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I get the sense that a lot of people are skeptical aboutConduit 2. First, it’s a Wii game, which is already enough toupset some people. Second, the originalConduitreceived a lot of pre-release hype, but failed to live up to the expectations of a lot of gamers. It was a good game, but it wasn’t a fully featured as similar games on other consoles, which left a lot Wii-only console gamers feeling bitter and jaded, convinced that High Voltage and other 3rd party developers “just didn’t care about them”....

Oh, hell yes. Square-Enix has just released a new trailer forFinal Fantasy VII: Crisis Core, the game that has convinced many of us not to trade in ourdusty PSPjust yet. Details on thisFFVIIprequel have been relatively scarce thus far aside from somecoolscans, so it’s nice of Squenix to finally throw fans a bone, even if most of us don’t speak Nihongo and have no idea what’s being said. Showing off just how decent a PSP game can look, the trailer whetsFFfans’ appetites by showcasing plenty of FMV sequences throughout and a delicious peek at the battle system toward the end....

Tetsuya Nomura spoke with Famitsu on the next in his series of Kingdom Hearts games,Dream Drop Distance. In the interview, translated bySQEX GAL, he said that he is currently going over the scenario with Disney for approval, and it seems that the story is a bit hard to understand. “It’s fairly complicated. Right now I’m telling Disney about the scenarios, but it’s hard for them to understand it all at once....

The obvious big release for this week isMetroid Prime 3: Corruption.From what I saw and from what Topher described to me in regards to the controls when he was trying it out on the PAX show floor, it looked great.Aside from that,Dynasty Warriors: Gundamis looking hawt to me thanks to Sterling never shutting up about it.Dead Head Fredlooks like it will also be good. Especiallyafter reading Tristero’s hands-onpreview. I actually had some hands-on time with it too....

This week’s biggest title is obviouslyWhere’s Waldo? The Fantastic Journey.HAH! No. It’sHalo 3: ODSTfor the Xbox 360. The new Halo offers up a lot of new stuff, but is it worth the price? Check outmy reviewfrom this past weekend to find out! Katamari Foreverwants to roll you up into a star,Zombie Apocalypseis an arcade version ofLeft 4 Dead(read: awesome) andPersonais on the PSP this week. What’s looking sw33t to you all?...

This past weekend at the NorCal Regionals 9 tournament, Capcom was on hand to show off the most recent build ofStreet Fighter X Tekken. Many of your favorite fighting game pros, such as EG Justin Wong, EG Ricky Ortiz, Floe, and Marn, were on hand to compete in a single-elimination tournament organized byiPlayWinner. Since then, iPlayWinner has uploaded HD direct-feed footage ontheir YouTube channel. Many of them were playing this game for the first time (aside from Justin Wong, who I caught beasting at this game at E3)....

If the obtuse video above didn’t make this clear,Metazoa Ludensis a human-animal interactive gaming system. UnlikeNintendogsorBarbie Horse Adventures,a biological animal actually controls its on-screen representation. The best news is, hyperbolic headline aside, the game can be operated by ordinary household pets. The hamster I challenged was not endowed with X-Men like mutagenic powers. The basic drive to find a nice place to burrow propelled him through our game together. This drive apparently outweighed my competitive streak, because he ripped me to shreds quickly after our game began....

The sequel to the poor man’sDynasty Warriorshas a handful of new screenshots today which you can look at with the eyes that live in your face. All sorts of pretty colors and flamboyant costumes are on display, so if that kind of thing gets you off, today is your lucky day. I giveNinety-Nine Nightssome stick because of how rubbish the first game was, but I certainly do hope the sequel is good....

One would think that after all the negative press Nintendo got for scoring a 0 out of a possible 10 on Greenpeace’s Scale of Greenitude (note: not official name) in 2007 they might be more willing to release the information Greenpeace looks for when judging companies. However, once again they’ve scored a zero on seven of the eleven points Greenpeace checks for when ranking Greenitude (note: still not an offical word) all because they don’t release or keep track of that info....

There’s not much more to this story past what the headline says. AJapanese blog postfrom one shop says that they’re making a whopping 700 yen ($7.39 by today’s conversions) on each sold PS3 Slim. Once they place their orders with Sony and sell their stock, they’re going to be left with just enough money to buy a couple ofegg-topped cheeseburgers from a nerdy white guy. It’s not clear whether this pricing extends through the rest of Japan or the rest of the world, but it’s certainly a bad deal for this shop....

You know OnLive? That service promising to let gamers playCrysis-grade titles on the lowest of low-end hardwarethrough the magic of the internet? Well,it’s been in beta testingfor a little while, and Ryan Shrout ofPC Perspectivemanaged to get a bite of the wild, free-range OnLive experience. And apparently, it tasted a bit likepie-in-the-sky. In his lengthy (but fascinating) write-up, Shrout testedBurnout Paradise, Unreal Tournament 3,andTom Clancy’s HAWXover the remote gaming service (which handles all the processing and hardware-intensive graphics server-side while streaming video feedback to the player), then compared the experience with playing the same games on a local, appropriately beefy home PC....

Industry analyst Michael “Slippery Bullet” Pachter has weighed in on the “crunch period” debate reignited by recentTeam Bondi controversies. According to Pacther, working long hours is an obligation, and anybody who dislikes it needs to get out. “TheLA Noireproject was disrupted, and there were several false promises of finishing the game, and poor Brendan McNamara — who is probably going to be ‘rich Brendan McNamara’ — was put in the position to get his team to crunch and get it done more than once,” he said....

At the recent PAX conference, I spent some time talking to the guys from Destineer. You may remember them fromthis hands-on pieceI wrote that seemed to confuse and terrify most of you, and today I’m bringing you some hands-on impressions of another one of their titles:Wordjong. The game itself is an electronic amalgam ofScrabbleandMahjong. With such classic parentage and a $20 price tag, moving this title off of store shelves shouldn’t be an issue regardless of its quality....