious time spent in-game.

So here's the latest on Reign of Augustus, Grand Ages: Rome, the game and expansion that has got me excited about RTS games again and makes me seriously consider investing money in a rig that will get me back into the genre.

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Well, it took more than a while but UK PS3 owners can now rent and buy films over the PlayStation Store by downloading them straight to their hard-drives.

The new part of the store launched at a Soho London party this week with a live performance from Little Boots and a set from radio 1 DJ Annie Mac in what essentially felt like a massive house party complete with crazy decorations similar to the zany indoor locations seen between programmes on Dave. The free bar went some way to keep everyone in the party mood too. In addition to the DJ rooms there’re several smaller ones with a few demo screens displaying the new store facilities, and taster screens of The Watchmen and Wolverine. Free booze aside, we at Game Hub were on hand to grab all the important facts for the launch of this long awaited service. So here’s our run-down and early impressions.

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