Vanquish is following in the stiletto-heel footsteps of Platinum's last action game, Bayonetta, in a couple of interesting ways. First, the Shinji Mikami-designed shooter is being outfitted with an optional "Casual Auto" difficulty level, much like Bayonetta's "Easy Automatic" mode, designed to allow even those new to action games have a good time.

"Once you get your target on the enemy, the rest is easy as pie," Mikami said in the blog post announcing the mode. "I'm sure saying it that way makes it sound totally uninteresting, but when you actually give it a shot, the tempo it gives the game play will make you jump up and say, 'Woohoo!'" That's the other way in which Vanquish echoes Bayonetta: exclamations. It's "Woohoo!" from the player, versus "Wuhhh!!" from Bayonetta. "You know ... 'Wuhhh!!'"

Vanquish also includes an unlockable "God Hard" difficulty. "I think our fans will get where this one is going," Mikami teased. We suspect apocalyptic beatdowns are to be found within this mode.

It seems silly to describe the "new features" that have been added to Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock without acknowledging the basic stuff the franchise still doesn't get right. For example, do you want to see the difficulty of a song before jumping into it in campaign mode? Nope, you can't do that. Want to filter and sort songs by multiple criteria? Forget about it. Compared to Rock Band 3's feature set -- keyboard, vocal harmonies, "Pro" mode -- it's clear that Activision has been surpassed. But maybe all you want from Guitar Hero is a "story" and the ability to bust through the five-star ranking system. 32x multiplier and 60 stars, YEAH!!!

You could argue that Warriors of Rock isn't regressive; it's an homage to the franchise's origins, a celebration of hardcore guitar music. The 90 songs included on the disc support drums and vocals, but it's clear what the focus of the game is: being a guitar hero. If the franchise's penchant for crazy note maps hasn't satiated your strumming skills, you'll be glad to know that Warriors of Rock ups the ante by including the entirety of Rush's "2112" -- as a final boss, of course.

Final boss? Yes, Warriors of Rock's big new feature is a Quest Mode, narrated by KISS' Gene Simmons. While I could rant about how it feels like it was written by (and for) twelve year old boys, I'll let Activision do the work. The fact sheet describes it as a "journey from the infamous stage of CBGBs to the molten lava fields of rock treachery ... to help the Demi-God of Rock take down 'The Beast' and save rock 'n roll." Tim Schafer would be rolling in his grave (if he were dead).

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Formerly known as Guitar Hero 6, Warriors of Rock promises the largest on-disc set list so far, with over 90 songs. Here's a look at the list of songs that have been announced to date.

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I played the video game version of Clash of the Titans for around seven hours and, according to the game, have finished 31 percent of it.

This would usually be unsatisfactory for a review, but in much the same way you'd only need to poll a small percentage of the population before you could confidently say that no one likes seeing immediate family members hit in the face with a ball-peen hammer, I feel like I've pretty much got the lay of the land here.

This is a very bad game.

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Capcom experienced another "sluggish" performance in its latest financial quarter -- the first of Fiscal 2010, from April 1 to June 30 -- and consequently blamed slow growth of Lost Planet 2 sales, among other things. Net sales for the quarter were down 2.4 percent year-over-year at 19 million yen ($219 million) and net income dropped a dramatic 90 percent from last year to the tune of 213 million yen ($2.5 million).

Although titles like Super Street Fighter IV and Monster Hunter Frontier Online showed what Capcom calls "steady growth," LP2 and Monster Hunter Tri only sold at a "sluggish pace." The first two weeks of Ghost Trick sales were also met with disappointment, although the game premiered at number two in its first week of Japanese sales.

The Japanese publisher also lamented "shrinking" US and European markets "under the stagnating economy," as well as fluctuating exchange rates. Though sales across the board were lower than expected, Capcom considers its financial forecast for this fiscal year to be unaffected.

The last footage we saw of Halo: Reach introduced us to the Forge World design tools. The latest video to come out of Bungie is a lot more straightforward, getting to the "real" Halo stuff: the campaign.

The trailer after the break, featuring an excerpt from Marty O'Donnell's score, shows everything from hand-to-hand combat to massive space battles, with plenty of armored Spartans looking very serious. You'd look very serious too if you were fighting to keep a planet invader-free. Or if you had to walk around in hundreds of pounds of armor.

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"Well, you found me. Congratulations. Was it worth it? Because despite your violent behavior, the only thing you've managed to break so far ... is my heart. Maybe you could settle for that and we'll just call it a day? I guess we both know that isn't going to happen."

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Syd Bolton, who runs the Personal Computer Museum in Brantford, Canada, really enjoys Dragon's Lair in all its many, many incarnations. Bolton owns almost every version of Dragon's Lair ever released, which is saying a lot considering that game has been ported more times over the last 30 years than a Carnival Cruise ship. However, he hasn't got them all, telling Joystiq that he's missing the mobile phone version from 2005 (because it wasn't available in his area) and the Amstrad CPC versions from the mid-'80s.

The picture above contains 47 versions of the game and its sequels. Bolton mentions that the image doesn't contain the whole collection, as a few copies are in storage. We've listed every copy of the game featured in the picture after the break.

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Look, Two Worlds had issues. You know it. We know it. Everyone knows it. Apparently "everyone" includes the folks at SouthPeak, who have released the first episodes in a new video series entitled "Sordahon's Journey."

The series follows the villainous Sordahon as he strives to break free from the shackles of his master and the stigma of the first Two Worlds. Granted, you won't learn a lot about Two Worlds 2, but you're guaranteed a chuckle or two, and it's nice to see game creators poking fun at themselves.

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Seeing that Red Dead Redemption takes place in a primitive world predating the car stereo, Rockstar San Diego had to come up with another way of injecting music into the title. Their solution: an interactive, Spaghetti Western-inspired score -- the making of which can be seen in the video below.

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