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Hello friends! Earlier this weekBatman: Arkham Asylumcame out. It’s been getting really good reviews! IGN gave both the 360 and PS3 versions a 9.3, because they never do separate reviews for multiplatform releases unless the game is fundamentally different. You would think that would be a good way to keep fanboy arguments to a minimum, right? Wrong! Before we get to the straight fanboying, I always like to take a moment to laugh at how seriously everyone takes number scores, and how people think there’s some definitive scale you may use....

A few months ago, 1upran a storydetailing a Square Enix-produced strategy forFinal Fantasy XI‘s toughest boss, the ridiculously-titled Absolute Virtue. More recently, at the Premier Site Summit event in late July, Sage Sundi, the Global Online Producer and Lead Game Master forFinal Fantasy XI, claimed that the Absolute Virtue battle takes about 18 hours. Yeah, you read that right. There’s a boss inFinal Fantasy XIthattakes 18 hours. This raises a few questions, the least of which is WTF....

I am not a multiplayer gamer. I love my single-player experiences and one of the things I hate most in this world is when a single-player game tacks on multiplayer in the sequel just so they can say they have it. Even if it doesn’t hurt the single-player experience at all I am irrationally annoyed by it. Is this the case withDead Space 2‘smultiplayer? We’ve got our first video to help us decide....

This may well be the last FAotD post before Christmas, since tomorrow Apple locks developers out of iTunes, preventing them from updating or releasing their games for six days. It’s a Holiday thing. Unfortunately I won’t be leaving on a high note, but it’s not an altogether miserable one either. Hero Projectis one of the “Freemium” games, though in collaboration withOpenFeint, they’re offering all in-App purchases at a 50% discount. You create a super hero and send him out on mundane tasks....

[Ed. note: For some reason, the video plays much better for me (i.e., its frame rate is normal) when I fullscreen it. –Samit]It’s been forever since the days when theWayne Gretzky’s 3D HockeyandNHL Hitzseries ruled the arcade hockey roost, and it now appears that we may soon have a current-gen spiritual successor to those golden oldies. The phrase I’ve been using to explain the potential greatness of EA Sports’ upcoming downloadable hockey title,3 on 3 NHL Arcade, is “NBA Jam… on ice....

Interesting news on the GameStop front. The massive retailer has announced its acquisition of streaming technology companySpawn Labs, and its agreement to purchase Stardock’s digital distribution clientImpulse, which is “subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close in May 2011.” “Our customers are gaming in many locations and on many devices, and we need to deliver the same great immersive experience that they have come to expect,” explains GameStop President Tony Bartel....

Demigodwas a good game. As such, a sequel toDemigodwould be — I have to imagine — received well. In a Gamescom-flavored interview between Gamers.fr and Gas Powered Games’ leading man Chris Taylor, the notion of doing a follow-up was danced around in fairly honest terms. “We made an investment in that game, and we spent a lot of money on it,” says Taylor. “Now, some things have happened since that; we’ve got a lot of interest in a sequel toDemigod....

Amongst the hustle and bustle of other shooters jostling for attention on the horizon, it’s easy to forgetSingularity. It’s that other FPS that evil publisher Activision has in its pocket, the one that isn’tModern Warfare 2orWolfenstein. You remember it now? Of course you do. We have a smattering of screens for you, fresh from Gamescom. I haven’t been paying as close attention to this game as I should, but it’s looking pretty cool....

[Update: Our originally story had mentioned a PlayStation Move-supported version of Deathly Hallows; this was incorrect. Electronic Arts has confirmed that the upcoming PlayStation 3 version of the game willnotsupport Move. Sorry for any confusion.] At Electronic Arts press conference today at gamescom, the publisher showed off for the first time how Kinect will work with the Xbox 360 version of the upcomingHarry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I....

Last Thursday, there was yet another attempted shooting rampage in Germany. Fortunately, nobody was killed, which is of course why no major news outlet run the story. Despite the fact that no lives were lost, however, one particular German school is joining the country’s pathetic anti-videogame bandwagon,declaring that his schoolis to be “Killergame-free.” German school principal Bernd Denning believes videogames play a major role in a child becoming a “homicidal maniac,” providing violent answers to problems that kids may be having....

As a young child, I drowned out the voices of cackling demons that infested my head by playing the Steve Jackson/Ian LivingstoneFighting Fantasyseries of roleplaying books. If you’ve never read/played one, it’s basically a fantasy novel with dice that incredibly lonely geeks enjoyed in the eighties and nineties. Truly badass stuff. This upcoming game from Aspyr is based upon the very first novel in the series,The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. I’d have been happy with just an DS version of the novel, but the developers instead have opted to create an old-school first-person RPG romp....

Last week, obsessive-compulsive gamers discovered a number of hidden Triforce symbols that had been smuggled into Google’s logos by artist Susis Sahim. The artist in question was commissioned to produce a number of images for the popular Search Engine, and threw in the easter eggs due to being a massive fan of the games. Unfortunately for her art, Google is not a massive fan of potential lawsuits from Nintendo, and the potentially infringing images havesince been removed....

Not surprising considering all of the Internet chatter, butFinal Fight‘s Mike Haggar and Marvel’s Phoenix are now official forMarvel vs. Capcom 3. YouTube account VicioJuegosVideos has snatched up the first videos of the two in action, both of which you can see below. This brings the totalMarvel vs. Capcom 3roster count to 34 fighters so far. Will more be revealed before the game launches on February 15? If I were a betting man, I’d say… no....