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Ubisoft have a history with their PlayStation 3 “exclusives.” TakeAssassin’s Creedfor instance — for awhile, they tried to convince the world that the game was going to be coming to Sony’s console only. Forget the fact that people had seen the game being played on an Xbox 360 and/or a PC (myself included). It appears the same thing is happening with Free Radical’s forthcoming drug addicted first-person shooter,Haze. The impressive looking title was once slated for a multiplatform release, with Free Radical employees themselves confirming the development of the title for at least the Xbox 360....

Concerned with how Ruffian is handlingCrackdown 2, agent? Never fear — you’ll have a chance to check it out before the game hits shelves, as the developer has confirmed a public demo will hit Xbox LIVE. “you may definitely expect a demo to hit LIVE before the game is out,”Crackdown 2producer James Cope toldIGN, “but I can’t say when that will be… yet. TheCrackdowndemo was fantastic, and we want to carry on in that form....

Oh boy! Blizzard is now offering one free name change for your character inStarCraft II. This can be done by logging into Account Management onBattle.net, selecting your game license, and hitting the “Character Name Change” button near the bottom. From there, you simply need to start upStarCraft IIas usual, and you’ll be prompted to change your identity. Oh, and if you decide to eventually change your name a second time, it’ll cost you....

For any person who wonders why I am a fan of theTaiko No Tatsujiinseries, I ask you: gaze upon that picture above and tell what about it is not to like. In addition to flying drums, we have multicolored birds, jubilant cats, overjoyed drumsticks, an ecstatic mermaid, a boy holding a gun with a tiger coming out of it and a flying bell holding what appears to be a lightsaber made of fire....

OK, so based on the sales numbers, I knew that gamers weren’t the only ones playingGrand Theft Auto IVthis year. But imagine my surprise when I saw that Darren Aronofsky, director ofRequiem for a Dreamand the upcomingThe Wrestler, used Rockstar’s game as an example when talking to theNew YorkTimesfor a recent “Moments That Mattered” piece. “Looking over Niko’s shoulder up at the virtual parachute jump inGrand Theft Auto IV‘s version of Coney Island, grabbing a dollar hot dog off the boardwalk to get my health back, then leaping into a bullet-hole-riddled Hummer and smashing through my childhood neighborhood, flying over sand dunes on Manhattan Beach and finally drowning in the sea off Brighton Beach,” wrote Aronofsky, breaking some imaginary “run-on sentence about videogames” record....

Toonstruckwas a mid-’90s point-and-click adventure game starring Christopher Lloyd and a bunch of cartoons. You might have heard of it. What you might not know, however, is that the game’s sequel — which used a significant amount of cut content fromToonstruck— was never finished. It gets weirder.Toonstruck‘s music director Keith Arem holds all of the necessary rights to release this content in an updated version ofToonstruckthat would “include the 2nd half of the game [for] iPad, online, etc....

Plans are in the works for another1 vs. 100season. The Xbox LIVE Primetime downloadable seemed to be a success if the overloaded servers during each live recording of the social game show are any indication of impact. But don’t expect the same thing all over again — the team behind the game is adding little twists and tweaks make the game all the more better. In a latest posting on thegame’s development blog, we’re observing that the game’s treatment of The One is receiving some love....

Nelson Abalos over atPixelated Geekhad a chance to interview Tony Hawk, at LEGOLAND of all places, and the skateboard legend mentioned that he’s working on a new game “probably for next year.” News that will be received by the choir of a swarm of crickets at this point. But who knows, maybe Activision will have gotten the message that nobody really cares about the franchise anymore after the last Tony Hawk game,Shred, sold a whole3,000 copies at launch....

Last week’sAchievement Unlockedwas based around the lack of newly leaked Achievements or Trophies. We had our fun with some familiar titles, both old and somewhat new. This week, there are only a few titles to draw from, but a few are of the unreleased variety — most notably, Vin Diesel’sWheelmanand Namco Bandai’sAfro Samurai. But before I start, I would like to point out the reader that made me laugh the most last week with a bogus Achievement....

If you are a huge Phoenix Wright fanboy like me, you will be very excited to hear that Capcom has just announced the first game in its spin-off series,Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, is scheduled for release inNorth Americaon February 12. I already miss my boyPhoenix(big ups!), but am willing to be open-minded and give his slick red vest-wearing colleague a chance. While I don’t think I will have as much of a secret man crush on Apollo, what keeps me optimistic is the fact thatApollo Justicewasspecificallymade for the Nintendo DS (as opposed to thePhoenix WrightGBA ports)....

This week’s Art Attack Friday spotlight is on poinko. A majority of his pieces all have a very cartoon like feel to them. There’s also a number of outrageous pieces in poinko’s collection. Most notable are the monster Mr. Mime, the mecha Pikachu and the Luigi and Lugia fusion pieces. Out of all of poinko’s work, the Fawful one is my favorite. It made me realize that there’s barely any fanart for probably one of the bestMariovillains of all time....

Naughty Bearis almost out. Just a few more days and we can start getting in on all the sick fun. To remind us of this momentous occasion, we’ve got this video footage of a rare Unibear. It’s a mythical creature which will score you a ton of points in the game if you can find, catch and scare it. And like just about everything inNaughty Bear, it’s a little weird. Why is it that a horn looks so natural on a horse yet strange on the bear?...

Cheap games.Real Talk. In this day and age, any kind ofanythingyou can land for $10 is good. That’s because $10 hardly buys anything of value anymore. It does get ten things off the dollar menus, but is that really good? I mean, it costs $10 to stick your luggage on a f’n airplane! But it won’t even buy half a tank of gas to get you to the airport, let alone the places with the dollar menu....