Relive key moments of the Harry Potter films as Harry, Hermoine, or Ron, or even scan in your own face to play as yourself. Gamers will be able to cast spells using gestures and magic words, partake in quidditch matches, and play a few minigames.

This game is definitely for grade schoolers – how creepy would it be for a 45 year old man to scan his face in and put it on a pre-teen or teenaged wizard? (shudder)

Harry Potter for Kinect will be coming out this Fall 2012.

Enjoy the good Doctor’s latest adventure, when he and River Song to save the future before time is undone in Doctor Who: The Eternity Clock, which is being released for PC, PlayStation 3 and Vita.

The news for the week:

• DICE has Frostbite-powered titles for 2013 that “will require a 64-bit OS”
• Actors confirm return to recording booth for Mass Effect 3
• CD Projekt RED: The truth is DRM does not work
• Potential $1 billion suit against EA by former student-athletes moves forward

All that and Reader Feedback. This week’s Question of the Week, “Have you ever wanted a game but didn’t buy it due to DRM?”

Listen in on the player below, download it directly here, or subscribe to iTunes!

Note: If this podcast title image and title seem familiar, you’d be right.

Croshaw reviews the sniper game Sniper Elite V2, and sort of likes it, but gets bored of all the Jerry brains splattering the walls.

GameStooge will be posting a review of it, too. Stay tuned.

This June, Forza Motorsport 4 will have its biggest DLC yet, adding not 10 but 30 new cars – all Porsches. That, and 20 tracks.

Let us know if you love sexy Porsche cars.

Return to the Sulaco as you face off against those grimy, acid-blooded Xenomorphs once again in Aliens: Colonial Marines.

Ubisoft has revealed a gameplay video showing off Far Cry 3‘s amazing fire effects as a house burns to the ground. Check it out.

Perhaps the most obvious is the new interface, which takes a lot of getting used to for veterans, and may seem overwhelming to new players. However, the game attempts to make the interface more graphic, rather than a jumble of numbers to assault the eyes.

For example, the team home screen shows all of the relevant data on a single screen; in OOTP12, the player had to scroll down to see information like the vs. L and vs. R lineups that had been set up. The minor league screen shows who is ready to be promoted and what areas they improved in in a more visual way. In OOTP12, one had to hunt through menus to get that data.

Even something so innocuous like the Player History tab has been revamped to make clear what the player accomplished and when that player was on the leaderboards. A frustrating bug loses all of a player’s transactions before that date, however, if you imported the game from OOTP12.

The other major change was the implementation of real-time simulation, where other games would be simmed as you manage a game, lending a realistic feel to it as you see real-time updates of other games in progress. It’s even possible to have games simming while not managing, instead having it run while checking stats, updating rosters, negotiating trades, and so on.

The game also takes a page from Championship Manager and tries to add a more roleplaying aspect by having your GM deal with player personalities in the Storyline Mode. Unfortunately, the additional layer to the game just adds frustration where players in the prime of their career will threaten to retire if you don’t trade them. Player and team slumps had already naturally been a part of the regular game as well. It’s an interesting attempt, but half-baked at this time. Fortunately, the Storyline Mode can be turned off as a feature.

More useful is the ability to mold a player in the minor leagues, in which very young players have ratings and a suggested position, but can be instructed to focus on developing into a more specific kind of player. For example, a player might be developed into a starting pitcher or a defensive centerfielder, though that kind of radical decision is far more rare than just deciding whether you want that pitcher to develop into a starter or a closer.

The rest of the major improvements are under the hood. For example, player career arcs and simulation are a little more realistic where you won’t have blatantly bizarre results such as a .340/50 HR hitter who strikes out 200 times, or a player who hits .220 but has 40 doubles out of 80 hits. The game also fixes the Rule V bug where players didn’t revert to their original teams when dropped by their new team.

As for the AI, it is still a mixed bag. While trading seems to be improved, it’s still possible to “game” the system and get some unrealistic concessions. Players, on the other hand, are a little less gullible in contract signing.

As far as online play, OOTP13 is trying to make it easier to join online leagues by adding a simple league browser. There are disappointingly few leagues (seven as of this writing, four of which are open), but it’s a heartening concession. It would be nice to be able to run live drafts, thought the game does now allow importing/exporting for drafts, a minor concession.

Finally, in case you’re wondering, yes, there is now the option for the second wild card team, as was implemented in the majors this year. The game still allows players to run historical leagues from 1871 through to 2012 as well, with the appropriate rules and conventions of each age. Fictional leagues are also still available, modifiable from top to bottom from number of divisions and leagues to which foreign leagues to either have as external simmed leagues or actually play in as the main league.

Overall, Out of the Park Baseball 13 is the best version of this evolving baseball management sim series, with a supportive community that constantly develops utilities for the game (which is encouraged by OOTP Developments.) Check it out.

G.R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones books have exploded on HBO, and now the game based on them is now out on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. A Game of Thrones features an original story developed in collaboration with the author George R. R. Martin as gamers play as two former soldiers of Robert’s Rebellion who, despite divergent paths, must reunite to face a new and deadly threat to the Seven Kingdoms.

Yahtzee scopes out Piranha Bytes’ pirate open world roleplaying game Risen 2: Dark Waters. Let’s see what he thinks of this waterlogged sequel.

The first behind-the-scenes look at Epic Mickey 2 re-introduces the development team and the friendship between Mickey Mouse and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, as the sequel goes multiplatform and co-op.

Gamestooge has previously reported on the problems facing GAME in Europe, notable that they wouldn’t be stocking Mass Effect 3 and other recent EA titles, and that they had entered “Administration”, the European equivalent of bankruptcy.

Now the problems have spread to GAME Australia, where they have also entered Administration and texted customers to tell them that they will not be stocking Diablo III, quite possibly the most anticipated PC game of 2012. Making matters worse, they also told their customers that not only was the pre-order cancelled, but that they would NOT receive a refund.

“Due to the appointment of an administrator to our business this morning, it is with regret that I inform you all that our stores will not be receiving any stock of diablo 3 (sic). Because of this, we regrettably will be unable to fulfill any pre-orders. Also, we will be unable to refund any deposits paid towards a pre-order of diablo 3. If you need any more info, please email customerrelations@game.com.au”

It will be interesting to see how far they go with this, because while I am fuzzy on Australian law, I’m pretty sure it’s illegal to accept payment for a good or service and then not provide that good or service. The alternative is to take the entire Diablo III customer base and add them as yet another creditor to the Game bottom line making it even harder for them to get out of Administration.

We know that Microsoft hit the #1 spot for console hardware, selling 236,000 units and capturing 47% of the console market, the 14th month in a row that they have exceeded the 40% share mark. We know Sony didn’t out-sell last year on any platform.

And as far as hardware goes, that’s all we know. Nintendo has not yet released a statement.

So let’s do some math here: 47% is 236,000 units so 100% would be 502,128. Which means that the PS3 and Wii combined for around 266,128 machines. We know Sony said they didn’t out-sell last year, and the PS3 moved 204,300 machines in April of 2011 which means the absolute best they could have done is 204,299, which means the Wii is left with around 61,829.

Wow, no wonder Nintendo is remaining quiet. I will be happy to change these numbers if and when Sony or Nintendo make official statements.

But let this be a lesson to everyone involved as to why sales numbers need to be reported by independent 3rd parties. We have no numbers at all for the PSP, PSP Vita, DS or 3DS. Your guess is as good as mine there.

On the software side, first the good news. Anita Frazier announced that with 83,000 unit sales, Kid Icarus for the 3DS would have made the top 10 – if they had not combined cross platform sales. You can probably guess which of these games would have been less than 83,000 units had they been considered separately:

• 1.) Prototype 2 (360, PS3) Activision Blizzard – Less than 236K, perhaps significantly.
• 2.) Kinect Star Wars (360) Lucasarts
• 3.) Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (360, PS3, Wii, PC) Activision Blizzard
• 4.) Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13 (360, PS3) Electronic Arts
• 5.) NBA 2K12 (360, PS3, Wii, PSP, PC, PS2) Take-Two Interactive
• 6.) The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings (360, PC) Warner Bros. Interactive
• 7.) Mario Party 9 (Wii) Nintendo
• 8.) Mass Effect 3 (360, PS3, PC) Electronic Arts
• 9.) Just Dance 3 (Wii, 360, PS3) Ubisoft
• 10.) MLB 12: The show (PS3, PSV) Sony
• XX.) Kid Icarus (3DS) Nintendo – 83K

I’m somewhat surprised that Prototype 2 took the top spot, but it’s worth noting another fun statistic… If it had gone against the best sellers from April, 2011, it would have ranked 8th. That really goes to show how weak this month was for sales.

Kinect Star Wars taking the #2 spot also surprises given the large quantity of hate regarding it on the Internet and the Han Solo Dance Party. Apparently casual Star Wars gamers weren’t turned off enough by it to refuse the sales.

To no surprise, someone let the air out of Mass Effect 3, and the Gamestop exclusive Xenoblade Chronicles for the Wii also failed to chart. This doesn’t bode well for the equally exclusive The Last Story due in July which is widely expected to be one of the last, if not the last, Wii game.

Several analysts are placing the blame on an early Easter which took a large quantity of gift-giving off the table for April. We should see sales bump up again, however, come June as students graduate from school and we also hit Father’s Day. Mother’s Day in May? Not so big for gaming.

Piranha Games has released a gameplay teaser showing off what to expect from their upcoming free-to-play online mech sim, MechWarrior Online. Players will be able to outfit their own mechs and join factions to battle across the galaxy.

Let us know how much you’re looking forward to this game.

After showing off the Gunzerker class for Borderlands 2, this time the Siren gets some developer walkthrough love.