No More Heroes has long been one of the surprisingly numerous games I will point to when people say there are no “hardcore” games for Wii, and so I was really stoked that more people would be able to experience this wacky, nutty masterpiece in No More Heroes: Heroes’ Paradise on the PS3 and 360. One thing that will not be included with this port is the involvement of Ubisoft, as a company spokesman let slip that ”Ubisoft will not be publishing either of these versions.”

This is somewhat puzzling, as Ubisoft is still publishing No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle for Wii in January 2010. You can’t be sure, but demand seems high enough to the point where somebody will pick this up and publish it. If you don’t wanna wait on a decision, you can probably pick up a copy of the original version for around $15 if you got a Wii, and I found the motion controls in the game to be well implemented to the point where I question if I would miss them playing the game with a traditional controller. Charging your beam katana just never got old.

That scene. Modern Warfare 2’s airport level is one of the most discussed sequences in the history of the medium. So when the scriptwriter behind it speaks up, it’s probably worth listening.

In an interview with GamePro, MW2 scriptwriter Jesse Stern had some interesting things to say on the level and its creation. “Every single person in testing opened fire on the crowd, which is human nature,” said Stern. “I hope that people don’t just look at it as being this simplistic and brutal sequence. We’ve done our best to treat it with care and not to make it gratuitous.”

Stern went on to laud Infinity Ward for taking risks, “This is a triple-A game and the top grosser of all time with this huge budget behind it, yet we’re still taking major chances wherever we can and the airport level was a risk we had to take. Sometimes you take huge risks and it really works. Sometimes it doesn’t work at all. But if you don’t take the chance, you’re not going to make something new.”

The ever-popular Need for Speed Shift will be getting its first piece of downloadable content next month. Coming to both Xbox Live and PlayStation Network as a free download, the content includes five classic cars (listed below) as well as a new team-based Team Racing mode, which EA is hopeful will “completely redefine online racing.” Check the video below to see what it’s all about.

The DLC will arrive on XBL on December 1, European PSN on December 3 and North American PSN on December 10.

Vehicles included:
1967 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray 427
1967 Shelby GT-500
1969 Dodge Charger R/T
1971 Dodge Challenger R/T
1998 Toyota Supra Mark IV

Along with the premiere of Halo: Reach, the Spike TV Video Game Awards next month promise to bring several other reveals and surprises, one of which it turns out is a new shooter from 2K Games. Beyond the teaser video below, absolutely nothing of the title is known, not even its name. But, it along with gameplay footage will air during the VGAs on December 12, so we’ll just have to hold our breath until then.

id Software’s upcoming post-apocalyptic bulletfest Rage will include a number of weapons from the company’s past games, creative director Tim Willits has told Total PC Gaming. Along with newly designed weapons, a number of which will have different ammo types by the way, Willits says Rage will feature “many of the classic id Software weapons.” Whether it’s weapons from Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein, or all of the above wasn’t mentioned, though I do believe the world agrees when I say there’s nothing more classic than the BFG, aka the all-mighty Big F***ing Gun.

While StarCraft II and the Cataclysm expansion for World of Warcraft are sure deals, a 2010 release for Diablo III was recently set in doubt, only to be now all but officially confirmed by VP of game design, Rob Pardo. “I think it’s safe to say that, yeah, [Diablo III] is not going to be out next year,” he told Techland.

“We always announce all of our games too early. We realize that and go, ‘You know what? Next time we’re not going to do that.’ And then we always fail at that. But I’d rather fail at that than fail at making the game great.”

Sad news, but those holding out any hope of playing the game next year should probably consider giving up right about now.

After being a tease with a closed beta, Cryptic has today announced the open beta dates for their upcoming ‘boldly go where no man has gone before’ MMO; The expanded beta for Star Trek Online will kick off on January 12 and ends on January 26, a week before the game’s launch in early February, lasting exactly two weeks. Keys will be given out on a first come first serve basis on startrekonline.com, so anyone interested better keep an eye on it.

Cryptic also sent over the “Space Exploration” trailer above, which shows us some sights and ships blowing up.

Heroes Over Europe offers a vision of World War II filtered through old British comic books, patriotic wartime posters and chirpy Pathe newsreels about ‘our boys.’ It’s a welcoming approach, a presentational style that accounts for much of the game’s strength. But the ‘chocks away’ charm wears away all too quickly. What’s left is a game with a real dearth of ideas.

The sequel to 2005’s Heroes Over the Pacific, HOE transplants the air-based arcade action to a rough approximation of the Battle of Britain. So you’ll be zooming over London defending the houses of Parliament, dispatching vast squadrons of bombers and dog-fighting ‘ace pilots’ over the white cliffs of Dover. All in the name of seeing off those dastardly Nazi chaps.

The game’s central gimmick is the addition of ‘Ace-Kills,’ a feature best described as the air-combat equivalent of bullet-time. Get in close to an enemy and a gauge on your targeting reticule will charge, keep them in your sights for long enough it will eventually turn red - allowing you to click a button, zoom in and pick off vulnerable sections of enemy plane. Think of it as an air-to-air headshot.

But Ace-Kills are just too fiddly to bother executing. The standard targeting scheme is so forgiving and deadly from such a range that aside from some achievement and mission-based incentives, Ace-Kills are likely to go unused.

So with even this barely-unique feature rendered all but useless, Heroes Over Europe struggles to differentiate itself. It’s not helped by the mission design, which is dull, repetitive and uninspired. Rarely do they deviate beyond throwing ever larger squadrons of bombers and fighters at you. When they do, you’ll have to contend with the odd escort mission or low-altitude escape, but they fail to raise the experience beyond mediocre.

It’s short and easy too, with an unchallenging 5 or 6 hour campaign that offers little or no depth. Once you’ve worked out the best way to tackle bombers, you’ve essentially learned everything you need to beat the game. From a full-price retail product, it’s an embarrassingly slight package that a barren-lobbied multiplayer is ill-equipt to counter.

There is the nucleus of a good game here. Throwing your plane around the skies is liberating, thanks largely to the arcade-esque rejection of annoyances like stalling or running out of ammo. Coupled with a charming presentational style of instructional loading-screen propaganda posters and some nicely done animated comic cut-scenes, for half an hour or so you could be convinced that HOE was going to be a deeply-unfashionable, yet highly-enjoyable guilty pleasure. Unfortunately, in that half an hour you’ve seen pretty much all the game has to offer.

It’s hard to escape the feeling that Heroes Over Europe was rushed out of the door with little or no love. It’s gets the very basics right, establishing presentational and gameplay styles that compliment each other nicely, but then fails to build on them. This is a game utterly bereft of inspiration or innovation, a cold exercise that ticks the boxes of what makes a game, but overlooks those that make a good one.We’d struggle to recommend it for any more than an evening’s rental.

+ Presentation is nicely done
+ Controls are accessible, fun
+ Quick way to earn 500+ Gamerscore…

- …because it is just so short and easy
- Mission design is uninspired, repetitive
- Crushingly familiar

The above video has been posted on YouTube displaying a hacker’s proof that there are hidden multiplayer modes on the Modern Warfare 2 game disk. There are three hidden game modes found in the video: VIP, Capture the Flag and Global Thermonuclear War, where the objective is to be the first team to capture a thermonuclear base before the other team and then blow everything up.

The hidden modes, if true, will likely be unlocked as downloadable content from Infinity Ward in the future. Seeing that the game modes are allegedly already on the MW2 game disk, it would be really sweet of IW not to charge for that DLC, but that’s unlikely. We’ll just have to wait and see how this turns out.

With Gears of War and Gears of War 2 each selling over 5 million copies worldwide, and Shadow Complex becoming the biggest selling single-player title in Xbox Live Arcade’s history this summer, it’s been pretty safe to assume that Epic’s moving forward with the franchises. And if a recent job listing is to be believed, that indeed appears to be the case.

The listing reveals that Microsoft is looking for a Lead Producer to join Microsoft Game Studios among whose responsibilities will be leading “the publishing side of games made by Epic,” helping lead the Gears of War and Shadow Complex “efforts” as well as leading, growing, and managing “a small team of producers across both Gears of War and Shadow Complex.”

So, yeah, we’ll be seeing more of those games.